The
Crusades were a series of religiously-sanctioned military campaigns
waged by much of Latin Christian Europe, particularly the Franks
of France
and the
Holy Roman Empire. The
specific crusades to restore Christian control of the
Holy Land were fought over a period of nearly 200
years, between 1095 and 1291. Other campaigns in Spain and Eastern
Europe continued into the 15th century. The Crusades were fought
mainly against
Muslims, although campaigns
were also waged against
pagan Slavs,
Jews,
Russian and Greek Orthodox
Christians,
Mongols,
Cathars,
Hussites,
Waldensians,
Old
Prussians, and political enemies of the
popes. Crusaders took
vows and were
granted
penance for past
sins, often called an
indulgence.
The
Crusades originally had the goal of recapturing Jerusalem
and the Holy Land from
Muslim rule and were launched in response to
a call from the Christian Byzantine Empire for help against the
expansion of the Muslim Seljuk Turks
into Anatolia
. The
term is also used to describe contemporaneous and subsequent
campaigns conducted through to the 16th century in territories
outside
the Levant usually against
pagans,
heretics, and peoples under the ban
of
excommunication for a mixture of
religious, economic, and political reasons. Rivalries among both
Christian and Muslim powers led also to alliances between religious
factions against their opponents, such as the Christian alliance
with the
Sultanate of Rum during
the
Fifth Crusade.
The Crusades had far-reaching political, economic, and social
impacts, some of which have lasted into contemporary times.
Because of
internal conflicts among Christian kingdoms and political powers,
some of the crusade expeditions were diverted from their original
aim, such as the Fourth Crusade,
which resulted in the sack of Christian Constantinople
and the partition of the Byzantine Empire between
Venice
and the Crusaders. The
Sixth Crusade was the first crusade to set
sail without the official blessing of the Pope. The
Seventh,
Eighth and
Ninth
Crusades resulted in
Mamluk and
Hafsid victories, as the
Ninth Crusade marked the end of the Crusades
in the
Middle East.
Historical context
Middle Eastern situation
The Holy Land is significant in Christianity because of the land's
association as the place of birth, ministry,
Crucifixion and
Resurrection of
Jesus of Nazareth, who Christians regard as the
Saviour or
Messiah. By the end of the 4th
century, following Emperor
Constantine's conversion to
Christianity (313) and the founding of the Byzantine Empire,
the Holy Land had become a predominantly Christian country.
Churches commemorating various events in the life of Jesus, had
been erected at key sites.
The Muslim presence in the Holy Land began with the initial
Arab conquest of Palestine
in the 7th century. The Muslim armies' successes put increasing
pressure on the
Eastern Orthodox
Byzantine Empire.
Another
factor that contributed to the change in Western attitudes towards
the East came in the year 1009, when the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the
destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
. In 1039 his successor, after requiring
large sums be paid for the right, permitted the Byzantine Empire to
rebuild it. Pilgrimages were allowed to the Holy Lands before and
after the Sepulchre was rebuilt, but for a time pilgrims were
captured and some of the clergy were killed . The Muslim conquerors
eventually realized that the wealth of Jerusalem came from the
pilgrims; with this realization the persecution of pilgrims
stopped. However, the damage was already done, and the violence of
the Seljuk Turks became part of the concern that spread the passion
for the Crusades.
Western European situation
The origins of the Crusades lie in developments in
Western Europe earlier in the
Middle Ages, as well as the deteriorating
situation of the
Byzantine Empire
in the east caused by a new wave of
Turkish Muslim attacks. The breakdown
of the
Carolingian Empire in the
late 9
th century, combined with the relative
stabilization of local European borders after the Christianization
of the
Vikings,
Slavs,
and
Magyars, had produced a large class of
armed warriors whose energies were misplaced fighting one another
and terrorizing the local populace. The Church tried to stem this
violence with the
Peace and Truce
of God movements, which was somewhat successful, but trained
warriors always sought an outlet for their skills, and
opportunities for territorial expansion were becoming less
attractive for large segments of the nobility.
One exception was the
Reconquista in Spain
and Portugal
, which at
times occupied Iberian knights and some
mercenaries from elsewhere in Europe in
the fight against the Islamic Moors.
In 1063,
Pope Alexander II had
given his blessing to Iberian Christians in their wars against the
Muslims, granting both a papal standard (the
vexillum sancti
Petri) and an
indulgence to those
who were killed in battle. Pleas from the Byzantine Emperors, now
threatened by the
Seljuks, thus fell on
ready ears. These occurred in 1074, from Emperor
Michael VII to
Pope
Gregory VII and in 1095, from Emperor
Alexios I Komnenos to
Pope Urban II. One source identifies Michael
VII in Chinese records as a ruler of Byzantium (Fulin) who sent an
envoy to
Song Dynasty China in 1081. A
Chinese scholar suggests that this and further Byzantine envoys in
1091 were pleas for China to aid in the fight against the Turks.
The Crusades were, in part, an outlet for an intense religious
piety which rose up in the late 11th century among the lay public.
