40p

THE HOW AND WHY WONDER BOOK OF

THE CRUSADES
Written by BRENDA RALPH LEWIS
Illustrated by EDWARD MORTELMANS
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS LONDON

, Cyprus<;J
.Damasc

n
P'.

Introduction
One summer nearly nine centuries ago, a mass emotion gripped
thousands of Europeans, an emotion which drove rich and poor alike
to leave their homes and lands, relinquish their feudal allegiance to
their lords and set off eastwards across the Continent. At the same
time, thousands of .Christian knights and soldiers armed themselves
. and embarked on the long, difficult and dangerous trek towards the
east.

.Their des'tination was the Holy Land of Palestine, where Jesus

Christ had once lived and preached, and in particular the holy city
of Jerusalem and Christ's tomb in the Holy Sepulchre. Their inspiration was the call made in 1095 by Pope Urb=!tn II, urging the Christians
of Europe to undertake a crusade against the Muslim rulers of
Palestine.
This First Crusade was highly successful. The crusaders captured
Jerusalem and later set up Christian states in Palestine. However,
the .Muslims were not so easily thwarted,' and over the next two
centuries, because of their persistent attacks, thousands more knights
and soldiers were inspired to set off on crusades to the Holy Land.
An enormous amount of faith, courage, . enterprise and .suffering
went into the two crusading centuries, and yet the story of those
centuries is not an entirely noble one. True, men performed great
deeds, showed great courage and acted with great chivalry. But too
many others gave way to intolerance, greed and cruelty, slaughtering
innocent civilians, looting cities of their wealth and dealing . with

opponents in merciless and vengeful fashion.

This is why the colossal collision between Christian Europe and
the Muslim East which took place during the crusades taught some
men to respect and admire one another, and provoked in others only
resentment, distrust and the fiercest brand of hate.
Originally published in Great Britain
by Transworld Publishers Ltd.
PRINTING HISTORY
Transworld Edition published 1975
Copyright 1975 Transworld Publishers Ltd.
All rights reserved.

The How and Why Wonder Book Series is originated

and ~ublished in the U.S.A. by Grosset and Dunlap Inc.
Pubhshed by Transworld Publishers Ltd., 57/59 Uxbridge Road, Ealing, Londori W,S.
Printed by Purnell & Sons Ltd., Paulton (Avon) and London.

Contents

INTRODUCTION
PRELUDE TO THE CRUSADES
Who was at Clermont in 1095?
What did the Pope say at Clermont?
What did the Pope propose to do?
What effect did Pope Urban's words have?
How was the crusade made known?
Who answered the call to crusade?
Why did the peasants want to be crusaders?
Who led the Peasants' Crusade?
.
What went wrong with the Peasants' Crusade?
What happened in Hungary and Byzantium?
What did the Byzantine Emperor do?
What happened to the peasants?

Page
2
4
4
5
6
6
7
7
8
9
9
10
10
11

FACT BOX: POPE URBAN II (c.1042-1099)

FACT BOX: PETER THE HERMIT (d. 1115)

11

THE KNIGHTS' CRUSADE

What did the crusaders think of Constantinople?
Why was Alexius suspicious?
What precautions did Alexius take?
How did Alexius help the crusaders?
What were the crusaders' early successes?
What difficulties did the crusaders encounter?
How was the first crusader state created?
How did Bohemund plot against Alexius?
How was Antioc~ captured?
How was Kerbogha defeated?
Why did the crusaders remain in Antioch?
What effect did this threat have?
What was Bohemund's private plan?
What happened at Bethlehem?
What was Jerusalem like?
Why was Jerusalem difficult to capture?
What happened at the siege of Jerusalem?
How was Jerusalem captured?

12
12
13
13
13
13
14
14
15
15
15
16
16
17
17
17
17
18
18

FACT BOX: BOHEMUND I OF ANTIOCH

(c. 1057-1111)

18

THE CRUSADER STATES IN PALESTINE

How was news of victory received?
How did the crusaders consolidate their victory?
How extensive were the crusaders' conquests?
Who were the "peacetime" crusaders?
How were the crusader states organised?
How did the crusaders get on with the natives?
What did the crusaders wear?
What was Muslim food like?
How did the crusaders entertain themselves?
Why did the crusaders favour Muslim doctors?
What did visitors from Europe think?
Why were the Muslims more successful now?
What effect did the "Jihad" have?
How did Saladin capture Jerusalem?
What happened after Jerusalem fell?

19
19
19
20
20
20
21
22
22
22
23
23
24
24
25
26

FACT BOX: GODFREY OF BOUILLON

(C. 1060-1100)
I
.

11

26

Page
FACT BOX: THE SECOND CRUSADE
OF 1147-1148
FACT BOX: THE CRUSADER ORDERS OF
KNIGHTHOOD
THE THIRD CRUSADE
Why was Richard an ideal crusader?
How did Richard prepare for the crusade?
Why were Richard and Philip rivals?
How did Philip and Richard reach Palestine?
What did Richard and Philip find in Palestine?
What happened in the early days of the siege?
How did the new arrivals attack Acre?
How did the crusaders capture Acre?
What problems did Richard face?
What towns did Richard attack?
Why were Richard and Saladin friends?
Why did Richard never capture Jerusalem?
What were the terms of Richard's treaty
with Saladin?
What happened to Richard on his way home?
What happened after Saladin's death?
FACT BOX: PHILIP II AUGUSTUS OF
FRANCE (1165-1223)

27
27
28
28
28
28
29
29
30
30
31
31
32
32
32
33
33
34
34

THE- NOT-SO-NOBLE CRUSADES

What part did Venice play in the crusade?
What was the Doge's solution?
What happened at Zara and Constantinople?
What went wrong with the Fifth Crusade?
Why was Emperor Frederick a bad crusader?
Why was Frederick excommunicated?
What happened during the Sixth Crusade?
Why were Christians so horrified?
How did Frederick become King of Jerusalem?
What happened after Frederick's departure?
What was the great danger from Asia?
How did the Muslims recover Jerusalem?

35
35
35
36
37
38
38
39
39
39
40
40
41

FACT BOX: THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE

OF 1212

41

THE LAST OF THE CRUSADES

What did people think of crusading now?
Who was this new leader?
What happened on the Seventh Crusade?
When did Louis go crusading again?
Why did Louis' brother betray him?
Who was Baybars?
How were the crusaders affected?
Why was there no new crusade?
What happened at the siege of Acre?
How was Acre captured?
How did crusader rule end?
What were the bad results of the crusades?
How did the crusades affect European life?
How did the crusades affect literature
and language?

42
42
42
42
43
43
43
44
45
46
46
46
46
47

INDEX

48

47

Prelude to the Crusades

A respectful hush fell over the great
crowd of bishops
Who was at
and barons
Clermont in 1095 7
gathered in
council at Clermont, France on 27
November 1095. The murmurs of
quiet conv:ersations faded away, and
everyone's eyes turned towards Pope
Urban II as he prepared to address
them.
No one, of course, expected the Pope
to say anything extraordinary or unusual. Councils like this one were
normally just meetings for the discussion of church business. Once that was
over, and the Pope had pronounced a
blessing, everyone simply went home
and got on with their everyday lives.
The bishops would return to their
sees. Priests would go back to their

villages and resume their work guiding

the peasants in their care and ensuring
that they led good Christian lives: The
monks would return to their monasteries and their lives of prayer and
contemplation. And the great feudal
barons would return to their estates
and their castles, their armies of serfs
and their servants.
At least, that is what everyone at
Clermont expected. What they got was
something totally different. T4e
message Pope Urban had brought them
completely changed their lives, their
ideas and their ambitions and set them
and all other Christians in Europe a
new and quite revolutionary task.
Pope l)rban ll's message changed t he history of Europe.

"Beloved brethren," the Pope began,

"the Church of
What did the Pope
Chtist is in
, say at Clermont 1
mortal danger.
Everywhere, Ch~istians are. being murdered and tortured, thetr churches
destroyed, their altars defiled and the
Holy Cross broken and spat upon
by the terrible .Muslim hordes. These
followers of the so-called prophet
Mohamed attack unarmed pilgrims
on their way to the holy places in
Jerusalem and other parts of the Holy
Land. They rob and kill them, kidnap
the women and children and lead them
away to lives of_fearful slavery and
suffering!"
A murmur of agreement ran through
the gathering. Men nodded their heads

Christian pilgrims were frequently attacked by the Muslims.

sadly at hearing these tragic and alltoo-familiar facts.

"Just as individual Christians are in

danger," Pope Urban continued, "so
whole communities are in great peril.
Think of the valiant Christians in
Spain, who are now engaged in a
violent war with the Muslims. Think
of the great eastern Empire in Byzantium, which is constantly threatened
by the Muslim Turks. And above all,
beloved brethren, think of the Holy
Land where Christ was born, lived and
preached and where He died for our
sins!"
5

Pope Urban paused. Emotion was

making his voice
What did the Pope
tremble
and his
propose to do 1
eyes fill with
tears. Then, after a few moments, he
went on: ''Jerusalem, Bethlehem,
Nazareth, 'Galilee-the whole country
of our beloved Lord has been in the
grip of the brutal Turks ever since 1071.
How can we stand by and let this
happen? How can we let our Lord be
shamed and reviled in His own land?
We must rescue Him! We must raise
a great Christian army and drive the
vile Muslim from the holy places in
Jerusalem, and from every scrap of the
holy soil which Christ once trod! I call
for a great crusade of Christians .everywhere! Rich and poor, powerful and
humbl~veryone must vow to take
the Cross and go to fight in Christ's
cause.I"
There was an awed silence for a
moment after the
What effect did
Pope had finished
Pope Urban's words
k'
Ub
have 1
spea mg. r an
could see many
emotions reflected in the faces of his

audience. There was anger. There was

sorrow. There was gloom. Some men
were weeping, some had bowed their
heads with grief.
Then, . suddenly, someone shouted
out: "God wills it! God . wills this
crusade!" Another man took up the
cry, and then another and anoth.er
. until, in a few minutes, all doubts
seemed to have been swept aside and
the whole body of bishops and barons
were shouting with one mighty voice :
"God wills it! God wills it!" Some of
them went even further and started
tearing their Clbaks into strips to make
crosses, which they pinned on their
sleeves.
Pope Urban stood up, tears of joy
streaming down his cheeks. He raised
his arms and pronounced a blessing on
the gathering. "Yes, our crusade is
indeed the will of God!" he cried.
, "Now, we must send messengers and
envoys to all the towns and villages of
Europe, and call upon the people to
join us in the great holy enterprise!" .

"God wi lls this crusade!"

--=-~~

---=====--=

Envoys spread the message througnout Europe. Both princes

Within the next months, Urban sent and
peasants set out to drive the Muslims from the Holy land.

his envoysspeedHow was the

ing on horseback
crusade made
In quite a short time, Urban's call for
known?
over the rough
a crusade was
of
Europe,
roads
Who answered the

h
h
spreading. the message of the crusade.
call to crusade?
sweepmg t roug
. Europe like a
The papal messengers sped up to
fever. The whole continent, it seemed,
castles, and there gave the news to the
was
in a state of high excitement and
nobles and barons and to their families
and servants. Other horsemen went to
enthusiasm.
Feudal princes formed a great cruthe courts of kings, princes and bishops.
sading army in southern France .
Priests hurried from monastery to
Raymond, Count of Toulouse raised
.monastery to inform the abbots and
their monks.
'
another large force, and yet another
gathered
under the command of
In the towns, town criers toured the
Bohemund of Otranto in the N onri.an
streets, clanging their handbells and produchy of Apulia, southern Italy. In
claiming the crusade in loud, booming
northern France, Duke Robert of
voices. Wandering preachers, like Peter
No;rmandy, son of William the Conthe Hermit, travelled from village to
queror, pawned his duchy for 25,000
village whipping up enthusiasm with
in
order to "take the Cross", as going
rousing, dramatic speeches.

on crusade was_ called. Other French

peasants were inspired by the desire .to
lords who also took crusading vows
escape their hard lives as serfs to harsh
were Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of feudal lords. Others hoped that in the
Lower Lorraine, Stephen, Count of . Holy Land the promises of Jesus
Blois and Hugh, Count of Vermandois.
would come true. For had not Jesus
These nobles and princes were, of
forecast that the "meek shall inherit
. course, the men whose profession was
the Earth" and that the poor should
war. However, to everyone's amazebe the first to enter the Kingdom of
ment, it soon became clear that a great
Heaven?
mass of . illiterate, .poverty-stricken
With such thoughts in mind, thoupeasants had also made up their minds
sands of peasants all over Europe and
to go on crusade.
from as far away as Scotland sold their
meagre possessions, abandoned their
homes and fields, and loaded their
Churchmen thought that some miracle
children onto ox-carts and horsemust have occurWhy did the .
red to stir the
wagons. I~ the early spring of 1096 they
peasants want to be
,
set off eastwards., bound for the Holy
crusaders?
peasants dull,

apathetic spirits. .Land which many of them believed

to be the Kingdom of Heaven itself.
It is more likely, though, that some

Princes from all

ov~r

Europe gathered armies together.

