History of the Christian Crusades
CRUSADES:
BACKGROUND.
Feb The origin of the Crusades is rooted in the political upheaval that resulted
from the expansion of the Seljuk Turks in the Middle East in the mid-11th
century. Western Christians viewed the conquest of Syria and Palestine by these
aggressive Muslims with fright and alarm. Turkish invaders also penetrated deep
into the Christian Byzantine Empire and subjected many Greek, Syrian, and
Armenian Christians to their rule. The Crusades were in part a reaction to these
events, as well as serving the ambitions of 11th-, 12th-, and 13th-century popes
who sought to extend their political and religious power. Crusading armies were,
in a sense, the military arm of papal policy.
Feb Beyond all this, the Crusades coincided with a time of dramatic growth of
European population and commercial activity. The Crusades provided an area of
expansion to accommodate part of this growing population. They also offered an
outlet for the ambitions of land-hungry knights and noblemen. At the same time,
the expeditions offered rich commercial opportunities to the merchants of the
growing cities of the West, particularly Genoa, Pisa, and Venice.
June Crusading thus had a broad appeal to numerous Europeans. Some went on
Crusades out of greed, some out of religious fervor; almost all Crusaders sought
adventure, and many of them believed that their participation would virtually
guarantee personal salvation. Every Crusader probably had different reasons for
participation.
THE FIRST CRUSADE.
The Crusades began formally on Tuesday, Nov. 27, 1095, in a field just
outside the walls of the French city of Clermont-Ferrand. On that day Pope Urban
II preached a sermon to crowds of laypersons and clergy attending a church
council at Clermont. In his sermon, the pope outlined a plan for a Crusade and
called on his listeners to join its ranks. The response was positive and
overwhelming. Pope Urban then commissioned the bishops at the council to return
to their homes and to enlist others in the Crusade. He also outlined a basic
strategy: Individual groups of Crusaders would begin the journey in August 1096.
June: Each group would be self-financing and responsible to its own leader. The
groups would make their separate ways to the Byzantine capital, Constantinople,
where they would rendezvous. From there, in concert with the Byzantine emperor
and his army, they would launch a counterattack against the Seljuk conquerors of
Anatolia. Once that region was under Christian control, the Crusaders would
campaign against the Muslims in Syria and Palestine, with Jerusalem as their
ultimate goal. The Crusading armies. In broad outline the First Crusade
conformed to the scheme envisioned by the pope. Recruitment went forward
vigorously during the remainder of 1095 and the early months of 1096.
Five major armies of noblemen ultimately assembled in late summer, 1096, to
set out on the Crusade. The majority were from France, but significant numbers
also came from Lorraine, Burgundy, Flanders, and southern Italy. The pope had
not foreseen the popular enthusiasm that his Crusade aroused among nonnoble
townspeople and peasantry. Alongside the Crusade of the nobility a popular one
materialized among the common people. The largest and most important group of
popular Crusaders was recruited and led by a Picard preacher known as Peter the
Hermit.
Although the participants in the popular Crusade were numerous, only a tiny
fraction of them ever succeeded in reaching the Middle East; even fewer survived
to see the ultimate triumph of the Crusade at Jerusalem. The conquest of
Anatolia. As the armies of Crusading nobles arrived at Constantinople, beginning
in November 1096 and continuing through May 1097, the Byzantine emperor Alexius
Comnenus pressured the leaders to swear that they would cooperate with the
Byzantines and would turn over to him any former Byzantine territory that they
captured. The leaders resented these demands, and although most of them
ultimately complied, they were henceforth suspicious of the Byzantines.
In May 1097, the Crusaders attacked their first major target, the Anatolian
Turkish capital at Nicaea (modern .Iznik, Turkey). In June the city
surrendered-to the Byzantines, rather than the Crusaders. This confirmed the
latter's suspicions that Alexius intended to use them as pawns in order to
achieve his own goals. Shortly after the fall of Nicaea, the Crusaders
encountered the principal Seljuk field army of Anatolia at Dorylaeum (EskiSehir).
On July 1, 1097, the Crusaders scored a smashing victory there and nearly
annihilated the Turkish force. As a result the Crusaders met little resistance
during the balance of their campaign in Asia Minor.
The next major obstacle was the city of Antioch in northern Syria (present
Antakya, Turkey). The Crusaders besieged the city on Oct. 21, 1097, but it did
not fall until June 3, 1098. No sooner had the Crusaders taken Antioch than they
were attacked by a fresh Turkish army from Mosul, which arrived just too late to
relieve Antioch's Turkish defenders. The Crusaders beat off the relief force on
June 28.
THE CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM.
Resting at Antioch for the remainder of the summer and early fall, the
Crusaders set out on the final leg of their journey in late November 1098. Now
they avoided attacks on cities and fortified positions in order to conserve
their forces. In May 1099 the Crusaders reached the northern borders of
Palestine; on the evening of June 7 they camped within sight of Jerusalem's
walls.