A crusader would, after pronouncing a solemn vow, receive a cross
from the hands of the pope or his
legate, and was thenceforth considered a
"soldier of the Church". This was partly because of the
Investiture Controversy, which had
started around 1075 and was still on-going during the First
Crusade. As both sides of the Investiture Controversy tried to
marshal public opinion in their favor, people became personally
engaged in a dramatic religious controversy. The result was an
awakening of intense Christian piety and public interest in
religious affairs, and was further strengthened by religious
propaganda, which advocated
Just War in
order to retake the Holy Land from the Muslims.
The Holy Land included
Jerusalem (where the death, resurrection and ascension into heaven of Jesus took place
according to Christian theology) and Antioch
(the first
Christian city). Further, the remission of sin was a driving
factor and provided any God-fearing man who had committed sins with
an irresistible way out of eternal damnation in
Hell. It was a hotly debated issue throughout the
Crusades as what exactly "remission of sin" meant. Most believed
that by retaking Jerusalem they would go straight to heaven after
death. However, much controversy surrounds exactly what was
promised by the popes of the time. One theory was that one had to
die fighting for Jerusalem for the remission to apply, which would
hew more closely to what
Pope Urban II
said in his speeches. This meant that if the crusaders were
successful, and retook Jerusalem, the survivors would not be given
remission. Another theory was that if one reached Jerusalem, one
would be relieved of the sins one had committed before the Crusade.
Therefore one could still be sentenced to
Hell
for sins committed afterwards.
All of these factors were manifested in the overwhelming popular
support for the First Crusade and the religious vitality of the
12
th century.
Immediate cause
The immediate cause of the First Crusade was the Byzantine emperor
Alexios I's appeal to
Pope Urban II for mercenaries to help him
resist Muslim advances into territory of the Byzantine Empire.
In 1071,
at the Battle of
Manzikert
, the Byzantine Empire was defeated, which led to
the loss of all of Asia Minor (modern Turkey
) save the
coastlands. Although attempts at reconciliation after the
East-West Schism between the
Catholic Western Church and the
Eastern Orthodox Church had failed,
Alexius I hoped for a positive response from Urban II and got it,
although it turned out to be more expansive and less helpful than
he had expected.
When the
First Crusade was preached in 1095, the Christian princes of
northern Iberia had been fighting their way out of the mountains of
Galicia
and Asturias
, the Basque Country and
Navarre
, with
increasing success, for about a hundred years. The fall of Moorish
Toledo
to the
Kingdom of
León
in 1085 was a major victory, but the turning points
of the Reconquista still lay in
the future. The disunity of Muslim emirs was an essential
factor.
While the
Reconquista was the
most prominent example of European reactions against Muslim
conquests, it is not the only such example. The
Norman adventurer
Robert
Guiscard had conquered
Calabria in 1057
and was holding what had traditionally been Byzantine territory
against the Muslims of
Sicily.
The maritime states
of Pisa
, Genoa
and Catalonia
were all actively fighting Islamic strongholds in
Majorca
and Sardinia, freeing the
coasts of Italy and Catalonia from Muslim raids.
Much
earlier, the Christian homelands of Syria
, Lebanon
, Palestine, Egypt
, and so on
had been conquered by Muslim armies. This long history of
losing territories to a religious enemy created a powerful motive
to respond to Byzantine Emperor Alexius I's call for holy war to
defend Christendom, and to recapture the lost lands starting with
Jerusalem.
The papacy of
Pope Gregory VII had
struggled with reservations about the doctrinal validity of a holy
war and the shedding of blood for the Lord and had, with
difficulty, resolved the question in favour of justified violence.
More importantly to the Pope, the Christians who made pilgrimages
to the Holy Land were being persecuted. Saint
Augustine of Hippo, Gregory's
intellectual model, had justified the use of force in the service
of Christ in
The City of
God, and a Christian "
just war"
might enhance the wider standing of an aggressively ambitious
leader of Europe, as Gregory saw himself.
The northerners would
be cemented to Rome
, and their
troublesome knights could see the only kind of action that suited
them. Previous attempts by the church to stem such violence,
such as the concept of the "Peace of God", were not as successful
as hoped. To the south of Rome, Normans were showing how such
energies might be unleashed against both Arabs (in Sicily) and
Byzantines (on the mainland). A Latin hegemony in the
Levant would provide leverage in resolving the
Papacy's claims of supremacy over the
Patriarch of Constantinople,
which had resulted in the
Great Schism
of 1054, a rift that might yet be resolved through the force of
Frankish arms.
In the
Byzantine homelands, the Eastern Emperor's weakness was revealed by
the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, which reduced the Empire's Asian territory
to a region in western Anatolia and around Constantinople. A sure sign of Byzantine desperation was
the appeal of
Alexios I to his
enemy, the Pope, for aid. But Gregory was occupied with the
Investiture Controversy and
could not call on the German emperor, so a crusade never took
shape.
For Gregory's more moderate successor,
Pope Urban II, a crusade would serve to
reunite Christendom, bolster the Papacy, and perhaps bring the East
under his control. The disaffected Germans and the Normans were not
to be counted on, but the heart and backbone of a crusade could be
found in Urban's own homeland among the northern French.
