Crusades Crusades are a broad military-colonization movement to the East, in which Western European sovereigns, feudal lords, knighthood, part of the townspeople and peasantry took part. Traditionally, the era of the Crusades is considered to be the period from 1096

The Crusades are the armed response of Western Christians to the growing power of the Islamic caliphate. These campaigns resulted in a number of attempts to conquer Palestinian lands. Another goal of the campaigns was to free the Holy Sepulcher and expand Christian lands. The Crusades were called because the participants wore an image of a red cross on their shoulders.

The reasons for these campaigns lay in the political and economic conditions of that era:

• the struggle of feudal lords with the growing kings revealed a layer of feudal lords seeking independence, as well as the desire of the royal dynasties to eliminate this layer; the townspeople understood the benefits of expanding the market and receiving benefits from the barons;


• the peasants also had a benefit - the opportunity to avoid serfdom; the papacy was seduced by the role of the first violin in the new movement and the great power that it could gain;


• The French population, subjected to the nightmares of half a century of famine and pestilence, was given hope for a better life in the Palestinian lands, as a country where rivers of milk flow, according to legend.

Other important reasons for the campaigns were changes in the East. Ever since the era of Constantine the Great, who built a beautiful church near the Holy Sepulcher, the West began to make pilgrimages to holy places, while the caliphs did not interfere with these trips. The latter were beneficial to the caliphs, as they delivered goods and funds to the state. However, at the end of the 10th century, Fatimid radicals seized power in the caliphate, pogroms of Christians began, which were aggravated by the Seljuk conquest of Palestinian and Syrian lands in the last quarter of the 11th century. The tragic news about the desecration of Christian shrines and reprisals against pilgrims gave rise to the idea among Western Christians of a campaign to liberate the Holy Sepulcher.

This idea was then realized by Pope Urban II, who convened councils in Clermont and Piacenza at the end of the 11th century, at which the crusade was approved. The slogan of all subsequent campaigns from now on was the words that such was God’s will. Emotions in favor of the crusade were also fueled by the colorful descriptions of Christian disasters in Palestine by the pilgrim Peter the Hermit.

However, before the first crusade, the inspired masses, under the leadership of the Hermit and the knight Golyak, made an amateur campaign through the German and Hungarian lands, without having any cash or food reserves. The participants of the campaign obtained these supplies through outrages and robberies of everyone who came across them on the way. The indignant Hungarians and Bulgarians destroyed some of the profit lovers, but the remaining participants in the campaign reached the borders of Byzantium. Emperor Komnenos got rid of them, transporting them to Asian lands. The Turks destroyed the remnants of the invading army in the battle of Nicaea.

But there were other crazy people too. Thus, 15 thousand residents of Germany and Lorraine, under the leadership of the clergyman Gottschalk, tried to carry out a similar unprepared crusade through the Hungarian lands, but they engaged in Jewish pogroms in the cities. In response, the participants in the campaign were killed by Hungarian troops.

These are military-colonization movements of Western European feudal lords, part of the townspeople and peasantry, carried out in the form of religious wars under the slogan of liberating Christian shrines in Palestine from Muslim rule or converting pagans or heretics to Catholicism.

The classical era of the Crusades is considered to be the end of the 11th - beginning of the 12th centuries. The term “Crusades” appeared no earlier than 1250. Participants in the first Crusades called themselves pilgrims, and campaigns - a pilgrimage, deeds, expedition or sacred road.

Causes of the Crusades

The need for the Crusades was formulated by the Pope Urban after graduation Clermont Cathedral in March 1095. He determined economic reason for the crusades: European land is not able to feed people, so to preserve the Christian population it is necessary to conquer rich lands in the East. Religious arguments concerned the inadmissibility of keeping holy objects, especially the Holy Sepulcher, in the hands of infidels. It was decided that the army of Christ would set out on a campaign on August 15, 1096.

