If you clicked on this video looking for a summary of a
failed multi century attempt to recapture a small,
religiously relevant municipality
then you're in the right place.
However, if you wanna know why
said campaign is significant to the broader context of world history
then I encourage you to give a look to these three videos
linked on screen here on the history of Islam, Christianity and Judaism
as well as this video on the broad religious history
of the first millennium AD around the time of the Muslim conquest
which serves more or less as a direct context to these here Crusades.
For some highly expedited backstory, Rome wasn't Christian, then it was
then part of it split off and became the Byzantine Empire
which owned Jerusalem for a good long while
until it, well, didn't when Islam popped up and took it in part
of its rapid conquest of Persia, the Lavant , North Africa, and Spain.
Then, three hundred or so years later, the Seljuk Turks
who were also Muslim, conquered Anatolia
which made the Byzantines, who previously owned Anatolia
a little skittish and our story begins from here.
Pope Urban the Second heard news of this
and, in my opinion, was likely excited for two possible reasons.
First, if he called some sort of war to aid his fellow Christian kingdom
he would then have some really good leverage for
asking the Greek Orthodox Byzantines to convert back to Roman Catholicism
and end the recent schism between the churches.
Second, if all of Europe was to be engaged in this
let's call it a "cross aid" then they'd have reason to stop
fighting each other as they had been for the past
few centuries. Win-win, right?
So Urban takes up his keyboard and starts deus volt spamming like mad.
Now, it's about time for my routine disclaimer on the Crusades
It's no secret that I just don't like them.
The moral and spiritual justifications for nine bloody repeated wars
eludes me, to put it lightly
I get it, the Holy Land means a lot, but you need to call it
a day after like three tries, tops.
not nine.
I mostly like to describe the Crusades with the word "messy".
Like them or hate them, you have to agree that these wars were
a mess from start to finish.
Plagued with infighting on all sides and barely effective
if effective at all.
Yes, the Crusades were about religion and theoretically
in service to God but my point is that overall they did
much more harm than good, even when the motive did come from
a place of good faith.
Remember, throughout history, religion has motivated and influenced
a ton of events
But the participants were always still people
who would often do peopley things like compromise their religious beliefs
for more human scale motivations
like money or land or power or mass murder
like I explained in the case before.
Christianity in itself isn't bad
It's just getting a twist from some very human factors
and Islam and Judaism engage in the same thing too on some occasions.
It's hardly a reason to condemn an entire religion.
So, considering all that, I'm going to do my best to be fair
and I'll be rating all nine crusades based on
how threatened Christiandom was, how well they actually defended it
how much they at least tried to do something good
and finally how much needless looting and pillaging happened.
Let's start with Crusade number one
Originally, it set out to give the Byzantines their land back from the Seljuks
and while this may not be number one on God's priority list
it's still valid and justified from a certain perspective
So we're off to a decent start
Then after that, they pushed south into the Lavant and then
set about saving Jerusalem
Except Jerusalem was...actually... doing...fine
and actually there was a bit of theological golden age
budding at the time
which was pretty cool by most accounts
but nope, nope, seige pretty much trashed the city
so that's gonna get some points off
probably a yellow card in there too
After taking Jerusalem, the Crusaders set up a few kingdoms in the area and left a few
soldiers behind and then hightailed it home
So our first crusade comes out... alright.
The Byzantines were on the brink and Europe came to its rescue
It was really more political and territorial than it was inherently religious
in nature, but it's as fair as any other instance of allies helping allies.
A holy city or two was sacked but at least their heart was in the right place
and in the end, the Byzantines got some of their stuff back.
This one, I'm mostly good with.
I'll give the first crusade a soft four Urbans out of five.
Next we have the second crusade, which, like the first
was called in response to a loss of Christian territory
In this case the Turkish Zenga dynasty took over the Crusader state of Idessa.
which was one of the many states founded by the Christians after the previous war ended
The difference with this crusade is that it failed. Horribly.
This crusade, while theoretically noble and honorable in its aims
failed so horribly that I have to give it two participation awards out of five
Third on our list is the, uh, well, Third Crusade.
Yeah, that one.
This one was the cleanup crew for the second Crusade
because after their failure weakened their holdings in the holy land
Jerusalem was taken by Saladin and his cool new Ayubid Caliphate in 1187.
Anyway, the third Crusade is when things become squarely about Jerusalem
And this is also probably the one that you know best
Number three is known for such famous faces as
Richard the Lionheart
Saladin
the plot of the original Assassin's Creed
All those fun guys.
There a bunch of fascinating neat little stories from this one that I just don't have time to get into right now
But from a broad military history perspective this one is
also really cool because of how many factors are involved
how many cities are in play and how many people volunteered.
