How many crusade orders can you complete

Capitalising their revenues from trade was one area of expertise of the Teutonic Order as they developed such a secure international system of financial administration, that they effectively became the bankers of Europe. They produced the first use of a cheque that allowed monies to be deposited in the West with a credit note that could be cashed in the Holy Land.

Brutal measures carried out by the Teutonic Knights on the battlefield such as killing wounded soldiers and slaughtering a fleeing enemy were not necessarily due to unbridled sadism but more about ensuring a favourable outcome during battle.

However, the Teutonic Knights recognised currency in slavery and the capturing of enemy soldiers became an important source of booty. With Papal authority declining in Central and northern Europe and the expansion of Protestantism due to the Reformation, the continuation of Crusades defending Christian pilgrims and the existence of the Orders themselves became less relevant.

Despite a changing world of political alliances between once-warring countries, the Crusades continued to be fought against the Muslims of North Africa, such as in when an international crusade was launched against Mahdia in Tunisia, a notorious centre of piracy. The Hospitallers established new headquarters, first on Cyprus and then Rhodes and later Malta, while the Teutonic Order carved out its own independent state in the Baltic. Yet despite all this re-evaluation of the Orders, no crusade ever reclaimed the Holy City again.

To date, the Teutonic Order still has its headquarters in Vienna although since it has been an Order of priests. Likewise the Hospitaller traditions of charity and helping the sick are maintained through the St John Ambulance service.

The five Orders of St John now dedicate themselves to carrying out the original Hospitaller functions of the order. Represented by WGM Atlantic agency. Knightfall View Show. The Military Orders of the Crusades. Knights Templar Medieval History. The Crusades: New Wave Armies. The New Orders. Knights Hospitaller. Knights of Christ.

Hospitaller Discipline. Teutonic Knights. Military Pecking Orders. The Decline of the Crusades. Richard Bevan. Read more about: Knights Templar Hamilton White. Most Recent. Lesser known facts about The Battle of the Somme. A history of the poppy: Why we wear them as a symbol of remembrance and other facts. Urban saw the campaign as a chance for knights to direct their energies towards what was seen as a spiritually meritorious act, namely the recovery of the holy city of Jerusalem from Islam the Muslims had taken Jerusalem in In return for this they would, in effect, be forgiven those sins they had confessed.

This, in turn, would save them from the prospect of eternal damnation in the fires of Hell, a fate repeatedly emphasised by the Church as the consequence of a sinful life. To find out more see Marcus Bull , who reveals the religious context of the campaign in his article. Within an age of such intense religiosity the city of Jerusalem, as the place where Christ lived, walked and died, held a central role. When the aim of liberating Jerusalem was coupled to lurid probably exaggerated stories of the maltreatment of both the Levant's native Christians and western pilgrims, the desire for vengeance, along with the opportunity for spiritual advancement, formed a hugely potent combination.

Urban would be looking after his flock and improving the spiritual condition of western Europe, too. The fact that the papacy was engaged in a mighty struggle with the German emperor, Henry IV the Investiture Controversy , and that calling the crusade would enhance the pope's standing was an opportunity too good for Urban to miss. A spark to this dry tinder came from another Christian force: the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines were Greek Orthodox Christians but, since , had been in a state of schism with the Catholic Church.

The launch of the crusade presented Urban with a chance to move closer to the Orthodox and to heal the rift. The reaction to Urban's appeal was astounding and news of the expedition rippled across much of the Latin West.

Thousands saw this as a new way to attain salvation and to avoid the consequences of their sinful lives. Yet aspirations of honour, adventure, financial gain and, for a very small number, land in the event, most of the First Crusaders returned home after the expedition ended may well have figured, too. While churchmen frowned upon worldly motives because they believed that such sinful aims would incur God's displeasure, many laymen had little difficulty in accommodating these alongside their religiosity.

Thus Stephen of Blois, one of the senior men on the campaign, could write home to his wife, Adela of Blois daughter of William the Conqueror , that he had been given valuable gifts and honours by the emperor and that he now had twice as much gold, silver and other riches as when he left the West.

People of all social ranks except kings joined the First Crusade, although an initial rush of ill-disciplined zealots sparked an horrific outbreak of antisemitism, especially in the Rhineland, as they sought to finance their expedition by taking Jewish money and to attack a group perceived as the enemies of Christ in their own lands.

These contingents, known as the 'Peoples' Crusade', caused real problems outside Constantinople, before Alexios ushered them over the Bosporus and into Asia Minor, where the Seljuk Turks destroyed them.

Led by a series of senior nobles, the main armies gathered in Constantinople during Alexios had not expected such a huge number of westerners to appear on his doorstep but saw the chance to recover land lost to the Turks. Given the crusaders' need for food and transport, the emperor held the upper hand in this relationship, although this is not to say that he was anything other than cautious in dealing with the new arrivals, particularly in the aftermath of the trouble caused by the Peoples' Crusade and the fact that the main armies included a large Norman Sicilian contingent, a group who had invaded Byzantine lands as recently as See Peter Frankopan.