After the First Crusade
On a popular level, the first crusades unleashed a wave of
impassioned, personally felt pious Christian fury that was
expressed in the massacres of
Jews that
accompanied the movement of the Crusader mobs through Europe, as
well as the violent treatment of "
schism" Orthodox Christians of the east.
During many of the attacks on Jews, local Bishops and Christians
made attempts to protect Jews from the mobs that were passing
through. Jews were often offered sanctuary in churches and other
Christian buildings.
In the
13th century, Crusades never expressed such a popular fever, and
after Acre
fell for the
last time in 1291 and the Occitan Cathars were exterminated during the Albigensian Crusade, the crusading ideal
became devalued by Papal justifications of political and
territorial aggressions within Catholic Europe.
The last crusading order of knights to hold territory were the
Knights Hospitaller.
After the
final fall of Acre, they took control of the island of Rhodes
, and in the
sixteenth century, were driven to Malta
, before
being finally unseated by Napoleon
Bonaparte in 1798.
List
A traditional numbering scheme for the crusades totals nine during
the 11th to 13th centuries. This division is arbitrary and excludes
many important expeditions, among them those of the 14th, 15th, and
16th centuries.
In reality, the crusades continued until the
end of the 17th century, the crusade of Lepanto
occurring in 1571, that of Hungary in
1664
, and the crusade to Candia in 1669. The Knights Hospitaller continued to crusade
in the Mediterranean Sea
around Malta until their
defeat by Napoleon in 1798. There
were frequent "minor" Crusades throughout this period, not only in
Palestine but also in the Iberian Peninsula and central Europe,
against Muslims and also Christian heretics and personal enemies of
the Papacy or other powerful monarchs.
First Crusade 1095-1099
In March 1095 at the
Council of
Piacenza, ambassadors sent by
Byzantine Emperor Alexius I called for help with defending
his empire against the
Seljuk Turks.
Later that year, at the
Council of
Clermont,
Pope Urban II called
upon all Christians to join a war against the Turks, promising
those who died in the endeavor would receive immediate remission of
their sins.
Following abortive
popular crusades
in early 1096, the official crusader armies set off from France and
Italy on the papally-ordained date of 15 August 1096. The armies
journeyed eastward by land toward Constantinople, where they
received a wary welcome from the Byzantine Emperor. Pledging to
restore lost territories to the empire, the Crusaders were supplied
and transported to Anatolia where they laid siege to
Seljuk-occupied
Nicea. The city fell on 19
June 1097. The Crusader armies fought further battles against the
Turks, facing grave deprivation of both food and water in their
summer crossing of Anatolia. The lengthy
Siege of Antioch began in October 1097 and
endured until June of 1098. The ruler of Antioch was not sure how
the Christians living within his city would react, so he forced
them to live outside the citadel. The siege only ended when one of
the gates to the city was betrayed by an Armenian dissident. Once
inside the city, as was standard military practice at the time, the
Crusaders massacred the Muslim inhabitants, destroyed mosques and
pillaged the city. Local Christians assassinated Yaghisiyan, former
ruler of the city. However a large Muslim relief army under
Kerbogha immediately besieged the
victorious Crusaders within Antioch.
Bohemund of Taranto led a successful
break-out and defeat of Kerbogha's army on the 28th of June. The
starving crusader army marched south, moving from town to town
along the coast, finally reaching the walls of Jerusalem on 7 June
1099 with only a fraction of their original forces.
Siege of Jerusalem
The Jews and Muslims fought together to defend Jerusalem against
the invading Franks. They were unsuccessful though and on 15 July
1099 the crusaders entered the city. They proceeded to massacre the
remaining Jewish and Muslim civilians and pillaged or destroyed
mosques and the city itself. One historian has written that the
"isolation, alienation and fear" felt by the Franks so far from
home helps to explain the atrocities they committed, including the
cannibalism which was recorded after the
Siege of Maarat in 1098. As a result of the
First Crusade, several small
Crusader
states were created, notably the
Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the Kingdom of
Jerusalem at most 120,000 Franks (predominantly
French-speaking Western Christians) ruled
over 350,000 Muslims, Jews, and native Eastern Christians.
The
Crusaders also tried to gain control of the city of Tyre
, but were defeated by the Muslims.
The
people of Tyre asked Zahir al-Din
Atabek, the leader of Damascus
, for help defending their city from the Franks with
the promise to surrender Tyre to him. When the Franks were
defeated the people of Tyre did not surrender the city, but Zahir
al-Din simply said “What I have done I have done only for the sake
of God and the Muslims, nor out of desire for wealth and
kingdom.”
After gaining control of Jerusalem the Crusaders created four
Crusader states: the
kingdom of
Jerusalem, the
County of
Edessa, the
Principality of
Antioch and the
County of
Tripoli. Initially, Muslims did very little about the Crusader
states due to internal conflicts.Eventually, the Muslims began to
reunite under the leadership of
Imad
al-Din Zangi. He began by re-taking Edessa in 1144. It was the
first city to fall to the Crusaders, and became the first to be
recaptured by the Muslims. This led the Pope to call for a second
Crusade.
