Introduction
The Crusades refer to a series of battles by Christians in Western Europe to retake the Holy Land from Muslims. The Crusades activities started in 1096 and the late thirteenth century marked their end (Morton, 2020). The word “crusade” was first used to refer to European efforts to reclaim Jerusalem from the Muslims since it was a holy Christian city where Jesus Christ was crucified. Later, it came to mean any military action taken by Europeans against non-Christians. (Morton, 2020). The crusades were a significant turning point in history. The Catholic Church has frequently engaged in debate concerning historical events. Despite the various setbacks that were experienced, it is argued that the crusades were mainly successful.
The crusades were a success since they helped advance Western civilization and Christianity, despite concluding with Muslim victory and European defeat. In the Near East, the crusaders also built feudal kingdoms. As a result, the Crusades represented a crucial early period in European colonization and expansion history. They celebrate the first time Western Christendom sent a maritime operation outside its borders and the first time a sizable portion of its population immigrated to further their culture and religion elsewhere. The crusading movement also included battles against Nonbelievers, Dissident Christians, and Muslims with an agenda of expanding Christianity over all of Europe and the wars in the East (Chamedes, 2019). The Crusades were a striking example of both aggressive Christianity and European imperialism. They combined secular, navy, and spiritual interests. Christians could survive in other civilizations because they learned about them, absorbed them, or even forced some of their traits upon them. Due to how profoundly they affected people’s aspirations and creativity, the Crusades were one of the most well-known periods in medieval history. To understand the successes that were made in each Crusade it is fundamental to explore their origins.
The Origin and Purpose of Crusades
Christian Europe was under perpetual siege after the death of Charlemagne (King of the Franks) in 814 and the subsequent breakup of his realm. Magyars, a migratory race from Asia, colonized eastern and central Europe until the eleventh century. Viking attacks affected northern European life for several centuries, starting around 800, even posing a danger to Mediterranean towns (Johnson, 2018). However, throughout the years that followed the death of their leader, Muhammad, in 632, the forces of Islam constituted the greatest threat because they were aggressive and successful. The majority of Spain, the eastern Mediterranean coastlines, and North Africa had all been overrun by Islamic troops by the eighth century.
The Byzantine Empire (the Eastern Roman Empire) saw a significant decline in size and influence due to Islamic troops setting up bases in Italy and besieging Constantinople (the then capital). The Byzantine Empire, which had protected the eastern Mediterranean from attacks from both sides and had preserved much of ancient Greece, could only stave off the invasion (Portnykh, 2019). The Islamic faith and lifestyle created a danger that neither the Vikings nor the Magyars could match. The stability of power began to shift toward the Westerners in the early eleventh century. A reform attempt to stop the practice of rulers installing significant clergy, such as bishops, in office resulted in the Church being more centralized and powerful. The Investiture Controversy resulted from this. The first Crusades were widely popularized due to the popes’ ability to successfully unite European society behind them for the first time in many years (Portnykh, 2019).
In addition, both local and long-distance trade were progressively rising, and urban life was starting to flourish in Europe. Europeans could fund new endeavors of the Crusades with their financial resources. Growing populations and financial surpluses contribute to increased demand for goods from other nations (Spacey, 2020). Despite traditionally looking to the Mediterranean, European business people now need greater control over the products, trade channels, and revenue. Thus, secular concerns met with religious sentiments over the Holy Land and the pope’s newly discovered capacity to organize and direct a massive undertaking.
The First Crusade
Pope Urban II called for a massive Christian mission to save Jerusalem from the Seljuk Turkish in a presentation delivered at Clermont in France in November 1095. Later, this new Muslim military started indiscriminately targeting Jerusalem’s innocent Christian population. Several reasons aided the Pope’s efforts, including the absence of stable leadership in France and Germany, the Pope’s status as the head of religious activity in Western Europe, and Alexius I’s (the Byzantine emperor) desire for help (Abu-Munshar, 2018). These factors supported the pope’s call for a Crusade and acted as persuasive justifications. Urban’s speech was appreciated by thousands of individuals from many social organizations, and it was well-documented in numerous histories. The message’s timing worked out to be ideal.
The First Crusade, which began in 1096 with the goal of liberating Jerusalem, succeeded. Additionally, it established the military presence of Western Christians in the Near East for about two centuries. The Crusaders gave this area the name Outremer, which means “beyond the waters” in French. The First Crusade drew largely minor lords and adherents, drawing no European rulers or powerful nobles (Portnykh, 2019). They were known as Franks in Outremer since they mainly were from regions with a French-speaking population and culture.
