Crusades (briefly). The most famous knights in world history What faith were the crusaders
It is difficult to imagine the history of the Middle Ages without the Crusades, which shook the entire Middle East in the 11th-13th centuries. Both representatives of the European nobility and commoners took an active part in these massive invasions, trying to cleanse the land of wicked Muslims.
Crusaders. Who are they?
The people who called themselves that professed Christianity. Hence the name of the campaigns, as well as the warriors who were involved in them. Devoted to the blood they shed, simple peasants quickly became professional fighters. A crusader is a knight. Such warriors took up arms and went against the infidels for various reasons: some because of a thirst for adventure, others for the sake of material enrichment, and still others were indeed notorious religious fanatics. Participants in the first campaigns called themselves pilgrims, and their military raids - a sacred road or a pilgrimage pleasing to God.
The knights dressed accordingly. A crusader is a religious warrior who placed crosses on his armor and outfits: before the campaign they were on the chest, after a successful return - on the back. The long journeys of knights were always shrouded in an aura of grandeur and romance. Despite heroism and valor, bravery and courage, they never managed to complete the holy mission. Muslims continued to dominate the East, and also became complete rulers of Palestine.
First Crusades
It all started with Pope Urban, who in March 1095 clearly formulated the economic reason for the raids. He said: European countries cannot feed a population that is growing every year. Therefore, in order to save the lives of honest Christians, it is necessary to seize the resource-rich eastern territories, which are unjustly occupied by Muslims. As for the religious motive, it became an indisputable fact: the Holy Sepulcher, an important shrine of their faith, is kept by infidels, and this is completely unacceptable.
A crusader is a simple man inspired by the calls of the pope. He, like his other brothers-in-arms, did not hesitate for a moment, abandoned his fields and went to the East. It was not difficult to gather a crowd: in those days, Europe worshiped the church and was enveloped in religious fanaticism. The first campaign aimed at Constantinople ended unsuccessfully. Most of the volunteers died on the way from disease, hunger and cold. The Turks destroyed that pitiful bunch of tired people who reached their destination.
results
Despite the defeat, the conquerors did not give up and gradually increased their strength. Within a few years, warriors burst into Asia. Here they destroyed cities and organized local crusade powers. They managed to capture Jerusalem and Byzantium, but the main goal, the Holy Sepulcher, remained in the hands of the infidels. Someone started a false rumor that only children's hands could free him. As a result, an army was organized, the core of which was the young crusading knights. Their age did not exceed 14-15 years. The result was tragic. Half of the minors died, the other half were sold into slavery.
A crusader is a person who was in complete subordination to the Church. Listening to the sermons of the priests, people justified their losses and strived for new conquests. There were eight Crusades in total. Their results are mixed. Firstly, it expanded its zone of influence and enriched itself with new lands. Secondly, the tension between the West and the East increased, and a retaliatory threat arose from the infidels - jihad. In addition, Christianity itself was finally divided: into Orthodoxy and Catholicism.
Prerequisites
In the east
However, one negative trait has spread among Christians since apostolic times - “lukewarmness” (Rev. 3:16), which manifested itself in the fact that some Christians began to believe that there are commandments in the Gospel that are supposedly very difficult to fulfill, which are not all “ can accommodate." For example, not everyone is able to give away all their possessions to the poor (Matthew 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-mentioned commandments of Christ about non-resistance to evil[source?].
The Crusades in the East against Muslims lasted continuously for two centuries, until the very end of the 13th century. They can be considered as one of the most important stages of the struggle between Europe and Asia, which began in ancient times and has not ended to this day. They stand alongside 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 conditioned 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 opposition 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 contrast between Europe and the East. The collision of both worlds became inevitable, especially since both Christianity and Islam equally considered themselves called to dominate the whole world. The rapid successes of Islam in the first century of its existence threatened European Christian civilization with serious danger: the Arabs conquered Syria, Palestine, Egypt, northern 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 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 of the Muslim world that soon began, which until then was terrible precisely because of its unity. The caliphate was fragmented into parts that were at war with each other.
