THE HOLY CRUSADES AS A MEDIEVAL "VIETNAM"

The First Crusade, prayed for in 1095, was also the first major war of conquest expedited from Europe since the decline of the Roman Empire. Thirty years earlier, William the Conqueror (1027- 1087) united England under one rule. The Islamic Seljuk empire arose at the beginning of the 11th century, conquering Iran, Georgia, Armenia, much of Asia, Syria, defeating the Byzantine forces of Emperor Romanus IV (?-1072) at Manzikert, Armenia, and capturing Jerusalem, where Harun-al- Rashid (of "Arabian Nights" fame, 763-809) had allowed Empeor Charlemagne to endow a hostel for pilgrims. (One Seljuk ruler was patron of mathematician and poet, Omar Khayam (1048-1122), who devised a calendar for him.) The French had known bloody quarrels between princely brothers for many years. Pope Urban II (c.1040-1099) declared, for all Christendom, "The Truce of God", a ban on factional fighting from Sunday to Wednesday, and that involving priests, monks, women, laborers and merchants on any weekday. Italy, a collection of city-states, was frequently overrun, recently by the Normans.

Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenus (1048-1118), in Constantinople, was beset by Turks attacking pilgrims traveling to - and in - Jerusalem. In `093, Alexius complained to his friend Robert, the Count of Flanders (1038-1093), who forwarded this letter to Pope Urban II. In turn, Urban welcomed an opportunity to assuage local complaints by promoting, at the Synod of Clermont, a Holy Crusade to reclaim the Holy Lands from "a race utterly alienated from God".

From France, we have Hugh, Count of Vermandois (?-1101), brother of the French King of Northern and Central France, with him were Godfrey (1061-1100), Baldwin (1058-118) and Eustace of Bouillon (1080-1125), sons of the Duke of Lower Lorraine (descended through their mother from Charlemagne) and their cousin, Baldwin Le Bourg.

Also from France, the first to "Take the Cross", was Raymond IV of Saint-Gilles, Count of Toulouse (1038-1105), veteran of Moorish wars in Spain, son of a princess of Barcelona.

From England, Robert, Duke of Normandy (1054-1134), son of William the Conqueror.

From Italy, Marcus Bohemond (1057-1111), Prince of Toranto, and his nephew, Tancred (1072- 1112).

Their goal was the Levant, the Latin Orient, a region now called Israel, parts of Lebanon and a small extension into Syria and southeastern Turkey.

It was later portioned into the four Crusader States of Antioch, Edessa, Tripoli and Jerusalem.

The eight Crusades "prayed for" by the Roman Catholic Church to "deliver the Holy Places from Mohamedan tyranny" became a kind of Medieval "Vietnam" (from the unofficial start in "The People's Crusade") for many European peoples. There is even a contemporary "Hostile View of the Crusade" (Online Medieval Sourcebook), which is comparable to dissension of our time. And a similar sense of failure (especially because of the permanent loss of the "holiest of cities", Jerusalem, to the great Arabic leader, Saladin) followed its closing. Also, reactions to the killing and plundering (The Maltese Falcon) and the behavior of the returning warriors bore some similarities to disturbances in our time.

(Some historians believe that intellectuals and political leaders were depressed by the end of the 15th century, believing that "nothing new can happen", when Christopher Columbus (1446?-1506) discovered "The New World".)

The label "crusade" derived from the cloth cross badge on outer garments of participants . The word "crusade" became generalized for propagandistic purposes, down to our time. The wars waged by Spaniards against the Moors from 11th to 16th centuries were considered crusades. (One of these, at Gelves in 1510, brought death to the father of the boy in the early Spanish classic, Lazarillo de Tormes -- see ethesis.com .) In Northern Europe, crusades were organized against Prussians and Lithuanians. The massacre of the "heretical" Albigenses was called "a crusade". In the 13th century, popes preached crusades against John Lackland (brother of Richard Coeur-de-Lion), and Emperor Frederick II. The conquest of Saxony by Charlemagne was considered "a crusade". And the Teutonic Knights who fought against Alexander Nevsky in 1249 considered themselves "crusaders". In the great 1938 film by Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1938), Alexander Nevsky, with magnificent musical score by Sergei Prokofieff (1891-1953), you see black robed priests praying victory for the Teutonic Knights, prior to their defeat in "The Battle on the Ice" by Nevsky's Russian warriors.

Some consider that the Crusades continued until the end of the 17th century. For example, the crusade of Lepanto in 1571. The crusade of Hungary in 1664. And the crusade of the Duke of Burgundy to Candia, in 1669.

