The Crusades Crescent and the Cross. pt 1 of 2 [Full Documentary]
The First Crusade was the most successful from a military
point of view. Accounts of this action are shocking. For example, historian
Raymond of Agiles described the capture of
Jerusalem by the
Crusaders in 1099:
Some of our men cut off the heads of their enemies; others shot them with arrows, so that they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting them into the flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city. It was necessary to pick one's way over the bodies of men and horses. But these were small matters compared to what happened at the temple of
Solomon, a place where religious services ware ordinarily chanted. What happened there?
If I tell the truth, it will exceed your powers of belief. So let it suffice to say this much at least, that in the temple and portico of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins.
http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/bible/crusades.stm
What was the legacy of the
Crusades?
Williston Walker et. al. observes:
Viewed in the light of their original purpose, the Crusades were failures. They made no permanent conquests of the
Holy Land. They did not retard the advance of
Islam.
Far from aiding the
Eastern Empire, they hastened its disintegration. They also revealed the continuing inability of
Latin Christians to understand
Greek Christians, and they hardened the schism between them. They fostered a harsh intolerance between Muslims and Christians, where before there had been a measure of mutual respect. They were marked, and marred, by a recrudescence of anti-Semitism
....
There were seven major Crusades. The era the Crusades the first began in 1095 with
Pope Urban II's famous speech and the ended in 1291 when
Acre, the last of the
Latin holdings in
Palestine, was lost. The major Crusades were:
the first, 1095-1099, called by Pope Urban II and led by
Peter the Hermit,
Walter the Penniless,
Godfrey of Bouillon,
Baldwin and
Eustace of
Flanders, and others (see also first crusade);
the second, 1147-49, headed by
King Louis VII who was enlisted by
Bernard of Clairvaux, was a disastrous failure, including the loss of one of the four Latin
Kingdoms, the Duchy of
Edessa;
the third, 1188-92, proclaimed by
Pope Gregory VIII in the wake of the catastrophe of the second crusade, which conducted by
Emperor Frederick Barbarossa,
King Philip Augustus of
France and
King Richard "Coeur-de-Lion" of
England;
the fourth, during which
Constantinople was sacked, 1202-1204 (see also fourth crusade);
the fifth, which included the conquest of
Damietta, 1217-1221;
the sixth, in which
Frederick II took part (1228-29); also Thibaud de
Champagne and
Richard of Cornwall (1239);
the seventh, led by
St. Louis (
Louis IX of France), 1248-50