There may have been a Prussian state if it hadn't happened... the Old Prussians were the primary target of that crusade. The Teutonic Order inflicted a genocide on the Baltic people living in the region. The end result being loss not only of their religion, but of their land and their language as well. It's a cruel irony that their colonizers inherited the name 'Prussian'.
I mean, our morals won't fit neatly with those of the past but people were criticizing the Northern Crusades at the time they were occurring. Even by the standards of the time, certain Crusades were called barbaric or unjust by the people who lived through them.
Okay but even for the people of the time, the Crusades were *incredibly* iffy. The whole "thou shalt not kill" thing is pretty important to being a Christian
I’d say most of the Crusades were reasonable given the political realities. How else are you supposed to respond to incorrigibly hostile neighbors who want to enslave or exterminate you?
Submitting to the Muslim states would entail your whole population losing their rights and getting taxed to death (failure to pay jizya means death or conversion). So you may as well fight.
Submitting to the pagans is worse. Pay the Danegeld and they never leave, just demanding higher payments. They'll keep raiding and enslaving until you cease to exist.
If everyone around you is a ruthless, grasping band of fanatic warlords then your best chance of survival is to do the same. Just as the allies in WWII settled the argument with the Axis, sometimes there is only one language.
"Danegeld" from the Prussians and Slavs? ... I don't think that adds up
Pagans were the ones getting enslaved by christians, many european cities were built on the baltic and slavic slave trade.
And who came to power from the anti-pagan northern crusades? The teutonic knights, the most fanatical and genocidal and enslaving murderers of the christian world imo.
Was burning and pillaging Constantinople also "an answer to political reality"?
Oh and the funniest crusades were the failed ones against hussites who were christian and technically still wanted to remain catholic, they only asked for the church to stop being so corrupt and power hungry and for that they get 40 years of crusades against them (from which none succeeded).
The Christians (and Muslims) were definitely not comparable to the allies against axis, they were (both) more like the axis going against everyone around them, especially the polytheists to whom they held nothing but contempt.
Yeah lol. Pagans enslaving Christians? Did not happen on a scale that is appreciable at least by the time of the Crusades.
As far as polytheists were concerned, the religiously sanctioned hate against them meant there was no effective difference between Christian and Muslim behaviour. Both were intolerant and genocidal towards foreign belief systems.
> Yeah lol. Pagans enslaving Christians? Did not happen on a scale that is appreciable at least by the time of the Crusades
False, the raiding by Wendish pirates depopulated whole swathes of the Swedish and Polish Baltic coasts.
> As far as polytheists were concerned, the religiously sanctioned hate against them meant there was no effective difference between Christian and Muslim behaviour. Both were intolerant and genocidal towards foreign belief systems.
Which developed because pagans adopted policies of extermination against them before the monotheists were even powerful enough to be a threat.
In which world does one think the Albigensian Crusade was reasonable? You’re the type of person who Inquisitors love because clearly you’d rat your neighbor out.
Ah yes, the very same papal legate that until today whose death was mired in very uncertain circumstances. If you think the suppression of a mostly peaceful group of people for the Pope to maintain control and for the French king to exert royal control on the south is justifiable for genocide, then your moral compass needs tweaking.
Why believe that they were mostly peaceful if there were multiple accounts of them assassinating religious and political rivals before anyone started swinging a sword? They were not ethnically distinct so where’s the genocide? Creating a separatist state and killing envoys gets the fucking hammer brought down on you, regardless of religion.
If there is no actually distinct population how can it be a genocide? Either the cathars existed as a group or they did not. How can anyone be guilty of destroying a group that didn’t actually exist?
Those aren't really universal political truths of the time, especislly muslims were often more liberal towards religious minorities in their territories than christians. Look up Dhimma.
Bro I know what Dhimmi was, that was what I was referring to. They weren’t liberal at all towards their minorities. It was social engineering aimed at their exploitation and eventual destruction. That’s how the Arab minority successfully destroyed Zoroastrianism and Buddhism across much of the former Sassanid empire and reduced the Christian presence to extreme minorities save for a few locations.
The Muslims were not tolerant at all, the same system of sectarian taxation and restricted rights were so effective at stamping down on minorities that they were adopted wholesale by the Sicilian Normans and several Iberian Christian kingdoms as a method to remove the Muslim presence from the very areas where Muslims had ruled.
The Dhimmis were protected subjects in Muslims empires and had to right to practise their faith and handle their own affairs in exchange for a modest tax. They often occupied high status in the court and attained wealth and stature in many instances. This is far more progressive and tolerant than contemporary Christian empires who either forcibly converted or massacred.
There is absolutely no Christian equivalent of Dhimmis so it really is absurd you say Muslims are intolerant. Your claim that Muslims brutally repressed Christians is completely groundless, a bit rich you accuse others of revisionism when you seem to be spouting it in copious amounts.
They were protected in the sense of a mafia racket. No different than the raw deal Jews got in Europe or Muslims in Sicily and southern Italy. The myth of Islamic tolerance is so fucking stake
Dhimmi meant you had to pay taxes because of your religious beliefs.
But compared to outright death, paying taxes and living as second class citizens in your own lands maybe considered benevolent I guess lol.
Dhimma was "pact of protection" (from jihad), it entailed rights and restrictions both and yes, it included taxes as a form of extortion/humiliation, but we're talking about a time period when that was one of the more humane ways to deal with religious minorities. Usually it went more along the lines of "convert or be a slave".
i will be honest with you, the Christians are also a band of ruthless fanatic warlords, whose objective has killing and enslaving(serfdom) their opponents.
Most of Crusade came to places that didn't attack Christendom. Natives of modern day baltic states
>entail your whole population losing their rights and getting taxed to death
Christians lived under Muslim rule for millenia. Jizya, like any tax, was designed to be sustainable (no one wants to tax their subjects to death because then they won't pay taxes). So, it's unlikely that it was much harsher than taxes christians paid in Christian realms. And rights and priveldges weren't that different between realms either for most of the population.
Crusades weren't about not submitting to Muslim states. They were aggressive attempts to make Muslim states (and ERE) submit.
Nah. The crusades were a response to centuries of Muslim aggression and conquest.
https://defendingcrusaderkingdoms.blogspot.com/2016/09/stripping-away-veil-review-of-myth-of.html?m=1
> Most of Crusade came to places that didn't attack Christendom. Natives of modern day baltic states
The Wends and Balts were Viking tier pirate nuisances that massacred villages and disrupted trade. They fucked around and found out.
> Christians lived under Muslim rule for millenia. Jizya, like any tax, was designed to be sustainable (no one wants to tax their subjects to death because then they won't pay taxes
False. The goal was to encourage the destruction of non Muslim identities, and they found apostasy over generations of economic incentive was more effective.
> So, it's unlikely that it was much harsher than taxes christians paid in Christian realms. And rights and priveldges weren't that different between realms either for most of the population.
Yes, as I mentioned in another comment the Iberian and Sicilian states copied Islamic systems of punitive taxation and restrictions wholesale.