,.4'y ':

l~lfy

N~rmandYt

ii Vermandois

\ff

Toulouse

Blois

IJ Lorraine

J>rague

The Peasants' Crusade.

In the early summer of 1096, the great

Individual groups were headed by
local knights or
horde of peasants
Who led the
bl
b
h
What went wrong
was choking the
Peasants Crusade 1
no es, ut t e
with the
overall leader of
Peasants Crusade 1
r Oad S Of the
Rhineland with a
most peasant crusaders was Peter the
huge, disorganised mass of wagons,
Hermit. Peter set out from Cologne,
pack animals and pedestrians. As they
Germany, in May, 1096, intending to
plodded the long weary kilometres from
take his followers through the Rhine. land and Hungary to Constantinople, .one town to the next, the peasants
became more and more restless and uncapital of the Byzantine Empire . .At
about . the same time another great
ruly. Finally, violence broke out and
before long the peasants were making
mass of peasants set out under another
wild attacks on villagers and townspreacher, Walter the Penniless.
people. They looted shops and beat up
Neither Peter nor Walter had got
very far; though, before they were made
their owners, broke into homes,
to realise that going on crusade was not . wrecked furniture and furnishings,
the grand and glorious venture they had . and stole everything . they could lay
pictured. There was a very ugly and
their hands on.
disturbing side to crusading, for while
In places like Worms or Prague, the
many peasants were sincere and devout,
people who suffered most were the
too many others were nothing better
Jews. They had long been an object of
than greedy, murderous thugs. Because
hatred among Christians and, as a
of them, the ideal of crusade soon
result, lived in a constant state of
became stained with savage, bloody
uncertainty and suspense. When the
deeds.
peasant crusaders arrived, the Jews'
9

worst fears came true, for they faced

annihilation from gangs of thugs with
murder in mind. Numberless Jews were
seized and slaughtered. Others were
threatened with instant death if they
did not agree to be instantly baptised
as Christians. Thousands of Jews who
refused wen~ butchered on the spot. In
this ghastly fashion, entire Jewish communities ceased to exist, despite the
appeals of local bishops for the mass
murders to stop.
I

The peasants behaved j1ist as barbarously when

What happened in
they
reached the
Hungary and
Danube and
Byzantium?
began to move
through Hungary. The Magyar inhabi.tants reacted to their violence, killing
and looting by gathering their armed
forces : thousands of peasants died in
the pitched battles that ensued.
Those who escaped moved on into
the territory of the Byzantine Empire,
where their approach was heralded,
ominously, by a plague of locusts.

The peasants proved a plague of another kind, for in Byzantium, too, they
bnrned and killed and pillaged and
created terror and havoc wherever they
went. Even Peter the Hermit was unable to halt the atrocities committed by
his followers.
The Byzantine Emperor, . Alexius I
Comneims, was
What did the
appalled to find
Byzantine Emperor
do 1
a horde of savage
barbarians .converging on Constantinople. When the
peasants finally got there, in August
1096, Alexius' one thought was to get
rid of them. Alexius gathered enough
ships, and within five or .six days he
had transported his unwelcome visitors
across the Bosphorus into lands occupied by the ferocious Turkish Muslims.

Wl

""
t11

(Iz

Tu
th(

He
Off

ret
Pe

FACT
The Peasants' Crusade ended in violence, death, barbarity and
total failure.

Odo of
March
sur-Ma
monki

When the peasants disembarked and

dispersed in the
What happened to
region round
the peasants?
Nicomedia ,
(Izmit), they quickly fell victim to the
Turks, who had no trouble in hunting
them down and killing them. Peter the
Hermit, unable to keep any sort of
order or save
followers, quickly
returned to Constantinople. Walter the
Penniless remained behind and died,
together with 300,000 peasants, in a
battle with the Turks on October 21.
Soon afterwards, Emperor Alexius took
pity on the exhausted survivors and
brought them back to Constantinople.
So the Peasants' Crusade, which had
begun with such high hopes, ended in
violence, death, barbarity and total
failure.

his

FACT BOX: POPE URBAN II (c. 1042-1099)

Odo of Lagery, who was elected Pope as Urban II on
March 12, 1088, was born in about 1042 in Chatillonsur-Marne,_ France. In about 1070, Odo became a
monk in the famous Benedictine abbey of Cluny, which

was renowned for its humanitarianism and welldisciplined ways. In 1078, he was created a cardinal
and ten years later, on becoming pope, one of Odo's
first acts was to try to heal the long-standing quarrel
with the Christian Emperors of . Byzantium. Pope
Urban's call for a crusade in 1095 was partly intended
to help this healing process. Urban wanted the crusaders
to help the Byzantines drive the Turks out of their
territory in Asia Minor. Urban died on July 29, 1099,
two weeks to the day after the armies of the First
Crusade captured Jerusalem.

FACT BOX: PETER THE HERMIT (DIED 1115)

Peter the Hermit, who was probably born in Amiens,
France, was only one of many wandering preachers who
spread the message of the crusade, but he was certainly among the most skilful. Peter appears to have
been a great orator, with all an orator's power to grip
the attention and emotions of his audiences. In about
1093, Peter had been a pilgrim to Jerusalem and knew
how terrifying it was to be set upon and attacked by
Muslim bandits, and to be robbed and beaten up by
them. Many of those who heard him, or who met him
on the road were convinced that Peter was a saint.
White-bearded and white-haired, Peter travelled the
roads on his donkey wearing a woollen tunic and cloak,
but no shoes, and carrying a heavy wooden cross
strapped to his back. After the disaster of the Peasants'
Crusade, Peter accompanied the crusading knights to
Palestine and preached a sermon on the mount of
Olives a week before the capture of Jerusalem. In
1100, Peter returned home to Europe and became
Prior of Neufmoustier at Liege, where he died on July 8,
1115.

Alexius was determined to remove all the peasants from

Constantinople as quickly as he could. He gathered together
many ships to transport them across the Bosphorus.

------ ---

-:.-- .---
..-=.----:-: . -

-=--~~~~ --- ~-- . .

:.

----~

The crusaders had never seen anything as splendid or as beautifu l as the city of Constantinople.

The Knig_
hts' Crusade

,
\
.~

'

In the meantime, the strong, welldisciplined armies of the Frankish and

Norman princes had begun to move
across Europe. The great armed hosts
rode and marched in ordered ranks
through towns and villages, armour
shining in the sun, pennons flying and
the fiery red cross of the crusader
emblazoned on their breasts._ They
presented a splendid sight and attracted
many lodal chiefs to join them, together with their own small bands of
soldiers. Pilgrims and priests also
joined in, and so the bands of knightly
crusaders swelled to greater and greater
.numbers.
12

The crusaders arrived at Constantinople in ~eparate

What did the
groups,
but by
crusaders think of
May 1097 the
Constantinople?
last of them had
reached the Byzantine capital. Its siZe
and magnificence made a dazzling impression on them. Europe had no city
like it. The crusaders goggled at the
great paved roads, superb gold-roofed
palaces and churches and at the
beautiful statues decorating the streets
and squares.
Emperor Alexius, who was still
shaken by the savagery of the peasant
crusaders, was very suspicious of them.

inti

He was afraid that the splendour of

Constantinople
Why was Alexius
would
drive the
suspicious 1
crusader armies
to start pillaging and looting. Apart
from this, the presence of a large
foreign army, some 80,000 strong,
whose leaders were not particularly .
friendly towards the Byzantines, was in
itself a threat. Some of the crusader
leaders, like Bohemund of Otranto, had
already made war on the Byzantines in
Italy, and had led armed invasions of
Byzantine lands in Albania and Greece.

Alexius provided the 9rusaders with

.
.
money, supplies,
How did Alex1us help transport ships
the crus.aders 1
d
.
an
gmdes to
take them through the unknown terrain
that lay across the Bosphorus in Asia
Minor: So, in mid-summer 1097, the
Christian hosts, who had travelled hundreds of kilometres from their homelands to fight for Christ, reached enemy
territory and prepared to do battle with
the Muslims.
At first, it seemed the crusaders were
going to score
What were the
a fairly easy
crusaders early
success.
In June,
successes?
1097, they forced
the city of Nicaea to surrender after a
short siege, and on June 29 they
inflicted a serious defeat on the Turks
at the pass . of Dorylaeum (near
Eskisehir). With that, all organised
Turkish resistance in Asia Minor came
to an end.
1

The wary Alexius therefore tried

.
. to safeguard
Wha~ precautions did himself He deAlexms take 1

l
mantled that al
crusader commanders swear an oath of
loyalty to him, and promise to return
to the Empire any former Byzantine
lands they captured from the Muslims.
Some crusaders were reluctant, but
with the help of bribes and threats
Alexius managed to persuade them to_
do as he asked. Nevertheless, a few,
like Bohemund of Otranto, had no
intention of ~eeping their word.

Alexius made the crusader commanders swear an oath of

loyalty to him, but some of ~hem had already made treacherous plans.

Alexius was naturally well pleased

and moved in with his own forces to
reoccupy Byzantine lands which had.
been liberated from the Turks.
The Christian armies, induding a
small contingent of Byzantines, moved
on, slowly but steadily making their
way southwards. They suffered from ,
lightning guerrilla attacks by bands of
mounted Turkish archers, who would
appear unexpectedly, loose a shower of
arrows at them and gallop away. Buttheir progress was not seriously
affected, and they continued on towards the towering peaks of the Taurus
Mountains.
. Now, the going became very hard and
exhausting. Asia
What difficulties
Minor was ovendid the crusaders
hot, with simmerencounter?
ing temperatures
more intense than anything experienced
in Europe. The heavily-armoured crusaders became exhausted after long
days of travelling over dry, sun-baked
terrain. Their horses' hooves and flurries of wind blowing acr0ss their path
raised clouds of dust that stung their
eyes and parched . their throats. The
Byzantines had been generous in their
gifts of food and supplies, but these

.I
I

soon ran out. The crusaders . were

forced to struggle on with hunger
rumbling in their stomachs and their
throats dried out and tongues swollen
from lack of sufficient water. The only
way they could relieve their thirst was by
chewing the branches of thorn bushes.
Some crusaders, according to a con- ,
temporary chronicler, "marched with
their mouths open, hoping to cool their
parched throats by even the slightest
breath of air."
Despite their sufferings, though, the
crusaders reHow was the first
sponded
readily
crusader state
when they recreated?
ceived an appeal
from Armenian Christians in and
around the city of Edessa for help in
freeing them from Turkish oppression.
At Marash, on the southern slopes of
the Taurus Mountains; one crusader
leader, Baldwin of Boulogne, left the
main army and marched to their aid.
Baldwin quickly liberated Edessa and
drove the Turks away. The Armenians
were delighted and their prince, Thoros,
. 3:dopted Baldwin as his son. Delight
soon turned to alarm, though, when the
unscrupulous Baldwin began to plot
against his adoptive father. After the
unfortunate Thoros was murdered,
Baldwin took over, made himself
first
master of Edessa and set up the
1
crusader state there.
This piece of treachery was the first
of many that would occur during the
crusades. It set an unsavoury example,
for Baldwin's action at Edessa fired the
equally ambitious Bohemund of
Otranto to copy him. The place Bohemund picked for his own crusader
state was Antioch, in northern Syria.

