Yet another blow to the “black legend” of the Crusades

~ “LETTERS FROM EUROPE” - by Rob (Wind Rose Hotel) ~

Recruiting for the Crusade, Oil on canvas (1621)

Palazzo Ducale, Venice

Every now and then I feel like paying tribute to the Crusades, one of the most controversial and misinterpreted issues—mostly because of the shadow cast on them by the Enlightenment circles to use them as a weapon in their anti-religious campaigns—in Western intellectual, religious, and political history. So here is yet another blow to the “black legend” of the Crusades, worshipped by almost every sworn enemy of the West and its Judeo-Christian values and heritage. This time it is G. K. Chesterton’s turn to be the Advocate of the Christian Cause. Here is an excerpt from his 1920 The New Jerusalem (CHAPTER XI, THE MEANING OF THE CRUSADE) :

The critic of the Crusade talks as if it had sought out some inoffensive tribe or temple in the interior of Thibet, which was never discovered until it was invaded. They seem entirely to forget that long before the Crusaders had dreamed of riding to Jerusalem, the Moslems had almost ridden into Paris. They seem to forget that if the Crusaders nearly conquered Palestine, it was but a return upon the Moslems who had nearly conquered Europe. There was no need for them to argue by an appeal to reason, as I have argued above, that a religious division must make a difference; it had already made a difference. The difference stared them in the face in the startling transformation of Roman Barbary and of Roman Spain. In short it was something which must happen in theory and which did happen in practice; all expectation suggested that it would be so and all experience said it was so. Having thought it out theoretically and experienced it practically, they proceeded to deal with it equally practically. The first division involved every principle of the science of thought; and the last developments followed out every principle of the science of war. The Crusade was the counter-attack. It was the defensive army taking the offensive in its turn, and driving back the enemy to his base. And it is this process, reasonable from its first axiom to its last act, that Mr. Pound actually selects as a sort of automatic wandering of an animal. But a man so intelligent would not have made a mistake so extraordinary but for another error which it is here very essential to consider. To suggest that men engaged, rightly or wrongly, in so logical a military and political operation were only migrating like birds or swarming like bees is as ridiculous as to say that the Prohibition campaign in America was only an animal reversion towards lapping as the dog lappeth, or Rowland Hill's introduction of postage stamps an animal taste for licking as the cat licks. Why should we provide other people with a remote reason for their own actions, when they themselves are ready to tell us the reason, and it is a perfectly reasonable reason?
I have compared this pompous imposture of scientific history to the pompous and clumsy building of the scientific Germans on the Mount of Olives, because it substitutes in the same way a modern stupidity for the medieval simplicity. But just as the German Hospice after all stands on a fine site, and might have been a fine building, so there is after all another truth, somewhat analogous, which the German historians of the Folk-Wanderings might possibly have meant, as distinct from all that they have actually said. There is indeed one respect in which the case of the Crusade does differ very much from modern political cases like prohibition or the penny post. I do not refer to such incidental peculiarities as the fact that Prohibition could only have succeeded through the enormous power of modern plutocracy, or that even the convenience of the postage goes along with an extreme coercion by the police. It is a somewhat deeper difference that I mean; and it may possibly be what these critics mean. But the difference is not in the evolutionary, but rather the revolutionary spirit.
The First Crusade was not a racial migration; it was something much more intellectual and dignified; a riot. In order to understand this religious war we must class it, not so much with the wars of history as with the revolutions of history. As I shall try to show briefly on a later page, it not only had all the peculiar good and the peculiar evil of things like the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution, but it was a more purely popular revolution than either of them. The truly modern mind will of course regard the contention that it was popular as tantamount to a confession that it was animal. In these days when papers and speeches are full of words like democracy and self-determination, anything really resembling the movement of a mass of angry men is regarded as no better than a stampede of bulls or a scurry of rats. The new sociologists call it the herd instinct, just as the old reactionaries called it the many-headed beast. But both agree in implying that it is hardly worth while to count how many head there are of such cattle. In face of such fashionable comparisons it will seem comparatively mild to talk of migration as it occurs among birds or insects. Nevertheless we may venture to state with some confidence that both the sociologists and the reactionaries are wrong. It does not follow that human beings become less than human because their ideas appeal to more and more of humanity. Nor can we deduce that men are mindless solely from the fact that they are all of one mind. In plain fact the virtues of a mob cannot be found in a herd of bulls or a pack of wolves, any more than the crimes of a mob can be committed by a flock of sheep or a shoal of herrings. Birds have never been known to besiege and capture an empty cage of an aviary, on a point of principle, merely because it had kept a few other birds in captivity, as the mob besieged and captured the almost empty Bastille, merely because it was the fortress of a historic tyranny. And rats have never been known to die by thousands merely in order to visit a particular trap in which a particular rat had perished, as the poor peasants of the First Crusade died in thousands for a far-off sight of the Sepulchre or a fragment of the true cross. In this sense indeed the Crusade was not rationalistic, if the rat is the only rationalist. But it will seem more truly rational to point out that the inspiration of such a crowd is not in such instincts as we share with the animals, but precisely in such ideas as the animals never (with all their virtues) understand.