Inspired by the calls of the pope, crowds of thousands of ordinary people did not wait for the set deadline and rushed to the campaign. The pitiful remnants of the entire militia reached Constantinople. The bulk of the pilgrims died on the way from deprivation and epidemics. The Turks dealt with the remainder without much effort. At the appointed time, the main army set out on a campaign, and by the spring of 1097 it found itself in Asia Minor. The military advantage of the Crusaders, who were opposed by the disunited Seljuk troops, was obvious. The crusaders captured cities and organized crusader states. The native population fell into serfdom.

History and consequences of the Crusades

The consequence of the first campaign there was a significant strengthening of positions. However, its results were fragile. In the middle of the 12th century. The resistance of the Muslim world is intensifying. One after another, the states and principalities of the crusaders fell. In 1187, Jerusalem and the entire Holy Land were recaptured. The Holy Sepulcher remained in the hands of infidels. New Crusades were organized, but all of them ended in complete defeat.

During IV Crusade Constantinople was captured and barbarously plundered. In place of Byzantium, the Latin Empire was founded in 1204, but it was short-lived. In 1261 it ceased to exist and Constantinople again became the capital of Byzantium.

The most monstrous page of the Crusades was children's hike, took place around 1212-1213. At this time, the idea began to spread that the Holy Sepulcher could only be released by innocent children's hands. Crowds of boys and girls aged 12 and older flocked to the coast from all European countries. Many children died along the way. The remainder reached Genoa and Marseille. They had no plan for moving forward. They assumed that they would be able to walk on water “like on dry land,” and the adults who were promoting this campaign did not take care of the crossing. Those who came to Genoa scattered or died. The fate of the Marseilles detachment was more tragic. Merchant adventurers Ferrey and Pork agreed “for the sake of saving their souls” to transport the crusaders to Africa and sailed with them on seven ships. The storm sank two ships along with all the passengers; the rest were landed in Alexandria, where they were sold into slavery.

In total, eight Crusades were launched to the East. By the XII-XIII centuries. include the campaigns of German feudal lords against the pagan Slavic and other peoples of the Baltic states. The indigenous population was subjected to Christianization, often violently. In the territories conquered by the crusaders, sometimes on the site of previous settlements, new cities and fortifications arose: Riga, Lubeck, Revel, Vyborg, etc. In the XII-XV centuries. Crusades against heresies are organized in Catholic states.

Results of the Crusades ambiguous. The Catholic Church significantly expanded its zone of influence, consolidated land ownership, and created new structures in the form of spiritual knightly orders. At the same time, the confrontation between the West and the East intensified, and jihad intensified as an aggressive response to the Western world from the Eastern states. The IV Crusade further divided the Christian churches and implanted in the consciousness of the Orthodox population the image of an enslaver and enemy—the Latin. In the West, a psychological stereotype of distrust and hostility has become established not only towards the world of Islam, but also towards Eastern Christianity.

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CRUSADES(1095–1270), military colonization campaigns of Europeans in the Middle East (Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia) at the end of the 11th–13th centuries. in the form of a pilgrimage with the goal of liberating the Holy Land (Palestine) and the Holy Sepulcher (in Jerusalem) from the “infidels” (Muslims). Going to Palestine, their participants sewed red crosses onto their chests, returning, they sewed it on their backs; hence the name "crusaders".

Causes of the Crusades.

The crusades were based on a whole complex of demographic, socio-economic, political, religious and psychological motives, which were not always realized by their participants.

Began in the 11th century. in Western Europe, demographic growth encountered limited resources, primarily land as the main means of production (low labor productivity and crop yields). Demographic pressure worsened due to the progress of commodity-money relations, which made a person more dependent on market conditions, and his economic situation less stable. A significant surplus of population arose, which could not be ensured within the framework of the medieval economic system: it was formed at the expense of the younger sons of feudal lords (in a number of countries the right of primogeniture prevailed - inheritance of paternal land holdings only by the eldest son), impoverished knights, small and landless peasants. According to J. Le Goff, “the Crusades were perceived as a cleanser from the overpopulation of the West.” The idea of ​​the countless riches of the East, which was strengthening in the mind, gave rise to a thirst for the conquest of fertile overseas lands and the acquisition of treasures (gold, silver, precious stones, exquisite fabrics).