First Crusade (1096-1099)
Fourth Crusade (1202-1204)
The idea of returning the Holy Land, however, was not completely abandoned in the West. In 1312, Pope Clement V preached the crusade at the Council of Vienne. Several sovereigns promised 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 passed irrevocably. The Kingdom of Cyprus, reinforced by the Franks who fled there, retained its independence for a long time. One of its kings, Peter I (-), traveled all over Europe with the aim of starting a crusade. He managed to conquer and rob Alexandria, but he could not keep it for himself. Cyprus was finally weakened by the wars with Genoa, and after the death of King James II, the island fell into the hands of Venice: James's widow, the Venetian Caterina Cornaro, after the death of her husband and son, was forced to cede Cyprus to her hometown (). Republic of St. Mark 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 Mameluke Sultan Ashraf subjugated it to his rule. When the Ottoman Turks established themselves in Asia Minor, transferred their conquests to Europe and began to threaten the Christian world with 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, the feudal nature of the crusader militias and the states founded by the crusaders is in the foreground. To successfully fight the Muslims, unity of action was required; Meanwhile, the crusaders brought feudal fragmentation and disunity with them to the East. The weak vassalage in which the crusader rulers were from the king of Jerusalem 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, you must first clearly understand its background. In November 1095, Urban II convened a church council in France, in 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 liberating the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.”
So, the bishops proclaimed the beginning of the crusade. Western Europe, which was under the constant ongoing threat of hunger 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) shed part of its excess population. Landless peasants, impoverished knights, who had nothing in their souls, “except ambition and a sharp saber,” rushed to the Eastern Mediterranean to seek a better life for themselves. 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) subsequently agreed to let them pass through his lands, only after first taking hostages from among them.
From 1096 to 1099 these crowds marched from Constantinople to Jerusalem. Along the way, they everywhere represented “an example of high morality and virtue.” An example of this is one of the crusaders' description of the capture of the rich Syrian city of Maara. “In Maar, our people boiled pagans (the last word the crusaders called all their enemies - Muslims, Jews, various heretics, which also meant Eastern Christians) in cauldrons, and put children on spits, fried them and ate them,” writes the Frankish chronicler Raoul de Caen . “The Faranj (Franks, the Arabic collective name for Western Europeans) have superiority in courage and fury in battle, but in 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'Aix ("Ours ate not only Turks and Saracens, but also dogs"). In the literature of those years, the crusaders are described as terrible cannibals. Their attitude towards to their seemingly natural allies - the local Christian population. Arriving here, including under the pretext of protecting Christians, the crusaders often exterminated them along with Muslims. For example, in the city of Edessa, a significant part of which were Armenians, who welcomed them with cordiality at first. their coreligionists, the Armenian aristocracy was simply slaughtered by the “liberators” a little later.
Thus, by June 7, 1099, the remnants of the 300,000-strong detachment of the crusading army, instilling fear and horror in the local population, having lost more than half of their strength along the way, approached Jerusalem. According to chroniclers, the Holy City with a population of seventy thousand was guarded by a thousand-strong 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 Ides of June. Robert of Normandy besieged Jerusalem from the northern side, near the church of the first martyr St. Stephen, where he was stoned for Christ. The Duke of Normandy was joined by Count Robert of Flanders. 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 stood up to their ankles in blood.” Other chroniclers, of course, from among the crusaders (the local population was completely exterminated, so nothing could be described) mention mountains of severed arms, legs and heads, and mockery of the bodies of the dead. These same chroniclers-witnesses report the fact of the murder of all residents - 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 only one can behave in relation to their newly-minted neighbor - a maniac killer 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 taken up by their former military leader 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, Muslim troops under the command of Salah ad-Din defeated the Crusaders at Lake Tiberias, after which Jerusalem was surrendered by the inhabitants under the terms of a treaty concluded between the victorious Muslims and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
On October 2, 1187, Salah ad-Din enters Jerusalem. He orders: no massacre, no looting. No Christian, Frankish or Eastern, should be offended. And the poor can leave without ransom. No ransom! Treasurer al-Asfahani becomes furious when he sees the Patriarch of Jerusalem taking out carts loaded with gold, carpets, and jewelry: “We allowed them to take away their property, but not the treasures of churches and monasteries. They must be stopped!” Salah ad-Din refuses: “We must fulfill the agreements that we signed. So Christians will talk everywhere about the blessings that we showered on them.”
