Deus Vult

The battle cry of the First Crusade is reported in the Gesta Francorum, written by an anonymous author associated with Bohemond I of Antioch shortly after the successful campaign, in 1100 or 1101. According to this description, as the Princes Crusade gathered in Amalfi in the late summer of 1096, there assembled a large number of crusaders, armed and bearing the sign of the cross on their right shoulders or on their backs, crying in unison "Deus le volt, Deus le volt, Deus le volt".[4] The Historia belli sacri, written somewhat later, c. 1131, also cites the battle cry.

The battle cry is again mentioned in the context of the capture of Antioch on 3 June 1098. The anonymous author of the Gesta was himself among the soldiers capturing the wall towers, and recounts that "seeing that they were already in the towers, they began to shout Deus le volt with glad voices; so indeed did we shout".[5]

Robert the Monk in c. 1120 re-wrote the Gesta Francorum because it was considered too "rustic". He added an account of the speech of Urban II at the Council of Clermont, of which he was an eyewitness. The speech climaxes in Urban's call for orthodoxy, reform, and submission to the Church. Robert records that the pope asked western Christians, poor and rich, to come to the aid of the Greeks in the east:

When Pope Urban had said these and very many similar things in his urbane discourse, he so influenced to one purpose the desires of all who were present, that they cried out, 'It is the will of God! It is the will of God!' When the venerable Roman pontiff heard that, with eyes uplifted to heaven he gave thanks to God and, with his hand commanding silence, said: Most beloved brethren, today is manifest in you what the Lord says in the Gospel, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them." Unless the Lord God had been present in your spirits, all of you would not have uttered the same cry. For, although the cry issued from numerous mouths, yet the origin of the cry was one. Therefore I say to you that God, who implanted this in your breasts, has drawn it forth from you. Let this then be your war-cry in combats, because this word is given to you by God. When an armed attack is made upon the enemy, let this one cry be raised by all the soldiers of God: It is the will of God! It is the will of God![6]

Robert also reports that the cry of Deus lo vult was at first shouted in jest by the soldiers of Bohemund during their combat exercises, and later turned into an actual battle cry, which Bohemund interpreted as a divine sign.[7]