"Knight's castle in the Middle Ages" - Donjon. A spear. Chainmail. Tournament. Code of chivalry. Feudal dwelling. Feudal lords. The establishment of a feudal society. Feudal lord. In the knight's castle. Coat of arms. The dwelling of the owner of the castle. Lock. Let's work with the textbook. Knight.
"Knights and castles in the Middle Ages" - Statue of Giotto. The rise of wall painting. Miniature. Branle. Middle Ages. Printing press. Knight Tournament. Portrait of Giotto. Esau before Isaac. B. Thorvaldsen. Portrait of Johannes Gutenberg.
"Castles" - Equipment of the knight. Knight's code of honor. Usually the castle was built on a hill or a high rock. In the knight's castle. At first, castles were built of wood, and then they began to build from stone. Only after a long service distinguished themselves were knighted. Knight Tournament. The interior of the castle. A drawbridge was often thrown over the moat. Tournaments were arranged by kings and noble feudal lords. Knight - equestrian warrior.
"Medieval knights and castles" - How many pairs of skis were received by the store. The knights were sensitive to the preservation of their honor. Enemies had to climb the walls to get into the castle. Why were there many younger sons of feudal lords among the crusaders. Blitz tournament "In the knight's castle". Correct spelling of city names. The purpose of the first crusades was the liberation of the Holy Sepulcher. Visor. Large land owner.
"Knighthood" - Customs and mores. Chivalry. Horse warrior. Ritual of knighthood. Coat of arms. Stages of becoming a knight. Knight's emblems. Chainmail. Origins of medieval chivalry. Friedrich Nietzsche. courtesy. Components of the coat of arms. Lock.
"The Times of the Knights" - Chivalry. Many cities were formed: Berlin, Amsterdam, Moscow, which exist to this day. It seems that the huge cathedral is weightless. Polytheism, or polytheism, gave way to monotheism, monotheism. Middle Ages. New gods appeared, the old ones were forgotten. Initiation into the Knights. Tournaments. Mariners discovered America and Australia. With the development of society, people's beliefs have also changed. The Middle Ages are the time of knights and castles.
Prerequisites
in the east
However, since apostolic times, one negative feature has spread among Christians - “lukewarmness” (Rev. 3:16), manifested in the fact that some Christians began to believe that the Gospel contains commandments that are supposedly very difficult to fulfill, which not all of them “ can accommodate." For example, not everyone is able to distribute all their possessions to the poor (Matt. 19:21), (Acts 5:1-11), or not everyone is capable of strict celibacy (1 Cor. 7:25-40), (Rom. 8: 8), (2 Tim. 2:4). The same "optionality" extended to the above commandments of Christ about non-resistance to evil [source?].
The Crusades in the East against the Muslims dragged on continuously for two centuries, until the very end of the 13th century. They can be regarded as one of the most important stages of the struggle between Europe and Asia, which began in antiquity and has not ended to this day. They stand along with such facts as the Greco-Persian wars, the conquests of Alexander the Great in the East, the invasion of Europe by the Arabs and then the Ottoman Turks. The Crusades were not accidental: they were inevitable, as a form of contact, determined by the spirit of the times, between two different worlds not separated by natural barriers. The results of this contact turned out to be extremely important for Europe: in the history of European civilization, the Crusades created an era. The antithesis between the two worlds, Asian and European, which was vividly felt before, has become especially acute since the advent of Islam created a sharp religious opposition between Europe and the East. The collision of both worlds became inevitable, especially since both Christianity and Islam alike considered themselves called to dominate the whole world. The rapid success of Islam in the first century of its existence threatened a serious danger to the European Christian civilization: the Arabs conquered Syria, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain. The beginning of the 8th century was a critical moment for Europe: in the East, the Arabs conquered Asia Minor and threatened Constantinople, and in the West they tried to penetrate beyond the Pyrenees. The victories of Leo the Isaurian and Charles Martel saved Europe from immediate danger, and the further spread of Islam was stopped by the political disintegration that began soon after in the Muslim world, which until then was terrible precisely because of its unity. The caliphate was divided into parts that were at enmity with each other.
