Crusades (end of XI - end of XIII century). Campaigns of Western European knights in Palestine with the aim of freeing the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem from the rule of Muslims.
First crusade
1095 - at the Clermont Cathedral, Pope Urban III called for a crusade to free the holy places from the yoke of the Saracens (Arabs and Seljuk Turks). The first crusade consisted of peasants and poor townspeople, led by the preacher Peter of Amiens. 1096 - they arrived in Constantinople and, without waiting for the approach of the knightly army, crossed over to Asia Minor. There, the poorly armed and even worse trained militia of Peter of Amiens was easily defeated by the Turks.
1097, spring - detachments of knights-crusaders concentrated in the capital of Byzantium. The main role in the First Crusade was played by the feudal lords of France: Count Raymond of Toulouse, Count Robert of Flanders, son of the Norman Duke William (future conqueror of England) Robert, Bishop Ademar.
Count Gottfried of Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine, his brothers Baldwin and Eustathius, Count Hugh of Vermandois, son of the French king Henry I, and Count of Bohemond of Tarentum, also took part in the campaign. Pope Urban wrote to the Byzantine emperor Alexei I Comnenus that 300,000 crusaders were marching, but it is more likely that several tens of thousands of people took part in the First Crusade, of which only a few thousand knights were well armed.
The crusaders were joined by a detachment of the Byzantine army and the remnants of the militia of Peter of Amiens.
The main problem of the crusaders was the lack of a unified command. The dukes and counts who took part in the campaign did not have a common suzerain and did not want to obey each other, considering themselves no less noble and powerful than their colleagues.
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Gottfried of Bouillon was the first to cross to the land of Asia Minor, followed by other knights. 1097, June - the crusaders took the fortress of Nicaea and advanced to Cilicia. The Crusader army marched in two columns. The right one was commanded by Gottfried of Bouillon, the left - Bohemond of Tarentum. Gottfried's army advanced in the valley of Dorilee, and Bohemond marched in the valley of the Gargon. On June 29, the Nicene Sultan Soliman attacked the left column of the Crusaders, which had not yet managed to move away from Dorilee. The crusaders were able to build a wagenburg (closed line of carts). In addition, their location was covered by the Bafus River. Bohemond sent a messenger with a detachment to Gottfried to announce the approach of the Turks.
The Turks rained stones and arrows on Bohemund's infantry, and then began to retreat. When the crusaders rushed after the retreating, they were unexpectedly attacked by Turkish cavalry. The knights were scattered. Then the Turks broke into Wagenburg and massacred a significant part of the infantry. Bohemund managed to push back the enemy with the help of the cavalry reserve, but reinforcements approached the Turks, and they again pushed the crusaders back to Wagenburg.
Bohemond sent another messenger to Gottfried, whose column was already hurrying towards the battlefield. She arrived in time to force the Turks to retreat. The crusaders then rebuilt for a decisive attack. On the left flank were the South Italian Normans of Bohemund, in the center were the French of Count Raymund of Toulouse, and on the right were the Lorraine of Gottfried himself. The infantry and a detachment of knights remained in reserve under the general command of Bishop Ademar.
The Turks were defeated, and their camp went to the victor. But the light Turkish cavalry was able to evade pursuit without much loss. The heavily armed knights had no chance of keeping up with her.
The Turks did not undertake new attacks on the combined forces of the Crusaders. However, crossing the waterless rocky desert was an ordeal in itself. Most of the horses died from lack of food. When the crusaders eventually entered Cilicia, the local Armenian population greeted them as liberators. The first crusader state, the county of Edessa, was founded there.
1097, October - Gottfried's army, after a seven-month siege, captured Antioch. The city tried to recapture the Sultan of Mosul, but was severely defeated. Bohemond founded another crusader state - the principality of Antioch.
1098, autumn - the army of the crusaders moved towards Jerusalem. On the way, she captured Accra and in June 1099 approached the sacred city, which was defended by Egyptian troops. Almost the entire Genoese fleet carrying siege weapons was destroyed by the Egyptians. But one ship was able to break into Laodicea. The siege engines delivered to them enabled the crusaders to destroy the Jerusalem walls.
1099, July 15 - The crusaders took Jerusalem by storm. On August 12, not far from Jerusalem, at Ascalon, a large Egyptian army landed, but the crusaders managed to defeat it. Gottfried of Bouillon stood at the head of the Kingdom of Jerusalem founded by them.
