I | INTRODUCTION |
Crusades, series of wars by Western European
Christians to recapture the Holy Land from the Muslims (see Palestine).
The Crusades were first undertaken in 1096 and ended in the late 13th century.
The term Crusade was originally applied solely to European efforts to
retake from the Muslims the city of Jerusalem, which was sacred to Christians as
the site of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It was later used to designate any
military effort by Europeans against non-Christians.
The Crusaders carved out feudal states in the
Near East. Thus the Crusades are an important early part of the story of
European expansion and colonialism. They mark the first time Western Christendom
undertook a military initiative far from home, the first time significant
numbers left to carry their culture and religion abroad.
In addition to the campaigns in the East, the
Crusading movement includes other wars against Muslims, pagans, and dissident
Christians and the general expansion of Christian Europe. In a broad sense the
Crusades were an expression of militant Christianity and European expansion.
They combined religious interests with secular and military enterprises.
Christians learned to live in different cultures, which they learned and
absorbed; they also imposed something of their own characteristics on these
cultures. The Crusades strongly affected the imagination and aspirations of
people at the time, and to this day they are among the most famous chapters of
medieval history.
II | ORIGINS OF THE CRUSADES |
After the death of Charlemagne, king of the
Franks, in 814 and the subsequent collapse of his empire, Christian Europe was
under attack and on the defensive. Magyars, nomadic people from Asia, pillaged
eastern and central Europe until the 10th century. Beginning about 800, several
centuries of Viking raids disrupted life in northern Europe and even threatened
Mediterranean cities. But the greatest threat came from the forces of Islam,
militant and victorious in the centuries following the death of their leader,
Muhammad, in 632. By the 8th century, Islamic forces had conquered North Africa,
the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, and most of Spain. Islamic armies
established bases in Italy, greatly reduced the size and power of the Byzantine
Empire (the Eastern Roman Empire) and besieged its capital, Constantinople. The
Byzantine Empire, which had preserved much of the classical civilization of the
Greeks and had defended the eastern Mediterranean from assaults from all sides,
was barely able to hold off the enemy. Islam posed the threat of a rival culture
and religion, which neither the Vikings nor the Magyars had done.
In the 11th century the balance of power began
to swing toward the West. The church became more centralized and stronger from a
reform movement to end the practice whereby kings installed important clergy,
such as bishops, in office. (See also Investiture Controversy.) Thus for
the first time in many years, the popes were able to effectively unite European
popular support behind them, a factor that contributed greatly to the popular
appeal of the first Crusades.
Furthermore, Europe’s population was growing,
its urban life was beginning to revive, and both long distance and local trade
were gradually increasing. European human and economic resources could now
support new enterprises on the scale of the Crusades. A growing population and
more surplus wealth also meant greater demand for goods from elsewhere. European
traders had always looked to the Mediterranean; now they sought greater control
of the goods, routes, and profits. Thus worldly interests coincided with
religious feelings about the Holy Land and the pope’s newfound ability to
mobilize and focus a great enterprise.
III | FIRST CRUSADE |
It was against this background that Pope
Urban II, in a speech at Clermont in France in November 1095, called for a great
Christian expedition to free Jerusalem from the Seljuk Turks, a new Muslim power
that had recently begun actively harassing peaceful Christian pilgrims traveling
to Jerusalem. The pope was spurred by his position as the spiritual head of
Western Europe, by the temporary absence of strong rulers in Germany (the Holy
Roman Empire) or France who could either oppose or take over the effort, and by
a call for help from the Byzantine emperor, Alexius I. These various factors
were genuine causes, and at the same time, useful justifications for the pope’s
call for a Crusade. In any case, Urban’s speech—well reported in several
chronicles—appealed to thousands of people of all classes. It was the right
message at the right time.
The First Crusade, which began in 1096, was
successful in its explicit aim of freeing Jerusalem. It also established a
Western Christian military presence in the Near East that lasted for almost 200
years. The Crusaders called this area Outremer, French for “beyond the
seas.” The First Crusade was the wonder of its day. It attracted no European
kings and few major nobles, drawing mainly lesser barons and their followers.
They came primarily from the lands of French culture and language, which is why
Westerners in Outremer were referred to as Franks.