Of all the crusades, this one is definitely the most religiously fervent
Morally justified or not, this one was motivated.
Crusades one and two were really just about getting some land back
but Jerusalem had taken on a totally new religious significance in the twelfth century
that, from my perspective, is rather sudden and unexpected
But, hey, it worked.
People were volunteering by the thousands to quote-unquote rescue Jerusalem
Unfortunately, despite some solid victories
won at Accrae and Arsuf
albeit despite some non-negligable massacre in the former case
Richard and the Crusaders never managed to recapture Jerusalem
So, despite genuine intentions to retake the city
it didn't pan out.
I'll give the third crusade three assassin's creeds out of four.
Honor.
So, we've talked about the fourth crusade before on this channel
and I really don't like talking about it.
The Greek in me is just plain sad that Constantinople got sacked
and the Venice enthusiast in me feels guilty for being deeply enamored of the place that did the sacking.
It's a lose-lose scenario for me.
And I think the speed at which these guys just
totally gave up on their divine quest to save Jerusalem
in order to sack a fellow Christian city
says a lot about what the Crusades really meant to some of the Crusaders
as we'll see later on, especially.
If you want to learn more about Constantinople getting sacked and the Byzantine Empire getting partitioned to the crusaders
which, I mean, just look at this bloody mess of a map right here
watch one of these two videos.
In the meantime, the Fourth Crusade gets negative four frustrated rants out of four stolen bronze horses
Can you tell that I'm salty about this?
From here on out, the Crusades delve further and further into ineffective warmongering
as the protracted Fifth Crusade was called in 1213
to retake Jerusalem to ultimately disastrous ends
and so gets one starved out army forcibly retreating out of five
The Sixth Crusade, however, is much nicer since
almost no actual fighting happened
on account of the diplomatically adept Holy Roman Emperor Frederick the Second
Jerusalem was simply negotiated over to the Christians
and no one went to hell for murder.
Yay!
This Crusade gets a score of Three Art of the Deals out of five disenchanted ghost writers.
The thing with the Sixth Crusade is that
this one was called and waged by Frederick himself
not the Pope, as the previous five had been.
Also, shortly after this crusade ended
Jerusalem was sacked by the Muslims and almost completely destroyed.
Now this, don't get me wrong, was a dick move through and through
One of the most important things to remember in history
is that no matter how much you might want to attack
or defend a culture, that culture is almost guaranteed to have done both great things and totally dickish things
and a black and white moral judgement is pretty much impossible
as a result.
Real history is complicated.
Who knew?
Anyway, following that trend of minimal papal oversight
the Seventh and Eighth Crusades, which Louis the Ninth launched
and finally Henry the Third's ninth crusade
all set out to [sigh] say it with me: Retake Jerusalem.
For various reasons, they each, unsurprisingly, ended in failure, and they
and they collectively get one Napoleon out of five Russias in the winter
Because at that point why on Earth are you still trying?
Now that those are over, have you noticed that these affairs get rapidly less noble and religiously justifiable
as time went on? The Crusades were each theoretically called to defend the cross
but the most they ever really did was defend some territory that happened
to be owned by Christians in Crusades One and Two
and then after that, the Crusaders all develop
that really unhealthy obsession with Jerusalem.
After war number three, and after sacking number two at the most
we all need to agree to just go home and let it go
Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Christians, Jews and Muslims
died in two centuries of war for a whole lot of nothing at the end of the day
Please, let this be a lesson in when to quit.
Now, it may seem like I'm just bashing on the idea of Christians crusading but I maintain
that there is one Crusade that was never called
but should have been.
If there was ever one instance in history in which Christianity as an idea
as a culture, as a way of life
was genuinely threatened and needed saving it was the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Ottomans.
Yeah, Jerusalem is cool and it's really great to have your God's home city under your wing
but Constantinople was the world's foremost repository of classical and early Christian scholarship
as well as all manner of Christian art
and an incalculable amount of that was simply lost
in the fall of the city
If there was ever a time that Christiandom was really in peril it was then
and neither the Pope nor the European powers did anything substantive to help
But here's why I personally think there wasn't one:
There's a lot of land and loot to be had on the road to recapturing Jerusalem
but there's next to nothing to gain from helping someone else keep what they already have
even if they're also Christian.
Although, given how the Fourth Crusade went
I wouldn't be surprised if the combined forces of Europe showed up to help the Ottomans beseige the city instead
So that's my rundown on the nine crusades that did happen and the one that didn't.
but should've.
As was the case with the last video, I highly suggest you watch part three
This one takes a break from all the war and killing to cover the philosophical developments in
Abrahamic culture, both during and after the time of the Crusades.
It's very much the final bow to my big, huge series on the Abrahamic religions
and I hope you enjoy it.
[peaceful music]