The success of the First Crusade was facilitated by the fact that the united army of Western European knights was opposed by the scattered and warring Seljuk sultanates. The most powerful Muslim state of the Mediterranean - the Egyptian Sultanate - only with a great delay moved the main forces of its army and navy to Palestine, which the crusaders managed to defeat in parts. This was due to the obvious underestimation of the danger threatening them by the Muslim rulers.
For the defense of the Christian states formed in Palestine, spiritual-knightly orders were created, whose members settled in the conquered lands after the bulk of the participants in the First Crusade returned to Europe. 1119 - the Order of the Templars (Knights of the Temple) was founded, the Order of the Hospitallers, or Johannites, appeared somewhat later, and at the end of the XII century the Teutonic Order appeared.
Second crusade (briefly)
The second crusade, which was undertaken in 1147-1149, ended in vain. It was attended by, according to some estimates, up to 70,000 people. The Crusaders were led by King Louis VII of France and German Emperor Conrad III. 1147, October - German knights were defeated at Dorileo by the cavalry of the Iconian Sultan. After that, epidemics fell on Konrad's army. The emperor was forced to join the army of the king of France, with whom he had previously been at enmity. Most of the German warriors chose to return to their homeland. The French were defeated at Honami in January 1148.
In July, the crusaders laid siege to heavily fortified Damascus for five days to no avail. 1149 - Conrad and then Louis returned to Europe, realizing the impossibility of expanding the boundaries of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Third Crusade (briefly)
In the second half of the 12th century, Saladin (Salah ad-Din), a talented military leader, became the sultan of Egypt opposing the crusaders. He defeated the Crusaders at Lake Tiberias and captured Jerusalem in 1187. In response, they proclaimed the Third Crusade, led by Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, King of France Philip II Augustus and King of England Richard I the Lionheart.
While crossing one of the rivers in Asia Minor, Frederick drowned, and his army, having lost its leader, disintegrated and returned to Europe. The French and British, moving by sea, captured Sicily, and then landed in Palestine, but generally acted unsuccessfully. True, after a siege of many months, they took the fortress of Accra, and the king of England seized the island of Cyprus, which had recently been deposited from Byzantium, where he took rich booty. There the Lusignan kingdom arose, which for a whole century became the stronghold of the Crusaders in the East. But strife between the English and French feudal lords caused the departure of the king of France from Palestine.
Having deprived the help of the French knights, Richard was never able to take Jerusalem. 1192, September 2 - Richard signed a peace with Saladin, according to which only the coastal strip from Tire to Jaffa remained under the control of the Crusaders, while Jaffa and Ascalon were previously destroyed by the Muslims to the ground.
Fourth Crusade (briefly)
The fourth crusade began in 1202 and ended in 1204 with the conquest of Constantinople instead of Palestine and a significant part of the possessions of Christian Byzantium. The capital of the empire was taken by storm on April 13, 1204 and plundered. The first attack, which was undertaken on the 9th from the sea, was repulsed by the Byzantines.
Three days later, the knights climbed the walls with the help of the bridges. Part of the crusaders penetrated into the city through a breach made with battering guns, and from the inside opened three Constantinople gates. Inside the city, the army of the crusaders did not meet any resistance, since few defenders fled on the night of April 12-13, and the population was not going to take up arms, considering the struggle senseless.
On the site of Byzantium, the Latin Empire was founded, which lasted half a century. It was an ephemeral formation dependent on the Venetian fleet and parasitizing on Byzantine wealth. 1261 - Emperor Michael III of Nicea, Palaeologus, with the help of the Genoese, was able to expel the crusaders from Constantinople.
After the Fourth Campaign, the scale of the next Crusades was greatly reduced. 1204 - King Amaury Lusignan of Jerusalem tried to assert his rule in Egypt, struck by drought and famine. The Crusaders defeated the Egyptian fleet and landed at Damietta in the Nile Delta. Sultan al-Adil Abu Bakr concluded a peace treaty with the crusaders, ceding to them the previously conquered Jaffa by the Egyptians, as well as Ramla, Lydda and half of Saida. After that, for a decade, there were no major military conflicts between the Egyptians and the Crusaders.