The city was at this point under Egyptian control; its defenders were
numerous and well prepared for a siege. The Crusaders attacked briskly. With the
aid of reinforcements from Genoa and newly constructed siege machines, they took
Jerusalem by storm on July 15; they then massacred virtually every inhabitant.
In the Crusaders' view, they purified the city by washing it in the blood of the
defeated infidels.
A week later the army elected one of its leaders, Godfrey of Bouillon, duke
of Lower Lorraine, to rule the newly won city. Under his leadership the army
then fought its last campaign, defeating an Egyptian army at Ascalon (now
Ashqelon, Israel) on August 12. Soon afterward the great majority of the
Crusaders returned to Europe, leaving Godfrey and a small remnant of the
origi-nal force to organize a government and to establish Latin (Western
European) control over the conquered territories.
THE HIGH TIDE OF LATIN POWER IN THE EAST.
In the after-math of the First Crusade, Latin colonists in the Levant
established four states. The largest and most powerful of these was the kingdom
of Jerusalem. To the north of that kingdom lay the tiny county of Tripoli on the
Syrian coast. Beyond Tripoli was the principality of Antioch, centered in the
Orontes Valley. Farthest east was the county of Edessa, largely populated by
Armenian Christians.
The victories of the First Crusade were in large part due to the Crusaders'
not confronting a united Muslim world but instead dealing with a number of
isolated and relatively weak Muslim powers. The generation after the First
Crusade, however, saw the beginning of Muslim reunification in the Middle East
under the leadership of Imad ad-Din Zangi (1084-1146), ruler of Mosul and
Aleppo. Under Zangi, the Muslim forces scored their first major victory against
the Crusaders by taking the city of Edessa (present Urfa, Turkey) in 1144; they
then systematically dismantled the Crusader state in that region. The papacy's
response to these events was to proclaim the Second Crusade late in 1145. The
new expedition attracted numerous recruits, among them the king of France, Louis
VII, and the Holy Roman emperor, Conrad III. Conrad's German army set out for
Jerusalem from Nuremberg in May 1147; the French forces followed about a month
later. In Anatolia the Germans fell into an ambush, from which only a few
escaped. The French army was more fortunate, but they also suffered serious
casualties during the journey, and only part of the original force reached
Jerusalem in 1148. In consultation with King Baldwin III of Jerusalem and his
nobles, the Crusaders decided to attack Damascus in July. The expedition failed
to take the city, however, and shortly after the collapse of this attack the
French king and the remains of his army returned home.
SALADIN AND THE THIRD CRUSADE.
The failure of the Second Crusade left the Muslim powers free to regroup.
Zangi had died in 1146, but his successor, Nur ad-Din (1118-74), was able to
expand his realm into a major power in the Middle East. In 1169 his forces,
under the command of Saladin, took control of Egypt. When Nur ad-Din died five
years later, Saladin succeeded him as ruler of a Muslim state that stretched
from the Libyan Desert to the Tigris Valley and surrounded the remaining
Crusader states on three fronts. After a series of crises during the 1180s,
Saladin finally invaded the kingdom of Jerusalem in force in May 1187. On July 4
he decisively defeated the Latin army at Hattin (Hittin). In the after-math of
this victory, Saladin swept through most of the Crusader strongholds in the
kingdom of Jerusalem. Jerusalem itself surrendered to him on October 2. At this
point the only major city still in Crusader hands was Tyre in Lebanon. On Oct.
29, 1187, Pope Gregory VIII (d. 1187) proclaimed the Third Crusade. Western
enthusiasm for the plan was widespread, and three major European monarchs
enlisted in its ranks: the Holy Roman emperor, Frederick I Barbarossa, the
French king, Philip II Augustus, and the English king, Richard I Lion-Heart. The
kings and their numerous followers constituted the largest Crusading force that
had taken the field since 1095, but the outcome of all this effort was meager.
Barbarossa died in Anatolia while on his way to the Holy Land, and most of his
army returned to Germany immediately following his death. Although both Philip
Augustus and Richard Lion-Heart reached Palestine with their armies intact, they
were unable to recapture Jerusalem or much of the former territory of the Latin
Kingdom. They did succeed, however, in wresting from Saladin control of a chain
of cities along the Mediterranean coast. By October 1192, when Richard finally
left Palestine, the Latin Kingdom had been reconstituted. Smaller than the
original kingdom and considerably weaker militarily and economically, the second
kingdom eked out a precarious existence for another century.
THE LATER CRUSADES.
No subsequent Crusade achieved anything like the military success of the
Third Crusade. The fourth one (1202-04) was plagued by financial difficulties.