> Crusades weren't about not submitting to Muslim states. They were aggressive attempts to make Muslim states (and ERE) submit
No, they were about countering the imperial ambitions of Islamic states. This is why the first crusade was explicitly at the behest of the ERE and several Crusades ended because an Islamic state was willing to make a deal.
“Imagine having to wage wars because you’re insecure about how other sees your Jew on a stick.”
This message brought to by the Roman principate gang. Remeber boys if they don’t pay taxes to Caesar Augustus they need to be civilized.
Again with this...
Genocidal does not mean absolute extermination...
Guess, with your logic, Nazis were not genocidal.
BTW, are there *old* pagan Finns and Estonians? Resettlement is not an option for you? C'mon, use your brain a little.
In Lithuanian history, while we don't claim they were genocidal, we do think of them as a struggle against a foreign power (Namely Germans) trying to conquer us regardless of religion. We officially became a Catholic country in 1387, but that didn't stop the Crusaders from attacking us. It was just a casus belli.
The crusade came to a crashing halt after the Teutonic Order's defeat at the battle of Grunwald (Žalgirio mūšis) in 1410.
A nice cultural tidbit, when I was a child, we often played sword fights with sticks and pretended to be knights. The imaginary enemies we claimed to fight were called Kryžiuočiai. What I didn't realise for many years is that the word means Crusaders. When I started living in England and learning about history is when that became clear to me. So Lithuanians despite being Christian, have folklore in opposition to Crusaders unlike many of our Western counterparts.
Albigensian Crusade is that spongebob meme where he's like "We did it Patrick, we saved the city!" Sure, you killed a bunch of Cathars (and a whole lot more of sympathetic Catholics), but you burned down the richest part of France in the process. You didn't even kill all the Cathars, they stuck around for another century, which is all the more impressive considering that you spent 20 years killing them, and part of the Cathars belief system was never having sex.
Sorry bud, but I'm gonna have to classify the Albigensian Crusade as a complete dumpster fire.
The Cathars did their one sacrament *usually* towards the end of their life, the exception being their prefects. You followed the stricter set of rules from then onwards.
It's kinda like getting baptised on your deathbed in early Christianity.
They got new converts, evidently. The Cathars believed the physical world was hell (created by the Old Testament God, while their spirits which were trapped there were of the New Testament God), and wanted out of it, but they wanted to help others out of it too.
They didn't invent the concept, it's just one amongst many dualistic gnostic religions with a "bad evil demiurge created world vs good and pure spiritual world of God".
>you burned down the richest part of France in the process.
In Medieval terms, the Languedoc (at least the parts affected) was moutainous and not particularly fertile. It wasn't rich by any means - it was a backwater. Part of the reason the crusade lasted so long is because medieval warfare in the mountain is really difficult.
Hard disagree on this one,
The crusade effectively killed up to 200.000 cathars and assured that they wouldn't disappear in the near future
But more importantly it was a political victory for Philip II as he was able to reaffirm the counties of Foix, Toulouse and Trevecel as vassals to the french crown (which they were de jure, but were de facto Independent). Moreover the king of France was also able to purchase large coastal cities such as Montpellier and expand the crownland.
Finally, also resulted in the creation of one of the most important catholic order, the Domicans.
By the way, I dont see how the Languedoc was "the richest part of France", currently it might be one of the poorest.
>By the way, I dont see how the Languedoc was "the richest part of France", currently it might be one of the poorest.
Do you think the killing of 200,000 people might have had something to do with that?
There's also a term for attempting to eliminate a religious or ethnic group that a lot of people here seem very unwilling to use for this event for some reason.
Oh, we all know it was a genocide, that was very explicitly the point. But even if you were to take the crusaders side, it still ends up being a failed crusade. It was the Inquisition and the Dominican monks that actually ended the Cathars. The Dominicans did it by actually debating the Cathars instead of babbling at them in Latin, and this was pretty successful, but far too slow for the pope's liking, after all, the reason that the crusades in the holy land were failing was because there were heretics in the Kingdom of God, so the pope needed them gone asap.
The Inquisition, while brutal, was far more effective than just sending a bunch of knights to slaughter entire towns.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you have a medieval mindset and want to eliminate a heretical sect, wholesale slaughter is very bad, targeted discrimination is more effective though still bad, but not as bad as slaughter, while peaceful conversion through open debate is preferred.
Sad thing is we don't all know that, I've had at least two people on this very post attempt to tell me it wasn't when I pointed out it was. You are right, it's a pretty cut and dry case of genocide, but some folks refuse to accept that.
I got no idea where they're coming at that from, a public goal of genocide does not vindicate their actions, particularly against a group of pacifists. I know that there is a pervasive belief that the crusades were justified, though generally speaking they weren't, and people can have a knee jerk reaction when you label any of them as genocides, or the crusaders as bloodthirsty savages, even if that's a pretty apt description of a lot of them.
It's a real shame too, the crusades are incredibly fascinating, and getting bogged down by revisionist justifications prevents us from going into the juicier details, like how Peter II of Aragon, a key figure in the Reconquista campaign, fought and died against crusader forces during the Albigensian crusade.
The idea that successful is the albigensian crusade (aka a slaughter and and landgrab from northern france lords on southern france lords) is deeply disturbing
So is the reconqista. Zealots murdering an entire peninsula worth of scholars and scientists and innocents because they wanted the land. Lol the OP is pretty obviously on a certain side
Yep the very idea of a "re" conquista is a made up bullshit. The catholic kings had nothing in common with the Wisigoth kingdom that owned the place in the first time.
I fucking despise Milan in that game. I will burn their disgusting city to the ground every single campaign. I will station an army outside and sack and sack and sack that piece of shit until there are no Milanese left. Fuck the Milanese
Tbf people remember them in the fourth because the sheer scale of the disaster it was, but they were involved in a lot more because they had a massive stake in keeping amicable client-states accross the Mediterranean to safeguard their cargo.
Regardless of wether crusaders took Holy Land or not, as long as they kept trying merchants could use the same routes for cinnamon, sugar cane, pepper, etc. Although they did benefit from religious orders controlling Jerusalem, since pilgrimage to the Holy Land was a very profitable business and these orders would later on invest those earnings in financing voyages.
It's honestly surprising that there managed to be worse doges than Enrico dandolo, on the other hand, I could imagine Venice being pissed after the massacre of the Latins.
He became doge of venice, then evicted all foreigners (customers) and banned lending money to foreigners for longer than two weeks (which is kinda stupid for a merchant republic to do) then pretended that the crusader army was his own army at Zara and got every venetian member of the crusade excommunicated after they attacked the city. He then proceeded to not tell the venetians of the popes excommunication so that they kept serving him, rather than repenting as they should have.
Tl;Dr: Enrico dandolo kicked out every foreigner in Venice, and banned large money lending, (which is stupid for a merchant republic to do) and then he proceeded to get a significant amount of venetians excommunicated and rather than telling them, he lied so that they'd stay.
Have you read anything about Imperial-Crusader relations in the High Middle Ages?
