Two centuries of holy wars: from the Pope's call at Clermont and the bloody capture of Jerusalem in 1099, through Saladin and Richard the Lionheart, to the sack of Constantinople by fellow Christians and the fall of Acre in 1291.
Stop 01 · 27 November 1095
The Call at Clermont: 1095
The Seljuk Turks had taken most of Anatolia, including Nicaea in 1081 and Antioch in 1086. In 1095 the Byzantine emperor Alexios I sent envoys to Pope Urban II's council at Piacenza to ask the West for soldiers. Urban answered on a far larger scale. On 27 November, at a council of about 300 clerics at Clermont, in France, he called on western knights to free the churches of the East and Jerusalem, promising those who went that their sins would be forgiven. He named Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy to lead the expedition and fixed its departure for 15 August 1096. The response was overwhelming, from knights and from ordinary people, who sewed cloth crosses on to their clothes.
Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, given a late Gothic setting in this illumination from the Livre des Passages d'Outre-mer, of c. 1474 (Bibliothèque nationale)Jean Colombe · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
The Seljuk Turks had taken most of Anatolia, including Nicaea in 1081 and Antioch in 1086. In 1095 the Byzantine emperor Alexios I sent envoys to Pope Urban II's council at Piacenza to ask the West for soldiers. Urban answered on a far larger scale. On 27 November, at a council of about 300 clerics at Clermont, in France, he called on western knights to free the churches of the East and Jerusalem, promising those who went that their sins would be forgiven. He named Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy to lead the expedition and fixed its departure for 15 August 1096. The response was overwhelming, from knights and from ordinary people, who sewed cloth crosses on to their clothes.
Before the knights were ready, tens of thousands of poor pilgrims and minor knights set out behind the preacher Peter the Hermit and the knight Walter Sans Avoir. On the way, crusading bands led by Emicho of Flonheim and others massacred Jewish communities in the Rhineland cities: some 800 Jews were murdered at Worms and over 1,000 at Mainz, and estimates of the total dead run from 2,000 to 12,000. Peter's followers marched from Cologne in April through Hungary and the Balkans, reaching Constantinople on 1 August, and Alexios quickly ferried them over the Bosporus. On 21 October about 20,000 marched out of their camp near Civetot, and the Turks of Kilij Arslan destroyed them. Fewer than 3,000 survived.
The armies of the princes, perhaps 60,000–100,000 people in all including non-combatants, came by several routes: Godfrey of Bouillon overland through Hungary, Bohemond of Taranto across the Adriatic, Raymond of Toulouse with Bishop Adhemar. They gathered at Constantinople in 1097, took Nicaea in June with Byzantine help, and beat Kilij Arslan's Turks at Dorylaeum in July. After a long, starving siege they took Antioch on 3 June 1098, then defeated a relief army under Kerbogha of Mosul. Only 12,000 to 14,000 reached Jerusalem in June 1099. On 15 July they stormed it and massacred much of its Muslim and Jewish population. They founded four crusader states along the eastern Mediterranean.
Edessa, the most northerly and weakest of the crusader states, fell first. Imad al-Din Zengi, atabeg of Mosul and Aleppo, besieged its capital from 28 November 1144 and took it on 24 December. Pope Eugene III called a new crusade, and Bernard of Clairvaux preached it, at Vézelay in March 1146 before Louis VII of France, and at Speyer, where Conrad III of Germany took the cross. Both kings marched overland. Seljuk Turks almost destroyed Conrad's army near Dorylaeum in October 1147 and mauled Louis's at Mount Cadmus in January. In July 1148 the survivors attacked Damascus, a former ally of Jerusalem, and retreated after five days. In 1154 Zengi's son Nur ad-Din took Damascus himself.
BattlesEdessa falls, 24 December 1144 · Dorylaeum, October 1147 · Damascus, July 1148 · Lisbon, taken October 1147
The crusader states survived by playing their Muslim neighbours against each other. That ended when Saladin united Egypt and Syria. In 1187 Raynald of Châtillon raided a Muslim pilgrim caravan during a truce, and Saladin invaded. He lured King Guy's army, perhaps 18,000 to 20,000 men, away from the springs of Sepphoris, trapped it on a dry plateau and set the grass alight. On 4 July, at the Horns of Hattin near the Sea of Galilee, he destroyed the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and captured its relic of the True Cross. On 2 October he took Jerusalem itself. Most inhabitants could buy their freedom, at ten dinars a man, but some 15,000 who could not pay were enslaved.
BattlesHattin, 4 July 1187 · Tiberias, attacked 2 July
Europe's three greatest rulers set out to retake Jerusalem. The German emperor Frederick Barbarossa marched overland and sacked the Seljuk capital, Konya, in May 1190, but on 10 June he drowned crossing the Saleph river, and most of his army went home. Richard the Lionheart of England and Philip II of France came by sea, Richard seizing Cyprus on the way. Together they took Acre on 12 July 1191, ending a siege begun in 1189. When ransom talks stalled, Richard had some 2,700 Muslim prisoners beheaded. On 7 September he beat Saladin at Arsuf, and twice advanced within reach of Jerusalem, but never retook it. A truce in 1192, the Treaty of Jaffa, let unarmed Christian pilgrims visit the city.
BattlesKonya (Iconium), May 1190 · Acre, 1191 · Arsuf, 1191
The Fourth Crusade, called by Pope Innocent III to strike at Egypt, never reached the Holy Land. The Venetian doge Enrico Dandolo agreed to ship 33,500 crusaders, but only about 12,000 came, and they could not pay for the fleet. In November 1202 they attacked the Christian city of Zara on the Adriatic for Venice instead, and the pope briefly excommunicated them. Next they sailed to Constantinople to put a Byzantine claimant, Alexios Angelos, on the throne in return for 200,000 silver marks. When he could not pay, on 12–15 April 1204, the crusaders stormed and sacked the greatest Christian city in the world. They crowned Baldwin of Flanders emperor in Hagia Sophia. The Byzantine Empire never fully recovered.
BattlesZara, 1202 · Constantinople sacked, April 1204
Jerusalem, regained by treaty in 1229, was lost again in 1244. Louis IX of France answered with a lavish crusade that cost over six times his annual revenue. He sailed from Aigues-Mortes in August 1248, wintered in Cyprus, and on 5 June 1249 landed at Damietta, which its garrison abandoned. His march on Cairo stalled at Mansurah, where his brother Robert of Artois charged into the town against advice and was killed in February 1250. Disease and hunger followed, and on 6 April, near Fariskur, Louis and most of his army were captured. His ransom was Damietta and 800,000 bezants. On 2 May the Mamluk slave soldiers, led by Baybars, murdered the new sultan Turanshah and soon took power themselves.
BattlesDamietta, taken June 1249 · Mansurah, February 1250 · Fariskur: Louis captured, 6 April 1250
More crusades followed, to Egypt and Tunis, with little success; Louis IX died at Tunis in 1270, and Emperor Frederick II had only briefly regained Jerusalem by treaty in 1229. In Egypt, the Mamluks, a dynasty of former slave soldiers, steadily took the remaining crusader cities: Baybars captured Caesarea, Haifa and Arsuf in 1265 and Antioch in 1268, and Sultan Qalawun conquered Tripoli in 1289. His son al-Ashraf Khalil besieged Acre, the last major crusader stronghold, from 4 April 1291 with huge catapults and miners. On 18 May his troops stormed the walls, and the Templars' seaside fortress fell on 28 May. Acre's Latin Christians were killed or enslaved. The crusades to the Holy Land were over.
BattlesAcre falls, 1291 · Antioch, taken 1268 · Tripoli, taken 1289