The usual historical reference to "Crusades" are to the "Eastern Ones", ordered by various popes, and announced by preaching. Taking a solemn vow, each warrior leader received a cross from the hands of the pope or his legates, and was declared a soldier of the Church. Crusaders were also granted indulgences and temporal privileges, such as exemption from civil jurisdiction, inviolability of persons or lands, etc.

Early in their occupation of Mideastern lands, crusaders founded military orders of knighthood. First, the Templars wearing red crosses on white, founded in 1191 to protect pilgrims. Soon after, The Hospitallers wearing white crosses on black, attached to the ancient Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. Later, as a "break-away group" from The Hospittalers, was formed the Teutonic Knights (cited above) wearing black crosses on white, with headquarters in Acre, port city of Haifa, now the Israeli Northern Capitol.

The Hospitallers later retreated from Islamic forces to Cyprus, Rhodes, various Italian towns, In 1530 Pope Clement VII (1478-1534) granted them perpetual fief of the Island of Malta for annual rent of a falcon. American novelist, Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961), embellished this by making the falcon a bejewelled figurine in his novel which John Houston turned into the 1941 film classic, The Maltese Falcon. The Knights of Malta eventually surrendered to Napoleon Bonapart (1769-1821) in 1798 and disbanded.

Many distinguish "The Eastern Crusades" as eight in number:

Some data has been taken from www.newadvent.org/cathen/04543c.ntm . An excellent source of material and images is www.medievalcrusades.com . I owe much information and several permitted images to this source, a debt I gratefully acknowledge.

The purpose of this Website is to delineate passage of the terrorist message from Jews to Christians to Islamics. So it suffices herein to selectively indicate some terrorist events during these "Eastern Crusades". Please remember, as terrible as war can be to the warriors, the "terrorist" notion herein involves only non-participating civilians.
After the initial 1095 preaching, Royal Armies did not march until 1096. Instead, in 1095, the unofficial Crusade of radical monk, Peter the Hermit, aroused poor peasant fanatics to pilgrimage in "The Holy Land". They stole food, ransacked homes for supplies, persecuted Jews (until then tolerated by Christians) along the route to Constantinople. If the crusade was to kill "God's enemies" abroad, why not here? Some bishops tried and failed to stop this. Past Constantinople, in Turkey, Peter's crusaders pillaged, plundered, massacred indiscriminately, often Byzantine Christians around Nicea. Besieged in a fortress, they were ambushed when they tried to flee and the "People's Crusade" ended.
Departing in 1096, the Royal Armies did not reach Constantinople until February or March, 1097. Forewarned by the violance of Peter the Hermit's rabble army, Byzantine Emperor Alexis exacted, partly by force, an oath of behavior from the leaders, who soon departed in varied directions.

Norman Prince Marcus Bohemond set his army to besiege Antioch in October, 1097. An Armenian insider allowed infiltration of the tower and Bohemond's army poured in. By the evening of July 3, 1097, every Antioch Turk, young and old, male and female, had been killed, and some Christians also. After more fighting thereabout and negotiating with the Emperor, Antioch remained an achievement of the Crusades. (Will Durant, The Story of Civiization, v. 4, The Age of Faith , p. 575: "The Saracens [Islamics] were astonished by the crudeness and cruelty of the Crusaders, even the great Bohemond, to show his contempt of the Greek emperoro [who warned about conduct], sent him a cargo of sliced off noses and thumbs.")
The Crusaders, led by Tancred (nephew of Marcus Bohemond) and the brothers Godrey and Estance of Boullin, in January of 1099, marched and negotiated their way from Antioch to lay siege on Jerusalem. By July their siege machines had broken Arabic defenses and the city was taken. All Moslems, warriors and civilians, were killed. All Jews were locked in their synogogue and burned alive. A contemporary historian, William, Archbishop of Tyre (?-1190) (Online Medieval Sourcebook), described, from eye-witness accounts, the savage Crusaders "dripping with blood from head to foot, an ominous sight which brought terror to all who met them". A few thousand survivors, from a population of 40,000, were sold as slaves at the city gates. Having brought terror and death to so many innocent people, the Crusaders gathered at the fourth century Church of the Holy Sepulchre to give thanks. Crusaders henceforth forbade Moslems and Jews to live in Jerusalem, claiming it would defile the sanctity of the city. But, with the retaking of Jerusalem by Saladin, Moslems allowed a Jewish community to develop alongside them.