The crusad.e rs soon found that they had to fight for survival
against heat, thirst and starvation.

. .'-,

. >~ ~.

'

r
t

,,
1

.
f

The crusader armies reached:Aniioch

in October, 1097, .
How did Bohemund
after slogging
plot against
Atexius 1
their way over
the narrow,
dangerous passes of the Taurus
Mountains. Antioch, which the Turks
had captured in 1085, rightfully belonged to the Byzantine Empire. Bohemund, however, had no intention of
handing it back to Emperor .Alexius 1
who was still occupied with retrieving
his former territories in Asia Minor.
With the crusader armies camped
before the walls of Antioch, Bohemund
used Alexius' absence as proof that the
Emperor meant to betray them. By
planting this damaging idea in the
minds of other crusader leaders,
Bohemund got most of them to agree
that whoever captured Antioch should
rule the city as his own.
The one leader to disagree, and insist
on sticking by his oath to Alexius, was
Raymond of Toulouse. Raymond
watched Bohemund .closely as the siege
of Antioch dragged on into the early
months of 1098 believing, quite rightly,
that. Bohemund was planning some
treachery.
Despite Raymond's susp1c10us eyes,
Bohemund
How was Antioch
secretly arranged
captured?
with Firuz, one,
of the Muslim commanders inside
Antioch, that he would .help the cru-

Bohehtund was determined that Antioch was going to be his

city.

saders take the City. This betrayal took

place just in time. When the crusaders
finally entered Antioch and overwhelmed its Turkish defenders, a relief
army under Kerbogha, Atabeg
(Regent) of Mosul, was only two days
away. Kerbogha arrived on June 5, to
find the crusaders in control, but in a
v~ry weak state. They were suffering
from starvation and from the terrible
hardships of the long siege. Thousands
had died in Antioch during that siege,
and with piles of bodies lying in the
streets, the crusaders a:lso faced the
perils of disease.
Kerbogha laid siege to Antioch, confident that it was
How was Kerbogha
on1y a matter of
defeated?
time before the
crusaders surrendered :. on1y a divine
miracle could possibly save them. To
Kerbogha' s fury-and the delight . of
Bohemund, who held most of Antioch.
- ,a miracle happened. A French priest
dreamed that the Holy Lance, which, it
was believed, had once pierced the body
of Jesus Christ, was hidden somewhere
in the city. The Lance was found, and
with this new assurance of God's support to raise their spirits, the crusaders
swarmed out of Antioch on June 28
and thrashed Kerbogha's army. It was
a great victory, for as a result of it
Kerbogha's forces disbanded and fled.
15

Most crusaders now longed to press

on to Jerusalem,
Why did the
kilometres away
crusaders remain in
Antioch 1
to the south, but,
Bohemund and
Raymond of Toulouse had other ideas.
They were not at all anxious to leave
Antioch. For months, they quarrelled
violently over their rival claims to the
city. Bohemund maintained it was his
because he had played the major part
in capturing it. Raymond insisted that
Emperor Alexius should have it.
After five months of this wrangling,
the ordinary soldiers, priests and ,pilgrims, who had not lost sight of the
purpose of their c,rusade, decided they
had had enough. To the astonishment
of their leaders, they issued a: ultimatum: either the march to Jerusalem

In 1099 the crusaders created the new Christian Bishopric of

St. George.

began immediately, or they would burn

down Antioch and demolish its walls.
The shock of this threat made the
squabbling
What effect did
leaders see sense.
this threat have 7
They took a
solemn oath to "remember Jerusalem"
and publicly repented for the sins of
greed and pride they had committed.
Privately, though, the wily Bohemund
was still plotting to get hold of
Antioch.
At long last, in November, 1098, the
crusaders began to move towards Jerusalem. It was not a difficult progress,
for local resistance by the Turks was

16
lftW-Cru51

weak, and in their eagerness to reach

the Holy City the crusaders left untouched several cities and castles .that
lay along their route. By Christmas,
the crusaders were well on their way
towards the sacred soil of Palestine and
it was, naturally, a very special and
solemn Christmas in their eyes.

If

Just after they had celebrated the

festival, BoheWhat was
mund put his
Bohemund's
plan into
private
private plan 1
operation. B~
fore Raymond could stop him, he
turned back, and raced to Antioch.
Bohemund seized the city and overcame the guards Raymond had left
there. In January, 1099, after fourteen
months of plOtting and argument,
Bohemund achieved his great ambition
and founded the second crusader state
in Antioch.
Meanwhile, the crusaders' advance
on Jerusalem continued, and when the
spring of 1099 came they reached the
Holy Land. When they arrived at
Lydda, a solemn ceremony took place
in which .the crusaders created the new
ChristianBishopric of St. George.

Then the knights left to join the rest

of the army; which was now approaching Jerusalem through the Mountains
of Judea.
On June 7, 1099, some 13,000 crusaders
climbed to the
What was
f

Jerusalem like?
top o a hill
overlooking
Jerusalem. Wonderstruck and deeply
moved, the crusaders scanned the
panorama of Jerusalem's flat-roofed
houses and shining domes. There was
the Church of the Resurrection, with
its roof sparkling in the brilliant summer sunlight. There were the great
round roofs of the bazaars. Here and
there, dotted among the other buildings, were the tall, elegant minarets
from which the Muslims were called
to prayer each day. And there,
in the distance, silhouetted against
.the skyline, was the Mount of
Olives, where Jesus had often gone
to pray.
Confronted with a scene that, to
them, was a dream come true, the
crusaders wept with emotion and knelt
in prayer to offer thanks to God for
bringing them safely through so many
dangers. The hill on which they knelt
was blessed and formally baptised as
, "Montjoie", or Hill of Joy.

An even more exciting and en;iotional

experience
What happened
awaited them the
at Bethlehem 1
day after they
However, the magnificent view of
J er us al em, as
moved on from Lydda, for they were
Why was
seen from the
now very close to Bethlehem, birthJerusalem difficult
place of Christ.
Hill of Joy, also
to capture?
showed the cruWhen the Christians in Bethlehem
saw one hundred crusader knights
saders that wresting the city from its
approaching the town iri the pale light
Muslim and Jewish defenders was not
of dawn, they snatched up crosses and
going to be easy. Jerusalem was built
banners and rushed out to greet them,
on top of a hill, 2,500 feet (762 metres)
tears of joy streaming down their faces.
high, and except on the north side
Singing hymns and proclaiming hies- was surrounded by very deep ravines.
sings, they led the knights to the basilica
From a military viewpoint, this is
of the Virgin Mary, where the crusaders
the most difficult sort of place to
knelt a.n.d offered heartfelt prayers.
capture.
'
17

The siege of Jerusalem began within

hours of the
What happened at
crusaders' arrival
the siege of
and in the five
Jerusalem?
weeks it lasted it
proved to be a vicious and exhausting
struggle. Again and again, the crusaders
approached and attacked the city walls,
only to have their scaling ladders
hacked down by the defenders. Scores
of knights were killed as the ladders
crashed down to the ground. 1Scores
more, who managed to get over the
walls, were slaughtered by groups of
defenders lying in wait for them with
swords and daggers.
As the weeks passed and Jerusalem
continued to hold out, desperation
seized many of the crusaders. Time and
. again, they walked in procession round
the city walls, calling on God to make
the walls fall like those of Jericho in the
Old Testament. Others prayed and
fasted and did penitence, but still the
city failed to fall.
Then,

.,I
I

g
!

decided to use
siege machines.
Howwas
Ra Ym ond of
Jerusalem captured 1
Toulouse and
Godfrey of Bouillon took several weeks
to build the great wooden castles on
wheels which the crusaders needed, but
at last, in mid-July, they were ready.
On July 15, in the sizzling heat of noon,
Godfrey's tower was whC(eled towards
the north wall of Jerusalem. Amid a
thick shower of arrows and spears
flung at them by the defenders, the
crusaders lowered a bridge from the
top of the machine onto the battlements. As crusader soldiers surged over
the bridge and into the city, the defenders fled towards the city centre.
Soon, Jerusalem was the scene of
frightful battles, with crusaders swarming through the narrow streets killing
every Muslim and Jew they could find.

~!

18

it

was

The Crusaders used great siege machines to get into Jeru salem.

The toll of dead was appalling, for the

crusaders butchered women and children as well as men.
The massacres went on for three
whole days. By the time the crusaders
gathered in the Church of the Resurrection to give thanks to God for
victory, Jerusalem was a horribly silent
city, littered with bodies, stained with
blood and choked with the smoke
of burning houses, mosques and
synagogues.
Nevertheless, it was now a Christian
city, after four centuries of Muslim
rule, and the great crusade Pope
Urban had preached had achieved its
most important purpose.

Co1

FACT BO.X: BOHEMUND I OF ANTIOCH

(c.1057-1111)
Bohemund's treacherous seizure of Antioch, in January
1099, brought him no joy or pleasure, because he was
faced with two extremely powerful adversaries. One
was Emperor Alexius, whom Bohemund had betrayed.
The other was the strong force of Muslims in north-east
Syria. Between these two enemies, Bohemund was
crushed.
In 1100, he was captured by the Muslims and
remained imprisoned for three years, until he was
ransomed by an Armenian prince. A year later, in 1104,
Bohemund was badly beaten by the Muslims in
a battle at Rakka on the River Euphrates. After this,
Bohemund returned to Europe, where he spread
slanderous stories about Emperor Alexius and began
to organise a crusade against him. This venture failed,
too. Alexius defeated Bohemund in 1108 at the Devoll
River, and forced him to submit to him as his vassal.
Bohemund died three years later, in Italy.

Me<

The Crusader States in

Palestine
When news of the capture of Jerusalem
spread through
How was the news
E
h
of victory rec;:eiveci 1
urope, t ere
were wild celebrations. People danced and feasted in
the streets. The merrymaking went on
for days at a time. Churches all over
the continent were crowded with people
expressing in prayer and thanksgiving
their joy and gratitude at the wonderful
achievement of the crusaders.
In this mood of wild delight, most
Christians failed to realise that the
crusaders' success was largely due to
disunity among the Muslims. A people
as divided and quarrelsome as the
Turks were in Asia Minor, Syria and
Palestine did not make good defenders,
and this had a lot to do with the
relative ease with which the First
Crusade had accomplished its aims.

The Turks were embittered by what

had happened,
How did the
but they were
crusaders consolidate
their victory?
helpless to stop
the crusaders
strengthenjng their hold on the lands
and cities they had won.
In the twelve years after the fall of
Jerusalem, the crusaders captured the
entire Mediterranean coastline of
Syria, Lebanon and Palestine and
moved inland to overrun Judea,
Samaria, Galilee and a good deal of
land across the Jordan River. By 1111,
the Muslims, whom the crusaders called
"Saracens", retained only Tyre and
Ascalon. Tyre fell to the Christians in
1123, and Ascalon in 1154.

The crusaders made great advances after the fall of Jerusalem.

Constantinople

Caesarea

as
4,
in

Mediterranean

After Godfrey's death, Baldwin had himself crowned King of

Jerusalem.

The Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem,

which the First
How extensive
Crusade
created,
were the crusaders'
extended from
conquests?
Beirut in the
north to Aqaba in the south, with a line
of strong fortifications and castles
guarding the 250-mile (402.3 kms.)
eastern frontier which ran through
desert country. North of th~ Kingdom
lay the crusader Cmmtship of Tripoli,
Bohemund' s Princedom of Antioch and
Baldwin's Countship of Edessa. With
these four territories, the crusaders had
carved a slice . out of the Muslim
. Turkish Empire that was some 500
miles (804.6 kms.) long. Over t4e next
few years, until the mid-12th century,
Muslim forces made inany attacks on
the Christians' lands. Many of these
onslaughts were made with considerable strength and determination, and
the crusaders often had to fight hard to
avert defeat. Despite this, though, the
Muslims scored no great success and
they had to face the fact that the hated
Christians and their states had come to
stay, at least for the foreseeable future.
20

Many of the lords and knights who

had taken part
Who were the
in the crusade
"peacetime"
returned home
crusaders?
soon after it was
over, having fulfilled the promises they
made to Pope Urban when they vowed
to take the Cross. There were hundreds
of others, though, who wanted to
replace them and share in the glory that
soon surrounded the whole idea of
going to live in the Holy Land.
As well as fresh soldiers and knights,
the crusader states also received a
constant flow of pilgrims. Many craftsmen and artisans also came, to set up
business in the towns. These people
were encouraged by the Church .to
regard themselves as "peacetime" crusaders, who were supporting and working for the states the crusading princes,
knights and . soldiers had created by
war.
The first crusader ruler of Jerusalem
was Godfrey of
How were the
Bouillon~ who
crusader states
had
played the
organised?
main part in the
capture of the city. Unfortunately,
Godfrey, brother .of Baldwin, crusader

Count of Edessa, died after little more

than a year, in July 1100. When he
heard the news, the ever-ambitious
Baldwin, accompanied by 200 knights
and 700 soldiers, hurried down from .
Edessa to take his brother's place:
Baldwin was crowned king of Jerusalem
on Christmas Day, in the Church of the
Nativity in Bethlehem.
Like the feudal lords they were,
Godfrey and Baldwin both shared out
lands among their followers who, in
return, did homage to them as their
vassals and promised to provide them
with soldiers in the event of war. This
was; of course, the same . system by
which feudal lords ruled in Europe at
that time. The only difference was that
in the Holy Land the serfs who worked
the vassals' lands were the Muslims,
Druses and others who were natives of
the country.
The crusaders also set up their own
courts oflaw, again on feudal European
lines. In addition, they turned Jeru. salem into a Christian city and forbad
Jews and Muslims, whom they considered "infidels", to live there. Muslim
mosques and Jewish synagogues were
all converted into churches, and the
niche in the southern wall of Jerusalem,
where the Muslims had turned towards
Mecca to pray, was covered in.
Muslim mosques and Jewish synagogues were all converted
into churches.

With government, law and religion, the

crusaders simply
How did the
transplanted to
crusaders get on
the Holy Land
with the natives?
the way of life
and the customs they knew at home in
Europe. Even so, they could not trans[orm everything because at no time
were they anything more than a tiny
minority among a large indigenous
population.
Of this population, the Muslims and .
Jews were far more cultured than the
crusaders themselves, with an impressive history of scholarship and philosophy. Muslim knights, whose courage
could . not be disputed, were often
learned scholars, while ' Christian
knights were usQally illiterate: they
thought reading and writing were useless for fighting men like th~mselves,
and left such things to monks and
churchmen.
In this situation, Christians who had
come to Palestine with a rather superior
attitude towards the natives soon found
they were outclassed and placed in the
awkward position of ruling over people
cleverer than themselves.
Add to this the fact that, as in all
countries, life in Palestine was influenced greatly by climate and geography, and you will see why, after a
few years, the crusaders began to copy
native customs and take advantage of
native talents.

At home, the crusaders dressed in the

loose robes,
What did the
turbans and open
crusaders wear 1
sandals which
Palestinians had long ago found most
comfortable for the very hot climate.
The burning sun could make the metal
of a knight's armour too hot to touch,
so crusader knights copied the Muslim
custom of covering it with a linen
surcoat.
The crusaders' wives and .daughters
Soon began to protect their delicate
European complexions from the sun
by wearing veils. over their faces, just
as Muslim women did. They also became very fond of making themselves
smell sweet by using the sultry Arabian
perfumes, and beautified themselves by
powdering their faces and daubing
their lips and cheeks with red ochre.

The crusaders adopted some of the Muslim clothes.

The crusaders enjoyed watching the Muslim women dance.

Using

cosmetics

was very much

frowned on in
What was Muslim
Europe as it enfood like?
couraged vanity.
Bathing, too, was neither popular nor
encouraged there, but in Palestine the
crusaders adopted the Muslim custom
of washing frequently. They also acquired a taste for exotic Muslim food,
which was deliciously spiced with pepper, ginger and cloves. There were
superb wines to drink, and there was
also. a marvellous delicacy of mixed
fruit juices called sherbet, which the
Muslims made ice-cold by packing it
in mountain snow. As if all this was not
enough, the Holy Land also offered
wonderful fruits rarely seen in Europe,
such as apricots, melons, oranges and
lemons.
ent~rtainments,

the crusaders
brought to the
How did the
H 1 L d th
crusaders entertain
Y an
e
themselves 1
hunting, hawking
and jousting that
were the usual pleasures of European
knights. They played chess, draughts
and dice just as they had done at home.
To these enjoyments they added recitals
of Muslim music and displays of dancing by veiled Muslim women.
As for

h
n

e
rl

One of the features of the Holy Land

for which the
Why did the
crusaders were
crusaders favour
most grateful was
Muslim doctors?
the skill of
Muslim doctors. Many European
doctors were little better than crude
butchers. They chopped off gangrenous
legs with axes, ,rubbed salt in wounds,
and cut deep crosses in the skulls of
patients suffering from tuberculosis or
fever in order to drive out the "devils"
supposed to be possessing them. Understandably, many of their patients died
as a result.

Muslim doctors were far less drastic.

They cured 'diseases with drugs like
camphor, myrrh, senna and musk. They
applied poultices to abscesses and prescribed curative diets for stomach
troubles and other ailments.
Many crusaders, faced with the
strange, virulent diseases of the Holy
Land, had good cause to bless the
Muslim doctors who understood the

illnesses of the country and often saved

the lives of Christian children.
Pilgrims, new immigrants and visitors
from Europe who
What did visitors
c am e t 0 the
from Europe thinl<?
crusader states
with strict, puritanical ideas were
appalled to discover that Christians
already living there were often no
different from the Muslims. They were
even more shocked to find that the
crusaders were quite friendly with
these deadly enemies of their faith,
hunted and feasted with therri and
sometimes married into Muslim
families. All this was thought
thoroughly reprehensible.
As one traveller, James of Vitry,
scornfully put it : the crusaders "were
brought up in luxury, soft and effeminate, more used to baths than battles
... clad like women in soft robes."
Muslim doctors were very skilled. They saved the lives of
many crusaders and their families.

Europeans had been taught that this

was very sinful and pilgrims frequently
returned home to tell terrible, scandalous tales about the crusaders, and to
accuse them of betraying the holy
cause of Christ. James of Vitry, for
instance, was certain that crusaders'
wives were learning witchcraft from
the Muslim women. As stories like
this passed from person to person, the
gossip grew more and more pernicious.
Soc;m, people in Europe began to believe
that crusaders in the :Holy Land did
nothing but give enormous banquets,
wash all day long, indulge in immoral
entertainments, like dancing, and
smother themselves with make-up and
perfume.
As was usual in those superstitious
times, fearsome predictions were made
that God would wreak fearful revenge
on the crusaders for their . misdeeds.
These frightening forecasts drew
strength and conviction from the fact
that, by the mid-12th century, the
defences of ,the crusader kingdoms
were weakening and the Muslim
armies, which had never ceased to
attack them, were scoring more
victories than before.
1

24

An important reason for tills new and

worrying situaWhy were the
tion
was that,
Muslims more
more and more
successful now 1
as the years went
by, the disunity and quarrelling that
had formerly weakened the Muslims
was being replaced by an increasing
resolve to join forces against the
crusaders. With this, of course, the
advantage of a divided enemy, which
had helped the First Crusade to succeed, was fadiri'g away.
In addition, the crusaders faced a
new and dangerous development. This
was the revival of ~ very old tenet of
Islam, the Muslim religion-"Jihad",
or Holy War, which meant much the
same thing to Muslims as crusading
did to Christians.
The peril all this posed for the crusader
states in Palestine
What effect did the
w as p ai nfully
...Jihad" have?
demonstrated in
1144, when the vigorous talented
Atabeg of Mosul, Zengi, captured
Edessa, the first crusader colony._
The fall of Edessa was a terrible
shock for the Christians. The shock

r~

K
G
tc
T
d
o~

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~I

f(

tl

tc
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was even greater, though, when the

rescue operation-the Second Crusade,
called by Pope Eugenius III and led by
King Louis VII of F ranee and the
German king; Conrad III-turned out
to be a dismal failur~ (see Fact Box :
The Second Crusade).
Worse was to come, for after Zengi
died in 1146, his son Nureddin and one
of Nureddin's most brilliant generals,
Saladin, took over his work. Like Zengi,
Nureddin and S;:tladin roused enthusiasm for the Holy War and unified
Muslims in Syria, Palestine and Egypt
for the common purpose of driving out
the crusaders.
After Nureddin died in 1174, Saladin
took sole command and worked cunningly to undermine the crusaderl)'
position. He exploited the strong animosity between the Byzantines and the
crusaders in the Holy Land. He made
sure that rich Italian cities like Venice
would not ship supplies and men to the
crusaders, by offering them tempting
trading treaties with Egypt.
Saladin was greatly helped by the
crusaders themse1ves, because after

Saladin united the Muslims of Syria, Palestine and Egypt in

their Holy War against the crusaders.

1186, when Baldwin V, child king of

Jerusalem died, a struggle for the
throne began between rival groups ~ The
struggle was so violent that it seemed
civil war was imminent.
While the crusaders squabbled, Saladin
and his powerful
How did Saladin
f 80 000
capture Jerusalem?
army 0 .
'
men were sweeping through Palestine. In May, 1187,
Saladin crossed the Jordan river, defeated 20,000 crusaders at Hattin in
Galilee on July 4, and marched towards Jerusalem virtually unchallenged,
conquering castles and cities as he
went. The worst blow of all fell on
October 2, the day Saladin overran
Jerusalem.
The Christian knights in the city
fought back fiercely as Saladin's
s9ldiers, using a siege machine, poured ,
over the walls, but they were doomed
from the start, for the Muslims were
strong, determined and cunning.
25

I'
:1

!I

Ibn-Al-athir, a Muslim who was

present at the siege, described how some
of Saladin's soldiers "approached the
moat . . . and made a breach. Archers
posted nearby repulsed the Christians
on top of the ramparts with shots from
their arrows, and so protected the
workers. At the same time, they dug a
subterranean passage and . . . filled it
with wood, which they then only had to
set alight. In this plight, the leaders of
the Christians thought it best to
capitulate."
1.

Although Saladin treated the Christians

mercifully after
What happened after the surrender of
Jerusalem fell?
l
hi
J erusa em, t s
did little to lessen the tide of grief and
fury that swept Europe when the
ghastly news became known. Christians
. wept in the streets and tore their hair
and clothes. Some were so affected by
the news that they ran about screaming
and cursing God for allowing such a
terrible catastrophe to occur.
Soon, a great cry went up for another
crusade, the third, to rescue Jerusalem
and avenge the insults perpetrated by
Saladin's men. The most painful of
these insults occurred when the
Muslims tore down the great cross

placed on the Holy Sepulchre, and

trampled and spat upon it.
The Third Crusade was preached first
by Pope Gregory VIII, and then by
Pope Clement III. Knights and fighting
men all over Europe, even from as far
away as Viking Scandinavia, responded
to the call. Among thei:n were the three
greatest monarchs in Europe-King
Frederick I Barbarossa (red-beard) of
Germany, King Philip II Augustus of
France and England's soldier-king,
Richard Lionheart.

