Johnston R.A. All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World

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in 1190 with the intent to restore the Holy Land cities to Crusader con-

trol. King Richard I of England, King Philip of France, and large numbers

of the nobility of Europe joined in a procession toward Antioch. The king

of Germany, who was also crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope in

1155, also joined them. His name was Frederick Barbarossa (Red-Beard),

and he had gone on the Second Crusade as a young man. The army massed

by these kings and barons was the largest army yet seen in Europe.

After defeating Saladin’s nephew in a battle in Asia Minor (Turkey), King

Frederick drowned while crossing a river. The duke of Austria and the count

of Thuringia led the remaining German knights to Acre, where the kings of

England and France, with the archbishop of Canterbury and the counts of

Champagne, Blois, and Clermont, joined them. The Crusaders were victo-

rious at Acre, but King Richard threw down the banner of the duke of Aus-

tria, which caused a serious offense. Both the Austrian duke and King Philip

of France went home; King Richard remained as supreme commander. The

Crusaders took the cities of Jaffa and Ascalon from the Muslims but could

not break a stalemate with Saladin. Jaffa changed hands several times, and

Jerusalem remained in Muslim control. Richard ﬁ nally negotiated a truce

with Saladin in 1192: the Christian nobility kept control of coastal cities,

Christian pilgrims could visit Jerusalem safely, and the truce would last for

ﬁ ve years. Although King Richard’s progress home was slowed by captivity

in Austria and Germany, the Third Crusade was over.

The Fourth Crusade was called to regain Jerusalem, and it was led by the

counts of Blois, Champagne, and Flanders. In 1201, they headed east. Al-

though the shipping powerhouse of Venice promised to take the Crusading

armies to the Holy Land, the Crusaders could not make the full payment.

The doge, ruler of Venice, proposed that, as partial payment, they might help

attack the competing port of Zara. Although the Crusader leadership could

not agree on this, they did sack the city of Zara for Venice. A Byzantine prince

approached them with a request to attack Constantinople in order to put

him on the throne. While some of the Crusaders quit, the rest attacked Con-

stantinople. The new emperor was murdered a few months later, in 1204,

and the Crusader army again attacked the city and took control. They looted

Constantinople, although it was a Christian city and capital of the Eastern

Roman Empire. Treasures, gold, and holy relics were carried off. The Fourth

Crusade ended with the count of Flanders crowned emperor; Venetians

seized coastal cities and islands and took over half the city, and Frankish

knights took control of most of Greece.

The Fifth Crusade was called in 1213 by Pope Innocent III, but it was

disorganized. King Andrew of Hungary arrived in Palestine in 1217, helped

build a fortress near Haifa, and returned home. Pelagius, the Pope’s repre-

sentative, led an army of bishops, French counts, and English earls against

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Egypt in 1218. They occupied the Egyptian city of Damietta and waited

for the German emperor’s arrival, but instead, a smaller army came with the

duke of Bavaria, and the Egyptians met their advance and defeated them by

opening ﬂ oodgates so that the plain became a lake. The Fifth Crusade, led

by a papal legate with no military experience, was a complete failure.

A few years later, in 1228, the German Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II

fulﬁ lled his earlier vow to go on Crusade. Raised under the guardianship and

tutoring of Popes, Frederick had become very secular and irreligious. The

emperor’s expedition became the Sixth Crusade. When the Pope excommu-

nicated him en route, he simply kept moving and carried out his mission

without the Pope’s permission or blessing. In Acre, he kept up a friendly

correspondence about philosophy with Sultan al-Kamil of Egypt, Saladin’s

nephew. Neither wanted war; eventually the Sultan returned Jerusalem to

the Christians without a battle and agreed to a 10-year truce.

In 1244, Khorezmian Turks, hired by Egypt against a Crusader-Damascus

alliance, took Jerusalem. The defensive force of Christian knights was de-

stroyed when the army of Damascus deserted the battle. The Seventh Cru-

sade was an attempt to take back Jerusalem again. In 1248, King Louis IX

of France marched with his brothers, vassals, wife, and children toward Pal-

estine. He landed at Acre but recaptured the Egyptian city of Damietta in

an attempt to secure Palestine from Egyptian threat. His army was badly

defeated and also suffered from dysentery. Louis remained in Acre for an-

other four years, as the de facto King, and then returned to France with his

family.

The Eighth Crusade also involved Louis IX, but it was preceded by two

major changes in regional power. These changes marked the end of a Chris-

tian or Latin kingdom in Palestine. First, during the Seventh Crusade, the

sultan of Egypt was overthrown by his slave army, the Mameluks. Second,

the Mongol Tartars began their push into the West. A Mongol army sacked

Baghdad in 1258 and then took Damascus and Aleppo. The Mameluk sul-

tan met the Mongols near Nazareth with a large army and defeated them.

The Egyptians proceeded to take all the Christian fortresses in the region,

except for Acre. King Louis IX again took the cross in 1267, and his army

sailed to Tunis, where they captured Carthage. Before they could continue

to Egypt, the king died in 1270, and the Crusade ended. Krak des Cheva-

liers in Syria, the largest Crusader castle, fell to the Mameluks in 1271, and

the Christians now held only a few coastal cities.

The last Holy Land Crusade, the Ninth, was short. Prince Edward of

England, later King Edward I, led a small force to Palestine and succeeded

in achieving a 10-year truce with the Mameluk sultan that protected the

city of Acre. However, the Mameluks were not content with partial domi-

nation of the region, and, in 1287, they took the last port of the former

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principality of Antioch. In 1288, they broke a truce and secretly attacked

Tripoli, razing its city and fortress to the ground. In 1291, the fortress of

Acre gave way to siege tactics that collapsed its main defensive towers, and

the city was abandoned in chaos. The remaining Crusader fortresses soon

followed, and the Crusader kingdoms were no more.

