Crusades

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Crusades and Crusaders

MEDIEVAL WARFARE

MEDIEVAL WEAPONS

CRUSADES & CRUSADERS

WILLIAM MARSHAL

MEDIEVAL LIFE

MEDIEVAL RE-ENACTMENT

MEDIEVAL TORTURE

First Crusade Second Crusade Third Crusade Fourth Crusade Cathar Crusade Childrens' Crusade Fifth Crusade Frederick II's Crusade Sixth Crusade SeventhCrusade Eigtth Crusade Ninth Crusade Later Crusades Consequences

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 east. 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 next world. 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 Acre.

medieval miniature painting of the Siege of Antioch during the First Crusade, by Sbastien Mamerot 1490

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The 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-byside 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

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 Lance.

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 (Bibliothque Boulogne-s-Mer). The two sides can be distinguished by their swords and shields.

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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 intraEuropean 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 Ni. 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 Nica, 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 nonChristian 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.

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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.

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The Second Crusade

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 punters: 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

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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 Christian ones. 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 the Christians.

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Jerusalem Retaken
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 alAdil 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 crusaders.

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