. ...~
;

.. _

FACT BOX: GODFREY OF BOUILLON

(c. 1060-1100)
Unlike many of the Frankish princes who led the First
Crusade, Godfrey of Bouillon was both pious and
sincere. In fact, when Bohemund and Raymond were
quarrelling over the possession Antioch in 1098, it was
Godfrey who led the opposition of ordinary crusaders
against them.
Later, when Jerusalem fell, Godfrey and his soldiers
were the first to enter the city. On July 22, 1099,
Godfrey was elected ruler of Jerusalem, but he refused
to take the title of "king": it' is said that he refused to
wear a crown of gold in the place where Jesus Christ
had worn a crown of thorns. Instead, Godfrey became
Defender of the Holy Sepulchre. After his death a year
later, Godfrey was made into a legendary hero of the
First Crusade and was depicted as such in two of the
Chansons de Geste (see part Vll)-The Chanson
d'Antioche and the Chanson de Jerusalem.
FAC1

1147Saladin recaptured Jerusalem .

The
of Fr~
sham
nothi~

by thE
Berna
The
Both
their
sever
lande1
were
crusa
Altho
Jerus
its int
Holy
Th
July
runni
With

Afterwards, many harsh stories were put around

accusing the crusaders of taking bribes from the inhabitants of Damascus in return for abandoning the
siege. Whether this was true or not, the bungling of the
Second Crusade swung public opinion in Damascus in
favour of Nureddin. Nureddin gained control of the
city in 1154, a success w,hich greatly strengthened
his efforts at uniting the Muslims against the Christians
in Palestine and Syria.

FACT BOX: THE CRUSADER ORDERS OF

KNIGHTHOOD

The Muslims tore down the great cross on the Holy

Sepulchre and trampled on it.

nson

FACT BOX: THE SECOND CRUSADE OF

1147-1148
The Second Crusade,_which was led by King Louis VII
of France and Kihg Conrad 111 of Germany, was a
shameful and grossly mismanaged affair. It was
nothing like the glorious venture of rescue envisaged
by the men who preached it-Pope Eugenius 11 f and St.
Bernard of Clairvaux.
The Second Crusaders had their share of bad luck.
Both Conrad and Louis were ambushed by Muslims on
their way to Palestine and their armies suffered
severely. Consequently, the crusader forces which
landed near Antioch and Acre in the spring of 1148
Were greatly reduced. To make matters worse, the
cArusaders made the bad mistake of attacking Damascus.
lthough Damascus was a Muslim city, it protected
ter~salem and the crusader states in Palestine because
ts inhabitants were not, as yet, keen to join Nureddin's
HOIYWar.
The crusaders' siege of Damascus, which began on
July 24, 1148, lasted only four days. On July 28, after
~~ nning short of water, the crusaders gave up and
"thdrew.

After the Kingdom of Jerusalem was established,

several chivalrous orders of knights played an important part in its defence. Their purpose was both military
and religious, and they included the Knights of the
- Holy Sepulchre, the Teutonic. Knights, the Order of
the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem (Knights Hospitaller) and the Order of the Temple of Solomon
(Knights Templar).
Of these, the last two orders, both of them largely
recruited from Frankish knights, were the best known
and most powerful.
The Knights Hospitaller were founded in about 1050,
and in Palestine they provided medical care for .
Christian soldiers and pilgrims. The great castles of
Margat and Krak des Chevaliers were both Hospitaller
castles, and it was from there that the Knights fought
hard after 1187 to keep Saladin's armies at bay. In 1291,
after the Muslims captured Acre and crusader rule in
Palestine came to an end, the Knights moved to
Limassol in Cyprus and there continued to protect
pilgrims and care for the sick. From Cyprus, the Knights
moved to Rhodes and afterwards ,t o Malta. The emblem
of the modern St. John Ambulance Brigade, which
today specialises in giving first aid at public gatherings,
is taken from the black cross which the Knights
Hospitaller wore on their white tunics.
The Knights Templar, founded in 1118, wore a large
red cross emblazoned on their white tunics. It was their
job to give armed protection to pilgrims, and they
worked, too, to discipline and convert to more honest
ways the many rogues and robbers who made "pilgrimages" to the Holy Land in hopes of plunder and
riches.
The Templars, who lived like monks, had as their
motto "first to attack, last to retreat" and they fought
many valiant battles against the Muslims. Scores of
Templars, including the Templar Grand Master, died
at the siege of Acre (1189-1191) and in 1218-1219
they were the great heroes of the siege of Damietta.
In 1244, when the Muslims recaptured Jerusalem, 278
out of the 300 Knights Templar helping to defend the
city were killed.
The later history of the Templars was a sad one. In
1307 they were accused of heresy and vice. Five years
later, after many of their number had been tortured and
burnt at the stake, Pope Clement V commanded that
the Order be suppressed.
f

27

- - ---

- ~

The Third Crusade

By the end of the 12th century most
people looked on crusading as the
:finest, most noble venture a Christian
could undertake. Knights who took
the cross were the great he.roes of the
age and among their number King .
Richard I of England was the hero of
heroes, for he had all the qualifications
a true crusader required.

li

I .

1: .
, j

Richard was tall, fair, handsome and a

.
great leader of
Why was Richard
A
b
an ideal crusader 1
men.
super
soldier, with a
great love of fighting, he had earned
his nickname "Lionheart" through
many acts of magnificent courag(( in
battle. King Richard and the crusades
were truly made for , each other' and
once the call went out for an army to
rescue Jerusalem, Richard could think
of little else.

In 1189, the year he became King

of Erigland, he
How did Richard
raised the money
prepare for the
he needed to go
crusade?
on' crusade by
every possible means. He sold government posts to anyone who would pay
for them. He made landowners pay
"carucage", a tax levied on every
hundred acres of land they owned. He
demanded that men unwilling or unable to go on crusade should pay a tax
called "sentage"; And he freed the
Scots king from vassalage to England
for 10,000 marks.
With all this money, and a large
amount from the treasure his father, .
King Henry II, had left him, Richard
raised a powerful fleet of ships and a
considerable army of men. In July,
1190, he left by sea for Palestine. At the
. same time, King Philip II Augustus set
out from France.
Although the two kings were allies
in this third
Why were Richard
crusade, . they
and Philip rivals 1
were not on
friendly terms. Philip had long coveted
lands in the Angevin Empire, in F ranee,
which belonged to Richard and so
deep was the distrust between them
that both refused to leave on crusade
without the other. Even so, like each
other or not, trust each other or not,
Richard and Philip were to be joint
leaders of the Third Crusade. An old
, prophecy that King Frederick Barbarossa, the Third Crsade leader,
would die by water had come true in
I

Richard the Lionheart deditated himself to the task of

organizing the Third Crusade to rescue Jerusalem.

Guy o( Lusignan, C hr istian Ki ng of Jerusalem, fou nd himself

hemmed in between .the city of Acre and Saladin's forces.

June: on his way to Palestine, Frederick

had drowned in a river near Antioch,
and his great army of 10,000 men
afterwards became so dispirited that
many of them returned home to
Germany.
Some six moriths after Barbarossa's
death, . in the
How did Philip and
autumn of 1190,
Richard reach
Richard and
Palestine?
Philip reached
Sicily, and after spending the winter
there sailed again for Palestine. Philip;
got there first, disembarking at the port
of Acre on April 20, 1191. Richard
joined him seven weeks later, .o n June
8 : he had stopped on the way to fight
a short, sharp, but successful campaign
of conquest in Cyprus, which now
became the fifth crusade state.

By the time Richard and Philip arrived,

nearly four years
What did Richard
had
passed since
and Philip find in
Saladin's capture
. Palestine 1
of Jerusalem.
Now, the Christian states were in a
sorry plight .: almost all their former
territory was under Muslim control,
apart from the . cities of Tyre and
Tripoli and a few isolated castles.
. wealthier crusaders had bought their
freedom from Saladin and had left Jor
Europe, while poorer ones who could
not afford the price of ransom were
forced to remain.
Obviously the task of the Third
Crusade was going to involve much
more than the recovery of Jerusalem.
The crusaders' most immediate problem was to capture Acre, which had
been besieged since Aug.st, 1189 by
Guy of Lusignan, Christian King of
Jerusalem. Guy's position was extremely difficult : although his armies
encircled Acre, they were in their turn
surrounded by Saladin and his forces.
I'

29

'

-------~

- -----------~~~-----

After nearly two years, the struggle between Christians

What happened in
and Muslims at
the early days of the A
h db
siege?
ere a ecome
a stalemate
punctuated by sporadic attacks by one
side or the other. Small bands of
Christians carrying crosses would
swoop down on groups of Muslims,
kill as many as they could with swords,
maces and battle-axes and then ride off.
Sometimes, the Muslims inside Acre
would rush out and attack their besiegers. At other times, Saladin's
soldiers would ambush a group of
Christians and set about them with
their long, curved swords. Neither side
managed to score a major victory,
though, and after a while a strange
friendship grew up between thein. When
they were tired of fighting, the adversaries laid down their weapons and met
to chat, sing songs, dance, swop jokes
and tell stories. Later, when another
battle began, the same Christians and
Muslims who had been friends only
hours before would start fighting and
killing each other once again:
All this changed after Richard and
Philip came on the scene. The men they
had brought with them were fresh and
keen, and had been itching for a whole
year to get to grips with the vile
Muslims.

'

'

j'

'

The crusaders got t_o work

. quickly. with
siege engines,
How did the new
b

arrivals attack Acre?

attenng rams
and mangonels,
which hurled huge stones at the wide
walls of the city at great speeds and
caused much damage and many
casualties. Day after day, night after
night, the war machines banged and
thumped away, sending frightening
thundering noises echoing through the
narrow streets of Acre. Meanwhile, the
Christian cavalry and infantry continually skirmished with the Muslims.
Men fought each other at close.quarters
with spears and swords while, overhead, the air was thick with flying
arrows.
The Muslims were aw~d by the
crusaders' ability to kill a rider and his
horse with one thrust of a lance, and
they were frustrated by the way the
Christians' armour and thick felt
jerkins protected them from arrows
and swords. One Muslim chronicler
wrote of Christians with "up to twentyone arrows stuck on their bodies,
marching no less easily for that." Also,
the Muslims were greatly' daunted by
the heavily armoured and armed crusader knights, each of whom was like a
human tank.
With the arrival of Richard and Philip the city of Acre was
taken .

Again and agam, Saladin tried to

bring help to
How did the
the starving
crusaders capture
beleaguered
Acre?
garrison, but
again and again he failed. Once, he sent
secret orders to the Muslims inside
Acre to open the gates and force their
way out to join his troops. The plan
was scotched when the crusaders
learned of Saladin's stratagem in
advance and sealed all the exits to
Acre.
At last, Saladin came to the bitter
conclusion that the garrison could not
hold out any longer, and he offered to
negotiate a truce. It was agreed that the
garrison and inhabitants of Acre should
pay 200,000 pieces of gold as their
ransom, and that 2,500 Christian
prisoners would be released.
On July 12, 1191, Richard, Philip and
the joyful crusaders marched into Acre
and took possession of the city. The
first thing they did was tear down the .
sign of the . Crescent, the Muslim
emblem, on buildings and houses and
replace it with their own sign of the
Cross. Tragically, Saladin was late in
fulfilling his side of the truce and the
great victory at Acre became yet another bloodstained crusader triumph :
on Richard's orders, 3,bOO unransomed
Muslims were executed.
Shortly after this dreadful act of
butchery, King
What problems did
Philip resolved to
Richard face?
return .to France,
giving ill-health as an excuse. No
amount of persuasion or pleading by
his infuriated knights and barons could
dissuade him, and on July 31 he
departed. Duke Leopold of Austria also
left, vowing vengeance on Richard :
during a violent quarrel with Leopold,
Richard had dealt the duke a frightfu]
insult by tearing down his standard.