For the Italian trading city-republics of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, expansion to the East was a continuation of their struggle with the Arabs for dominance in the Mediterranean. Their support for the crusading movement was determined by the desire to establish themselves on the shores of the Levant and control the main trade routes to Mesopotamia, Arabia and India.

Demographic pressure contributed to rising political tensions. Civil strife, feudal wars, and peasant revolts became a constant feature of European life. The Crusades provided an opportunity to channel the aggressive energy of frustrated groups of feudal society into a just war against the “infidels” and thereby ensure the consolidation of the Christian world.

In the late 1080s and early 1090s, socio-economic and political difficulties were aggravated by a series of natural disasters (harsh winters, floods) and epidemics (primarily fever and plague), which struck primarily Germany, the Rhineland regions and Eastern France . This contributed to the widespread spread of religious exaltation, asceticism, and hermitism in all layers of medieval society. The need for religious feat and even self-sacrifice, ensuring the atonement of sins and the achievement of eternal salvation, found its adequate expression in the idea of ​​​​a special pilgrimage to the Holy Land for the liberation of the Holy Sepulcher.

Psychologically, the desire to seize the riches of the East and the hope of eternal salvation were combined with the thirst for wandering and adventure characteristic of Europeans. Traveling into the unknown provided an opportunity to escape from the usual monotonous world and get rid of the hardships and disasters associated with it. The expectation of afterlife bliss was intricately intertwined with the search for earthly paradise.

The initiator and main organizer of the crusading movement was the papacy, which significantly strengthened its position in the second half of the 11th century. As a result of the Cluny movement () and the reforms of Gregory VII (1073–1085), the authority of the Catholic Church increased significantly, and it could again lay claim to the role of leader of the Western Christian world.

The beginning of the Crusades.

Situation in the East.

With the collapse of the Abbasid Caliphate at the end of the 10th century. Palestine came under the rule of Fatimid Egypt; Muslim hostility towards Christians intensified. The situation became even more tense after the capture of Jerusalem by the Seljuk Turks (1078). Europe was agitated by stories of Muslim atrocities against Christian shrines and brutal persecution of believers. In 1071–1081, the Seljuks took Asia Minor from the Byzantine Empire. In the early 1090s, the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos (1081–1118), pressed by the Turks, Pechenegs and Normans, turned to the West with a call for help.

Clermont Cathedral.

Taking advantage of the appeal of Alexios I, the papacy took the initiative in organizing a holy war to liberate the Holy Sepulcher. On November 27, 1095, at the Council of Clermont (France), Pope Urban II (1088–1099) delivered a sermon to the nobility and clergy, calling on Europeans to stop internecine strife and go on a crusade to Palestine, promising its participants absolution and eternal salvation. The pope's speech was enthusiastically received by a crowd of thousands, who repeated like an incantation the words “God wants it this way,” which became the slogan of the crusaders.

Peasant Crusade.

Numerous preachers spread the call of Urban II throughout Western Europe. Knights and peasants sold their property to purchase the necessary military equipment and sewed red crosses onto their clothes. In mid-March 1096, crowds of peasants (about 60–70 thousand people), mainly from Rhineland Germany and Northeastern France, led by the ascetic preacher Peter the Hermit, set out on a campaign, without waiting for the knights to gather. They walked along the valleys of the Rhine and Danube, crossed Hungary and in the summer of 1096 reached the borders of the Byzantine Empire; their path was marked by robberies and violence against the local population and pogroms against Jews. To prevent outrages, Alexei I demanded that they not stay anywhere for more than three days; They moved through the territory of the Empire under the constant surveillance of Byzantine troops. In July, the significantly thinned (almost halved) militia of peasant crusaders approached Constantinople. The Byzantines hastily transported him across the Bosphorus to the town of Tsibotus. Contrary to the advice of Peter the Hermit, peasant detachments moved to Nicaea, the capital of the Seljuk state. On October 21, they were ambushed by Sultan Kilych Arslan I in a narrow desert valley between Nicaea and the village of Drakon, and were completely defeated; most of the crusading peasants died (approx. 25 thousand people).

