The Crusades lasted about two hundred years from 1095 to about 1295 and were designed to ‘liberate’ Jerusalem and the Christian Holy Places from the control of Muslim rulers. Although there were later military adventures or social movements which called themselves crusades, they either petered out or were diverted to other targets. Historians squabble over whether there were seven or eight or nine crusades.
Muhammed
632 Muhammed dies.
637 Muslim armies besiege and take Jerusalem from the Byzantines.
The Great Schism
1054 Eastern and Western Christianity finally split after years of drift, crystallising into the Eastern Orthodox church based in Byzantium and the Roman Catholic church based in Rome, their respective followers known as Latins (or Franks) and Greeks.
1063 King Ramiro I of Aragon murdered by a Muslim and Pope Alexander II offers an indulgence (forgiveness of all sins; go directly to heaven) to anyone taking arms to revenge this crime.
1064 to 1066 – A group of about 7,000 Germans, some heavily armed, travel to Jerusalem and back unhindered.
1073 Pope Gregory VII helps organise an army against the Muslims in Spain, promising any soldier he can keep the land he seizes.
1095 Byzantine Emperor Alexios I sends an ambassador to Pope Urban II asking for military help against the growing Turkish threat (in fact the fast-expanding Great Seljuk Empire). Urban sees an opportunity to reassert Western control over the East and starts preaching a new idea: anyone who takes up arms and travels to liberate the Holy Land under the order of the Pope will go to heaven. Killing the infidel will no longer require penance: it will be a penance.
The First Crusade 1096 to 1099
1096 Easter. Peter the Hermit led a mass of maybe 20,000 people to set off to the Holy Land. As they moved through Germany they sparked off a series of massacres of Jews in every town and city. Having reached the Byzantine Empire they were ambushed by Muslim forces and only about 3,000 survived. Official crusader armies departed Europe August and September 1096.
1097 Siege of Antioch until June 1098. Crusaders massacre the Muslim inhabitants and loot the city.
1099 15 July – CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM The remnants of the army enter/liberate Jerusalem, massacre native Muslims, killing all the Jews, burning the synagogue, looting all the holy buildings. The chronicler claims some 70,000 were slaughtered and the streets piled high with corpses.
1100 On Christmas Day in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Baldwin of Edessa is crowned King of Jerusalem.
[1101 The Crusade of 1101, also known as The crusade of the faint-hearted due to the involvement of soldiers who had turned back from the First Crusade, was in three distinct groups of western soldiers, all of which were soundly thrashed by Seljuk Turks led by Kilij Arslan. As usual when the crusaders took Caesarea they rounded up all the Muslims into the Grand Mosque and massacred them all. And were then themselves beaten and killed by Kilij. The survivors eventually made it to Jerusalem, more as a pilgrimage than a military force.]
1109 The Franks sack the city of Tripoli after a five year siege, then rampage through it, burning the Banu Ammar library, the largest in the Muslim world, containing over 100,000 manuscripts.
1118 Baldwin dies, succeeded by his cousin, Baldwin II.
1124 Tyre falls to the Franks who now hold the entire cost from Egypt to Antioch.
1131 King Baldwin II dies and is succeeded by his son-in-law, Count Fulk of Anjou.
1122 to 1124 The Venetian Crusade A combination of religious fervour (it was sponsored by Pope Callixtus II) and commercial savvy, some 120 ships carrying over 15,000 men left Venice on 8 August 1122: they besieged Corfu to settle a commercial dispute; defeated a navy from Fatimid Egypt; besieged and took the sea port of Tyre, which became a Venetian trading centre, and on the way home ravaged various Greek islands, forcing the Empire to concede their trading privileges.
1135 Pope Innocent II’s grant of crusading indulgences to anyone who opposed papal enemies can be seen as the beginning of politically motivated crusades.
The Second Crusade 1145 to 1149
1144 King Fulk dies. Army of Imad ad-Din Zengi recaptures Edessa (modern Urfa), massacring the men and selling the women into slavery. Which leads Pope Eugenius III to call for another crusade, supported by various clerics, notably Bernard of Clairvaux.
1146 March 31 – Bernard delivers the first of many thundering first crusade sermons. In May and June armies from France and Germany led by King Louis VII and Conrad III set off.