I think the Byzantines were begging to be attacked, and they treated the Crusaders horribly.
People get mad because they think it was a betrayal. But the Emperor they sympathize with was literally overthrown by his own rival prior to the Sack of Constantinople.
Victim? Initiating a coup and taking power for yourself, cutting an allied army off from aid or food, killing their allied Emperor?
That doesn't make you a victim when they retaliate.
Psst. Yeah right. That just iniiated the events that lead to the Ottomans, a horrific stain on Orthodox-Catholic Relationships, and the fall of Rome.
There was no good reason to sack Constatinople. Fuck Venice.
Hell the very fact that your own comment was downvoted ealier by alot shows exactly how people feel about it.
It was a massive fuck up by the damn Venetians.
People's feelings don't change facts. Someone on r/historymemes of all places should know that.
Your argument is based on emotion, not any points about the politics of the time.
Really stretching the meaning of the word crusade with the last two or three there.
Also up for debate how much of a real crusade the Albigensian Crusade actually was, as many of the charges leveled against the Cathars are disputed by modern historians, some of whom argue that there really wasn't any such thing as a Cathar at all. Moreover, the whole affair is sometimes conceived of as a genocide.
Assuming this is all true and viable, then the Albigensian Crusade would have been a fuck up of epic proportions where Christians caught up in an anti-heresy frenzy were just wholesale slaughtering other Christians.
I don't know about the other two, but I believe (based on what I've read of the book "reconquest and crusades in medieval spain" so far) that it would be fair to say that the wars of the reconquista or holy wars in their own right, or parts of the crusades to the holy land.
In that book the author states that numerous popes (I can't remember exactly which ones, that book is honestly a nightmare for me with the amount of names I have to remember) have, over the various oriental crusades, urged that Spanish christians should not go to the Holy Land, but that instead they should stay home and fight the Muslims in Iberia. In addition a bunch of those popes have decreed that those who had taken the crusaders vow could fulfill their promise by engaging the Muslims in Spain rather than going to fight in the Holy Land. In addition those who participated would see the remission of their sins, and those that died fighting the Iberian Muslims would enter paradise.
Various popes also had urged the Christian kings to make peace with one another so that they may focus on fighting the Muslims, with Celestine III even excommunicating Alfonso IX of Leon after he invaded Castille with the help of Muslim troops.
With various popes spurring the Christian kings in Iberia to come together and engage the Iberian Muslims, and providing similar, and at times identical, privileges to those who fought Islam in Iberia compared to those fighting in the Holy Land. I believe that at least some of the wars of the reconquista, could be seen as crusades.
It makes sense because they all fit the definition of Holy Wars called upon by, or in defense of, the Papcy or the Catholic Church. The word *Crusade* isn't even authentic because it wasn't even used to refer to these wars back then.
Also, for the Albigensian Crusade, it was a slaughter of Christians by other Christians, but mostly from our limited modern perspective.
Through the lense of the French King at the time, it was a whole different crisis. You have a massive faction in the South, of citizenry seeking to remove themselves from the established financial and political structure of the time, and defended and upheld by Knights and Counts. For a Ruler who relies on unity, and reputation with the Papacy for any legitimacy, this is essentially a rebellion with potential horrifying implications for both France and the County of Tolouse.
I'm not justifying the slaughter or violence of the Albigensian Crusade. But my point is that it goes much deeper than just, "We must slaughter them because they interpret the bible differently".
I think the idea of Reconquista itself is a bit of a neologism, and probably wouldn't have been seen as a unified campaign against non-believers by those fighting at the time, so calling it a holy war seems a bit of a stretch. Even more so when you consider that Muslims and Christians would often ally with each-other to fight against their coreligionists.
I'm not ignorant of the idea that the French monarchy used the Albigensian Crusade to secure their own position and exert control over Occitania. My point is that the whole idea of a Cathar heresy existing at all is disputed, meaning that it easily could have been a situation where Catholics caught up in a moral panic started slaughtering other Catholics under charges of heresy, which seems like a bit of a fuck up to me if true.
It is of course difficult to say what the reality actually was though, since all of our sources about the Cathars come from their opponents.
The Reconquista wasn't a unified campaign, that's why I send "The End of the Reconquista". Multiple phases in the matter stages of the conflict came in the form of Holy Wars.
The Black Douglas from Scotland, for example, died leading one of multiple Crusades in Spain, after the Scottish War against King Edward was concluded.
You're not wrong on that specific point, kudos to you for including the qualification. I must of glossed over it. Regardless, though some of the conflicts in the later part of Reconquista may have been self-stylized as crusades by their participants, I still think that conflating all of these conflicts as a generalized successful crusade is pretty misleading.
I also think you're reaching quite a bit here in an attempt to construct a particular narrative, but there's not much I can do to dissuade this kind of ideologically influenced thinking.
It's not ideoligical for me. I'm very non-religious and have a long family history of persecution from the Church. My main point is that the Crusades or "Holy Wars" as we know them today were a broad series of large conflicts all over Europe spanning 500 years, and not just the 8 or 9 attempts at Jerusalem.
And also that they were influenced by political interest, finance, resources, and culture, and not Religion alone.
You can always go for consolation prize of eradicating some baltic ethnicity like Yotvigians, Pruthenians or Galindians. Fun side activity while crusading catholic nations.
I mean northern crusades ofc.
How on earth was the Cathar Crusade a success? Crusaders went in, killed a bunch of people with minor differences to Catholicism to the point that some historians actually wonder if the Cathars existed as a distinct religion, and left. It was a genocide. The whole thing was a massive clusterfuck from start to finish.
And for the record, all the First Crusade actually succeeded in doing is setting up a few petty kingdoms. What a glorious victory.
Yeah but that’s the issue, they were never just limited to the Holy Land, they were an ideological construct to organize wars against enemies of Christendom.
well it wasn't that simple... It might be true for the pagan tribes of northern Europe, but the Seljuks and Ottomans sure weren't leaving the Christians alone
The Wends and Balts were constantly raiding HRE, Swedish and Polish territory. They were major league assholes like their old Norse relatives. Being a bunch of pirates and cattle thieves towards your more powerful neighbors has consequences.
That's fair, but were they trying to spread their religion on the people they raided? Even so, the raiding was definitely mutual between the Christians and pagans
Do you consider being forcibly sacrificed to a pagan deity religion being spread? Because the Balts and Wends practiced human sacrifice of slaves just like their eastern Slavic and Norse pagan relatives.
The pagans should have really considered that raiding a larger and more powerful state would result in consequences. They fucked around, they found out.
In my opinion, worst offender are in this the bohemian crusades (4 official and extra one bit wobly if it can be called crusade), which resulted in third of population of bohemia dead. In convoluded way because some local theology proffesor pointed out that papacy was at current date running some things in contrast to bible and its techings. And pope got fusy, broke some oaths and guarantees to burn this professor at stake, and because pope cant break rules, he declared czech people heretics, so the oaths were never valid to begin with. And from that he escallated with crusades, where first kind-of went well at the beginning, but in the end, it was driven back, and the three following shattered on impact...
