The crusades were a series of military expeditions promoted by
the papacy during the Middle Ages, initially aimed at taking the
Holy Land for Christendom. The concept of a crusade was developed
in the eleventh century partially as a result of organised Christian
forces fighting Muslims in Sicily and Spain. The Holy Land had been
in the hands of the Muslims since 638, and it was against them that
the crusades were, at least nominally, directed. Expansionism along
with desire for adventure, conquest and plunder seem to have been
at least as influential in attracting Christians to the cause as
any desire to restore Christ's supposed patrimony.
The main crusades spanned more than two centuries (1096-1300 CE).
These extended military raids stemmed from changes hat had taken
place outside Europe before the time of the Crusades, most notably
the growth and expansion of Islam. Christian holy wars such as these
bear a striking resemblance to the Moslem practice of the jihad,
which by then had become a very successful Islamic institution.
By translating the notion of a "holy warrior" into Christian terms,
Medieval popes created the crusader, a "knight of Christ." and new
religious orders composed of fighting monks most notably the Knights
Hospitaller and Knights Templar.
Popes who promoted the Crusades used their authority to muster
an army, appoint its military leaders, and send it on its mission.
(Part of the reason for the failure of the crusades was bishops
acting as field commanders and chosing the wrong military targets,
the wrong battles, and the wrong military maneuvers).
These Church-sponsored wars brought some benefit to Medieval Europe.
For instance, crusading allowed westerners to take advantage of
the much richer East for the first time since the days of ancient
Rome. It served as an outlet for Europe's youth and aggression as
population exploded during the High Middle Ages (1050-1300
CE). Sending young men off to fight in a holy cause temorarily stifled
the internal wars that had afflicted the West since the collapse
of Roman government . That a few of the early Crusading skirmishes
produced victories helped Europeans regain a sense of self-confidence,
after centuries of losing on nearly every front, they temporarily
turned the tables on their military and cultural superiors to the
The Church regarded crusaders as military pilgrims. They took vows
and were rewarded with privileges of protection for their property
at home. Any legal proceedings against them were suspended. Another
major inducement was the offer of indulgences for the remission
of sin. Knights were especially attracted by what were effectively
Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free cards allowing them to commit any sins throughout
the rest of their lives without incurring liability in this or the
During the Crusades the Western Church developed new types of holy
warrior. These were military monks such as the Knights Hospitaller
and Knights Templar. They were literally both soldiers and monks,
and took vows for both callings, fulfilling their holy duties by
killing God's enemies.
Underlying the crusaders' excursions was the impulse to migrate
and conquer, the same drive that had long before pushed their Indo-European
forebears out of their homeland and across Eurasia, and that had
also motivated the Vikings.
Not since the days of ancient Rome had westerners found many viable
opportunities to expand their horizons, not just militarily but
also economically, culturally and politically. Crusading gave them
a glimpse of the larger world that lay beyond their frontiers. This
taste of the globe sparked in them a curiosity about life beyond
Europe, which, in turn, helped to lay the groundwork for the colonial
period to follow. In fact, one can argue that the Crusades of the
twelfth century, not Columbus' expeditions three centuries later,
mark the real onset of Western expansionism,
arguably the single most significant development of the last millennium
The crusaders, modern Europe's first colonists of a sort, headed
east, not west
Nine crusades are generally recognised, although there were many
others. Many of them collapsed before they got out of Christendom.
Some, such as the Children's Crusade, are now disowned as crusades.
Others were directed not against Muslims but fellow Christians in
Europe, the Church at Constantinople, Christian emperors and kings,
sects who rejected the Roman Church, even powerful Italian families
hostile to the pope of the day.
|The Kings of Jerusalem, France and England at the siege of
|medieval miniature painting of the Siege of Antioch during
the First Crusade, by Sébastien Mamerot 1490
First Crusade (1096-1099 CE)
The spark that set off the Crusades was struck in the East, when
the Byzantines first confronted a new Moslem force, the Seljuk
Turks. The Seljuk Turks were originally an Asian horde which, like
the Huns of earlier times, had penetrated far into the West. By
the eleventh century the Seljuk Turks controlled much of the Levant.
With Persia in their control, including Baghdad, the capital of
the Moslem world, they presented a terrifying prospect: of "Moslem
Huns," or Mongol jihadis.
Byzantine concern turned to panic when Turkish forces began expanding
into eastern Asia Minor (modern Turkey). The Byzantines were defeated
by the Turks at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071and stood
on the verge of losing the whole of Asia Minor. Casting about for
help and finding none nearby, they were forced to go for their last
resort, appealing for aid from the Catholic West.
ince Justinian's Gothic Wars, the Byzantines' failure to impose iconoclasm on
the West, and the ever growing claims of the papacy, Byzantium and
Western Europe had suffered from strained relations. This tension
grew to such a pitch that, by the middle of the eleventh century
(during the 1050's CE), they splintered into separate sects: the Catholic
Church based in Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Churchs in
Constantinople. The result was that, by the time of the Crusades,
the Christians of Western Europe belonged to a different religion
from their brethren in the Middle East. To re-open the channels
of communication between these former allies who did not speak the
same language and had not fought side-by-side for centuries seemed
difficult, but with Islamicized Mongols poised on Byzantium's borders,
this was the only option.
The Turkish situation affected Western Europeans as well. Direct
contacts between Moslems and Western Europeans at this time were
largely the result of Christian pilgrims making their way to Jerusalem
and the Holy Places. Before the Turkish takeover, Moslems had not
actively encumbered pilgrims coming and going. As Byzantine-Turkish
antagonism increased in the late eleventh century, it had become
difficult for Christian pilgrims to pass through Asia Minor and
Syria to reach the Holy Lands. The Byzantine Emperor Alexius
Comnenus used his conflict with the Turks and its impact on
pilgrimage as the basis of an appeal for Western aid. Writing to
the Church in Rome, he intentionally spread stories (some aparently
invented) of Turkish atrocities against Christians in Asia Minor.
He added the inducement of reunifying the recently severed Eastern
and Western Churches.
Pope Urban II embraced the idea of helping Europe's "beleaguered
allies" and fellow Christians in the East, and proposed a holy war
and explained this as an extension of a policy already in place
called theTruce of God. This program of measures was part of the
Church's attempt to limit warfare within Christendom. In Urban's
hands, the Truce of God was remolded into a declaration ending all
wars in which Christian fought Christian and deflecting European
militarism toward what was perceived as the "real" enemy, the Moslem
infidels in the East. Following Urban's ingenious reasoning, the
Crusades were the culmination of a "peace" movement. It took some
re-reading of the New Testament to find plausible justifications
for this new doctrine, but as usual the Holy Book revealed precisely
what the Church sought.