Richard and Leopold quarrelled violently and Leopold swore

he would have his revenge.

The departure of Philip and Leopold

left Richard with two worrying problems. The first was that the French
king and the Austrian duke had ta'.ken
the greater part of the crusading armies
with them. The second was the certain
knowledge that, once back in France,
P];rilip would attack Richard's Angevin
territories. Also, Richard's sly, ambitious brother, Prince John, was bound
to make trouble in England.
This was not the end of Richard's
worries, though. Acre, with its good
food, fine wines, exciting entertainments and luxurious comforts, proved a
great temptation to his soldiers, who
had never dreamed such a paradise
existed. They argued long and loudly _
that they did not want to leave, but
Richard's counter-arguments were
louder and longer. He was determined
to fulfil his crusader's vow to recapture Jerusalem, and after much
bullying, cajoling and threats he
managed to gather his forces and march
them out of Acre at the end of August.
31

Saladin gave Richard a present of two Arab horses.

Richard headed southwards in the

sizzling heat of
What towns did
the Palestinian
Richard attack 7
summer,. driving
Saladin and his army before him. One
after the other, Haifa, Caesarea and
Jaffa fell to the crusaders. At Arsuf, on
September 7, Richard gave Saladin's
men a terrible thrashing and killed
thousands of them. All Saladin could
do in retaliation was to lay waste the
country, and destroy villages and
castles as his army retreated, in order
that they should not give succour to
the advancing Christians.
Because of his exploits, Richard became greatly feared and respected by
the Muslims. There is a st9ry that the
English king once galloped along tpe
whole front line of the Muslim army
with his lance at rest : they were so
overawed that not one of them made a
move to attack him.

Although

'

were sworn foes,

Richard and
Why were Richard
S 1 d"
and Saladin friends 7
a a m came to
admire and respect each other a great deal, both as
men and as soldiers. There are many
stories of the chivalrous way they
treated each other. Once Saladin sent .
Richard a present of fruit and snow
when the king was suffering from
fever. On another occasion, Saladin
32

they

gave Richard two beautiful Arab horses

after Richard's own mount had been
killed. Richard, for his part, even
offered Saladin his sister, 'Joan, as a
prospective bride for Saladin's brother
al-Adil, a:p.d suggested that the couple
should be given the Holy Land as a
wedding present. The proposal came
to not!ting because both Joan and the
Pope were outraged at the idea.
Nevertheless,

neither Richard nor

-Saladin ever forWhy did Richard
got they were at
never capture
war with one
Jerusalem?
another,
and
both of them were determined to
emerge from that war as the victor.
After _his lightning conquest of the
Mediterrap.ean ports, Richard turned
inland and headed for Jerusalem in the
late autumn of i 191. Now~ so near his
great goal, Richard began to encounter
enormous difficulties. His army was
exhausted by sickness, hunger and heat
and by the long months of campaigning, and their stores and supplies were
getting further and further away.
The approach of winter halted
Richard's march to Jerusalem when he
was only kilometres .away from the
city, and though he waited till the
following summer and tried again, he
knew his army was too weak to succeed.
Richard was so distressed at this
bitter fact that when his men pointed

out the spires and towers of Jerusalem

in the distance, he covered his face with
his shield and refused to look. "If my
hand cannot conquer it,'? he cried, "my
eyes shall not behold it!"

it. Richard also obtained a promise

from Saladin that Christian pilgrims
could visit the holy places in Jerusalem,
and that there would be a halt to
hostilities for at least three years.
'

By this time Richard knew that he

must soon leave
What were the
the
Holy Land.
terms of Richard's
treaty with Saladin ? Philip's attacks
on his Angevin
lands and John's troublemaking in
England were now too serious to ignore
and he would have to return home to
deal with them. This was why Richard
decided, regretfully, to make a treaty
with Saladin.
On September 2, 1192, the two
leaders agreed that the coast from Tyre
to Jaffa, most of which Richard had
, conquered, should remain in Christian
hands : this small strip of land became
the second Kingdom of Jerusalem, even
though Jerusalem was not included in

Five weeks ,later, on October 9,

a disappointed
What happened to
and
frustrated
Richard on his way
Richard sailed
home?
for home, having
achieved much less than he had hoped.
In December, on his way through
Vienria, the vengeful Duke Leopold of
Austria seized him arid flung him into
prison. Richard remained a prisoner
for over a year, until February 1194,.
when the colossal ransom of 150,000
marks was raised by taxing the people
of England.

Richard and Saladi n agreed o n a peace treaty. Saladi n kept

t he city of Jerusalem.

Adana
Tarsus

Hamistra

Alexandretta

Antioch

Rhodes
Crete

ARMENIANS

FRANKS

ENGLISH

MUSLIM.S

11

Leopold had his revenge. Richard was kept a prisoner for

over a year.

(1165-1223)

On March 4, 1193, Saladin died of fever

in Damascus.
What happened
Almost immediafter Saladin's
ately, the Muslim
death?
unity he had
striven so hard to build up began to
disintegrate. Old jealousies, rivalries
and quarrels re-emerged and with that
there returned to the Muslim world the
dangerous weakness of disunity.
This was opportune for the Chris~
tians since it gave them a good chance
to wipe out their disappointment over
the Third Crusade. In 1199 a new
expedition was already being planned.
However, far from compensating for
previous disappointments, it turned out
to be the most disreputable venture that
ever came to be called a crusade.

Philip II Augustus was the son of King Louis VII, one

of the leaders of the unsuccessful Second Crusade. For
ten months before Louis' death in 1180, Philip ruled
jointly, with him as king of France. After he became sole
king, Philip quickly proved himself a strong, determined ruler despite the fact that he was only fifteen
years old.
Philip and Richard of England inherited their
rivalry from their respective fathers. At the end of 1191,
after he left Palestine, Philip began a series of attacks
on his rival's lands and actually promised financial help_
to Richard's captor, Leopold of Austria, to encourage
Leopold to prolong Richard's imprisonment.
In 1194, though, Richard was released and returned
to inflict several. heavy defeats on Philip. Philip got his
chance after Richard died in 1199, leaving the throne
of England to his far less formidable younger brother,
John. In the years that followed, John was virtually
helpless as Philip took many Angevin lands, including
Normandy, Touraine, Anjou and most of Poitou.
Philip even had ideas of seizing the English throne, arid
put Lip his son Louis as a candidate for king.
Although this particular plan failed, Philip II is
counted among the best and most able kings of France,
energetic, strong-willed, a clever politician and a
monarch who attracted and retained the loyalty of all
his subjects. Philip died at Mantes on July 14, 1223.

FACT BOX: PHILIP II AUGUSTUS OF FRANCE

The Not-so- Noble

Crusades

The Fourth Crusade has been called a

farce, a fiasco, a travesty and a tragedy.
Whatever uncomplimentary name was
given to it, though, this thoroughly
ignoble expedition certainly gave
Christians plenty of cause for shame
and shock, and their Muslim enemies a
prize chance to jeer, sneer and rejoice.
Afterwards, when the time came to
apportion blame, many people decided
that the chief villain of the Fourth
Crusade was the Republic of Venice.

C:E
1ne
=or

ed
le

eir
91,

ks
elp

ge

ed
his
ne

er,.

lly
ing
ou.

and
is

ce,
~

all

At that time, Venice was a wealthy

city state with
What part did
flourishing trade,
Venice play in the
a fine fleet of
crusade?
ships and many
overseas possessions, all of which
aroused great jealousy among other
Italian cities, like Genoa. Also, Vene. tians had a bad name for their greed,
their double-dealing and their haughty
.
ways.
Nevertheless, when the leaders of the
Fourth Crusade began to consider how
to transport their troops and equipment, Venice was the obvious place to
go. The Venetians agreed to provide
ships to carry 4,500 horses, 9,000
knights and 20,000 foot-soldiers and
enough provisions to last a year. In
return, the Venetians demanded 85,000
silver marks and half of all the crusaders' conquests. It was a heavy price,
and it was also too high, for the
crusaders could raise only 51,000
marks. The Venetians would not sail
until all the money .was forthcoming
and so the crusaders, who had gathered
in Venice in the spring of 1201, were
I

stranded there with debts for food and

supplies in their camps mounting up
daybyday. '
Then, Enrico Dandolo, the blind 90year-old
Doge
What was the
(Duke) of Venice,
Doge's solution 1
came up with a
cunning solution. The territories of
Zara and Dalmatia (Yugoslavia) had
rebelled against Venice in 1166 and
were threatening Venetian trade in the
Adriatic Sea. Dandolo wanted the
crusaders' help in overcoming them . .
It was an outrageous suggestion, but
despite vigorous protests from Pope
Innocent III and howls of anger from
more sincere crusaders, Marquis Boniface of Montforrat, leader of the
crusade, agreed.
Venice was a wealthy city state, and the Doge wanted to
expand her territory.

 In

1202 the cr:usading

forces stormed
What happened at
Zara, a Christian
Zara and
city, and . looted
Cotlstantinople?
it. As punishment for this sacrilegious act, Pope
Innocent excommunicated every cru- .
sader who had taken part.
Worse, much worse, was to come.
The wily Venetians now persuaded the
crusaders to help them in another
disreputable plan : this was to dethrone
.the Byzantine Emperor and put a proVenetian monarch, Alexius IV, in his
place. Once again, the crusadei;s agreed .
Once again, the Christian world was
shocked and disgusted to learn that
men who had taken the Cross had
besieged, captured and pillaged a
Christian city. This was the fate of
Constantinople on April 12, 1204, when
the crusaders overwhelmed it and, possessed by a frenzy of greed, set about
stripping the Byzantine capital of thousands of pounds, worth of gold and
silver ornaments, jewelled crosses,
chalices, candelabra andother priceless
objects.
The crusaders had acted like bandits
and 'barbarians and, not unnaturally,
their reprehensible behaviour aroused
great hatred among . the Byzantines.
This hatred was all the stronger because
after Alexius IV was deposed the
crusaders set up their own "Latin"
emperor in his place.

A dome mosaic of Christ at Arta in Epirus (about 1300).

..
I

,I

' I'
I

A detail from an illumination from the Book of Gospels

(about 11 O).

!.

November

L~ft: A lead seal belonging to Bohemund (twelfth century).

Right: An enamelled cross belonging to Pope Pascal I (ninth
century).

Previous crusades had, of course, been

marked by greed,
What went wrong
brutality,
ambi~
with the Fifth
tion and bad
Crusade?
. faith, :but never
on the appalling scale that occurred at
Zara and Constantinople. Bad management, too, had not been absent during
former crusading years, and when it
came to the Fifth Crusade, bungling
stupidity turned out to.be its dominant
characteristic.
This time, the crusaders' objective
was the port of Damietta in Egypt,
which they hoped to capture and
hold hostage for the return of Jerusalem. The crusade, led by John de
Brienne, titular King of Jerusalem,
very nearly succeeded, and failed to
do so only through the stubbornness and lack of sense shown by
Cardinal Pelagius of Albano, the papal
legate.
In June 1218, John de Brienne began

The Fifth Crusade came to an end when the crusaders were

trapped by ,a Nile flood at Mansurah.

a siege of Damietta which lasted seventeen months before Sultan al-Kamil of

Egypt gave in and offered to restore to
the crusaders the whole Kingdom of
Jerusalem west of the River Jordan: in
exchange, the Sultan proposed, the
crusaders would leave Egypt.
The great prize of Jerusalem was
actually being handed over by the
enemy, and yet Cardinal Pelagius refused it: he had ambitious ideas of
conquering .the whole of Egypt.
Damietta fell .to the crusading armies
on November 5, 1219, but in the next
two years the Egyptians put up such
strong resistance that Pelagius came
nowhere near to fulfilling his ambitions.
The end came in August, 1221 when
the crusaders were trapped at Man, surah by a Nile flood and Pelagius was
forced to restore Damietta to the
Egyptians.
37

'.I

.~

If the Fourth Crusade had been dishonourable and

Why was
the Fifth a stupid
Emperor Frederick
a bad crusader 7
failure, the Sixth
was utterly reprehensible and showed in most scandalous fashion how taking the Cross had
become an excuse for greed and
personal ambition.
The leader of the Sixth Crusade was
Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor
and King of Germany and Sicily.
Frederick was a clever man, but possessed some horrible habits, like his
fondness for using his serfs as human
guinea-pigs in bizarre scientific experiments. Frederick had no religious
beliefs and once said that "all the
misfortunes of Mankind are due to
three impostors-Moses, Mohamed
and Christ."