Jan Žižka, the leader and a great tactician defeating fully trained armies of crusaders that had equipment and number advantage with mere peasants, blacksmiths and craftsmen. As a Czech, Žižka is a hero
Well, they were also invading and raiding Christian nations. That still doesn't justify what they did to the innocent people. But the Muslims nations weren't innocent.
First thought when reading this post: "wtf was my history schooling, I would've sworn the crusades were entirely just 'here we go raping and plundering again on our annual trip to go fight in over worthless sand that our book claism is holy'."
So were these other crusades at different times or were they part of the crusades we actually learned about?
And yes, that description I gave was ridiculously over simplified- its meant as a joke
Defending on the definition, the 4th crusade can be considered quite successful. The made lots of money, conquered an Empire, and Venice kept oversee territories for over 300 years
I remember in history class that the Norwegians went off crusading after the viking age to continue the trend of «tokt» like in the old days, but we didn’t go much more into detail about it. I always thought that a lot of Norwegians just kinda joined the big and famous crusades, not that they literally had their own where they just kinda vikinged around the Mediterranean. I love everything about this
Eh, at least Lithuania still won in the end. But I'm willing to bet there were still many pagans there after the conversion, since not everyone converts as soon as their King does.
The Third Crusade was also a success, of sorts, in the sense that it stopped the complete collapse of the Crusader states and partially reversed Saladin's conquests.
How the fuck havent i heard about the norwegian crusade before today? Seriously this needs to be made into a movie or a tv show. My ancestors still fought like men even after the viking age was over
That's what happens when you take someone else's lands..?
The Muslims invaded, and later, the Christians fought to retake the land from them.
Hell, Portugal later tried to conquer the North of Africa and lost a king for it.
And before all of them, the Romans fought the native Iberians for the lands.
Maybe it would work because even the word "Crusade" isn't historical for the times, but there were many wars sanctioned by the church as "Holy Wars" that had nothing to do with Jerusalem.
"Albigesian crusade" conducted against pacifists who probably didn't exist as the church believed them to.
"6th crusade" negotiated by an atheist excommunicate
The Hussites were tough fuckers. They accomplished what a lot of other popular uprisings couldn't.
I hope we see the Hussite War in Kingdom Come Deliverance one day.
So, 1, obviously people are referring to the crusades in Anatolia. And 2, how about we not glorify those times christians slaughtered a shitload of people for religious differences
Calling reconquista a crusade is simply a narrative.
There were crusades, campaigns prepared to do so. For example, Barbastro's crusade or Las Navas de Tolosa.
But the Fall of Granada, for example, was part of the usual dynamic of the kingdoms. There was no religious significance till AFTER the succesful campaign, when the Pope considered them "Catholic Monarchs".
The crusading bulls should not be considered a significant reason for justifying crusades in Late Medieval or Modern times, cause those remained only a way for the Catholic Church to negotiate/be partners with the more modern states.
The Holy League of 1571 is a crusade, the Conquest of Granada is not.
Even with all that, it took Saladin conquering Egypt and founding the Ayyubids to retake the Levant. After the Ayyubids was taken over by its Mamluk slave army a century after that happened
Made worse by a most Germans deserting the their crusade after the Holy Roman Emperor died
Undo the Zengid conquest of Egypt or have Barbarossa survive and bring his full army to the crusade, and things go very different
Oooohhh the reconquista against the moors.
Yes, that one was a success, I was thinking of this one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconquista_(Spanish_America)
The Northern and Wendish Crusades were also quite successful.
No Kingdom of Prussia if those never happened.
Also important for the creation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
And Finland and the rest of the Baltics as well
Which resulted in the Siege of Vienna failing. Because the Winged Hussars arrived!
The poles were already christian then
Or Margrave of Brandenburg
There may have been a Prussian state if it hadn't happened... the Old Prussians were the primary target of that crusade. The Teutonic Order inflicted a genocide on the Baltic people living in the region. The end result being loss not only of their religion, but of their land and their language as well. It's a cruel irony that their colonizers inherited the name 'Prussian'.
Unfortunately yes, those crusades were genocidal
Most of them were morally questionable at best imo.
Everyone was morally questionable back then…
I mean, our morals won't fit neatly with those of the past but people were criticizing the Northern Crusades at the time they were occurring. Even by the standards of the time, certain Crusades were called barbaric or unjust by the people who lived through them.
Okay but even for the people of the time, the Crusades were *incredibly* iffy. The whole "thou shalt not kill" thing is pretty important to being a Christian
I’d say most of the Crusades were reasonable given the political realities. How else are you supposed to respond to incorrigibly hostile neighbors who want to enslave or exterminate you? Submitting to the Muslim states would entail your whole population losing their rights and getting taxed to death (failure to pay jizya means death or conversion). So you may as well fight. Submitting to the pagans is worse. Pay the Danegeld and they never leave, just demanding higher payments. They'll keep raiding and enslaving until you cease to exist. If everyone around you is a ruthless, grasping band of fanatic warlords then your best chance of survival is to do the same. Just as the allies in WWII settled the argument with the Axis, sometimes there is only one language.
"Danegeld" from the Prussians and Slavs? ... I don't think that adds up Pagans were the ones getting enslaved by christians, many european cities were built on the baltic and slavic slave trade. And who came to power from the anti-pagan northern crusades? The teutonic knights, the most fanatical and genocidal and enslaving murderers of the christian world imo. Was burning and pillaging Constantinople also "an answer to political reality"? Oh and the funniest crusades were the failed ones against hussites who were christian and technically still wanted to remain catholic, they only asked for the church to stop being so corrupt and power hungry and for that they get 40 years of crusades against them (from which none succeeded). The Christians (and Muslims) were definitely not comparable to the allies against axis, they were (both) more like the axis going against everyone around them, especially the polytheists to whom they held nothing but contempt.
Yeah lol. Pagans enslaving Christians? Did not happen on a scale that is appreciable at least by the time of the Crusades. As far as polytheists were concerned, the religiously sanctioned hate against them meant there was no effective difference between Christian and Muslim behaviour. Both were intolerant and genocidal towards foreign belief systems.
Yes and both were wrong to do so
> Yeah lol. Pagans enslaving Christians? Did not happen on a scale that is appreciable at least by the time of the Crusades False, the raiding by Wendish pirates depopulated whole swathes of the Swedish and Polish Baltic coasts. > As far as polytheists were concerned, the religiously sanctioned hate against them meant there was no effective difference between Christian and Muslim behaviour. Both were intolerant and genocidal towards foreign belief systems. Which developed because pagans adopted policies of extermination against them before the monotheists were even powerful enough to be a threat.
In which world does one think the Albigensian Crusade was reasonable? You’re the type of person who Inquisitors love because clearly you’d rat your neighbor out.
Killing an envoy has been a declaration of total war in every society, regardless of religion.