On the evening of October 9, at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the imam praises God and “Salah ad-Din Yusuf, son of Ayyub, who restored this nation to its trampled dignity.” In the very Al-Aqsa Mosque, from the location of which the Prophet Muhammad once traveled to the seventh heaven, and which the crusaders of our time are persistently trying to destroy. The history of Al-Aqsa and its liberation has another significant significance for Russian Muslims - the fact is that the majority of Salah ad-Din’s troops were Mamluks. The Mamluk units - Kipchaks and Circassians (Circassians mean not only the Circassians, but also the other indigenous peoples of the North Caucasus), were formed from purchased slaves who were raised as warriors. The main source of recruitment for the Mamluks were the countless internecine wars that shook the steppes of Desht-i-Kipchak (from Altai to the south of modern Ukraine) and the Caucasus mountains. In the process of raising these boys, they 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). Subsequently, not only military leaders and government officials, but also scientists and poets emerged from among the Mamluks. Within 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.
What about the crusaders? Some stayed. Lebanese and Palestinian Catholics are considered their descendants. Some converted to Islam, and the descendants of those who accepted the religion that their ancestors fought against still live in this region. A considerable part left. Having once arrived in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria in search of a “better life”, they have completely forgotten 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, Western Europe. But even there they were faced with landlessness and poverty. Usually, gangs of robbers and robbers are put together from such people... The Pope found good use for them - he sent them on a new crusade - to the shores of the Baltic Sea, the lands of the Prussians, Balts, Finns and Slavs.
Akhmad MAKAROV
Crusaders- These are Western European warriors, participants in the crusades organized by feudal lords and the Catholic Church under the banner of the fight against the “infidels”. The “infidels” usually meant Muslims who, back in the 7th century, captured the “holy land” - Palestine with the holy city of three religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) Jerusalem. They were called crusaders because they made a solemn promise to God (vow) to participate in the campaign for the “liberation of the Holy Sepulcher,” as a sign of which they sewed a cross on their clothes.
First Crusade
The most famous of the crusades is the first, which took place in 1096 - 1099. Then the crusaders managed to conquer not only Jerusalem and the territory of modern Israel, but also the entire eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. They built numerous fortresses and castles here, and created several of their own states, of which the most significant was the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Loss of territories
But these classic feudal states turned out to be short-lived. The onslaught of Arabs and Turks intensified from all sides. The county of Edessa fell first (1146). In 1187, the Egyptian ruler and commander Salah ad-Din (Saladin) defeated the Crusader army and took Jerusalem. He almost destroyed the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Material from the site
Third Crusade
Western European feudal lords in 1189-1192 undertook a new, third crusade to Palestine. And although it was led by the kings of England (the famous Richard I the Lionheart) and France (Philip II Augustus), they managed to win from Saladin only a narrow strip along the sea with cities, fortresses and castles. Jerusalem remained in Muslim hands. However, the Kingdom of Jerusalem continued to exist, only the seaside city of Acre (now the city of Acre in the State of Israel) became its center.
CRUSADES(1096-1270), military-religious expeditions of Western Europeans to the Middle East with the aim of conquering Holy places associated with the earthly life of Jesus Christ - Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulcher.
Prerequisites and start of hikes
The prerequisites for the Crusades were: traditions of pilgrimages to Holy Places; a change in views on war, which began to be considered not a sinful, but a good deed if it was waged against the enemies of Christianity and the church; capture in the 11th century the Seljuk Turks of Syria and Palestine and the threat of capture by Byzantium; the difficult economic situation of Western Europe in the 2nd half. 11th century
On November 26, 1095, Pope Urban II called on those gathered at the local church council in the city of Clermont to recapture the Holy Sepulcher captured by the Turks. Those who took this vow sewed crosses from rags onto their clothes and therefore were called “crusaders.” To those who went on the Crusade, the Pope promised earthly riches in the Holy Land and heavenly bliss in case of death, they received complete absolution, they were forbidden to collect debts and feudal obligations during the campaign, their families were under the protection of the church.
First Crusade
In March 1096, the first stage of the First Crusade (1096-1101) began - the so-called. march of the poor. Crowds of peasants, with families and belongings, armed with anything, under the leadership of random leaders, or even without them at all, moved east, marking their path with robberies (they believed that since they were soldiers of God, then any earthly property belonged to them) and Jewish pogroms (in their eyes, the Jews from the nearest town were the descendants of the persecutors of Christ). Of the 50 thousand troops of Asia Minor, only 25 thousand reached, and almost all of them died in the battle with the Turks near Nicaea on October 25, 1096.
