The Crusades: Sduring The Middle Ages

SDuring the Middle Ages, a series of events occurred over the span of a few hundred years

known as the Crusades. These were a series of wars that had the Christian church waging war

against the aggressive Muslims of the East after they took the Holy Land and began to try and

push into Europe. Today the Crusades are viewed in a very poor light and people view them as a

dark moment in world history. Many people, including former United States President Bill

Clinton, would blame the Crusades as the cause of the conflicts and terrorists acts coming from

the Middle East. Osama Bin Laden, late Al-Queda leader, calls the American war on terrorism

as a new crusade against Islam. But people seem to just say the crusades were all terrible
That October, the Turks crushed

Conrad’s forces at Dorylaeum.”(history.com)

The Crusaders combined their forces and attacked Damascus, but were utterly destroyed by the

Muslim forces. General Shirkuh, commander of Mosul’s army, captured Cairo in 1169 with the

aid of his nephew, Saladin. Shirkuh unfortunately died soon after this leaving the army in his

nephew’s hands.

Saladin, with his great tactics, easily retook Jerusalem and other regions at the

Battle of Hattin in 1187. This sparked the Third Crusade, King Richard I of England,

Emperor Frederick I, and King Phillip II of France gathered their forces to retake the

Holy Land. The Crusaders won the only real battle when they took Asurf and the port

city Jaffa. They made it to Jerusalem, however it did nothing because Frederick never

actually made it to the Holy Land because he had died at sea, and the majority of his

forces turned back. Phillip II did not see eye to eye with Richard, so he left, but did not

take his forces back with him. Richard didn't have the supplies, so he signed a treaty with

Saladin in 1192 stating all unarmed Catholics could make pilgrimages to Jerusalem
This is probably the darkest moment in Christian history as Catholics besieged

Constantinople and stormed it by pillaging, plundering, raping, and burning the city, cutting off

any chance of the two churches coming back together.

The next crusades were for the most part flops that did pretty much nothing and

the only crusade that was considered a success was the first one.

“Through the end of the 13th century, groups of Crusaders sought to gain ground

in the Holy Land through short-lived raids that proved little more than an

annoyance to Muslim rulers in the region. The Seventh Crusade (1239-41), led by

Thibault IV of Champagne, briefly recaptured Jerusalem, though it was lost again

in 1244 to Khwarazmian forces enlisted by the sultan of Egypt. In 1249, King

Louis IX of France led the Eighth Crusade against Egypt, which ended in defeat

at Mansura (site of a similar defeat in the Fifth Crusade) the following year. As

the Crusaders struggled, a new dynasty known as the Mamluks–descended from

former slaves of the sultan–took power in Egypt.”(history.com).

By 1290 the Muslims had totally rid the land of the remaining Crusader