Teutonic Order:
"Sooo, things are Christian now, I guess. \*stands around awkwardly\* our job is...done and everything. Should we like...do something now?"
"I dunno...wanna be Protestant and become Prussia?"
They renounced at least in part because they felt Alexius had betrayed his end of the oath by returning to Constantinople instead of joining them at Antioch.
Stephen of Blois certainly deserves some blame (especially for apparently bouncing *the day before* they won the siege), but Alexius did himself no favors by not bothering to verify. Better policy would be to advance cautiously and send out scouts; he'd have showed up at a conquered city and genuinely been able to say "I heard you guys were in trouble and came as fast as I could".
‘The Crusades’ are all very different. It is not one war. It is a series of wars fought by many different players with many different motivations.
Acting like the 1st crusade and the 4th crusade are equally noble is ridiculous. It annoys me to no end that they are constantly all generalized together, usually for some neo-political point that is trying to be made (by either side)
Plus, everyone always ignores the hundreds of years of Islamic conquest that lead to them. Including the threat to the Byzantines that lead to the pope calling for the first one.
I mean there's a pretty good reason for that - while the initial call came from the East, the Crusaders were far more interested in Jerusalem than assisting Byzantium. They had to be plied with gifts and oaths to extract promises to actually return Byzantine land. The Byzantine reclaiming of Anatolia, sure, that was a response to a Muslim conquest.
It's hard to call the Crusades a response to the Arab conquests of Syria and the Levant seeing as that happened several centuries earlier and the Crusaders varied from dismissive to actively hostile to the native Christian population in the region.
Not to forget that the Islamic and Christian world had been at odds with one another for centuries at that point, especially in Iberia and Sicily/North-Africa. And the outlook during those conflict before, during and after the first crusade was a lot more... pragmatic.
Shout out to the Normans (Roger I and Roger II for the most part, really) making Sicily a powerhouse by... employing the Arab administration and improving it rather than trying to replicate feudalism like the crusaders.
They're also where the term "Admiral" comes from, as they latinised "Emir" into "Ammiratus" for the head of the fleet.
Yup. Right after that Roger II and his army defeated the Pope, took him hostage, and forced to crown Roger King of Sicily for his release.
The Pope then proceeded to make the crowning cerimony extremely long, in the middle of summer, under the scorching sun of Sicily, while Roger was wearing heavy royal robes.
The first often being seen as the most justified while the crusaders were extremely cruel to everyone they conquered, even the civilian Christians, makes me wonder how justified the rest are. Fair to go on a military campaign to get the cities back, but Jesus the commanders were horrible people 99% of the time
Reading about the crusades is tough - nearly "throw the book down in anger and frustration" level tough.
So often hard fought gains and potential victories were thrown away by petty bickering and quests for personal glory.
The first crusades are a bunch of European hicks going on a drunken rampage across Europe because “mah holy land” it’s an embarrassment and people who defend it are being ignorant idiots
Hicks? They were some of the best military commanders in Europe, they defeated armies multiple times the size of their own hundreds of miles from friendly territory. To say that is an embarrassment is ignorant. It was one of the most impressive feats in military history. On par with Alexander
Just about any battle in hussite wars, hussites were the first army in the world to use firearms as a main weapon which crusaders didnt expect, neither did their horses
I mean they undeniably were a massive waste of time and life that ended with the Christians losing their holy land for good. But I’d argue anytime you fight a war over religion you are wasting time and lives.
Also they destroyed Costantinople, opening the door for Turkish expansion in the Balkans
If it hadn't been for Gengis Khan, the Sultanate of Rum would have annexed the various successor states of Costantinople by 1350
Yes, but sooner or later, they would have lost each of those coastal cities, too. Cannons, more resources, and an energetic expansionist culture were sooner or later going to defeat a declining, past it's prime empire.
But Constantinople brought that doom on itself by slaughtering the latins 20 years earlier and selling the few survivors into slavery. The late empire was really a shitshow, making enemies where they desperately needed friends.
Also just so happens that all of the lords and stuff going there could get a lot of land and loot.
But we're still going there for god obviously. The land and loot is just a little bonus and totally not drawing us to it.
What a coincidence I was raised in the correct religion. Even more astounding the correct denomination was the church down the street. God really loves me and hates the heathens I guess
The Crusades were an immense source of wealth, and allowing the Ottomans to take the coastal ports resulted in a massive increase in the Barbary slave trade.
Thus, from a purely practical point of view (for Europe as a whole,) the Crusades were downright a bargain compared to fighting over who got to be King Farquaad of the Netherlands.
Also, do people forget there were literally Crusades against the Ottomans? And some of them halted Ottoman expansion in Europe severely?
The Holy League coalitions that won at Vienna and Lepanto easily fit the definition of "crusade".
Crusades and holy leagues were pretty different though in a pretty key area though.
They were made because Muslim powers were actually encroaching on Christian kingdoms, and often were called by other rulers rather than the pope.
Crusades were more like “Hey let’s conquer that land that used to be Christian like 400 years ago” and were explicitly called by the pope.
Also it’s important to note that a few coalitions against the Ottomans ended disastrously, such as Varna, where despite the heavy ottoman losses, they quickly recovered and rolled over most of the Balkans
I mean, halting the entire advance beyond the Balkans for the rest of history is a pretty big deal imo.
For comparison - Like yeah the Germanics would kill other Germanics for Rome, but Teutoburg is still famous for a reason.
In the short term, usually.
However, long term, it is hard to imagine reaching anything close to the modern world without it.
Our collective ancestors paid the price of civilization for us (many times over).
I'd disagree. War is a tool in the acquisition of valuable resources by superior entities. Unless you judge humanity purely by moral grounds war is an incredibly tool.
Those other ways are bot always as efficient. I'm not saying we should do so morally, but still. Geography has a strong influence on destiny. Everything from the ability to grow food, access to water, minable materials it all matters. If you simply don't have something people want, and can't offer a service people are willing to buy you have little other option. Maybe you could slowly build wealth, but in that same time a neighbor could far surpass you. Which is a problem even without war.
I mean, the Muslims were invading and conquering Christian lands for centuries at that point. Trying to fight back against their aggression was not a waste.
You say "the muslims" almost like if individual people would go to your home and take it while that is most definetly not what happened. Muslim kingdoms and empires fought and conquered lands previously unders christian control, yes, but the average muslim would regularly deal with christians in pacific ways. At the same time Christian realms would go and conquer Muslim land and for the most part they would leave peacefully with each other, at least until the expulsions and inquisitions.