What is peculiar about the First Crusade is that it was in quite a new and abnormal sense a popular movement. I might almost say it was the only popular movement there ever was in the world. For it was not a thing which the populace followed; it was actually a thing which the populace led. It was not only essentially a revolution, but it was the only revolution I know of in which the masses began by acting alone, and practically without any support from any of the classes. When they had acted, the classes came in; and it is perfectly true, and indeed only natural, that the masses alone failed where the two together succeeded. But it was the uneducated who educated the educated. The case of the Crusade is emphatically not a case in which certain ideas were first suggested by a few philosophers, and then preached by demagogues to the democracy. This was to a great extent true of the French Revolution; it was probably yet more true of the Russian Revolution; and we need not here pause upon the fine shade of difference that Rousseau was right and Karl Marx was wrong. In the First Crusade it was the ordinary man who was right or wrong. He came out in a fury at the insult to his own little images or private prayers, as if he had come out to fight with his own domestic poker or private carving-knife. He was not armed with new weapons of wit and logic served round from the arsenal of an academy. There was any amount of wit and logic in the academies of the Middle Ages; but the typical leader of the Crusade was not Abelard or Aquinas but Peter the Hermit, who can hardly be called even a popular leader, but rather a popular flag. And it was his army, or rather his enormous rabble, that first marched across the world to die for the deliverance of Jerusalem.

Here’s What You Don’t Know and Weren’t Taught About the Crusades III

First Crusade: In addition to what was noted in the previous blogs, the First Crusade was also in response to a plea from the Byzantine Empire. There were thousands people that came to the call that suffered and died. They marched thousands of miles across Europe.
They crossed the Bosporus at Constantinople, and then marched to Nicaea. Thousands of people that needed to be fed and sheltered on the move. The logistics boggle the mind. They restored the city to the Byzantine Emperor and then on to Anatolia and restored to Christian control the city of Antioch, one of the ancient patriarchates of Christianity. Keep in mind a lot of these Crusaders were not professional soldiers. Marching on they captured Edessa. Moving on, down the coast they come to Jerusalem. They captured it in July 1099. This Crusade completed what it set out to do. That it was done is amazing. So many people in a strange land, so unprepared, yet so successful. The rest of the story doesn’t show much success.

The Second Crusade, led by two kings and preached by St. Bernard of Clair Vaux, failed dramatically. Edessa had been lost, and this Crusade was to regain it. The leaders fought each other, undermined each other, and were an abysmal failure. It even strengthened a powerful Muslim leader. They tried to take Damascus and that failed too. Results of the Second Crusade, failure.

Third Crusade: A famous adventure, written about in many books, fiction and non-fiction, and movies, because the story involved Richard the Lionheart against Saladin. The fight was for Jerusalem. Results of the Third Crusade, failure.

Forth Crusade: This is the one where the Crusaders reached Constantinople, the largest, most powerful Christian city in the world; sacked it and dispersed. This was the source of the split between Western and Eastern Christendom.
The purpose of this one was to recapture Jerusalem. The Byzantine Empire and Turkey were still mad at what happened the last time the Crusaders crossed their land, destroying their crops, fields and cities, so the leaders of this Crusade thought they would sail across the Mediterranean. They didn’t have boats, so they went to Vienna, gave them some blank checks, and the Venetians asked them how many ships for how many people, supplies and livestock. The Crusaders ordered transportation and provisions for 33,500 men and 4,500 horses, and the Pope said, go ahead and do it. It took awhile, and eventually all ships and tons of provisions were ready. Only about 12,000 folks showed up. The Crusaders didn’t have the money as a result. To make amends the Venetians requested the Crusaders sack Zara, a city on the Dalmatian coast. The ruler of the city was the Hungarian king, which had signed on to the Crusades and was a supporter. The city was also a Catholic. They moved on to Constantinople and hoped to get to Egypt from there. A lot of misunderstanding. The city got sacked. The Pope was TO’d and excommunicated the lot. The Crusade didn’t even make it to the Middle East. Results of the Forth Crusade, failure.

Albigensian Crusade: Big civil war in France. Cathars were wiped out and Southern France’s attempt at independence from Northern France was squashed.

