The Mistakes Of The Crusades

The Crusades are commonly classified as an act of Christian aggression against the weakened and fractured Muslims. There are many mistakes with this view, the Crusades were not against Arabs specifically, despite what is commonly believed. As mentioned in “Our Worlds Story” and other sources, the Arabs were under attack by a steppes horde from Asia called the Seljuk Turks. The Seljuk and Arabs, despite both being Sunni Muslims had been in conflict against each other since the late 900’s. The Seljuk Turks expanded swiftly through the Middle East and Anatolia, the heartland of the East Romans, known as the Byzantines. Now, during the 1090’s Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire became under attack by the Seljuk, the Seljuk had also

Urban II then relayed this message while preaching in a church in France. The promise of their sins being forgiven just for participating in the Crusade, the possible chance for land or just prestige, or just the chance of Knights, professional soldiers, and mercenaries to have a job again, did not just persuade a certain group in France, it appealed to essentially every Christian. The religious fever had not reached a boiling point that hordes of Christians would just start walking there with little armor or weapons, up until then they were living life normally. Seemingly less about religious intolerance which leads to war, which is believed by many, but instead, the result of the most successful political speech in history. The Crusades themselves were not that successful, but the speech convinced them to unite as a single European force going to war. It was so successful, the last part of the speech, Deus Vult, Latin for “God wills it” became the famous battle cry of the Crusaders for centuries. According to historians, the crusades were a remarkably unique event in history, there were no crusades or jihad in China, there was not one person indirectly leading a continent divided as much as possible to unite, there was not hordes of Indian Hindus uniting

Alexius did not want to bother letting a horde of peasants in, so they proceeded into Turkey and were defeated quickly. The Muslims must have thought that they won, that they just defeated Europe. The Muslims, and the Byzantine Empire, thought that Western Europe was ruled by a bunch of German barbarians, which is technically correct assumption, except for in the past centuries, Western Europe had advanced to be on par with Byzantine and the Middle east, and more advanced than the Muslims in warfare. Thinking they were a bunch of barbarians, they must have been shocked, for the actual crusaders were a legion of heavily armored private armies with the same joint purpose despite their differences. The angry horde of heavily armored Europeans stopped first at Constantinople, hoping for supplies and to stay there until starting a march into Anatolia. Alexius thought he was getting a few hundred knights which would swear fealty to him, not a bunch of private armies who had no real interest in restoring Byzantine lands. Alexius did give helpful advice to stay along the coasts of Anatolia so they could supply the crusaders. They ignored him and marched straight across Anatolia, most likely because it would be faster and they could raid villages and towns for resources along the way. (Maalouf