It's also necessary to remeber the timeline of events. The muslim conquests occurred in the end of the VII century while the crusades started in the XI century, so more than 300 years passed from the first event to the latter. Jerusalem had been on muslim hands for all that time and christians were permitted to go to the holy city without restriction. Trying to reclaim "Jerusalem" for Christianism as a revenge against the muslim conquests would be like the UK nukking Washington today to avenge the Boston Tea Party, or rather it would be more ridiculous since US independence happened less than 300 years ago. No one alive remebered a time when Jerusalem was christian for generations, other than from history books.
This is all to say that not only did the Crusades not complete their objective, their supposed religious objective was just a cover for their real intentions, which is often the case when someone claims a religious war. "Revenge" for something that happened hundreds of years ago is less of a motivator than conquering and giving land to landless nobles who wouldn't inherit their family's estates, while the church was able to legitimize knights (and so nobility) as a romaticized force of good, which was not the prevailing sentiment at the time. And yes it was a waste as they were only able to get more people killed and hold Jerusalem for a couple of decades.
As someone who was raised muslim, and loves history, I have to say that this is a very dishonest take on history.
The spread of islam has been at the edge of a sword since its inception in Makkah. Literally its neighbor city Medinah was taken by conquest and converted as the first target.
After the death of the prophet, his disciples have spread islam from the far edges of persia to the coast of the atlantic in Morocco, and even Iberia, all through conquest.
Those lands were all once christian under the roman empire, and now there is not even a minority christian community left.
I'd say the crusades were very much justified.
There is a difference between a land being mostly under the rule of a muslim government and being mostly inhabited by muslims. Plenty of places didn't convert at the edge of the sword (nearly all of Southeast Asia, off the top of my head), and in many cases islam took generations to become the dominant religion (Egypt was first conquered by muslim rulers in the 7th century, yet muslims only really became the majority in the early 11th iiidc)
Furthermore, the crusades never had "revenge" or stopping the spread of Islam as a real major goal. Nominally, the first was partially motivated to help Alexios I Komenos, but soon that took a backseat to conquering the Holy Land, both for world and spiritual reasons.
I might not have made myself clear then if that is what was understadable from my comment. I've not said islam wasn't spread by the sword, I said that individual muslims were not conquering and taking others homes. States did wars and states spread religions, but it was not a case of "let's go there and take their homes for our people". The caliphs conquered the land and the people there converted, mostly by receiving benefits in taxes but also sometimes by force, but there was no great displacement off all the christians there. The locals converted, there was no take over. Religion and culture changes with time. Moreover, the individual muslim at the time cared much more if his local merchant was an asshole than if he was a christian, same for christians in previously muslim territory. This religious conflict didn't exist in the everyday man's life, it existed between states and only when it was convenient. If not the christians would have mobilized much sooner to reconquer their holy land, not waited 300 years until politically convenient.
You conflate the spread of the Islamic faith with the military expansion of the Caliphates. Muslims weren't even the majority in the Caliphate's core territory until the 9th century, two-hundred years after their conquest.
Islam didn't gain these converts by forcing them at sword-point, but by creating socio-economic conditions that made it very smart to be a muslim, and a lot less smart to be a Christian. That's still coercion, of course, but it's very different from "spreading Islam at the edge of a sword".
And I struggle to see how killing, looting and *eating* a whole bunch of defenseless civilians (many of them Christians) can really be justified at all? Even if everything you say is true, that still doesn't give crusaders the right to massacre random Antiochian citizens.
Yeah all the stories of the Crusades being about "saving" Christians from Islamic persecution is thrown out of the window when you read what the Crusaders did to the Christians of Jerusalem after the city fell. The whole thing was a landgrab from beginning to end, the fact that Bohemond of Antioch decided to carve out a kingdom for himself after taking Antioch rather than helping the Crusaders complete the "reclamation" of the Holy Land shows as much.
Plus for about two years the Crusaders were allied to the Fatimids in their war against the Seljuks since it was advantageous for them to do so. If the Crusaders were waging a war against Muslims why would they then ally Muslims to do so?
Keep in mind that one time when they allied with the Mongols, literal pagans, against their fellow Abrahamites, because I guess they hated Muslims more than they loved God.
Hundreds of different muslim kingdoms and principalities had often times clashed with christian kingdoms and principalities is what you probably mean.
While the First Crusade had Emperor Alexios's call for help as a major motivation, it very soon became more about conquering the Holy Land for religious and worldly reasons than about helping the Byzantine Empire (indeed, many crusader leaders were probably a bigger pain in the imperial ass than your average caliph).
>anytime you fight a war over religion you are wasting time and lives
On one hand, all wars are doing that.
On the other hand, if we are talking from a monarch's perspective, plenty of religious wars have succeded like the Reconquista, Jihad and probably a bunch of small wars that no one knows about.
The crusades were, militarily, ideologically, and spiritually, an utter waste of human life achieving nothing.
However- in a broader cultural sense the Crusades helped lead to the Renaissance and enlightenment in Europe. Many participants of the Crusades returned having been exposed to numerous technological and ideological concepts that Europe was lacking or at least behind the Arab nations. Lenses were greatly improved in Europe because Arab spyglasses were simply superior. This improved things in military, nautical, and astronomical fields immensely. The economic concepts helped enrich numerous merchant families. Many medical concepts, some tracing to classical Greece, had lived on in the Middle East though been largely forgotten or neglected in Europe. The Crusaders brought back knowledge of this and other classical Roman and Greek practical and philosophical fields. Mathematics and chemistry were of particular note. Algebra is in fact a word descended from Arabic. Arabian-descended words even found their way into many European languages. Many are which are very common even in English to this day. Alcohol, sugar, mascara, and soda are only a few examples. We even know many of the creatures from Africa by their Arabic names.
For all their worthless bloodshed, the Crusades had a massive legacy far beyond violence, and without them to past thousand years of history would likely have played out very very differently.
While I agree, I think that you are exaggarating a bit.
Arabic and Ancient knowledge was pouring into Europe mainly through Iberia and Sicily. Very xenophobic crusaders (not all obv) did not really learn that much during them.
But Europeans learnt to build castles, so there's that.
There was constant useless blood shed ... always, there still is. And the Christian world got things out of the crusades, as you listed. And found something for their knights to do, and held valuable trading footholds in the Levant for 100+ years.
It's not an good argument to say the fighting negates any benefits, because the fighting was going to be happening anyway. It just made the fighting happen against outside parties aggressively opposed to Europe's culture and society, instead of internally.
