Crusaders help :S Confused?

Question

I'm a little confused. Muslims had the holy land. Then Christians who wanted the holy land (because it's holy) went to get it. (1st one). Afterwards, Muslims went to get it back (2nd) and then it went on a complete loop like that (with King Richard 'the Braveheart'?)

What year did the 1st one happen, and what year did the 2nd one happen?

(sorry, but I forgot as we haven't dont them for a while, and I don't find it as easy to leaf through information. First answer will win the 10p unless an answer after that proves it was inaccurate)

thanks

Please note to some people who didn't even answer the asked question. This is not homework. And if you think like that then everyone here can do their own research and how do you know I wasn't after peoples knowledge of the holy wars? See, there really is no need to get rude

Answer 1

First crusade preached by Urban II in 1095 at Clermont, though they did not make to the Holy Land until later. Second crusade (led by Louis VII) was to stem the influx of Muslim armies back into the Holy Land in 1144/5. It was a failure from the perspective of western Christians, but they retained some regions. Third crusade (led by Philip Augustus and Richard the Lionhearted n 1188) was for the same reason, but was an even bigger failure for western forces.

Answer 2

Actually, the Christians wanted it back, the Holy Land was owned by the Byznatines before the Muslims took it. King Richard was known as the Lionheart, your thinking of the Scotsman who was fighting the English later on. The Crusades started in 1095, and there were more then just the major ones that you hear about. There were many little ones too.

Answer 3

It's King Richard the Lionheart, and do your own homework.

Answer 4

the cathoics were enraged that moslems possesed the holy land, so the pope called for a holy crusade. it failed. a second was launched and catholics won the second, and a third was launched to contain moslem rebels. the rebels got control again.
they ended in a comprimise moslems would poseses the holy land but would allow christain pilgrims to visit all of the cites unharmed

Answer 5

so not only are you dumb you are also not compitent enough to google "first Crussade"
woa... i so pitty your teachers

Answer 6

Normally I don't help people who are to lazy to do their own homework. However I REALLY like the Crusades so I'll give you some help. (Please keep your points though.)

Remember the Roman Empire? They were in control of the Holy Land, heck all of the Medeteranian back when Jesus was alive. Well about the year 410 the Western part of the Emprie fell apart when the Barbarians invaded.

Well the EASTERN part of the Empire DIDN'T fall apart. The capital had already moved from Rome to Constantinople, so these folks just went on being Romans. They had Emperors (Justinian and his wife Theodora were the best) and chariot races and did pretty much everything the Romans did, except they were Christian. Today we call them the Byzantines, but at the time they just called themselves Romans, even though they didn't own Rome anymore.

This went on for two or three hundred years. Then in then duiring the 600s they got into a HUGE series of wars with Persia (today we call Persia Iran). Neither side won, they just sort of stopped fighting when both sides were so trashed out they couldn't fight anymore.

At this exact time Mohammed was down in Mecca, and he created Islam. He lead his armies on a war of conquest, and by the time he died he was king of what is today Saudi Arabia. After he died his followers kept up the Jihad, and went to war to make the whole world Islamic.

The first Moslem troops invaded the Holy Land, and the Christian Romans (Byzantines) were too trashed out from fighting Persia to fight back very well. This resulted in the Fall of Jerusalem, Damascus (635) and Antioch (636) to the Moslems.

The Moslems didn't kill all the Christians in the cities they took over, they made the Christians "Dhimmis". Dhimmis could not own weapons, ride horses, wear shoes, ring church bells, wear anything green, or fight back if they were attacked by a Muslim.
Proclaiming Jesus' divinity and conversion from Islam were capital offenses.
Muslim rulers were not anxious for converts because Dhimmis were more valuable economically, as they paid tribute and were the slave labor. However life as a Dhimmi pretty much stunk and over the years most people converted to Islam, if only to get out of the extra taxes and be able to get good jobs.

The war between Islam and the Byzantines never did stop until 1453 when the Byzantine Capital of Constantinople fell to the Turks. There were truces every so often, but they were more like a "time out" than anything else.

In 1071 the Turks, (who ARE Moslems, but NOT Arabs) beat the stufing out the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikurt. The Byzantines lost most of what was left of their nation, and all of their Army. Most importanlty they lost their agricultural heartland, and with it, the ability to recruit large armies. They were in deep doo doo.

So deep that the Emperor asked the Pope for help. This was a big deal as Byzantium was Orthodox Christian and Rome and the rest of Western Europe was Roman Catholic and the two did NOT get along well. What the Emperor wanted was an army of mercenary troops. What he got was the First Crusade.

The Pope (Urban the II) only said "Go take Jerusalem back from the Moslems!" He did NOT say who was in charge, how it was going to work, or anything like that. This was probably not the best idea.

When it comes to the Crusades, the best thing to rememer is that NOBODY was in charge of this affair. This was NOT D-Day with everyone taking orders from General Eisenhower. The Crusaders were loyal to their feudal lords, the lords were loyal to a particular king or baron. NOBODY was in overall command. This lead to problems, to say the least.

There were, in fact, several Crusades, including a "Pesants Crusade" or "People's Crusade" which was just a bunch of unorganized pesants following a guy called Peter the Hermit. (Today we would probably call it the Hippies Crusade. Think of a cross between a protest march and the 700 Club.) The Pesants Crusade marched into Turkish Territory and was promptly slaughtered. Well many were slaughtered, the Turks took a lot of them prisoner and made them into slaves and concubines and such.

The First Crusade, despite a great many problems, wound up taking Jerusalem in the summer of 1099. Because of a long history of Moslem atrocities against Christians (including the slaughter and enslavement of the People's Crusade) the Crusaders were pretty rough on the Moslems who lived in Jerusalem. ""[Our leaders] also ordered all the Saracen dead to be cast outside because of the great stench, since the whole city was filled with their corpses; and so the living Saracens dragged the dead before the exits of the gates and arranged them in heaps, as if they were houses. No one ever saw or heard of such slaughter of pagan people, for funeral pyres were formed from them like pyramids, and no one knows their number except God alone".

At this point the Crusaders decided to set up their own kingdoms in the new lands they conquered, rather than give them back to the Byzantines. When they were in Constantinople they had promsed to give the land back to the Byzantine Emperor, but the Byzantines had also promised to support and help the Crusaders. No such help ever showed up, so since the Byzantines didn't come through on their end of the deal the Crusaders sort of felt they didn't have to hold up their end of the bargan either.

They set up 4 little countries. There was the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli, the County of Edessa and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Godfrey of Bouillon became "Protector of the Holy Sepulchre" and head of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He refused to be called King of Jerusalem because Jesus was King of Jerusalem.

The Crusaders held Jerusalem until Saladin, and Egyptian Moslem recaptured it in 1187. (That's 88 years. Israel has only existed for 59 years, so that's one of the reasons the Arabs today keep fighting Israel. They sort of figure "We did it once we can do it again.")

For most of those years the Crusader states owed their existance to the fact that the Moslems couldn't or wouldn't work together. Moslem Syria kept fighting Moslem Egypt, etc. Finally a General named Saladin managed to unite all the Moslem Armies, and he retook Jerusalem in 1187. The Christians called another Crusade to retake it. This was the Third Crusade.

(The Second Crusade was called in 1145 in response to the fall of the County of Edessa the previous year, it was pretty much a total gork up by the Christians and a total victory for the Moslems all around, so it doesn't get a lot of attention in the history books.)

The Third Crusade was lead by Richard the Lionhearted of England, Philip II of France and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa who was in charge of the Germans. Only Frederick died and Leopold V of Austria took over command of the Germans half way through. These guys all had big egos and couldn't work together either, and even though there were some tremendious adventures (The Siege of Acre is still studied by soldiers today) the other two got so sick of Richard they finally just took their ball and went home. Richard was able to fight his way to just outside of Jerusalem. He could see it... heck he probably could have taken it..everybody wanted him to try... but he was (unusally for the time) a really good General and he knew he couldn't HOLD it if he did take it. On September 2, 1192, Richard and Saladin finalized a treaty by which Jerusalem would remain under Muslim control, but which also allowed unarmed Christian pilgrims to visit the city. (Prior Pilgrims had come back with their feet cut off... when they came back at all.) Richard departed the Holy Land on October 9 1192.

Most historians stop talking about Crusades after that. The 4th Crusade was a disaster all around. Pope Innocent III began to call for a Crusade in 1198. The Crusaders negotiated in 1200 with the Doge of Venice for transport of 33,500 Crusaders to Egypt. (Venice was the big naval power of the time and owned pretty much all the ships) Well the money never showed up, and Crusaders could not pay the original price, and then some VERY dirty dealing began... long story short Venice said they Crusaders could work off their fare by taking Constantinople (the Byzantine Capital) for them. They told the Crusaders all sorts of stories about how if the Crusaders would take Constantinople the Venetians would provide them transport to the Holy Land, and the would set up a new Emperor in Constantinople who would make all the Orthodox Christians into Catholics, etc. The real motive was that A) Constantinople was one of the richest cities on Earth and B) Constantinople had gotten rich by being Venice's biggest trade rival. Venice just wanted to take out the competition.

Crusaders went along with this and took the city on April 12, 1204. The burned, looted, pillaged, raped, stole anything that wasn't nailed down and a lot of things that were... (there are 4 bronze horses at the Cathederal of St. Marks in Venice that used to be in Constantinople's Chariot racing stadium). Then the Crusaders split up what was left of the Byzantine Empire amongst themselves and spent the next several decades fighting each other (and the remaing Byzantines) over who got what and pretty much ignoring Jerusalem and the Moslems and the Turks; who must have just thought this was all laugh out loud funny.

The Byzantines eventually got Constantinople back from the Crusaders, but so much of its wealth had been stolen by the Crusaders that the City was never very strong again and finally fell to the Turks in 1453. The various Crusader States fell to the Turks one by one. The the county of Edessa fell in 1144, kingdom of Jerusalem fell 1187, the principality of Antioch 1268, and the county of Tripoli 1289. There were more Crusades (the 8th and 9th are the last ones) to try to help, but they didn't come to much (by this time most of the European Knights were busy fighting each other in wars back in Europe).

The Moslems and Turks wound up the big winners. They kept on moving East and weren't finally stopped until Jan Sobieski defeated them during the Siege of Vienna in 1683. The Moslems kept Jerusalem until the British took it from the Turks in 1916 during World War One. The Israelis got West Jerusalem in the Israel's War of Independece in 1948, and then took East Jerusalem in 1967. They still hold it today.