From Pilgrimage to Power Play: The True Nature of the Crusades
God Wills It? No, The Pope and Kings Did
There are few events in history that have been so thoroughly wrapped in myth and self-righteous storytelling as the Crusades. Ask anyone with a passing knowledge of medieval history, and they'll tell you the Crusades were a noble, if brutal, quest by pious knights to reclaim the Holy Land for Christendom. They’ll paint pictures of shining armour, gallant warriors, and divine purpose. But like most grand historical narratives, this version of events is more fantasy than fact. Strip away the religious window dressing, and the Crusades look far less like a righteous holy war and far more like a medieval power grab, with a generous side of looting, land-grabbing, and political backstabbing.
To put it bluntly, the Crusades were about as holy as a tavern brawl over a spilt pint. Yes, religion played a role, it was the banner under which the whole affair marched, but the motivations were far more practical. The Pope had his own reasons for whipping Europe into a frenzy of war, kings and nobles saw opportunities for land and glory, and the average crusader? Well, he was often in it for a shot at wealth, adventure, and perhaps a bit of legally sanctioned pillaging. And the best part? Many of these so-called "holy warriors" were barely even religious.
The idea of the Crusades being primarily a religious endeavour is one of history’s greatest misinterpretations, helped, of course, by centuries of romantic retellings, biased chronicles, and an absolute refusal by later historians to admit that medieval knights were often little more than glorified thugs in chainmail. As historian Christopher Tyerman puts it, the Crusades were "never purely about religion," but rather a blend of politics, economics, and personal ambition. The reality is that power, politics, and profit drove the Crusades far more than faith ever did.
And then there’s Jerusalem itself; the supposed prize at the heart of it all. If the Crusades were truly about faith, one would expect a bit more reverence towards the Holy City. Instead, the First Crusade culminated in a massacre so brutal that even medieval chroniclers (who weren’t exactly known for being squeamish) described the streets as running knee-deep in blood. Fulcher of Chartres, an eyewitness to the First Crusade, described the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 in terms that sound less like divine justice and more like a medieval horror story. Hardly the behaviour of the devoutly religious, unless their idea of piety involved an awful lot of indiscriminate slaughter.
Of course, the irony doesn’t stop there. By the time we get to the Fourth Crusade, the whole pretense of a religious mission had crumbled entirely. Instead of marching on Jerusalem, the Crusaders decided that Constantinople, a Christian city, mind you, was a much more appealing target. Why? Because it was rich, poorly defended, and conveniently located on the way. The result? The Crusaders sacked the city in 1204, looted its treasures, and installed their own Latin rulers. Holy war, indeed.
But it wasn’t just the Christians playing the political game. The Muslim world, far from being a united front against the European invaders, was often just as fragmented and power-hungry as their Christian counterparts. The Muslim leaders of the time weren’t simply waging jihad against the infidels out of pure religious devotion. Many were engaged in their own internal struggles, using the Crusades as either a convenient rallying cry or an excuse to eliminate their political rivals. Saladin, often portrayed as the noble and devout counterpart to the Crusaders, was just as much a political operator as he was a military leader.
This myth of the Crusades as a noble religious war is one that still persists today, not just in textbooks but in popular culture. Hollywood, in particular, has been instrumental in reinforcing this narrative, painting the Crusaders as brave warriors of faith. Films like Kingdom of Heaven (2005) in its theatrical release attempted to portray a more nuanced version of events, yet still fell into the trap of framing the conflict in largely religious terms, glossing over the deep political and economic motivations that drove both sides. Earlier films, such as The Crusades (1935), took an even more overtly propagandistic approach, portraying Christian knights as pure-hearted heroes battling villainous, one-dimensional Saracens. These depictions, while entertaining, do little to challenge the long-standing misconception that the Crusades were fought purely for God’s will.