In giving knights a holy vocation and calling them "vassals of
Christ," Urban II was granting anyone who joined his crusade an
automatic indulgence, the forgiveness of all prior sins. Instead
of paying penance for murder, killing could spell a sinner's salvation,
as long as he slew the right sort of person, an enemy of Christ
such as a Jew or a Moslem.. When Urban began to discern how well
his new idea was going to work, he took his marketing campaign on
the road. In a spell-binding speech before a crowd of Frankish knights,
Urban exhorted his adherents to win back "the land of milk and honey"
and avenge the Turkish atrocities.. He cited several of the gory
details sent him by Alexius Comnenus and ended by bidding them fight
"for the remission of your sins, with the assurance of imperishable
glory." The crowd chanted back Deus le vult! Deus
le vult!" ("God wills it! God wills it!")
The Crusades reflect other aspects of life in Europe at that time,
in particular, its burgeoning population during the High Middle
Ages. Around the turn of the millennium (ca. 1000 CE), destructive
invasions like those of the Vikings had abated and, amid the calm
that followed, Europe had repopulated. The crusades were a mechanism
for tapping off excess population - the first three occured at roughly
40 year intervals - froving outlets and potential spoils for younger
sons with inheritances.
There were political forces at work too. The Crusades were tied
to the Investiture Controversy, the struggle for power
between the rising authority of the Pope and the traditional ruling
political system of the day. From the papal perspective, the kings
of Europe had long intruded upon the sacred right of the Pope to
run his own business (ie to choose the men who constituted the Church's
administration). In calling the First Crusade, Urban II shifted
the theatre of action in this conflict to an arena where medieval
kings had traditionally reigned supreme, the battlefield. Urban
usurped the prerogative of secular rulers to declare an enemy and
muster troops for battle.
By reinterpreting the Truce of God as a warrant for Europeans to
kill Moslems and not each other, he also sought to embarrass secular
leaders for all their intra-European wars which were now presented
as "un-Christian," in spite of that fact that the Church had for
centuries sanctioned European-upon-European carnage. For centuries
to come the increasing claims of the papacy, generally bolstered
by forgeries from the papal chancery, would unsettle secular rulers
just as much as Orthodox Christians and Western scholars
A majority of Christian Europeans saw Urban's call-to-arms as a
means of salvation and a way of ridding the world of infidels. That,
to them, referred not only to the Moslems but also the Jews in Europe,
many of whom were slaughtered before the knights of the First Crusade
set off in search of the Holy Lands. After all, good Christians
couldn't send their men off to fight one infidel and abandon the
homeland to another. With this early attempt at genocide, the crusaders
surged out of Europe, spreading mayhem wherever they went.
The First Crusade had been planned by Pope Urban II and more than
200 bishops at the Council of Clermont. It was preached by Urban
between 1095 and 1099. He assured his listeners that God himself
wanted them to encourage men of all ranks, rich and poor, to go
and exterminate Muslims. He said that Christ commanded it. Even
robbers, he said, should now become soldiers of Christ. Assured
that God wanted them to participate in a holy war, masses pressed
forward to take the crusaders" oath. They looked forward to
a guaranteed place in Heaven for themselves and to an assured victory
for their divinely endorsed army. The pope did not appoint a secular
military supreme commander, only a spiritual one, the Bishop of
Le Puy. Initial expeditions were led by two churchmen, Peter the
Hermit and Walter the Penniless. Peter was a monk from Amiens, whose
credentials were a letter written by God and delivered to him by
Jesus. He assured his followers that death in the Crusades provided
an automatic passport to Heaven.
One German contingent in the Rhine valley was granted a further
sign from God. He sent them an enchanted goose to follow. It led
them to Jewish neighbourhoods of Spier, where they took the divine
hint and massacred the inhabitants. Similar massacres followed at
Worms, Mainz, Metz , Prague, Ratisbon and other cities. These pogroms
completed, Peter the Hermit's army marched through Hungary towards
Turkey. On the way they killed 4,000 Christians in Zemun (present
day Semlin) , pillaged Belgrade, and set fire to the towns around
Niš. They thieved and murdered all the way to Constantinople,
by which time only about a third of the initial force remained.
The Emperor was astonished. He had asked for trained mercenaries,
but what arrived was a murderous rabble. To minimise the risks of
danger to his own city he allowed the crusaders to proceed. Once
across the Bosphorus, they continued as before. Marching beyond
Nicæa, a French contingent ravaged the countryside. They looted
property, and robbed, tortured, raped and murdered the mainly Christian
inhabitants of the country, reportedly roasting babies on spits.
Some 6,000 German crusaders, including bishops and priests, jealous
of the French success, tried to emulate it. However, this time an
army of Turks arrived and chopped the holy crusaders to pieces.
Survivors were given the chance to save their lives by converting
to Islam, which some did, including their leader Rainauld, setting
a precedent for many future crusaders.
The principal expedition that followed was more organised, although
crusaders continued to threaten their Christian allies in Constantinople
on the way. The Christian Emperor was shocked to find his capital
under attack by Western Christians in Holy Week. He developed a
technique for bringing the barbarian Westerners under control by
speedily processing batches of them as they arrived. His technique
was to induce them to swear fealty to him, then swiftly move them
across the Bosphorus before the next batch arrived. On the far side
of the water their massed forces were no threat to the city. Apart
from further devastating the countryside they could do little but
prepare for their first encounter with their non-Christian enemies.
Sieges were laid to a series of Muslim cities. Crusaders had little
respect for their enemies and enjoyed catapulting the severed heads
of fallen Moslem warriers into besieged cities. After a victory
near Antioch, crusaders brought severed heads back to the besieged
city. Hundreds of these heads were shot into the city, and hundreds
more impaled on stakes in front of the city walls. A crusader bishop
called it a joyful spectacle for the people of God. When Muslims
crept out of the city at night to bury their dead the Christians
left them alone. Then in the morning the Christians returned, and
dug up the corpses to steal gold and silver ornaments.
When the crusaders took Antioch in 1098 they slaughtered the inhabitants.
Later the Christians were in turn besieged by Muslim reinforcements.
