Page 107 - Encyclopedia Of World History

crusades, the 457

It’s hard to be religious when certain people are never
incinerated by bolts of lightning. • Calvin & Hobbes

army and fleet of the Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) and culturally transformed, at least to the point that their
found itself attacking, capturing, and pillaging the city on indigenous peoples were converted to Latin Christianity.
12–13 April 1204.This act, and the establishment of the First Wends, Livs, Letts, and Estonians, and later Prus-
Latin empire of Constantinople, which held the city until sians and Finns, underwent conquest, dispossession, col-
August 1261, completed the rupture between the onization, and conversion.
churches and peoples of Byzantium and the West. Not all of the Baltic Crusades ended in success. Due to
One of the many significant results of the Fourth Cru- intensified animosities between Rome and Constantino-
sade was the conquest of most of Greece and the Greek ple, by the early thirteenth century the Roman church
islands by western crusader forces and the establishment considered all Christians who followed the Byzantine
of the Venetians (and later the Genoese) in the Black Sea, rite, including Russians and Ukrainians, to be schismat-
which became the West’s point of entry into the markets ics who rejected the God-ordained authority of the
of central Asia and beyond. Portions of mainland Frank- Roman pope. Consequently, in 1240–1242 Swedish,
ish Greece, as occupied Greece is often called, remained Danish, German, and Estonian crusaders participated in
in western hands until the mid-fifteenth century, and a series of papally authorized expeditions against Chris-
some Greek islands were western possessions until the tian Russia. Led by Prince Alexander Nevsky of Nov-
end of the seventeenth century. gorod, the Russians threw back the invaders in 1242.
Meanwhile, Islam and the Christian West continued to
struggle in the Holy Land and Egypt. Muslim conquest Jerusalem Reconquered
of Edessa in 1144 occasioned the Second Crusade On 2 October 1187 the armies of Saladin retook
(1147–1149), which failed to achieve any success in the Jerusalem and came close to driving the Franks totally
East but which also became the opportunity for the cru- into the sea, thereby occasioning the Third Crusade
sader West to expand the scope of enemies against (1188–1192), the Crusade of the Kings, so-called be-
whom it waged holy war. cause of the involvement of King Richard I Coeur de
Lion (Lion-Hearted) of England, King Philip II of France,
Crusades in the Baltic and Emperor Frederick I of Germany and Italy.The Cru-
Soldiers of the Second Crusade fought on three fronts: sade was unable to recapture Jerusalem, but it did recon-
Iberia, where they participated in the capture of Lisbon quer significant portions of the Syrian-Palestinian coast,
in 1147; the Middle East, where they failed miserably; thereby giving the truncated crusader states another cen-
and the Baltic, where Christian Europe began a series of tury of life.The capital of the kingdom of Jerusalem now
crusades of conquest, colonization, and conversion that shifted to the port city of Acre.
lasted from 1147 to 1525. During these almost four hun-
dred years, German and Scandinavian crusaders waged The North African
war against various pagan and Christian peoples along Campaigns
Europe’s northeastern frontier. Unlike the Crusades in the By the end of the Third Crusade, western strategists
Middle East, the Baltic Crusades contained an overt mis- understood that Jerusalem could not be rewon without
sionary purpose. Also, unlike the Crusades in the Levant first conquering Egypt, the heart of the empire be-
and the Reconquista, the Baltic Crusades were not fought queathed by Saladin to his heirs. The Fourth Crusade
to recover land previously held by Christians.These were (1202–1204) was headed for an assault on Egypt before
wars of conquest and expansion, although they were it was diverted to Constantinople. The Fifth Crusade
often justified as defensive reactions to cross-border incur- (1217–1221) reached Egypt, where it enjoyed early suc-
sions. Unlike the crusader states of the Latin East, lands cess, but then ended in disaster. The same was true of
conquered along the Baltic were systematically settled the Seventh Crusade (1248–1254), whereas the Eighth