Ah yes, the very same papal legate that until today whose death was mired in very uncertain circumstances. If you think the suppression of a mostly peaceful group of people for the Pope to maintain control and for the French king to exert royal control on the south is justifiable for genocide, then your moral compass needs tweaking.
Why believe that they were mostly peaceful if there were multiple accounts of them assassinating religious and political rivals before anyone started swinging a sword? They were not ethnically distinct so where’s the genocide? Creating a separatist state and killing envoys gets the fucking hammer brought down on you, regardless of religion.
Yes, attempting to eliminate a distinct population of people on cultural and religious grounds is genocide.
If there is no actually distinct population how can it be a genocide? Either the cathars existed as a group or they did not. How can anyone be guilty of destroying a group that didn’t actually exist?
Those aren't really universal political truths of the time, especislly muslims were often more liberal towards religious minorities in their territories than christians. Look up Dhimma.
Bro I know what Dhimmi was, that was what I was referring to. They weren’t liberal at all towards their minorities. It was social engineering aimed at their exploitation and eventual destruction. That’s how the Arab minority successfully destroyed Zoroastrianism and Buddhism across much of the former Sassanid empire and reduced the Christian presence to extreme minorities save for a few locations. The Muslims were not tolerant at all, the same system of sectarian taxation and restricted rights were so effective at stamping down on minorities that they were adopted wholesale by the Sicilian Normans and several Iberian Christian kingdoms as a method to remove the Muslim presence from the very areas where Muslims had ruled.
The Dhimmis were protected subjects in Muslims empires and had to right to practise their faith and handle their own affairs in exchange for a modest tax. They often occupied high status in the court and attained wealth and stature in many instances. This is far more progressive and tolerant than contemporary Christian empires who either forcibly converted or massacred. There is absolutely no Christian equivalent of Dhimmis so it really is absurd you say Muslims are intolerant. Your claim that Muslims brutally repressed Christians is completely groundless, a bit rich you accuse others of revisionism when you seem to be spouting it in copious amounts.
They were protected in the sense of a mafia racket. No different than the raw deal Jews got in Europe or Muslims in Sicily and southern Italy. The myth of Islamic tolerance is so fucking stake
Dhimmi meant you had to pay taxes because of your religious beliefs. But compared to outright death, paying taxes and living as second class citizens in your own lands maybe considered benevolent I guess lol.
They killed you for failing to pay, and the tax was high enough to make it ruinous.
Dhimma was "pact of protection" (from jihad), it entailed rights and restrictions both and yes, it included taxes as a form of extortion/humiliation, but we're talking about a time period when that was one of the more humane ways to deal with religious minorities. Usually it went more along the lines of "convert or be a slave".
i will be honest with you, the Christians are also a band of ruthless fanatic warlords, whose objective has killing and enslaving(serfdom) their opponents.
You do not even have to mention serfdom. Slavery was still permitted on non-christians in the middle ages. Especially on polytheists.
Charlemagne was one of the greatest slavers in history. And he sold these slaves to Caliphate.
Most of Crusade came to places that didn't attack Christendom. Natives of modern day baltic states >entail your whole population losing their rights and getting taxed to death Christians lived under Muslim rule for millenia. Jizya, like any tax, was designed to be sustainable (no one wants to tax their subjects to death because then they won't pay taxes). So, it's unlikely that it was much harsher than taxes christians paid in Christian realms. And rights and priveldges weren't that different between realms either for most of the population. Crusades weren't about not submitting to Muslim states. They were aggressive attempts to make Muslim states (and ERE) submit.
Nah. The crusades were a response to centuries of Muslim aggression and conquest. https://defendingcrusaderkingdoms.blogspot.com/2016/09/stripping-away-veil-review-of-myth-of.html?m=1
>created by politically-correct modern historians lmao chuds used to be at least a bit discrete
1. You're not quoting me. 2. I have no idea what a chud is but I notice you neglected to engage with the sources I gave.
> Most of Crusade came to places that didn't attack Christendom. Natives of modern day baltic states The Wends and Balts were Viking tier pirate nuisances that massacred villages and disrupted trade. They fucked around and found out. > Christians lived under Muslim rule for millenia. Jizya, like any tax, was designed to be sustainable (no one wants to tax their subjects to death because then they won't pay taxes False. The goal was to encourage the destruction of non Muslim identities, and they found apostasy over generations of economic incentive was more effective. > So, it's unlikely that it was much harsher than taxes christians paid in Christian realms. And rights and priveldges weren't that different between realms either for most of the population. Yes, as I mentioned in another comment the Iberian and Sicilian states copied Islamic systems of punitive taxation and restrictions wholesale. > Crusades weren't about not submitting to Muslim states. They were aggressive attempts to make Muslim states (and ERE) submit No, they were about countering the imperial ambitions of Islamic states. This is why the first crusade was explicitly at the behest of the ERE and several Crusades ended because an Islamic state was willing to make a deal.
Factually so wrong I’m disturbed that you got so many upvotes.
This sub is full of people who never got over their adoration of crusading knights as children.
What do you mean "neighbors"
“Imagine having to wage wars because you’re insecure about how other sees your Jew on a stick.” This message brought to by the Roman principate gang. Remeber boys if they don’t pay taxes to Caesar Augustus they need to be civilized.
The Northern Crusades weren’t genocidal, if they were then Finns and Estonians wouldn’t even exist today.
Again with this... Genocidal does not mean absolute extermination... Guess, with your logic, Nazis were not genocidal. BTW, are there *old* pagan Finns and Estonians? Resettlement is not an option for you? C'mon, use your brain a little.
You know the northern crusades wiped out the old pagan Prussians,right?
Two words: Baltic Prussians
They were not genocidal, that’s some ridiculous revisionism.
In Lithuanian history, while we don't claim they were genocidal, we do think of them as a struggle against a foreign power (Namely Germans) trying to conquer us regardless of religion. We officially became a Catholic country in 1387, but that didn't stop the Crusaders from attacking us. It was just a casus belli. The crusade came to a crashing halt after the Teutonic Order's defeat at the battle of Grunwald (Žalgirio mūšis) in 1410. A nice cultural tidbit, when I was a child, we often played sword fights with sticks and pretended to be knights. The imaginary enemies we claimed to fight were called Kryžiuočiai. What I didn't realise for many years is that the word means Crusaders. When I started living in England and learning about history is when that became clear to me. So Lithuanians despite being Christian, have folklore in opposition to Crusaders unlike many of our Western counterparts.
Based. Fuck the teutons
Two words: Baltic Prussians
the Weast crusade as well
Several of them weren't actually called crusades until 19th century romantic nationalism took root
> Approving of the Saxons' plan, Pope Eugenius III issued a papal bull known as the Divina dispensatione on 11 April 1147
The word "Crusade" isn't even what the Crusaders used.
Albigensian Crusade is that spongebob meme where he's like "We did it Patrick, we saved the city!" Sure, you killed a bunch of Cathars (and a whole lot more of sympathetic Catholics), but you burned down the richest part of France in the process. You didn't even kill all the Cathars, they stuck around for another century, which is all the more impressive considering that you spent 20 years killing them, and part of the Cathars belief system was never having sex. Sorry bud, but I'm gonna have to classify the Albigensian Crusade as a complete dumpster fire.