The crusaders broke out, putting the Muslim army to flight and capturing
their women. The chronicler Fulcher of Chartres was proud to record
that on this occasion nothing evil (i.e. sexual) had happened, although
the women had been murdered in their tents, pierced through the
belly by lances. Time and time again Muslims who surrendered were
killed or sold into slavery. This treatment was applied to combatants
and citizens alike: women, children, the old, the infirm
anyone and everyone. At Albara the population was totally extirpated,
the town then being resettled with Christians, and the mosque converted
into a church. Often, the Christians offered to spare those who
capitulated, but it was an unwise Muslim who accepted such a promise.
A popular technique was to promise protection to all who took refuge
in a particular building within the besieged city. Then after the
battle, the Christians had an easy time: the men could be massacred
and the women and children sold into slavery without having to carry
out searches. Clerics justified this by claiming that Christians
were not bound by promises made to infidels, even if sworn in the
name of God. At Maarat an-Numan the pattern was repeated. The slaughter
continued for three days, both Christian and Muslim accounts agreeing
on the main points, although each has its own details. The Christian
account describes how the Muslims" bodies were dismembered.
Some were cut open to find hidden treasure, while others were cut
up to eat. The Muslim account mentions that over 100,000 were killed.
When the crusaders captured Jerusalem on the 14 th July 1099, they
massacred the inhabitants, Jews and Muslims alike, men, women and
children. The killing continued all night and into the next day.
Jews who took refuge in their synagogue were burned alive. Muslims
sought refuge in the al-Aqsa mosque under the protection of a Christian
banner. In the morning crusaders forced an entry and massacred them
all, 70,000 according to an Arab historian, including a large number
of scholars. The Temple of Solomon was so full of blood that it
came up to the horses" bridles. The chronicler Raymond of Aguiliers
described it as a just and wonderful judgement of God. Even before
the killing was over the crusaders went to the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre "rejoicing and weeping for joy" to thank God
for his assistance. Muslim prisoners were decapitated, shot with
arrows, forced to jump from high towers, or burned. Some were tortured
first. Neither was this an isolated incident. It was wholly typical.
When the crusaders took Caesarea in 1101, many citizens fled to
the Great Mosque and begged the Christians for mercy. At the end
of the butchery the floor was a lake of blood. In the whole city
only a few girls and infants survived. Soon afterwards, there was
a similar massacre at Beirut. Such barbarity shocked the Eastern
world and left an impression of the Christian West that has still
not been forgotten in the third millennium.
By 1101 reinforcements were on the way, under the command of the
Archbishop of Milan, to support the Frankish crusaders already in
the Holy Land. Mainly Lombards, the new troops lived up to the record
of their French and German predecessors, robbing and killing Christians
on the way, and blaming the Byzantine Emperor for the consequences
of their own shortcomings. At the first engagement with the enemy
they fled in panic leaving their women and children behind to be
killed or sold in slave markets. As Sir Steven Runciman, a leading
historian of the period says: the Byzantines were "shocked
and angered by the stupidity, the ingratitude and the dishonesty
of the crusaders". They also questioned the crusaders"
loyalty to their Byzantine allies. The crusaders had purportedly
gone to help Byzantium, and had sworn to restore to the Emperor
any of his territory that they recaptured, but not a single one
ever did so. Indeed, Eastern Christians were regarded as enemies
as much as the Muslims.
Fired by the success of the crusade against the Muslims, Pope Paschal
II (the successor to Urban II) gave his blessing in 1105 to a holy
war against his fellow Christians in the East. Preached by a papal
legate, the new crusade sought to subjugate the Eastern Empire to
Rome. This was unprecedented treachery and undisguised imperialism.
For the time being such perfidy got the crusaders nowhere.
| Christ overseeing the massacre of Jews in before
the First Crusade (the victims are wearing characteristic Jewish
hats called judenhuts). From a bible of 1250..
|Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy a
bishop, recognisable by his mitre, riding to battle with other
knights at Antioch on 28th June 1098. He is carrying a Holy
|The Siege oif Nicaea during the first Crusade. The Christians
are firing severed heads into the enemy camp.
| Western crusaders attacking Muslims from a fourteenth-century
manuscript (Bibliothèque Boulogne-s-Mer). The two sides
can be distinguished by their swords and shields.
In the decades following the First Crusade, the Christian overlords
of the Crusader States failed to integrate themselves into Middle
Eastern society in any meaningful way. Despised by the natives for
their imperious and condescending manner, many turned out to be
cruel and abusive despots. Even if a minority proved kinder and
gentler, the general impression their rule left behind was not favorable.
Even their fellow Christians disliked them, as witnessed by one
churchman who wrote home complaining:
They devoted themselves to all kinds of debauchery and allowed
their womenfolk to spend whole nights at wild parties; they mixed
with trashy people and drank the most delicious wines.
Such a situation could not endure, and in 1144, one of the Crusader
states fell back into Moslem control. The Second Crusade followed
(a generation or so after the First). Pope Eugene III proclaimed
The Second Crusade in 1145. It was preached by St Bernard, a leading
Cistercian theologian who declared that "The Christian glories
in the death of a pagan, because thereby Christ himself is glorified".
He also pointed out that anyone who kills an unbeliever does not
commit homicide but malicide; in other words they kill not a man
but an evil. He knew how to sell a crusade to believers. His spiel
was reminiscent of that of a high-pressure salesman selling to credulous
But to those of you who are merchants, men quick to seek a bargain,
let me point out the advantages of this great opportunity. Do
not miss them. Take up the sign of the cross and you will find
indulgence for all sins that you humbly confess. The cost is small,
the reward is great....
The Second Crusade was led by the greatest potentates in western
Europe: King Louis VII of France and the German Emperor Conrad III.
Once again churchmen promoted anti-Semitism in Germany and France.
Without the aid of a single enchanted goose the crusaders once again
found unbelievers in their midst. Inspired by a Cistercian monk,
they massacred Jews throughout the Rhineland notably in Cologne,
Mainz, Worms, Spier and Strasbourg.
A number of crusaders were the descendants of those who had gone
on the First Crusade. This time, both Byzantines and the Turks were
ready for the barbarian Franks and plotted together to exterminate
them. Betrayed by Byzantium the Second Crusade was nearly obliterated
as the crusaders tried to pass through Asia Minor.