That said, some modern works have tried to dismantle this illusion. Revisionist films like Arn: The Knight Templar (2007) aim to highlight the complex motivations of those involved, portraying Crusaders as opportunists as much as warriors. Meanwhile, Ridley Scott’s director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven, arguably a different film altogether, offers a far more critical and layered view of the Crusades. In it, the hypocrisy, greed, and political scheming of both Christian and Muslim leaders are brought to the fore, exposing the gap between pious rhetoric and worldly ambition.
One of the most striking moments in that particular film, comes near the end, when Balian of Ibelin asks Saladin what Jerusalem means. Saladin, walking away, responds, “Nothing.” Then, after a pause, he turns and adds, “Everything.” It’s a moment that distills the entire absurdity of the Crusades into two words. On the surface, it sounds like a paradox, but it’s really a commentary on perspective. For the kings, sultans, and popes orchestrating the war, Jerusalem was a bargaining chip. A symbol, yes, but ultimately a prize to be taken or traded. For the common people, the knights, the pilgrims, and the believers on both sides, it was everything: the axis of faith, the promise of salvation, the justification for all suffering. The horror lies in the fact that those in power knew it was “nothing,” while the people died believing it was “everything.” That tension between political cynicism and popular faith is what gives the Crusades their tragic absurdity.
And yet, despite such searing cinematic moments, the romanticised image of the Crusader as a chivalrous knight on a holy mission remains stubbornly persistent in the cultural consciousness.
So, where does that leave the age-old tale of the Crusades as a noble holy war? Probably somewhere between a fairytale and a sales pitch. Faith was certainly part of the story, at least for the ordinary folk doing the marching, bleeding, and praying. But for the ones calling the shots; the popes, kings, emperors, and ambitious noblemen, religion was largely irrelevant. It was the packaging, not the product. The real motives? Land, power, influence, legacy and the occasional urge to settle an old grudge or plunder something shiny.
We're about to dig into the real story: not one of divine inspiration, but of political manoeuvring, economic ambition, and a rather medieval flavour of opportunism. Because when it comes down to it, the “holy” part of the holy wars was often the most irrelevant part of all, unless, of course, you needed a catchy slogan to rally the troops.
Crosses, Crowns, and Clever Lies: What the Christians Were Really After
It all kicked off in 1095, when Pope Urban II stood before a crowd at the Council of Clermont and delivered what can only be described as one of the most successful marketing speeches in history. With cries of Deus vult! ("God wills it!"), he stirred the hearts of thousands, promising spiritual salvation in exchange for martial enthusiasm. But behind the fiery rhetoric and the promise of heavenly reward lay a far less divine motivation: power. Lots of it. As the likes of Thomas Asbridge, Christopher Tyerman, and Jonathan Riley-Smith have all noted, religious fervour was merely the wrapping paper for a far more secular gift; namely, authority, land, and influence.
The Pope's Gambit
Pope Urban II had a problem, or several, really. The papacy was embroiled in the Investiture Controversy with the Holy Roman Emperor; a bitter power struggle over who had the right to appoint bishops and other church officials. In essence, it was a medieval tug-of-war between popes and kings: should the Church control its own hierarchy, or should secular rulers get to hand out mitres like party favours? The Investiture Controversy wasn’t merely an ecclesiastical tiff; it was an existential crisis. Who truly held power in Christendom; the sword or the crosier? Popes and emperors excommunicated each other, bishops played both sides, and the faithful watched their spiritual and secular leaders bicker like children over a cherished toy sceptre.
Urban saw in this chaos a spectacular opportunity: by launching a holy war, he could unify Western Christendom under papal leadership, reclaim the moral high ground, assert dominance over secular kings, and perhaps even mend the schism with the Eastern Church. And then there was Jerusalem, the most sacred city in Christendom. This site of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, had been under Muslim control for centuries. Rallying the faithful to take back Jerusalem wasn’t merely symbolic; it was galvanising. It provided the perfect spiritual MacGuffin with an irresistibly marketable location. The optics were immaculate.
Asbridge describes Urban’s move as “a stunning political calculation disguised in religious idiom,” while Riley-Smith argues that the Pope’s message was effective precisely because it allowed audiences to project their own motives onto it. Whether driven by devotion or ambition, the result was the same: an army of cross-bearing volunteers ready to march.