First crusade (1096-1099)
Fourth Crusade (1202-1204)
The idea of returning the Holy Land was not, however, finally abandoned in the West. In 1312, Pope Clement V preached a crusade at the Council of Vienne. Several sovereigns made a promise to go to the Holy Land, but no one went. A few years later, the Venetian Marino Sanuto drafted a crusade and presented it to Pope John XXII; but the time of the crusades has passed irrevocably. The Cypriot kingdom, reinforced by the Franks who fled there, retained its independence for a long time. One of its kings, Peter I (-), traveled all over Europe in order to raise a crusade. He managed to conquer and rob Alexandria, but he could not keep it behind him. The wars with Genoa finally weakened Cyprus, and after the death of King James II, the island fell into the hands of Venice: the widow of James, the Venetian Caterina Cornaro, was forced to cede Cyprus to her hometown () after the death of her husband and son (). Republic of St. Marka owned the island for almost a century, until the Turks took it from her. Cilician Armenia, whose fate since the first crusade was closely connected with the fate of the crusaders, defended its independence until 1375, when the Mamluk sultan Ashraf subjugated it to his power. When the Ottoman Turks established themselves in Asia Minor, transferred their conquests to Europe and began to threaten the Christian world with a serious danger, the West tried to organize crusades against them as well.
Reasons for the failure of the Crusades
Among the reasons for the unsuccessful outcome of the Crusades in the Holy Land, in the foreground is the feudal nature of the crusader militias and the states founded by the crusaders. Unity of action was required for the successful conduct of the struggle against the Muslims; meanwhile, the crusaders brought with them to the East feudal fragmentation and disunity. The weak vassal dependence, in which the crusader rulers were from the Jerusalem king, did not give him the real power that was needed here, on the border of the Muslim world.
In order to imagine this or that historical fact, one must first clearly understand its background. In November 1095, Urban II convened an ecclesiastical council in France, at Clermont, which was attended by 14 archbishops, 200 bishops and 400 abbots. The Council decided to organize a Crusade to the East - "for the sake of the liberation of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem."
So the bishops proclaimed the beginning of the crusade. Western Europe, which was under the constant threat of starvation and death from it (see European chronicles and read European fairy tales, not only folklore, but also, for example, the Brothers Grimm, Hoffmann and others), threw off part of its excess population. Landless peasants, impoverished knights, who had nothing in their souls, “except for ambition and a sharp saber,” rushed to the Eastern Mediterranean to look for a better life. Of course, at the expense of the local population. Their first destination was the Christian countries of Hungary and Bulgaria. Their "manners" can be judged by the fact that the Hungarian king (by the way, a Catholic, like the crusaders) later agreed to let them pass through his lands, only after taking hostages from their midst.
From 1096 to 1099 these crowds marched from Constantinople to Jerusalem. Along the way, they were everywhere "an example of high morality and virtue." An example of this is the description by one of the crusaders of the capture of the rich Syrian city of Maara. "In Maar, ours boiled pagans (the crusaders used the last word to call all their enemies - Muslims, Jews, various heretics, by which they understood Eastern Christians) in cauldrons, and put children on skewers, fried and ate," writes the Frankish chronicler Raoul de Kaen . "Faranj (the Franks, the Arabic collective name for Western Europeans) have superiority in courage and fury in battle, but nothing else, just as animals have superiority in strength and aggressiveness," wrote the Syrian aristocrat Osama. The Arabs will never forget about the "cannibalism" of the crusaders - a fact confirmed by the knight Albert d'Ex ("Our ate not only Turks and Saracens, but also dogs"). In the literature of those years, the crusaders are described as terrible cannibals. their seemingly natural allies - the local Christian population. Arriving here, including under the pretext of protecting Christians, the crusaders often exterminated them along with the Muslims. For example, in the city of Edessa, a significant part of which were Armenians, who at first welcomed of their co-religionists, the Armenian aristocracy was simply slaughtered by the “liberators” a little later.
Thus, by June 7, 1099, the remnants of the 300,000th detachment of the crusader army, instilling fear and horror in the local population, having lost more than half of their composition along the way, approached Jerusalem. According to the chroniclers, the Holy City with a population of 70,000 was guarded by a thousand Egyptian garrison, to whose aid local residents came.