The initial object of the Second Crusade was to recapture Edessa
(in what is now eastern Turkey), which had fallen to the Muslims
in 1144. Initial contingents were led by military commanders like
the bishops of Metz and Toul. On the way, travelling by sea, the
crusaders besieged Lisbon, which at that time was a Muslim city.
After four months the garrison surrendered, having been promised
their lives and their property if they capitulated. They did capitulate
and were then massacred. Only about a fifth of the original crusader
force got as far as Syria, where the real crusade started. It proved
a failure, at least partially because tactical targets were selected
for religious rather than military reasons. A military tactician
might have gone for Aleppo, but the crusade leaders agreed on mounting
an attack on Damascus, apparently because they recognised its name
as biblical. The leaders argued amongst themselves until the crusade
collapsed in 1149, having failed to take either Edessa or Damascus.
The whole thing had been a disaster. As Runciman put it:
…when it reached its ignominious end in the weary retreat
from Damascus, all that it had achieved had been to embitter relations
between the Western Christians and the Byzantines almost to breaking-point,
to sow suspicions between the newly-come Crusaders and the Franks
resident in the East, to separate the western Frankish princes
from each other, to draw the Muslims closer together, and to do
deadly damage to the reputation of the Franks for military prowess.
What little of the expedition made it to the Holy Lands ended up
fighting with the survivors and descendants of the First Crusade.
They saw this new European incursion as a band of thugs sent to
rob them of their lands. The result was that
most participants in the Second Crusade returned to Europe empty-handed,
a pitiful troupe of whom Saint Bernard was forced to admit, "I must
call him blessed who is not tainted by this." This disaster killed
most Europeans' interest in crusading for another generation.
The Muslim Turks extended their rule to Egypt soon afterwards.
St Bernard had been promised a victory by God, but instead of this
he had provided a complete disaster. Bernard and his supporters
tried hard to work out why God's purpose had been so badly frustrated.
Perhaps the best solution was that the outcome had been a great
success after all, because it had transferred so many Christian
warriors from God's earthly army to his heavenly one. Not everyone
was convinced. Meanwhile the Christian forces resident in the East
accommodated themselves to the realities of Eastern life. Eventually
they would come to terms with the fact that until their arrival
Muslims, Jews and Christians had lived together in amity. Resident
Christians often preferred their old Muslim masters to their new
Muslim captives who chose to convert to Christianity rather than
die were allowed to, but only if there were no further monetary
complications. When Cairo offered 60,000 dinars to the Templars
for the return of a putative convert, his Christian instruction
was promptly suspended and he was sent in chains to Cairo to be
mutilated and hanged. Such incidents brought little glory to either
side, but it is fair to say that Muslim princes generally conducted
themselves with a degree of honour and chivalry lacking amongst
In 1187, almost 90 years after it had been captured by the Christian
army of the First Crusade, Jerusalem was retaken by the Muslim warrior
Saladin (c.1137-1193). Originating from Tikrit in modern-day Iraq,
Saladin had first demonstrated his military prowess in the 1160s
in campaigns against crusaders in Palestine. Succeeding his uncle
as a vizier in Egypt, he conquered Egypt in 1175 and then set about
improving that country's economy and military strength. Following
further campaigns in Syria and Mesopotamia, in 1186 he proclaimed
a jihad that led to his capturing Jerusalem for the Muslims
in the following year.
In addition to his abilities as a military leader, Saladin is renowned
for his chivalry and merciful nature. It is known, for example,
that in his struggles against the crusaders, he provided medical
assistance on the battlefield to the wounded of both sides, and
even allowed Christian physicians to visit Christian prisoners.
Once the battle to retake Jerusalem was over, no one was killed
or injured, and not a building was looted. The captives were permitted
to ransom themselves, and those who could afford to do so ransomed
their vassals as well. Many thousands could not afford their ransom
and were held to be sold as slaves. The military monks, who could
have used their vast wealth to save their fellow Christians from
slavery, declined to do so. The head of the Church, the patriarch
Heraclius, and his clerics looked after themselves. The Muslims
saw Heraclius pay his ten dinars for his own ransom and leave the
city bowed with the weight of the gold that he was carrying, followed
by carts laden with other valuables. As the prisoners who had not
been ransomed were led off to a life of slavery, Saladin's brother
Malik al-Adil took pity. He asked his brother for 1,000 of them
as a reward for his services, and when he was granted them he immediately
gave them their liberty. This triggered further generosity amongst
the victorious commanders, culminating in Saladin offering gifts
from his own treasury to the Christian widows and orphans. As a
contemporary historian has remarked, "His mercy and kindness
were in strange contrast to the deeds of the Christian conquerors
of the First Crusade".
In contrast to the generally honourable behaviour of the Muslims,
the Christians repeatedly made promises under oath and them reneged
upon them, often with the encouragement of the priesthood. In 1188
the King of Jerusalem, Guy, who had been captured by Saladin, was
released. Guy had solemnly sworn that he would leave the country
and never again take arms against the Muslims. Immediately, a cleric
was found to release him from his oath. Despite this sort of behaviour,
Muslim leaders generally stuck to their own promises. They were
rather bemused by the cynical behaviour of the Western Christians.
Often the cynicism worked to the Muslims" advantage. For example,
Saladin was pleasantly surprised to find that Italian city states
were prepared to sell him high quality weapons to be used against
When the Emperor in Constantinople heard of the Muslim victory,
he sent an embassy to congratulate its leaders. Eastern Christians
had already generally allied themselves with the Muslims, regarding
them as fairer and more civilised rulers than the followers of the
Church of Rome. Now they asked to stay in Jerusalem, were allowed
to do so, and gave "prodigious service" to their new masters.
The Third Crusade
With Jerusalem no longer in Christian hands, some sort of reprisal
was called for — another crusade — but this time one
that was well-organized and well-equipped, and no one better to
do that than the foremost regents of Europe. The rulers of Germany,
France and England joined forces in the name of God to avenge this
affront to Christendom at large.
After the loss of Jerusalem, a Third Crusade was preached by Pope
Gregory VIII. It was jointly led by Frederick Barbarossa, Philip
of France, and Richard I of England (The Lionheart). The Archbishop
of Canterbury, Baldwin, went along too. Richard had been crowned
on 3 rd September in 1189 with crusading fervour already in the
air. English Christians emulated their continental co-religionists,
and took to murdering Jews, starting with those who had come to
offer presents to their new king. This sparked further persecutions
throughout the country, most notably in York. Soon the crusaders,
including those who had engaged in the murder of Jews, departed
for the East along with their continental co-religionists. Frederick
Barbarossa died on the way, an event that mystified the crusaders,
but which Muslims immediately recognised as a miracle wrought by
God for the one true faith. Philip and Richard squabbled and attempted
to bribe each other's armies to change allegiance (three gold pieces
per month for English knights who joined Philip: four for French
knights who joined Richard).