In the autumn of 1096, a knightly militia from different parts of Europe set off, its leaders were Godfrey of Bouillon, Raymond of Toulouse and others. By the end of 1096 - beginning of 1097, they gathered in Constantinople, in the spring of 1097 they crossed to Asia Minor, where, together with Byzantine troops, they began the siege of Nicaea, They took it on June 19 and handed it over to the Byzantines. Further, the path of the crusaders lay in Syria and Palestine. On February 6, 1098, Edessa was taken, on the night of June 3 - Antioch, a year later, on June 7, 1099, they besieged Jerusalem, and on July 15 captured it, committing a brutal massacre in the city. On July 22, at a meeting of princes and prelates, the Kingdom of Jerusalem was established, to which the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch and (from 1109) the County of Tripoli were subordinate. The head of state was Godfrey of Bouillon, who received the title “Defender of the Holy Sepulcher” (his successors bore the title of kings). In 1100-1101, new detachments from Europe set off for the Holy Land (historians call this a “rearguard campaign”); The borders of the Kingdom of Jerusalem were established only in 1124.
There were few immigrants from Western Europe who permanently lived in Palestine; spiritual knightly orders played a special role in the Holy Land, as well as immigrants from the coastal trading cities of Italy who formed special privileged quarters in the cities of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Second Crusade
After the Turks conquered Edessa in 1144, the Second Crusade (1147-1148) was declared on December 1, 1145, led by King Louis VII of France and King Conrad III of Germany and proving unsuccessful.
In 1171, power in Egypt was seized by Salah ad-Din, who annexed Syria to Egypt and in the spring of 1187 began a war against Christians. On July 4, in a battle that lasted 7 hours near the village of Hittin, the Christian army was defeated, in the second half of July the siege of Jerusalem began, and on October 2 the city surrendered to the mercy of the winner. By 1189, several fortresses and two cities remained in the hands of the crusaders - Tire and Tripoli.
Third Crusade
On October 29, 1187, the Third Crusade (1189-1192) was declared. The campaign was led by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, the kings of France, Philip II Augustus, and the kings of England, Richard I the Lionheart. On May 18, 1190, the German militia captured the city of Iconium (now Konya, Turkey) in Asia Minor, but on June 10, while crossing a mountain river, Frederick drowned, and the demoralized German army retreated. In the fall of 1190, the crusaders began the siege of Acre, the port city and sea gate of Jerusalem. Acre was taken on June 11, 1191, but even before that Philip II and Richard quarreled, and Philip sailed to his homeland; Richard launched several unsuccessful attacks, including two on Jerusalem, concluded an extremely unfavorable treaty for Christians with Salah ad Din on September 2, 1192, and left Palestine in October. Jerusalem remained in the hands of the Muslims, and Acre became the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Fourth Crusade. Capture of Constantinople
In 1198 a new, Fourth Crusade was declared, which took place much later (1202-1204). It was intended to strike Egypt, to which Palestine belonged. Since the crusaders did not have enough money to pay for ships for the naval expedition, Venice, which had the most powerful fleet in the Mediterranean, asked for help in conquering the Christian (!) city of Zadar on the Adriatic coast, which happened on November 24, 1202, and then prompted the crusaders march on Byzantium, the main trading rival of Venice, under the pretext of intervening in dynastic feuds in Constantinople and uniting the Orthodox and Catholic churches under the auspices of the papacy. On April 13, 1204, Constantinople was taken and brutally plundered. Part of the territories conquered from Byzantium went to Venice, on the other part the so-called. Latin Empire. In 1261, the Orthodox emperors, who had gained a foothold in Asia Minor, which was not occupied by Western Europeans, with the help of the Turks and Venice's rival Genoa, again occupied Constantinople.
Children's Crusade
In view of the failures of the crusaders, the belief arose in the mass consciousness of Europeans that the Lord, who did not give victory to the strong but sinful, would grant it to the weak but sinless. In the spring and early summer of 1212, crowds of children began to gather in different parts of Europe, declaring that they were going to liberate Jerusalem (the so-called children's crusade, not included by historians in the total number of Crusades). The church and secular authorities treated this spontaneous explosion of popular religiosity with suspicion and did their best to prevent it. Some of the children died on the way through Europe from hunger, cold and disease, some reached Marseilles, where clever merchants, promising to transport the children to Palestine, brought them to the slave markets of Egypt.
Fifth Crusade
The Fifth Crusade (1217-1221) began with an expedition to the Holy Land, but, having failed there, the crusaders, who did not have a recognized leader, transferred military operations to Egypt in 1218. On May 27, 1218, they began the siege of the fortress of Damietta (Dumyat) in the Nile Delta; The Egyptian sultan promised them to lift the siege of Jerusalem, but the crusaders refused, took Damietta on the night of November 4-5, 1219, tried to build on their success and occupy all of Egypt, but the offensive floundered. On August 30, 1221, peace was concluded with the Egyptians, according to which the soldiers of Christ returned Damietta and left Egypt.