European Crusades

While the Holy Land Crusades were the most important and prominent,

Popes declared other Crusades. First, they gave indulgences to anyone who

would help ﬁ ght their European military foes. Then, beginning in 1208,

there were full-scale Crusades fought entirely within Europe. The name

Crusade became less relevant as the goals became less justiﬁ able. The idea

of a holy war came to mean any military action supported by the Pope, with

no connection to the safety of pilgrims.

In 1208, Pope Innocent III proclaimed a Crusade against the Albigen-

sian (or Cathar) believers of southern France, in Provence and the county

of Toulouse. A representative of the Pope had been murdered in the re-

gion, but the growing strength of the Cathar region had been a concern for

The best-preserved Crusader castle is Krak des Chevaliers in Syria. The outer walls’

ﬁ nal form belonged to the conquering Turks, but the inner towers and buildings are

entirely European. Gothic arches support a chapel roof and simple stone tracery

outlines windows in the great hall. The very large castle was like a small town within

the walls. (Steve Estvanik/Dreamstime.com)

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some time. The count of Toulouse governed independently from France,

and many Albigensians had fortresses and walled towns. A large army led by

England’s Simon de Montfort and the abbot of Cîteaux invaded Toulouse.

They besieged towns and were often indiscriminate in their slaughter. In

the town of Béziers, most of the inhabitants were killed, both Roman Cath-

olics and Cathars. The region’s culture and military strength were broken,

and the count of Toulouse willed his territory to France as part of a peace

treaty.

Even before this, German knights proclaimed their own Crusades against

the still-pagan people on their eastern borders. Beginning in 1147 against

the Wends, they conquered and converted the Prussians, Livonians, Es-

tonians, and other now-forgotten groups between Germany and Poland.

Swedes, Danes, and Poles sent troops at times. Other Crusades led by the

Teutonic Order of Knights defeated the Stedingers, a group of excommu-

nicated Frisian farmers, and tried to attack the Eastern Orthodox nation of

Russia. The Pope supported some of these endeavors with ofﬁ cial procla-

mations.

Beginning in 1420, Crusades were proclaimed against early Protestant

reformers in Bohemia. They were followers of Jan Hus, who was convicted

of heresy and burned by a church council in 1415. The First Bohemian Cru-

sade, led by a would-be king of Bohemia, ended with the Hussites trium-

phant and in control of Bohemia. With the Pope’s backing, German princes

launched several campaigns against the Hussites, and each one was termed

a Crusade. In 1436, the new king, Sigismund, and the Hussites signed a

peace treaty that agreed to some reforms of the Catholic Church in Bohemia.

The Bohemian Crusades were not similar to the original Holy Land Cru-

sades; they were both a civil war and a precursor to the wars of the Reforma-

tion in the following century.

The Inﬂ uence of the Crusades

At their peak, the Crusader kingdoms maintained ﬁ ve large ports in the

Eastern Mediterranean: Tripoli, Haifa, Acre, Tyre, and Beirut. Before the

ports were reconquered by Muslim troops in 1291, they were centers of

trade between the West and the East. They served as points of contact

with Africa and Asia. Traders from as far away as the Himalayas and China

brought jewels and porcelain. The number of goods available in Europe (to

those who could afford them) skyrocketed during the time of the Crusader

kingdoms.

Beginning with the nobility of the First Crusade, Europeans intermar-

ried with Byzantine Christians and Arabs. They learned Arabic and Greek

and took up new customs. The nobility of the Holy Land sent daughters

back to Europe as wives of kings. The Western and Eastern cultures began

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to mix more. European identity itself widened and began to include the far-

off lands that had formerly been considered Byzantine. There was a grow-

ing exposure to new ideas.

Crusaders started new styles in armor, such as wearing a surcote over

chainmail. They marked themselves with the cross, the original design of

some of Europe’s modern ﬂ ags. They were further inﬂ uenced by Eastern

styles that were more suited to the hot weather. The turbans and robes that

came back to the heartland of Europe changed high fashion and brought

in more ﬂ owing sleeves and longer trains.

By coming into contact with Byzantine fortress-building techniques, the

Europeans carried home methods and plans for building large stone castles.

Their castles in the Holy Land were among the best and most famous me-

dieval castles; the ruins of many still stand. Their castles were not just around

Jerusalem, but held strategic points in Lebanon, Syria, Moab, and Asia Mi-

nor (modern Turkey). Masons who traveled with the kings and knights came

home with new architectural ideas. Eventually, masons began using the

pointed arch they had seen in some Eastern buildings, which permitted the

Gothic building revolution.

The monastic ﬁ ghting orders began in the Holy Land. The Knights of the

Temple became the record-breaking charity of choice for European nobil-

ity, since giving to the Templars seemed to guarantee forgiveness for sin.

The Templars’ wealth enabled them to become the bankers of Europe, a step

toward international ﬁ nance. Similarly, the Crusaders’ close ties with the sea-

based powers of Venice and Genoa drew trading and banking within Europe

more closely together.

Financing the Crusades proved ruinously expensive to the noble families

of Europe. Although trade increased, they did not directly proﬁ t. Both in

donations and in land pledges for cash advances, the Crusades greatly in-

creased the land holdings of the Catholic Church. Fund-raising by the First

Crusade’s nobles increased centralized royal power because some sold cities

to the king. Fund-raising by later Crusading kings developed new forms of

taxation and new structures of bureaucracy to collect these taxes.

See also: Armor, Banks, Monasteries, Ships, Weapons.