Eventually, Philip gave up and went home. Richard went on to capture
Acre in 1191. Saladin was unable to pay for the release of the survivors
quickly enough, so Richard ordered the massacre of his 2,700 captives,
many of them women and children. They waited in line, each watching
the one in front have their throat slit. Wives were slaughtered
at the side of their husbands, children at the side of their parents
while bishops blessed the proceedings. Corpses were then cut open
in the hope of finding swallowed jewels.
Richard found further success difficult to come by, and a truce
was made with Saladin, although Richard felt free to break it when
it suited him. Despite Richard's behaviour, Saladin continued to
treat him with respect when they met on the battlefield, apparently
because Richard's fighting prowess impressed him. When Richard's
horse fell, wounded in battle outside Jaffa in August 1192, Saladin
sent a groom through the mêlée with fresh mounts for
him. The Lionheart's treatment by his Muslim enemy contrasted with
his treatment by his own Christian allies. On his way home later
that year Richard was captured and imprisoned by a fellow crusader,
Leopold, Duke of Austria. He was eventually released on payment
of the Christian sum of 150,000 marks (£100,000), literally
a king's ransom.
Troisième croisade. Philippe Auguste
assiège Acre (1191). Grandes Chroniques de France de
Charles V. Paris, XIVème siècle. Bibliothèque
nationale de France.
Fourth Crusade (1201-1204)
The Fourth Crusade was preached by Pope Innocent III and lasted
from 1202 to 1204. The new Pope Innocent III began by doing his
homework. He devised a means by which to avoid the problems that
had destroyed the previous two Crusades. He avoided the division
of leadership by putting himself in charge alone. To confound the
supposed treachery of the double-dealing Byzantines, he chose to
send the next wave of crusaders by sea, enabling them to avoid Byzantium
Innocent arranged to contract ships and supplies from the port
city of Venice, by now a great sea-power. Problems developed
before this Crusade even got on board. All participants thought
someone else was paying for the "rental" of the ships. When the
crusaders began to arrive in Venice they were greeted with outstretched
hands but no one had any money to pay their passage.
Although intended to regain the Holy Land from the Muslims by way
of Egypt, the crusade was hijacked by the Venetians and directed
against the Christian cities of Zara and then Constantinople, which
offered a softer target and richer pickings. Zara, one of Venice's
subject states on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea, had recently
revolted from the city's maritime empire and, to avoid Venetian
reprisal, the people of Zara had delivered their city into the Pope's
embrace. Zara was now one of the Papal States, an currently under
construction by the Roman Church.
In exchange for cash, the Venetians contracted with the crusaders
to stop in at Zara on their way and force it back under Venice's
control. Such an agreement was certainly not part
of Innocent's plan for this Crusade. When he learned about their
agreement with the Venetians, he withdrew his support of the Crusade,
along with his funding. When that did not stop them, he excommunicated
them all, expelling them from the Church and condemning their souls
to perdition. This too made no difference. The crusaders sailed
to Zara and delivered it back into Venetian hands as they had been
paid to do.
There the crusaders came upon a Byzantine exile, a pretender to
the throne who had recently been exiled from Byzantium and who offered
them a substantial sum if they would put him on the throne. With
the sanction of the Venetians who saw nothing but advantage in causing
turmoil in Byzantium (their trading rival), the crusaders were diverted
again. This time they headed in the direction of Constantinople.
There, the crusaders' approach inspired panic among the Byzantines.
The reigning Emperor, along with others, fled Constantinople. Meeting
no resistance, the crusaders entered the city and set their "Latin"
nominee for Emperor on the throne, then headed of for the Holy Land.
Almost as soon as they sailed out of Constantinople's harbor, their
Latin pretender was murdered. When the news of his assassination
reached them, the crusaders turned their ships around and headed
back to secure their supply lines. When the crusaders found the
city bolted tight against them, the stage was set for a siege
Contrary to historical precedent, these crusading marauders accomplished
the seemingly impossible. Byzantium fell to siege for the first
time ever to the descendants of the Byzantines' nominal allies,
western Europeans. Constantine's "New Rome" finally fell to mercenaries
from the original Rome.
Constantinople was taken, the Emperor deposed, and Baldwin of Flanders
was set up in his place. The Sack of Constantinople in 1204
lasted three days. The great library there was destroyed when the
crusaders ransacked it, then stabled their horses there. Ancient
learning and literature was lost in that catastrophe, almost certainly
including the complete works of ancient authors whose writings now
exist only in tattered fragments. Some were entirely lost. The victorious
crusaders amused themselves in the usual way, even though this was
the capital of Christendom. As well as the standard bout of destruction,
the men of the cross desecrated imperial tombs, plundered churches,
stole holy relics, wrecked houses, vandalised libraries, destroyed
whatever loot they could not carry, raped nuns, and murdered at
will. They also set a prostitute on the patriarch's throne in Sancta
Sophia, the Church of the Holy Wisdom, the greatest Church in Christendom.
Later a Latin (i.e. Roman Catholic) patriarch was installed, and
the Venetians shipped off the remaining treasures to their own city,
where some of them remain to this day. We have sympathetic accounts
of these events, including one of an Abbot threatening to kill an
Orthodox priest if he did not hand over a stash of “powerful”
relics. The Eastern Churches still harbour bitter resentment about
the behaviour of Western Christians during this time. Here is a
modern Orthodox bishop on the subject:
Eastern Christendom has never forgotten those three appalling
days of pillage. "Even the Saracens are merciful and kind,"
protested Nicetas Choniates [a contemporary historian], "compared
with these men who bear the Cross of Christ on their shoulders".
What shocked the Greeks more than anything was the wanton and
systematic sacrilege of the Crusaders. How could men who had specially
dedicated themselves to God's service treat the things of God
in such a way? As the Byzantines watched the Crusaders tear to
pieces the altar and icon screen in the Church of the Holy Wisdom,
and set prostitutes on the Patriarch's throne, they must have
felt that those who did such things were not Christians in the
same sense as themselves.
