January 1095—1229 A.D. Remember the Six Crusades
The first of the Crusades began in 1095, when
armies of Christians from Western Europe responded to Pope Urban II’s plea to
go to war against Muslim forces in the Holy Land. After the First Crusade
achieved its goal with the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, the invading
Christians set up several Latin Christian states, even as Muslims in the region
vowed to wage holy war (jihad) to regain control over the region. Deteriorating
relations between the Crusaders and their Christian allies in the Byzantine
Empire culminated in the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the Third Crusade.
Near the end of the 13th century, the rising Mamluk dynasty in Egypt provided
the final reckoning for the Crusaders, toppling the coastal stronghold of Acre
and driving the European invaders out of Palestine and Syria in 1291.
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The Crusades: Background
By the end of the 11th century, Western Europe
had emerged as a significant power in its own right, though it still lagged far
other Mediterranean civilization such as that of the Byzantine Empire (formerly the eastern half
of the Roman Empire) and the Islamic empire of the Middle East and North
Africa. Meanwhile, Byzantium was losing considerable territory to the invading
Seljuk Turks, who defeated the Byzantine Army at the battle of Manzikirt in
1071 and went on to gain control over much of Anatolia. After years of chaos
and civil war, the general Alexius Comnenus seized the Byzantine throne in 1081
and consolidated control over the remaining empire as Emperor Alexius I.
Did You Know?
In a popular movement known as the Children's
Crusade (1212), a motley crew including children, adolescents, women, the
elderly and the poor marched all the way from the Rhineland to Italy behind a
young man named Nicholas, who said he had received divine instruction to march
toward the Holy Land.
In 1095, Alexius sent envoys to Pope Urban II
asking for mercenary troops from the West to help confront the Turkish threat.
Though relations between Christians in East and West had long been fractious,
Alexius’ request came at a time when the situation was improving. In November
1095, at the Council of Clermont in southern France, the pope called on Western
Christians to take up arms in order to aid the Byzantines and recapture the
Holy Land from Muslim control. Pope Urban’s plea met with a tremendous
response, both among lower levels of the military elite (who would form a new
class of knights) as well as ordinary citizens; it was determined that those
who joined the armed pilgrimage would wear a cross as a symbol of the Church.
The First Crusade (1096-99)
Four armies of Crusaders were formed from
troops of different Western European regions, led by Raymond of Saint-Gilles,
Godfrey of Bouillon, Hugh of Vermandois and Bohemond of Taranto (with his
nephew Tancred); they were set to depart for Byzantium in August 1096. A less
organized band of knights and commoners known as the “People’s Crusade” set off
before the others under the command of a popular preacher known as Peter the
Hermit. Peter’s army traipsed through the Byzantine Empire, leaving destruction
in their wake. Resisting Alexius’ advice to wait for the rest of the Crusaders,
they crossed the Bosporus in early August. In the first major clash between the
Crusaders and the Muslims, Turkish forces crushed the invading Europeans at
Cibotus. Another group of Crusaders, led by the notorious Count Emicho, carried
out a series of massacres of Jews in various towns in the Rhineland in 1096,
drawing widespread outrage and causing a major crisis in Jewish-Christian
relations.
When the four main armies of Crusaders arrived
in Constantinople, Alexius insisted that their leaders swear an oath of loyalty
to him and recognize his authority over any land regained from the Turks, as
well as any other territory they might conquer; all but Bohemond resisted taking
the oath. In May 1097, the Crusaders and their Byzantine allies attacked Nicea
(now Iznik, Turkey), the Seljuk capital in Anatolia; the city surrendered in
late June. Despite deteriorating relations between the Crusaders and Byzantine
leaders, the combined force continued its march through Anatolia, capturing the
great Syrian city of Antioch in June 1098. After various internal struggles
over control of Antioch, the Crusaders began their march toward Jerusalem, then
occupied by Egyptian Fatimids (who as Shi’ite Muslims were enemies of the Sunni
Seljuks). Encamping before Jerusalem in June 1099, the Christians forced the
besieged city’s governor to surrender by mid-July. Despite Tancred’s promise of
protection, the Crusaders slaughtered hundreds of men, women and children in
their victorious entrance into the city.
The Crusader States and the Second Crusade (1147-49)
Having achieved their goal in an unexpectedly
short period of time, many of the Crusaders departed for home. To govern the
conquered territory, those who remained established four large western
settlements, or Crusader states, in Jerusalem, Edessa, Antioch and Tripoli.
Guarded by formidable castles, the Crusader states retained the upper hand in
the region until around 1130, when Muslim forces began gaining ground in their
own holy war (or jihad) against the Christians, whom they called “Franks.” In
1144, the Seljuk general Zangi, governor of Mosul, captured Edessa, leading to
the loss of the northernmost Crusader state.