Godfrey's brother, Baldwin, became king of Jerusalem, founding a succession of kings. In 1187, King Guy was defeated by the great Arabic leader, Saladin (1138-1193), who spared both his life and that of his supporter, Balian of Ibelin, permitting Balian to return to Jersalem to his ailing wife.

During the Third Crusade (1189-1192), Richard Coeur-de-Lion negotiated a treaty with Saladin for pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Except for a six months period in 1300, nearly 675 years elapsed before a Christian army entered Jerusalem, led by General Sir Edmun Allenby, in 1917 -- the way having been prepareded by troops of Lawrence of Arabia, as marvelously depicted in David Lean's great 1962 classic, Lawrence of Arabia, starring Peter O'Toole.

During the Second Crusade (1145-47), the first forces to depart were Anglo-Norman and Flemish sailors and troops, leaving Dartmouth, England, on May 19, 1147, for conquer some positions on the Iberian west coast (including Lisbon), joining forces of Alfonso I of Portugal. Lisbon swarmed with 154,000 occupants, exiles and criminals from many regions. After a long siege, Lisbon's gates were opened under treaty conditions to the entoning of Te Deum and Asperges me. But the treaty and religious guarantees were broken by plundering, raping, indiscriminate killing. A contemporary account (cf. Online Medieval Sourcebook) said, "This affair covered the Count Aerschot, Christian, and their leaders with very great shame".

Later, during the Second Crusade, the people of the ancient Latin city of Edessa were massacred by forces of the Mosul Prince Zengi.

The siege of Damascus in 1147 ended in a fiasco and "bitterness" among Crusaders and suspicion of "treachery", "shattering the grand alliance" of royal armies. In the Online Medieval Sourcebook, you can read a contemporary comment of "an anonymous analyst of Würburg" presenting a "hostile view of the Crusade" which "reflected the current Western attitude in his acount of the Crusade". Said this "anonymous analyst of Würzburg", "The bishops, archbishops, abbots, and other ministers and prelates of the church joined in this error, ... to the great peril of bodies and souls .... Others there were who were driven by poverty who ... went to fight, not only against the enemies of Christ's cross, but even against the friends of the Christian name ...."

The Third Crusade (1189-1192) began after Saladin's re-conquest of most of Palestine, including Jerusalem, led by Frederick I Barbarossa (1123-90) of Germany, Phillip II Augustus (1165-1223) of France, and Richar I Lionheart of England, then the three greatest monarchs of Europe. In 1191 Phillip left the campaign to plan the conquest of Richard's French lands. Richard , meanwhile, routed Saladin's forces in 1191 and marched on Jerusalem. But Saladin's "scorched earth" strategy forced Richard into a treaty with Saladin and withdrawal.

In the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204), Crusaders joined Venetian Enrico Dandelo (c. 1108-1205) in sacking and plundering theRoman Catholic town of Zara, Dalmatia, so infuriating Pope Innocent III (1160-1216) that he excommunicated the entire Crusade, although it continued. Their main achievement was to reclaim Constantinople for the Emperor from a Byzantine faction, destroying whole libraries and collections of art, again infuriating the Pope.

In 1212, in Germany, the Cologne Children's Crusade, preached by a 10-year-old boy, called forth 20,000 children, ending with the girls sold into brothels, the boys into slavery. Also in 1212, in France, the Saint-Denis Children's Crusade, preached by a 12-year-old boy, called forth 30,000 children who ended as slaves in Alexandria, Egypt.

The Fifth Crusade (1218-1221) failed because of intransigence of the Papal legate, Cardinal Pelagius.

The Sixth Crusade (1228-29) bogged down in political activities in Europe, with little military effect in "The Holy Lands".

The Seventh Crusade (1248-1254) was a thoroughly disastrous French campaign, led by Louis IX (1215-70), who was captured by Egyptian forces and had to be expensively ransomed.

The Eighth Crusade (1270-1) was again led by Louis IX, who died in an epidemic. His brother, Charles of Anjou (1246-1285), King of Sicily, negotiated a treaty to current fighting. This Crusade, and the "Crusade era", ended with the 1291 fall of Acre, last Crusader base in Palestine.

A ONLINE commentator (www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture25b.html) concludes, "There is no escaping the fact of the Crusader's savage butchery -- of Jews at home and of Muslims abroad. The Crusades certainly accelerated the deterioration of western relations with the Byzantine Empire and contributed to the destruction of that realm, with the disastrous consequences that followed. And western colonialism in the Holy Land was only the beginning of a long history of colonialism