The+Crusades

The Crusades

Introduction
The crusades were military expeditions that were organized by Western Christians and announced by the pope in the name of god. They sent totally nine crusades with a main purpose to conquer the holy land, Israel.

Background info
On the 11th century, before the first crusade started year 1095, the Christian pilgrimage to Jerusalem increased at an unbelievable rate, due to Jesus millennium of birth (1000) and millennium of death (1033). People thought that it was time for the second coming of Christ and therefore they pilgrimaged to Jerusalem to get forgiven for their sins. At that time Christians hade free access to the holy land, even though the Arabs conquered it around year 600. Western Europe was at the time several kingdoms with feudal system. But it was at the moment in a period of population growth and economic revival and the leaders of the different countries were starting to gain better control over their people. At the same time another change took place, the Gregorian Reform, that simply meant that the church shouldn’t’t have to obey the earthly powers, for example kings. In the middle of the 11th century some thing changed, there were wars in the Middle East. To keep it short, the wars made it harder and more dangerous for Christian pilgrims to get to Jerusalem. Another effect of the war was that Islam started to spread into Christian areas. So, Europe was in a time of population growth and economic revival, the Christian church hade more power than ever, it was getting harder for pilgrims to get to Jerusalem, the Middle East was divided because of war and Islam was spreading into Christian territory. The pope made a very important decision; he declared war in the name of god, with three little words "Deus le volt!", which means “God wants it”.

The Crusades
The first crusades started year 1096 and the ninth and last crusade ended year 1272, so the crusades lasted for almost 200 years. There were totally nine of them that were launched by the pope(s). They were, as I said, military expeditions that were organized by the western Christians. Lots of countries helped the church with the crusades by either financing the crusades or joining up with their own armies. But the most active countries were Italy, Germany, England and France. The reason people had to join the crusades were to get forgiven for their sins, if you died you died as a martyr, the properties you had when you joined the crusade would be under protection of the church until you got back, if you got back. Another reason could be that the king of for example Sweden wanted to be sure that he came to heaven when he died. Therefore he joined the crusade with his army. But there were also other ”crusades” that weren’t led by the church. For example the ”people crusade” led by Peter the Hermit, the spring 1096 ( a few moths before the first real crusade started). These crusades didn’t accomplished almost anything; they either disbanded or got killed before they could do any damage.

During the crusades no one was safe, not even women or children. When the Christians took over Jerusalem under the first crusade, the slaughtered every man, women or child, that were either Muslim or Jew, in the whole city. So anyone could be killed, but on the other hand, anyone could make a pact to. There were Muslims and Jews fighting on the Christians side and vice versa. One interesting thing about the crusades is that they always end with the Europeans retreating back to Europe and loosing their conquered land.

Consequences
The short term consequences of the crusades were of course that lots of people died, that Christian church got more power and influence because of their private armies and the hero worshipping for the people that died trying to defeat the //evil// Muslims. The long term Consequences that we know of is that the Christians succeeded to slow down the spreading of Islam. Another one is that Christians became more hostile towards Muslims, because of the bloodshed, and the other way around. Some people mean that the Arabic world kept more for it self after the crusades.

Summarize
The Christian church launched crusades to stop Islam from spreading and to conquer the holy land and Jerusalem. They were able to do this because Europe was in a time of population growth and economic revival, the Christian church hade more power than ever, it was getting harder for pilgrims to get to Jerusalem and the Middle East was divided because of war. This was the driving powers behind the crusades. The crusades lasted for 200 years. The four countries that were the most active in the crusades were Italy, France, England and Germany. The Europeans never managed to keep control over their conquered land; the Muslims always got it back. Now you are probably thinking, “Why should I learn about the crusade!? It was 1000 years a go!” But do you really think so many things have changed? It’s still war in the Jerusalem, a few years ago the west, more exactly USA, declared war against the Middle East and as if that isn’t enough, George W Bush said that he was on a //mission from god.// Or more exactly “God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq” So what do you say, have anything real changed in 1000 years? Or is it just the way we wage war that have changed?

Source
If have looked around on a lot of pages but these are my major sources: [] [] [] I know that Wikipedia isn’t the safest page to use, but I double checked it with the other two pages and it seems to be correct. If you feel like reading more on the crusades then I recommend []