Medival history anyone?

Question

im a having to hardest time understanding the Crusades!!! I need help...I need someone to please explain to me what they were all about. I understand that there were like 6 of them?

Answer 1

On the one hand: power game
on the other hand: the need, wish to do something ”good” for God.
It was considered good and loyal to recapture Jerusalem from the Unholies.
Irrational idea, like so many others at the time (and today)
Like so many mass movement ideas it grasped everyone.
They even built complete settlements as starting points for these expeditions.
King Louis: Aigues Mortes in Southern France

You are welcome

Answer 2

They started off with all the best religious intentions and then degenerated into the usual punch-ups for wealth and territory.

See my summary below that I wrote for the question "Who won the Crusades?"

First Crusade (1095-1099) : Crusaders v Turks - Crusaders win 2 battles then invade Jerusalem, massacring the population (Crusaders 1 - Muslims 0)

Second Crusade (1145-1149) : Muslims take Edessa and Crusaders nip over to the Holy Land but don't score an decent wins (1-1)

Third Crusade (1189-1192) : Saladin takes back Jerusalem, Richard 1 takes Acre but doesn't make it to Jerusalem. Sues for peace with Saladin, then gets kidnapped on the way home. (2-2)

Fourth Crusade (1201-1204) : Crusade highjacked by the Venetians who manage to divert the army from going to the Holy Land and score a massive own goal by sacking Constantinople instead (2-3)

Children's Crusade (1212) : Another own-goal as the French and Germans lead 37,000 kids into slavery without getting anywhere near the Holy Land (2-4)

Fifth Crusade (1217-1221) : Crusaders again fail to get Jerusalem back and after a win at Dalmietta get foiled by the Egyptians when have a go at Cairo (2-5)

Sixth Crusade (1228-1229) : In a radical departure of tactics, Emperor Frederick II negotiates a peace deal instead of using armed force which gives the Crusaders control of Jerusalem, Nazareth and Bethlehem (3-5)

Seventh Crusade (1248-1254) : Egyptians storm Jerusalem and the Crusaders fail to get it back (3-6)

Eighth Crusade (1270) : Crusaders go to aid Syria but end up in Tunis (3-7)

Ninth Crusade (1271-1272) : Crusaders lose Antioch, Tripoli and Acre and are left with no presence in Syria (3-8)

I would say that makes it a resounding win overall for the Muslims, not necessarily all due to their military prowess but often due to the incompetence and greed of the Christian forces.

Answer 3

I'm not surprised at your confusion - they were barely understood even at the time that they were going on.

Originally, Alexios, the Emperor of Byzantium, sent word to Rome asking for help defending his city against the Seljuk Turks. He probably would have been better off asking Heinrich IV, the HRE for help directly, but instead his appeal was directed at Pope Urban II, who (whether ignorantly and in good faith or deliberately, I don't know) changed the message from "Help defend Byzantium" to "Liberate Jerusalem".

Pope Urban preached his call for soldiers to go east from Clermont in France with the cry "God Wills It!". The newly recruited Frankish army ripped up cloth to sew makeshift crosses on thier tunics and were dubbed "Crus-aders" (Crus being the Latin word for "Cross").

Soon several Crusader kingdoms had been established in the "Outermere" (the "other side of the sea" in Old French) and a number of "Crusades" were declared against forces in the Middle East, as well as against non-conformers at home (like the Cathars in southern France). There was even a "Children's Crusade" declared by a couple mis-guided teenagers (which became the basis for the Pied Piper legend).

Answer 4

The Crusades were a series of military campaigns of a religious character waged by Christians from 1095-1291, usually sanctioned by the Pope[1] in the name of Christendom,[2] with the goal of recapturing Jerusalem and the sacred "Holy Land" from Muslim rule and originally launched in response to a call from the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire for help against the expansion of the Muslim Seljuq dynasty into Anatolia.[3][4]

The term is also used to describe contemporaneous and subsequent campaigns conducted through the 16th Century in territories outside of the Levant[5], usually against pagans, those considered by the Catholic Church to be heretics, and peoples under the ban of excommunication,[3] for a mixture of religious, economic, and political reasons.[6] The traditional numbering scheme for the Crusades includes the nine major expeditions to the Holy Land during the 11th to 13th centuries. Other unnumbered "crusades" continued into the 16th century, lasting until the political and religious climate of Europe was significantly changed during the Renaissance and Reformation.

The Children's Crusade was not a military campaign, but probably a popular uprising in France and/or Germany, possibly with the intention of reaching the Holy Land in order to peacefully convert Muslims there to Christianity.

The Crusades had far-reaching political, economic, and social impacts, some of which have lasted into contemporary times. Due to internal conflicts among Christian kingdoms and political powers, some of the crusade expeditions, e. g., the fourth crusade, were diverted from their original aim and resulted in the sack of Christian cities, including the Byzantine capital, Constantinople.[7] Internal conflicts between Muslim kingdoms and political powers also meant alliances with one faction against the other such as the one with the Sultanate of Rum during the Fifth Crusade

Answer 5

There were over 9 crusades (wikipedia), and constituted a series of wars over land lost to the Muslims in Iberia (Spain), Western Mediterranean, and the Holy Land (Syria, Lebanon, Israel). The Christian Participants came from Germany, Poland, Scandinavia, France, Italian maritime states (Venice, Pisa, Genoa), Catalonia (North East Spain). Both the Catholics and Eastern Orthodox churchs participated. Ultimately, the Christians conquered all of the lands, but they could not hold on to the Holy Land, but they did keep everything they eventually won in the Western Mediterranean.

Answer 6

Taking possession of the Holy Land for the Pope. The Pope thought that neither the Jews nor the Muslims should be allowed to have the Holy Land, so he persuaded the kings of Europe to send their knights and soldiers to take the Holy Land away from the non-Christians. Bad idea. Caused more harm than good and was a total failure. Not a very Christian way for the Pope to treat those who were God's chosen people.

Answer 7

Some say it was a ingenious campaign of the church to get rid of all powerful and belliquous people in europe. As everybody was making war somewhere far away, there was "no problem at home" and church could rise to great power in europe.

I don't know if it's true, though, but we probably never will.

Answer 8

Religion!

Answer 9

A good reference is below.