The Crusades was a historical period of the Middle Ages during which a series of religious wars and military expeditions were waged by the Latin Christian kings of Western Europe against the Islamic (and occasionally the Eastern Christian) kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean (Anatolia, the Levant, and North Africa) with the objective of recovering the Holy Land from Muslim rule. The Crusades were generally fought between the Christian "Crusaders" (who were overwhelmingly French, plus significant German, Italian, and English contingents) and the Muslim "Saracens" (the Arab and Turkish dynasties of the Near East), with Eastern Christian states such as the powerful Byzantine Empire and the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia often finding themselves in the crossfire of the two major warring factions. Overall, the Crusades are regarded as a failure, as the Crusaders failed to establish a permanent presence in the Holy Land, which, once entirely reconquered by the Muslims in 1291, would remain under virtually uncontested Muslim rule until World War I. From 1095 to 1291, an estimated 1-3 million people were killed or died of war-related causes (disease, famine, etc.) as a result of the Crusades. In addition, the Crusades catalyzed the decline of the Byzantine Empire, the rise of the Ottoman Empire in the ensuing power vacuum, and the dawn of the Renaissance in the 14th century, which would ironically set about the decline of the Catholic Church's power during the following centuries.
History[]
The Crusades were initially seen by the Roman Catholic Church as "armed pilgrimages", as the casus belli for the Crusades was the protection of Christian pilgrims who were harassed by the Turkic Islamic dynasties who had seized control of Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the Fatimid Egyptians in 1073. In addition, the Pope sought a rapprochement with the Orthodox Christian Byzantine emperor, who called on Western Christendom to aid the Eastern Christians in fighting back the rapid expansion of the Turkish Seljuk Empire.
Following the successful First Crusade of 1095-1099, the Latin Crusaders established four "crusader states" in the Levant: the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli, and the County of Edessa. These crusader states fought off several Islamic attempts to reconquer lost territory until 1144, when Edessa's fall to the Zengids led to the Pope declaring a "Second Crusade" to protect the Holy Land. This crusade failed after the crusading armies diverted their focus to Damascus, allowing for the Saracens to regroup and defeat the Crusaders in 1149. During the 1160s, Egypt was thrown into political turmoil, and the powerful Kurdish general and warlord Saladin took advantage of the situation to seize power from the Shi'ite Fatimids and create the Ayyubid Sultanate. In 1175, after defeating the Zengids at Hama, the Abbasid Caliph recognized him as Sultan of Egypt and the Levant, and he came to rule over a massive empire stretching from Egypt to Syria. This powerful new Islamic empire destroyed the army of the crusader states at the Battle of Hattin in 1187 and proceeded to capture Jerusalem, leading to the Pope calling for a "Third Crusade". Led by Kings Richard the Lionheart of England, Philip Augustus of France, and Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, the Third Crusade succeeded in reconquering much of the Holy Land, including the cities of Acre and Jaffa, but, following the bloody Battle of Arsuf in 1191, Richard and Saladin agreed to a peace in 1192 which allowed for Christian pilgrims to safely enter Jerusalem, which would remain under Muslim control. In 1202, Pope Innocent III called for a Fourth Crusade to reconquer Jerusalem, but the French, German, and Italian crusaders diverted to capture the Croatian port of Zara from the Hungarians and sack the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, settling for plunder and glory over fulfilling their religious calling to recapture the Holy Land. The Fourth Crusade resulted in the temporary destruction of the Byzantine Empire, as the lords of the Fourth Crusade went on to partition Byzantium's lands between them, leading to the formation of the crusader Latin Empire and the splintering of the Byzantine Empire of Nicaea. Only a handful of the crusaders continued on to the Holy Land after the Sack of Constantinople.
In 1217, Pope Innocent III and Pope Honorius III organized a Fifth Crusade led by King Andrew II of Hungary and Duke Leopold VI of Austria, and the Crusaders secured the aid of the Seljuks in invading Ayyubid Syria as they assaulted Egypt via Damietta. The Crusaders besieged al-Mansoura in 1221, but they were forced to retreat due to dwindling supplies; however, they were trapped, battered by a flood attack, and starved into surrender. Sultan al-Kamil forced the Europeans to withdraw from Egypt and agreed to an eight-year truce with the Crusaders. In 1228, Emperor Frederick II launched a "Sixth Crusade" to the Holy Land, but there was very little fighting; instead, he negotiated a treaty with the Ayyubids by which he acquired Jerusalem, Nazareth, Sidon, Jaffa, and Bethlehem without loss of life. However, the expiration of Frederick's treaty in 1239 led to the Pope organizing the Barons' Crusade (1239-1241) to consolidate the Crusaders' gains, and the crusade returned Jerusalem to its largest size since 1187, recovering Ascalon, Tiberias, and most of Galilee in addition to the lands secured by Frederick II in the Sixth Crusade. However, the Mongol onslaught in Central Asia presented a new threat to the Crusaders as the Khwarezmian hordes migrated into the Levant. In allliance with the Ayyubids, they destroyed Jerusalem in 1244 and defeated an allied Crusader-Syrian army at the Battle of La Forbie to the northeast of Gaza that same year, leading to the Pope calling for a Seventh Crusade (1248-54). Led by King Louis IX of France, this crusade again targeted Egypt, but, at the Battle of al-Mansurah, the Egyptians dealt a crushing blow to one of the Crusader armies. At the 1254 Battle of Fariskur (near Damietta), Louis IX' army was annihilated, and Louis, now sick with dysentery, was forced to surrender to the Egyptians, pay a hefty ransom, and return to Acre empty-handed. Meanwhile, Egypt was thrown into turmoil by a major slave revolt which led to the Turkic Mamelukes seizing power from the Arab Ayyubids. The Crusaders' Mongol allies, who attempted to conquer the Levant from the Ayyubids, were defeated by the Mameluke general Baibars at the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260, and Baibars went on to seize control of Egypt from Sultan Qutuz and embark on an ambitious campaign to subdue the Holy Land. In 1268, Baibars conquered Antioch, bringing an end to one of the original Crusader states. All of northern Syria was quickly lost to the Mamelukes, who absorbed the former Ayyubid empire into their domain.