The Emperor's most notable . characteristics, in fact, were covetousness

and opportunism and he fulfilled his
crusading vow, made in 1215, purely for
the sake of getting his hands on the
Kingdom of Jerusalem. The chance to
do so came his way in 1225, when he
married 14-year-old Yolande Isabella,
daughter of John de Brienne and heiress
to the throne of Jerusalem.

Through his young wife, the Kingdom

could be his and
Why was Frederick
in September,
excommunicated 7
1227, Frederick
sailed for the Holy :Land in gleeful
anticipation of the greatest prize _
Christendom had to offer. He was not
many kilometres out to sea, though,
before he turned back, complaining of
seasickness. The rest of his fleet continued across the Mediterranean
towards the port of Acre.
Pope Gregory IX was so enraged
and so certain that Frederick was going
back on his vows that he excommunicated him. Frederick, a virtual atheist,
was not at all bothered and in the
__~?lmer of 1228 he set out again.

Frederick turned his ship back after a few kilometres because

he felt sea-sick.

. -.:.... .:" .
- -:---:-.::.:

~.'~
- - ~~~~
:'~

- - . ..:....-

;::

~~- -

-~

- -~

--

- .:-__~._ - - - ---...:
. - .....__.... ::.-:..

'

-;

-----

'

__

.....

- ..~-;:.;.: --.--.

:::-:-.- ......-:.-

----~--~-:s...-- - ...

- ----

.. .

--

- .....:....-..

-- .

To most Christians, the idea of an

ex comm uni ca te
What happened
like Frederick, a
during the .
virtual outlaw
Sixth Crusade 1
from Christian
society, actually leading a crusade to
the Holy Land was shocking enough.
But even more shocking and astounding were Frederick's actions when he

got there.
The crusaders did a little token
fighting against the Muslims, but nothing very energetic, and then Frederick
began negotiating with Sultan al-Kamil
of Egypt. The Sultan offered Frederick
much the same terms as those he had
proposed to Cardinal Pelagius ten years
before. Unlike Pelagius, Frederick accepted them, .and a treaty was signed
on February 18, 1229.
The horrified reaction this produced
in Europe was
Why were
perfectly underChristians so
standable. Chrishorrified?
Frederick signed a treaty with Sultan al-Kamil of Egypt whic-h
tians believed,
horrified European Christians.
quite sincerely, that crusaders ought to
fight and kill . the Muslim enemies
of Christ, not make treaties with them.
Because of the interdict, church bells
This feeling took a lot of pleasure
throughout Jeruout of the considerable gains Frederick
How
did
Frederick
salem were silent
had made. He had retrieved from
~:~::Te~~g of
as Frederick rode
the Muslims the three. main places
into
the city.
of Christian pilgrimage-Jerusalem,
Bethlehem and Nazareth-as well as However, nothing the Pope could do
could take from Frederick the thrill and
Sidon and Lydda. He had also obglory of what followed. Frederick
tained Muslim agreement to a ten.,.year
entered the Church of the Holy Sepulperiod of peace in Palestine.
chre, where the crown of Jerusalem
Far from rejoicing at Frederick's
was kept on the altar, and there he
diplomatic achievement, the Pope took
placed the crown on his own head and
an angry revenge on him. He began a
proclaimed himself king.
"crusade" of his own by sending his
The millions of Christians who came
armies to attack Frederick's lands in
to believe that Frederick's heinous sins
Italy, and he . also placed Jerusalem

would be punished by disaster were

under interdict: this meant the city
proved tragically right during the years
was "out of bounds" for all true
that followed.
Christians.
39

Ii

, I

After Frederick left Acre for home

on May 1, 1229,
What happened after to face a barrage
Frederick's
of criticism
departure?
and scorn, the
crusaders he left behind in Palestine
frittered away . his gains by' stupid
squabbles. and rivalries. They had no
strong, determined leader to discipline
them or organise their efforts towards
preserving the territories the Sixth
Crusade had brought them. Instead,
the crusaders took sides against each
other and supported warring factions
among the equally contentious
Muslims. The . Knights Templar, for
instance, sided with the Muslims of
Syria against the M uslinis of Egypt,
who were being backed in their turn by
the Knights Hospitaller.
The Muslims of Egypt realised that the Mongols were a great
t_l1reat. With the help of the Khwarlzmians, the Muslims
defeated the Mongols at the battle of Gaza.

While all this was going on, a great

new danger was
What was the great
d

danger from Asia?

rawmg nearer
.
and nearer. It
came from Central Asia, in the form of
the warlike barbarian Mo'ngols who,
until his death in 1227, had been led by
the famous Genghis Khan.
By 1241, the Mongols were fast
approaching the shores of the eastern
Mediterranean, conquering one territory after the other with no one,
apparently, strong enough or determined enough to stop them.
It was the Muslims of Egypt who
first woke up to the danger and resolved to challenge it. In doing so, the
Egyptians had an additional motive:
they saw in the coming conflict with
the Mongols not only a chance to save
the Muslim world,. but a prize opportunity to topple the Christians in
Palestine.

Very few children survived the Children's Crusade.

In 1244, the Egyptians made an

alliance with the
How did the Muslims Kh

recover Jerusalem 1
wanzrruans, a
people.. who had
been forced by the Mongols to
leave their lands by the Caspian
Sea. Together, the Egyptians . and
Khwarizmians defeated the crusader
armies at the battle of Gaza. The
inevitable, grim sequel came in July
1244, when the Khwarizniians burst
into Jerusalem, overran the crusader
garrison there and won back the qity
for the Muslims.
'
Twelve months later, Sultan Ayyub
of Egypt was in possession- of almost
all of crusader Palestine.
FACT BOX: THE CHILDRENS CRU SA DE OF
1212
One of the most touching and tragic episodes to take
Place during the crusades was the Children's Crusade

Of 1212.
In May that year, a young shepherd boy called
Stephen appeared in towns and villages in France

calling on children to follow him on crusade. He had,

he said, seen a vision in which he was told that the
Holy Land would be liberated from the Muslims by
youngsters like himself. Thousands of children res ponded and left their homes to follow Stephen to
Marseilles, i1,1 the south of France. There, remembering
how in the Old Testament, the Red Sea had parted to
let the children of Israel through, the young crusaders
waited patiently for the Mediterranean to do the same
thing so that they could walk along the sea bed to the
Holy Land .. At this juncture, two wily shipowners,
William the Pig and Hugh the Iron, offered the children
transport. The children accepted, only to find themselves
sailing to North Africa, where they were sold as slaves.
The sole survivor out of the thousands who had
followed Stephen returned to France in f230, after

spending eighteen years ip slavery.

Another children's crusade took place after Nicholas,
a young boy from Cologne, Germany, claimed he had
seen similar visions to Stephen's. The children who
followed Nicholas were no luckier than their French
counterparts. Thousands of them died of cold and
from accidents as they struggled over the Alps into
Italy. In Italy, thousands more died from hunger and
exhaustion. Finally, the Bishop of Brindisi ordered the
children to go home. They obeyed and turned back,
but very few ever reached Germany. Many of their
parents were so grief-stricken that they hanged
Nic''olas's father for encouraging his son.

41

King Louis IX of France believed it was his duty i:o go on crusade.

The Last of the

Crusades
By the mid-13th century, crusading
had become so
What did people
thoroughly disthink of crusading
credited
that, for
now?
many people, it
was little more than a bad joke. After
the irresponsible Marquis of Montferrat, the wilful Cardinal Pelagius and
the abominable Emperor Frederick,
would-be crusaders were likely to be
regarded, at best, as fools and, at worst,
as greedy opportunists. More and more
people were becoming convinced that
God had no interest in crusades and
that the whole idea was useless
nonsense.
Yet, despite all the cynicism, sincere
crusading zeal was still strong among
more honourable men, and in 1244
there was at least one leader willing to
take the Cross whose character was
beyond 'question.
l'

King .Louis IX of France (St. Louis)

was strong, just,
Who was this new

d
leader?
wise,
evout,
~onscien tious
and generous. He had very high ideals
42

about his responsibilities as king, and

his views of a Christian's duty to go on
crusade were just as exalted.
Louis took his crusading vows late in
1244, but nearly
What happened on
four years passed
the Seventh
Crusade 7
before his venture was ready to
depart. At the end of August, 1248,
Louis embarked at Aigues-Mortes, in
the south of France, with 2,500 knights,
5,000 crossbowmen and large numbers
of infantry and cavalry. They sailed
first to Cyprus and then, in May, 1249,
to Damietta in Egypt. What happened
after Louis arrived there provided almost a repeat performance of the Fifth
Crusade.
Like the army of John de Brienne,
Louis' forces besieged and, in June,
1248, captured Damietta. Sultan Ayyub
of Egypt offered Louis Jerusalem in
exchange. Louis refused and determined to conquer Egypt instead. The
Egyptians fought back and on February 8, 1250, defeated Louis' armies at
Mansurah, the very same place where

the armies of the Fifth Crusade had

met disaster in 1221. This time, the
Nile did not flood and trap the crusaders, but Louis was taken prisoner
and -he and his foHowers had to pay
nearly one million gold pieces as
ransom.
After gaining .his freedom in May,
1250, Louis went to Acre. He spent
four years in Palestine helping to fortify
crusader castles there and paying ransoms for hundreds of Christians held
captiv.e by the Muslims.
Louis was not deterred by his failure
in Egypt, and he
When did Louis go
1
d
crusading again 7
onge to go on
..
another crusade.
Thirteen years passed before he was /
able to do so, but when, in March,
1267, he announced his intention to
take the Cross again, his nobles and
courtiers tried to dissuade him. One of
Louis' friends, John Sieur de Joinville,
told the king to his face that this latest
crusade, the Eighth, was pure folly.
The crusade proved to be something
much more tragic than that. On July 1,
1270, Louis sailed from Aigues-Mortes
bound for Tunisia where, it was
planned, a base would be established
for another attack on Egypt. The attack
never took place. Almost as soon as
Louis' forces landed, they were struck
down by an epidemic of bubonic
plague. Louis was himself one of the
victims, and died near Tunis on
August 26, 1270. As he died, Louis is
said to have whispered in brokenhearted tones : "Jerusalem! Jerusalem!"
Louis' death was all the more tragic and
wasteful because
Why did Louis'

T
brother betray him 7 m gomg to umsia in the first
place, he had been betrayed by his own
brother, King Charles of Sicily. Charles
hated the Byzantines , and thought

Louis' crusade might interfere with the

war he was preparing against them : so
he persuaded his brother to go to
Tunisia. Charles also had an extra
motive for his action-his friendship
with a powerful Muslim leader, Sultan
Baybars of Egypt.

Sultan Baybars belonged to the Mame1uk e warrior

Who was Baybars 7
caste, which was
made up of slaves from Turkey, Russia
and central Asia. Already, by 1270, he
was the great hero of the Muslim
world. It was Baybars who, on September 3, 1260, had led the Egyptian
armies to a decisive victory against the
Mongols at Ayn J alut and so finally
rescued the Muslim world from the
threat of Mongol domination. It was
also Baybars who roused the Muslims
to action by preaching a new Jihad,
this time against the Mongols, whom
he drove out of Syria and Palestine and
back towards Persia and Armenia.
Many Mongols were so impressed by
Baybars' courage, prowess and fighting
skill that they adopted the Muslim
faith, believing it to be .the religion of
strong men.
Louis never reached the Holy Land.