The first knightly crusade began in August 1096. It was attended by knights from Lorraine, led by Duke Godfrey IV of Bouillon, from Northern and Central France, led by Counts Robert of Normandy, Robert of Flanders and Stephen of Blois, from Southern France, led by Count Raymond IV of Toulouse and from Southern Italy (Normans) led by Prince Bohemond of Tarentum; The spiritual leader of the campaign was Bishop Adhemar of Puy. The path of the Lorraine knights went along the Danube, the Provencal and northern French - through Dalmatia, the Norman - along the Mediterranean Sea. From the end of 1096 they began to concentrate in Constantinople. Despite the tense relations between the crusaders and the local population, which sometimes resulted in bloody clashes, Byzantine diplomacy managed (March-April 1097) to get them to take the feudal oath to Alexei I and undertake to return to the Empire all its former possessions in Asia Minor, captured by the Seljuk Turks. By the beginning of May, the crusading troops crossed the Bosphorus and in the middle of the month, together with the Byzantines, besieged Nicaea. The knights defeated the army of Kylych-Arslan I under the walls of the city, but its garrison surrendered not to them, but to the Byzantines (June 19); to pacify the crusaders, Alexei I allocated them part of the booty.

At the end of June, the knights set out on a campaign against Antioch. On July 1, they completely defeated the Seljuks at Dorileum and, with great difficulty, passing through the interior of Asia Minor (the Turks used scorched earth tactics), they reached Iconium in mid-August. Having repulsed the Seljuk attack at Iraklia, the crusaders entered Cilicia and in October, having crossed the Antitaurus ridge, entered Syria. On October 21, they besieged Antioch, but the siege dragged on. At the beginning of 1098, a detachment of knights captured Edessa; their leader Baldwin of Bouillon founded the first crusader state here - the County of Edessa. The crusaders were able to take Antioch only on June 2, 1098. On June 28, they defeated the army of the emir of Mosul, which came to the rescue of the city. In September 1098, by agreement between the leaders of the crusaders, Antioch was transferred to the possession of Bohemond of Taren; Thus, the second crusader state arose - the Principality of Antioch.

After the fall of Antioch, the leaders of the crusader army began to conquer Syrian fortresses, which caused discontent among ordinary soldiers who wanted to continue the campaign. In the winter of 1098/1099, they rebelled in Maar and forced their leaders to move in the spring of 1099 to Jerusalem, which by that time had passed from the hands of the Seljuks to the rule of the Egyptian Sultan. On June 7, 1099, they besieged the city and took it by storm on July 15, exterminating the entire non-Christian population. The winners created the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which was headed by Godfrey of Bouillon with the title of “Guardian of the Holy Sepulcher.” On August 12, Godfrey defeated the Fatimid troops near Ascalon, ending their rule in Palestine.

In the first quarter of the 12th century. The Crusaders' possessions continued to expand. In 1101 they captured Tripoli and Caesarea, and in 1104 Acre. In 1109 the County of Tripoli was created, the ruler of which was Bertrand, the son of Raymond IV of Toulouse. Beirut and Sidon fell in 1110, Tire in 1124.

Crusader states.