However, the Crusaders encountered several challenges. First, they needed a clear-cut leader who was highly respected. Also, they needed to agree on how to treat the churchmen who accompanied them. Additionally, they could not agree on the pope’s function. Aside from that, they were unable to identify whether they were the Byzantine emperor’s allies, subjects, rivals, or foes. Due to these concerns, the Crusaders were separated into groups and only seldom put into battle. Commanders took specific routes to meet at Constantinople. The armies of Robert of Flanders and Bohemond of Taranto sailed across Italy. However, Raymond who ruled Toulouse and Godfrey of Bouillon crossed the Adriatic Sea. Thousands of people joined the Crusaders as they marched east, from peasants seeking freedom from their bonds to the manor to petty knights and their families.
The march attracted a considerable assortment of participants with various goals and contributions. They wandered eastward on their own or followed prominent local lords or nobles, arriving at a port town on foot before taking a ship to Constantinople. Few people were prepared. They had limited knowledge of the Eastern Orthodox Christianity practiced in the Byzantine Empire. A few Crusaders were no longer familiar with or interested in the Eastern Orthodox faith, which no longer understood the pope, employed Greek instead of Latin and had fairly diverse styles of art and building (Caplazi, 2020). They had even less knowledge of Islam and Muslim culture. For others, the First Crusade served as justification for launching vicious assaults against Jewish settlements along the Rhine in the name of Christianity.
The leadership convened in Constantinople and decided against traveling by water to cross the hostile and challenging terrain of what is now Turkey on foot. Despite making this dubious choice, the initial forces—which may have numbered between 25,000 and 30,000—somehow managed to hang on long enough to defeat the Muslim principalities and nations that are now Israel, Syria, and Lebanon. Islam was fragmented, much like Western Christianity. Its leaders were unable to foresee the enemy’s efficiency. Additionally, the Franks enjoyed a brief advantage as the invading army. Under the direction of Bohemond of Taranto, they took advantage of this and captured the important city of Antioch in June 1098.
Then, despite their factionalism and conflicts, they went on to a terrible and disastrous Christian triumph resulting from the siege of Jerusalem, where many of the locals were slaughtered, which took place in July 1099. The victory brought new challenges. Many Crusaders were prepared to return home after capturing Jerusalem. Others viewed the establishment of a long-lasting Christian presence and residency in the Holy Land as the next mission (notably lesser nobles and younger sons of wealthy aristocratic families) (Caplazi, 2020). They sought to establish feudal states like those seen in the West. They planned to establish themselves on the new frontier and bring their military culture. Despite being more intolerant than the understanding of Eastern culture, the Crusaders were aware of its treasures. Additionally, they considered these governments as a means of defending the access points to the Holy Land and its Christian shrines.
As a result, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was established by two brothers who had the same vision (Godfrey of Bouillon and Baldwin). Godfrey of Bouillon was referred to as the Defender of the Holy Sepulcher. On the other hand, Baldwin served as king. Apart from the Latin Empire/Kingdom, there were other empires ruled by kings such as the Kingdom of Antioch (where present day Syria is located), the Kingdom of Tripoli (where Lebanon is currently located), and the Kingdom of Edessa (Present-day southern Turkey and parts of northern Syria) (Oliver & Theron, 2018).
The Twelfth Century Crusades
Many problems or challenges were experienced during the Crusades of the Twelfth century onwards. A settlement with the locals and the Muslim rulers made sense to the rulers of Crusader States since they could not continue to wage war. However, they were immigrants from Europe, so they depended on Western troops and supplies, often only available during the declared war (Johnson & Jotischky, 2019). A unifying agenda among the states was also constrained by factional disputes in Outremer resulting from domestic rivalry. Although the Second and Third Crusades sent European monarchs and their allies to the East, the situation was not improved; European hostilities and divisions turned out to be just as divisive in the Crusader States just as the state was in Europe.
