Crusades: A Visual History

The Crusades were a series of religious wars launched by the Latin Church, beginning when Pope Urban II called for the recovery of Jerusalem in 1095. The First Crusade took the city in 1099 and set up four Crusader states on the Levantine coast. Later expeditions tried, with diminishing success, to defend or recover them against Zengi, Nur ad-Din, Saladin and the Mamluks. The Fourth Crusade never reached the Holy Land at all and sacked Christian Constantinople instead. Acre, the last major stronghold, fell in 1291. Crusading continued for centuries in Spain, the Baltic and against heretics, but 1096-1291 covers the classic Crusades to the East.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Crusades. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

The numbered crusades: years each lasted

Duration of the main expeditions to the East, from departure to return or collapse.

Timeline of the Crusades

1. 1095
   Council of ClermontUrban II calls the First Crusade.
2. 1099
   Jerusalem captured15 July; massacre of the population.
3. 1144
   Fall of EdessaThe first Crusader state lost.
4. 1147-1149
   Second CrusadeFails at Damascus.
5. 1187
   Hattin and JerusalemSaladin retakes the city.
6. 1189-1192
   Third CrusadeRichard the Lionheart versus Saladin.
7. 1204
   Sack of ConstantinopleThe Fourth Crusade attacks Christians.
8. 1229
   Jerusalem regained by treatyFrederick II negotiates; lost again in 1244.
9. 1250
   Louis IX capturedThe Seventh Crusade fails in Egypt.
10. 1268
    Antioch fallsBaibars destroys the city.
11. 1291
    Fall of AcreThe end of the Crusader states.

The First Crusade, 1096-1099

In November 1095 at Clermont, Pope Urban II responded to a plea from the Byzantine emperor for help against the Seljuk Turks by calling on the knights of the West to march to Jerusalem, promising remission of sins. The response was overwhelming. A People's Crusade of peasants under Peter the Hermit set off first, massacred Jews in the Rhineland and was itself annihilated in Anatolia.

The princes' armies, perhaps 60,000 strong, took Nicaea in 1097, won at Dorylaeum, endured a terrible siege at Antioch in 1098 and stormed Jerusalem on 15 July 1099, slaughtering much of the population. Four Crusader states were established: the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the County of Edessa, Principality of Antioch and County of Tripoli.

Holding on and losing Jerusalem, 1100-1192

The Crusader states survived because the Muslim world was divided. That began to change when Zengi took Edessa in 1144, prompting the Second Crusade (1147-1149), led by the kings of France and Germany, which failed miserably outside Damascus. Nur ad-Din united Syria, and his lieutenant Saladin added Egypt, surrounding the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

On 4 July 1187 Saladin destroyed the Crusader army at Hattin and took Jerusalem in October, sparing its people in pointed contrast to 1099. The Third Crusade (1189-1192) brought Frederick Barbarossa, who drowned on the way, Philip II of France and Richard the Lionheart. Richard retook Acre and won at Arsuf but could not take Jerusalem, settling for a truce that allowed pilgrims access.

The Fourth Crusade and the thirteenth century

The Fourth Crusade (1202-1204) is the most notorious. Unable to pay the Venetians for their fleet, the crusaders were diverted first to the Christian city of Zara and then to Constantinople, which they sacked in April 1204, installing a Latin Empire that lasted until 1261. The Byzantine Empire never fully recovered, and the schism between the Latin and Greek churches became permanent.

Later crusades targeted Egypt as the key to Jerusalem: the Fifth (1217-1221) and Louis IX's Seventh (1248-1254) both ended in defeat in the Nile Delta, with Louis captured and ransomed. Frederick II actually recovered Jerusalem in 1229 by negotiation, while excommunicated, and the city was held until 1244. Meanwhile crusades were preached against the Cathars of southern France and the pagan Baltic peoples.

The end of Outremer

The Mongol invasion of the Middle East briefly seemed to offer the Crusaders an ally, but it was the Mamluks of Egypt, victors over the Mongols at Ain Jalut in 1260, who finished them. Sultan Baibars took Antioch in 1268; Tripoli fell in 1289; and after a six week siege Acre fell to al-Ashraf Khalil on 18 May 1291. The remaining coastal cities were abandoned within weeks.

The military orders founded in the Crusades, the Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights, outlived them: the Templars were destroyed by the French king in 1307-1314, the Hospitallers held Rhodes and then Malta until 1798, and the Teutonic Knights built a state on the Baltic. The word 'crusade' passed into every European language, and the memory of the wars remains politically charged in the Middle East to this day.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Byzantine Empire (395 to 1453)
• Fatimid Caliphate (909 to 1171)
• Great Seljuk Empire (1037 to 1194)
• Ayyubid dynasty (1171 to 1260)
• Mamluk Sultanate (1250 to 1517)
• Latin Empire of Constantinople (1204 to 1261)
• Kingdom of France (Middle Ages) (987 to 1498)
• Holy Roman Empire (800 to 1806)

Wars of the same era and region

• Reconquista (718 to 1492)
• Mongol invasions and conquests (1206 to 1368)
• Hundred Years' War (1337 to 1453)

10 surprising things about the Crusades

1. The people who fought them never used the word 'crusade'; they spoke of pilgrimage or journey. The word appears only in the late twelfth century and became common much later.
2. The Fourth Crusade was launched to recover Jerusalem and never got closer to it than Constantinople, which it sacked instead.
3. Frederick II recovered Jerusalem in 1229 without a battle, while excommunicated by the Pope; the Patriarch put the city under interdict in protest.
4. Richard the Lionheart spent perhaps six months of his ten year reign in England and probably spoke little English.
5. Saladin's reputation for chivalry was so great in the West that Dante placed him in Limbo with the virtuous pagans, and later legend made him a secret Christian.
6. The Children's Crusade of 1212 was probably not made up of children; 'pueri' meant poor people, and most of them got no further than Marseille or Genoa.
7. The Knights Templar invented a form of banking: a pilgrim could deposit money in London and withdraw it in Jerusalem with a letter of credit.
8. Frederick Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor, drowned crossing a river in Anatolia on the Third Crusade; his body was pickled in vinegar to bring home and mostly did not survive the trip.
9. The Hospitallers still exist as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which issues its own passports and has diplomatic relations with over 100 countries.
10. The Crusades gave Europe apricots, sugar cane, the game of chess in its modern form and, arguably, the word 'assassin', from the Nizari sect the Crusaders encountered.

Sources

• Crusades Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Crusades Wikipedia
• Fourth Crusade Wikipedia
• The Crusades World History Encyclopedia
• Thomas Asbridge, The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land (2010) Simon and Schuster
• Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A History (1987, 3rd ed. 2014) Bloomsbury

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