The King of Jerusalem was the supreme overlord of the Palestinian and Syrian lands that fell under Christian rule; the Count of Edessa, the Prince of Antioch and the Count of Tripoli were in vassal dependence from him. Each state was organized according to the Western European feudal model: it was divided into baronies, and the baronies into knightly fiefs. Vassals were obliged to perform military service at the call of the overlord at any time of the year. Direct vassals of the rulers sat on the council (in the Kingdom of Jerusalem - the Assisi of the High Court). Legal relations were regulated by the local judge - Jerusalem Assisi. In port cities, the leading role was played by Italian merchants (Genoese, Venetians, Pisans); they had broad privileges and had their own fortified quarters, governed by elected consuls. The dependent population consisted of peasants of local origin and slaves (mostly prisoners).

In church terms, the crusader lands formed the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which was divided into fourteen bishoprics. The local Catholic Church had great wealth and considerable political weight. There was an extensive system of monasteries in Syria and Palestine.

In the crusader states, special spiritual knightly orders arose, whose task was to fight the “infidels” and provide conditions for the pilgrimage of Christians to the Holy Land (protection of roads and shrines, construction of hospitals and hospice houses). Their members were both monks (they took vows of chastity, poverty and obedience) and knights (they could take up arms to defend the faith). The orders were headed by grand masters and chapters, directly subordinate to the Pope. The first such order in Palestine was the Order of St. John, or Hospitallers (Order of St. John the Merciful; from 1522 the Order of Malta), established in 1113; its members wore red cloaks with a white cross. In 1128, the Order of the Templars (Order of the Temple of Solomon) was formed; they wore white cloaks with a red cross. In 1190/1191 German knights founded the Teutonic Order (Order of St. Virgin Mary); Their distinctive feature was a white cloak with a black cross.

Subsequent Crusades.

After the emir of Mosul, Imad ad-Din Zengi, captured Edessa in December 1144, in 1145 Pope Eugene III (1145–1153) called for a new crusade. The fiery preacher Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux convinced the French king Louis VII (1137–1180) and the German emperor Conrad III (1138–1152) to lead it. In 1147, the German army moved to Asia along the Danube route through Hungary; two months later the French followed; the total strength of the two armies was 140 thousand people. Emperor Manuel I of Byzantium (1143–1180) did not provide them with serious material support and hastened to transport them across the Bosphorus. Without waiting for the French, the Germans headed deep into Asia Minor. At the end of October 1147, they were defeated by the Seljuk Turks at Dorilea, retreated to Constantinople, and then reached Acre by sea; another German detachment was defeated in Pamphylia in February 1148.

The French army, having reached Constantinople, crossed the Bosporus and moved to Syria along the southern road (via Lydia). In the battle of Laodicea south of the river. Meander Louis VII failed, retreated to Pamphylia and from Attalia sailed to the Holy Land.

In March 1148, German and French troops arrived in Palestine. Together with the troops of the Jerusalem king Baldwin III, they undertook two campaigns against Damascus and Ascalon, which ended in complete failure. In September 1148 Conrad III evacuated his army from Palestine; Louis VII soon followed his example.

In the early 1150s, the position of the crusader states in Palestine improved somewhat: in 1153 they managed to capture Ascalon. However, in the mid-1170s they faced a new threat: in 1176, the new Egyptian Sultan Salah ad-Din (Saladin) subjugated Syria, and the crusaders found themselves surrounded by his possessions. In 1187, one of the largest feudal lords of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Renaud of Chatillon, captured a caravan with the sister of Salah ad-Din, which provoked the Sultan’s attack on the crusader states. In June 1187, the Egyptians inflicted a series of defeats on the knights near Lake Gennesaret, and on July 5 they defeated their main forces at Hattin, capturing King Guy de Lusignan, the Grand Master of the Templar Order, Renaud of Chatillon and a large number of knights. On September 19, Salah ad-Din besieged Jerusalem and forced it to surrender on October 2. He then captured Ascalon, Acre, Tiberias and Beirut, part of the county of Tripoli and the principality of Antioch.