The anonymous Italo-Norman chronicle of the 11th century “The Acts of the Franks and Other Jerusalemites” describes the capture of Jerusalem by the crusaders on July 15, 1099. “And so we approached Jerusalem on Tuesday, 8 days before the June ides. Robert of Normandy besieged Jerusalem from the north side, near the church of the first martyr St. Stephen, where he was stoned for Christ. Count Robert of Flanders adjoined the Duke of Normandy. From the west, the city was besieged by the dukes Gottfried and Tancred. From the south, fortified on Mount Zion, Count Saint-Gilles led the siege. On Friday, July 15, we rushed to the fortifications. There was such a massacre that ours were up to the ankles in blood. Other chroniclers, of course, from among the crusaders (the local population was completely exterminated, so they could not describe anything) mention mountains of severed arms, legs and heads, mockery of the bodies of the dead. The same chroniclers-witnesses report the fact of the murder of all the inhabitants - Muslims, Jews, Nestorian Christians.
Three states were formed - Jerusalem, Antioch and Edessa, headed by noble feudal lords - the leaders of the crusaders. But the neighboring Muslim rulers could not put up with such a neighborhood and acted as soon as possible to behave in relation to the newly appeared neighbor - a murderous maniac with a penchant for cannibalism. The fight against the crusaders was initially led by the emirs of Mosul from the Turkic Zangi dynasty - Imad ad-Din and Nur ad-Din. Later, this banner was picked up by their former commander of Kurdish origin, Yusuf Salah ad-Din ibn Ayyub (known in Europe as Saladin), who seized power in Egypt and abolished the Ismaili Fatimid dynasty there.
In 1187, the Muslim troops under the command of Salah ad-Din defeated the Crusaders near the Lake of Tiberias, after which Jerusalem was surrendered to the inhabitants under the terms of the agreement concluded between the victorious Muslims and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
October 2, 1187 Salah ad-Din enters Jerusalem. He orders: no massacre, no robbery. No Christian, Frankish or Oriental, should be offended. And the poor can leave without ransom. No ransom! Treasurer al-Asfahani is furious when he sees how the patriarch of Jerusalem takes out carts loaded with gold, carpets, jewelry: "We allowed them to carry away their property, but not the treasures of churches and monasteries. They must be stopped!" Salah al-Din refuses: "We must fulfill the agreements that we have signed. So Christians will talk everywhere about the blessings with which we showered them."
On the evening of October 9, at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the imam gives praise to God and "Salah ad-Din Yusuf, the son of Ayyub, who returned to this nation its trampled dignity." In the very mosque of Al-Aqsa, from the location of which the prophet Muhammad once made a journey to the seventh heaven, and which the crusaders of our time are stubbornly trying to destroy. The history of Al-Aqsa and its liberation has another significant meaning for Russian Muslims - the fact is that the majority of Salah ad-Din's troops were Mamluks. Mamluk divisions - Kipchaks and Circassians (the Circassians mean not only the Adyghes, but also the rest of the indigenous peoples of the North Caucasus), were formed from purchased slaves who were brought up as warriors. The main source of replenishment of the Mamluks were countless internecine wars that shook the steppes of Desht-i-Kypchak (from Altai to the south of modern Ukraine) and the mountains of the Caucasus. In the process of upbringing, these boys were not only taught to fight, they were given the necessary knowledge of Islam (our ancestors, with the exception of the Bulgars, were not yet Muslims then). Subsequently, not only military leaders and government officials, but also scientists and poets came out of the Mamluks. In a matter of years, the Mamluks seized power in Egypt and continued to rule this rich country with an ancient culture for many centuries. From them came the famous sultans Baybars and Kotuz, who stopped the advance of the Mongols and destroyed the crusaders.
And what about the crusaders? Some stayed. Their descendants are considered Lebanese and Palestinian Catholics. Some converted to Islam, and the descendants of those who adopted the religion that their ancestors fought against still live in this region. A lot of them left. Having once arrived in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria in search of a "better life", they completely forgot how to work. At the same time, one cannot deny them the ability to fight - this was their only craft. After the collapse of their states, they were forced to return to their historical homeland, to Western Europe. But even there, landlessness and poverty awaited them. Usually gangs of robbers and robbers are put together from such people ... The Pope found them a good use - he sent them on a new crusade - to the shores of the Baltic Sea, the lands of the Prussians, Balts, Finns and Slavs.