In an effort to alleviate these, the leaders agreed to a plan to attack
Constantinople in concert with the Venetians and a pretender to the Byzantine
throne. The Crusaders succeeded in taking Constantinople, which they then
plundered shamelessly. The Latin Empire of Constantinople, created by this
Crusade, survived for less than 60 years and contributed nothing to the defense
of the Holy Land.
In 1208, Pope Innocent III proclaimed a Crusade against the Albigenses, a
religious sect in southern France. The ensuing Crusade (1209-29) was the first
to be fought in Western Europe.
The Fifth Crusade (1217-21) had a promising beginning with the taking of the
Egyptian seaport of Damietta in 1219. The strategy, sensible as far as it went,
called for an attack on Egypt, the capture of Cairo, and then a campaign to
secure control of the Sinai, seen as a link between Egypt and the Latin Kingdom
that would cut off the remaining Muslim powers from the wealth and grain
supplies of Egypt. Implementation of this strategy, however, fell short of the
goal. The attack on Cairo was abortive, and promised reinforcements failed to
materialize. In August 1221 the Crusaders were forced to surrender Damietta to
the Egyptians, and the expedition broke up. Frederick II. The Crusade of Holy
Roman Emperor Frederick II differed in approach from all the others. Frederick
vowed to lead a Crusade in 1215 and renewed his pledge in 1220, but for domestic
political reasons kept postponing his departure. Under pressure from Pope
Gregory IX, Frederick and his army finally sailed from Italy in August 1227, but
returned to port within a few days because Frederick had fallen ill. The pope,
outraged at this further delay, promptly excommunicated the emperor. Undaunted,
Frederick embarked for the Holy Land in June 1228. There he conducted his
unconventional Crusade almost entirely by diplomatic negotiations with the
Egyptian sultan Al-Kamil (r. 1218-38). These negotiations produced a peace
treaty by which the Egyptians restored Jerusalem to the Crusaders and guaranteed
a 10-year respite from hostilities. Despite this achievement, Frederick was
shunned as an excommunicate by both the clergy and the lay leaders of the Latin
states. At the same time, the pope had proclaimed a Crusade against Frederick,
raised an army, and proceeded to attack the emperor's Italian possessions.
Frederick returned to the West to cope with this threat in May 1229. Louis IX.
Nearly 20 years elapsed between Frederick's Crusade and the next large
expedition to the Middle East, which was organized and financed by King Louis IX
of France after the Muslims recaptured Jerusalem in 1244. Louis spent four years
making careful plans and preparations for his ambitious expedition. At the end
of August 1248, Louis and his army sailed to Cyprus, where they spent the winter
in further preparations. Following the same basic strategy as the Fifth Crusade,
Louis and his followers landed in Egypt on June 5, 1249, and the following day
captured Damietta. The next phase of their campaign, an attack on Cairo in the
spring of 1250, proved to be a catastrophe. The Crusaders failed to guard their
flanks, and as a result the Egyptians retained control of the water reservoirs
along the Nile. By opening the sluice gates, they created floods that trapped
the whole Crusading army, and Louis was forced to surrender in April 1250. After
paying an enormous ransom and surrendering Damietta, Louis sailed to Palestine,
where he spent four years building fortifications and strengthening the defenses
of the Latin Kingdom. In the spring of 1254 he and his army returned to France.
King Louis also organized the last major Crusade, in 1270. This time the
response of the French nobility was unenthusiastic, and the expedition was
directed against Tunis rather than Egypt. It ended abruptly when Louis died in
Tunisia during the summer of 1270. Meanwhile, the remaining Latin outposts in
Syria and Palestine were coming under increasing pressure from Egyptian forces.
One by one, the cities and castles of the Crusader states fell to armies of the
new and vigorous Mameluke dynasty. The last major stronghold, Acre (now Akko,
Israel), was taken on May 18, 1291, and the Crusading settlers took refuge first
on Cyprus and later on Rhodes, both of which were held until the 16th century.
Other Latin states established in Greece as a result of the Fourth Crusade
survived until the mid-15th century.
RESULTS OF THE CRUSADES.
The expulsion of the Latins from the Holy Land did not end Crusading
efforts, but the response of European kings and nobles to repeated calls for
further Crusades was feeble, and later expeditions accomplished little. Two
centuries of Crusades left little mark on Syria and Palestine, save for the
castles, churches, and fortifications that the Crusaders left behind. The
principal effects of the Crusades were felt in Europe, not in the Middle East.
The Crusades had bolstered the commerce of the Italian cities, had generated
interest in exploration of the Orient, and had established trade markets of
enduring importance. The experiments of the papacy and European monarchs in
raising money to finance the Crusades led to the development of systems of
direct general taxation that had long-term consequences for the fiscal structure
of European governments. Although the Latin states in the East were short-lived,
the experience of the Crusaders established mechanisms that later generations of
Europeans used and improved on when they colonized the territories discovered by
the explorers of the 15th and 16th centuries.