'

In all this, the squabbling and therefore

All Baybars had to do now was to
divided crusaders
pick them off one by one. This did not
How were the
hi b
happen
immediately because, when
crusaders affected? were not ng ut
King Louis began to prepare his cruhelpless bystanders. Before long, though, they
sade in 1267, Baybars became uneasy
were inevitably caught up in Baybars'
and this took some of the bite out of
campaigns. As Baybars and his Mamehis attacks. For the beleaguered
luke army swept through Palestine and
Christians, the reprieve was brief. After
Louis died in Tunisia, Baybars' worries
Syria, the crusaders were thrown out of
Caesarea, Haifa and Arsuf in 1265, the
were over and he resumed his onslaughts with undiminished vigour. In
castle of Safed in 1266 and in 1268 out
of Jaffa, the castle of Belfort and 1271 his forces overwhelmed the last
Antioch. In a few short years, the
three inland castles held .by the crunarrow coastal strip which Richard
saders-Safita, Krak des Chevaliers,
Lionheart had formed into the second
near Tripoli, and Montfort.
Kingdom of Jerusalem had shrunk
awayi and the crusaders were holding '
on only in small, isolated towns and
lonely fortifications.
Baybars gradually captured all the crusaders' castles .

Antioch

Krak des Chevaliers

Cyprus

MEDITERRANEAN
SEA
Haifa]
Arsuf
Caesarea
Sated ]

I I
I I

BeHort

Montfort

Haifa

Safed

Jaffa
Belfort

1265

1266

1268

AnUoch

Arsuf

Alexandria

Port Said

8aflla

Ca&11area
Safita]
Krak des Chevaliers

Jaffa

Jerusalem
I

Montfort

1271

Once, a great crusade would have

been preached
. Whywas there no
throughout
new crusade 1
Europe to re-.
lieve the hard-pressed Christians in the
Holy Land. Wandering priests would
have travelled from village to village to
inflame the people with terrible stories
of Baybars' brutalities. They would
have had plenty of material: Baybars
was no chivalrous, scrupulous Saladin,
but a merciless, savage warrior intent
on the complete extermination of his
enemies. Many of his .victories against
the crusaders had been accompanied
by the most atrocious massacres.
Under the hammer-blows of Baybars' attacks, the crusader states in
Palestine were dying. Yet there was no
great rescue . operation this time, for
now the ideal of crusading was dying,

Left: Some of the weapons used by the crusaders.

Right: Some of the weapons used by the Muslims.

too. In many European countries, a

new sense of nationalism was stirring,
and men were now more concerned
with what was happening in their own
lands than in foreign regions far away.
In addition, the Pope was losing his
power to command or even inspire men
to take the Cross.
There was still some interest, of
course, but nothing very effective, or
even enthusiastic. King Jam.es I of
Aragon took crusading vows and set
out, but turned for home when he was
halfway .to Palestine. King Edward I
of England, who had originally intended to join Louis IX's last, ill-fated
crusade, arrived in Acre in May, 1271,
but though he stayed until September,
1272, he achieved very little.
45

Sultan Baybars died of fever in

dead bodies began to pile up all over

Acre.
Damascus in
What happened at
1277, . but his
the siege of Acre 1
work was carried
Three months later, in August 1291,
on by his equally enterprising succesthe Christians in
How did crusader
sors. Sultan Qalawim overran Christian
Tyre,
Beirut,
rule end?
Tripoli in 1289 and celebrated his ,
Tortosa and
victory as Baybars would have done,
Athlit surrendered to the Muslims
by cutting the throats of the men and
without a fight, and at Sidon they put
taking the women and children as
up only feeble resistance. The last
remnant of the crusader presence in
slaves.
Two years later, in April 1291,
the Holy Land clung on until 1303,
Qalawun's son, Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil,
when some Knights Templar holding
laid siege to the great crusader bastion
out on the tiny island of Arwad, two
of Acre with an army of 66,000 cavalry
miles ..out to sea from Tortosa, finally
gave m.
and 160,000 foot-soldiers. The 14,000
soldiers and 800 knights inside Acre
So, after two centuries, the crusades
resisted with almost suicidal courage,
came to an ignominious end, with final
but they were no match for the
triumph going to the Muslims.
Muslims. Khalil's forces loosed thousands of feathered arrows and darts
As you have seen, . crusading had its
down on the Christians, and with their
good and its bad
What were the bad
side. It involved
mangonels hurled scores of boulders
results of the
over the walls. The Muslims also used
crusades?
glory and infamy,
a terrifying flame-weapon called
sincerity and
"Greek Fire" which, once alight, could
insincerity, mercy and brutality, magnot be extinguished. John Sieur de ;
Joinville described how Greek Fire
had "a burning tail . . . the length of a
long sword. In flight, it made .fl noise
...:...:..;-==- .
. -------like thunder and it seemed a dragon
flying through the air."
.

:..- ::~.:_ .:_-_ = -=-- - . -

_ __:-_ __ ::.:= -

~I

r
On May ' 18, 1291-a Friday and the
holy day of the
How was Acre
Muslims - the
captured?
Muslim war
drums ,could be heard thundering out
all round Acre as the armies of Khalil
massed for a final, mighty onslaught on
the walls.
The attack succeeded, and the Muslims poured into the city, brandishing
swords and other deadly weapons.
They ran wild through the streets,
cutting down everyone they encountered, and soon grisly heaps of
46

nanimity and treachery.

The legacy of the crusades was
similarly paradoxical.
One terrible effect was the fatal
weakening of the Byzantine Empire,
which never recovered from the shameful crusader attack on Constantinople
in 1204. Another tragic result was a
marked increase in religious intolerance
between Christian and Muslim,
Christian and Jew and even between
Christian and Christiap : during and
after the crusades, Christians tegarded
with extra hatred others of their own
faith whose ideas about religion were
different from their own.
Nevertheless,

there

was a more
positive side to
How did the
the aftermath of
crusades affect
the crusades.
European life?
The most farreaching and significant effect was
the way the ultimate failure of the
crusades obliged Europeans to look
for a sea route to Asia now that the
1

Muslims had blocked the land route to

Asia's tempting store of spices, silks,
ivory, precious metals, precious stones
and other luxuries. Eventually, the urge
to reach these riches led to the 15th and
16th century explorations by Portuguese, Spanish, French and English
sailors, explorations which finally
opened up the world.
These explorers owed much to the
fact that during and after the crusades
. the Muslims' superior knowledge of
science, mathematics, medicine, hygiene, navigation and geography greatly
improved European knowledge of
these subjects.
.
The crusades also prompted a considerable increase in trade, with a consequent rise in. living standards in
Europe. European merchants imported
from Muslim lands more spices, furnishings, medicines, jewellery, perfumes, fruits, sugar . and other commodities than ever before. In return the
Muslims received European grain, timber and horses. They also received a
constant stream of Christian pilgrims
and so profited from a thriving .tourist
trade in tours of the Holy Land and
sales of mass-produced souvenirs.
In addition, the crusades provided the
inspiration for a
How did the
great new literacrusades affect
ture in the form
literature and
oflegends, stories
language?
and chronicles
and songs like the famous Chansons de
Geste, which told romantic tales of
chivalrous knights and their noble
deeds.
European languages were also
affected by the crusades. Muslim
words, borrowed and adapted by the

The armiesof Khalil massed for a final onslaught on Acre.

47

. t ro duced"synJp ""h
crusaders, m.
, s erbet", "elixir", "divan", "candy" as
well as the sinister-sounding "assassin"
to the English language.

Perhaps, though, the most important

word we have acquired from thisperiod
of history is the word "crusade" itself.
Originally, "crusade", taken from the
Spanish word "cruzada", meant
"marked with a cross". Today, it is
commonly used to describe a determined attack on evil practices or on
evil people who seek to oppress others.
Although this is, of course, the
modern meaning of "crusade", it does
help explain how the original crusaders
thought, and why they acted, at times,
in ways we find shocking and brutal.
Rightly or mistakenly, sincere crusaders viewed their task as a holy fight
against evil, and it was in that spirit
that they ventured to a strange, distant
and inhospitable land with the Cross
of their faith emblazoned on their
breasts and the . resolve to fight for
Christ burning fiercely in their hearts.
T he Crusades i~spired many legends. One of these was t he
story of Tristan and Isolde

Index

Acre, 29-31, 45, 46

Aigues-Mortes, 42, 43
al-Ashraf Khalil, Sultan, 46
Alexius I, Byzantine Emperor, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15
Alexius IV, Byzantine Emperor, 36
al-Kamil, Sultan of Egypt,

King James I of Aragon, 45

James of Vitry (traveller), 23
Jerusalem, Kingdom of,
19-25, 37

Jews, 9, 10, 21
"Jihad" (Holy War), 24, 43
John de Brienne. 37, 38
John, Prince (of England), 31

37, 39, 41

Antioch, 14, 15, 44

Antioch, Princedom of, 20
Arsuf, 32, 44
Asia Minor, 13, 15
Athlit, 47
Ayyub, Sultan of Egypt, 41,
42

Baldwin ofBoulogne (Count

of Edessa, King of Jerusalem), 14, 20
Baybars, Sultan of Egypt,
43, 44, 45

Beirut, 46
Belfort, castle of, 44
Bethlehem, 6, 39
Bohemund of O'tranto
(Prince of Antioch), 7, 13,
14, 15-18

Boniface, Marquis of Mont

ferrat (leader of Fourth
Crusade), 35

Byzantine Empire, 5, 9, 10,

47

Kerbogha (Regent of Mosul), 15

Khwarizmians, 41
Krak des Chevaliers, 44
Leopold, Duke of Austria,
31, 33

King Louis Vil of France, 25

King Louis IX of France
(St. Louis), 42-44
Lydda, 16
Mameluke5, 43, 44
Medicine, 23
Mongols, 40
Montfort, Castle of, 44
Nazareth, 39
Nicaea, 13
Nureddin, 25
Pelagius of Albano, Cardinal, 37
Peter the Hermit, 7, 9, 10, 11
King Philip II Augustus of
France, 26, 28-31, 34

Caesarea, 32, 44
Charles of Anjou (King
Chartes of Sicily), 43
Conrad ill, King of Germany, 25
Constantinople, 9, 36
Council of Clermont (1095),
4
Cyprus, 29

Popes:
Eugenius III, 25
Gregory IX, 26, 38
Innocent ill, 35 ' .
Urban II, 4, 5, 6, 11

Dalmatia (Yugoslavia), 35
Damietta (Egypt), 37
Dandolo, Enrico, Doge of
Venice, 35
Dorylaeum, pass of, 13

Raymond, Count of Toulouse, 7, 15, 16-18

Rhineland, 9
.
King Richard I of England
(Lionheart), 26, 28-34

E.dessa, city of, 14, 24

Edessa, Countship of, 20
King Edward I of England,

Safed, castle of, 44

Safita, castle of, 44
Saladin, 25-26, 29-34
Sidon, 39, 46

45

King Frederick I Barbarossa, 26, 28

Emperor Frederick II of
Germany, 38, 39
Godfrey of Bouillon (Defender of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem), 8, 18,

Qalawun, Sultan, 46

Taurus Mountains, 14, 15

Templar, Knights, 27, 40
Tortosa, 46
Tripoli, 29
Tripoli, Countship of, 20
Tunisia, 46
Tyre, 19, 29, 46

20, 26

Guy de Lusignan (King . of

Jerusalem), 29

Venice, 25, 35.

Walter the Penniless, 9, 11

Haifa, 32, 44
Holy Lance, 15
Hospitaller, Knights, 27, 40
Hungary, 9, 10

Yolande Isabella (wife of

Frederick II), 38

Jaffa, 32, 44

Zara, 35, 36
Zengi (Regent of Mosul), 24

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