To this day, no one can seriously name their child “Adolf” without subjecting it to a lifetime of sideways glances. Luckily, the Crusaders had heavy cavalry the Muslims did not.īut due to petty bickering, they never captured Ascalon.īy 20th century standards, murdering six million Jewish people makes you history’s greatest monster, and rightfully so. The Crusaders caught the Muslims by surprise, but were still outflanked by an Egyptian army that was actually ready to fight. That’s why water discipline is important.Īrguably the greatest victory for the Crusaders came at Ascalon, after the fall of Jerusalem in 1099. He began his campaign to recapture Jerusalem the next day, which he did, three months later. They were so thirsty, their lines broke as the knights made for the nearby springs. After a brief war council, the Crusaders decided to march on Saladin’s army.ĭid I mention they left their water source to walk nine miles in full armor? In 1187, the Islamic leader, Saladin, tricked the Crusader Armies into leaving their fortified position (and their water source) in what is, today, the deserts of Israel by attacking an out-of-the-way fortress near Tiberias. And when you really read the history, it makes you wonder how they were able to stay so long.ġ. It doesn’t matter who started it, after nine crusades (only the first and sixth being anything close to a “success”), these wars were ridiculously destructive, even for medieval combat.Įventually, the Crusaders were expelled from the Holy Land. Between one and three million people died in the Crusades – one percent of the world’s population at the time. I mean it when I say there is no good guy or bad guy. Muslim armies and Christian armies could be equally brutal.
The Islamic powers in the Middle East were struggling against each other for regional dominance. Christendom was finally able to respond to the Islamic wars of expansion that rose from the founding and spread of Islam in the Middle East.īut even with all that money and power, the Christian kings of Europe were still stupid, inbred products of the Middle Ages. The truth is that European power was on the rise at the end of the first millennium. With the Crusades, there was no good guy or bad guy. Trigger warning: If this is your jam, you probably aren’t going to like the rest of this list. The lasting legacy of the Crusades is used to support international terrorism against the West, to explain the relationship between the Christian and Muslim worlds in poorly-researched history papers, and is used as a meme on the internet by people who are “proud to be an infidel.”
The least romantic war is the Nagorno-Karabakh War, but only because none of you know where that is. The Crusades were no exception, just one more in a long line of useless, stupid wars that people now romanticize for some reason.
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