History Online - Crusades

To begin to answer the question, "What were the Crusades?" one must first consider the history of Europe and the Middle East in the millenium before 1095.

Beginning in the first century A.D., the religion known as Christianity arose in Palestine and spread rapidly throughout the Roman Empire. By the end of the fourth century, the Roman Empire had become officially and primarily Christian, as a result of peaceful missionary activity from within society (later church, or canon, law in fact forbade forced conversions). Jerusalem, Palestine and Syria, all within the boundaries of the Roman Empire, became predominantly Christian (the Jewish population of Jerusalem had been largely dispersed by pagan Roman authorities following the Jewish anti-Roman revolts of A.D. 66-70 and 132-135, and few Jews remained in the area).

In the seventh century A.D., the religion known as Islam arose in the Arabian peninsula. Like Christianity, Islam officially condemned forced conversions. But unlike Christianity, Islam instructed its followers to ensure that the world was under the political control of the Faithful. Hence Islam's political domination could be, and was, spread by the sword.

Carried on the backs of Arab cavalry, Islam burst out of Arabia and quickly took control of the Middle East. Byzantium and Persia, the two powers in the area, were exhausted by prolonged conflict with each other. Persia was completely defeated and absorbed into the Islamic world. The Middle Eastern armies of the Christian Byzantine Empire were defeated and annihilated in 636, and Jerusalem fell in 638. Through the rest of the seventh century, Arab armies advanced inexorably northwards and westwards.

By the early eighth century Arab forces had reached the Straits of Gibraltar, and in 711 they crossed into European Spain and shattered the armies of the Christian Visigoths. By 712 they had reached the center of the Iberian Peninsula, and by the 730s they were raiding deep into the heart of France, where Charles Martel met and defeated their most ambitious raid near Tours around 732. This was to prove their high water mark in the West.

For the next 300 years Christians and Muslims engaged in a protracted struggle, including the siege of Constantinople by the Arabs in 717-18, and the seizure of Sicily and other Mediterranean islands in the ninth century by the Muslims. In the tenth century the Byzantines made some limited gains along the periphery of the now-shrunken Empire, but did not retake Jerusalem.

In the middle of the eleventh century the Arabs were displaced as leaders of Islam by the Turks, who converted to Islam even as they conquered the Arabs. The Turks disrupted the area's political and social structures and created considerable hardships for Western pilgrims. Up till now most Arab rulers of the area had been fairly tolerant of Christian interest in the Holy Places (one notable exception was the "Mad" Caliph Hakim at the beginning of the eleventh century, who destroyed churches and persecuted Jews and Christians). By the second half of the eleventh century, most pilgrims were going to the Holy Land only in large, armed bands, groups who look in retrospect very like crusade rehearsals.

The Turks also posed a new threat to the Byzantines. In 1071 the Turks met and crushed the Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert, near Armenia. As a result the entire heartland of the Empire, in Asia Minor, lay open and defenseless, and the Turks soon established themselves as far west as Nicaea, just across the Bosphorus from Constantinople. In the same year the Normans in southern Italy, led by Robert Guiscard, defeated the Byzantines at Bari and drove them off the Italian mainland.

The Imperial Byzantine crown was briefly contested following Manzikert and Bari; the successful claimant was Alexius Comnenus, a capable soldier and a clever diplomat. Perceiving that the Empire was deprived of its primary recruiting grounds and breadbasket, he sent out desperate calls for help to the West, particularly to the pope. Gregory VII briefly considered leading an expedition eastwards himself in support of the Byzantines. However, he was too preoccupied both by the Investiture Controversy with the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, and by the growth of Norman power under Robert Guiscard in southern Italy, to respond in any meaningful way.