Crusade of 1101
Following this crusade there was a second, less successful wave of
crusaders, in which Turks led by
Kilij
Arslan defeated the Crusaders in three separate battles in a
well-managed response to the
First
Crusade. This is known as the
Crusade of 1101 and may be considered an
adjunct of the First Crusade.
Norwegian Crusade 1107-1110
Sigurd I of Norway was the first
European king who went on a crusade and his crusader armies
defeated Muslims in Spain, the Baleares, and in Palestine where
they joined the king of Jerusalem in the
Siege of Sidon.
Second Crusade 1147–1149
The status of Europe in 1142
After a period of relative peace in which Christians and Muslims
co-existed in the Holy Land, Muslims conquered the town of
Edessa. A new crusade was called for by
various preachers, most notably by
Bernard of Clairvaux. French and South
German armies, under the Kings
Louis
VII and
Conrad III
respectively, marched to Jerusalem in 1147 but failed to win any
major victories, launching a failed pre-emptive siege of Damascus,
an independent city that would soon fall into the hands of
Nur ad-Din, the main enemy of the Crusaders.
On the
other side of the Mediterranean, however, the Second Crusade met
with great success as a group of Northern European Crusaders
stopped in Portugal, allied with the Portuguese King, Afonso I of Portugal, and retook
Lisbon
from the Muslims in 1147. A detachment from
this group of crusaders helped Count Raymond Berenguer
IV of Barcelona conquer the city of Tortosa
the following year. In the Holy Land by
1150, both the kings of France and Germany had returned to their
countries without any result. St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who in his
preachings had encouraged the Second Crusade, was upset with the
amount of misdirected violence and slaughter of the Jewish
population of the Rhineland. North Germans and Danes attacked the
Wends during the 1147
Wendish Crusade, which was unsuccessful as
well.
Third Crusade 1187–1192
In
1187, Saladin, Sultan of Egypt, conquered Jerusalem after
nearly a century under Christian rule, following the Battle of
Hattin
. After the Christians surrendered the city,
Saladin spared the civilians and for the most part left churches
and shrines untouched to be able to collect ransom money from the
Franks. Several thousand apparently were not redeemed and probably
were sold into
slavery. Saladin is
remembered respectfully in both European and Islamic sources as a
man who "always stuck to his promise and was loyal." The reports of
Saladin's victories shocked Europe.
Pope
Gregory VIII called for a crusade,
which was led by several of Europe's most important leaders:
Philip II of France,
Richard I of England (aka Richard the
Lionheart), and
Frederick I, Holy Roman
Emperor. Frederick drowned in
Cilicia in
1190, leaving an unstable alliance between the
English and the French.
Before his arrival in the Holy Land, Richard
captured the island of Cyprus
from the
Byzantines in 1191. Cyprus would serve as a Crusader base for
centuries to come, and would remain in Western European hands until
the Ottoman Empire conquered the
island from Venice
in 1571. After a long
siege, Richard the Lionheart recaptured the city of Acre and took the entire Muslim garrison under
captivity, which was executed after a series of failed
negotiations. Philip left, in
1191,
after the Crusaders had recaptured Acre from the Muslims.
The
Crusader army headed south along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. They defeated the Muslims near Arsuf
, recaptured
the port city of Jaffa
, and were
in sight of Jerusalem. However, Richard did not believe he
would be able to hold Jerusalem once it was captured, as the
majority of Crusaders would then return to Europe, and the crusade
ended without the taking of Jerusalem. Richard left the following
year after negotiating a treaty with Saladin. The treaty allowed
unarmed Christian pilgrims to make pilgrimages to the Holy Land
(Jerusalem), while it remained under Muslim control.
On
Richard's way home, his ship was wrecked and he ended up in
Austria
, where his enemy, Duke Leopold, captured
him. The Duke delivered Richard to the Emperor
Henry VI, who held the King for
ransom. By 1197, Henry felt ready for a crusade, but he died in the
same year of
malaria. Richard I died during
fighting in Europe and never returned to the Holy Land. The Third
Crusade is sometimes referred to as the Kings' Crusade.
Fourth Crusade 1202–1204
The Crusader states established in
Greece in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade.
The Fourth Crusade was initiated in 1202 by
Pope Innocent III, with the intention of
invading the Holy Land through Egypt.
Because the Crusaders
lacked the funds to pay for the fleet and provisions that they had
contracted from the Venetians, Doge Enrico Dandolo enlisted the crusaders to
restore the Christian city of Zara (Zadar
) to
obedience. Because they subsequently lacked provisions
and time on their vessel lease, the leaders decided to go to
Constantinople, where they attempted to place a Byzantine exile on
the throne. After a series of misunderstandings and
outbreaks of violence, the Crusaders
sacked the city in 1204, and
established the so-called
Latin Empire
and a series of other
Crusader states
throughout the territories of the Greek Byzantine Empire. This is
often seen as the final breaking point of the
Great Schism between the
Eastern Orthodox Church and
(Western)
Roman Catholic
Church.
