Hot answers tagged crusades
20
The fourth crusade was the turning point. The crusade was high-jacked by Venice to take revenge on the Byzantines for past deeds: imprisonments, break of contract, etc... The crusade was aimed to land in Egypt originally, as it was seen as the main threat to taking Jerusalem back. However, since the crusaders could not pay for the large Venetian feet, it ...
18
I don't think it is possible to idenitify a single point in history as beginning the "slope toward the end". Such thinking results from the simplistic model of an empire's history as consisting of two segements: "growth" and "decline". In reality, the history of the Byzantine empire is a complex sequence of alternating growth and decline.
I'd say that the ...
14
Saladin was an unusual man who tried to win the "hearts and minds" of people he conquered.
When he occupied Jerusalem, he ordered his men NOT to kill and plunder (in contrast even to the crusaders).
When he occupied Cairo, Egypt, he built hospitals and universities for the city, even though he had to take harsh measures against the leaders of his former ...
13
Officially the Knights were disbanded in the early 14th century, beginning in France with King Philip IV prosecuting them for multiple reasons (the Templars had lost standing after the Third Crusade, public mistrust, and the King owed money to the order), with other countries to follow. Pope Clement V disbanded the Order in 1312.
11
Can we think of any reason why a major American Holywood motion picture would wish to distance it's hero from Islam?
Most of his portrayal in 'literature' is from Walter Scott and the Victorians which tells you a lot more about their attitudes to themselves and what they saw as important values than it does about an actual medieval Islamic ruler
10
I don't have much historical evidence to bring to this one, but I've worn heavy SCA armour on hot days (hot by British Isles standards) and discussed the problem with people who have done so in hotter climates (Texas and Israel, most notably).
So, first and foremost, they probably would not have worn the armour unless they were expecting to go into a fight. ...
10
Actually, Richard had acquired that name before he went on the Crusades. Richard and two of his brothers rose up in rebellion against their father, Henry II. They went to France to obtain the support of Louis VII, and it was Louis who actually knighted Richard. This established his initial ties to the French.
When the brothers set out to attack their ...
8
In GENERAL, captured nobles were ransomed. That's because this maximized their value to their captors.
One notable exception was the battle of Agincourt, in 1415, during the 100 years' war. At one point, the French lines approached the English prison camp, and King Henry V feared that the prisoners would not only be released, but re-armed, and take the ...
6
I think you can't really separate the two sets of motivations for the crusades (religious fervor/ political or power-grabbing issues) from one another. In a time where politics and religion were habitually and naturally intermixed it's hard to expect something else.
A look at the least of leaders of the First Crusade to examine their personalities can be ...
6
A recent report by USAID offers a brief but insightful view on some of current research on 'Youth Bulge' hypothesis. Some of the key take-away are:
The common thread across the latest research is that youth bulges alone do not cause conflict. Rather, when unstable politics and social deterioration are combined with large numbers of disadvantaged young men, ...
5
A prior article mentions the empire of Justinian (and Leo, by extension), but I would argue that these are 'Roman' empires which are terminated by the eruption of Islam over much of the East Roman Empire.
This was a pretty traumatic event which led to some serious results. Among them, the abandonment of Latin, abandonment (with some exceptions) of universal ...
5
Most of the information I have found indicates that the Arab Christians were caught in the crossfire between the Muslims and the Christian Crusaders. In fact, they were often slaughtered along with the Muslims. Most likely this was because the Crusaders did not want to risk being infiltrated by Muslims posing as Christians.
Ironically, the Crusades ...
3
I found a number of various sources that had different versions of the examples you provided from Wikipedia. For example, one story claimed that he put a number of prisoners in an airtight room and then once he was certain they had suffocated, he had the door opened very slowly so that he could observe whether or not their souls could be seen escaping the ...
2
Assuming this truly did happen, there are a couple of reasons that might explain why. First of all, Saladin was Muslim, and one of the of the main principles of Islam is that Muslims should help those in need. Secondly, Saladin could use this as an opportunity to send men into Richard's camp and report back on the condition and size of Richard's army, ...
2
From what I recall from historical texts that I've read in my travels, the event that seems to have started the irreversible decline was the Fourth Crusade, when instead of heading to free Jerusalem, the crusading armies attacked and sacked Constantinople. With large parts of the Empire fragmented into Latin states by the armies that had attacked them, it ...
2
Even as someone with an Anglo-Saxon background, I find it informative to look upon the Crusades in the way the residents of the area must have viewed them - a series of barbarian invasions from the north-west.
Yeah, the Crusaders had their reasons. In their own minds they were completely justified. But the same could be said for the Huns and the Mongols and ...
1
In The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson makes the following interesting observation:
The Roman system of coinage outlived the Roman Empire itself. Prices were still being quoted in terms of silver denarii in the time of Charlemagne, king of the Franks from 768 to 814. The difficulty was that by the time Charlemagne was crowned Imperator Augustus in 800, ...
1
A (male) youth bulge sometimes occurs when the birth rate is FALLING. That's because most men prefer to marry women younger than them. So if the birth rate is falling, there are more older men of the earlier period than younger women of the later period.
This happened with American cohorts born in the 1960s (and in certain other parts of the world). One ...
1
Personally, for me, the turning point was Manzikert. It wiped out a good portion of the fighting men of the empire, and caused the Seljuks to take the eastern part of Asia Minor, which was a large source of manpower for the emperors under the theme system. So with the threat of a Seljuk invasion, Empire responded with a plea for help to the West, launching ...
1
Assuming it's true, and not just something invented by Victorian novelists, it's for the consumption of his generals / supporters / allies and general hangers-on
By showing your confidence, majesty and general cool-dude-ness you suggest to all your allies, and possible competitors, that you are so supremely confident of your ability and power that it would ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