Ahmad MAKAROV
Crusades ... these words seem to us an integral part of the Middle Ages - meanwhile, in the Middle Ages such a term did not exist (it was introduced by historians of the New Age), and then they simply said about those who went to the Holy Land to fight the infidels - "accepted the cross" ... or they called them "pilgrims", just like those who went there on a pilgrimage - after all, the crusade was for medieval people a kind of pilgrimage - however, with weapons in their hands ...
How and why did it start?
In our time, they like to talk about greed and secular feudal lords, thirsting for rich booty and new possessions, about the need to call landless knights errant (read: robbers) to order ... yes, it also happened. But still, let's take a closer look at what happened in Palestine. After all, Christians also lived there ... what was their life like?
1009 year. Caliph Hakim ordered the destruction of all Christian churches, starting with the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, while Christians were obliged to constantly wear a copper cross weighing about 5 kg around their necks, and Jews to drag a calf-shaped chopping block behind them. True, in 1020 such outright persecution ceased (and the Byzantines restored the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in 1048), but it did not become much easier for Christians - both for those who lived there permanently and for those who went on pilgrimage ... however, the latter could it is easy to go into the category of the first: becoming a victim of robbers, one could lose all the money - and there was simply nothing to return home to (the same could happen with a prisoner released for a ransom).
However, such people still had to be grateful to fate - in contrast, for example, to the pilgrims led by Bishop Günther, who in the spring of 1065 fell victim to the attack of the Arabs. Those few of them who had weapons eventually gave up resistance, begging the leader for a truce - but this did not save them from reprisal ... This incident is remarkable only for the large number of victims - and there were many such cases. Those who were not killed could be sold into slavery. It was unthinkable to refuse pilgrimages - although it was not obligatory (like the Hajj for Muslims), nevertheless, every Christian of that time considered it his duty to touch the land that remembers the Savior ...
Information then did not spread as quickly as it does now - and yet news of such events reached the Christian world - and caused no less outrage than we do now - the murder of Russian children by American adoptive parents or the massacre of Kosovo Serbs. But then there was neither the UN nor international tribunals - and where we are waiting for some kind of reaction from international institutions, the man of the Middle Ages could only act. The immediate impetus for the beginning of the crusading movement was the invasion of the Seljuk Turks into Christian Byzantium - and the request of the Byzantine emperor for help (let's not forget that in the Middle Ages there was no national self-consciousness yet - and the place that national solidarity occupies in us was then occupied by religious solidarity).
In a word, when in 1095, at the cathedral in Clermont, Pope Urban II made his famous speech with an appeal to “hurry up quickly to the rescue of our brothers living in the East”, people who reached his call were by no means only a desire to rob ... There were also such, of course - but alas, a certain percentage of "human dirt" always sticks to any business - even the most noble.
One way or another, about 300,000 people took part in the First Crusade, which began in 1096. It was headed by the whole color of chivalry of those times: Raymond IV of Toulouse, brother of the French king Hugh de Vermandois, Duke of Normandy Robert Kurtgoz, Gottfried of Bouillon, Bohemond of Tarentum and his nephew Tancred. This very first campaign was, perhaps, the most successful: the crusaders defeated the Turks at Dorilei, captured Antioch (founding a Christian state there), helped the Armenian ruler Thoros to recapture the region of Edessa (although they did nothing to save Thoros during the rebellion - and Baldwin of Boulogne became the ruler of Edessa ... the county of Edessa lasted until 1144), and achieved their main goal - they took Jerusalem. To preserve the conquests, it was decided to appoint Gottfried of Bouillon as King of Jerusalem - but he did not consider it possible to accept the royal crown where the Savior received the crown of thorns, and limited himself to the title of "defender of the Holy Sepulcher". True, the subsequent rulers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (starting with Baldwin, brother of Gottfried) did not hesitate to call themselves kings ... In addition to the principality of Antioch, the county of Edessa and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, another Christian state was founded - the county of Tripolitan.
The failures began with the Second Campaign undertaken in 1147 after the fall of the Principality of Edessa, the main outpost of Christians in the East. This campaign was poorly organized, defeat followed defeat - and the only result of the campaign was the confidence of Muslims in the possibility of destroying Christians in the East.