Sixth Crusade
The Sixth Crusade (1228-1229) was undertaken by Emperor Frederick II Staufen. This constant opponent of the papacy was excommunicated from the church on the eve of the campaign. In the summer of 1228, he sailed to Palestine, thanks to skillful negotiations, he concluded an alliance with the Egyptian Sultan and, in return for help against all his enemies, Muslims and Christians (!), received Jerusalem without a single battle, which he entered on March 18, 1229. Since the emperor was under excommunication, the return of the Holy City to the fold of Christianity was accompanied by a ban on worship there. Frederick soon left for his homeland; he had no time to deal with Jerusalem, and in 1244 the Egyptian Sultan again and finally took Jerusalem, massacring the Christian population.
Seventh and Eighth Crusades
The Seventh Crusade (1248-1254) was almost exclusively the work of France and its king, Louis IX the Saint. Egypt was again targeted. In June 1249, the crusaders took Damietta a second time, but were later blocked and in February 1250 the entire force, including the king, surrendered. In May 1250, the king was released for a ransom of 200 thousand livres, but did not return to his homeland, but moved to Acre, where he waited in vain for help from France, where he sailed in April 1254.
In 1270, the same Louis undertook the last, Eighth Crusade. His goal was Tunisia, the most powerful Muslim maritime state in the Mediterranean. It was supposed to establish control over the Mediterranean in order to freely send crusader detachments to Egypt and the Holy Land. However, soon after the landing in Tunisia on June 18, 1270, an epidemic broke out in the crusader camp, Louis died on August 25, and on November 18, the army, without having entered into a single battle, sailed to their homeland, taking with them the body of the king.
Things in Palestine were getting worse, the Muslims took city after city, and on May 18, 1291, Acre fell - the last stronghold of the crusaders in Palestine.
Both before and after this, the church repeatedly proclaimed crusades against pagans (a campaign against the Polabian Slavs in 1147), heretics and against the Turks in the 14th-16th centuries, but they are not included in the total number of crusades.
Results of the Crusades
Historians have different assessments of the results of the Crusades. Some believe that these campaigns contributed to contacts between East and West, the perception of Muslim culture, science and technological achievements. Others believe that all this could be achieved through peaceful relations, and the Crusades would remain only a phenomenon of senseless fanaticism.
D. E. Kharitonovich
At the end of May 1212, unusual wanderers suddenly arrived in the German city of Cologne on the banks of the Rhine. A whole crowd of children filled the city streets. They knocked on the doors of houses and begged for alms. But these were no ordinary beggars. Black and red cloth crosses were sewn onto the children’s clothes, and when questioned by the townspeople, they answered that they were going to the Holy Land to liberate the city of Jerusalem from the infidels. The little crusaders were led by a boy of about ten years old, who carried an iron cross in his hands. The boy's name was Niklas, and he told how an Angel appeared to him in a dream and told him that Jerusalem would not be liberated by mighty kings and knights, but by unarmed children who would be led by the will of the Lord. By the grace of God, the sea will part, and they will come on dry land to the Holy Land, and the Saracens, fearful, will retreat before this army. Many wanted to become followers of the little preacher. Not listening to the admonitions of their fathers and mothers, they set off on their journey to liberate Jerusalem. In crowds and small groups, children walked south, to the sea. The Pope himself praised their campaign. He said: “These children serve as a reproach to us adults. While we sleep, they joyfully stand up for the Holy Land.”
But in reality there was little joy in all this. On the road, children died from hunger and thirst, and for a long time peasants found the corpses of little crusaders along the roads and buried them. The end of the campaign was even sadder: of course, the sea did not part for the children who had reached it with difficulty, and enterprising merchants, as if undertaking to transport the pilgrims to the Holy Land, simply sold the children into slavery.