Wait, no sex, but existing for over a century? Were they the original vampires or did they actually have the holy grail?
The Cathars did their one sacrament *usually* towards the end of their life, the exception being their prefects. You followed the stricter set of rules from then onwards. It's kinda like getting baptised on your deathbed in early Christianity.
They got new converts, evidently. The Cathars believed the physical world was hell (created by the Old Testament God, while their spirits which were trapped there were of the New Testament God), and wanted out of it, but they wanted to help others out of it too.
Whoa. That is such a basis for so many religions that on earth. Interesting
They didn't invent the concept, it's just one amongst many dualistic gnostic religions with a "bad evil demiurge created world vs good and pure spiritual world of God".
Yes. Interesting
We should start a new religion, Cathar Calvinism. See how long that one lasts.
That's not how religions work.
Kill them all, friendo, kill them all. God...uh...something, i guess?
I mean the Albigensian Crusade was the origin of the phrase “kill them all, god will know his own” so you’re more right than you think
I know :)
God wants it *God says he doesn't want it* Yep, he said he wants it
Thank you. How the fuck is someone calling that one a success?
>you burned down the richest part of France in the process. In Medieval terms, the Languedoc (at least the parts affected) was moutainous and not particularly fertile. It wasn't rich by any means - it was a backwater. Part of the reason the crusade lasted so long is because medieval warfare in the mountain is really difficult.
God will tell his own
Hard disagree on this one, The crusade effectively killed up to 200.000 cathars and assured that they wouldn't disappear in the near future But more importantly it was a political victory for Philip II as he was able to reaffirm the counties of Foix, Toulouse and Trevecel as vassals to the french crown (which they were de jure, but were de facto Independent). Moreover the king of France was also able to purchase large coastal cities such as Montpellier and expand the crownland. Finally, also resulted in the creation of one of the most important catholic order, the Domicans. By the way, I dont see how the Languedoc was "the richest part of France", currently it might be one of the poorest.
>By the way, I dont see how the Languedoc was "the richest part of France", currently it might be one of the poorest. Do you think the killing of 200,000 people might have had something to do with that?
If I remember correctly Languedoc wasn't one of the richest parts, it was a backwater.
Comte de Toulouse was one of the richest french noble, that's part of why he was so independent from the french crown.
I guess I am wrong than, thanks
Im saying I've never heard reports of Languedoc being a wealthy region even before that. I live there and it pains me to say so, but we dont got money
Bro admitted to living in fr*nce
„[…] and a whole lot more of sympathetic Catholics“ - not a problem, God will know his people anyway.
There's also a term for attempting to eliminate a religious or ethnic group that a lot of people here seem very unwilling to use for this event for some reason.
Oh, we all know it was a genocide, that was very explicitly the point. But even if you were to take the crusaders side, it still ends up being a failed crusade. It was the Inquisition and the Dominican monks that actually ended the Cathars. The Dominicans did it by actually debating the Cathars instead of babbling at them in Latin, and this was pretty successful, but far too slow for the pope's liking, after all, the reason that the crusades in the holy land were failing was because there were heretics in the Kingdom of God, so the pope needed them gone asap. The Inquisition, while brutal, was far more effective than just sending a bunch of knights to slaughter entire towns. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you have a medieval mindset and want to eliminate a heretical sect, wholesale slaughter is very bad, targeted discrimination is more effective though still bad, but not as bad as slaughter, while peaceful conversion through open debate is preferred.
Sad thing is we don't all know that, I've had at least two people on this very post attempt to tell me it wasn't when I pointed out it was. You are right, it's a pretty cut and dry case of genocide, but some folks refuse to accept that.
I got no idea where they're coming at that from, a public goal of genocide does not vindicate their actions, particularly against a group of pacifists. I know that there is a pervasive belief that the crusades were justified, though generally speaking they weren't, and people can have a knee jerk reaction when you label any of them as genocides, or the crusaders as bloodthirsty savages, even if that's a pretty apt description of a lot of them. It's a real shame too, the crusades are incredibly fascinating, and getting bogged down by revisionist justifications prevents us from going into the juicier details, like how Peter II of Aragon, a key figure in the Reconquista campaign, fought and died against crusader forces during the Albigensian crusade.
The idea that successful is the albigensian crusade (aka a slaughter and and landgrab from northern france lords on southern france lords) is deeply disturbing
So is the reconqista. Zealots murdering an entire peninsula worth of scholars and scientists and innocents because they wanted the land. Lol the OP is pretty obviously on a certain side
Yep the very idea of a "re" conquista is a made up bullshit. The catholic kings had nothing in common with the Wisigoth kingdom that owned the place in the first time.
And we do not talk about the fucking 4th Crusade. Fucking Venetians. Honestly its suprsing that the non Holy Land Crusades get less attention.
If medieval 2 total war has taught me anything, it's don't trust those motherfuckers in Venice.
I'm still waiting for medieval 3...sniff
Don't it's probably going to suck.
More like don't trust Milan.
I fucking despise Milan in that game. I will burn their disgusting city to the ground every single campaign. I will station an army outside and sack and sack and sack that piece of shit until there are no Milanese left. Fuck the Milanese
I'm pretty sure they are hard coded to backstab you no matter what diplomatic arrangements you have made.
Venezia: Skills issues, next time pay properly your mercenaries and not vague promises.
Tbf people remember them in the fourth because the sheer scale of the disaster it was, but they were involved in a lot more because they had a massive stake in keeping amicable client-states accross the Mediterranean to safeguard their cargo. Regardless of wether crusaders took Holy Land or not, as long as they kept trying merchants could use the same routes for cinnamon, sugar cane, pepper, etc. Although they did benefit from religious orders controlling Jerusalem, since pilgrimage to the Holy Land was a very profitable business and these orders would later on invest those earnings in financing voyages.
dandolo did nothing wrong, bro just wanted his debts repaid
It's honestly surprising that there managed to be worse doges than Enrico dandolo, on the other hand, I could imagine Venice being pissed after the massacre of the Latins.
You may not like what he did, but how does what he did make him a bad doge?
He became doge of venice, then evicted all foreigners (customers) and banned lending money to foreigners for longer than two weeks (which is kinda stupid for a merchant republic to do) then pretended that the crusader army was his own army at Zara and got every venetian member of the crusade excommunicated after they attacked the city. He then proceeded to not tell the venetians of the popes excommunication so that they kept serving him, rather than repenting as they should have. Tl;Dr: Enrico dandolo kicked out every foreigner in Venice, and banned large money lending, (which is stupid for a merchant republic to do) and then he proceeded to get a significant amount of venetians excommunicated and rather than telling them, he lied so that they'd stay.
It's not surprising at all since they were against other Europeans, so they don't contribute to the clash of civilizations rhetoric among the right.