Alexius continued to appeal to the West, however, and in the spring of 1095 Pope Urban II allowed Byzantine delegates to address the Council of Piacenza, and he gave his sanction to those nobles who were inclined to respond. He then proceeded into France, attending to various church business. By November he was in Clermont, and it was here that he gave a speech which caught the imagination of the West. It is hard to know exactly what Urban had in mind when he called for expeditions to the East. We have various texts of his speech; none agree exactly, but it seems unlikely that Urban envisaged waves of Frankish peasants travelling to Jerusalem. Alexius had called for large contingents of mercenaries, particularly Normans, to come and take service in the Byzantine Army. Urban probably had something a little more elaborate than that in mind--among other things, he probably hoped that an expedition to the East, carried out under papal leadership and comprised of noblemen from across western Europe, would boost his position in the ongoing Investiture Controversy with the Holy Roman Empire.


Proud knights in the Crusades would march towards forgiveness of their sins, filled with greed. Bloodshed was worth it, dying was worth it. Marching towards Jerusalem with victory in their eyes, they would take anyone who stood in their way of victory. In Jerusalem they never stopped killing the Muslims. That was the Crusades of the Middle Ages.

In the year 1095, people were shocked in Western Europe by the words of Pope Urban II, "The Muslims have conquered Jerusalem". The Muslims forbade Christians and pilgrims to come to Jerusalem to pray. Pope Urban wanted the Christians to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims. People shouted "God wills it". All over France these were the words of the Christians.

The French, German, and Italians were the European Christians that went on Crusades. The word Crusade meant "a war of the cross". During the first Crusade (1095-1097) most of the knights died of hunger, thirst or disease. When they got to Jerusalem they slaughtered anyone they could find. They took vows before going on a crusade. Sometimes during a crusade a knight would forget his vows and ride off or live in the village closest by.

In a Crusade there were pilgrims who were going to pray in Jerusalem, groomers that cleaned the horses, wives and children of the knights, and two kinds of knights: a mounted knight who rode on a horse and a foot soldier who walked on foot. Some of the knights went on Crusades to get rich or to steal a new home from the people they were fighting, but most of the knights went to get healed of their sins. Richard the Lion Heart (or Richard the I of England) was a famous general in the Crusades. The fourth Crusade (1199-1204) started off with a tournament against the Turks in France but the Crusade ended in tragedy. Pope Innocent III wanted the Christians to go and kill the Muslims. Most of the armies that went were already half destroyed by the Turks. They didn't reach Jerusalem. After the first Crusade (1095-1097) Godfrey, a general, ruled Jerusalem till he died in 1099. His brother Baldwin ruled starting Christmas day. All together there were six Crusades in a period of 176 years. The Crusades lasted from 1095 until 1271.

When the knights were attacked in a Crusade they used huge siege weapons. The ballista was the simplest weapon. It was like a giant crossbow that could shoot arrows a distance of 350-450 yards in length. The mangonel was called a wild donkey by the Romans. It was a medium range catapult. The trebuchet was the most powerful siege weapon. It was a catapult that could fling rocks long range. A battering ram was a log cut from a heavy tree. The battering ram got its name because the Romans said it looked like a ram. It was then tied onto a penthouse to protect the knight from arrows and it took twelve men to swing it. All these siege weapons were used to get into Jerusalem by the knights of the Crusades. Other knights would try to dig under ground and then set fire to the wall supports underground in hopes that the wall would collapse. Another way knights tried to get into Jerusalem was to put long ladders against the wall and trying to climb them without being pushed over or having boiling liquids poured onto them, or being killed by a knight on the wall. The knights also built huge staircases called ]siege towers that were pushed against the wall and the knights walked up the staircases. When they actually reached Jerusalem however, they waited awhile before attacking to starve their enemy, but it didn't work so they just attacked the Muslims. The knights captured towers built on the walls. When the knights got inside the walls of Jerusalem they killed any Muslim on the street, inside buildings, walking on the sidewalk, or just anywhere at all. Muslims rode ponies during war and they were in groups lead by an emir. Sometimes a feud or fight between the group members about who should attack first caused the groups to break up.