[1147 A group of crusaders from northern Europe allied with the king of Portugal, Afonso I, retaking Lisbon from the Muslims.]
1147 October 25 – Battle of Dorylaeum: Conrad III and his army of 20,000 men was badly defeated by the Seljuk Turks led by Mesud I. The Germans abandoned the crusade and Conrad and the 2,000 survivors retreated to join the forces of King Louis VII of France.
1148 Louis and Conrad’s surviving soldiers besiege Damascus. It ends in complete defeat and a ruinous retreat. ‘St Bernard’s crusade ended in fiasco.’ (p.93)
1150 Louis and Conrad return home, failures.
The Wendish Crusade
1147 German knights attacked western Slavs on their border with a view to christianising them. Henry restarted efforts to conquer the Wends in 1160, and they were defeated in 1162.
[1172 Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, made a pilgrimage that is sometimes considered a crusade.]
Saladin
1169 Saladin – Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb – a Kurdish Muslim from Damascus, is in complete control of Egypt.
1169 to 1187 the campaigns of Saladin to unite the usually warring Arab kingdoms.
1180 King Baldwin IV negotiates a peace treaty with Saladin.
1185 24-year-old Baldwin IV dies, leaving the throne of Jerusalem to the eight-year-old Baldwin V.
1186 Baldwin V dies. The kingdom is weakened by complicated dynastic feuds which lead to Guy of Lusignan being crowned king.
1187 SALADIN RETAKES JERUSALEM Saladin led an enormous army of 30,000 into Palestine and inflicted a crushing defeat on the army of Jerusalem at the Battle of Hattin on 4 July. He took his time capturing all the surrounding towns and then retook Jerusalem on 29 September. In studied contrast to the crusader’s massacre and pogrom of 1099, Saladin enforces his army to respect the city and its inhabitants: not a building was looted, not a person harmed.
When Pope Urban III heard the news he died of a heart attack. On 29 October Pope Gregory VIII issued a papal bull calling for the…
The Third Crusade 1189 to 1192
1189 Frederick I ‘Barbarossa’, Holy Roman Emperor, commanded a vast army which sailed to Constantinople, then fought its way across Anatolia, winning battles but suffering from the heat and lack of supplies. Coming down the other side of the Taurus Mountains, Frederick went for a swim in the river Göksu and drowned. His disheartened troops turned back. Philip II of France, and Richard I of England led their armies on to the Holy Land.
1190 Pre-Crusade pogroms of Jews spread across England climaxing in a particularly violent massacre of Jews at York in March.
1191 Richard the Lionheart captured Cyprus from the Byzantines, then recaptured Acre and Jaffa. But they ran out of food before reaching Jerusalem which he knew, anyway, he didn’t have the force to hold.
1192 Richard negotiates a treaty with Saladin allowing Christian pilgrims free passage, then sails home. ‘Jerusalem would never again be captured by crusaders.’ (Crusades p.151) In Palestine Richard had had a big argument with Leopold of Austria. Now, travelling overland back through Leopold’s territory, Richard was identified and arrested. Leopold handed him over to the Emperor Henry VI who held him in prison for a year before a vast ransom could be organised to buy his freedom.
1193 Saladin dies worn out.
1199 Richard dies of gangrene from an arrow wound at an insignificant siege in Aquitaine.
The German Crusade
1197 Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor, fulfils a promise to his father. Led by Conrad of Wittelsbach the army landed at Acre and captured Sidon and Beirut, but when Henry died most of the forces returned to Germany.
The North European Crusade
1193 Pope Celestine III called for a crusade against Northern European pagans and his successor Pope Innocent III issued a papal bull declaring a crusade against the pagan Livonians. Bishop Berthold of Hanover led a large army against them, during which the Christian settlers found the city of Riga, although Berthold was himself killed in battle in 1198.
1201 Albrecht von Buxthoeven established Riga as the seat of his bishopric in 1201.
1202 Albrecht formed the Livonian Knights to convert the pagans to Catholicism. The Livonians were conquered and converted between 1202 and 1209.
1217 Pope Honorius III declared a crusade against the Prussians.
1226 Konrad of Masovia gave Chelmno to the Teutonic Knights in 1226 as a base for the crusade.
1236 The Livonian Knights were defeated by the Lithuanians at Saule.
1237 Pope Gregory IX merged the remainder of the troops into the Teutonic Knights as the Livonian Order.
1249 The Teutonic Knights completed their conquest of the Old Prussians. They then conquered and converted the Lithuanians, a process which lasted into the 1380s. The order tried unsuccessfully to conquer Orthodox Russia.