The Council of Clermont in 1095 was the moment it all coalesced. Urban framed the Crusade as an act of righteous violence; killing in the name of God, but with a generous side of indulgences. Anyone who joined the cause was promised full remission of sins, a shortcut to paradise that every landless knight, ambitious noble, and wayward sinner with a sword found irresistible. Chroniclers like Fulcher of Chartres, who was present at Clermont, give us glowing accounts of Urban’s speech, though modern historians like Carl Erdmann have questioned how much of the rhetoric was later invention.
The Knightly Class Jumps On Board
At this juncture, Europe was teeming with younger sons of nobility who, thanks to the laws of primogeniture, inherited absolutely nothing. For those unfamiliar with this charming bit of medieval legalese, primogeniture meant that the eldest son inherited everything; land, title, horses, and even the fancier tapestries, leaving the younger sons to either join the Church, marry rich (good luck with that), or get very, very creative with their careers.
The Crusades offered these underdogs a chance to leave home and either carve out a fiefdom in the Holy Land or, at the very least, pilfer someone else’s. For many, the call to Crusade was less about piety and more about profit, and even for the more devout warriors, the lines between religious duty and earthly reward were as blurry as a rainy windowpane in November. Tyerman argues that crusading appealed precisely because it fused spiritual gain with material opportunity, what he calls “devotion by way of acquisition.”
Then came the knights themselves; imagine less Sir Galahad and more heavily armed opportunists with an uncanny knack for setting things alight. The First Crusade (1096–1099) ended with the capture of Jerusalem and the establishment of several Crusader states: the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, and the County of Tripoli. These were not the pious outposts of a heavenly mission but colonial territories, complete with taxation, feudal lords, and internecine squabbles. The newly arrived Crusaders installed themselves as a ruling elite and began behaving like any other medieval nobility: fighting, scheming, and relentlessly accumulating land.
Winning Once and calling it a Series
The First Crusade was the only one that, by any generous historical measure, could be considered a “success.” The Crusaders managed to claw their way through Anatolia, survive a starvation-level siege at Antioch (where, both amusingly and horrifyingly, they allegedly resorted to cannibalism, as chronicled by Radulph of Caen), and then miraculously capture Jerusalem in 1099. Once inside the Holy City, they promptly massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants in a purge so bloody that even some commanders were reportedly shocked. That victory, however morally dubious, established the four Crusader states mentioned above.
The Second Crusade (1147–1149) was launched after Edessa fell to the Muslims in 1144. Led by King Louis VII of France and Emperor Conrad III of Germany, this venture became a sort of medieval buddy comedy gone disastrously awry. Plagued by poor planning, mistrust between allies, and an almost magical aptitude for making every wrong decision, it ended in a failed siege of Damascus, a great deal of embarrassment, and a very long walk home. Tyerman describes the Second Crusade as “a masterclass in futility,” while Steven Runciman calls it “the most ill-conceived expedition of the age.”
The Third Crusade (1189–1192), known as the Kings’ Crusade, featured a veritable Avengers line-up of medieval monarchs; Richard the Lionheart, Frederick Barbarossa, and Philip II of France. Unfortunately, fate intervened: Frederick drowned en route, Philip flounced back to France after a spat with Richard, and although Richard won some key battles (notably at Arsuf), he failed to retake Jerusalem. Instead, he signed a treaty with Saladin that allowed Christian pilgrims access to the city. Not exactly the resounding “Deus vult” victory the faithful had hoped for. Arab chronicler Ibn al-Athir noted Richard’s military brilliance but also mocked the Crusaders’ inability to hold what they’d taken.
Then came the Fourth Crusade (1202–1204). Brace yourself: instead of marching on Jerusalem, the Crusaders ended up sacking Constantinople—the very capital of Eastern Christianity. Broke and desperate, and influenced by Venetian interests, they looted and occupied a fellow Christian metropolis. This detour was a catastrophic public relations disaster for the Church—a theological facepalm of such magnitude that even the Pope was, at least publicly, horrified. Runciman saw it as “the final and irrevocable breach between East and West.”