The Western Church saw nothing wrong with its conduct. It is true
that the Pope was initially irritated by the crusade having been
diverted to attack Zara. But His Holiness was soon reconciled by
a victory in his name over the Emperor, and any pretence that the
crusade was ever intended to fight the infidel was abandoned. A
papal legate, Peter of Saint-Marcel, issued a decree absolving the
crusaders from having to proceed further to fight the Muslims. The
new Emperor in Constantinople, Baldwin, wrote to the Pope about
the sack of the city as "a miracle that God had wrought".
The Pope rejoiced in the Lord and gave his approval without reserve.
Modern historians tend to take a different view. As Sir Steven Runciman
put it "There was never a greater crime against humanity than
the Fourth Crusade".
In 1208 Pope Innocent III launched crusades against the Cathars
in southern France, and in 1211 against Muslims in Spain, but it
was difficult to raise interest in expeditions to the more distant
and dangerous Holy Land. The year 1212 saw the so-called Children's
Crusade. This crusade was preached by a French shepherd boy aged
around 12, inspired by a vision of Christ. Christ gave him a letter
for the King of France, and despite the King's indifference, the
boy succeeded in rousing 30,000 recruits, none over the age of 12.
The crusader children were blessed by priests and marched off to
Marseilles. The idea was that God would protect them and supply
them with suitable fighting skills. He would even part the sea so
that they could walk from Marseilles to the Holy Land. But God declined
to perform his promised miracle at Marseilles. Instead two men,
monks according to one tradition, Hugh the Iron and William the
Pig according to another, offered the children ships free of charge
to take them to their destination. Most accepted, embarked, and
were promptly sold as slaves to African Muslims. This was not an
isolated incident. Roman Catholic traders were engaged in an established
commerce involving the sale of young boys to Muslim rulers.
Some 40,000 German children also set out on the crusade, but God
declined to perform his promised miracle for them either. How many
ever arrived to fight, if any at all, is not known. Few ever returned
Meanwhile in the Holy Land the resident Christians were becoming
ever more accustomed to Eastern life. They wore robes and turbans,
ate Eastern food, married Eastern women and learned Eastern medicine.
Alliances were made between powerful rulers, often irrespective
of religion. Christians accepted Muslims as their feudal Lords and
Muslims accepted Christians as theirs.
The Albigensian Crusade, or War against the Cathars
A perceived success in hindsight, the siege of Constantinople reinvigorated
Western Europeans' interest in religious warfare with the East.
Called by Innocent III in 1208, the so-called Albigensian
Crusade took many years to complete. It was directed not against
the Moslem East but at lands inside Europe, a shift in focus for
a formal "Crusade". The ostensible aim of this campaign
was to rid the Languedoc of the Albigensians, a religious sect
which declined to recognize the authority of the Roman Church, claiming
to more faithfully represent early Christianity.
The days when Crusades could be justified as an extension of the
"Truce of God" were by now long past. Even so, the rewards were
the same as for any other crusade, namely a guaranteed place in
heaven. This proved very attractive to many, since it was much less
risky to go on a Holy War - across hundreds of miles of hostile
barren lands and even more hostile population
Not even trying to head east but fighting fellow European Christians
seemed to many so far from the true spirit of crusading. So Innocent's
campaign was never numbered with the other Crusades. It was not
the "Fifth Crusade" but the "Albigensian Crusade" .
For more on the Cathars and the crusade against them, visit
this leading website on the Cathars
|The Albigensian Crusade
The Childrens' Crusade
The "Crusade" was preached in France by a peasant boy
named Stephen from a village near Vendome in France, and a boy named
Nicholas from Cologne in Germany, encoraged in both places by the
local clergy. The sorry business was related by a chronicler:
In this year  occurred an outstanding thing and one much
to be marveled at, for it is unheard of throughout the ages. About
the time of Easter and Pentecost, without anyone having preached
or called for it and prompted by I know not what spirit, many
thousands of boys, ranging in age from six years to full maturity,
left the plows or carts which they were driving, the flocks which
they were pasturing, and anything else which they were doing.
This they did despite the wishes of their parents, relatives,
and friends who sought to make them draw back. Suddenly one ran
after another to take the cross. Thus, by groups of twenty, or
fifty, or a hundred, they put up banners and began to journey
to Jerusalem. They were asked by many people on whose advice or
at whose urging they had set out upon this path. They were asked
especially since only a few years ago many kings, a great many
dukes, and innumerable people in powerful companies had gone there
and had returned with the business unfinished. The present groups,
morever, were stfll of tender years and were neither strong enough
nor powerful enough to do anything. Everyone, therefore, accounted
them foolish and imprudent for trying to do this. They briefly
replied that they were equal to the Divine will in this matter
and that, whatever God might wish to do with them, they would
accept it willingly and with humble spirit. They thus made some
little progress on their journey. Some were turned back at Metz,
others at Piacenza, and others even at Rome. Still others got
to Marseilles, but whether they crossed to the Holy Land or what
their end was is uncertain. One thing is sure: that of the many
thousands who rose up, only very few returned.
Source: Chronica Regiae Coloniensis Continuatio prima,
s.a.1213, MGH SS XXIV 17-18, translated by James Brundage, The
Crusades: A Documentary History, (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette
University Press, 1962), p 213
The Fifth Crusade
This crusade was preached by Pope Innocent III but undertaken in
the reign of Pope Honorius III. It was led by Cardinal Pelagius
of Lucia and lasted from 1217 to 1221. Although ultimately intended
to recover Jerusalem, the main force was initially directed against
Egypt. Damietta (a Mediterranean port on the Nile delta) was besieged.
Saladin proposed a deal. He would cede Jerusalem, all central Palestine,
and Galilee if the crusaders would spare Damietta. Pelagius rejected
this offer, against military advice. Damietta duly fell to the Christians,
confirming God's support for the Crusade. Surviving inhabitants
of Damietta were sold into slavery, and their children handed over
to the Christian priests to be baptised and trained into the service
of the Church.
If the crusade leaders had been willing to read books ratherthan
burn them, the campagn might have been more successfull in the longer
term. As it was, the ignorance that had afflicted the West since
the Fall of Rome now became apparent. If Pelagius had read Herodotus,
he would have known about the annual flooding of the Nile. But virtually
no one in Western Europe could read Greek. Pelagious and his knights
had landed on the shores of the Nile just at the time of the annual
flood. Trapped in high waters, they met a watery end at hands of
the natives there. Saladin soon recovered Damietta by force. The
Christian campaign had been another failure, undermined by a combination
of personal and national jealousies along with the lack of strategic
insight on the part of Cardinal Pelagius, a man who has been described
as "an ignorant and obstinate fanatic".