At the call of Pope Clement III (1187–1191), the third crusade was organized, which was led by the German Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa (1152–1190), the French King Philip II Augustus (1180–1223) and the English King Richard I the Lionheart (1189–1199). ). The Germans were the first to act (late April 1189). Having concluded an alliance with the Hungarian king Bela III (1173–1196) and the Seljuk Sultan Kilich Arslan II, Frederick I led his army along the Danube route. He easily reached the borders of Byzantium, but, once on its territory, he encountered the hostility of Emperor Isaac II Angelos (1185–1195). Nevertheless, he managed to come to an agreement with the Byzantines, who allowed the German army to winter in Adrianople. In the spring of 1190, Frederick I crossed the Hellespont into Asia Minor and moved to Syria through Lydia, Phrygia and Pisidia. The Germans captured Iconium, crossed the Taurus and entered Isauria; On June 10, 1190, Frederick I drowned while swimming in the Kalikadna (Salef) river near Seleucia. The army was led by his son, Duke Frederick of Swabia; Having passed Cilicia and Syria, he reached Palestine and besieged Acre.

In 1190, Philip II Augustus and Richard I concentrated their troops in Messina (Sicily). But the conflict that broke out between them led to the division of the crusaders' forces. In March 1191, the French left Sicily and soon joined the Germans besieging Acre. They were followed by the British, who on the way captured Cyprus, which belonged to the Byzantine dynast Isaac Comnenus; in June 1191 they landed near Acre. A few weeks later the fortress fell. A new conflict with Richard I forced Philip II Augustus to evacuate his troops from Palestine. In the second half of 1191 - the first half of 1192, Richard I undertook a series of military operations against Salah ad-Din, but did not achieve any success; three of his attempts to take Jerusalem failed. In September 1192, he concluded a peace with the Egyptian Sultan, according to which the Christians regained the coastal strip from Jaffa to Tire, the Muslims pledged to destroy Ascalon, but retained Jerusalem. On October 9, 1192, British troops left Palestine. Richard I ceded Cyprus to the former King of Jerusalem, Guy de Lusignan, who founded the independent Kingdom of Cyprus (1192–1489).

Fourth Crusade.

The failure of the Third Crusade prompted Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) to begin agitating for a crusade against Egypt, the main enemy of the Crusader states, which held Jerusalem. In the summer of 1202, detachments of knights led by Marquis Boniface of Montferrat gathered in Venice. Since the Crusader leaders did not have the funds to pay for transport by sea to Palestine, they agreed to the Venetians' demand to take part in a punitive expedition against the abandoned port of Dara (Zadar) in Dalmatia. In October 1202, the knights sailed from Venice and at the end of November, after a short siege, they captured and plundered Dara. Innocent III excommunicated the crusaders from the church, promising, however, to lift the excommunication if they continued their campaign in Egypt. But at the beginning of 1203, at the request of the Byzantine prince Alexei Angel, the son of Emperor Isaac II, who was overthrown in 1095 by his brother Alexei III (1195–1203), who fled to the West, the knights decided to intervene in the internal political struggle in Byzantium and restore Isaac to the throne. At the end of June 1203 they besieged Constantinople. In mid-July, after the flight of Alexei III, the power of Isaac II was restored, and Tsarevich Alexei became his co-ruler under the name of Alexei IV. However, the emperors were unable to pay the crusaders the huge sum of two hundred thousand ducats promised to them, and in November 1203 a conflict broke out between them. On April 5, 1204, as a result of a popular uprising, Isaac II and Alexei IV were overthrown, and the new emperor Alexei V Murzufl entered into open confrontation with the knights. On April 13, 1204, the crusaders broke into Constantinople and subjected it to a terrible defeat. On the site of the Byzantine Empire, several crusader states were founded: the Latin Empire (1204–1261), the Kingdom of Thessalonica (1204–1224), the Duchy of Athens (1205–1454), the Principality of Morea (Achaean) (1205–1432); a number of islands fell to the Venetians. As a result, the Fourth Crusade, the purpose of which was to strike a blow at the Muslim world, led to the final split between Western and Byzantine Christianity.