Later Crusades; the Fifth (1217–1221), Sixth (1228–1229), Seventh (1248–1254), Eighth (1270), and even a Ninth (1271–1272, if you count Prince Edward of England’s side quest); mostly resulted in military failures, dubious treaties, or logistical shambles that would have made a Roman general weep. Some campaigns were marginally more successful; for instance, Frederick II managed to reclaim Jerusalem through diplomacy during the Sixth Crusade, though the city was lost again soon after. By 1291, with the fall of Acre, the last Crusader stronghold in the Holy Land had been permanently extinguished.
After nearly 200 years of relentless campaigning, Western Christendom was left with no Jerusalem, no lasting Crusader states; only an exhausted nobility, a thoroughly confused laity, and a papacy that began wielding the term “Crusade” as a political sledgehammer for conflicts that had little to do with the Holy Land.
Enter the Templars: God's Real Estate Agents
No discussion of the Crusades would be complete without tipping our collective chainmail helmet to the Knights Templar. Founded circa 1119, the Order started humbly enough; nine knights in Jerusalem who took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and swore to protect Christian pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land. In principle, they were nothing more than warrior-monks. In practice, they quickly evolved into medieval real moguls with a taste for land deeds and ledgers.
By the mid-12th century, the Templars had developed a sophisticated financial network that spanned from London to Acre. Pilgrims could deposit money at a Templar preceptory in Europe and withdraw it in the Levant using coded letters of credit; essentially, an early form of international banking, minus the customer service line and overdraft fees. This innovation, coupled with generous donations from nobles and tax exemptions from the Pope, made them obscenely wealthy. They weren’t just warriors of Christ, anymore, they were the first multinational financial and real estate institution with a side hustle in smiting.
Their landholdings stretched across France, England, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and the Holy Land. They built castles, operated fleets of ships, lent money to kings, and funded military campaigns. They were exempt from local laws and answered only to the Pope; effectively operating as a state within a state, but holier and better at compound interest. At their height, the Templars owned so much land and cash they could make the Crown of France look like it was down to its last sou.
As historian Malcolm Barber notes, “No other military order came near to matching the wealth and international scope of the Templars.” One might say they were less ‘holy order’ and more ‘Vatican-backed hedge fund with helmets.’
Naturally, this kind of power attracted suspicion, envy, and eventually, the full wrath of one particularly paranoid French king. By the early 14th century, King Philip IV of France, deeply in debt to the Templars and notably short on patience, decided enough was enough. In 1307, he had hundreds of Templars arrested in one coordinated sweep, charging them with heresy, blasphemy, sodomy, and other popular ecclesiastical offences that conveniently required no hard evidence. Torture provided the rest.
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Confessions were extracted under duress, and suddenly the most disciplined knights in Christendom were apparently spitting on crosses, worshipping bearded heads, and kissing each other in decidedly un-Christian ways. It was all a bit theatrical and more than a little convenient.
The last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, held firm in the face of all this nonsense. After years of imprisonment and sham trials, he was burned at the stake in 1314. According to legend, he cursed both the King and the Pope before the flames consumed him and in a twist that would make Shakespeare jealous, both were dead within a year. “Die in your turn, Pope Clement!… King Philip, within a year I summon you to appear before God’s tribunal!” he’s reported to have cried, likely with dramatic flare befitting a man about to be flambéed.
As historian Helen Nicholson remarks, “The suppression of the Templars had little to do with religious heresy and everything to do with royal finances and papal politics.” It was, in essence, a hostile corporate takeover dressed in ecclesiastical robes.
Even contemporary chroniclers couldn’t quite take the whole ordeal seriously. One wrote, “Many marvelled at the charges, which seemed without precedent or plausibility.” That’s polite speak for, “This smells like rubbish.”
So much for holy purpose. In the end, it wasn’t divine wrath or moral corruption that toppled the Templars; it was the classic cocktail of envy, debt, and political ambition. The Church waved the banner, but the king held the purse strings.