Really hard times for Christians in Palestine came in 1187, when, through the “efforts” of the mediocre king of Jerusalem, Guido de Lusignan, the Christian army was defeated at Hattin, and then the Muslims captured several Christian possessions: Accra, Jaffa, Beirut and finally Jerusalem.
The response to these events was the Third Crusade (1189-1192), which was led by four powerful monarchs: Richard I the Lionheart, Frederick I Barbarossa, the French king Philip II Augustus and the Austrian Duke Leopold V. Their main opponent was the Sultan of Egypt and Syria Salah -ad-Din (known in Europe as Saladin) - the one who shortly before this defeated the Christians at Hattin and took Jerusalem. He was respected even by enemies - for such "knightly virtues" valued in Europe as courage and generosity to the enemy. And Saladin turned out to be worthy opponents: they failed to take Jerusalem ... they say that King Richard was advised to climb the hill from which Jerusalem is visible, but Richard refused: he believed that since he could not recapture the holy city, then he was not worthy to see him ... True, the crusaders managed to recapture Accra, which has now become the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In addition, another Christian state was founded - the Kingdom of Cyprus, which existed until 1489.
But perhaps the most shameful event in the history of the crusade was the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204). It all started with the fact that the Venetians, having promised to provide ships, at the last moment raised such a price for them that there was not enough money. On account of the debt, the Venetian Don Enrique Dandolo offered the leaders of the crusaders to render a service to Venice, namely ... to defeat Zadar - a city in Dalmatia (of course, Christian), which competed with Venice - which was done. We must pay tribute to Pope Innocent III - he excommunicated everyone who took part in this, but soon canceled the excommunication, leaving it in force only in relation to the Venetian instigators.
Then Alexei Angel, the son of the deposed Byzantine emperor Isaac Angel, appeared in the crusader camp and asked for help in returning the throne to his father. He promised a generous reward, and most importantly, the transfer of the Byzantine Church (Orthodox) under the authority of the papal throne. The question was left to the discretion of the pope, the pope - as a smart politician - reminded the crusaders of the main goal of their expedition, but did not say a firm “no” ... in the language of diplomacy, this meant “yes” - and the crusaders moved to Constantinople. In fairness, it should be noted that some leaders of the crusaders (in particular, Simon de Montfort - the one who is most often remembered in connection with the massacre of the Cathars and the phrase "Kill all - the Lord will distinguish his own") refused to fight the Christians (even if not Catholics) and withdrew their troops, but most of the crusaders were tempted by the promises of Alexei. Constantinople was taken, the throne was returned to Isaac. True, the blind, aged emperor no longer wielded real power...
However, Alexei had not much more than her. In any case, he could not fulfill his promises: firstly, the treasury turned out to be empty (through the efforts of an escaped usurper), and secondly, the subjects were by no means happy with uninvited rescuers ... In the end, Isaac would be overthrown again, Alexei would be killed - and the new the ruler did not want to deal with the crusaders. And then they decided that they would take their own.
A new assault on Constantinople followed, and then a barbaric robbery, accompanied by the massacre of civilians and outright sacrilege: neither the tombs of the emperors nor the temples were spared, where everything that was valuable was taken out (and the holy relics were simply scattered), mules were brought into the temples and horses to take out the loot. The mockery of Orthodox shrines reached the point that street girls were brought into churches and forced to dance naked on the holy thrones.
One can only guess how all this was explained to those ordinary participants in the campaign who went not to rob, but “for an idea” ... and if it was still possible to sew some kind of ideological lining on Constantinople - the fight against “Orthodox heresy” (however, as we already seen, and it didn’t “work” with everyone) - how was the defeat of Zadar explained to them?
It is probably not surprising that after these events in Europe they began to doubt that the reconquest of the Holy Land was possible - Christians became too sinful ... and only those who are sinless can do such a thing. And only children are sinless!
If the idea is worn, then there will certainly be someone who implements it ... 12-year-old shepherd Etienne saw in a dream Christ, who ordered him to go on a holy cause - the liberation of the Holy Land. Of course, there were adults who - as they would say now - “unwound” this case - and in 1212 the “army” of French and German teenagers set off. Many died on the way to the sea - and for those who reached it, the sea for some reason did not part (as expected). Merchants came to the rescue, providing ships to the young crusaders. But the merchants had their own plans: those children who did not die during the storm, they sold into slavery...