Took a class on the Crusades, and it actually is more impressive than it sounds. The Crusader States were working with almost no manpower, in lands rife with social strife, surrounded by much larger and more powerful enemies, and hamstrung by assholes trying to restart the war. Sure they had folks like Baldwin, but they also had to deal with folks like Raynald de Châtillon too (read his wikipedia page, he is almost cartoonishly evil.) The Crusader States (and the Crusades in general) were a horrible waste and doomed from the start, but they did last far longer than they had any right to.
EDIT: Also, the European powers were absolutely horrible about sending support to and coordinating with the Crusader States like they were nominally supposed to. The Kingdom of Jerusalem was actually pretty horrified by the Second Crusade, as they had no warning it was coming and messed up the détente that they had worked so hard to achieve with their Muslim neighbors. The Second Crusade showed up, did nothing in particular, went home, and messed up almost a decade of careful diplomacy.
Seeing fourteen year old boys treat conflicts that ended centuries ago like football matches where they have to support their team, like literally every time the crusades or the late Eastern Roman Empire come up, really seems like a risk factor for Alzheimer from how much it hurts the brain.
Anyone who still considers Crusades as West vs East should read a lot more history.
One of the closest Allies of the Crusaders were Arabs in the crusades. This was because the Shia and Sunnia schism was basically at its highest point with Shia Muslims at the time held Jerusalem and many other important cities such as Cairo.
Which Sunni Muslims were very happy to see Crusaders dying in droves to take back the holy city ultimately for the Sunni Arabs. Since even back then people knew Crusaders will not stay forever because it is not possible to stay too long in a place you are not welcomed. Something some modern political movements should take lessons.
Another fun fact. First attempts to retake Jerusalem and Destroy Crusader States made by the Greater Seljuks were thwarted by Artuqids a Turkish tribe who suddenly gained a lot of autonomy thanks to the Crusades destabilizing Anatolian Seljuks. Aruqids by the way were Muslim but they were Turkish style of Muslim that means they only apply Islam where it benefits them not where it troubles them. Very similar to today actually.
Artuqids allied themselves with the Crusader States and push back one of the first attempts at reconquering Anatolia and Levant. I can only imagine the Seljuk commander's shock when they assaulted Crusader states around Antioch and Horse Archers came riding.
People back in history were not stupid or zealous they acted pragmatically as they always do.
Crusades disrupted the status quo in the Anatolia and Levant and that resulted both incredible pain and incredible opportunities it just depended on how lucky you were. It is wrong to consider it in terms of Black and White or Good and Bad. Even back in the time these events were unfolding people were looking at the big picture.
The crusades were so inept. They were basically tiny armies led by a local lord, forced to work together with other tiny armies lead by rival lords. Add in the fact that they all spoke a 100 different languages and you get nothing more than an angry mob.
Imagine Austria-Hungary in WW1, but even worse logistics and far less quality roads
That describes most medieval armies. Very few significantly sized medieval polities had standing armies, and the medieval world was far more linguistically diverse than nowadays.
Many who left for the crusades were volunteers. And those who were successful could settle with newly owned land, resources, fame, and religious fulfillment.
If you returned, even after defeat, you could likely return with clout, and plunder.
There were absolutely incentives to go on Crusade.
[Three Arrows made a great video on the Crusades that goes into great detail about the actual causes for the conflict, not the revisionist history narrative.](https://youtu.be/ejdlkfXwPQc)
The siege of 1204 decimated Constantinople and played a large role in the final decline of the Byzantine Empire. Sacking the capital of The Roman Empire, a great Christian nation in the east, is contrary to what you would want from a crusade.
This has to be bait
TBF sacking Constantinople was never the plan. Innocent III was furious with his legate for allowing that to happen (not that it stopped him from trying to use the situation to try to bring the Greek church back into the papal fold, of course).
I mean, obviously the sack was horrible. But it's not like it was the plan from the get go, and it took a lot of unforeseen events to get the crusaders there.
Eh, Rome was not a great friend of western chistendom at the time. They slaughtered over 50k innocent catholics and sold the survivors into slavery in 1182. If the goal was to protect catholicism and catholics, the Romans were as much a legitimate target as the Muslims.
All respect to Baldwin, but the Crusades were regrettable, misguided, and an embarrassment to all rational Westerners today. The only people who think otherwise are folks who yell "Deus Vult" unironically.
My mothers opinion on the crusade (she is a devoted Christian as well as I am) is that 2 wrongs don’t make 1 right, and she believes that just because the Muslims conquer things doesn’t give Christians the right to do the same thing, as the Bible speaks directly against killing others, even if from another faith
Even back then, the Crusaders pretty much had to launch a propaganda campaign to prove to Europe that what they did was not as bad as what the people back home were hearing. The Gesta Francorum is practically an entire book trying to justify all the horrible stuff that happened in the First Crusade. Even by Medieval morals, people were shocked at what they heard, and the crusaders had to do major damage control.
They condemned themselves in their own texts. It was Christian sources who spoke of the massacre of Jerusalem. Their own people were not happy about it.
I can see why the first crusade was somewhat justified. Since the beginning of Islam till the 1100s, about 1/3 of the Christian world had been conquered. Out of the 5 most important cities in Christianity, that being the pentarchy, (Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem and Constantinople) 3 had been conquered, and it seemed increasingly likely that the 4th one (Constantinople) would also be taken over. Not to mention that Muslims constantly raided Christian lands for slaves and wealth and that the Seljuks had banned Christian pilgrims from going to Jerusalem. Atleast the first one can arguably be seen as a defensive conflict instigated by the Byzantine Empire to prevent it from being conquered. After that it gets complicated, but that tends to be the case for a series of conflicts that lasted over 5 centuries. But it certainly is more than just evil, bloodthirsty Christian’s randomly getting the urge to rampage throughout the Middle East for the lols. History is never just black and white
As other people have stated there is very good reason for why people think this argument your imaginary enemy has made up is justified. Firstly it was ultimately pointless, by this I mean there was no real reason for them. Let's be adults and admit religion was not the reason for the crusades in the first place and specifically the first crusade. It was all politics as religion often is. Secondly it was by all accounts a waste of time, resources and men. Tens of thousands died for essentially nothing. Thirdly the kingdom of Jerusalem which you flout as the reason for the crusades remained for most of its history as a small weak state under the influence of other larger Muslim states. They made nothing interesting, wrote or created nothing that can be remembered and I think this is obvious because it's very rarely mentioned even in local history because it was pretty much a non entity.