Another perfect example of the Crusades being less about the Cross and more about the coin.
Holy Relics and Unholy Motivations
By the 13th century, the Crusades had taken on a quasi-theatrical quality. While the pious window dressing remained, the underlying machinery was increasingly driven by cold calculations and warm purses. One of the most vivid manifestations of this shift was the relic trade.
Churches across Europe began to boast of acquiring relics from the East; splinters of the True Cross, vials of Christ’s blood, even strands of the Virgin’s hair. Some cathedrals claimed to possess multiple heads of John the Baptist, leaving one to wonder whether his body had a regenerative quality or if someone was simply being creative with the miracles.
These relics not only drew pilgrims and donations but also symbolised the Church’s capacity to convert faith into tangible wealth. Peter Partner and Norman Housley have both commented on how relics were commodified, serving as both spiritual tokens and economic assets.
For monarchs, the Crusades provided a convenient outlet to rid themselves of troublesome nobles, export internal conflicts, and polish their divine credentials. For the Pope, they reaffirmed his control over Christendom by demonstrating that spiritual indulgences could be dispensed with very lucrative side benefits.
The Papacy's Long Game: Expanding the Crusade Concept
As time wore on, the term “Crusade” became a catch-all label for any military venture that suited the papacy’s political agenda. By the 13th century, Crusades were launched not solely against Muslims in the Holy Land but also against heretics and pagans much closer to home.
The infamous Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) against the Cathars in southern France serves as a prime example. Accused of heresy and disobedience to Rome, the Cathars found themselves facing a brutal campaign. One chilling instruction reportedly echoed in the streets of Béziers: “Kill them all; God will know His own.”
Simultaneously, the Northern Crusades saw the Teutonic Knights and other orders waging war against the pagan tribes of the Baltics. What began as a religious pilgrimage evolved into outright military colonisation, with entire principalities sprouting under ecclesiastical sanction. The Pope’s blessing, combined with the promise of indulgences, ensured that even these ventures carried the trappings of spiritual legitimacy, even as they functioned as straightforward power plays.
In this grand scheme, faith was the façade, a brilliant marketing tool to rally the masses, while for the higher-ups; popes, kings, and ambitious noblemen, religion was largely irrelevant. It was the packaging, not the product. The true rewards lay in crowns, lands, and loot. As Housley quips, “The cross was worn on the shoulder, but the purse was never far from the heart.”
Before we dive into the fray, let’s set the stage. Who exactly were the Muslim forces during the Crusades? Contrary to the dramatic, clashing-armies imagery of Hollywood, the Muslim world at the time wasn’t a singular, unified entity. It was a patchwork of competing empires, sultanates, and dynasties, all jostling for power. The primary players included the Seljuk Turks, who had taken over vast swathes of the Middle East; the Abbasid Caliphate, whose caliph in Baghdad was more of a symbolic figurehead than a ruler of actual consequence; and the Fatimids of Egypt, who were often more concerned with their own internal struggles than the arrival of heavily armoured Europeans. Unity, as you might guess, was not the order of the day.
As historian Carole Hillenbrand aptly puts it, the Muslim response to the First Crusade was not one of immediate, unanimous jihad but rather "a series of uncoordinated local reactions." And therein lies the rub; while the Crusaders thundered in under a single (if squabbling) banner of Christendom, the Muslim world was fragmented and often too busy fighting itself to muster a serious collective defence.
Oh, You Meant Those Foreign Invaders?
When the First Crusade arrived in 1096, the general Muslim response was one of mild confusion. The Seljuks, ruling much of Anatolia and Syria at the time under Sultan Malik-Shah I (1072–1092) and later his weaker successors, had their hands full dealing with Byzantine counterattacks and internal power struggles. When word reached them that some European warriors had arrived, they initially dismissed them as another band of Byzantine mercenaries, until the Crusaders began cutting a bloody swathe through Anatolia. Even then, many Muslim rulers, particularly in Syria, saw the Crusaders less as an existential threat and more as a convenient opportunity to weaken their local rivals.