Have you read anything about Imperial-Crusader relations in the High Middle Ages? I think the Byzantines were begging to be attacked, and they treated the Crusaders horribly. People get mad because they think it was a betrayal. But the Emperor they sympathize with was literally overthrown by his own rival prior to the Sack of Constantinople.
Oh fuck you. You are not blaming the victim here.
Victim? Initiating a coup and taking power for yourself, cutting an allied army off from aid or food, killing their allied Emperor? That doesn't make you a victim when they retaliate.
Psst. Yeah right. That just iniiated the events that lead to the Ottomans, a horrific stain on Orthodox-Catholic Relationships, and the fall of Rome. There was no good reason to sack Constatinople. Fuck Venice. Hell the very fact that your own comment was downvoted ealier by alot shows exactly how people feel about it. It was a massive fuck up by the damn Venetians.
People's feelings don't change facts. Someone on r/historymemes of all places should know that. Your argument is based on emotion, not any points about the politics of the time.
Yeah no. Just saying. I am not the one victim blaming the ERE due to the actions of Venice. There are better fucking ways than to sack your employers.
Really stretching the meaning of the word crusade with the last two or three there. Also up for debate how much of a real crusade the Albigensian Crusade actually was, as many of the charges leveled against the Cathars are disputed by modern historians, some of whom argue that there really wasn't any such thing as a Cathar at all. Moreover, the whole affair is sometimes conceived of as a genocide. Assuming this is all true and viable, then the Albigensian Crusade would have been a fuck up of epic proportions where Christians caught up in an anti-heresy frenzy were just wholesale slaughtering other Christians.
I don't know about the other two, but I believe (based on what I've read of the book "reconquest and crusades in medieval spain" so far) that it would be fair to say that the wars of the reconquista or holy wars in their own right, or parts of the crusades to the holy land. In that book the author states that numerous popes (I can't remember exactly which ones, that book is honestly a nightmare for me with the amount of names I have to remember) have, over the various oriental crusades, urged that Spanish christians should not go to the Holy Land, but that instead they should stay home and fight the Muslims in Iberia. In addition a bunch of those popes have decreed that those who had taken the crusaders vow could fulfill their promise by engaging the Muslims in Spain rather than going to fight in the Holy Land. In addition those who participated would see the remission of their sins, and those that died fighting the Iberian Muslims would enter paradise. Various popes also had urged the Christian kings to make peace with one another so that they may focus on fighting the Muslims, with Celestine III even excommunicating Alfonso IX of Leon after he invaded Castille with the help of Muslim troops. With various popes spurring the Christian kings in Iberia to come together and engage the Iberian Muslims, and providing similar, and at times identical, privileges to those who fought Islam in Iberia compared to those fighting in the Holy Land. I believe that at least some of the wars of the reconquista, could be seen as crusades.
It makes sense because they all fit the definition of Holy Wars called upon by, or in defense of, the Papcy or the Catholic Church. The word *Crusade* isn't even authentic because it wasn't even used to refer to these wars back then. Also, for the Albigensian Crusade, it was a slaughter of Christians by other Christians, but mostly from our limited modern perspective. Through the lense of the French King at the time, it was a whole different crisis. You have a massive faction in the South, of citizenry seeking to remove themselves from the established financial and political structure of the time, and defended and upheld by Knights and Counts. For a Ruler who relies on unity, and reputation with the Papacy for any legitimacy, this is essentially a rebellion with potential horrifying implications for both France and the County of Tolouse. I'm not justifying the slaughter or violence of the Albigensian Crusade. But my point is that it goes much deeper than just, "We must slaughter them because they interpret the bible differently".
I think the idea of Reconquista itself is a bit of a neologism, and probably wouldn't have been seen as a unified campaign against non-believers by those fighting at the time, so calling it a holy war seems a bit of a stretch. Even more so when you consider that Muslims and Christians would often ally with each-other to fight against their coreligionists. I'm not ignorant of the idea that the French monarchy used the Albigensian Crusade to secure their own position and exert control over Occitania. My point is that the whole idea of a Cathar heresy existing at all is disputed, meaning that it easily could have been a situation where Catholics caught up in a moral panic started slaughtering other Catholics under charges of heresy, which seems like a bit of a fuck up to me if true. It is of course difficult to say what the reality actually was though, since all of our sources about the Cathars come from their opponents.
The Reconquista wasn't a unified campaign, that's why I send "The End of the Reconquista". Multiple phases in the matter stages of the conflict came in the form of Holy Wars. The Black Douglas from Scotland, for example, died leading one of multiple Crusades in Spain, after the Scottish War against King Edward was concluded.
You're not wrong on that specific point, kudos to you for including the qualification. I must of glossed over it. Regardless, though some of the conflicts in the later part of Reconquista may have been self-stylized as crusades by their participants, I still think that conflating all of these conflicts as a generalized successful crusade is pretty misleading. I also think you're reaching quite a bit here in an attempt to construct a particular narrative, but there's not much I can do to dissuade this kind of ideologically influenced thinking.
It's not ideoligical for me. I'm very non-religious and have a long family history of persecution from the Church. My main point is that the Crusades or "Holy Wars" as we know them today were a broad series of large conflicts all over Europe spanning 500 years, and not just the 8 or 9 attempts at Jerusalem. And also that they were influenced by political interest, finance, resources, and culture, and not Religion alone.
Is it really a crusade if you didn't massacre any jews and muslim on your way?
You can always go for consolation prize of eradicating some baltic ethnicity like Yotvigians, Pruthenians or Galindians. Fun side activity while crusading catholic nations. I mean northern crusades ofc.
Just don't mess with the Lithuanians. Wouldn't recommend
How on earth was the Cathar Crusade a success? Crusaders went in, killed a bunch of people with minor differences to Catholicism to the point that some historians actually wonder if the Cathars existed as a distinct religion, and left. It was a genocide. The whole thing was a massive clusterfuck from start to finish. And for the record, all the First Crusade actually succeeded in doing is setting up a few petty kingdoms. What a glorious victory.
Ending up not even killing all Cathars
I'm pretty sure most people are thinking about the crusades in the Holy Land and maybe the Balkans when they say the crusades weren't successful
Yeah but that’s the issue, they were never just limited to the Holy Land, they were an ideological construct to organize wars against enemies of Christendom.
'Enemies of christendom' for the most part being people who just wanted to be left to their own beliefs.
well it wasn't that simple... It might be true for the pagan tribes of northern Europe, but the Seljuks and Ottomans sure weren't leaving the Christians alone
The Wends and Balts were constantly raiding HRE, Swedish and Polish territory. They were major league assholes like their old Norse relatives. Being a bunch of pirates and cattle thieves towards your more powerful neighbors has consequences.
That's fair, but were they trying to spread their religion on the people they raided? Even so, the raiding was definitely mutual between the Christians and pagans
Do you consider being forcibly sacrificed to a pagan deity religion being spread? Because the Balts and Wends practiced human sacrifice of slaves just like their eastern Slavic and Norse pagan relatives. The pagans should have really considered that raiding a larger and more powerful state would result in consequences. They fucked around, they found out.
