It was the most brutal war in history.
Countless lives were lost; entire cities were reduced to rubble.
Christendom waged war on Islam.
Members of the two religions slaughtered each other in some of the most bloody battles in
history.
The Crusades lasted almost 200 years, and would have lasting effects on Europe and the
Middle East to this day.
This was an all out war dedicated to the glory of God, and reclaiming the Holy Land.
The Crusades is the name give to the series of campaigns Chirstians carried out to reclaim
the Holy Land from the Muslim empires.
It is important to note that both religions view this area of the world as holy, and important
to their religion, because they worship the same God.
They also share many of the same prophets, but the Crusades were fought in the name of
the same God on both sides.
So, perhaps if each side spent a little more time learning about the other’s culture,
200 years of war could have been avoided.
But that’s just a thought.
The First Crusade started in November of 1095 when Urban II called on Christians to take
up arms and regain control of the Holy Land from the Muslims.
This was a battle that the Byzantines and Christians from Eastern Europe were already
fighting.
The call to reclaim the Holy Land was met with a flood of support; knights and soldiers
were willing to give their lives for the Church.
The First Crusade had begun.
Four main armies were formed and led by Raymond of Saint-Gilles, Godfrey of Bouillon, Hugh
of Vermandois, and Bohemond of Taranto.
In August of 1096 they began marching to the Holy Land.
There was also a ragtag bunch of less organized people that left for the Holy Land just before
the main armies.
They could not contain their desire to take back what was rightfully Christian land.
This disorganized army was called the “People’s Crusade,” and was led by a popular preacher
of the time known as Peter the Hermit.
Peter ignored the advice of well trained generals and knights that suggested he wait for the
main forces to arrive.
Instead, Peter led his People’s Crusade into Muslim territory, and his entire army
was crushed by Turkish forces at Cibotus.
It was a humiliating defeat, and senseless waste of life.
When the main armies reached Constantinople, Alexius I, the emperor of the Byzantine Empire
at the time, declared that the Crusader leaders must swear an oath of loyalty to him, and
recognize his authority over any lands they conquer.
All of the leaders of the armies resisted this order, except for Godfrey of Bouillon.
The Crusaders felt that land claimed during this Holy War belonged to the victors, not
an emperor who hid behind the walls of his city.
It was clear that Alexius and the Crusdaders from the west would need to combine forces
in order to reclaim the Holy Land from Muslim control, so a compromise was made.
The Byzantine and western European armies marched into Muslim territory and attacked
Nicea.
They laid siege to the city, which surrendered to the Crusader forces in late June of 1097.
Tensions were still high between the Crusaders and their Byzantine allies, but they continued
on knowing that the only way they could secure their next victory of capturing the Syrian
city of Antioch, was by working together.
Control of Antioch was necessary in order for the Crusaders to continue onto their main
goal, Jerusalem.
The purpose of this holy war was to reclaim Jerusalem for Christendom, anything less would
be a failure.
The battle of Antioch caused losses on both sides, but eventually the city fell to the
Crusaders.
They were still squabbling over the right to control land with the Byzantines, but their
goal was in sight.
Bohemond, whose army had actually captured the city claimed it for himself.
However, Raymond of Saint-Gilles felt it should be given to the emperor.
Neither leader could come to an agreement.
As a result, the rest of the Christian forces marched on towards Jerusalem, while Bohemond
and Raymond stayed in Antioch fighting with one another.
The Crusaders finally reached their destination and invaded the city of Jerusalem.
The Muslim forces repelled attack after attack, like waves breaking on a fortified wall.
Crusader numbers had been depleted from other battles prior to reaching Jerusalem.
The Muslim governor of the city was sure he could hold out until more forces arrived from
Egypt.
Due to lucky timing, the Crusaders received reinforcements before help for the Muslims
could arrive.
They erected siege towers and marched towards the walls of Jerusalem.
The Crusader forces stormed the city and captured the governor, along with his army of bodyguards.
After negotiations, they were escorted out of the city.
The leaders of the Crusader force promised protection for the civilians of the city as
they made preparations to leave.
But the Christian soldiers disobayed this order, or did not know about the agreement
at all, and slaughtered every Muslim and Jewish man, woman, and child in the name of their
God.
Once the carnage ceased, and the dust settled, the Crusaders had finally attained their goal.
Three years after they left Europe for the Holy Land, Jerusalem was now under Christian
control.
After the completion of the First Crusade, many knights and soldiers returned home to
their families and estates.
In order to control the Holy Land four Crusader States were formed in Jerusalem, Edessa, Antioch,
and Tripoli.
It was in these lands that gigantic castles and fortresses were built, in order to stave
off any attacks from the enemy.
However, in 1130 Muslim forces started to gain back territory during their own holy
war, or jihad.
The Christians knew they were in trouble when General Zangi, governor of Mosul, besieged
and captured Edessa.
The fall of the northern most Crusader State was a cause for alarm across Christendom.
This led the Church to call for another Crusade to retake the territory that had been lost
in the Holy Land.
This would lead to the start of the Second Crusade in 1147 led by King Louis VII of France
and King Conrad III of Germany.
Unlike the First Crusade, the second had more than one objective.
While Kings Louis VII and Conrad III marched to reclaim Edessa, other Crusaders were sent
to Spain to eradicate the Muslim threat in the region.
At the same time, another force was sent to the Baltic Sea to wage war against the pagans
that lived along the coast.
During the Crusades several religious military orders were created to aide pilgrims traveling
to the Holy Land.
The two most powerful of these orders were the Hospitallers and The Knights Templars.