The Fourth Crusade 1202 to 1004: the Sack of Constantinople
1199 Pope Innocent III began preaching the Fourth Crusade in France, England, and Germany. The two military leaders Doge Enrico Dandolo of Venice and German King Philip of Swabia had their own political agendas and when the enterprise turned out not be able to pay the Venetian fleet, they decided to conquer and loot Constantinople instead.
1202 They seized the Christian city of Zara prompting Innocent to excommunicate them.
1203 Easter – the army set sail for Byzantium.
1204 The army entered Constantinople and enacted the complicated plot to put Prince Alexius IV on the throne. Alexius had promised wild amounts of money in return but turned out to be unable to pay. Alexius was murdered in a palace coup; the blind old emperor died; the coup plotter announced himself emperor. All this made it easier for the Latins and their Catholic leaders to give the go-ahead for a devastating sack of the city, which spread out of control to unbridled looting, massacring, churches pillaged and thousands murdered in the streets.
1205 Bulgars defeated the crusaders and remaining Greeks at Adrianople. The devastation of Byzantium permanently weakened the Eastern Empire, didn’t bring its church under Latin rule, as the Pope dreamed, and probably benefited Venice most, which seized control of commerce in the empire.
The Albigensian Crusade 1208 to 1229
1208 launched to eliminate the Cathars of Occitania (present-day southern France) lasted for decades and led to Northern French domination of the South. In July 1208 the crusaders took Béziers and massacred every man, woman and child. When soldiers asked the Abbot how they could avoid killing ‘true’ believers, he replied:
‘Kill them all. God will know his own.’
Mindset of terrorists throughout the ages.
[1221 Pope Honorius III asked King Andrew II to put down heretics in Bosnia. Hungarian forces answered further papal calls in
1234 and 1241. This campaign ended with the Mongol invasion of Hungary in 1241.]
The Fifth Crusade 1213 to 1221
1215 Pope Innocent III called the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215. It was at this mass assembly of bishops and cardinals that ‘heresy’ was defined, ‘inquisition’ formalised, Jews were ordered to wear special clothing and Innocent announced his new crusade.
1216 Innocent III dies.
1217 Duke Leopold VI and Andrew II arrived in Acre but failed to assert their power and left.
1219 The remaining forces besieged Damietta in Egypt and captured it in November 1219. But further plans were blocked by the Arab leader Ayyubid Sultan Al-Kamil and the crusaders were forced to surrender and hand back Damietta.
The Sixth Crusade b.1228
1228 Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, after being repeatedly threatened and eventually excommunicated by Innocent’s successor, Pope Honorius III, for his delays, finally landed at Acre.
1229 RESTORATION OF JERUSALEM – However, both sides being reluctant to fight, Frederick agreed a peace treaty with Al-Kamil which allowed Latin Christians to rule most of Jerusalem and a strip of land along the coast, with the Muslims controlling their sacred areas in Jerusalem. Frederick had himself crowned in the Holy Sepulchre and declared himself the mouthpiece of God. Frederick returned home to find the Pope had organised armies to invade his realm.
1238 Frederick tried to extend his lands into northern Italy and Pope Gregory declared a crusade against him. ‘The Holy War was now being preached not against the ‘infidel’, not even against a heretic – no such charge was made against Frederick – but against a political enemy of the Pope.’ (Crusades p.181) Crusade had become degraded to a purely secular concept.
1239 A force led by King Theobald I of Navarre arrived in Acre in September. Defeated in battle in November, Theobald negotiated another treaty with the Ayyubid Sultan Al-Kamil.
1244 The Destruction OF Jerusalem
The Ayyubids invited Khwarazmian forces whose empire had been destroyed by Genghiz Khan’s Mongols, to reconquer the city. It fell July 15, 1244 and the Khwarezmians completely razed Jerusalem to the ground, leaving it in ruins.
1244 An Arab force led by al-Salih Ayyub seized Jerusalem.
The Seventh Crusade 1248 to 1254
1245 to 1250 King Louis IX of France organized a vast army, set sail in 1248 and landed in Egypt in June 1249. In a series of battles they were defeated, and in 1250 Louis was captured and ransomed for 800,000 bezants, and a ten-year truce agreed.