Subsequently, 4 more Crusades took place: in 1217, in 1228, in 1248 and 1270 - but the crusading movement did not manage to rise to the heights of the First Crusade: there were more and more strife between the crusaders themselves, less and less success in the Holy Land... The Saracens conquered the Christian possessions in the East one after another - and the final was the capture of Tripoli in 1289 - this meant the end of the Christian states in the Holy Land.
The Crusades in Europe further disgraced the very idea of the crusading movement: the crusades against the Slavs in the lands beyond the Laba River (now the Elbe) in 1147, the crusades in the Baltic states, Estonia, Finland - and, of course, to Russia (when with the crusaders Prince Alexander Nevsky successfully fought), as well as the Albigensian Crusade - when, under the pretext of fighting the heresy of the Cathars, the lands of Occitania were captured and plundered ...
The crusading movement would be most correctly characterized by one well-known saying of the time: “We wanted the best - it turned out as always” ... is it really the eternal fate of mankind - to vulgarize, dishonor and turn any idea into a complete opposite?
Crusades - an armed movement of the peoples of the Christian West to the Muslim East, expressed in a number of campaigns over the course of two centuries (from the end of the XI to the end of the XIII) with the aim of conquering Palestine and liberating the Holy Sepulcher from the hands of the infidels; it is a powerful reaction of Christianity against the power of Islam (under the caliphs) that was growing stronger at that time and a grandiose attempt not only to take possession of the once Christian areas, but in general to widen the limits of the dominance of the cross, this symbol of the Christian idea. Participants in these trips crusaders, wore a red image on the right shoulder cross with a saying from Holy Scripture (Luke 14, 27), thanks to which the campaigns got their name crusades.
Causes of the Crusades (briefly)
Performance in was scheduled for August 15, 1096, but before the preparations for it were over, crowds of ordinary people, led by Peter the Hermit and the French knight Walter Golyak, set off on a campaign through Germany and Hungary without money and supplies. Indulging in robbery and all sorts of outrages along the way, they were partly exterminated by the Hungarians and Bulgarians, partly reached the Greek empire. The Byzantine emperor Alexei Komnenos hastened to transport them across the Bosporus to Asia, where they were finally killed by the Turks at the Battle of Nicaea (October 1096). The first disorderly crowd was followed by others: thus, 15,000 Germans and Lorraine, led by the priest Gottschalk, went through Hungary and, having engaged in beating Jews in the Rhine and Danube cities, were exterminated by the Hungarians.
The crusaders set off on the first crusade. Miniature from a manuscript by Guillaume of Tyre, 13th century.
The real militia set out on the First Crusade only in the autumn of 1096, in the form of 300,000 well-armed and excellently disciplined warriors, led by the most valiant and noble knights of that time: next to Gottfried of Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine, the main leader, and his brothers Baldwin and Eustathius (Estachem), shone; Count Hugh of Vermandois, brother of the French king Philip I, Duke Robert of Normandy (brother of the English king), Count Robert of Flanders, Raymond of Toulouse and Stephen of Chartres, Bohemond, Prince of Tarentum, Tancred of Apulism and others. As papal governor and legate, the army was accompanied by Bishop Ademar of Monteil.
Participants of the First Crusade arrived by various routes to Constantinople, where the Greek emperor Alexei forced from them a fealty oath and a promise to recognize him as a feudal lord of future conquests. At the beginning of June 1097, the crusader army appeared before Nicaea, the capital of the Seljuk sultan, and after the capture of the latter, it was subjected to extreme difficulties and hardships. Nevertheless, they took Antioch, Edessa (1098) and, finally, on June 15, 1099, Jerusalem, which at that time was in the hands of the Egyptian sultan, who unsuccessfully tried to restore his power and was utterly defeated at Ascalon.
The capture of Jerusalem by the crusaders in 1099. Miniature of the XIV or XV centuries.
Under the influence of the news of the conquest of Palestine in 1101, a new army of crusaders moved to Asia Minor, led by the Duke of Welf of Bavaria from Germany and two others, from Italy and France, amounting to a total army of 260,000 people and exterminated by the Seljuks.
