Crusades

The causes

In the 11th century, Christian Europe was swept by strong religious fervour, and Jerusalem, a holy place for Christians, Jews and Muslims, was a destination for pilgrims. The Byzantine emperor Alexios I, threatened by the Seljuk Turks, asked the West for help. At the Council of Clermont in November 1095, Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade.

The Byzantine defeat at Manzikert, in 1071, against the Seljuks, handed much of Anatolia to the Turks, and the Seljuks seized Jerusalem shortly afterwards. The 11th-century popes, notably Gregory VII, wanted to assert their authority over the princes of the West, and they had already backed expeditions against Muslims, such as the capture of Barbastro in Spain in 1064. Feudal society, in which knights fought over land, offered another motive: the Church sought to channel this violence toward a holy cause. The trigger was the request for aid made by Emperor Alexios I, presented by his envoys at the Council of Piacenza, in March 1095, a few months before Clermont.

The course of the war

The First Crusade (1096-1099) succeeded: the crusaders took Antioch and then Jerusalem, in July 1099, at the cost of massacres, and founded the Kingdom of Jerusalem and other Latin states. In 1187, Sultan Saladin crushed the crusaders at Hattin and retook Jerusalem. The Third Crusade, with Richard the Lionheart, did not recover it but secured pilgrims' access to the city.

Later crusades were diverted from their goal: the Fourth (1202-1204) ended with the sack of Constantinople, a Christian city. The expeditions of Saint Louis, to Egypt and then to Tunis, failed. In 1291, the Mamluks took Acre, the crusaders' last major stronghold.

The Crusaders crossed the Bosphorus, then won the Battle of Dorylaeum, in 1097, against the Seljuk Turks. They took several months to capture Antioch, in 1098, after a gruelling siege in which hunger ravaged their ranks. The leaders then quarrelled over the conquests: Bohemond kept Antioch, while Baldwin of Boulogne founded the county of Edessa. In August 1099, the victory at Ascalon over the Fatimids completed the campaign and opened the way to the founding of the Latin states.

The Second Crusade (1147-1149) arose from the fall of Edessa in 1144, taken by the sultan Zengi. Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany set out, but their armies were severely tested in Anatolia. Before Damascus, in 1148, the siege failed, and the Crusaders returned without reaching their goal. This failure provoked criticism in Europe against the leaders of the expedition, and reinforced the idea that the Latin states were too fragile to defend themselves without reinforcements. Contemporaries also saw in it proof that Nur ad-Din, who unified Muslim Syria, could organise an effective resistance to the Crusaders.

In the Holy Land, the Crusaders relied on military orders, such as the Templars and the Hospitallers, which held fortresses such as the Krak des Chevaliers. But the Latin states were divided by dynastic quarrels and by the rivalry between Venice, Genoa and Pisa, which competed for trade. The Mamluk sultan Baybars seized Antioch in 1268, then the Krak des Chevaliers in 1271. Acre, the seat of most Latin institutions, held out only until 1291. The Hospitallers then withdrew to Cyprus, and later to Rhodes, where they perpetuated their order.

The consequences

The Crusades left very different memories in the East and in the West. They strengthened the power of the popes and of Italian merchants, such as Venice and Genoa, who developed trade with the East. They encouraged exchanges of knowledge and goods, but also lasting mistrust between Christians, Jews and Muslims, and between the Eastern and Western Churches, especially after 1204.

The Crusades left a contrasting memory. The massacres of Jews in the Rhine valley, in 1096, before the main armies had even departed, are at the heart of debates on religious intolerance. In the 13th century, the idea of crusade was extended to the fight against heretics, with the war against the Albigensians launched in 1209, and then to campaigns against pagans in the Baltic. Historians still debate the failure of the Latin states, the real role of trade in the expeditions, and the respective share of faith and interests. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the word crusade reappeared in political discourse, in Europe as well as in the Arab world, often in a polemical manner.

Timeline

1. 1095Pope Urban II calls for a crusade at Clermont
2. 1099The crusaders take Jerusalem
3. 1187Saladin defeats the crusaders at Hattin and retakes Jerusalem
4. 1204Fourth Crusade crusaders sack Constantinople
5. 1291Fall of Acre, the crusaders' last bastion

Key figures

• Urban II, pope who issued the call of 1095
• Saladin, sultan who retook Jerusalem in 1187
• Richard the Lionheart, king of England, leader of the Third Crusade
• Saint Louis, Louis IX, king of France, who led two crusades