Even while there is no evidence that the pope or the Byzantine emperor planned or encouraged colonization, it does seem to be a logical result of the Crusade’s success. The lives and activities of the Frankish nobles extended beyond the Mediterranean, yet they nevertheless kept in touch with their home families (Buck, 2022). In addition, daily life in the area did not change much in the city and the countryside; one military master was similar to another. The Christian lords did not want to convert the indigenous in large numbers or to oppress them on a scale identical to current genocide or forced migration. They chose to maintain their eminent position and take pleasure in living in their new surroundings as European nobility. As they had established themselves, papal efforts to fund future military operations had lost their appeal to them. They also never really compromised with the Byzantine ruler over land taken from him in the past (Buck, 2022). Even if the two Christian communities shared an enemy, this was insufficient justification for collaboration between societies with little respect for one another.
A unified military effort was essential in the eyes of the leaders of Muslim governments. Political, economic, and religious interests were all offended by the Franks. In the face of realities like the necessity to enlist and keep men who are dependable and efficient, the crusaders’ winning mix of passion and luck from 1099 vanished. When Muslims regained control of Edessa on the Euphrates River, a big setback to Christian rule would not come until 1144, but the Islamic administration almost immediately launched an invasion. The Frankish territory, which was mostly located near to the coast, had a back gate guarded by Edessa. This defeat marked the beginning of the Christian army’s decline in favor of Islam.
In some part of Europe, word of the fall of Edessa spread, and Pope Eugenius III proclaimed the Second Crusade. The leaders who joined the second Crusade include Conrad the third, the Roman Emperor, Louis the seventh, and the king of France. However, the successes, achievements, and support of the beginning of the Crusades in 1095 was never surpassed. Since the armies were divided, some armies such as that of Conrad were destroyed (at Dorylaeum in Asia Minor) on their way from Constantinople to the Holy Land. Although it nevertheless suffered significant fatalities along the journey, the French army had better luck, and only a part of the initial force made it to Jerusalem in 1148 (Brinling, 2022). After consulting with King 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley III of Jerusalem and his nobles, the Crusaders decided to conquer Damascus in July. After the expedition failed to capture the city, the French monarch and his final soldiers hurriedly returned home. The Crusades of the 12th century resulted in massive losses of soldiers and country. As a result, no significant improvements were achieved during this period, particularly in the Crusader States (Caplazi, 2020). In Western Europe, however, the Moors were pushed out of Lisbon (the current capital city of Portugal) with the assistance of English forces. This was a significant accomplishment during a tough era.
After the Second Crusade’s failure, it became difficult to anticipate how future events would develop. By combining religion with the military ideas of knighthood and chivalry, Military Religious Orders were established in the 1120s and 1130s to further the Crusading. Men who joined the orders took chastity and obedience oaths that were inspired by monastic oaths. They were also well-educated soldiers who wanted to spend a lot of time in the East. The most well-known were the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem (also known as Hospitalers), and the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, also known as the Templars and Hospitalers, respectively. For the purpose of defending Christian pilgrims and communities in the East, these groups sent men to Crusader States (Brinling, 2022). It implied that the kings and queens of Crusader States would need to rely on more than simply the sizable but misguided armies led by princes. Between the Church’s worries and the princes’ more materialistic objectives—who saw the East as an extension of their aspirations and dynastic rules—these Crusading knightly guilds attempted to act as an intermediary.
Following the Second Crusade, these orders gradually gained acceptance and support. The orders became political players in Europe as they drew in men and riches and as the Crusades integrated into the broader politics of Western Europe. They established chapters in the West that acted as recruiting centers and a source of funding for the East (Brinling, 2022). They also built and guarded enormous castles, participated in royal councils, and accumulated money and power.
In the years between the Second Crusade’s failure and 1170, when the Muslim ruler Saladin came to power in Egypt, the Latin States continued to stay on the defense but had to preserve their own. But in 1187, Saladin took control of Jerusalem when a concerted pressure on the Horns of Hattin resulted in an extreme loss. According to Caplazi (2020), three Western kings agreed to direct their armies when the Church pushed for a new, major Crusade. They had been Frederick I, Frederick Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor, Richard I, the Lion-Heart, and Philip II of France. The Third Crusade, often known as the Third Crusade, is today arguably the most well-known, aside from the First Crusade, despite the fact that its significance in mythology and literature much transcends its effectiveness or worth.