Both of the orders were composed of knights who fought solely in the name of God, and
with God behind them amassed vast amounts of wealth and power.
The Templars headquarters was at the former Temple of Solomon, one of the most holy sites
in all of Jerusalem.
These religious orders of knights gained control of, and built, castles along main travel routes,
which allowed them to protect and support pilgrims on their journey to the Holy Land.
These strategic outposts also allowed the religious orders to gain wealth and power
as they provided more and more services to the Crusaders and pilgrims.
Their foothold in the Holy Land and in Europe made them international organizations, and
their services were sought after by kings and the Church to help with battling the Muslim
threat.
These religious orders became so powerful that the Church soon became jealous and wary
of the organizations.
This would eventually lead to their demise.
In the Holy Land, the Muslims were gaining more and more ground.
Louis and Conrad managed to reach Jerusalem just in time.
They amassed an army of around 50,000 men.
This was the largest Crusader force of the war.
In order to make their intentions and their power known, Louis and Conrad marched on the
Syrian stronghold of Damascus with their massive force.
However, the Muslim leaders began to unify and combine armies, realizing the only way
to defeat the Christians was with cooperation of their own.
When the army of Crusaders reached Damascus, the Muslim forces had already joined together.
Their large numbers, along with having the fortresses of the city as a fallback position,
led to the Muslims pulverizing the Christian army.
This defeat brought an abrupt end to the Second Crusade.
Although the Christains still maintained control of much of the region gained during the First
Crusade, their enemy was becoming powerful, and the kingdoms of Europe were beginning
to lose their grasp over the Holy Land.
The Crusaders tried again and again to launch campaigns form Jerusalem further into Muslim
territory.
Their goal was to eventually capture Egypt, but they could not break the Muslim forces.
In 1187, Saladin, the sultan of Egypt, launched his own campaign against the Crusader States.
His goal was to reclaim Jeusalem for the Muslim faith, and he did just that.
Saladin led his forces into Christian territory where he crushed their main army at the battle
of Hattin.
Saladin successfully took Jerusalem, and a large amount of territory surrounding it.
The loss of Jerusalem resonated through Christendum, which led to the Third Crusade.
This is where King Richard the Lionheart entered history.
He, along with other kings of Europe, amassed another Crusader army and marched towards
the Holy Land to reclaim the city of Jerusalem once again.
Once in the Holy Land Richard the Lionheart and his forces roared into battle.
They fought and defeated Saladin at the Battle of Arsuf.
This was the main, and only real battle, of the Third Crusade.
It was a decisive victory for the Christians.
After Richard recaptured the city of Jaffa, he reestablished Christian control in the
region.
He took his Crusaders and moved on to Jerusalem.
Once there, he refused to lay siege to the holy city.
Instead, in September of 1192, Richard and Salidin signed a peace treaty ending the Third
Crusade and reestablishing the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
The Fourth Crusade was unlike all the others.
Instead of Christians fighting Muslims, Christians fought Christians.
It was a strange time to be a crusader.
Pope Innocent III called for a new Crusade in 1198.
But, a power struggle between Europe and Byzantium diverted the Crusaders from the Holy Land,
and they headed to Constantinople to overthrow Alexius III.
The plan was to replace him with his nephew, who would submit his power to Rome and the
Catholic Church.
When Alexius IV was put on the throne as Emperor of Byzantium by the crusaders, he tried to
force the Byzantine Church to rejoin the Western Church in Rome.
This was met with intense resistance, and the new emperor was strangled to death during
a coup in 1204.
This caused the Crusaders to declare full out war on Constantinople and they sacked
the city.
The Fourth Crusade concluded with the fall of Constantinople.
The Crusaders slaughtered hundreds, and looted everything they could get their hands on.
The entire Byzantine capital was practically destroyed.
This Crusade against the Byzantine Empire created an everlasting schism between the
Eastern and Western churches.
After the sack of Constantinople, and the end of the Fourth Crusade, there was a series
of smaller Crusades.
None of them would amass the armies, or reclaim territory, in the same way the previous wars
had.
There was also a shift in ideology during these final Crusades.
The emphasis was not on reclaiing the Holy Land from Muslim forces, but on decimating
anyone seen as a threat to the Catholic faith.
For example, The Albigensian Crusades’ sole purpose was to wipe out the Cathari sect of
Christianity in France.
The Baltic Crusades’ main purpose was to eradicate the pagans in Transylvania.
These Crusades had nothing to do with maintaining control of the Holy Land, and instead focused
on the genocide of groups of people who did not conform to the Catholic ideology.
Then there was the Children’s Crusade where thousands of people vowed to march to Jerusalem
and make a life in the Holy Land.
This was not really a Crusade since the motley crew that made up the group were children,
adolescents, women, elderly people, and the poor.
This group never actually reached Jerusalem, and therefore, the “Children’s Crusade”
is a bit of a misnomer.
The Crusades lasted hundreds of years and resulted in the loss of countless lives.
The battles resulted in the destruction of important cultural and religious structures
and artifacts on both sides.
In 1291 the city of Acre fell to Muslim forces marking what many believe to be the end of
the Crusades.
The legacy of all this death and destruction was the dismantling of the Byzantine Empire,
noble houses of Europe gaining large amounts of power and wealth, and myths of religious
heroes spreading throughout the lands.
However, the actual goal of the Crusades, which was to take back the Holy Land and hold
it in the name of Christianity, was not actually achieved.
Now check out “The Fall of Constantinople.”
Or watch “Medieval Knights Were NOT Noble, But Cold-Hearted Killers.”