Ibn al-Athir, a 12th-century Muslim historian, recounts how the Crusaders' arrival was met with disbelief. The Muslim rulers of the time simply couldn’t fathom that these strange, heavily armoured warriors would be anything more than a nuisance. It was only after the horrific sack of Jerusalem in 1099; where the streets reportedly "ran with blood up to the knees of horses" (an exaggeration, but a vivid one), that the Muslims began to take the Crusader presence seriously.
Not Exactly a United Front
One of the great ironies of the Crusades is that while they were framed as a grand religious war, the Muslim response was, for the most part, driven by realpolitik rather than piety. The rulers of Aleppo, Damascus, and Mosul were more interested in maintaining their own power than in launching a unified jihad. Even after Jerusalem fell, rulers like Ridwan of Aleppo (r. 1095–1113) and Duqaq of Damascus (r. 1095–1104) often preferred to negotiate with the Crusaders rather than confront them outright.
This fragmentation played directly into the hands of the Crusaders, allowing them to establish their precarious but enduring states in the Levant. As historian Hugh Kennedy points out, the Crusaders "succeeded not because of their own strength, but because of the divisions among their Muslim enemies." The notion of a grand, religiously motivated Muslim counter-crusade was largely a later construction; one that only truly took form with the rise of Imad ad-Din Zengi (r. 1127–1146) and, more famously, Saladin (r. 1174–1193).
Enter the Man, the Myth, the Legend: Saladin
If the First Crusade was marked by Muslim disunity, the latter half of the Crusades saw the emergence of figures who sought to change that. Chief among them was Saladin (Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb, 1137–1193), the Kurdish sultan who famously recaptured Jerusalem in 1187. Now, Saladin has often been portrayed as a paragon of chivalry, a noble warrior fighting for the Islamic cause against the barbaric Franks. While there is some truth to that, the reality is, as always, far more complex.
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Saladin’s primary motivation was political rather than religious. He spent as much time fighting fellow Muslims as he did fighting Crusaders, and his unification of Egypt and Syria was as much about consolidating his own power as it was about repelling the Europeans. Historian Andrew Ehrenkreutz argues that Saladin "manipulated the idea of jihad for political purposes," using it to rally support and legitimacy for his campaigns. That he was a skilled general and an effective leader is undisputed, but his motivations were more Machiavellian than purely religious.
The Long Goodbye: The Crusades Fizzle Out
By the time of the later Crusades, the Muslim world had grown more adept at dealing with these European incursions. The Mamluks of Egypt, a dynasty of former slave soldiers, delivered the final blow to the last Crusader stronghold in 1291. Unlike their predecessors, the Mamluks under Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil (r. 1290–1293) had no patience for coexistence or diplomacy, they wiped out the remaining Crusader states with ruthless efficiency.
Yet, even in victory, the Crusades remained a secondary concern for most of the Muslim world. As historian Thomas Asbridge notes, "For the Islamic world, the Crusades were a sideshow, a minor episode in a far larger struggle for power." The Mongol invasions (which sacked Baghdad in 1258), internal dynastic struggles, and the rise and fall of empires were of far greater concern to them than the remnants of European knights clinging to fortresses on the Mediterranean coast.
So, What Was It All About Then?
For many Muslim rulers, the Crusades were not about defending Islam in some unified religious cause. Just as Christendom’s holy war was fuelled by ambition, greed, and opportunism, so too was the Muslim response shaped more by power struggles than piety. Jihad may have been invoked, but often as a convenient banner rather than a deep conviction.
The Muslim world, like its Christian counterpart, was fragmented, pragmatic, and largely unbothered by grand religious narratives. Crusaders may have charged in with crosses on their chests, but those they fought were often more concerned with holding their cities, undermining rivals, and making the best political bargain. The myth of a grand civilisation clash? A later invention, tidy in textbooks but utterly divorced from the grubby, tactical reality on the ground.
It wasn’t about divine destiny. It was about who could hold the throne.