Albigensian Crusade
The
Albigensian Crusade was launched in 1209
to eliminate the heretical Cathars of Occitania (the
south of modern-day France). It
was a decade-long struggle that had as much to do with the concerns
of northern France to extend its control southwards as it did with
heresy. In the end, both the Cathars and the independence of
southern France were exterminated.
Children's Crusade
Christian states in the Levant.
The Children's Crusade is a series of possibly fictitious or
misinterpreted events of 1212. The story is that an outburst of the
old popular enthusiasm led a gathering of children in France and
Germany, which
Pope Innocent III
interpreted as a reproof from heaven to their unworthy elders. The
leader of the French army, Stephen, led 30,000 children. The leader
of the German army, Nicholas, led 7,000 children.
None of the children
actually reached the Holy Land: those who did not return home or
settle along the route to Jerusalem either died from shipwreck or hunger, or
were sold into slavery in Egypt or North Africa.
Fifth Crusade 1217–1221
By processions, prayers, and preaching, the Church attempted to set
another crusade afoot, and the
Fourth Council of the Lateran
(1215) formulated a plan for the recovery of the Holy Land.
In the
first phase, a crusading force from Austria and Hungary
joined the forces of the king of Jerusalem and the
prince of Antioch to take
back Jerusalem. In the second phase, crusader forces
achieved a remarkable feat in the capture of Damietta
in Egypt in 1219, but under the urgent insistence
of the papal legate, Pelagius, they then launched a foolhardy
attack on Cairo
in July of
1221. The crusaders were turned back after their dwindling
supplies led to a forced retreat. A night-time attack by the ruler
of Egypt, the powerful Sultan
Al-Kamil,
resulted in a great number of crusader losses and eventually in the
surrender of the army. Al-Kamil agreed to an eight-year peace
agreement with Europe.
Sixth Crusade 1228–1229
Emperor Frederick II had
repeatedly vowed a crusade but failed to live up to his words, for
which he was
excommunicated by
Pope Gregory IX in 1228.
He
nonetheless set sail from Brindisi
, landed in Palestine, and through diplomacy he
achieved unexpected success: Jerusalem, Nazareth
, and Bethlehem
were delivered to the crusaders for a period of ten
years.
In 1229 after failing to conquer Egypt, Frederick II of the
Holy Roman Empire, made a peace
treaty with
Al-Kamil, the ruler of Egypt.
This
treaty allowed Christians to rule over most of Jerusalem, while the
Muslims were given control of the Dome of the Rock
and the Al-Aksa
mosque. The peace brought about by this
treaty lasted for about ten years. Many of the Muslims though were
not happy with Al-Kamil for giving up control of Jerusalem and in
1244, following a
siege,
the Muslims regained control of the city.
Seventh Crusade 1248–1254
The papal interests represented by the
Templars brought on a conflict with Egypt in
1243, and in the following year a
Khwarezmian force summoned by the latter
stormed Jerusalem.
The crusaders were drawn into battle at
La Forbie in Gaza
. The
crusader army and its Bedouin mercenaries were completely defeated
within forty-eight hours by
Baibars' force
of
Khwarezmian tribesmen. This
battle is considered by many historians to have been the death
knell to the
Kingdom of Outremer.
Although
this provoked no widespread outrage in Europe as the fall of
Jerusalem in 1187 had done, Louis IX
of France organized a crusade against Egypt from 1248 to 1254,
leaving from the newly constructed port of Aigues-Mortes
in southern France. It was a failure, and
Louis spent much of the crusade living at the court of the crusader
kingdom in Acre. In the midst of this crusade was the first
Shepherds' Crusade in 1251.
Eighth Crusade 1270
The
eighth Crusade was organized by Louis
IX in 1270, again sailing from Aigues-Mortes, initially to come
to the aid of the remnants of the crusader states in Syria.
However,
the crusade was diverted to Tunis
, where
Louis spent only two months before dying. For his efforts,
Louis was later canonised. The Eighth Crusade is sometimes counted
as the Seventh, if the Fifth and Sixth Crusades are counted as a
single crusade. The Ninth Crusade is sometimes also counted as part
of the Eighth.
Ninth Crusade 1271–1272
The future
Edward I of England
undertook another expedition against
Baibars
in 1271, after having accompanied Louis on the Eighth Crusade.
Louis died in Tunisia. The Ninth Crusade was deemed a failure and
ended the Crusades in the Middle East.
In their later years, faced with the threat of the Egyptian
Mamluks, the Crusaders' hopes rested with a
Franco-Mongol alliance. The
Ilkhanate's
Mongols
were thought to be sympathetic to Christianity, and the Frankish
princes were most effective in gathering their help, engineering
their invasions of the Middle East on several occasions. Although
the Mongols successfully attacked as far south as Damascus on these
campaigns, the ability to effectively coordinate with Crusades from
the west was repeatedly frustrated most notably at the
Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260. The
Mamluks, led by
Baibars, eventually made
good their pledge to cleanse the entire Middle East of the Franks.
With the fall of
Antioch
(1268),
Tripoli (1289), and
Acre (1291), those Christians
unable to leave the cities were massacred or
enslaved and the last traces of Christian rule
in the
Levant disappeared.