At the beginning of the 13th century. In Europe, the belief spread that only sinless children are capable of liberating the Holy Land. The fiery speeches of preachers mourning the capture of the Holy Sepulcher by the “infidels” found a wide response among children and teenagers, mainly from peasant families in Northern France and Rhineland Germany. For the most part, church authorities did not interfere with this movement. In 1212, two streams of young crusaders headed to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Detachments of French teenagers, led by the shepherd Etienne, reached Marseille and boarded ships. Some of them died during a shipwreck; the rest, upon arrival in Egypt, were sold into slavery by shipowners. The same fate befell German children who sailed east from Genoa. Another group of young crusaders from Germany reached Rome and Brindisi; the pope and the local bishop released them from their vow and sent them home. Few of the Children's Crusade participants returned home. This tragic event may have formed the basis of the legend about the rat-catcher-flutist who took all the children away from the city of Gammeln.

In 1215, Innocent III called on the West for a new crusade; his successor, Honorius III (1216–1227), repeated this call in 1216. In 1217, the Hungarian king Endre II landed with an army in Palestine. In 1218, more than two hundred ships with crusaders from Friesland and Rhine Germany arrived there. In the same year, a huge army under the command of the King of Jerusalem, Jean de Brien, and the Grand Masters of the three spiritual knightly orders invaded Egypt and besieged the strategically important fortress of Damietta at the mouth of the Nile. In November 1219 the fortress fell. At the request of the papal legate Cardinal Pelagius, the crusaders rejected the offer of the Egyptian Sultan al-Kamil to exchange Damietta for Jerusalem and launched an attack on Cairo, but found themselves sandwiched between Egyptian troops and the flooded Nile. For the possibility of an unhindered retreat, they had to return Damietta and leave Egypt.

Under pressure from Popes Honorius III and Gregory IX (1227–1241), the German Emperor Frederick II (1220–1250), the husband of the heir to the throne of Jerusalem, Iolanta, undertook a campaign in Palestine in the summer of 1228. Taking advantage of al-Kamil's conflict with the ruler of Damascus, he entered into an alliance with the Egyptian Sultan; under the terms of the ten-year peace concluded between them, al-Kamil freed all Christian captives and returned Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth and the coast from Beirut to Jaffa to the Kingdom of Jerusalem; The Holy Land was open to pilgrimage for both Christians and Muslims. On March 17, 1229, Frederick II solemnly entered Jerusalem, where he assumed the royal crown, and then sailed to Italy.

After the ten-year peace expired, the Crusaders launched several offensive operations against the Muslims. In 1239, Thibault I, king of Navarre (1234–1253), landed in Palestine, but his actions had no success. More successful was the campaign of 1240–1241 English knights under the command of Earl Richard of Cornwall, brother of King Henry III (1216–1272); Richard obtained from the Egyptian Sultan Ayub the release of all Christian captives and left for his homeland. But in 1244 Ayyub, gathering an army of Turkish mercenaries, invaded Palestine, captured Jerusalem and defeated the crusaders in the Battle of Gaza. In 1247, Muslims captured Ascalon. In response to the call of Pope Innocent IV (1243–1254), the French king Louis IX (1226–1270) sailed from Marseilles with a large fleet in February 1249 and landed in Egypt. The French occupied Damietta, abandoned by the Muslims, and moved towards Cairo, but were surrounded and forced to capitulate. The entire rank and file of the army was exterminated. With great difficulty, Louis IX managed to conclude a truce and gain freedom for a huge ransom of two hundred thousand livres; Damietta was returned to the Egyptians. The king went to Acre and for four years waged military operations in Syria with varying success. In 1254 he returned to France.

