The Crusades?

Question

I have to make an essay about the crusades. The problem is my teacher is making me show how this happened in 3 different regions. Even though it only happened once he said be creative.
Can anyone help?

I know that four crusades happened and everything. The essay is three different regions tho. One can be Europe, the other America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East. I already have the fours crusades down, now i just need two others that resembles the crusade in some way and that is in a different region.

Answer 1

There were also conflicts called crusades against the tribes of Eastern Europe (look up the Teutonic Knights) and in southern France, against a heretical group called the Cathars (look up Albigensian Crusade)

Answer 2

What your teacher is trying to convey to you is that The Crusades was not simply a Regional Conflict but a Global Conflct that effected several regions.

We'll play this out like a movie stage left to right across a Map of Europe.
A) The typical mall crowd is hanging out at the mall/in the shopping district imagine a whole lot of small stores clustered around a town square dominated by a Church. Typical crowd, lots of bored teenagers without a whole lot to do, people in their twenties stuck in the rut of a boring job, others more settled in their 30's & 40's most of whom are the shopkeepers and priests.
A man in the robes of a Priest draws everyones attention. He makes a loud angry speech about Moslems & Herectics & Godless Heathens "Holding Jerusalem hostage," the very birth place of Christ is being defiled the site of Christ's crucifixion/martydom is being defiled.
What is even better is the word that there is riches & land to be taken, an act sanctified by God because 'He' wants the Holy Land Free .

Bored restless teenagers having no video or computer games or competitive sports plus a large number of 20 somethings and 30 somethings jump at the chance to go wage war in some place in the Middle East.

B) Hordes of Men and a few women surge out of France, picking up recruits from Britain, they can go two ways to reach the Holy Land. The so called easy way and the most exspensive way is due south to the French Mediteranen Coast and take passage on a foul smelly leaky boat. The trip is mostly boring and could be deadly.

More Fun is to March acorss Germany, called The Holy Roman Empire. These hordes of holy hooligans can recruit more bored restless teens and adults along the way, and Joy of Joy along the way the find Ghettos of 'Godless Heathens,' 'Jews,' the very same people that 'murdered Christ. Christ isn't going on a Crusade Fun? They pause to rape murder loot, finding profit in holding communities of Jews hostage, Go to The Crusades and Get Paid Along the Way.

C) Through the Holy Roman Empire, the heart of Europe, high mountain passages, rivers running south, on through The Balklans. Slam up against The Byzantium Empire where Turkey is today )2007). The Byzantiums are Bizarre. They have crosses and priests and such but their people are BROWN and speak funny and old Easter on the wrong day and other weird stuff. Impossible to sack & loot Constaniople just yet but o-k to pillage & rape small villages along the way.

D) Finally after arduous travel, foot sore & broke despite loot seized along the way arrive in the Holy Land and find out that in a desert war most of your commanders hardly know what to do. It only gets more complicated from here!!

Hope this helps - - - if I was your teacher you would be pumping out great Hollywood epics starring your favorite actors slashing trashing their way across medeival Europe.

Peace.....

Answer 3

If we do not learn from history; we are doomed to repeat it. The crusades are about religious land, and power grabs. Use events from the present day world. There were 4 different crusades. Try the reading the Name of the Rose or any book about the Knights Templar.

Answer 4

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Answer 5

they definatly happened more than once.

Answer 6

Actually your teacher means three different REGIONS. That is three different areas of the earth that crusades (in the context of the christian crusades against the mohommedans) occured. There were three of them. One was the famous crusades of the holy land(Palestine), one was the RECONQUISTOR(reconconquest) of the Spanniards in Spain against the Moorish conqueres there to reclaim back the parts of Spain in Mohommedan hands and the third was the knights of the Teutonic order's crusade and expansion into north eastern Europe.

The first region entailed a number of crusades:
THE FIRST CRUSADE:
In 1079 the Seljuk Turks under Alp Arslen defeated the forces of Byzantium under the emperor Romanus at the battle of Manzikurt, in Asia Minor. The Byzantines then began to press for help from Western Europe and eventually in 1095, pope Urban II gave a rousing speech at Cluny(the leading monestery in Europe) and there began a crusade. At first thousands of poor and peasantry(looking for a better life and fired with religious zeal) answered the call of a man called Peter. He led them over to Asia Minor where they were slaughted by the Turks. Then the proper crusade under Robert of Normady(the eldest son of William the Conquerer), Bohemond, Baldwin and Raymond of Tolouse arrived at Constantinopal. They numbered according to various history books from 60,000 to 300,000. They captured Dolyorium(Incium or Roum), Edessa and Antioch before captureing Jerusalem itself in 1099. They slaughtered the Jews and Muslims there and established the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
There were four kingdoms or realms: The overlord-the kingdom of Jerusalem, The principality of Edessa, the principality of Antioch and the County of Tripoli.

THE SECOND CRUSADE:
About 70 years later the Muslim leader Zenghi captured Edessa. A second crusade was launched. It was a bungle. Instead of joining Damascus which was the only Muslim holdout to Nur-al-din, the Muslim leader then, the crusaders actually went to attack Damascus. They dilly dally at the olive groves of Damascus and in the meantime, Damascus, joined Nur-al-din. The crusade collapsed.

THE THIRD CRUSADE:
In 1197, Saladin, the new Muslim leader lured(by the siege of Tiberius) the army of the kingdom of Jerusalem out beyond water and destroyed it at the battle of the Horns of Hattin. Saladin then captured Jerusalem which precipitated the third crusade. It was led by Frederick Barbarossa(the Holy Roman Emperor), Phillip Augustus(king of France), the archduke of Austria and Richard the Lionheart(king of England and the Plantagenon empire). Involving Richard has made the third crusade the most famous. The Germans under Frederick went through Asia Minor where Frederick drowned in a river. The Germans(a very formidable fighting force) without their leader-dissapated. The French and English and Austrians ,despite rivalries, captured Acre. Afterwards both the archduke and Phillip Augustus left and it was left to Richard to complete the crusade. He marched down the coast, defeated Saladin in two battles, but failed to capture Jerusalem. A truce was eventually done and Richard sailed for home. Soon after both Saladin and Richard died.

THE FOURTH CRUSADE:
This crusade set out and arrived at Venice. Due to poor planning the crusaders were short of money and supplies. Dandalo, the Dodge of Venice, agreed to supply them in return for attacking a rival. This they did but when it was over the Dodge informed them that this was not enough to pay the debt. He then informed them of a prize rich enough to pay in full and become rich themselves-Constantinopal-the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Most of the crusaders set sail with the Venitian navy(one of the strongest in the world at that time)-(although some like Simon De Montford's father in discust sailed for home) and they took and sacked Constantinopal in 1204. After committing atrocities they set up four kingdoms: The overlord-the latin kingdom of Constantinopal, the duchy of Morea(the Peloponese), the duchy of Euripus(in western Greece)and the duchy of Athens.
This lasted till a resurgent Byzantine dynasty from Nicea(in Asia Minor) under Michael Paleogolus recaptured Constantinopal in 1261.

THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE:
In the early 13th century there was a movement of religous and crusading children. Masses of children began to leave their homes in the hope of liberating the holy land from the Muslims. Lead by among others a boy named Stephan they had the pope's blessing, who said that where the knights and the men-at-arms failed, the children would, by the help of God, sucseed. They were taken on ships by supposevily friendly Muslim merchants, taken to North Africa, betrayed and sold as slaves. Very few of them ever saw their homelands again.

THE EGYPTIAN CRUSADE:
It was reasoned that to destroy the Muslim power in the Middle East that it was a good idea to attack the strongest Muslim power and the base of Mulim power-Egypt. The army was put under the command of John of Bryenne(the son of Balian IL Iblan and Sybilla of Jerusalem(the sister of Baldwin IV of Jerusalem). However the cardinal in charge of spiritual matters used fanatsism to mess up the strategic advantages and the crusader army after initial sucsesses was caught by the flooding of the canals and disease, decimated, and defeated.

LOUIS VII (Saint Louis-king of France)
Louis conducted two crusades in the middle of the 13th century. The first was in Egypt were he almost won, but lost it because he was fantatical and did not negotiate when he would have gotten back Jerusalem itself. Eventually after capturing Alexandria his sucsess was halted by an attack led by Baybars(a commander who was to become a very famous Sultan). Then the Egyptians flooded the cannals, Loui's army was worn down and he was forced to surrender.
Loui's second crusade was in North Africa where after some successes , he died of disease.

FREDERICK II(HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR)
Frederick was really an athiest who only took the crusade because he was being pressured continuously and thought it might be to his advantage. He actually won back Jerusalem by negotiation-as being brought up in Sicily he spoke Arabic, understood Muslim culture and was flexable. But almost all of the other crusaders were shocked and offended because he had won it by negotiaton and not by wading though masses of blood to regain the kingdom. He eventually got tired of the whole stupidity and left for his domains. Also the pope, when he was away, was encouraging his rivals to grab his lands.

EDWARD I OF ENGLAND:
The Muslims had captured the whole of the Middle East by the end of the 13th century. Under Baybars(who captured Acre) and his sucsessor-Khalid(who captured the famed caslte-the Krak De Chavelliers). The castle had withstood Saladin with 100,000 men including 12,000 knights for months. Edward did not capture Jerusalem. There is a story that he was poisoned but the poison was sucked out by his wife Matilda. But Christians could visit Jerusalem.
Jerusalem remained in Muslim hands till 1917 when it was captured by the British.


The second region was in Spain where the kingdoms of Aragon, Castille, Leon and Naverre began to reclaim their land which had been conquered by Islam in 715 A.D. It was a slow process which included the legandary hero El Cid and foriegn knights and men-at-arms who came to help. It eventually ended in 1492 with the capture of Granada(the last Muslim stronghold in Spain) by the king of Aragon and Naverre(Ferdinand) and the queen of Castille and Leon(Isabella) who ruled a newly united Spain. The famed explorer Christopher Columbus was in the campaign. Afterwards, due to pressure by Torquemada(the leader of the inquisition there) they began to persacute Muslims and Jews.

The third region was in North Eastern Europe where the order of the Teutonic knights were engaged in a crusade of expansion against the native Prussians and other Balkan peoples. They had two aims. To expand their land and power and to convert(forcibly if necissary) the local peoples to christianity. They waged a brutal and persistant war against these peoples. Eventually they foundered the city of Berlin as their principal fortress.

So these are the three regions. The first was mostly abondonded by the west eventually. The orders of knights were foundered to guard pilgrims etc. The two most famous were the TEMPLARS and the HOSPITILLARS. The Templars grew rich and powerful until they were destoyed by the French king-Phillip the Fair in 1314. The Hospitillars had their medical vocation when kicked out of the holy land. They moved first to Rhodes where they were kicked out by the Ottoman Turkish Sultan - Sulieman the Magnificant in 1512. They moved to Malta were they sucsessfully resisted a siege by the same sultan. They continued in Malta till Napoleon captured the island in 1799. They moved to Rome where they have the headquarters. Their work continues in the St. John Ambulence service in many countries of the world. The West learn't a lot from the East in those crusading centuries. This helped, with the capture of Constantinopal on Thursday-the 29th of May 1453 by the Turks led by Mohommed II (the conquerer). This event helped bring about the renassiance which brang about our modern world.

The crusade in Spain made Spain a united country. The capture of Granada enable Queen Isabella to provide Christopher Columbus with the backing of his voyage of discovery to America. Spain became a mighty empire for a time after that(due to the conquests of the new world) but didn't take full advantage of it . It slipped back into mediocracy. But this crusade did set things up, by the discovery of America and the age of exploration, for our modern world.

The other crusade had different consequences. Berlin became the capital of the kings of Prussia, then the capital of a united Germany which fought two world wars. Both they lost. In the second, the final resolution of the crusade in Eastern Europe-the Germanic against the Slav could be said to have been resolved in the capture of Berlin by Russian forces in 1945. But these two world wars helped shape our modern world. Relationships these days are much better.

The crusades were such as they could be looked upon as one of the last of the barbarian invasions in history. An invasion of ignorant, uncouth and fanatical barbarians on a civized portion of the world. The crusaders did do much that is atrocious. However they did do much that was good. For instance they reformed the land system so the use of the fallow system as used in Europe did make the land more fruitful. And the peasanty at the time found things much better under the crusaders than under their own rulers. The crusades were a blight on history. But they did keep the west safe for those vital years. A west that eventually brang democracy and human rights as well as prosperity to much of the world's population. Yes we of the west made mistakes, fell flat on out a***s. But we have grown up now. And isn't growing up all about that-making mistakes , learning from them and moving on. It is a pity we had to grow up that way-but this is because we had forgotten Rome. And after all, isn't the shoe on the other foot these days. Sure the crusades were wrong. But we have learn't a lot since then. Much has happened in the last thousand years. Hope this helps.