Fifth Crusade (briefly)
The Fifth Crusade was organized in 1217–1221 to conquer Egypt. It was headed by the Hungarian king Andras II and the Duke Leopold of Austria. The crusaders of Syria met the newcomers from Europe without much enthusiasm. The kingdom of Jerusalem, which survived the drought, found it difficult to feed tens of thousands of new warriors, and it wanted to trade with Egypt, not fight. Andrash and Leopold raided Damascus, Nablus and Beisan, besieged, but did not take the strongest Muslim fortress Tavor. After this failure, Andrash returned to his homeland in January 1218.
The Dutch knights and German infantry came to replace the Hungarians in Palestine in 1218. It was decided to conquer the Egyptian fortress Damietta in the Nile delta. It was located on an island, was surrounded by three rows of walls and protected by a powerful tower, from which a bridge and thick iron chains stretched to the fortress, blocking access to Damietta from the river. The siege began on May 27, 1218. Using their ships as floating battering guns and using long assault ladders, the crusaders took possession of the tower.
Upon learning of this, the Egyptian sultan al-Adil, who was in Damascus, could not bear this news and died. His son al-Kamil offered the crusaders to lift the siege of Damietta in exchange for the return of Jerusalem and other territories of the Kingdom of Jerusalem within the borders of 1187, but the knights, under the influence of the papal legate Pelagius, refused, although the sultan promised to find and return even pieces of the Life-giving cross, captured by Saladin.
Pelagius actually led the army, reconciled various groups of crusaders and brought the siege to an end. On the night of November 4-5, 1219, Damietta was taken by storm and plundered. By then, the vast majority of its population had died of hunger and disease. Out of 80,000, only 3,000 survived. But the crusaders rejected the offer of Pelagius to go to Cairo, realizing that there would not be enough forces to conquer Egypt.
The situation changed when new troops of knights from southern Germany arrived in Damietta in 1221. At the insistence of Pelagius, al-Kamil's peace proposals were again rejected, and the crusaders attacked the Muslim positions at Mansura south of Damietta. To the aid of al-Kamil came his brothers from Syria, so that the Muslim army was not inferior in number to the crusaders. In mid-July, the flooding of the Nile began, and the camp of the crusaders was flooded, while the Muslims prepared in advance for the revelry of the elements and did not suffer, and then cut off the path of Pelagius' army to retreat.
The crusaders asked for peace. At this time, the Egyptian sultan most of all feared the Mongols, who had already appeared in Iraq, and preferred not to tempt happiness in the fight against the knights. Under the terms of the armistice, the crusaders left Damietta and sailed to Europe.
Sixth Crusade (briefly)
He led the Sixth Crusade in 1228-1229. German Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen. Before the start of the campaign, the emperor himself was excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX, who called him not a crusader, but a pirate who was going to “kidnap the kingdom in the Holy Land”. Frederick was married to the daughter of the king of Jerusalem and was about to become the ruler of Jerusalem. The prohibition of the campaign did not affect the crusaders, who followed the emperor in the hope of prey.
1228 summer - Frederick landed in Syria. There he was able to persuade al-Kamil, who fought with his Syrian emirs, to return Jerusalem and other territories of the kingdom to him in exchange for help against his enemies - both Muslims and Christians. The corresponding agreement was concluded in Jaffa in February 1229. On March 18, the crusaders entered Jerusalem without a fight.
Then the emperor returned to Italy, defeated the pope's army sent against him and forced Gregory, under the terms of the St. Germain peace of 1230, to withdraw his excommunication and recognize the treaty with the Sultan. Jerusalem, thus, passed to the crusaders only at the expense of the threat that their army posed to al-Kamil, and even thanks to the diplomatic skill of Frederick.
Seventh Crusade
The Seventh Crusade took place in the fall of 1239. Frederick II refused to provide the territory of the Kingdom of Jerusalem for the crusading army led by Duke Richard of Cornwell. The Crusaders landed in Syria and, at the insistence of the Templars, entered into an alliance with the Emir of Damascus to fight the Sultan of Egypt, but together with the Syrians were defeated in November 1239 at the Battle of Ascalon. Thus, the seventh campaign ended in vain.
Eighth crusade
The eighth crusade took place in 1248-1254. His goal was again to reconquer Jerusalem, which was captured in September 1244 by Sultan al-Salih Eyyub Najm ad-Din, who was assisted by the 10 thousandth Khorezm cavalry. Almost the entire Christian population of the city was massacred. This time, King Louis IX of France played the leading role in the crusade, and the total number of crusaders was determined at 15-25 thousand people, of which 3 thousand were knights.