The three kings fought each other. The English lands in France had long been a contention between Richard and Philip. Despite the fact that English kings possessed considerable fiefs in France that they had inherited, their loyalty to the French king became a constant cause of strife. Old and renowned Frederick Barbarossa left in 1189 while traveling to the Holy Land, and the majority of his troops eventually came back to Germany. When Philip II returned home in 1191, he paid little attention to the successes of the East because he felt pushed to join the Crusade in order to keep up with his rivals (Spencer, 2021). Richard, a superb soldier, detected a threat in conducting subject campaigns, cultivating connections with the local nobility, and acting as the crusader countries’ representative.
The Crusaders did not succeed in retaking Jerusalem or the majority of the former Latin Kingdom’s territory, even though they attained significant successes. They were able to seize control of several places further from Saladin along the Mediterranean coast. Richard eventually departed the Holy Land in October 1192, after the Latin Kingdom had been re-established. The second nation, smaller and less potent than the first one on both an economic and military level, managed to hang on for another century.
Thirteen Century Crusades
Western armies would never again pose a danger to the trustworthy sources of Muslim power after the failures of the Third Crusade. Since then, they have been allowed admission to Jerusalem only through diplomatic channels and no longer through palms. Innocent III suggested yet another Crusade to take back Jerusalem in 1199 (Oliver & Theron, 2018). The Duke of Venice authorized the sending of French and Flemish Crusaders to the Holy Land prior to this Crusade. There might not be any evidence that the Crusaders ever engaged in combat with Muslims. Due to their inability to pay the Venetians the agreed-upon amount, they were compelled to come to an agreement. They agreed to take part in an assault on Zara, an Adriatic economic port inside the neighboring Kingdom of Hungary and a rival of the Venetians. Innocent III excommunicated the participants after finding out about the ride, but in 1202 the added strain claimed Zara’s life.
The Crusaders were then advised by the Venetians to assault Constantinople, the Byzantine capital, which was eventually taken on April 13, 1204. The Crusaders pillaged the city for three days. The Venetians finally took control of the Byzantine economy. Up until the Byzantine emperor regained control, the Latin Empire of Constantinople flourished. Constantinople in 1261, came to be associated with it (Moller, 2021). In addition, many Outremer kingdoms arose around the Black Sea and in modern-day Greece. However, the Muslim powers, who were a major adversary of the crusades, faced no threats at this time (the forth Crusade). Furthermore, the divide between the Western and Eastern churches widened dramatically. Businesses and industries, on the other hand, thrived.
The crusades were no longer large-scale movements after the Fourth Crusade, but rather military groups directed by rulers with personal goals. In the thirteenth century, Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire advocated for another Crusade, but concerns relating to regional politics hampered his efforts. However Pope Gregory IX insisted on the mission and Frederick and his navy eventually departed Italy in August 1227, but they were forced to turn around after a few days when Frederick fell ill (Brinling, 2022). The pope immediately declared the emperor to be excommunicated out of anger at being similarly enraged. Frederick sailed unfazed for the Holy Land in June 1228. There, he frequently conducted his unconventional Crusade through diplomatic talks with the Egyptian pharaoh. Through a peace pact resulting from these discussions, the Egyptians granted the Crusaders control of Jerusalem in exchange for a 10-year ceasefire in hostilities. But since Frederick chose to use diplomacy rather than force, he was mocked around Europe.
Saint Louis of France (Louis IX) decided in 1248 that his duties to the Church were more critical than his monarchy, and he left his realm for a six-year journey. Louis IX did not even set foot in the Holy Land since Egypt had become the center of Muslim power, and any conflict with Islam now qualified as a Crusade. On June 5, 1249, Louis and his supporters arrived in Egypt, and the next day they took Damietta (Dragnea, 2021). Their assault on Cairo in the spring of 1250, the next stage of their campaign, turned out to be a disaster. The Egyptians continued to sway over the Nile water storage facilities because the Crusaders neglected to protect their flanks. When they opened the sluice gates and caused floods that imprisoned the whole Crusading army, they put pressure on Louis to yield in April 1250. Louis traveled to Palestine and spent four years fortifying the Latin Kingdom and bolstering its defenses after paying a hefty ransom and giving up Damietta. He left France in the spring of 1254 and returned with his army.