The Crusaders faced many obstacles. They had
no obvious or widely accepted leader, no consensus about relations with the
churchmen who went with them, no definition of the pope’s role, and no agreement
with the Byzantine emperor on whether they were his allies, servants, rivals, or
perhaps enemies. These uncertainties divided the Crusaders into factions that
did not always get along well with one another.
Different leaders followed different routes
to Constantinople, where they were all to meet. The contingents of Robert of
Flanders and Bohemond of Taranto went by sea via Italy, while the other major
groups, those of Godfrey of Bouillon and Raymond of Toulouse, took the land
route around the Adriatic Sea. As the Crusaders marched east, they were joined
by thousands of men and even women, ranging from petty knights and their
families, to peasants seeking freedom from their ties to the manor. A vast
miscellany of people with all sorts of motives and contributions joined the
march. They followed local lords or well-known nobles or drifted eastward on
their own, walking to a port town and then sailing to Constantinople. Few knew
what to expect. They knew little about the Byzantine Empire or its religion,
Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Few Crusaders understood or had much sympathy for
the Eastern Orthodox religion, which did not recognize the pope, used the Greek
language rather than Latin, and had very different forms of art and
architecture. They knew even less about Islam or Muslim life. For some the First
Crusade became an excuse to unleash savage attacks in the name of Christianity
on Jewish communities along the Rhine.
The leaders met at Constantinople and chose
to cross on foot the inhospitable and dangerous landscape of what is now Turkey,
rather than going by sea. Somehow, despite this questionable decision, the
original forces of perhaps 25,000 to 30,000 still survived in sufficient numbers
to overcome the Muslim states and principalities of what are now Syria, Lebanon,
and Israel. Like Western Christendom, Islam was disunited. Its rulers failed to
anticipate the effectiveness of the enemy. In addition, the Franks, as the
attacking force, had at least a temporary advantage. They exploited this, taking
the key city of Antioch in June 1098, under the lead of Bohemond of Taranto.
Then, despite their divisions and factionalism, they moved on to Jerusalem. The
siege of Jerusalem culminated in a bloody and destructive Christian victory in
July 1099, in which many of the inhabitants were massacred.
With victory came new problems. Many
Crusaders saw the taking of Jerusalem as the goal; they were ready to go home.
Others, especially minor nobles and younger sons of powerful noble families, saw
the next step as the creation of a permanent Christian presence in the Holy
Land. They looked to build feudal states like those of the West. They hoped to
transplant their military culture and to carve out fortunes on the new frontier.
Though the Crusaders were more intolerant than understanding of Eastern life,
they recognized its riches. They also saw such states as the way to protect the
routes to the Holy Land and its Christian sites. The result was the
establishment of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, first under Godfrey of
Bouillon, who took the title of Defender of the Holy Sepulchre, and then under
his brother Baldwin, who ruled as king. In addition to the Latin Kingdom, which
was centered on Jerusalem, three other Crusader states were founded: the County
of Tripoli, in modern Lebanon; the Principality of Antioch, in modern Syria; and
the County of Edessa, in modern northern Syria and southern Turkey.
IV | CRUSADES OF THE 12TH CENTURY |
The Crusades of the 12th century, through the
end of the Third Crusade in 1192, illustrate the tensions and problems that
plagued the enterprise as a whole. For the lords of Outremer a compromise with
the residents and Muslim powers made sense; they could not live in constant
warfare. And yet as European transplants they depended on soldiers and resources
from the West, which were usually only forthcoming in times of open conflict.
Furthermore, rivalries at home were translated into factional quarrels in
Outremer that limited any common policy among the states. Nor was the situation
helped by the arrival of European princes and their followers, as happened when
the Second and Third Crusades came East; European tensions and jealousies proved
just as divisive in the East as they had been at home.
There is little reason to think that
colonization had been anticipated or encouraged by the pope, let alone by the
Byzantine emperor; however, it seems a logical consequence of the Crusade’s
success. Frankish nobles maintained links with their families at home, and they
built lives and careers that spanned the Mediterranean. Moreover, in town and
countryside, daily life in the region did not alter greatly; one military master
was much like another. Christian lords had no plan for mass conversion of the
natives or for any systematic mistreatment comparable to modern genocide or
enforced migration. They wanted to maintain their privileged position and to
enjoy the lives of European nobles in a new setting. As they settled in, they
gradually lost interest in any papal efforts at raising new military
expeditions. Nor did they ever reach any real compromise with the Byzantine
emperor regarding reconquered territory that had once been his. Although the two
groups of Christians had a common enemy, this was not a sufficient motive for
cooperation between worlds with so little mutual regard.