Children's Crusade: The leader of the French army, Stephen, led 30,000 children. The leader of the German army, Nicholas, led 7,000 children. The history of this Crusade is fuzzy. Some of the kids made it back home, a lot settled along the route, many were sold into slavery in the Middle East and North Africa, or died of starvation.

Fifth Crusade: This was organized by the Church, and was directed by professional administrators and soldiers to recapture Jerusalem. The captured the city of Damietta, and were then ordered to take Cairo. Lost that battle hugely. Major defeat. Results of the Fifth Crusade, failure.

The next crusade and the Fifth can be viewed as the same. Fredrick II had led the Fifth, went back and negotiated a settlement with the ruler of Egypt. This lasted for about ten years. He got Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem; Muslims got Muslims were given control of the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aksa mosque.

Over the next few years and Crusades, nothing else much happened. A lot of skirmishes in Europe. The Crusades as we were taught, and what Muslims were taught is incorrect.
If there should be any grievances, the West should be stating them. Now, a thousand years later, Muslims are again killing to convert, using both terrorism and the laws of democratic states to conquer.

Here’s What You Don’t Know and Weren’t Taught About the Crusades II

The other aspect was of course the religious component. It is now politically incorrect to justify, as noted above, religion as a motivation for war. Jerusalem and the surrounding area was, for Christians at the time, holy land. Jesus walked, taught, lived, died and was resurrected there. Pope Urban was the one that called for the First Crusade, saying:
“They (the Turks) have completely destroyed some of God’s churches and they have converted others to the uses of their own cult. They ruin the altars with filth and defilement. They circumcise Christians and smear the blood from the circumcision over the altar or throw it into the baptismal fonts. They are pleased to kill others by cutting open their bellies, extracting the end of their intestines, and tying it to a stake. Then, with flogging, they drive their victims around the stake until, when their viscera have spilled out; they fall dead on the ground. They tie others, again, to stakes and shoot arrow at them; they seize other, stretch out their necks, and try to see whether they can cut off their heads with a single blow of a naked sword. And what shall I say about the shocking rape of women?”

The Crusade was to be a pilgrimage, and a holy endeavor. It was to bring grace and penance. It was originally for able bodied men that could fight. But everyone, women and the elderly wanted to go. What happened was that Urban relented and as a result, many sick, poor, children, women and other people unfit for soldiering went. Not just this crusade but the following ones.

Who went? About 150,000 from all European countries went. Most were poor, many were women. There were about 40,000 men in the First Crusade. Very few Knights, and these had armies. These weren’t loser knights, weak sons, etc, but barons, lords, estate owners, many of whom lost everything, including their lives. It was expensive too. Funds had to be raised because the cost was far beyond what it took to run their estates.

As part of Urban’s degree, captured lands were to be left to the Byzantine emperor. Most knights, after fulfilling their vows, returned to Europe with adding to their wealth, and often were impoverished and had to rebuild. The same for the poor; no wealth to be gained. A lot of ways to die. Starvation, bandits and robbers, attacks from Muslim armies. Were there ill intentioned people making the journey? Surely. I contend most were doing it for exactly the reasons they stated. Protect Europe, the Holy Land, and Christianity.

The scriptures that motivated: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt. 16:24) “And everyone that has forsaken houses, or brethren, or sister, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life: (Matt 19:29)

Here’s What You Don’t Know and Weren’t Taught About the Crusades I

Here’s What You Don’t Know and Weren’t Taught About the Crusades

The word “crusade” comes from “cruce-signati” meaning “those signed by the cross”. It’s modern meaning is for any huge endeavor; for example, a crusade against illiteracy, or poverty. The original Crusades have come to be viewed as a military campaign, religious warfare. Of course religious warfare is despicable, but wars for real estate and secular ideology are okay. The exception in modern time is militant Islamofascism. “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

The big clash now between Western Civilization and Islam is a repeat of what happened about a thousand years ago. Christianity had no armies until the Roman Emperor Constantine got converted from paganism about 312 CE. Jesus had no armies. Mohammed had armies. I believe sources need to be looked at; they inform thoughts and behavior or any organization and belief.

Mohammed began by waging war, first against Mecca, the neighboring villages and towns to consolidate his power. He ended up conquering all of Arabia and the Middle East; Persia, Egypt and Syria. After his death, Islam continued to use military might to conquer and convert. They conquered North Africa. Moved across the Straits of Gibraltar and conquered Spain. They met defeat in France. On the other side of Europe, Islamic armies moved in deep, claiming Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, Croatia, and Serbia.
They had ships on the Danube. In 846 CE a naval expedition entered the River Tiber and Arab forces sacked Ostia and Rome.

The Crusades were a defensive measure. I’ll start with the First Crusade, which was a success, and then over the next few posts show how the rest were at best marginal failures and others absolute failures.