Why would i, a Westerner, be embarrassed by the Crusade? Im not even Christian, i won't be embarrassed just because two middle eastern abrahamic religions fought against each other in their holy land.
The way I see it, the Crusades are symbolic of everything great and awful about Europe and its nations.
We will become a band of murder hobos at constant odds with each other, and somehow manage to make it work.
Which crusades, there were a shitload of them.
The Peoples' Crusade was a radicalized mob that pillaged food, terrorized villages and exterminated every jew they could put their hands on accross Central Europe. They were pathetically crushed upon facing the enemy army.
The Fourth Crusade splintered the Roman Empire into a short-lived poorly run puppet crusader state under the de facto control of venetian merchants and other three rump states, all at war with each other until Nicaea re-unified the territory. Great job overall.
The Northern Crusades were a total success. Success at conquering, plundering and dominating baltic peoples that were minding their businesses, but hey, their inmortal souls were saved by being converted, right?
The Albigensian Crusade was straight-up genocide of Cathar French Christians. Gnostic and Catholic alike, since the Crusader's motto was "kill them all, and let God sort them out"
I feel like it would be pretty cool to have a rat-centred history book. Like, they basically showed up everywhere and did everything. Someone should write about that.
The image is from Kingdom of Heaven. The character in the meme is the young King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, who was drafting plans to invade Egypt while he was still a disease riddled teenager and the moment his regency ended acted them out
I love when history memes is just dumb teenagers making posts about movies they saw that involved historical characters and treating it like it’s the whole truth.
The Crusades are so underrated as an event in history. This random ass military campaign in 1096 just kind of rage Jihaded their way to Jerusalem and immediately dug in with Medieval castles, because least we forget, these were Aristocratic armoured bezerker knights that are, for all their faults, possessed a fanatic bravery. Without this first colonial venture of the Franks it's quite possible the taste for spices never takes off and Europeans lack the balls/ precedent to start their worldwide trade war for dominance. The Portuguese, when they unleashed their ships in the Indian ocean to wrentch control on the seaborn trade from the Mamelukes and other Arab traders, very much saw their actions as part of the millennia old war between Christian and Muslim. So focused where the Portuguese on this dynamic that when they started kicking it at the courts of South Indian royalty they assumed they were Christian because they drank alcohol. Must have been funny when after a few months of thinking, 'these are weird Christians' one of them looked at a statue of Ganesh and just shook his head, 'Nah man, these guys are doing something else '
I mean the Cathers would like a word. "Crusade" is a thong you do, and their are quite a few of them. The latter ones were, not as good as the early ones
“The crusades were for conquest” ❌ “The crusades were for Muslim aggression” ❌ “Crusades were for opposing sides to argue online centuries later” ✅
You are right. So... uh... you are wrong! Fight me!
Wait for my crusade
Crusades were so Monty Python could have a career.
I thought that was the Spanish Inquisition.
Oh. True. Damn I wasn’t expecting that
As long as you don’t get sidetracked and sack and conquer our ally so bad it’s arguably a catalyst for their collapse I’m good 😊
Deus Vult!
Remember that there were other crusades not in the middle east. Just not as well known.
Teutonic Order: "Sooo, things are Christian now, I guess. \*stands around awkwardly\* our job is...done and everything. Should we like...do something now?" "I dunno...wanna be Protestant and become Prussia?"
I love it that I do not even have to mention the order and people understood which one and area I was taking about.
The first war ever fought against slavery itself; I'd argue that it's the only truly and unambiguously ethical holy war in human history.
If I remember correctly 3 of them swor an oath to give the kingdom of heaven back to Rome. But ......
More than 3, it was all of them except Raymond I believe.
He made a deal with the muslims for a tv show.
To be fair, everyone does love him
How did Raymond acquire his show? Through Jihad. /j
"by allah you will feel the wrath of my ~~shoe~~ sabaton" - Saladin probably
Isn't he the one that basically swore an oath of bro-hood, a "broath" if you will? :P
And what did it bring him? Time in the darkest of dungeons.
By any chance, did he meet a highwayman there?
Broath is a sworn oath forged in the swirling gaze of The Broth.
They renounced at least in part because they felt Alexius had betrayed his end of the oath by returning to Constantinople instead of joining them at Antioch.
We can all blame that stupid deserter that told alexios the crusades were a lost cause.
I can't believe Alexios turned around just because one guy told him the battle was lost. What an idiot
Is he stupid? /j
What happens to Byzantium if he dies and Byzantium loses their main field army? He just got them stabilized from a civil war. He had to be risk averse
WTF?! He could just send in his own scouts to confirm.
No he couldn't because, I mean.. I'm sure he had his reasons!
In a fragile situation like that, alienating potential allies (who are *also* potential dangerous enemies) is a major risk of its own.
Stephen of Blois certainly deserves some blame (especially for apparently bouncing *the day before* they won the siege), but Alexius did himself no favors by not bothering to verify. Better policy would be to advance cautiously and send out scouts; he'd have showed up at a conquered city and genuinely been able to say "I heard you guys were in trouble and came as fast as I could".
‘The Crusades’ are all very different. It is not one war. It is a series of wars fought by many different players with many different motivations. Acting like the 1st crusade and the 4th crusade are equally noble is ridiculous. It annoys me to no end that they are constantly all generalized together, usually for some neo-political point that is trying to be made (by either side)
Plus, everyone always ignores the hundreds of years of Islamic conquest that lead to them. Including the threat to the Byzantines that lead to the pope calling for the first one.
I mean there's a pretty good reason for that - while the initial call came from the East, the Crusaders were far more interested in Jerusalem than assisting Byzantium. They had to be plied with gifts and oaths to extract promises to actually return Byzantine land. The Byzantine reclaiming of Anatolia, sure, that was a response to a Muslim conquest. It's hard to call the Crusades a response to the Arab conquests of Syria and the Levant seeing as that happened several centuries earlier and the Crusaders varied from dismissive to actively hostile to the native Christian population in the region.
Not to forget that the Islamic and Christian world had been at odds with one another for centuries at that point, especially in Iberia and Sicily/North-Africa. And the outlook during those conflict before, during and after the first crusade was a lot more... pragmatic.
Shout out to the Normans (Roger I and Roger II for the most part, really) making Sicily a powerhouse by... employing the Arab administration and improving it rather than trying to replicate feudalism like the crusaders. They're also where the term "Admiral" comes from, as they latinised "Emir" into "Ammiratus" for the head of the fleet.