To the rulers of Muslim states a concerted
military effort was imperative. The Franks were an affront to religious as well
as to political and economic interests. The combination of zeal and luck that
had enabled the Crusaders to triumph in 1099 evaporated in the face of such
realities as the need to recruit and maintain soldiers who were loyal and
effective. Islamic rulers turned almost at once to the offensive, though a major
blow to Christian power did not come until 1144, when the Muslims recaptured
Edessa. The city of Edessa had guarded the back door of the Frankish holdings,
which were mostly near the coast. This loss marked the beginning of the end of a
viable Christian military bastion against Islam.
News of the fall of Edessa reverberated
throughout Europe, and the Second Crusade was called by Pope Eugenius III.
Though the enthusiasm of 1095 was never again matched, a number of major figures
joined the Second Crusade, including Holy Roman Emperor Conrad III and France’s
King Louis VII. Conrad made the mistake of choosing the land route from
Constantinople to the Holy Land and his army was decimated at Dorylaeum in Asia
Minor. The French army was more fortunate, but it also suffered serious
casualties during the journey, and only part of the original force reached
Jerusalem in 1148. In consultation with King Baldwin III of Jerusalem and his
nobles, the Crusaders decided to attack Damascus in July. The expedition failed
to take the city, and shortly after the collapse of this attack, the French king
and the remains of his army returned home. The Second Crusade resulted in many
Western casualties and no gains of value in Outremer. In fact the only military
gains during this period were made in what is now Portugal, where English
troops, which had turned aside from the Second Crusade, helped free the city of
Lisbon from the Moors.
After the failure of the Second Crusade, it
was not easy to see where future developments would lead. In the 1120s and 1130s
the Military Religious Orders had been created to further the Crusading ideal by
combining spirituality with the martial ideas of knighthood and chivalry. Men
who joined the orders took vows of chastity and obedience patterned after those
of monasticism. At the same time they were professional soldiers, willing to
spend long periods in the East. The most famous were the Knights of St. John of
Jerusalem, called Hospitalers, and the Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple
of Solomon, called Templars. These groups sent men to Outremer to protect
Christian pilgrims and settlements in the east. This meant that the rulers in
Outremer did not have to depend only on the huge but wayward armies led by
princes. These orders of Crusading knights tried to mediate between the Church’s
concerns and the more worldly interests of princes who saw the East as an
extension of their own ambitions and dynastic policies.
After the Second Crusade these orders began
steadily to gain popularity and support. As they attracted men and wealth, and
as the Crusading movement became part of the extended politics of Western
Europe, the orders themselves became players in European politics. They
established chapters throughout the West, both as recruiting bases and as a
means to funnel money to the East; they built and fortified great castles; they
sat on the councils of princes; and they too became rich and entrenched.
In the years between the failure of the
Second Crusade and 1170, when the Muslim prince Saladin came to power in Egypt,
the Latin States were on the defensive but were able to maintain themselves. But
in 1187 Saladin inflicted a major defeat on a combined army at Hattin and
subsequently took Jerusalem. The situation had become dire. In response to the
Church’s call for a new, major Crusade, three Western rulers undertook to lead
their forces in person. These were Richard I, the Lion-Hearted of England,
Philip II of France, and Frederick I, called Frederick Barbarossa, the Holy
Roman Emperor. Known as the Third Crusade, it has become perhaps the most famous
of all Crusades other than the First Crusade, though its role in legend and
literature greatly outweighs its success or value.
