An Introduction to the History of Western Europe

by James Harvey Robinson

CHAPTER XV

THE CRUSADES

73. Of all the events of the Middle Ages, the most romantic and fascinating are the Crusades, the adventurous expeditions to Syria, undertaken by kings and doughty knights with the hope of permanently reclaiming the Holy Land from the infidel Turks. All through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries each generation beheld at least one great army of crusaders gathering from all parts of the West and starting toward the Orient. Each year witnessed the departure of small bands of pilgrims or of solitary soldiers of the cross. For two hundred years there was a continuous stream of Europeans of every rank and station making their way into western Asia. If they escaped the countless hazards of the journey, they either settled in this distant land and devoted themselves to war or commerce, or returned home, bringing with them tales of great cities and new peoples, of skill and luxury unknown in the West.

Natural temptation to overrate the importance of the Crusades.

Our sources of information in regard to the Crusades are so abundant and so rich in picturesque incidents that writers have often yielded to the temptation to give more space to these expeditions than their consequences really justify. They were, after all, only one of the great foreign enterprises which have been undertaken from time to time by the European peoples. While their influence upon the West was doubtless very important,—like that of the later conquest of India by the English and the colonization of America,—the details of the campaigns in the East scarcely belong to the history of western Europe.

The Holy Land conquered first by the Arabs and then by the Turks.

Eastern emperor appeals to the pope for aid against the infidel Turks.

Syria had been overrun by the Arabs in the seventh century, shortly after the death of Mohammed, and the Holy City of Jerusalem had fallen into the hands of the infidels. The Arab, however, shared the veneration of the Christian for the places associated with the life of Christ and, in general, permitted the Christian pilgrims who found their way thither to worship unmolested. But with the coming of a new and ruder people, the Seljuk Turks, in the eleventh century, the pilgrims began to bring home news of great hardships. Moreover, the eastern emperor was defeated by the Turks in 1071 and lost Asia Minor. The presence of the Turks in possession of the fortress of Nicæa, just across from Constantinople, was of course a standing menace to the Eastern Empire. When the energetic Emperor Alexius (1081–1118) ascended the throne he endeavored to expel the infidel. Finding himself unequal to the task, he appealed for assistance to the head of Christendom, Urban II. The first great impetus to the Crusades was the call issued by Urban at the celebrated council which met in 1095 at Clermont in France.

Urban II issues the call to the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont, 1095.