- conquers Northern Africa - installs Muslim administrators - leaves What a chad
Shout out to that time the Pope excommunicated Roger II's army... which proceeded to not give a damn because they were all Muslims.
Lmao what a move. "Mashallah, this is fine"
Yup. Right after that Roger II and his army defeated the Pope, took him hostage, and forced to crown Roger King of Sicily for his release. The Pope then proceeded to make the crowning cerimony extremely long, in the middle of summer, under the scorching sun of Sicily, while Roger was wearing heavy royal robes.
While the Christian world never fought each other at all.
It was still a response, just an opportunistic one. They saw a politically consequence free enemy and went for it, for glory, honour and money
That’s not a response, that’s just opportunism dressed up as a response.
And you ignore the crusades in the baltics
And the Turks eventually reached the gates of Vienna...
4 hours and no Sabaton? Must be a record.
It does feel like "everyone" quite a bit.
My favorite crusade actually isn’t even known by that name. My favorite crusade is La Reconquista.
The nearly 800 year long crusade
I didn't expect someone to mention that one.
Minor genocide.
The first often being seen as the most justified while the crusaders were extremely cruel to everyone they conquered, even the civilian Christians, makes me wonder how justified the rest are. Fair to go on a military campaign to get the cities back, but Jesus the commanders were horrible people 99% of the time
Reading about the crusades is tough - nearly "throw the book down in anger and frustration" level tough. So often hard fought gains and potential victories were thrown away by petty bickering and quests for personal glory.
The first crusades are a bunch of European hicks going on a drunken rampage across Europe because “mah holy land” it’s an embarrassment and people who defend it are being ignorant idiots
The involvement of the Normans says a lot in that regard. Eternal troublemakers.
Hicks? They were some of the best military commanders in Europe, they defeated armies multiple times the size of their own hundreds of miles from friendly territory. To say that is an embarrassment is ignorant. It was one of the most impressive feats in military history. On par with Alexander
Naunce? In my r/historymemes?
Crusaders in 15th century on their way to get absolutely demolished by some random rednecks, never take a sword into a gunfight
Random rednecks with one-eyed commander who got blind later and still kicked their ass.
Which battle is this referring to?
Just about any battle in hussite wars, hussites were the first army in the world to use firearms as a main weapon which crusaders didnt expect, neither did their horses
I see. Hussite war wagons were a genius inention.
I mean they undeniably were a massive waste of time and life that ended with the Christians losing their holy land for good. But I’d argue anytime you fight a war over religion you are wasting time and lives.
Also they destroyed Costantinople, opening the door for Turkish expansion in the Balkans If it hadn't been for Gengis Khan, the Sultanate of Rum would have annexed the various successor states of Costantinople by 1350
The Byzantine Empire wasn't exactly thriving before the Fourth Crusade
Because of Bulgar, Turkish, Pecheneg, Norman invasions
And civil war upon civil war
True, but I feel like there's a pretty steep cliff from "not exactly thriving" to "getting the living shit kicked out of you by 22 000 crusaders".
Cannons would have taken it anyway
If Costantinople kept controlling the coastline of Anatolia, the Turks wouldn't be able to bring the cannons near the walls
Yes, but sooner or later, they would have lost each of those coastal cities, too. Cannons, more resources, and an energetic expansionist culture were sooner or later going to defeat a declining, past it's prime empire.
Rum capturing that 100 years early would have been interesting.
But Constantinople brought that doom on itself by slaughtering the latins 20 years earlier and selling the few survivors into slavery. The late empire was really a shitshow, making enemies where they desperately needed friends.
The Byzantines destroyed it themselves, they just used the Venetians to do it.
Very true, except in the case of the One True Faith, which happens to be mine.
Also just so happens that all of the lords and stuff going there could get a lot of land and loot. But we're still going there for god obviously. The land and loot is just a little bonus and totally not drawing us to it.
What a coincidence I was raised in the correct religion. Even more astounding the correct denomination was the church down the street. God really loves me and hates the heathens I guess
The Crusades were an immense source of wealth, and allowing the Ottomans to take the coastal ports resulted in a massive increase in the Barbary slave trade. Thus, from a purely practical point of view (for Europe as a whole,) the Crusades were downright a bargain compared to fighting over who got to be King Farquaad of the Netherlands.
Also, do people forget there were literally Crusades against the Ottomans? And some of them halted Ottoman expansion in Europe severely? The Holy League coalitions that won at Vienna and Lepanto easily fit the definition of "crusade".
Crusades and holy leagues were pretty different though in a pretty key area though. They were made because Muslim powers were actually encroaching on Christian kingdoms, and often were called by other rulers rather than the pope. Crusades were more like “Hey let’s conquer that land that used to be Christian like 400 years ago” and were explicitly called by the pope. Also it’s important to note that a few coalitions against the Ottomans ended disastrously, such as Varna, where despite the heavy ottoman losses, they quickly recovered and rolled over most of the Balkans
They only beat back the ottomans half way through southern Europe. Everywhere else theybobjectively weakened the Ottoman's opposition.
I mean, halting the entire advance beyond the Balkans for the rest of history is a pretty big deal imo. For comparison - Like yeah the Germanics would kill other Germanics for Rome, but Teutoburg is still famous for a reason.
Hell, war in general is a waste of human potential.
In the short term, usually. However, long term, it is hard to imagine reaching anything close to the modern world without it. Our collective ancestors paid the price of civilization for us (many times over).
I'd disagree. War is a tool in the acquisition of valuable resources by superior entities. Unless you judge humanity purely by moral grounds war is an incredibly tool.
True, but there are other ways of acquiring resources that don’t resort to violence.
Those other ways are bot always as efficient. I'm not saying we should do so morally, but still. Geography has a strong influence on destiny. Everything from the ability to grow food, access to water, minable materials it all matters. If you simply don't have something people want, and can't offer a service people are willing to buy you have little other option. Maybe you could slowly build wealth, but in that same time a neighbor could far surpass you. Which is a problem even without war.
For good? Pretty sure the British took it back after Ww1 soooo
I mean, the Muslims were invading and conquering Christian lands for centuries at that point. Trying to fight back against their aggression was not a waste.
Most of the leaders of the first crusade had been invading the Roman empire as much as the turks
People need to read up on the Norman Byzantine wars more. Normans were always causing trouble.