In early June 1249, the Crusaders landed in Egypt and captured Damietta. At the beginning of February 1250, the Mansur fortress fell. But there the crusaders themselves were besieged by the army of Sultan Muazzam Turan Shah. The Egyptians sank the Crusader fleet. The starving army of Louis left Mansura, but few made it to Damietta. Most were destroyed or captured. Among the prisoners was the king of France.
Epidemics of malaria, dysentery and scurvy spread among the captives, and few of them survived. Louis was released from captivity in May 1250 for a huge ransom of 800,000 bezants, or 200,000 livres. At the same time, they demanded from the king that the crusaders leave Damietta. The remnants of the "army of Christ" went to Accra. Soon, in the same 1250, Turan Shah was killed, and the Mamluks - hired soldiers in the service of the Sultan - came to power. The first Mamluk sultan was Muiz Aybek. Under him, active hostilities against the crusaders practically ceased. Louis remained in Palestine for another 4 years, but without receiving reinforcements from Europe, in April 1254 he returned to France.
Ninth Crusade
The ninth and last crusade took place in 1270. It was prompted by the successes of the Mamluk Sultan Baybars. The Egyptians defeated the Mongol troops in 1260 at the Battle of Ain Jalut. 1265 - Baybars captured the fortresses of the crusaders Caesarea and Arsuf, and in 1268 - Jaffa and Antioch. The crusade was again led by Saint Louis IX, and only French knights took part in it. This time the target of the crusaders was Tunisia.
The size of the crusader army did not exceed 10,000 people. By that time, the knights no longer aspired far to the East, as they easily found work in Europe, constantly shaken by feudal civil strife. Played a role as the proximity of the Tunisian coast to Sardinia, where the crusaders gathered, and Louis' desire to have a base for attacking Egypt from land. He hoped that Tunisia would be easy to capture, since there were no large forces of Egyptian troops.
The landing in July 1270 was successful, but soon an epidemic of plague broke out among the crusaders, from which Louis himself died on August 25. His brother Charles I, King of the Two Sicilies, arrived in Tunisia with fresh forces, thus saving the crusader army from disintegration. On November 1, he signed an agreement under which the Tunisian emir renewed the full payment of tribute to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. After that, the crusaders left Tunisia. After the failure of the Ninth Campaign, the days of the Crusaders in Palestine were numbered.
1285 - the Sultan of Egypt Mamluk Kilavun captured the fortresses of Marabou, Laodicea and Tripoli in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Accra remained the last Christian stronghold in Syria. 1289 - a truce was concluded between Kilavoun and King Henry II of Cyprus and Jerusalem, but it was soon broken by Henry's troops invading the border areas of the Mamluk state. In response, the sultan declared war on the crusaders.
Accra's garrison, which received reinforcements from Europe, numbered 20,000. But there was no unity in the ranks of Christians. In the fall of 1290 Kilavun set out on a campaign, but soon fell ill and died. The army was led by his son Almelik Azsharaf. In March 1291 Muslims approached the walls of Accra. They had 92 siege engines. The armistice negotiations proposed by the defenders of the city were unsuccessful. On May 5, the Sultan's army began an assault. The day before, King Henry arrived in Accra with a small army, but on the night of May 15-16, he returned to Cyprus, and about 3,000 defenders of the city joined his detachment.
The remaining garrison numbered 12-13,000. They fought off enemy attacks until May 18, when the Muslims were able to smash the gates, make out the gaps in the walls filled up by the defenders and burst into the streets of Accra. The Egyptians killed Christian men and captured women and children. Some of the defenders were able to make their way to the harbor, where they boarded ships and went to Cyprus. But a storm arose at sea, and many ships sank.
Several thousand remaining on the coast of the crusaders took refuge in the castle of the Templars, which the Sultan's troops were quickly able to capture by storm. Some of the Christian warriors were able to break through to the sea and board ships, the rest were exterminated by the Egyptians. Accra was burned and razed to the ground. It was retaliation for the assassination of the Egyptian garrison of Accra by King Richard the Lionheart of England. After the fall of Accra, Christians left several small towns in Syria under their control. This was the inglorious end of the Crusades.
B. Sokolov