Aftermath
The
island of Ruad
, three
kilometers from the Syrian shore, was occupied for several years by
the Knights Templar but was
ultimately lost to the Mamluks in the
Siege of Ruad on September 26,
1302. The
Armenian
Kingdom of Cilicia, which was not itself a crusader state, and
was not Latin Christian, but was closely associated with the
crusader states and was ruled by the Latin Christian Lusignan
dynasty for its last 34 years, survived until 1375. Other echoes of
the crusader states survived for longer, but well away from the
Holy Land itself. The Knights of St John carved out a new territory
based on the Aegean island of Rhodes, which they ruled until
1522. Cyprus remained under
the rule of the House of Lusignan until 1474/89 (the precise date
depends on how Venice's highly unusual takeover is interpreted -
see
Caterina Cornaro) and
subsequently that of Venice until 1570. By this time the Knights of
St John had moved to Malta - even further from the Holy Land -
which they ruled until 1798.
Northern Crusades (Baltic and Germany)
The
Crusades in the Baltic
Sea
area and in Central
Europe were efforts by (mostly German) Christians to subjugate
and convert the peoples of these areas to Christianity.
These Crusades ranged from the 12th century, contemporaneous with
the Second Crusade, to the 16th century.
Contemporaneous with the Second Crusade,
Saxons and
Danes fought against
Polabian Slavs in the 1147
Wendish Crusade. In the 13th century, the
Teutonic Knights led
Germans,
Poles, and
Pomeranians against the
Old Prussians during the
Prussian Crusade.
In 1198 German Crusaders started
Livonian Crusade. Despite numerous setbacks
and rebellions, by 1290
Livonians,
Latgalians,
Selonians,
Estonians
(including
Oeselians),
Curonians and
Semigallians had been all gradually subjugated.
Denmark
and Sweden
also
participated in fight against Estonians.
Between 1232 and 1234, there was a crusade against the
Stedingers. This crusade was special, because the
Stedingers were not heathens or heretics, but fellow Roman
Catholics. They were free
Frisian farmers
who resented attempts of the count of
Oldenburg and the archbishop
Bremen-Hamburg to make an end to
their freedoms. The archbishop excommunicated them, and
Pope Gregory IX declared a crusade in 1232.
The Stedingers were defeated in 1234.
The
Teutonic Order's attempts to conquer Orthodox Russia
(particularly the Republics of Pskov
and Novgorod), an enterprise
endorsed by Pope Gregory IX, can
also be considered as a part of the Northern Crusades. One
of the major blows for the idea of the conquest of Russia was the
Battle of the Ice in 1242. With or
without the Pope's blessing, Sweden also undertook several
crusades against Orthodox
Novgorod.
Other
Crusade against the Tatars
In 1259
Mongols led by Burundai and Nogai Khan ravaged the principality of Halych-Volynia, Lithuania
and Poland
.
After that
Pope Alexander IV tried
without success to create a crusade against the
Blue Horde (see
Mongol invasion of Poland).
In the 14th century, Khan
Tokhtamysh
combined the Blue and White Hordes forming the
Golden Horde. It seemed that the power of the
Golden Horde had begun to rise, but in 1389, Tokhtamysh made the
disastrous decision of waging war on his former master, the great
Tamerlane.
Tamerlane's hordes rampaged through
southern Russia, crippling
the Golden Horde's economy and practically wiping out its defenses
in those lands.
After losing the war, Tokhtamysh was then dethroned by the party of
Khan Temur Kutlugh and Emir Edigu, supported by Tamerlane. When
Tokhtamysh asked
Vytautas the
Great for assistance in retaking the Horde, the latter readily
gathered a huge army which included Lithuanians, Ruthenians,
Russians,
Mongols,
Moldavians, Poles, Romanians and
Teutonic Knights.
In 1398,
the huge army moved from Moldavia and conquered the southern steppe
all the way to the Dnieper River and
northern Crimea
.
Inspired by their great successes, Vytautas declared a 'Crusade
against the Tatars' with
Papal
backing. Thus, in 1399, the army of Vytautas once again moved on
the Horde. His army met the Horde's at the
Vorskla River, slightly inside Lithuanian
territory.
Although the Lithuanian army was well equipped with
cannon, it could not resist a rear attack from
Edigu's reserve units. Vytautas hardly escaped alive.
Many princes of his
kin—possibly as many as 20—were killed (for example, Stefan Musat, Prince of Moldavia and two of his brothers,
while a fourth was badly injured ), and the victorious Tatars
besieged Kiev
.
"And the Christian blood flowed like water, up to the Kievan
walls," as one chronicler put it. Meanwhile, Temur Kutlugh died
from the wounds received in the battle, and Tokhtamysh was killed
by one of his own men.
Crusades in the Balkans
To counter the expanding
Ottoman
Empire, several crusades were launched in the 15th century.The
most notable are:
Aragonese Crusade
The
Aragonese
Crusade, or Crusade of Aragón, was declared by
Pope Martin IV against the
King of Aragón, Peter III the Great, in
1284 and 1285.