News of Edessa’s fall stunned Europe, and led
Christian authorities in the West to call for another Crusade. Led by two great
rulers, King Louis VII of France and King Conrad III of Germany, the Second
Crusade began in 1147. That October, the Turks crushed Conrad’s forces at Dorylaeum,
site of a great victory during the First Crusade. After Louis and Conrad
managed to assemble their armies at Jerusalem, they decided to attack the
Syrian stronghold of Damascus with an army of some 50,000 (the largest Crusader
force yet). Previously well disposed towards the Franks, Damascus’ ruler was
forced to call on Nur al-Din, Zangi’s successor in Mosul, for aid. The combined
Muslim forces dealt a humiliating defeat to the Crusaders, decisively ending
the Second Crusade; Nur al-Din would add Damascus to his expanding empire in
1154.
The Third Crusade (1189-92)
After numerous attempts by the Crusaders of
Jerusalem to capture Egypt, Nur al-Din’s forces (led by the general Shirkuh and
his nephew, Saladin) seized Cairo in 1169
and forced the Crusader army to evacuate. Upon Shirkuh’s subsequent death,
Saladin assumed control and began a campaign of conquests that accelerated
after Nur al-Din’s death in 1174. In 1187, Saladin began a major campaign against
the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. His troops virtually destroyed the Christian
army at the battle of Hattin, taking the city along with a large amount of
territory.
Outrage over these defeats inspired the Third
Crusade, led by rulers such as the aging Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (who was
drowned at Anatolia before his entire army reached Syria), King Philip II of
France and King Richard I of England (known as Richard the Lionheart). In
September 1191, Richard’s forces defeated those of Saladin in the battle of
Arsuf; it would be the only true battle of the Third Crusade. From the
recaptured city of Jaffa, Richard reestablished Christian control over some of
the region and approached Jerusalem, though he refused to lay siege to the
city. In September 1192, Richard and Saladin signed a peace treaty that
reestablished the Kingdom of Jerusalem (though without the city of Jerusalem)
and ended the Third Crusade.
From the Fourth to the Sixth Crusade (1198-1229)
Though the powerful Pope Innocent III called for
a new Crusade in 1198, power struggles in and between Europe and Byzantium
drove the Crusaders to divert their mission in order to topple the reigning
Byzantine emperor, Alexius III, in favor of his nephew, who became Alexius IV
in mid-1203. The new emperor’s attempts to submit the Byzantine church to Rome
met with stiff resistance, and Alexius IV was strangled after a palace coup in
early 1204. In response, the Crusaders declared war on Constantinople, and the
Fourth Crusade ended with the conquest and looting of the magnificent Byzantine
capital later that year.
The remainder of the 13th century saw a variety
of Crusades aimed not so much at toppling Muslim forces in the Holy Land as at
combating any and all of those seen as enemies of the Christian faith. The
Albigensian Crusade (1208-29) aimed to root out the heretical Cathari or
Albigensian sect of Christianity in France, while the Baltic Crusades (1211-25)
sought to subdue pagans in Transylvania. In the Fifth Crusade, put in motion by
Pope Innocent III before his death in 1216, the Crusaders attacked Egypt from
both land and sea, but were forced to surrender to Muslim defenders led by
Saladin’s nephew, Al-Malik al-Kamil, in 1221. In 1229, in what became known as
the Sixth Crusade, Emperor Frederick II achieved the peaceful
transfer of Jerusalem to Crusader control through negotiation with al-Kamil.
The peace treaty expired a decade later, and Muslims easily regained control of
Jerusalem.
End of the Crusades
Through the end of the 13th century, groups of
Crusaders sought to gain ground in the Holy Land through short-lived raids that
proved little more than an annoyance to Muslim rulers in the region. The
Seventh Crusade (1239-41), led by Thibault IV of Champagne, briefly recaptured
Jerusalem, though it was lost again in 1244 to Khwarazmian forces enlisted by
the sultan of Egypt. In 1249, King Louis IX of France led the Eighth Crusade
against Egypt, which ended in defeat at Mansura (site of a similar defeat in
the Fifth Crusade) the following year. As the Crusaders struggled, a new
dynasty known as the Mamluks–descended from former slaves of the sultan–took
power in Egypt. In 1260, Mamluk forces in Palestine managed to halt the advance
of the Mongols, an invading force led by Genghis Khan and his descendants that had emerged as
a potential ally for the Christians in the region. Under the ruthless Sultan
Baybars, the Mamluks demolished Antioch in 1268, prompting Louis IX to set out
on another Crusade, which ended in his death in North Africa (he was later
canonized).
A new Mamluk sultan, Qalawan, had defeated the
Mongols by the end of 1281 and turned his attention back to the Crusaders,
capturing Tripoli in 1289. In what was considered the last Crusade, a fleet of
warships from Venice and Aragon arrived to defend what remained of the Crusader
states in 1290. The following year, Qalawan’s son and successor, al-Ashraf
Khalil, marched with a huge army against the coastal port of Acre, the
effective capital of the Crusaders in the region since the end of the Third
Crusade. After only seven weeks under siege, Acre fell, effectively ending the
Crusades in the Holy Land after nearly two centuries. Though the Church
organized minor Crusades with limited goals after 1291–mainly military
campaigns aimed at pushing Muslims from conquered territory or conquering pagan
regions–support for such efforts disappeared in the 16th century, with the rise
of the Reformation and the corresponding decline of papal authority.
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