Second Crusade (briefly)
The Second Crusade - Briefly, Bernard of Clairvaux - Brief Biography
In 1144, Edessa was taken by the Turks, after which Pope Eugene III declared Second crusade(1147-1149), freeing all the crusaders not only from their sins, but at the same time from their obligations regarding their fief masters. The dreamy preacher Bernard of Clairvaux managed, thanks to his irresistible eloquence, to attract King Louis VII of France and Emperor Conrad III of Hohenstaufen to the Second Crusade. Two troops, totaling, according to Western chroniclers, about 140,000 armored horsemen and a million infantrymen, set out in 1147 and headed through Hungary and Constantinople and Asia Minor. Due to lack of food, illness in the troops and after several major defeats, the reconquest plan Edessa was abandoned, and the attempt to attack Damascus failed. Both sovereigns returned to their possessions, and the Second Crusade ended in complete failure.
Crusader states in the East
Third Crusade (briefly)
Reason for Third Crusade(1189–1192) was the conquest of Jerusalem on October 2, 1187 by the powerful Egyptian sultan Saladin (see the article The Capture of Jerusalem by Saladin). Three European sovereigns participated in this campaign: Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, French king Philip II Augustus and English Richard the Lionheart. The first to march on the Third Crusade was Frederick, whose army increased to 100,000 along the way; he chose the path along the Danube, along the way he had to overcome the intrigues of the incredulous Greek emperor Isaac Angelus, who was only prompted by the capture of Adrianople to give free passage to the crusaders and help them cross to Asia Minor. Here Frederick defeated Turkish troops in two battles, but soon after that he drowned while crossing the Kalikadn (Salef) River. His son, Frederick, led the army further through Antioch to Akka, where he found other crusaders, but soon died. The city of Akka in 1191 surrendered to the French and English kings, but the discord that opened up between them forced the French king to return to his homeland. Richard remained to continue the Third Crusade, but, desperate in the hope of conquering Jerusalem, in 1192 he concluded a truce with Saladin for three years and three months, according to which Jerusalem remained in the possession of the Sultan, and the Christians received the coastal strip from Tyre to Jaffa, as well as the right to free visiting the Holy Sepulcher.
Frederick Barbarossa - crusader
Fourth Crusade (briefly)
For more details, see separate articles Fourth Crusade, Fourth Crusade - briefly and Capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders
Fourth Crusade(1202-1204) was originally aimed at Egypt, but its participants agreed to assist the exiled emperor Isaac Angel in his quest to regain the Byzantine throne, which was crowned with success. Isaac soon died, and the crusaders, deviating from their goal, continued the war and took Constantinople, after which the leader of the Fourth Crusade, Count Baldwin of Flanders, was elected emperor of the new Latin Empire, which lasted, however, only 57 years (1204-1261).
Members of the Fourth Crusade near Constantinople. Miniature to the Venetian manuscript of Villehardouin's History, c. 1330
Fifth Crusade (briefly)
Ignoring the strange Cross hiking children in 1212, caused by the desire to test the reality of the will of God, Fifth Crusade one can name the campaign of King Andrew II of Hungary and Duke Leopold VI of Austria to Syria (1217–1221). At first, he walked sluggishly, but after the arrival of new reinforcements from the West, the crusaders moved to Egypt and took the key to access this country from the sea - the city of Damietta. However, an attempt to capture the large Egyptian center of Mansour was not successful. The knights left Egypt, and the Fifth Crusade ended with the restoration of the former borders.
Assault by the crusaders of the Fifth campaign of the tower of Damietta. Painter Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen, c. 1625
Sixth Crusade (briefly)
sixth crusade(1228–1229) committed by the German Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen. For the long delay in starting the campaign, the pope excommunicated Frederick from the church (1227). The next year, the emperor nevertheless went to the East. Taking advantage of the strife of the Muslim rulers there, Frederick started negotiations with the Egyptian Sultan al-Kamil on the peaceful return of Jerusalem to the Christians. To back up their demands with a threat, the emperor and the Palestinian knights besieged and took Jaffa. Threatened also by the Sultan of Damascus, al-Kamil signed a ten-year truce with Frederick, returning to the Christians Jerusalem and almost all the lands once taken from them by Saladin. At the end of the Sixth Crusade, Frederick II was crowned in the Holy Land with the crown of Jerusalem.