1254 Louis withdrew to Acre, now the only Crusader territory of any significance, which he built up again until his money ran out in 1254 and he had to return to France.
[1256 The Venetians were evicted from Tyre, prompting the War of Saint Sabas over territory in Acre claimed by Genoa and Venice. The war dragged on for a decade during which both Christian sides allied with Muslim forces and most fortified buildings in Acre were destroyed.
1266 Louis IX’s brother Charles seized Sicily and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean with a view to restoring the Latin empire by reconquering Byzantium.]
The Eighth Crusade 1270
1265 The ferocious Mameluk Sultan Baibars ibn-Abdullah had captured Caesarea, Nazareth, Haifa, Safed, Toron, and Arsuf.
1268 Baibars captures Antioch and massacres its entire population.
1270 These events inspire King Louis IX of France to sail to Tunis with a large fleet and impressive army. However it was the height of the Saharan summer, the army was devastated by disease and Louis died. Thus ended the last major attempt to take the Holy Land.
The Ninth Crusade 1272
1270 The future Edward I of England had travelled with Louis. He sailed with his forces to Acre in May 1271. His forces were small and he was unable to alter the existing peace treaties between Baibars and King Hugh of Jerusalem.
1272 Edward learned of his father’s death.
1274 Edward I returns to England to take up his crown.
1277 The fearsome Baibars dies.
The last crusade
1281 Election of a French pope, Martin IV who threw himself behind the campaigns of French king Charles I. His ships were at Sicily when the Emperor of Byzantium conspired to provoke the ‘Sicilian Vespers’, an uprising during which the crusader fleet was abandoned and burnt.
1287 King Charles I dies, allowing Henry II of Cyprus to reclaim Jerusalem.
These kinds of struggles are typical of the endless disunity and conflict among the Roman Christians which continually undermined efforts to hold the Holy Land. In this two hundred year period the papacy, far from creating the kind of total control over Christendom which Innocent and Urban dreamed of, had become just one among a hectic throng of nationalist kings and princes all fighting each other. The papacy had lost all its moral authority. Thus:
1284 The Crusade of Aragon was called by Pope Martin against Peter III of Aragon, Peter supporting anti-Angevin forces in Sicily, Martin supporting Charles of Anjou.
1298 Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed a crusade against Frederick III of Sicily (Peter’s younger brother).
The end of the Crusader states
1291 A group of pilgrims from Acre was attacked by Muslim forces and in retaliations killed some innocent Muslim merchants. The Sultan demanded compensation from the king of Acre and, when none came, used it as a pretext to besiege and then capture the city. Men, women and children were massacred: prisoners were beheaded. Acre had been the last independent Crusader state in the Holy Land and its fall signified that – The Crusades had ended.
Non-Holy Land ‘crusades’
1365 The Alexandrian Crusade Peter I of Cyprus captured and sacked Alexandria for mainly commercial reasons, killing as many Christians as Muslims and Jews.
1390 The Mahdian Crusade Louis II led a ten-week campaign against Muslim pirates in North Africa. After a siege the crusaders signed a ten-year truce.
1396 Crusade against the Ottomans led by Sigismund of Luxemburg, king of Hungary which was defeated by the Ottomans in the Battle of Nicopolis.
1420s The Hussite Crusades military action against the followers of Jan Hus in Bohemia from 1420 to about 1431. Crusades were declared five times during that period: in 1420, 1421, 1422, 1427, and 1431.
1440s Crusade against the Ottomans Polish-Hungarian King Władysław Warneńczyk invaded recently conquered Ottoman territory, reaching Belgrade in January 1444. Negotiated a truce with Sultan Murad II. The Ottomans won a decisive victory at the Battle of Varna on 10 November, and the crusaders withdrew. This left Constantinople exposed and it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.
John Hunyadi and Giovanni da Capistrano organized a 1456 crusade to lift the Ottomon siege of Belgrade.
1487 Pope Innocent VIII called for a crusade against the Waldensians in the south of France but little military activity followed and it had no effect…
Sources
- The Crusades Wikipedia article
- Crusades by Terry Jones and Alan Ereira
- A History of Christianity by Paul Johnson
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