But not only children thought about the liberation of the Holy Land and the Holy Sepulcher, located, according to legend, in Jerusalem. Having sewn crosses on shirts, cloaks and banners, peasants, knights, and kings rushed to the East. This happened in the 11th century, when the Seljuk Turks, having captured almost all of Asia Minor, in 1071 became the masters of Jerusalem, the holy city of Christians. For Christian Europe this was terrible news. Europeans considered Muslim Turks not only “subhumans” - worse! - minions of the devil. The Holy Land, where Christ was born, lived and suffered martyrdom, now turned out to be inaccessible to pilgrims, but a pious journey to the shrines was not only a commendable deed, but could also become atonement for sins both for a poor peasant and for a noble lord. Soon rumors began to be heard about the atrocities committed by the “damned infidels”, about the brutal tortures to which they allegedly subjected the unfortunate Christians. The Christian European turned his gaze to the East with hatred. But troubles also came to the lands of Europe itself.
End of the 11th century became a difficult time for Europeans. Beginning in 1089, many misfortunes befell them. Plague visited Lorraine, and an earthquake occurred in Northern Germany. Severe winters gave way to summer droughts, after which floods occurred, and crop failure led to famine. Entire villages died out, people engaged in cannibalism. But no less than from natural disasters and diseases, the peasants suffered from unbearable exactions and extortion of the lords. Driven to despair, people in entire villages fled wherever they could, while others went to monasteries or sought salvation in a hermit’s life.
The feudal lords also did not feel confident. Unable to be content with what the peasants gave them (many of whom were killed by hunger and disease), the lords began to seize new lands. There were no more free lands left, so large lords began to take away estates from small and medium-sized feudal lords. For the most insignificant reasons, civil strife broke out, and the owner expelled from his estate joined the ranks of landless knights. The younger sons of noble gentlemen were also left without land. The castle and land were inherited only by the eldest son - the rest were forced to share horses, weapons and armor among themselves. Landless knights indulged in robbery, attacking weak castles, and more often mercilessly robbing already impoverished peasants. Monasteries that were not ready for defense were especially desirable prey. Having united in gangs, noble gentlemen, like simple robbers, scoured the roads.
An evil and turbulent time has come in Europe. A peasant whose crops were burned by the sun, and whose house was burned by a robber knight; a lord who does not know where to get funds for a life worthy of his position; a monk looking with longing at the monastery farm ruined by “noble” robbers, not having time to perform the funeral service for those who died of hunger and disease - all of them, in confusion and grief, turned their gaze to God. Why is he punishing them? What mortal sins have they committed? How to redeem them? And is it not because the wrath of the Lord has overtaken the world that the Holy Land - the place of atonement for sins - is being trampled by the “servants of the devil,” the damned Saracens? Again the eyes of Christians turned to the East - not only with hatred, but also with hope.
In November 1095, near the French city of Clermont, Pope Urban II spoke before a huge crowd of gathered people - peasants, artisans, knights and monks. In a fiery speech, he called on everyone to take up arms and go to the East to win the Holy Sepulcher from the infidels and cleanse the Holy Land from them. The Pope promised forgiveness of sins to all participants in the campaign. People greeted his call with shouts of approval. Shouts of “God wants it this way!” Urban II's speech was interrupted more than once. Many already knew that the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos turned to the Pope and European kings with a request to help him repel the onslaught of the Muslims. Helping the Byzantine Christians defeat the “non-Christians” would, of course, be a godly deed. The liberation of Christian shrines will become a real feat, bringing not only salvation, but also the mercy of the Almighty, who will reward his army. Many of those who listened to the speech of Urban II immediately vowed to go on a campaign and, as a sign of this, attached a cross to their clothes.
The news of the upcoming campaign to the Holy Land quickly spread throughout Western Europe. Priests in churches and holy fools on the streets called for participation in it. Under the influence of these sermons, as well as at the call of their hearts, thousands of poor people took up the holy crusade. In the spring of 1096, from France and Rhineland Germany, they moved in discordant crowds along roads long known to pilgrims: along the Rhine, Danube and further to Constantinople. The peasants walked with their families and all their meager belongings, which fit in a small cart. They were poorly armed and suffered from food shortages. It was a rather wild procession, since along the way the crusaders mercilessly robbed the Bulgarians and Hungarians through whose lands they passed: they took away cattle, horses, food, and killed those who tried to defend their property. Being barely familiar with the final destination of their journey, the poor, approaching some large city, asked, “Is this really the Jerusalem where they are going?” With grief in half, having killed many in skirmishes with local residents, in the summer of 1096 the peasants reached Constantinople.
