accompanied his brother Godfrey as far as
Heraclea in Asia Minor. When Tancred left the main body of the crusaders at
Heraclea, and marched into Cilicia, Baldwin followed, partly in jealousy,
partly from the same political motives which animated Tancred. He wrested
Tarsus from Tancred's grip (September 1097), and left there a garrison of
his own. After rejoining the main army at Marash, he received an invitation
from an Armenian named Pakrad, and moved eastwards towards the Euphrates,
where he occupied Tell-bashir. Another invitation followed from Thoros of
Edessa; and to Edessa Baldwin came, first as protector, and then, when
Thoros was assassinated, as his successor (March 1098). For two years he
ruled in Edessa (1098-1100), marrying an Armenian wife, and acting
generally as the intermediary between the crusaders and the Armenians.
During these two years he was successful in maintaining his ground, both
against the Mahommedan powers by which he was surrounded, and from which he
won Samosata and Seruj (Sarorgia), and against a conspiracy of his own
subjects in 1098. At the end of 1099 he visited Jerusalem along with
Bohemund I.; but he returned to Edessa in January 1100. On the death of
Godfrey he was summoned by a party in Jerusalem to succeed to his brother.
A lay reaction against the theocratic pretensions of Dagobert, who was
counting on Norman support, was responsible for the summons; and in the
strength of that reaction Baldwin was able to become the first king of
Jerusalem. He was crowned on Christmas Day, 1100, by the patriarch himself;
but the struggle of church and state was not yet over, and in the spring of
1101 Baldwin had Dagobert suspended by a papal legate, while later in the
year the two disagreed on the question of the contribution to be made by
the patriarch towards the defence of the Holy Land. The struggle ended in
the deposition of Dagobert and the triumph of Baldwin (1102).

As Baldwin had secured the supremacy of the lay power in Jerusalem, so he
extended into a compact kingdom the poor and straggling territories to
which he had succeeded. This he did by an alliance with the Italian trading
towns, especially Genoa, which supplied in return for the concession of a
quarter in the conquered towns, the instruments and the skill for a war of
sieges, in which the coast towns of Palestine were successively reduced.
Arsuf and Caesarea were captured in 1101; Acre in 1104; Beirut and Sidon in
1110 (the lat