Most of the crusade leaders swore oaths to Alexios, promising to hand over to him lands formerly held by the Byzantines in return for supplies, guides and luxury gifts. In June the crusaders and the Greeks took one of the emperor's key objectives, the formidable walled city of Nicaea, miles from Constantinople, although in the aftermath of the victory some writers reported Frankish discontent at the division of booty.

The crusaders moved inland, heading across the Anatolian plain. A large Turkish army attacked the troops of Bohemond of Taranto near Dorylaeum. The crusaders were marching in separate contingents and this, plus the unfamiliar tactics of swift attacks by mounted horse archers, almost saw them defeated until the arrival of forces under Raymond of Toulouse and Godfrey of Bouillon saved the day.

This hard-won victory proved an invaluable lesson for the Christians and, as the expedition went on, the military cohesion of the crusader army grew and grew, making them an ever more effective force. Over the next few months the army, under Count Baldwin of Boulogne, crossed Asia Minor with some contingents taking the Cilician towns of Tarsus and Mamistra and others, heading via Cappadocia towards the eastern Christian lands of Edessa biblical Rohais , where the largely Armenian population welcomed the crusaders.

Local political conflict meant Baldwin was able to take power himself and thus, in , the first so-called Crusader State, the County of Edessa, came into being. By this time the bulk of the army had reached Antioch, today just inside the southern Turkish border with Syria. This huge city had been a Roman settlement; to Christians it was significant as the place where saints Peter and Paul had lived and it was one of the five patriarchal seats of the Christian Church.

It was also important to the Byzantines, having been a major city in their empire as recently as The site was too big to surround properly but the crusaders did their best to squeeze the place into submission. Over the winter of conditions became extremely harsh, although the arrival of a Genoese fleet in the spring of provided some useful support. The stalemate was only ended when Bohemond persuaded a local Christian to betray one of the towers and on June 3rd, the crusaders broke into the city and captured it.

Their victory was not complete, however, because the citadel, towering over the site, remained in Muslim hands, a problem compounded by the news that a large Muslim relief army was approaching from Mosul. Lack of food and the loss of most of their horses essential for the knights, of course meant that morale was at rock bottom.

Count Stephen of Blois, one of the most senior figures on the crusade, along with a few other men, had recently deserted, believing the expedition doomed. They met Emperor Alexios, who was bringing long-awaited reinforcements, and told him that the crusade was a hopeless cause. Thus, in good faith, the Greek ruler turned back. In Antioch, meanwhile, the crusaders had been inspired by the 'discovery' of a relic of the Holy Lance, the spear that had pierced Christ's side as he was on the cross.

A vision told a cleric in Raymond of St Gilles' army where to dig and, sure enough, there the object was found. A couple of weeks later, on June 28th, , the crusaders gathered their last few hundred horses together, drew themselves into their now familiar battle lines and charged the Muslim forces.

With writers reporting the aid of warrior saints in the sky, the crusaders triumphed and the citadel duly surrendered leaving them in full control of Antioch before the Muslim relief army arrived. The senior crusaders were bitterly divided. Bohemond wanted to stay and consolidate his hold on Antioch, arguing that since Alexios had not fulfilled his side of the bargain then his oath to the Greeks was void and the conquest remained his.

The bulk of the crusaders scorned this political squabbling because they wanted to reach Christ's tomb in Jerusalem and they compelled the army to head southwards. En route, they avoided major set-piece confrontations by making deals with individual towns and cities and they reached Jerusalem in June John France relates the capture of the city in his article from Forces concentrated to the north and the south of the walled city and on July 15th, the troops of Godfrey of Bouillon managed to bring their siege towers close enough to the walls to get across.

Their fellow Christians burst into the city and over the next few days the place was put to the sword in an outburst of religious cleansing and a release of tension after years on the march. A terrible massacre saw many of the Muslim and Jewish defenders of the city slaughtered, although the oft-repeated phrase of 'wading up to their knees in blood' is an exaggeration, being a line from the apocalyptic Book of Revelation used to convey an impression of the scene rather than a real description — a physical impossibility.

The crusaders gave emotional thanks for their success as they reached their goal, the tomb of Christ in the Holy Sepulchre. Their victory was not yet assured. The vizier of Egypt had viewed the crusaders' advance with a mixture of emotions.

As the guardian of the Shi'ite caliphate in Cairo he had a profound dislike of the Sunni Muslims of Syria, but equally he did not want a new power to establish itself in the region. His forces confronted the crusaders near Ascalon in August and, in spite of their numerical inferiority, the Christians triumphed and also secured a substantial amount of booty.

By this time, having achieved their aims, the vast majority of the exhausted crusaders were only too keen to return to their homes and families. Some, of course, chose to remain in the Levant, resolved to guard Christ's patrimony and to set up lordships and holdings for themselves. Fulcher of Chartres, a contemporary in the Levant, lamented that only knights stayed in the kingdom of Jerusalem; a tiny number to establish a permanent hold on the land. Over the next decade, however, aided by the lack of real opposition from the local Muslims and boosted by the arrival of a series of fleets from the West, the Christians began to take control of the whole coastline and to create a series of viable states.