At the same time, King Louis IX was planning another crusade to the Holy Land. In 1270, after ruling out a previous plan to descend on the Levantine coast via Cyprus, Louis IX decided to strike at the Egyptian supply base of Tunis (ruled by the Hafsids). He also believed that the Hafsid Caliph Muhammad I al-Mustansir could be persuaded to convert to Christianity if given military support against the Egyptians. The Crusaders landed in North Africa on 18 July 1270 and besieged Tunis, but a wave of summertime dysentery swept through the Crusaders' ranks, killing Louis IX and his son John Tristan. His brother Charles I of Anjou arrived too late to join him in the siege, and, on 30 October, the Crusaders abandoned their siege of Tunis. The Christians concluded a peace treaty with the Egyptians by which they would be granted free trade and safe passage for Catholic monks and priests in Tunis, and the Tunisians also paid a war indemnity to the Crusaders.
Prince Edward of England had arrived in Tunisia with an English fleet the day before the Crusaders left Tunis, and, upon hearing that the Crusade was over, he returned to Sicily with his fleet. At the end of April 1271, the English fleet set out for the Holy Land in the "Ninth Crusade", during which the English crusaders were supported by Armenian Cilicia, the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus, Jerusalem, Tripoli, and the Mongol Ilkhanate. Edward won several impressive naval victories over Baibars off Cyprus, but Edward was forced to return home after an assassination attempt by the Hashshashin and after hearing of the death of his father, King Henry III of England, in 1272. Edward's crusade was the last crusade to reach the Holy Land, concluding the Western European efforts to reinforce the crusader states.
By this time, the re-emergence of the Byzantine Empire under the Palaiologos dynasty and the War of the Sicilian Vespers had drawn European attention away from the Holy Land and towards inter-Christian rivalries, while the crusader states also squabbled among each other. In 1289, the Mameluke sultan al-Mansur Qalawun conquered Tripoli after a bloody assault, bringing an end to the County of Tripoli. However, Qalawun suffered heavy losses, including his eldest son, and he was forced to wait two years to recuperate from his losses. In 1291, after a group of Christian pilgrims from Acre came under attack and retaliated by killing 19 Muslim merchants, Qalawun used this as a pretext to finish off the crusader states. Qalawun and his army laid siege to the Jerusalemite stronghold of Acre - the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem since Jerusalem's fall in 1244 - and, while Qalawun died during the siege, his sole surviving family member al-Ashraf Khalil seized the city.
Aftermath[]
Islamic State propaganda from the magazine Dabiq comparing the War on Terror to a "failed Crusade"
The Fall of Acre is often considered the end of the Crusades, although the Mongols did not withdraw from Syria until 1300, the Armenians and Mongols made a failed invasion of Syria at the 1303 Battle of Shaqhab, the Hospitaller base on the island of Ruad Island was lost in 1303, the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus would maintain its independence until its purchase by the Republic of Venice in 1489, the Hospitaller stronghold on Rhodes (their new base after Acre's fall) would not be captured until the Ottomans besieged the island in 1522, and a Christian army would finally recapture Jerusalem from the Ottomans in the 1917 Battle of Jerusalem during World War I, which many Entente propagandists hailed as the true end of the Crusades. Even into the 21st century, the legacy of the Crusades lived on as Western nations continued to maintain an active military presence in the Middle East due to the War on Terror, and Islamist and jihadist groups compared the American, British, and other Coalition occupying forces to the "Crusaders" of old.
The Crusades was a watershed moment in world history for many reasons: it led to cultural interactions between East and West which would open up new trade routes and ultimately lead to the Renaissance (due to the rediscovery of Greek and Roman classics translated into Arabic), it led to a decline in the persuasive and political power of the Catholic Church as Western Europe's powerful monarchs grew apathetic towards the Pope's calls for new crusades in the centuries following Acre's fall, it paved the way for the Fall of the Byzantine Empire and the Rise of the Ottoman Empire, and the Crusades in the Holy Land inspired several other Christian holy wars and Crusades both concurrent with the Levantine crusades (the Reconquista and Northern Crusades) and in the following centuries (the Ottoman-Habsburg Wars, the Dutch Revolt, the Anglo-Spanish War, the French Wars of Religion, and the Thirty Years' War).