From Holy Fire to Cold Ash
The great bonfire of the Crusades was lit with the promise of divine purpose, by popes and caliphs, kings and sultans, all invoking the sacred to justify the sword. But what burned brightest in those flames was not faith. It was ambition.
The First Crusade was pitched as a pilgrimage, a kind of spiritual gap year with chainmail and murder. Pope Urban II, at Clermont in 1095, spoke of liberating the Holy Land, saving Eastern Christians, and securing eternal salvation; all in one tidy pitch. One medieval chronicler had him declaring, “Deus vult!” ("God wills it!"), though frankly, God’s involvement in medieval geopolitics has always been suspiciously well-aligned with whichever party had more cavalry.
On the other side, the Muslim world responded with... a shrug, at first. Confused local emirs assumed the Crusaders were just overzealous tourists. Even later, when jihad was invoked in response, it often served more as a rallying cry for political consolidation than a genuine spiritual awakening. Saladin, lionised as Islam’s great hero, spent years consolidating power in Egypt and Syria, occasionally stopping to whack a Crusader or two on the head when they became inconvenient. His supposed chivalry was admirable, sure, but also excellent PR.
In truth, religion was the wrapping paper. The real gift was always power.
The Crusaders weren’t unique in this. Muslim leaders were just as opportunistic, often more interested in outmanoeuvring rivals in Aleppo or Cairo than in confronting Frankish invaders. Alliances shifted like desert sand. At various points, Muslims fought alongside Christians against other Muslims. Some Christian knights defected and converted. And the Venetians, ever practical, once went so far as to sack Christian Constantinople instead of bothering with Muslims at all, because why fight Saladin when you can loot a cathedral?
And by the time the later Crusades rolled around, particularly the Seventh and Eighth, things had taken a turn from the pious to the positively surreal. Egypt had become the new battleground, but this was no Holy Land; it was the breadbasket of the Islamic world, and the Crusaders had the brilliant idea of attacking it, not because it held sacred significance, but because it seemed logistically sound. "Cut off the head and the body will die," they thought, failing to realise Egypt was not so much a head as an entirely separate beast that hadn't been invited to this particular party.
Enter Louis IX of France, a man so devout he’d probably try to baptise the Nile. His ill-fated crusade to Damietta in 1249 ended in abject failure and a humiliating ransom after he was captured by the Mamluks, who had just recently taken over Egypt by assassinating their former overlords in a military coup that could make Shakespeare blush. By then, the whole affair had become a grotesque parody of itself: a French king attacking North Africa to “liberate” Jerusalem via the Red Sea, while the actual Holy City remained thoroughly unbothered.
Historian Jonathan Riley-Smith once wrote, “The Crusades were the first colonial wars.” If that’s true, they were also the first to be thoroughly confused about their mission statement. Was it about saving Jerusalem, or looting Antioch? Spreading Christendom, or securing a second son a nice estate by the sea? Depending on who you asked (or bribed), the answer varied.
And so, after nearly two centuries of bloodshed, what did the Crusades achieve? No lasting Christian presence in the East. No enduring Muslim unity. Just a trail of broken cities, empty coffers, dead emperors, and the vague sense that it had all been rather awkward and extremely expensive.
Even contemporaries were sceptical. The 12th-century Syrian chronicler Usama ibn Munqidh noted with dry bemusement that the Franks were both barbaric and hilariously inconsistent, once watching a Crusader knight drink rose water with soap in it because he thought it was medicine. One gets the impression he saw the whole endeavour as tragically stupid, if occasionally entertaining.
And that’s perhaps the truest legacy of the Crusades: a cautionary tale masquerading as a divine quest. Not a clash of civilisations, but a collision of egos. A reminder that even when cloaked in the sacred, war tends to be the work of men chasing power, not God handing down orders from the sky.
The Crusades weren’t a holy war gone wrong. They were never holy to begin with. From the start, they were driven by the usual suspects; greed, glory, revenge, and the deeply human fear of dying obscure and unimportant.
The holy fire roared for a time, fed by sermons, steel, and stupidity.
But in the end, it burned itself out.
And all we’re left with is cold ash and questionable statues.
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