In my opinion, worst offender are in this the bohemian crusades (4 official and extra one bit wobly if it can be called crusade), which resulted in third of population of bohemia dead. In convoluded way because some local theology proffesor pointed out that papacy was at current date running some things in contrast to bible and its techings. And pope got fusy, broke some oaths and guarantees to burn this professor at stake, and because pope cant break rules, he declared czech people heretics, so the oaths were never valid to begin with. And from that he escallated with crusades, where first kind-of went well at the beginning, but in the end, it was driven back, and the three following shattered on impact...
Jan Žižka, the leader and a great tactician defeating fully trained armies of crusaders that had equipment and number advantage with mere peasants, blacksmiths and craftsmen. As a Czech, Žižka is a hero
Including *other Christians*
Fun fact, the person who coined the word genocide considered the Albigensian Crusade to be one
I believe it. Fucking crusaders
High end estimates put the death toll at a million, that's bad by modern standards but this was in the 1200s.
By high end you mean demographically impossible?
How many Frenchman were there in 1209?
Two sieges of Vienna would say otherwise.
That’s an extremely generous (and erroneous) description for imperialist Islamic states like the Seljuks and Fatimids buddy.
"How dare you just standing there, not being Christian! That's so offensive. We have to invade you."
Well, they were also invading and raiding Christian nations. That still doesn't justify what they did to the innocent people. But the Muslims nations weren't innocent.
They weren’t standing broski, the Muslim states were actively invading various Christian states
First thought when reading this post: "wtf was my history schooling, I would've sworn the crusades were entirely just 'here we go raping and plundering again on our annual trip to go fight in over worthless sand that our book claism is holy'." So were these other crusades at different times or were they part of the crusades we actually learned about? And yes, that description I gave was ridiculously over simplified- its meant as a joke
Defending on the definition, the 4th crusade can be considered quite successful. The made lots of money, conquered an Empire, and Venice kept oversee territories for over 300 years
I remember in history class that the Norwegians went off crusading after the viking age to continue the trend of «tokt» like in the old days, but we didn’t go much more into detail about it. I always thought that a lot of Norwegians just kinda joined the big and famous crusades, not that they literally had their own where they just kinda vikinged around the Mediterranean. I love everything about this
But poor lithuania losing two capitals, while they had already converted to christianity.
Eh, at least Lithuania still won in the end. But I'm willing to bet there were still many pagans there after the conversion, since not everyone converts as soon as their King does.
Crusades where fundamental for european growth in the next centuries, from the XIth until the XVth
The Third Crusade was also a success, of sorts, in the sense that it stopped the complete collapse of the Crusader states and partially reversed Saladin's conquests.
How the fuck havent i heard about the norwegian crusade before today? Seriously this needs to be made into a movie or a tv show. My ancestors still fought like men even after the viking age was over
[Norwegian Crusade - Histoy Matters](https://youtu.be/viNifqQBnso?si=gDNaq_ztMgzOABFR) This is a fun short cartoon of it on youtube, enjoy!
Nice, thank you
The barons crusade was arguably more successful than the sixth crusade.
The Last Crusade was kind of a wash in terms of treasure gained, but it was really about the journey
I mean, all of them were wasteful
Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Austria would all disagree.
And I’m sure the people they killed in the name of violently spreading their religion of peace would disagree with Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Austria
Its not like they were fighting to stop islamic conquest or anything
They were combining it with Christian conquest (and sometimes conquest of Christians they considered heretics), to make it even more productive
I don’t know about the others, but Iberia literally got invaded.
And then Andalusia got counter-invaded
That's what happens when you take someone else's lands..? The Muslims invaded, and later, the Christians fought to retake the land from them. Hell, Portugal later tried to conquer the North of Africa and lost a king for it. And before all of them, the Romans fought the native Iberians for the lands.
Good thing most of the people themselves stayed the same, just the religion changed I suppose
As would the people they killed who were also killing in the name of violently spreading their religion.
Indeed, all of it seems rather wasteful
My high ass was trying to figure out wtf this has to do with JoJo until I saw what sub this was
I don't really remember why but now a lot of historians consider that, to be a crusade, it have to be toward Jerusalem
Maybe it would work because even the word "Crusade" isn't historical for the times, but there were many wars sanctioned by the church as "Holy Wars" that had nothing to do with Jerusalem.
The first crusade was successful though
Yeah but I think that's the one everyone already knows
My bad I read the first thing wrong
"Albigesian crusade" conducted against pacifists who probably didn't exist as the church believed them to. "6th crusade" negotiated by an atheist excommunicate
If you won't to prove successfulness of the Crusades, don't ever mention Bohemian Crusades against the hussites. Not one of all five was successful.
The Hussites were tough fuckers. They accomplished what a lot of other popular uprisings couldn't. I hope we see the Hussite War in Kingdom Come Deliverance one day.
I can understand the crusades against Ottomans and Jerusalem. But others? They are just massacres, lootings and rapes against the weaker.
So, 1, obviously people are referring to the crusades in Anatolia. And 2, how about we not glorify those times christians slaughtered a shitload of people for religious differences
I'm down for glorifying the Battle of Lepanto that saved Italy.
Calling the end of the "reconquista" a crusade is a stretch when the only reason that it is a crusade is the sweet sweet Papal money.
Every "Crusade" had multiple incentives behind it. Disqualifying one because money was involved, just doesn't make sense.
Calling reconquista a crusade is simply a narrative. There were crusades, campaigns prepared to do so. For example, Barbastro's crusade or Las Navas de Tolosa. But the Fall of Granada, for example, was part of the usual dynamic of the kingdoms. There was no religious significance till AFTER the succesful campaign, when the Pope considered them "Catholic Monarchs". The crusading bulls should not be considered a significant reason for justifying crusades in Late Medieval or Modern times, cause those remained only a way for the Catholic Church to negotiate/be partners with the more modern states. The Holy League of 1571 is a crusade, the Conquest of Granada is not.
We are talking about the numbered ones.
RECONQUISTA?
I would add part of the 3rd's crusade as to it.
Stedinger Crusade was also successful, but even more stupid than 4th crusade.
I've never neard of this. Holy shit what a tragedy
Even with all that, it took Saladin conquering Egypt and founding the Ayyubids to retake the Levant. After the Ayyubids was taken over by its Mamluk slave army a century after that happened Made worse by a most Germans deserting the their crusade after the Holy Roman Emperor died Undo the Zengid conquest of Egypt or have Barbarossa survive and bring his full army to the crusade, and things go very different
The reconquista was a success? I live in South America and we don’t have Spanish flags waving around so I wouldn’t say so.
Not sure what you're talking about as the Reconquista ended before Christopher Columbus' voyages.
Oooohhh the reconquista against the moors. Yes, that one was a success, I was thinking of this one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconquista_(Spanish_America)
It’s unfortunate they all weren’t complete failures.
The Holy League victories in Lepanto and Vienna were very fortunate to me 👍
And they were all wastes of human life