The three rulers were rivals. Richard and
Philip had long been in conflict over the English holdings in France. Though
English kings had inherited great fiefs in France, their homage to the French
king was a constant source of trouble. Frederick Barbarossa, old and famous,
died in 1189 on the way to the Holy Land, and most of his armies returned to
Germany following his death. Philip II had been spurred into taking up the
Crusade by a need to match his rivals, and he returned home in 1191 with little
concern for Eastern glories. But Richard, a great soldier, was very much in his
element. He saw an opportunity to campaign in the field, to establish links with
the local nobility, and to speak as the voice of the Crusader states. Though he
gained much glory, the Crusaders were unable to recapture Jerusalem or much of
the former territory of the Latin Kingdom. They did succeed, however, in
wresting from Saladin control of a chain of cities along the Mediterranean
coast. By October 1192, when Richard finally left the Holy Land, the Latin
Kingdom had been reconstituted. Smaller than the original kingdom and
considerably weaker militarily and economically, the second kingdom lasted
precariously for another century.
V | CRUSADES OF THE 13TH CENTURY |
After the disappointments of the Third
Crusade, Western forces would never again threaten the real bases of Muslim
power. From that point on, they were only able to gain access to Jerusalem
through diplomacy, not arms.
In 1199 Innocent III called for another
Crusade to recapture Jerusalem. In preparation for this Crusade, the ruler of
Venice agreed to transport French and Flemish Crusaders to the Holy Land.
However, the Crusaders never fought the Muslims. Unable to pay the Venetians the
amount agreed upon, they were forced to bargain with the Venetians. They agreed
to take part in an attack on one of the Venetians’ rivals, Zara, a trading port
on the Adriatic Sea, in the nearby Kingdom of Hungary. When Innocent III learned
of the expedition, he excommunicated the participants, but the combined force
captured Zara in 1202. The Venetians then persuaded the Crusaders to attack the
Byzantine capital of Constantinople, which fell on April 13, 1204. For three
days the Crusaders sacked the city. Subsequently the Venetians gained a monopoly
on Byzantine trade. The Latin Empire of Constantinople was established, which
lasted until the recapture of Constantinople by the Byzantine emperor in 1261.
In addition, several new Crusader states sprang up in Greece and along the Black
Sea. The Fourth Crusade did not even threaten the Muslim powers. Trade and
commerce had triumphed, as Venice had hoped, but at the cost of irreparably
widening the rift between the Eastern and Western churches.
Crusades after the Fourth were not mass
movements. They were military enterprises led by rulers moved by personal
motives. Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II vowed to lead a Crusade in 1215, but
for domestic political reasons postponed his departure. Under pressure from Pope
Gregory IX, Frederick and his army finally sailed from Italy in August 1227, but
returned to port within a few days because Frederick had fallen ill. The pope,
outraged at this further delay, promptly excommunicated the emperor. Undaunted,
Frederick embarked for the Holy Land in June 1228. There he conducted his
unconventional Crusade almost entirely by diplomatic negotiations with the
Egyptian sultan. These negotiations produced a peace treaty by which the
Egyptians restored Jerusalem to the Crusaders and guaranteed a ten-year respite
from hostilities. However, Frederick was ridiculed in Europe for using diplomacy
rather than the sword.
In 1248 Louis IX, Saint Louis of France,
decided that his obligations as a son of the Church outweighed those of his
throne, and he left his kingdom for a six-year adventure. Since the base of
Muslim power had shifted to Egypt, Louis did not even march on the Holy Land;
any war against Islam now fit the definition of a Crusade. Louis and his
followers landed in Egypt on June 5, 1249, and the following day captured
Damietta. The next phase of their campaign, an attack on Cairo in the spring of
1250, proved to be a catastrophe. The Crusaders failed to guard their flanks,
and as a result the Egyptians retained control over the water reservoirs along
the Nile. By opening the sluice gates, they created floods that trapped the
whole Crusading army, and Louis was forced to surrender in April 1250. After
paying an enormous ransom and surrendering Damietta, Louis sailed to Palestine,
where he spent four years building fortifications and strengthening the defenses
of the Latin Kingdom. In the spring of 1254 he and his army returned to
France.
King Louis also organized the last major
Crusade, in 1270. This time the response of the French nobility was
unenthusiastic, and the expedition was directed against the city of Tunis rather
than Egypt. It ended abruptly when Louis died in Tunisia during the summer of
1270.
