As a matter of fact, of the roughly 35,000 ~ 40,000 people who left Europe, only about 15,000 eventually stood before the gates of Jerusalem four years later. So yes, they were killed off by the dozens on their way to the Holy Land, but the people who were killed the most were the badly armed commoners, not the minority of well armed soldiers and knights who participated. Also, there was a lot of strive in the region in that time - the very reason Pope Urban called the Crusade was to aid and defend Constantinople against the various muslim armies. But because there was division among the muslim leaders, there was no single muslim army to defeat the crusaders. It is also thought, especially with the battle for Nicea, that the Seljuq Sultan Aslan severely underestimated the Crusaders' military abilities. Before the great Crusader Army left Europe, the People's Crusade lead by Peter the Hermit had already left and tried to cross Asia Minor. The People's Crusade mostly consisted of farmers and the like, hence the name. They were butchered across Asia Minor, and because they went first, the muslims thought that the second crusader army wouldn't amount to much either. They were mistaken. The First Crusade took four years from the first call to the conquering of Jerusalem. A great deal of that time was spent in and around the Siege of Antioch, but when Antioch was finally conquered, the Crusaders had a bridgehead into the region. Lastly, the First Crusade was the most succesful Crusade of all, and in later years, the muslims succeeded in conquering back all the territory they had lost. The Zengid dynasty unified the Syrian and Egyptian forces and Jerusalem fell in 1187.

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Primary sources:

• William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea.

• Anna Komnena, Alexiad

Secondary sources (amongst others)

• Thomas Asbridge, The First Crusade. A New History (2004)

• Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades. A History (2005)

• Christopher Tyerman, God's War. A New History of the Crusades (2006)