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Crusades
The First Crusade took place from 1096 -- 1099. The First Crusade was a great surprise to both the Christians and the Muslims, the two opposing parties of the Crusades. The victory of the First Crusade went to the Christians. The Crusades were a series of nine wars waged during the Middle Ages between Christians and Muslims. The wars were waged between the 11th and 13th centuries specifically.
In 1071, the Muslim Turkish armies thoroughly defeated the Christine Byzantine military forces at the Battle of Manzikert. (Madden, 2002) The Christians were defending their territories in Asia Minor. Asia Minor had been swiftly invaded and conquered by outsiders and the Byzantine emperor at the time sought assistance from the west. A council was called and a decision was made:
At the Council of Clermont in 1095, Pope Urban II called on the knights of western Christendom to right this wrong by taking up arms against the Turks. He also urged them to go further, rolling back earlier Muslim conquests of Christian...
The response was tremendous. (Madden, The Crusades, 2002)
Lands that were once Christian were now Muslim as a result of the Battle of Manzikert. The leader of the primary religious institution in all of western culture claims that this event is wrong and that war is the way to correct it. In essence, the Turks took Christian lands, so the Christian response was to not only take the lands back, but also take a great deal of their lands in addition. The Crusades first began as an attempt to release Jerusalem, but over time, other goals included seizing Spain from the Moors, pushing the Slavs and Pagans from Eastern Europe, as well as the seizure of Mediterranean Islands. Thus goals of the Crusades included revenge, land acquisition, and displacement of people whose lifestyles conflicted with the goals of the Pope. One of the goals in any war is power and territory. Those too were goals of the Crusades.
Historians contend that the Crusades failed…
References:
Madden, Thomas F. (2002) The Crusades: Essential Readings. Blackwell, Boston.
McKay, J.P., Hill, B.D., Buckler, J., Ebrey, P.B., Beck, R.B, Crowston, C.H., & Wiesner-Hanks, M.E. (2009) A History of World Societies, Volume 1. Bedford/St. Martin's.
One thing not even Madden can excuse is that cultural and social exchanges between Christians did not lead to compassion towards members of other faiths, particularly Jews. In fact, the crusading impulse invariably, more so with every successive crusade, brought examples of the persecution of Jews in the region. The first crusade almost immediately spawned mass killings of Jews down the Rhine en route to Jerusalem, supposedly because Jews' wealth
Crusades An overview of the book, specifically its focus on the bloody aftermath of the Fourth Crusade to take Jerusalem, as chronicled and assembled by Regine Pernoud in pages 201-216 of his text The text The Crusades by Regine Pernoud presents, in its overview of the events, two contemporary chronicled versions of the pivotal events that took place in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade to take Jerusalem by the Christian world.
Kilij Arslan, having seen saw how easily his army had defeated the Frank invaders at minimal cost, grossly underestimated at his great cost the much more disciplined and formidable European crusading armies that followed. (McFall 5, "Ill-Fated Crusade....") The Second Wave The 'second wave' of crusaders -- elite contingents of effective military force led by local leaders and knights from different parts of Europe took a little longer to organize and
"[footnoteRef:6] At the time of The Crusades the relations between the West and Byzantium is reported to have been characterized "as a clash of cultures." [footnoteRef:7] The Greeks are reported to have seen themselves as "civilized superiors to the barbaric and violent westerners." [footnoteRef:8] However, it is reported that the Western Christians did not have a monopoly on brutality, as "the Byzantines were capable of extraordinary unpleasantness. he death of
crusades advanced the cause of Christ and what were the motivating factors for each of the crusades and if they were carried out with approval of the rest of the Christian world. Crusades involved a series of religious and political wars that were fought between 1096 and 1291 so as to gain control of the Holy land. Crusades were military campaigns that were sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church
.. Popular understanding of the crusades nowadays tends to think in terms of a great contest between faiths fuelled by religious fanaticism. This perception is bound up with modern sensibilities about religious discrimination, and... It is a perspective which, at least as far as the First Crusade is concerned, needs to be rejected. Bull, 1999, p. 16/17) The Crusades The first crusade was initiated when Alexis I, the leader of the Byzantine Empire