The tale of the Crusader states, after the
mid-13th century, is a sad and short one. Though popes, some zealous
princes—including Edward I of England—and various religious and political
thinkers continued to call for a Crusade to unite the warring armies of Europe
and to deliver a smashing blow to Islam, later efforts were too small and too
sporadic to do more than buy time for the Crusader states. With the fall of
‘Akko (Acre) in 1291, the last stronghold on the mainland was lost, though the
military religious orders kept garrisons on Cyprus and Rhodes for some
centuries. However, the Crusading impulse was not dead. As late as 1396 a large
expedition against the Ottoman Turks in the Balkans, summoned by Sigismund of
Hungary, drew knights from all over the West. But a crushing defeat at Nicopolis
(Nikopol) on the Danube River also showed that the appeal of these ventures far
outstripped the political and military support needed for their success.
VI | OTHER CRUSADES |
The expeditions to Outremer are thought of as
the Crusades. Military-Christian enterprises and expeditions elsewhere are
easily branded as misdirected or perverted Crusades, but there is really no
significant difference between them. Medieval Christendom perceived itself as
having a right or duty to expand, to convert and dominate Muslims and pagans,
and to bring dissident Christians back to the fold. When English forces helped
take Lisbon from the Moors in 1147, they were carrying out what seemed the true
purpose of a Crusade. This was also true for German soldiers under the banner of
the Teutonic Knights when they imposed Christianity on the pagans of eastern
Germany and the Baltic in the 12th and 13th centuries.
Since the Crusades had become the militant
arm of Christian society, it seemed only logical to launch the Albigensian
Crusade (see Albigenses). This was a war fought by the French kings and
their vassals against heretics in the south of France from around 1210 to 1229.
This use of the Crusading banner seems a hypocritical smoke screen, as the
French knights took the lands of their enemies, savaged the people, and became
the new feudal lords. But the distinction between what happened in France, in
Jerusalem, or in Rīga in the Baltic was one of place and time, not of
essence.
As late as the 15th century, this extension
of the Crusading ideal to areas outside the Holy Land was a powerful force when
directed against a specific opponent. When national feeling and the adoption of
religious ideas later associated with the Protestants made Bohemia a threat to
European stability, at least in the eyes of the Holy Roman Empire and the pope,
a Crusade was declared against Hussites, who were named for John Hus, their
first leader. Some decried this as a false Crusade, saying that greed was being
sanctified by ecclesiastical banners. But most of Europe endorsed the brutal
warfare and the reimposition of Catholicism. This was, in their eyes, a Crusade
for Christ’s church and people, as valid as any of the expeditions to the Holy
Land.
VII | CONSEQUENCES AND CONCLUSION |
When judged by narrow military standards,
the Crusades were a failure. What was gained so quickly was slowly but steadily
lost. On the other hand, to hold territory under a Christian banner so far from
home, given the contemporary conditions of transport and communication, was
impressive. The taking of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade had been just
short of fatal to the Byzantine Empire, and it cast a blemish on the movement in
the West, where there were critics of the whole concept of armed Crusades. While
Constantinople was not taken by the Ottoman Empire until 1453, the Byzantine
Empire after the Fourth Crusade was but a shell of its former self.
For many years, scholars were inclined to
give the Crusades credit for making Western Europe more cosmopolitan. They
believed the Crusades had brought Western Europe higher standards of Eastern
medicine and learning, Greek and Muslim culture, and such luxuries as silks,
spices, and oranges. Extreme statements of this view held that the Crusades
brought Europe out of the provincialism of the Dark Ages.
Scholars no longer accept this assessment.
It is too simple. It ignores the larger trends of population growth, expanding
trade, and the exchange of ideas and cultures that existed long before 1095.
These trends would have encouraged East-West exchange without military
expeditions or the taking of Jerusalem. The Crusades, while an exciting and
integral part of the Middle Ages, merely served to hasten changes that were
inevitable.
The most important effect of the Crusades
was economic. The Italian cities prospered from the transport of Crusaders and
replaced Byzantines and Muslims as merchant-traders in the Mediterranean. Trade
passed through Italian hands to Western Europe at a handsome profit. This
commercial power became the economic base of the Italian Renaissance. It also
provoked such Atlantic powers as Spain and Portugal to seek trade routes to
India and China. Their efforts, through such explorers as Vasco da Gama and
Christopher Columbus, helped to open most of the world to European trade
dominance and colonization and to shift the center of commercial activity from
the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.
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