The appearance of this disorganized, hungry crowd did not please Emperor Alexei Komnenos at all. The ruler of Byzantium hastened to get rid of the poor crusaders by transporting them across the Bosphorus to Asia Minor. The end of the peasants' campaign was sad: in the fall of the same year, the Seljuk Turks met their army not far from the city of Nicaea and almost completely killed them or, having captured them, sold them into slavery. Of the 25 thousand “armies of Christ”, only about 3 thousand survived. The surviving poor crusaders returned to Constantinople, from where some of them began to return home, and some remained to wait for the arrival of the crusading knights, hoping to fully fulfill their vow - to free shrines or at least find a quiet life in a new place.
The crusading knights set out on their first campaign when the peasants began their sad journey through the lands of Asia Minor - in the summer of 1096. Unlike the latter, the lords were well prepared for the upcoming battles and difficulties of the road - they were professional warriors, and they were accustomed to prepare for battle. History has preserved the names of the leaders of this army: the first Lorraineers were led by Duke Godfrey of Bouillon, the Normans of Southern Italy were led by Prince Bohemond of Tarentum, and the knights of Southern France were led by Raymond, Count of Toulouse. Their troops were not a single cohesive army. Each feudal lord who went on a campaign led his own squad, and behind his lord the peasants who had escaped from their homes again trudged along with their belongings. The knights on the way, like the poor people who had passed before them, began to plunder. The ruler of Hungary, taught by bitter experience, demanded hostages from the crusaders, which guaranteed fairly “decent” behavior of the knights towards the Hungarians. However, this was an isolated incident. The Balkan Peninsula was plundered by the “soldiers of Christ” who marched through it.
In December 1096 - January 1097. The crusaders arrived at Constantinople. They behaved with those whom they were actually going to protect, to put it mildly, unfriendly: there were even several military skirmishes with the Byzantines. Emperor Alexei used all the unsurpassed diplomatic art that made the Greeks so famous, just to protect himself and his subjects from unbridled “pilgrims.” But even then, the mutual hostility between the Western European lords and the Byzantines, which would later bring death to the great Constantinople, was clearly evident. For the arriving crusaders, the Orthodox inhabitants of the empire were, although Christians, (after the church schism in 1054) not brothers in faith, but heretics, which is not much better than infidels. In addition, the ancient majestic culture, traditions and customs of the Byzantines seemed incomprehensible and worthy of contempt to the European feudal lords - short-term descendants of barbarian tribes. The knights were infuriated by the pompous style of their speeches, and their wealth simply aroused wild envy. Understanding the danger of such “guests”, trying to use their military zeal for his own purposes, Alexei Komnenos, through cunning, bribery and flattery, obtained from the majority of the knights a vassal oath and an obligation to return to the empire those lands that would be conquered from the Turks. After this, he transported the “army of Christ” to Asia Minor.
The scattered Muslim forces were unable to withstand the pressure of the crusaders. Capturing fortresses, they passed through Syria and moved to Palestine, where in the summer of 1099 they took Jerusalem by storm. In the captured city, the crusaders committed a brutal massacre. The killings of civilians were interrupted during prayer, and then began again. The streets of the “holy city” were littered with dead bodies and stained with blood, and the defenders of the “Holy Sepulcher” scoured around, taking away everything that could be carried away.
Soon after the capture of Jerusalem, the Crusaders captured most of the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. In the occupied territory at the beginning of the 12th century. The knights created four states: the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the County of Tripoli, the Principality of Antioch and the County of Edessa - the lords began to settle their lives in new places. Power in these states was built on the feudal hierarchy. It was headed by the King of Jerusalem; the other three rulers were considered his vassals, but in reality they were independent. The church had enormous influence in the crusader states. She also owned large land holdings. Church hierarchs were among the most influential lords in the new states. On the lands of the Crusaders in the 11th century. later spiritual and knightly orders arose: the Templars, the Hospitallers and the Teutons.
In the 12th century. under pressure from the Muslims who began to unite, the crusaders began to lose their possessions. In an effort to resist the onslaught of the infidels, European knights launched the 2nd Crusade in 1147, which ended in failure. The 3rd Crusade that followed (1189-1192) ended just as ingloriously, although it was led by three warrior kings: the German Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, the French King Philip II Augustus and the English King Richard I the Lionheart. The reason for the action of the European lords was the capture of Jerusalem in 1187 by Sultan Salah ad-Din. The campaign was accompanied by continuous troubles: at the very beginning, while crossing a mountain stream, Barbarossa drowned; French and English knights were constantly at odds with each other; and in the end it was never possible to liberate Jerusalem. True, Richard the Lionheart obtained some concessions from the Sultan - the crusaders were left with a piece of the Mediterranean coast, and Christian pilgrims were allowed to visit Jerusalem for three years. Of course, it was difficult to call this a victory.