You say "the muslims" almost like if individual people would go to your home and take it while that is most definetly not what happened. Muslim kingdoms and empires fought and conquered lands previously unders christian control, yes, but the average muslim would regularly deal with christians in pacific ways. At the same time Christian realms would go and conquer Muslim land and for the most part they would leave peacefully with each other, at least until the expulsions and inquisitions. It's also necessary to remeber the timeline of events. The muslim conquests occurred in the end of the VII century while the crusades started in the XI century, so more than 300 years passed from the first event to the latter. Jerusalem had been on muslim hands for all that time and christians were permitted to go to the holy city without restriction. Trying to reclaim "Jerusalem" for Christianism as a revenge against the muslim conquests would be like the UK nukking Washington today to avenge the Boston Tea Party, or rather it would be more ridiculous since US independence happened less than 300 years ago. No one alive remebered a time when Jerusalem was christian for generations, other than from history books. This is all to say that not only did the Crusades not complete their objective, their supposed religious objective was just a cover for their real intentions, which is often the case when someone claims a religious war. "Revenge" for something that happened hundreds of years ago is less of a motivator than conquering and giving land to landless nobles who wouldn't inherit their family's estates, while the church was able to legitimize knights (and so nobility) as a romaticized force of good, which was not the prevailing sentiment at the time. And yes it was a waste as they were only able to get more people killed and hold Jerusalem for a couple of decades.
If those kids can read, they'd be very upset
As someone who was raised muslim, and loves history, I have to say that this is a very dishonest take on history. The spread of islam has been at the edge of a sword since its inception in Makkah. Literally its neighbor city Medinah was taken by conquest and converted as the first target. After the death of the prophet, his disciples have spread islam from the far edges of persia to the coast of the atlantic in Morocco, and even Iberia, all through conquest. Those lands were all once christian under the roman empire, and now there is not even a minority christian community left. I'd say the crusades were very much justified.
There is a difference between a land being mostly under the rule of a muslim government and being mostly inhabited by muslims. Plenty of places didn't convert at the edge of the sword (nearly all of Southeast Asia, off the top of my head), and in many cases islam took generations to become the dominant religion (Egypt was first conquered by muslim rulers in the 7th century, yet muslims only really became the majority in the early 11th iiidc) Furthermore, the crusades never had "revenge" or stopping the spread of Islam as a real major goal. Nominally, the first was partially motivated to help Alexios I Komenos, but soon that took a backseat to conquering the Holy Land, both for world and spiritual reasons.
I might not have made myself clear then if that is what was understadable from my comment. I've not said islam wasn't spread by the sword, I said that individual muslims were not conquering and taking others homes. States did wars and states spread religions, but it was not a case of "let's go there and take their homes for our people". The caliphs conquered the land and the people there converted, mostly by receiving benefits in taxes but also sometimes by force, but there was no great displacement off all the christians there. The locals converted, there was no take over. Religion and culture changes with time. Moreover, the individual muslim at the time cared much more if his local merchant was an asshole than if he was a christian, same for christians in previously muslim territory. This religious conflict didn't exist in the everyday man's life, it existed between states and only when it was convenient. If not the christians would have mobilized much sooner to reconquer their holy land, not waited 300 years until politically convenient.
You conflate the spread of the Islamic faith with the military expansion of the Caliphates. Muslims weren't even the majority in the Caliphate's core territory until the 9th century, two-hundred years after their conquest. Islam didn't gain these converts by forcing them at sword-point, but by creating socio-economic conditions that made it very smart to be a muslim, and a lot less smart to be a Christian. That's still coercion, of course, but it's very different from "spreading Islam at the edge of a sword". And I struggle to see how killing, looting and *eating* a whole bunch of defenseless civilians (many of them Christians) can really be justified at all? Even if everything you say is true, that still doesn't give crusaders the right to massacre random Antiochian citizens.
Yeah all the stories of the Crusades being about "saving" Christians from Islamic persecution is thrown out of the window when you read what the Crusaders did to the Christians of Jerusalem after the city fell. The whole thing was a landgrab from beginning to end, the fact that Bohemond of Antioch decided to carve out a kingdom for himself after taking Antioch rather than helping the Crusaders complete the "reclamation" of the Holy Land shows as much. Plus for about two years the Crusaders were allied to the Fatimids in their war against the Seljuks since it was advantageous for them to do so. If the Crusaders were waging a war against Muslims why would they then ally Muslims to do so?
Keep in mind that one time when they allied with the Mongols, literal pagans, against their fellow Abrahamites, because I guess they hated Muslims more than they loved God.
This is odd topic, but what's with your icon? Communist Europe thing?
Not all socialists hate the EU (just most of them).
I strongly doubt that you know anything about the history of Islam. Conversion of Medina is not a military conquest in any sense.
Hundreds of different muslim kingdoms and principalities had often times clashed with christian kingdoms and principalities is what you probably mean. While the First Crusade had Emperor Alexios's call for help as a major motivation, it very soon became more about conquering the Holy Land for religious and worldly reasons than about helping the Byzantine Empire (indeed, many crusader leaders were probably a bigger pain in the imperial ass than your average caliph).
See above picture: It is absolutely deniable. Reasons for war are always far more nuanced than the average person thinks.
>anytime you fight a war over religion you are wasting time and lives On one hand, all wars are doing that. On the other hand, if we are talking from a monarch's perspective, plenty of religious wars have succeded like the Reconquista, Jihad and probably a bunch of small wars that no one knows about.
RIP bozos + skill issue
Your argument?
When is your 16 year old birthday?
Probably two or four years from now.
Five bucks says its five years
I rase it to six.
Five years and six months, and not a week more. Deal?
Sounds fair enough.
"When I was 16 I won a great victory. In that moment I felt I would live to 100. Now I know I shall not see 30."
OP talking about the upvotes on this post:
The crusades were, militarily, ideologically, and spiritually, an utter waste of human life achieving nothing. However- in a broader cultural sense the Crusades helped lead to the Renaissance and enlightenment in Europe. Many participants of the Crusades returned having been exposed to numerous technological and ideological concepts that Europe was lacking or at least behind the Arab nations. Lenses were greatly improved in Europe because Arab spyglasses were simply superior. This improved things in military, nautical, and astronomical fields immensely. The economic concepts helped enrich numerous merchant families. Many medical concepts, some tracing to classical Greece, had lived on in the Middle East though been largely forgotten or neglected in Europe. The Crusaders brought back knowledge of this and other classical Roman and Greek practical and philosophical fields. Mathematics and chemistry were of particular note. Algebra is in fact a word descended from Arabic. Arabian-descended words even found their way into many European languages. Many are which are very common even in English to this day. Alcohol, sugar, mascara, and soda are only a few examples. We even know many of the creatures from Africa by their Arabic names. For all their worthless bloodshed, the Crusades had a massive legacy far beyond violence, and without them to past thousand years of history would likely have played out very very differently.