Alexandrian Crusade
The
Alexandrian
Crusade of October 1365 was a minor seaborne crusade
against Muslim Alexandria
led by Peter I of
Cyprus. His motivation was at least as commercial as
religious.
Hussite Crusade
The Hussite Crusade(s), also known as the "
Hussite Wars," or the "Bohemian Wars," involved
the military actions against and amongst the followers of
Jan Hus in
Bohemia in the period 1420 to circa
1434. The Hussite Wars were arguably the first European war in
which hand-held gunpowder weapons such as
muskets made a decisive contribution. The
Taborite faction of the
Hussite warriors were basically infantry, and their
many defeats of larger armies with heavily armoured knights helped
affect the infantry revolution. In the end, it was an inconclusive
war.
Swedish Crusades
The
Swedish conquest of Finland
in the Middle Ages has
traditionally been divided into three "crusades": the First Swedish Crusade around 1155 AD,
the Second Swedish Crusade
about 1249 AD and the Third
Swedish Crusade in 1293 AD.
The First Swedish Crusade is purely legendary, and according to
most historians today, never took place as described in the legend
and did not result in any ties between Finland and Sweden. For the
most part, it was made up in the late 13th century to date the
Swedish rule in Finland further back in time. No historical record
has also survived describing the second one, but it probably did
take place and ended up in the concrete conquest of southwestern
Finland.
The third one was against Novgorod
, and is properly documented by both parties of the
conflict.
According to archaeological finds, Finland was largely Christian
already before the said crusades. Thus the "crusades" can rather be
seen as ordinary expeditions of conquest whose main target was
territorial gain. The expeditions were dubbed as actual crusades
only in the 19th century by the national-romanticist Swedish and
Finnish historians.
Analysis
Elements of the Crusades were criticized by some from the time of
their inception in 1095. For example,
Roger
Bacon felt the Crusades were not effective because, "those who
survive, together with their children, are more and more embittered
against the Christian faith." In spite of such criticism, the
movement was widely supported in Europe long after the fall of Acre
in 1291. Historians agree that
St.
Francis of Assisi crossed enemy lines to meet the Sultan of
Egypt. Hoeberichts cast doubt on the intentions most Christian
historians assign to Francis. From the fall of Acre forward, the
Crusades to recover
Jerusalem
and the Christian East were largely lost. Later,
18th century Enlightenment thinkers
judged the Crusaders harshly. Likewise, some modern historians in
the West expressed moral outrage. In the 1950s, Sir
Steven Runciman wrote a resounding
condemnation:
- "High ideals were besmirched by cruelty and greed … the Holy
War was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of
God".
Historical perspective
Western and Eastern
historiography
present variously different views on the crusades, in large part
because "crusade" invokes dramatically opposed sets of
associations—"crusade" as a valiant struggle for a supreme cause,
and "crusade" as a byword for barbarism and aggression.
Legacy
Politics and culture
The Crusades had an enormous influence on the European
Middle Ages.
At times, much of the continent was united
under a powerful Papacy, but by the 14th
century, the development of centralized bureaucracies (the
foundation of the modern nation-state)
was well on its way in France, England, Spain, Burgundy, and Portugal, and partly because of the dominance of the church
at the beginning of the crusading era.
Although Europe had been exposed to
Islamic culture for centuries through
contacts in Iberian Peninsula and
Sicily,
much knowledge in areas such as science, medicine, and architecture
was transferred from the Islamic to the western world during the
crusade era.
The
military experiences of the crusades also had a limited degree of
influence on European castle design; for example, Caernarfon
Castle
, in Wales
, begun in
1283, directly reflects the style of fortresses Edward I had
observed while fighting in the Crusades.
In addition, the Crusades are seen as having opened up European
culture to the world, especially Asia:
Along with trade, new scientific discoveries and inventions made
their way east or west. Arab advances (including the development of
algebra, optics, and refinement of
engineering) made their way west and sped the course of advancement
in European universities that led to the Renaissance in later
centuries
The invasions of German crusaders prevented formation of the large
Lithuanian state incorporating all Baltic nations and tribes.
Lithuania was destined to become a small country and forced to
expand to the East looking for resources to combat the crusaders.
The Northern Crusades caused great loss of life among the pagan
Polabian Slavs, and they consequently
offered little opposition to German colonization (known as
Ostsiedlung) of the Elbe-Oder region and were
gradually assimilated by the
Germans, with
the exception of
Sorbs.
The
First
Crusade ignited a long tradition of organized violence against
Jews in European culture.
Trade
The need to raise, transport and supply large armies led to a
flourishing of
trade throughout Europe.
Roads largely unused since the days of
Rome saw significant increases in traffic as
local merchants began to expand their horizons. This was not only
because the Crusades
prepared Europe for travel, but also
because many
wanted to travel after being reacquainted
with the products of the Middle East. This also aided in the
beginning of the
Renaissance in Italy,
as various Italian
city-states from the
very beginning had important and profitable trading colonies in the
crusader states, both in the
Holy Land and
later in captured
Byzantine
territory.
