1. Pope Urban calls for the First Crusade. Due to Turkish
rapid expansion westward, Pope Urban called the nations of Europe to support
the crusades and recapture Jerusalem. As Jerusalem was seen to be a holy piece
of land, it needed to belong to the Christian world and the Pope wanted as much
help from others as was possible.
2. Many European rulers rejected the call. The kings of
Britain and France rejected out of spite since they had many issues with the
Pope. What was problematic is that their nobles and vassals decided to join the
Pope hoping that they would also attain power through their work with the
church. People from Italy and Germany joined almost instantly.
3. After the crusaders managed to successfully take
Jerusalem, they established an independent land. They wanted to purge all
people who were of different religion from the city so they killed everyone in
their way indiscriminately. This also included Jews, besides Muslims, as well
as some Christians who managed to remain in the city.
4. Since the Seljuks managed to take the region for
themselves, the second crusade was called in order to retake the region. Unlike
the first one, the second crusade was unsuccessful and the Kingdom of Edessa
was unable to be formed once again by the crusaders. This resulted in many losses
for the Christian world.
5. Following the failure that was the second crusade,
leaders of France and Britain managed to start another crusade in order to try
and take Jerusalem again, this time from Saladin. They suffered heavy losses
which resulted in the Treaty of Jaffa which ended the war for a while. Saladin
proved to be too strong with his armies for Europeans to take on.
6. The forth crusade brings much of the same. In another
attempt to get Jerusalem back, the Christian countries of Europe managed to get
another large army and send it to recapture Jerusalem. This time, the mighty
Venetian fleet and army joined too which resulted in the Crusaders having over
20 000 soldiers which was a lot for the time.
7. Due to difficulties in the war and people not agreeing
with each other, the Fourth crusade actually ended with the sacking of Constantinople,
not with Jerusalem. The Venetians who were fighting Byzantines for a long time
managed to get the crusaders to sack Constantinople which resulted in the
Western Church becoming much more powerful than the eastern.
8. The next couple of crusades were unsuccessful and failed
to capture the spirit of the first one. This resulted in the fifth, sixth,
seventh, and eighth crusade having armies with much lower numbers and even
fewer successful warfare endeavors than the previous ones. The Europeans were getting
tired of going to Jerusalem every so often.
9. The final large crusade was the Ninth. As the previous ones, it was a complete loss, even though it seemed at first that there would be more successful endeavors considering there were a few victories in battles. In the end, the crusade was finished unsuccessfully and without any support by the people form Europe who ultimately had armies to send.
10. Although these were the major crusades, there was a huge number of smaller ones that were named after groups of people or specific battles because they were much smaller and didn’t encompass the entirety of Europe like the major ones did. They existed parallel with the major crusades, even though they didn’t get much time among the public.