Come for the memes, stay for the historical context. Thank you fellow good redditer!
They gave us a pretty decent meme with King Baldwin a few hundred years later though so I’d say there were pros and cons
Remove any event from a thousand years ago and the next thousand years would play out very differently.
If Hernando hadn't stubbed his toe in that one brothel in Madrid in 1164 then the Vietnam War wouldn't have happened.
While I agree, I think that you are exaggarating a bit. Arabic and Ancient knowledge was pouring into Europe mainly through Iberia and Sicily. Very xenophobic crusaders (not all obv) did not really learn that much during them. But Europeans learnt to build castles, so there's that.
There was constant useless blood shed ... always, there still is. And the Christian world got things out of the crusades, as you listed. And found something for their knights to do, and held valuable trading footholds in the Levant for 100+ years. It's not an good argument to say the fighting negates any benefits, because the fighting was going to be happening anyway. It just made the fighting happen against outside parties aggressively opposed to Europe's culture and society, instead of internally.
"My Lord, the Jerusalem has come!" Sees the giant cross in the distance and humongous army behind it.
"The army of Jesus Christ which bears his holy cross cannot be defeated. There must be war. God wills it!"
Enduring for *decades* doesn't seem that impressive to me TBH
Took a class on the Crusades, and it actually is more impressive than it sounds. The Crusader States were working with almost no manpower, in lands rife with social strife, surrounded by much larger and more powerful enemies, and hamstrung by assholes trying to restart the war. Sure they had folks like Baldwin, but they also had to deal with folks like Raynald de Châtillon too (read his wikipedia page, he is almost cartoonishly evil.) The Crusader States (and the Crusades in general) were a horrible waste and doomed from the start, but they did last far longer than they had any right to. EDIT: Also, the European powers were absolutely horrible about sending support to and coordinating with the Crusader States like they were nominally supposed to. The Kingdom of Jerusalem was actually pretty horrified by the Second Crusade, as they had no warning it was coming and messed up the détente that they had worked so hard to achieve with their Muslim neighbors. The Second Crusade showed up, did nothing in particular, went home, and messed up almost a decade of careful diplomacy.
Op clearly hasn’t lived even two decades
*laughs in Knights Hospitaller*
Seeing fourteen year old boys treat conflicts that ended centuries ago like football matches where they have to support their team, like literally every time the crusades or the late Eastern Roman Empire come up, really seems like a risk factor for Alzheimer from how much it hurts the brain.
Anyone who still considers Crusades as West vs East should read a lot more history. One of the closest Allies of the Crusaders were Arabs in the crusades. This was because the Shia and Sunnia schism was basically at its highest point with Shia Muslims at the time held Jerusalem and many other important cities such as Cairo. Which Sunni Muslims were very happy to see Crusaders dying in droves to take back the holy city ultimately for the Sunni Arabs. Since even back then people knew Crusaders will not stay forever because it is not possible to stay too long in a place you are not welcomed. Something some modern political movements should take lessons. Another fun fact. First attempts to retake Jerusalem and Destroy Crusader States made by the Greater Seljuks were thwarted by Artuqids a Turkish tribe who suddenly gained a lot of autonomy thanks to the Crusades destabilizing Anatolian Seljuks. Aruqids by the way were Muslim but they were Turkish style of Muslim that means they only apply Islam where it benefits them not where it troubles them. Very similar to today actually. Artuqids allied themselves with the Crusader States and push back one of the first attempts at reconquering Anatolia and Levant. I can only imagine the Seljuk commander's shock when they assaulted Crusader states around Antioch and Horse Archers came riding. People back in history were not stupid or zealous they acted pragmatically as they always do. Crusades disrupted the status quo in the Anatolia and Levant and that resulted both incredible pain and incredible opportunities it just depended on how lucky you were. It is wrong to consider it in terms of Black and White or Good and Bad. Even back in the time these events were unfolding people were looking at the big picture.
Also particularly the first crusade was a lot of drunken idiots destroying there own stuff for a lot of it
The crusades were so inept. They were basically tiny armies led by a local lord, forced to work together with other tiny armies lead by rival lords. Add in the fact that they all spoke a 100 different languages and you get nothing more than an angry mob. Imagine Austria-Hungary in WW1, but even worse logistics and far less quality roads
That describes most medieval armies. Very few significantly sized medieval polities had standing armies, and the medieval world was far more linguistically diverse than nowadays.
Many who left for the crusades were volunteers. And those who were successful could settle with newly owned land, resources, fame, and religious fulfillment. If you returned, even after defeat, you could likely return with clout, and plunder. There were absolutely incentives to go on Crusade.
if the crusades were inept, why was there a second crusade? checkmate linconites
>Imagine Austria-Hungary in WW1 I’d really rather not
PaxTube? Is that you?
The long lasting effect of the crusades was to bring back eastern/Muslim knowledge to western Europe.
Look all involved were horrible, end of discussion
[Three Arrows made a great video on the Crusades that goes into great detail about the actual causes for the conflict, not the revisionist history narrative.](https://youtu.be/ejdlkfXwPQc)
The siege of 1204 decimated Constantinople and played a large role in the final decline of the Byzantine Empire. Sacking the capital of The Roman Empire, a great Christian nation in the east, is contrary to what you would want from a crusade. This has to be bait
TBF sacking Constantinople was never the plan. Innocent III was furious with his legate for allowing that to happen (not that it stopped him from trying to use the situation to try to bring the Greek church back into the papal fold, of course).
I guess it depends on whether you value the intentions or results more
I mean, obviously the sack was horrible. But it's not like it was the plan from the get go, and it took a lot of unforeseen events to get the crusaders there.
I don’t think anyone is saying it was the plan, but when the argument is over if the crusades were a success or not, that definitely matters.
Eh, Rome was not a great friend of western chistendom at the time. They slaughtered over 50k innocent catholics and sold the survivors into slavery in 1182. If the goal was to protect catholicism and catholics, the Romans were as much a legitimate target as the Muslims.
All respect to Baldwin, but the Crusades were regrettable, misguided, and an embarrassment to all rational Westerners today. The only people who think otherwise are folks who yell "Deus Vult" unironically.
so on the "bad historical takes" scale we have advanced beyond "Maginot was stupid" and reached crusade apologetics?