Increased trade brought many things to Europeans that were once
unknown or extremely rare and costly. These goods included a
variety of spices, ivory, jade, diamonds, improved
glass-manufacturing techniques, early forms of gun powder, oranges,
apples, and other Asian crops, and many other products.
From a larger perspective, and certainly from that of noted
naval/maritime historian
Archibald
Lewis, the Crusades must be viewed as part of a massive
macrohistorical event during which Western Europe, primarily by its
ability in naval warfare, amphibious siege, and maritime trade, was
able to advance in all spheres of civilization. Recovering from the
Dark Ages of AD 700-1000, throughout the
11th century Western Europe began to push the boundaries of its
civilization.
Prior to the First
Crusade the Italian city-state of Venice, along with
the Byzantine Empire, had cleared
the Adriatic
Sea
of Islamic pirates, and loosened the Islamic hold
on the Mediterranean Sea (Byzantine-Muslim War of 1030-1035).
The
Normans, with the assistance of the Italian
city-states of Genoa and Pisa, had retaken
Sicily from the Muslims from
1061-1091. These conflicts prior to the
First Crusade had both retaken Western
European territory and weakened the Islamic hold on the
Mediterranean, allowing for the rise of Western European
Mediterranean trading and naval powers such as the Sicilian Normans
and the Italian city-states of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa.
During
the Middle Ages, the key trading region of Western Europe was the
Black
Sea
-Mediterranean Sea-Red
Sea
. It was the aforementioned pre-First Crusade
actions, along with the Crusades themselves, which allowed Western
Europe to contest the trade of the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea,
for a period which began in the 1000s and would only be ended by
the Turkish Ottoman Empire beginning in the mid-to-late 1400s. This
Western European contestation of vital sea lanes allowed the
economy of Western Europe to advance to previously unknown degrees,
most obviously as regards the Maritime Republics of Venice, Genoa,
and Pisa. Indeed, it is no coincidence that the Renaissance began
in Italy, as the Maritime Republics, through their control of the
Eastern Mediterranean and Black Seas, were able to return to Italy
the ancient knowledge of the Greeks and Romans, as well as the
products of distant East Asia.
Combined
with the Mongol Empire, Western Europe traded extensively with East
Asia, the security of the Mongol Empire allowing the products of
Asia to be brought to such Western European controlled ports as
Acre, Antioch, Kaffa (on the Black Sea) and even, for a time,
Constantinople itself. The
Fifth
Crusade of 1217-1221 and the
Seventh
Crusade of 1248-1254 were largely attempts to secure Western
European control of the Red Sea trade region, as both Crusades were
directed against Egypt, the power base of the
Ayyubid, and then
Mameluke,
Sultanates. It was only in the 1300s, as
the stability of trade with Asia collapsed with the Mongol Empire,
the
Mamelukes destroyed the Middle Eastern
Crusader States, and the rising
Ottoman
Empire impeded further Western European trade with Asia, that
Western Europeans sought alternate trade routes to Asia, ultimately
leading to
Columbus's voyage of
1492.
Caucasus
In the
Caucasus
Mountains
of Georgia
, in the remote highland region of Khevsureti
, a tribe called the Khevsurs
are thought to possibly be direct descendants of a
party of crusaders who got separated from a larger army and have
remained in isolation with some of the crusader culture
intact. Into the 20th century, relics of armor, weaponry and
chain mail were still being used and passed down in such
communities. Russian serviceman and ethnographer
Arnold Zisserman who spent 25 years
(1842–67) in the Caucasus, believed the exotic group of Georgian
highlanders were descendants of the last Crusaders based on their
customs, language, art and other evidence. American traveler
Richard Halliburton saw and
recorded the customs of the tribe in 1935.
Etymology and usage
- For other uses of crusade, see Crusade .
The crusades were never referred to as such by their participants.
The original crusaders were known by various terms, including
fideles Sancti Petri (the faithful of
Saint Peter) or (knights of Christ). They saw
themselves as undertaking an
iter, a journey, or a
peregrinatio, a
pilgrimage,
though pilgrims were usually forbidden from carrying arms.
Like pilgrims, each crusader swore a vow (a
votus), to be
fulfilled on successfully reaching Jerusalem, and they were granted
a cloth cross (
crux) to be sewn into their clothes. This
"taking of the cross", the
crux, eventually became
associated with the entire journey; the word "crusade" (coming into
English from the Medieval
French
croisade and
Spanish
cruzada) developed from this.
See also
- Some results of the crusades
- Background to crusades
- Events named "crusade" but not included in historical
crusades
- Media and culture
- Knightly Orders:
- Participants
Footnotes
Further reading
- Atwood, Christopher P. (2004). The Encyclopedia of Mongolia
and the Mongol Empire. Facts on File, Inc. ISBN
0-8160-4671-9.
- Erdmann, Carl, The Origin of
the Idea of Crusade, trans. M. W. Baldwin & Walter Goffart, in English (Princeton, 1977).
Original work in German, Die Enstehung des
Kreuzzugsgedanken, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und
Geistesgeschichte 6 (Stuttgart, 1935).
External links
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