As the defeated Christians sailed off, stories of their atrocities
triggered a wave of persecution of Christians communities in Egypt,
which until then had happily coexisted with their Muslim masters
Frederick II's Crusade
Like the Albigensian Crusade, the next European expedition to the
East is not numbered.
The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II organised his own crusade while
under sentence of excommunication, and pursued it between 1222 and
1229. Despite the Pope's machinations and much to his embarrassment
Frederick's military and strategic skill led to a negotiated settlement
under which Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem came under Christian
control. On his return to Europe the victorious Frederick crushed
the papal forces that had been sent to destroy him, and the Pope
had no choice but to lift the sentence of excommunication.
This one also disqualified as being too far from the spirit of
crusading. Even after Frederick managed to return Jerusalem to Christian
control, the pope would not acknowledge it as a "Crusade" Moslem
forces retook Jerusalem soon afterwards, where it remained until
the twentieth century.
The Sixth Crusade
The Sixth Crusade was proposed by Pope Gregory IX, but found few
takers, previous crusades having proved such failures. Led by Louis
IX, the King of France it proved another utter failure, never getting
anywhere near the Holy Land.
The Seventh Crusade
The Seventh Crusade lasted from 1248 to 1254. It was initiated
under Pope Innocent IV, Jerusalem having been lost to the Muslims
again in 1244. It was led by King Louis IX of France ( St Louis)
who started by attacking Egypt. Once again Damietta was captured,
and once again the Sultan offered to exchange it for Jerusalem.
Once again the offer was rejected, and once again the Muslims won
Damietta back by force of arms. Louis himself was captured and had
to be ransomed for 400,000 bezants (gold coins). After his release
he went to the Holy Land but failed to recover the holy cities,
and so gave up and went home.
Innocent's successor, Pope Alexander IV, tried to organise yet
another crusade, this time against the Mongols, but he was unsuccessful.
Had he had a better grasp of strategy he might instead have allied
Western Christendom with the Asian powers. Nestorian Christianity
was still influential in Asia, and the Mongols might easily have
become allies, some of their leaders having already been baptised.
Western and Eastern forces combined could have overcome the forces
of Islam. In 1254 the Great Khan Mongka, whose mother had been a
Nestorian Christian, had offered to recover Jerusalem for the Christians,
if they would co-operate. But European Christians were unwilling
to co-operate with each other, much less a remote and unknown semi-heathen
whose mother had been a heretic. In time the victorious Mongols
would themselves convert to Islam and spread their new religion
throughout Asia, eclipsing Christianity from the Levant to the Far
| Louis IX en route from Aigues-Mortes to Égypt for
the seventh Crusade
The Eighth Crusade
The Eighth Crusade was proposed by Pope Gregory X, but not organised
until a later reign. It lasted only from 1270 to 1271, and was initially
led once again by St Louis. An English contingent was made up largely
of men who needed to hold on to lands they had taken by force in
the baronial wars of the 1260s. By joining a crusade they were assured
of the protection of the Church, and thus able to keep their newly
acquired property. The project was another failure. It collapsed
after Louis died of disease while attacking Carthage (modern Tunis).
|The King of France and the Holy Roman emperor fighting Saracens
The Ninth Crusade
The Ninth Crusade continued St Louis's Eighth Crusade. It was led
by Prince Edward, the future English King Edward I, between 1271
and 1272. Edward reached the Holy Land and was mystified by what
he found. The Venetians were supplying the Sultan with all the timber
and metal he needed to manufacture his armaments, while the Genoese
controlled the Egyptian slave trade. Like Edward, new arrivals were
generally surprised by the realities of life in the East. Italian
city states jostled with each other for trade with Christians and
Muslims without distinction. Senior churchmen paralysed strategic
military initiatives. Noble families argued and betrayed each other
without compunction. So did the representatives of European nation
states, jealous of each other's favour or success. Members of the
Eastern and Western Churches bickered continuously. Military Orders
squabbled with each other and subverted military expeditions when
they threatened their own commercial interests. The Knights Templar
created the first true multinational banking corporation serving
Christians and Muslims alike, while Muslim Assassins continued to
pay homage to the Hospitallers. Native Christians resented their
supposed saviours from the West, and would have preferred life under
Byzantine or Muslim rulers. Edward got nowhere in such a milieu,
so alien to his preconceptions. Like earlier crusades, this one
fizzled out, a total failure.
Civil wars in the remaining Christian territories in the East hastened
the end of the crusading period in the Holy Land. Christian princes
burned each other's castles and besieged each other in their strongholds.
Western Christians were regarded as barbarians by almost everyone.
They were likely to kill anyone on a whim, whether Muslim, Jew or
Christian. In 1290 newly arrived Italian crusaders went on a Muslim-killing
spree in Acre, but since they assumed that any man with a beard
was a Muslim, they murdered many Christians as well. The Italians
seem to have been even worse than most of their fellow crusaders:
…the Italians, with their arrogance, their rivalries and
the cynicism of their policy, caused irremediable harm. They would
hold aloof from vital campaigns and openly parade the disunity
of Christendom. They supplied the Muslims with essential war-material.
They would riot and fight each other in the streets of the cities
By the last Crusade, many in Europe had come to see the Pope as
no more than another war-mongering king.
When in 1291 the last Christian outpost in the Middle East, the
port city of Acre, fell to Moslem forces, the Crusades were
brought to an ignominious close. As a sign of this, at his great
centennial Jubilee in 1300, a celebration of Christianity's might
and longevity, Pope Boniface VIII offered indulgence to Christian
pilgrims if they would "crusade" to Rome, not Jerusalem. It was
the papacy's admission that crusading had failed.
|Louis IX embarks on Crusade
Further Crusades In 1297 Pope Boniface VIII preached
a crusade against the Colonnas, a powerful Italian family that regarded
the papacy almost as its hereditary possession, and that felt free
to take papal treasure at will, even when the papacy was temporarily
out of its control. The crusade was announced, complete with indulgences,
but Colonna forces captured the Pope. Although he was rescued, he
died a month later, a broken man. New crusades against the Turks
were proposed by a number of fourteenth century popes, but they
never got started. Benedict XII , Innocent VI , Urban V and Gregory
XI all proposed them, and Urban even got as far as proclaiming his
in 1363, but nothing ever came of it.
