CAUSES AND OUTCOMES

To begin with, the crusades were, at the very least, as much acts of Christian aggression as wars of defence. It is certainly true that Islam had initiated its own unprovoked surge of invasion and expansion in the seventh century, but the mercurial vigour of this onslaught had long since slackened. The First Crusade was not launched in response to an overwhelming and impending threat, nor was it the immediate result of any catastrophic loss. Jerusalem, the campaign’s averred goal, had been conquered by Muslims some four centuries earlier–hardly a recent injury. The accusations of widespread or systematic abuse of Christian subjects or pilgrims by the Islamic overlords of the Levant also appear to have had little basis in fact. After the First Crusade’s seemingly miraculous success and the foundation of the crusader states, the war for the Holy Land was perpetuated by cycles of violence, vengeance and reconquest, in which Christians and Muslims alike perpetrated acts of savage brutality.

A conflict unlike any other?

Through two centuries, diverse forces combined to fuel and propel this struggle. These ranged from the ambition of popes to achieve Rome’s ‘divinely ordained’ ecclesiastical primacy, to the economic aspirations of Italian merchants; from notions of social obligation and bonds of kinship, to an emerging sense of chivalric duty. Leaders–Muslim and Christian, secular and spiritual–came to realise that the ideals of holy war could be harnessed to justify programmes of unification and militarisation, even to facilitate the imposition of autocratic governance. In this respect, the crusader wars conformed to a paradigm common to many periods of human history–the attempt to control and direct violence, ostensibly for the common good, but often to serve the interests of ruling elites.

In the case of Latin Christian crusades and Islamic jihad, however, this ‘public’ warfare was imbued with a compelling religious dimension. This did not necessarily lead to a conflict marked by uniquely barbaric acts of violence or especially entrenched enmity. But it did mean that many of those involved in the contest for control of the Holy Land earnestly believed that their actions were enmeshed with spiritual concerns. Popes like Urban II and Innocent III preached crusades to affirm their own authority, but they also did so in the hope of helping Christians find a path to salvation. Venetian crusaders may have had an eye for earthly profit, yet, just like other participants in these holy wars, they seem to have been moved by a heartfelt desire to attain a spiritual reward. Even a power-hungry warlord like Saladin–content to exploit the struggle for his own ends–evidently experienced a quickening sense of pious dedication to Jerusalem’s reconquest and defence. Of course, not all crusaders, Frankish settlers or Muslim warriors felt these religious impulses in equal measure, but the pulse of faith, pervasive and enduring, resounded through the two-century-long battle for the Levant.

This devotional element infused these wars with a distinct character, inspiring remarkable feats of resilience, fortitude and, on occasion, intolerance. It also helps to explain how and why tens of thousands of Christians and Muslims continued to participate in this protracted struggle across so many decades. The enthusiasm of Near Eastern Islam is more easily understood. Jihad was a devotional obligation rather than a voluntary form of penance, and generations of Muslims could take inspiration from a mounting succession of Zangid, Ayyubid and Mamluk victories. The lasting appeal of crusading in western Europe is more striking taken against a backdrop of an endless sequence of depressing defeats and the redirection of holy wars into new theatres of conflict. The very fact of continued recruitment, through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and beyond, illustrates the compelling allure of taking the cross–of participating in an endeavour that fused the ideals of military service and penance–and ultimately purifying the soul of sin. From 1095 onwards, Latin Christians wholeheartedly accepted the idea that crusading was a permissible and efficacious form of devotion. There is virtually no sign of concern over the union of violence and religion among medieval contemporaries. And even when criticism of the crusading movement gathered pace, the questions raised related to issues such as wavering commitment and finance, not the basic principle that God would support and reward wars fought in his name.2

Accounting for victory and defeat

If the continued attraction of crusading was noteworthy, so too was the associated survival of Frankish Outremer for close to 200 years. Even so, there is no escaping the fact that, in the end, the Latins lost the war for the Holy Land. The path from the First Crusade’s victory in 1099 to Acre’s fall in 1291 was by no means simply a spiral of defeat and decay. But equally, from the Second Crusade’s failure at Damascus in 1148 to King Louis IX of France’s ignominious capture in Egypt in 1250, there hardly was a tide of success. Whenever historians have sought to explain this trend, the focus generally has turned to Islam–to the supposed resurgence of jihadi enthusiasm and the shift to Muslim unification across the Near and Middle East. Yet in reality, until the advent of the Mamluks, enthusiasm for holy war was sporadic and pan-Levantine accord ephemeral at best. Of course, events within Islam did impact upon the outcome of the crusades, but there were other, perhaps even more powerful, issues at work.

The very nature of crusading itself was a fundamental cause of Christendom’s ultimate defeat in the struggle for mastery of the eastern Mediterranean. The idea of holy war did not remain static between 1095 and 1291. It was subject to evolution and development–although these changes were not always apparent to contemporaries–and underwent some adjustment in response to wider developments in religious thinking, including the incorporation of mission and conversion as means to overcome non-Christian opponents. Throughout, however, crusading expeditions remained badly suited to the business of defending or reconquering the Holy Land. To survive, the crusader states desperately needed external martial assistance, but in the form of permanent (or at least long-standing) and obedient military forces. More often than not, crusades actually brought short-lived injections of massed armies–often adulterated by non-combatants–led by independent-minded potentates fixated upon their own objectives.

The fact that Outremer’s needs were not met by the crusading movement should come as no surprise, because this form of holy war was not expressly designed to fulfil such a purpose. Instead, at an elemental level, crusades were constructed as a voluntary and personal form of penance. Participants might expect to pursue an established goal–the capture of a particular target or the defence of a region. They also might envisage themselves as fulfilling a duty of service owed to God, as bringing succour to fellow Christians, even as imitating the labours and suffering of Christ himself. Yet always, at the heart of the crusading impulse, lay the promise of individual salvation: a guarantee that the penalties owing for confessed sins would be cancelled out by the completion of an armed pilgrimage. This was the overwhelming allure of a crusade–its capacity to eradicate the taint of transgression, to offer an escape from damnation. And this was why hundreds of thousands of Latins took the cross in the course of the Middle Ages.

The febrile aura of religiosity that enveloped most crusading expeditions could instil a unity of purpose and an unparalleled determination in its participants, empowering them to undertake unimaginable feats of arms. It was this sense of divine sanction and spiritual devotion that helped Louis IX’s troops to survive the Battle of Mansourah, that enabled the Third Crusaders to endure the gruelling siege of Acre and led the Franks to risk total annihilation by marching on Jerusalem in 1099. Burning with enthusiasm, crusaders could prevail against seemingly insurmountable odds, but this fiery passion often also proved to be impossible to control. Crusade armies were made up of thousands of individuals, each ultimately intent upon forging their own path to redemption. As such, they could not be led or governed in the same way as other, more conventional military forces. Raymond of Toulouse discovered this to his cost at Marrat and again at Arqa during the First Crusade; so too did Richard the Lionheart when he twice retreated from Jerusalem. Arguably, no Christian king or commander ever truly learned how to harness the force of the crusading tempest.