On November 27, 1095, in Clermont, France, the Pope Urban II made an appeal that Christians in the West should go help the Christians in the East and this led to a series of Crusades by people in Western Europe to capture land in the Middle East and specifically the land of Israel. One group of at least 15,000 people from apparently Northern France responded to the Pope’s call, and started to walk to the land of Israel in the spring of 1096. However, these people were not willing to wait to fight until they got to the land of Israel, but they started to attack Jewish communities almost from the get go. Sperber (1990, p. 109) writes that it seems that the first Jewish community that they attacked was in Rouen in northwest France. Afterwards, they travelled eastwards towards Germany, and they attacked the Jewish community of Speyer on May 9, 1096 (8th of Iyar). Note, the kinah Mi yeten roshi mayim gives the dates for the attacks on the Jews of Speyer, Worms and Mainz. Also, note that since the Crusader mob travelled eastwards from France to Germany, north of Paris, they did not encounter the Jewish communities south of Paris where Rashi lived, and Rav Soloveitchik (2010, p. 431) writes that this enabled the Torah shebe’al peh to continue since there was no destruction of Torah scholarship in France in 1096.
From Speyer, the Crusader mob went north along the Rhine to kill the Jews in Worms (around 50 kilometers north of Speyer) on the 23rd of Iyar and Rosh Chodesh Sivan (May 24 and May 31, 1096) and then they continued north again to Mainz (another 50 kilometers north of Worms) to kill the Jews in Mainz on the third of Sivan (June 2, 1096). Afterwards they continued marching northwards, 165 kilometers, to the city of Cologne and they killed the Jews there on Shavuot (June 5, 1096). This last pogrom is not mentioned in the kinot, but is mentioned by Sperber (1990, p. 108). The fact that Crusaders marched northwards, which was out of their way since they were supposed to be walking east or south to go to the land of Israel, shows their cruelty as they were just going to kill the Jews. According to one estimate, during these two months of May and June 1096 in Germany, “as many as 8,000 Jews were massacred or took their own lives,” (Haag, 2014, p. 106).
Most of the mob who attacked the Jewish communities died on their march to the land of Israel, but some joined with a Crusader force, which was led by various knights, and they conquered Jerusalem on July 15, 1099 (17th of Tammuz). This led to more massacres of the Jewish community of Jerusalem, and the burning of synagogues where Jews were hiding. These massacres are not mentioned in the kinot, but the entire period of the Crusaders was a terrible period for the Jewish people.
One oddity about the four kinot relating to the destruction of the Jewish communities of Speyer, Mainz and Worms is that they are not grouped together. Instead, in between the four kinot, there are kinot about the destruction of the first Bet ha-Mikdash and the second Bet ha-Mikdash. I have never understood this disorder. People have suggested to me that this apparent disorder is to show that all the tragedies are related. I doubt this and think there could be some historical reasons, but I do not know of any particular reason.
Bibliography:
Haag, Michael, 2014, The tragedy of the Templars: The rise and fall of the Crusader States, London: Profile Books.
Soloveitchik, Rav Yosef, 2010, The Koren mesorat harav kinot: Commentary on the kinot based on the teachings of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, edited by Simon Posner, Jerusalem: Koren Publishers; New York: OU Press.
Sperber, Daniel, 1990, Minhagei Yisrael, Volume 1, Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook.