Crusades
The Crusades were Europe's version for "holy
wars" during the Middle
Ages. The official First Crusade began in
1096-1099. The First Crusade conquered
a strip of land along the eastern
coast of the Mediteranean about 500 miles long
and averaging 40 miles wide.
This European foothold in the Middle East was
divided into four little
kingdoms; the county of edessa, the Principality of
Antioch, the County
of Tripoli and the kingdom of Jerusalem this kingdoms were
ruled by the
Muslims soon recognized and began to reconquer this territory. The
Second
Crusade started in 1147-1149. The Christian forces in the Holy Land
grew
weak. In 1144, the Turks conquered the county of Edessa. The threat to
the other
Christian states brought about the Second Crusade. The spirited
preachings of
the French religious leader Bernard of Ccclairvaux inspired
Western Europeans to
defend the Latin States agains the Muslims. King Louis
VII of France and King
Conrad III of Germany led the armies of the Second
Crusade into Asia Minor, but
their armies did not coperate, and the Muslims
forces defeated them before they
reached Edessa. The Third Crusade sterted in
1189-1192. The Muslims continued to
attack the Christians in the Holy Land.
By 1183, Saladin, the master of Egypt
and Syria, had united the Muslims areas
around the Latin States. In 1887,
Saladin 1 easily defeated a Christian
army at the Batlle of the Horns of Hattin,
and entered Jerusalem. Only the
coastal cities of Tyre, Tripoli, and Antioch
remained in Christian hands. The
loss of Jerusalem led to the Third Crusade. The
important European leaders of
the Third Crusade included the German emperor Fre*censored*
I (called
Barbara), King Richard I (the Lion-Hearted) of England, and King
Phillip
II (Augustus) of France. Richard the Lionheart the English King known
for his
love of Crusades to the Holy land. Richard's action earned him the
name
Lion-Hearted. Richard actually spent only six months in England out
of his ten
years as a King. In this absence the nobles grew in power, but
thanks to the
stable goverment that Henry II ( his father), had established,
England fared
well even without her crusading King. Some of the legends of
Robin Hood, the
infamous outlaw of Sherwwod Forest, are set in the control of
Richard I and his
brother John. The Third Crusade having failed in its
importance objective of
recovering Jerusalem, the popes almost began
preaching a new crusade. This
turned out to take longer than anyone wanted,
for a variety of reasons. By the
time a new crusade was really under way,soon
after the turn of the
century,events were preparation in Constantinople that
would cause the Fourth
Crusade to take a dramatic turn away from
Palestine. The Fourth Crusade did not
recover jerusalem in 2 fact, it never
even made it to Outremer: rather, the
Crusdes ended by attacking
Constantiple, driving out the Byzantine Emperor, and
installing one of their
own in the ancient capital of
constatinople.