Emperor Frederick II and Sultan al-Kamil. 14th century miniature
The violation of the truce by some pilgrims led a few years later to the resumption of the struggle for Jerusalem and to its final loss by the Christians in 1244. Jerusalem was taken from the crusaders by the Turkic tribe of the Khorezmians, who were ousted from the Caspian regions by the Mongols during the movement of the latter to Europe.
Seventh Crusade (briefly)
The fall of Jerusalem caused Seventh Crusade(1248–1254) Louis IX of France, who, during a serious illness, vowed to fight for the Holy Sepulcher. In August 1248 the French crusaders sailed to the East and spent the winter in Cyprus. In the spring of 1249 the army of Saint Louis landed in the Nile Delta. Due to the indecision of the Egyptian commander Fakhreddin, she took Damietta almost without difficulty. After lingering there for several months in anticipation of reinforcements, the crusaders moved to Cairo at the end of the year. But at the city of Mansura, the Saracen army blocked their path. After hard efforts, the participants of the Seventh Crusade were able to cross the branch of the Nile and even break into Mansura for a while, but the Muslims, taking advantage of the separation of the Christian detachments, inflicted great damage on them.
The crusaders should have retreated to Damietta, but due to false notions of knightly honor, they were in no hurry to do so. They were soon surrounded by large Saracen forces. Having lost many soldiers from disease and hunger, the participants in the Seventh Crusade (almost 20 thousand people) were forced to surrender. Another 30 thousand of their comrades died. Christian captives (including the king himself) were released only for a huge ransom. Damietta had to be returned to the Egyptians. Sailing from Egypt to Palestine, St. Louis spent about 4 years in Akka, where he was engaged in securing Christian possessions in Palestine, until the death of his mother Blanca (regent of France) recalled him to his homeland.
Eighth Crusade (briefly)
Due to the complete failure of the Seventh Crusade and the constant attacks on the Christians of Palestine by the new Egyptian (Mamluk) Sultan Baybars the same king of France, Louis IX the Saint, undertook in 1270 Eighth(And last) cross hike. The crusaders at first thought again to land in Egypt, but the brother of Louis, king of Naples and Sicily Charles of Anjou, persuaded them to sail to Tunisia, which was an important commercial rival of southern Italy. Coming ashore in Tunisia, the French participants in the Eighth Crusade began to wait for the arrival of Charles' troops. A plague broke out in their cramped camp, from which Saint Louis himself died. Mor caused such losses to the crusader army that Charles Anjou, who arrived shortly after the death of his brother, chose to stop the campaign on the terms of the payment of indemnity by the ruler of Tunisia and the release of Christian captives.
Death of Saint Louis in Tunisia during the Eighth Crusade. Painter Jean Fouquet, c. 1455-1465
End of the Crusades
In 1286, Antioch went to Turkey, in 1289 - Lebanese Tripoli, and in 1291 - Akka, the last major possession of Christians in Palestine, after which they were forced to abandon the rest of the possessions, and the whole Holy Land was united again in the hands of the Mohammedans. Thus ended the Crusades, which cost the Christians so many losses and did not reach the originally intended goal.
Results and consequences of the Crusades (briefly)
But they did not remain without a profound influence on the entire structure of the social and economic life of the Western European peoples. The consequence of the Crusades can be considered the strengthening of the power and importance of the popes as their main instigators, further - the rise of royal power due to the death of many feudal lords, the emergence of independence of urban communities, which, thanks to the impoverishment of the nobility, received the opportunity to buy benefits from their fief owners; the introduction in Europe of crafts and arts borrowed from the eastern peoples. The result of the Crusades was the increase in the West of the class of free farmers, thanks to the liberation from serfdom of the peasants participating in the campaigns. The crusades contributed to the success of trade, opening up new routes to the East; favored the development of geographical knowledge; expanding the scope of intellectual and moral interests, they enriched poetry with new subjects. Another important result of the Crusades was the promotion to the historical stage of the secular knighthood, which constituted an ennobling element of medieval life; their consequence was also the emergence of spiritual knightly orders (Johnites, Templars and Teutons), which played an important role in history. (For more details, see separate articles