The support of the Italian trading cities of Venice, Pisa and, particularly at this early stage, Genoa, was crucial. The motives of the Italians have often been questioned but there is convincing evidence to show they were just as keen as any other contemporaries to capture Jerusalem, yet as trading centres they were determined to advance the cause of their home city, too.

The writings of Caffaro of Genoa, a rare secular source from this period, show little difficulty in assimilating these motives. He went on pilgrimage to the River Jordan, attended Easter ceremonies in the Holy Sepulchre and celebrated the acquisition of riches. Italian sailors and troops helped capture the vital coastal ports such as Acre, Caesarea and Jaffa , in return for which they were awarded generous trading privileges which, in turn, gave a vital boost to the economy as the Italians transported goods from the Muslim interior especially spices back to the West.

Just as important was their role in bringing pilgrims to and from the Holy Land. Now that the holy places were in Christian hands, many thousands of westerners could visit the sites and, as they came under Latin control, religious communities flourished.

Thus, the basic rationale behind the Crusades was fulfilled. There is a strong case for saying that the crusader states could not have been sustained were it not for the contribution of the Italians.

One interesting side-effect of the First Crusade and a matter of immense interest to scholars today is the unprecedented burst of historical writing that emerged after the capture of Jerusalem. This amazing episode inspired authors across the Christian West to write about these events in a way that nothing in earlier medieval history had done.

No longer had they to look back to the heroes of antiquity, because their own generation had provided men of comparable renown. This was an age of rising literacy and the creation and circulation of crusade texts was a big part of this movement.

Numerous histories, plus oral storytelling, often in the form of Chansons de geste , popular within the early flowerings of the chivalric age, celebrated the First Crusade. Historians have previously looked at these narratives to construct the framework of events but now many scholars are looking behind these texts to consider more deeply the reasons why they were written, the different styles of writing, the use of classical and biblical motifs, the inter-relationships and the borrowings between the texts.

In response, the Crusaders declared war on Constantinople, and the Fourth Crusade ended with the devastating Fall of Constantinople , marked by a bloody conquest, looting and near-destruction of the magnificent Byzantine capital later that year. Throughout the remainder of the 13th century, a variety of Crusades aimed not so much to topple Muslim forces in the Holy Land but to combat any and all of those seen as enemies of the Christian faith.

The Albigensian Crusade aimed to root out the heretical Cathari or Albigensian sect of Christianity in France, while the Baltic Crusades sought to subdue pagans in Transylvania. The movement never reached the Holy Land. In , in what became known as the Sixth Crusade, Emperor Frederick II achieved the peaceful transfer of Jerusalem to Crusader control through negotiation with al-Kamil.

The peace treaty expired a decade later, and Muslims easily regained control of Jerusalem. This battle, known as the Seventh Crusade, was a failure for Louis. As the Crusaders struggled, a new dynasty, known as the Mamluks, descended from former slaves of the Islamic Empire, took power in Egypt. In , Mamluk forces in Palestine managed to halt the advance of the Mongols, an invading force led by Genghis Khan and his descendants, which had emerged as a potential ally for the Christians in the region.

Under the ruthless Sultan Baybars, the Mamluks demolished Antioch in In response, Louis organized the Eighth Crusade in The initial goal was to aid the remaining Crusader states in Syria, but the mission was redirected to Tunis, where Louis died.

Edward I of England took on another expedition in This battle, which is often grouped with the Eighth Crusade but is sometimes referred to as the Ninth Crusade, accomplished very little and was considered the last significant crusade to the Holy Land. In , one of the only remaining Crusader cities, Acre, fell to the Muslim Mamluks. Many historians believe this defeat marked the end of the Crusader States and the Crusades themselves.

Though the Church organized minor Crusades with limited goals after —mainly military campaigns aimed at pushing Muslims from conquered territory, or conquering pagan regions—support for such efforts diminished in the 16th century, with the rise of the Reformation and the corresponding decline of papal authority. While the Crusades ultimately resulted in defeat for Europeans and a Muslim victory , many argue that they successfully extended the reach of Christianity and Western civilization.

The Roman Catholic Church experienced an increase in wealth, and the power of the Pope was elevated after the Crusades ended. Trade and transportation also improved throughout Europe as a result of the Crusades.

The wars created a constant demand for supplies and transportation, which resulted in ship-building and the manufacturing of various supplies. After the Crusades, there was a heightened interest in travel and learning throughout Europe, which some historians believe may have paved the way for the Renaissance.

Among followers of Islam , however, the Crusaders were regarded as immoral, bloody and savage. The ruthless and widespread massacre of Muslims, Jews and other non-Christians resulted in bitter resentment that persisted for many years. Timeline for the Crusades and Christian Holy War to c. The Crusades: LordsAndLadies.

Crusades: New Advent.