Crusades

Introduction

Temple of the Mount in Jerusalem

Eleanor of Aquitaine

Depiction of children getting ready to embark on the Children's Crusade

In 1095, the whole of Christendom was shaken by news from Pope Urban II: the Muslims had taken over Jerusalem! According to Urban, the streets of Jerusalem ran with the blood of Christians, and Christianity’s holy places were being desecrated. Urban continued his speech with a call to the knights of Christendom to go and recapture Jerusalem for Christ. Thus a movement had begun. The First Crusade, launched in 1095, did make it to Jerusalem and briefly established the Latin Kingdom. Over the next several hundred years, countless numbers of European knights were to “take the cross” and go fight in the Holy Land or against anyone deemed “heretical” by the Church in Rome.

Essential Facts

1. The First Crusade, the most successful and well-known of the Crusades, consisted of five armies of knights and one army of peasants led by a zealot named Peter the Hermit. Nearly all of the peasants were slaughtered by the Turks before reaching Jerusalem.
2. Eleanor of Aquitaine, the wife of Louis VII and Queen of France, didn’t just send a thousand of her vassals on Crusade: she went herself and brought 300 of her ladies to “tend the wounded.” It was said that in order to gain volunteers for the Second Crusade, she dressed as an Amazon and rode through the crowds on a galloping white steed, urging the men to join.
3. The Third Crusade was led by England’s Richard the Lionhearted. After negotiating a successful treaty for control of Jerusalem, he was heading home when he ended up shipwrecked on the coast of Italy. While trying to return overland, he was kidnapped and held for ransom by Leopold of Austria. It is during this period of Richard’s reign that the Robin Hood tales are set.
4. Another well-known Crusade is the Children’s Crusade. In 1212, a young man named Stephen of Cloyes supposedly convinced an estimated 15,000 children that they could defeat the Muslims by merely going to Jerusalem: their faith in God would give them victory. They actually made it through France and to Italy, where they got on seven boats to head to the Holy Land. And after that? They simply disappeared from history, most likely being sold into slavery by their transporters when they reached the Middle East. So much for the faith of children!
5. Some of the Crusades’ fiercest fighters belonged to the Knights Templar, a military monastic order formed after the First Crusade to defend Jerusalem. Although known for their bravery and staunch defense, the Knights quickly acquired wealth through donations of land and money, which brought them many enemies. Falsely accused of heinous crimes, the order was disbanded and its leaders arrested in 1307.