King Peter I of Cyprus organised his own crusade, which attacked
and took Alexandria in 1365. The subsequent massacres followed traditional
lines of Jerusalem in 1099 and Constantinople in 1204. Crusaders
massacred native Christians indiscriminately along with Jews and
Muslims. Some 5,000 survivors, representing all three religions,
were sold into slavery. European triumphalism over this victory
soon waned. Muslim bitterness was revived, Venetian merchants were
almost ruined, the spice and silk trades dried up, pilgrims"
access to the Holy Land was imperilled, and native Eastern Christians
were persecuted once more. Christendom became alarmed at what might
happen next. Providentially, Peter was assassinated in 1369, and
a peace treaty was signed the following year.
In the fifteenth century, Pope Martin V organised an unsuccessful
crusade against the Hussites, a Christian sect in Bohemia. Pope
Eugene IV tried to organise another crusade to recover the Holy
Land, but it was a failure. A few years later Cardinal Cesarini
persuaded the King of Hungary to support another crusade against
the Turks. A ten-year truce was in place, but the Cardinal gave
assurances that an oath sworn to a Muslim was invalid. Battle was
joined at Varni in Bulgaria, in 1444, where the Christian forces
were roundly defeated, leaving Cardinal Cesarini amongst the dead.
The annihilation opened up central Europe to the Muslims and further
In 1453 the Turks finally sacked Constantinople, news of which
terrified European leaders. Pope Nicholas V tried to organise a
crusade to recover the city, but it was yet another failure. Pope
Callistus III did manage to organise one, funded by the sale of
indulgences, but it was diverted and finished up attacking Genoa.
Pope Pius II was so keen to revive the Crusades that he went himself,
but hardly anyone else could be coerced into going with him. He
waited near the coast at Ancona in the summer of 1464, hoping for
others to turn up. His attendants concealed the fact that no supporting
armies were on the way, and drew the curtains of his litter so that
he should not see the desertions from his own fleet. When a few
Venetian galleys hove into sight His Holiness died, apparently of
excitement, and the crusade was promptly abandoned. Over the next
three centuries, several further attempts were made at organising
a crusade, but nothing came of them.
Results of the Crusades
The Crusades are more telling in their failures than their successes.
Because of them, the credibility of the Pope as the agent of God
on earth suffered irreparable damage, especially those Crusades
that turned out not so well, which added up to virtually all of
them in the long run. But even the ones that did succeed in some
respect accomplished little real good over time.
Laying the groundwork for the destruction of the Byzantine Empire
can hardly be seen as a boon to Europe, if for no other reason than
Byzantium no longer could serve as a buffer state against Moslem
expansion to the west. That opened Eastern Europe to Turkish incursion,
the consequences of which can still be seen in the recent conflicts
in the Balkan region. Ironically, then, the two parties which had
instigated these grand experiments in foreign atrocity—the
Byzantines and the papacy—suffered the most in the end.
In sum, by all reasonable standards none of the Crusades profitted
Europe much, certainly not in proportion to their cost. Only the
First Crusade delivered any substantial and immediate gains. Moreover,
the commercial progress, the extension of trade which might have
followed in their wake, didn't, as if even that would excuse the
extermination of so many souls. Besides, even then only the Venetians
in the wake of the Fourth Crusade managed to advance their mercantile
interests in the East long term. But, on the whole, was the toppling
of Constantinople a fair price for this small gain? Few would say
Still, to be fair to the complexity of these military expeditions,
they surely amounted to "more than a romantic bloody fiasco," as
some historians claim, but not much more. Surely,
then, there's something to be learned from all this somehow but
what that lesson is has yet to be determined since we still live
today in the aftermath of the Crusades' devastation. Until we decide
what drove our ancestors to this mad exploit, how we became the
enemy of our brethren in the East, we will find no safe path out
of the morass of intolerance and animosity which characterizes Christian-Islamic
relations in the modern world. No other aspect of life today makes
it clearer that there can be no secure future as long as we continue
to war over our past and what-really-happened back then.
The object of the crusades had been to save Eastern Christendom
from the Muslims. They were undertaken with God's encouragement,
support and promise of victory. When they ended they had proved
a disastrous failure. The whole of Eastern Christendom was under
Muslim rule. The Crusades, especially the later ones, had been characterised
by partisan self-interest, short-sighted pettiness, internal squabbles,
strategic mismanagement, poor military leadership, bigotry, barbarism,
corruption and dishonour. The implications were wide-ranging. The
popes had succeeded in ruining the emperors of both East and West,
while strengthening and unifying disparate Muslim enemies. The greatest
Church in Christendom, Sancta Sophia, was now a mosque. Many Eastern
Churches, which had always enjoyed toleration under Muslim rulers,
now suffered persecution and decline. The schism between East and
West, which might have been healed by allies in war, was instead
made permanent. Asia was lost to Christianity and was soon to convert
wholesale to Islam. The balance of world power had shifted irrevocably.
The death toll of these expeditions will never be known accurately
for either side, but it is certain that it numbered hundreds of
thousands, and possibly millions. Most of the dead were Christians.
In fact Christian forces themselves may have killed as many Christians
and Jews as they did Muslims.
Both sides fought fiercely, not to say barbarously. Christian virtues
such as mercy and cheek-turning had been almost totally absent throughout,
at least on the Christian side. At the end of it all nothing positive
had been achieved. Before the crusades, Muslims had established
a great reputation for tolerance. Now that they had suffered Christian
atrocities and perfidy, they had become fanatical in defence of
their religion. As Runciman wrote of the slaughter at Jerusalem
during the First Crusade: "It was this bloodthirsty proof of
Christian fanaticism that recreated the fanaticism of Islam".
Muslim respect for Eastern Christians was superseded by hatred and
contempt for Western ones.
The bitterness that was generated between the Christian West and
the Muslim Levant was so great that its effects rumbled down the
centuries and echo to the present day. Across many Eastern countries
the word for a western foreigner is ferenghi, a corruption
of Frank, and an echo of the fact that crusaders were usually referred
to as Franks in the Middle Ages but this is far from the
most serious reverberation from the crusades.
|While on a crusade, make sure
that you are armored and protected well. Visit this website
for more info.