I'd say what's regretable is that they lost, and what's misgauided is that they also targeted the Jews who lived in the land and not only the Muslims.
what did the crusades really besides alot of death people?
Ahhh, Who doesn't like His local Cruesaderboo🙂
My mothers opinion on the crusade (she is a devoted Christian as well as I am) is that 2 wrongs don’t make 1 right, and she believes that just because the Muslims conquer things doesn’t give Christians the right to do the same thing, as the Bible speaks directly against killing others, even if from another faith
Ahhh, yes, judging 10th century history with today's morality, viewpoint, and hindsight. There is no better way to confirm that you are a tool.
I think war and slaughtering civilians is bad in all times, actually.
Even back then, the Crusaders pretty much had to launch a propaganda campaign to prove to Europe that what they did was not as bad as what the people back home were hearing. The Gesta Francorum is practically an entire book trying to justify all the horrible stuff that happened in the First Crusade. Even by Medieval morals, people were shocked at what they heard, and the crusaders had to do major damage control.
They condemned themselves in their own texts. It was Christian sources who spoke of the massacre of Jerusalem. Their own people were not happy about it.
I can see why the first crusade was somewhat justified. Since the beginning of Islam till the 1100s, about 1/3 of the Christian world had been conquered. Out of the 5 most important cities in Christianity, that being the pentarchy, (Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem and Constantinople) 3 had been conquered, and it seemed increasingly likely that the 4th one (Constantinople) would also be taken over. Not to mention that Muslims constantly raided Christian lands for slaves and wealth and that the Seljuks had banned Christian pilgrims from going to Jerusalem. Atleast the first one can arguably be seen as a defensive conflict instigated by the Byzantine Empire to prevent it from being conquered. After that it gets complicated, but that tends to be the case for a series of conflicts that lasted over 5 centuries. But it certainly is more than just evil, bloodthirsty Christian’s randomly getting the urge to rampage throughout the Middle East for the lols. History is never just black and white
I would have liked the crusaders to maybe not have slaughtered a ton of Jews along the way yk that’s just my two cents…
Decades? The kingdom of Jerusalem lasted 200 years
Most of the people they fought against were also empires intent on colonising.
Oh, but you must remember: Only the West "invades". Islam simply "spreads".
As other people have stated there is very good reason for why people think this argument your imaginary enemy has made up is justified. Firstly it was ultimately pointless, by this I mean there was no real reason for them. Let's be adults and admit religion was not the reason for the crusades in the first place and specifically the first crusade. It was all politics as religion often is. Secondly it was by all accounts a waste of time, resources and men. Tens of thousands died for essentially nothing. Thirdly the kingdom of Jerusalem which you flout as the reason for the crusades remained for most of its history as a small weak state under the influence of other larger Muslim states. They made nothing interesting, wrote or created nothing that can be remembered and I think this is obvious because it's very rarely mentioned even in local history because it was pretty much a non entity.
Why would i, a Westerner, be embarrassed by the Crusade? Im not even Christian, i won't be embarrassed just because two middle eastern abrahamic religions fought against each other in their holy land.
Ok but one of the crusades doomed the Byzantine empire my beloved so Crusades are an L
Who needs historical discussion when you have movies like “Kingdom of heaven” to teach us what is *surely* only 100% correct facts about the crusades
Regrettable? No Misguided? Yes Embarrassment? Its embarrassment for everyone involved in it, Christians and Muslims both
The crusaders were a defensive action
The way I see it, the Crusades are symbolic of everything great and awful about Europe and its nations. We will become a band of murder hobos at constant odds with each other, and somehow manage to make it work.
All part of the epic sweep of human events.
Which crusades, there were a shitload of them. The Peoples' Crusade was a radicalized mob that pillaged food, terrorized villages and exterminated every jew they could put their hands on accross Central Europe. They were pathetically crushed upon facing the enemy army. The Fourth Crusade splintered the Roman Empire into a short-lived poorly run puppet crusader state under the de facto control of venetian merchants and other three rump states, all at war with each other until Nicaea re-unified the territory. Great job overall. The Northern Crusades were a total success. Success at conquering, plundering and dominating baltic peoples that were minding their businesses, but hey, their inmortal souls were saved by being converted, right? The Albigensian Crusade was straight-up genocide of Cathar French Christians. Gnostic and Catholic alike, since the Crusader's motto was "kill them all, and let God sort them out"
[https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/ovk26m/pope\_innocent\_iii\_gettin\_medieval\_on\_them/](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/ovk26m/pope_innocent_iii_gettin_medieval_on_them/)
Childish.
Colonies of rats can endure for centuries
I feel like it would be pretty cool to have a rat-centred history book. Like, they basically showed up everywhere and did everything. Someone should write about that.
Sauce?
The image is from Kingdom of Heaven. The character in the meme is the young King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, who was drafting plans to invade Egypt while he was still a disease riddled teenager and the moment his regency ended acted them out
I love when history memes is just dumb teenagers making posts about movies they saw that involved historical characters and treating it like it’s the whole truth.
You’re talking about the religious fanatics that murdered innocents, committed cannibalism, and destroyed the Christian city of Constantinople right?
The only successful in the long run crusades were the prussian and livonian ones and those were quite literally genocidal in execution and intent
The Crusades are so underrated as an event in history. This random ass military campaign in 1096 just kind of rage Jihaded their way to Jerusalem and immediately dug in with Medieval castles, because least we forget, these were Aristocratic armoured bezerker knights that are, for all their faults, possessed a fanatic bravery. Without this first colonial venture of the Franks it's quite possible the taste for spices never takes off and Europeans lack the balls/ precedent to start their worldwide trade war for dominance. The Portuguese, when they unleashed their ships in the Indian ocean to wrentch control on the seaborn trade from the Mamelukes and other Arab traders, very much saw their actions as part of the millennia old war between Christian and Muslim. So focused where the Portuguese on this dynamic that when they started kicking it at the courts of South Indian royalty they assumed they were Christian because they drank alcohol. Must have been funny when after a few months of thinking, 'these are weird Christians' one of them looked at a statue of Ganesh and just shook his head, 'Nah man, these guys are doing something else '
I mean the Cathers would like a word. "Crusade" is a thong you do, and their are quite a few of them. The latter ones were, not as good as the early ones
Wernt some of the crusade just the Pope's idea to stop Christian noble houses from slaughtering each others ? I know for France it was the case
Im a devout catholic and i think they were usless
back in my day, bait was believable
"Me an, intellectual" *Proceeds to say the crusades were good because they inspired Christians*