Next to these unsuccessful enterprises of European knights, the 4th Crusade (1202-1204) stands completely apart, which leveled the Orthodox Christian Byzantines with the infidels and led to the death of the “noble and beautiful Constantinople.” It was initiated by Pope Innocent III. In 1198, he launched a grandiose campaign for another campaign in the name of the liberation of Jerusalem. Papal messages were sent to all European states, but, in addition, Innocent III did not ignore another Christian ruler - the Byzantine Emperor Alexios III. He, too, according to the Pope, should have moved troops to the Holy Land. In addition to reproaches to the emperor for his indifference to the liberation of Christian shrines, the Roman high priest in his message raised an important and long-standing issue - about union (the unification of the church that was divided in 1054). In fact, Innocent III dreamed not so much of restoring the unity of the Christian Church as of subordinating the Byzantine Greek Church to the Roman Catholic Church. Emperor Alexei understood this perfectly well - as a result, neither an agreement nor even negotiations came out. Dad was angry. He diplomatically but unambiguously hinted to the emperor that if the Byzantines were intractable, there would be forces in the West ready to oppose them. Innocent III did not frighten - indeed, European monarchs looked at Byzantium with avid interest.
The 4th Crusade began in 1202, and Egypt was initially planned as its final destination. The path there lay through the Mediterranean Sea, and the crusaders, despite all the careful preparation of the “holy pilgrimage,” did not have a fleet and therefore were forced to turn to the Venetian Republic for help. From this moment on, the route of the crusade changed dramatically. The Doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo, demanded a huge sum for the services, and the crusaders turned out to be insolvent. Dandolo was not embarrassed by this: he suggested that the “holy army” compensate for the arrears by capturing the Dalmatian city of Zadar, whose merchants competed with the Venetian ones. In 1202, Zadar was taken, the army of the crusaders boarded ships, but... they did not go to Egypt at all, but ended up under the walls of Constantinople. The reason for this turn of events was the struggle for the throne in Byzantium itself. Doge Dandolo, who liked to settle scores with competitors (Byzantium competed with Venice in trade with eastern countries) with the hands of the crusaders, conspired with the leader of the “army of Christ” Boniface of Montferrat. Pope Innocent III supported the enterprise - and the route of the crusade was changed for the second time.
Having besieged Constantinople in 1203, the crusaders achieved the restoration of Emperor Isaac II to the throne, who promised to pay generously for support, but was not rich enough to keep his word. Angered by this turn of events, the “liberators of the Holy Land” took Constantinople by storm in April 1204 and subjected it to pogrom and plunder. The capital of the Great Empire and Orthodox Christianity was devastated and set on fire. After the fall of Constantinople, part of the Byzantine Empire was captured. On its ruins a new state arose - the Latin Empire, created by the crusaders. It did not exist for long, until 1261, when it collapsed under the blows of the conquerors.
After the fall of Constantinople, calls to go liberate the Holy Land died down for a while, until the children of Germany and France in 1212 set off for this feat, which turned out to be their death. The subsequent four crusades of the knights to the East did not bring success. True, during the 6th campaign, Emperor Frederick II managed to liberate Jerusalem, but after 15 years the “infidels” regained what they had lost. After the failure of the 8th crusade of the French knights in North Africa and the death of the French king Louis IX the Saint there, the calls of the Roman high priests to new “exploits in the name of the faith of Christ found no response. The possessions of the crusaders in the East were gradually captured by Muslims, until at the very end of the 13th century. The Kingdom of Jerusalem did not cease to exist.
True, in Europe itself the crusaders existed for a long time. By the way, those German dog knights whom Prince Alexander Nevsky defeated on Lake Peipus were also crusaders. Roman Popes until the 15th century. organized crusades in Europe in the name of exterminating heresies. But these were only echoes of the past. The Holy Sepulcher remained with the “infidels”; this loss was accompanied by enormous sacrifices - how many paladins remained forever in the Holy Land? But along with the returning crusaders, new knowledge and skills, windmills, cane sugar, and even the familiar custom of washing our hands before eating came to Europe. Thus, having shared a lot and taken thousands of lives in payment, the East did not yield a single step to the West. The great battle, which lasted 200 years, ended in a draw.
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