In 1270, King Louis also planned the final significant Crusade. This time, the French nobility’s response was lackluster, and the expedition focused on Tunisia rather than Egypt. When Louis passed away in Tunisia in the summer of 1270, everything ended abruptly. After the mid-13th century, the history of the Crusader nations is depressing and brief. Popes, certain fervent rulers, such as Edward I of England, and a variety of theological and political intellectuals persisted in calling for a Crusade to unite Europe’s warring armies and strike a fatal blow against Islam. However, following efforts were too little and intermittent to achieve much progress for the Crusader kingdoms. Later on, the final stronghold of the Crusader States (Acre, Israel). But to keep control of the places they had, religious organizations and military activities continued in Rhodes and Cyprus for decades. The desire for the Crusade, though, was still alive. A significant campaign led by Sigismund of Hungary in 1396 against the Ottoman Turks in the Balkans attracted knights across the West. However, the Danube River city of Nicopolis (Nikopol) also demonstrated that the attraction of these endeavors greatly outweighed the governmental and military backing required for their accomplishment.
Other Crusades
The Crusades are sometimes referred to as the voyages to Outremer. Although military-Christian endeavors and expeditions abroad are sometimes referred to as misguided or corrupted Crusades, there isn’t much of a distinction between them. Medieval Christianity believed it had a right or obligation to spread, subjugate, convert Muslims and pagans, and win back dissenting Christians. When English armies assisted in liberating Lisbon from the Moors in 1147, they appeared to be achieving the Crusade’s primary goal (Caplazi, 2020). It also applied to German troops fighting under the Teutonic Knights’ banner in the 12th and 13th centuries when they converted pagans in eastern Germany and the Baltic to Christianity.
According to Caplazi (2020), it seemed sensible to start the Albigensian Crusade as the Crusades had evolved into the militant wing of Christian civilization. From around 1210 until 1229, the French monarchs and their vassals engaged in this conflict in the south of France against heretics. Because the French knights captured their opponents’ territories and had them pillaged by the populace, they established themselves as the new feudal rulers, making this usage of the Crusader flag appear hypocritical. In addition, the idea of spreading the Crusade activities beyond the Holy Land became a pillar for most leaders and rulers until the fifteenth century. When a Crusade was declared against the Hussites (known by the name of their first leader John Hus), Bohemia was seen as a threat to the security and stability of Europe, at least from the perspective of the Roman Catholic Church and the papacy (Johnson, 2018). The acquisition of non-secular views that would subsequently be connected to the Protestants and national emotion were to blame. Some said this was a phony Crusade and religious banners sanctified avarice. The vast majority of Europe, however, backed both the brutal battle and the revival of Catholicism (Johnson, 2018). They viewed this as a genuine Crusade for Christ’s Church and followers as earlier visits to the Holy Land.
Counterargument
The Crusades were a failure when measured only from a military perspective. What was initially won was progressively and slowly lost. However, Christians kept these territories for long and this represented a significant accomplishment when considering the level of communication and transportation in modern times. In the West, where there have been opponents of the idea of the Crusades as a whole, Constantinople’s capture during the Fourth Crusade left a mark on the Byzantine Empire’s decline. Despite the Ottoman Empire not seizing Constantinople until 1453, the Byzantine Empire after the Fourth Crusade was simply a shadow of what it once was (Johnson, 2018).
For a long time, academics tended to attribute Western Europe’s increased cosmopolitanism to the Crusades. According to Morton (2020), the academicians thought that the Crusades had introduced luxury items like silks, spices, oranges, and superior levels of Eastern medicine and scholarship to Western Europe. Extreme versions of this viewpoint claimed that Europe was liberated from the provincialism of the Dark Ages by the Crusades. Academics no longer accept this argument because it is far too easy, simplistic, and does not consider other perspectives. It disregards longer-term patterns of population expansion, commerce expansion, and the diffusion of ideas and civilizations that date back to well before 1095 (Mourad, 2020). Without military campaigns or the conquest of Jerusalem, these tendencies would have promoted East-West communication. The Crusades were significant events of the middle Ages. However, it is counter argued that, the activities of the Crusaders contributed in fastening the changes in society that would eventually occur.
Conclusion
The Crusades’ most significant impact was economic. As a result of the Crusaders’ commerce in the Mediterranean, the Italian cities developed and displaced the Byzantines and the Muslims as major trading centers. Italians profited significantly from the trade that they handled for Western Europe. The Italian Renaissance’s foundational economic force was its commercial might. Additionally, it encouraged Atlantic countries like Portugal, France, and Spain to look for trade routes to China and India. Along with other explorers, Columbus and Vasco da Gama helped shift the focus of economic activity from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and open up most of the world to European colonization and commercial dominance.
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