In the second half of the 1250s, the position of Christians in Syria and Palestine became somewhat stronger, as Muslim states had to fight the Tatar-Mongol invasion. But in 1260, the Egyptian Sultan Baibars subjugated Syria and began to gradually capture the Crusader fortresses: in 1265 he took Caesarea, in 1268 Jaffa, and in the same year he captured Antioch, putting an end to the existence of the Principality of Antioch. The final attempt to assist the crusader states was the Eighth Crusade, led by Louis IX, the Sicilian king Charles of Anjou (1264–1285) and the Aragonese king Jaime I (1213–1276). The plan was to attack Tunisia first and then Egypt. In 1270, the crusaders landed in Tunisia, but due to a plague epidemic that broke out among them (Louis IX was among the dead), they interrupted the campaign, making peace with the Tunisian sultan, who undertook to pay tribute to the king of Sicily and give the Catholic clergy the right to free worship in their possessions.

This failure made inevitable the fall of the last crusader strongholds in Syria and Palestine. In 1289, Muslims captured Tripoli, eliminating the county of the same name, and in 1291 they took Beirut, Sidon and Tyre. The loss of Acre in the same year, which was desperately defended by the Templars and Johannites, marked the end of crusader rule in the East.

Consequences of the Crusades.

The Crusades brought countless disasters to the peoples of the Middle East and were accompanied by the destruction of material and cultural values. They (especially the Fourth Crusade) undermined the strength of the Byzantine Empire, thereby hastening its final fall in 1453. The Crusades ended in failure, and therefore did not solve any of the long-term problems facing medieval Europe. Nevertheless, they had a significant influence on its further development. They made it possible for a certain period to ease demographic, social and political tensions in Western Europe. This contributed to the strengthening of royal power and the creation of national centralized states in France and England.

The Crusades led to a temporary strengthening of the Catholic Church: it significantly strengthened its financial position, expanded its sphere of influence, and created new military-religious institutions - orders that played an important role in subsequent European history (Johannites in the defense of the Mediterranean from the Turks, the Teutons in German aggression in Baltic). The papacy confirmed its status as the leader of Western Christendom. At the same time, they made the gap between Catholicism and Orthodoxy insurmountable, deepened the confrontation between Christianity and Islam, and exacerbated the intolerance of Europeans towards any form of religious dissent.

It was previously believed that the Crusades significantly enriched the European food flora, gave impetus to the development of production technologies and led to the expansion of cultural potential through borrowings from the East. Recent research, however, does not support such claims. At the same time, the Crusades did not pass without leaving a mark on the Western economy and culture. The robbery of overseas countries became a catalyst for property stratification and the progress of commodity-money relations. The economic power of the Italian trading republics increased, making huge profits through freight and significantly strengthening their commercial positions in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea, seriously displacing the Arabs and Byzantines. The Crusades contributed to the social mobility of Europeans, overcoming their fear of the unknown; psychologically, they prepared the Great Geographical Discoveries. And finally, the crusader movement and the crusader spirit were reflected in medieval literature (chivalrous romance, troubadour poetry, historical writing). Among the most significant works are the historiographical and biographical works of William of Tire, Geoffroy de Villehardouin, Robert de Clary and Jean de Joinville, poems Song of Antioch And Story holy war.

According to J. Le Goff, the Crusades turned out to be “the pinnacle of expansionism of the medieval Christian world,” “the first experience of European colonialism.”

Ivan Krivushin

Literature:

Zaborov M. A. Crusaders in the East. M., 1960
Robert de Clary . Conquest of Constantinople. M., 1986
Zaborov M. A. History of the Crusades in documents and materials. M., 1986
Dobiash-Rozhdestvenskaya O. A. Cross and sword. M., 1991
Geoffroy de Villehardouin . Conquest of Constantinople. M., 1993
Anna Komnenos . Alexiad. St. Petersburg, 1996