wave following the First Crusade. The first army was Lombardy, led by Anselm, archbishop of Milan. They were joined by a force led by Conrad, constable to the German emperor, Henry IV. A second army, the Nivernois, was commanded by William II of Nevers. The third group from northern France was led by Stephen of Blois and Stephen of Burgundy. They were joined by Raymond of Saint-Gilles, now in the service of the emperor. The fourth army was led by William IX of Aquitaine and Welf IV of Bavaria. The Crusaders faced their old enemy Kilij Arslan and his Seljuk forces first met the Lombard and French contingents in August 1101 at the Battle of Mersivan, with the crusader camp captured. The Nivernois contingent was decimated that same month at Heraclea, with nearly the entire force wiped out, except for the count William and a few of his men. The Aquitainians and Bavarians reached Heraclea in September where again the Crusaders were massacred. The Crusade of 1101 was a total disaster both militarily and politically, showing the Muslims that the Crusaders were not invincible. Establishment of the kingdom The reign of Baldwin I began in 1100 and oversaw the consolidation of the kingdom in the face of enemies to the north, the Seljuks, and the Fatimids to the south. Al-Afdal Shahanshah, the powerful Fatimid vizier, anxious to recover the lands lost to the Franks, initiated the First Battle of Ramla on 7 September 1101 in which his forces were narrowly defeated, by those of Baldwin I. On 17 May 1102, the Crusaders were not so lucky, suffering a major defeat at the hands of the Fatimids, under the command of al-Afdal's son Sharaf al-Ma'ali at the Second Battle of Ramla. Among the slain were veterans of the Crusade of 1101, Stephen of Blois and Stephen of Burgundy. Conrad of Germany fought so valiantly that his attackers offered to spare his life if he surrendered. The kingdom was on the verge of collapse after the defeat, recovering after the successful Battle of Jaffa on 27 May. In the north, the siege of Tripoli was begun, not to be resolved for seven years. Al-Afdal tried once more in the Third Battle of Ramla in August 1105 and was defeated. After the Crusader victory at the siege of Beirut in 1110, the Fatimid threat to the kingdom subsided for two decades. The Battle