History
Book Club
The
Crusades, 1095-1272
Wednesday,
July 31, 2019
The
Crusaders Capture Jerusalem, July 15, 1099
Wednesday,
July 31, 2019: The Crusades—what caused them? The Seljuk
Turks; Pisa, Genoa, Venice and Amalfi; Byzantium and Jerusalem; The Children’s
Crusade; Attacking the Jews in Germany; The Popes and Kings; Saladin and
Richard I of the Lion Heart; how the Christians massacred Moslems and Jews and
made Moslems intolerant.
Thomas Asbridge, The Crusades: The War
for the Holy Land, London: Simon & Schuster, UK, 2012, 808 pp.
Since September 11, 2001 we have had a mental
picture of Islam and the Middle East as the center of an unyielding,
backward-looking part of the world, with certain elements dedicated to
destroying the West and overrunning Christianity. In that time American launched a war against
the Taliban aggressors in Afghanistan in 2001.
We are still engaged in that wartorn, bedraggled country. In 2003,
perhaps with justification that begs questioning, we launched war against
Saddam Hussein, leader of Iraq. We are still
engaged there, as well.
Thomas Asbridge
is a professor of Medieval History at
Queen Mary, University of London, and the author of several books on medieval
history. He studied for a BA in Ancient and Medieval History at Cardiff
University, and then gained his PhD in Medieval History at Royal Holloway,
University of London.
Asbridge’s picture of the Crusades
begins with Pope Urban II facing division in the Roman Catholic Church. In the
Pope’s mind, rejuvenation was needed. His solution in 1095 was to issue a call
to arms for Christian knights and their followers to march 2000 miles, from
western Europe to Jerusalem, and return that holy city to Christian hands. Knights
all over took up the challenge and gathered their soldiers and started the
grueling march across to Constantinople, then across the Bosporus into Asia.
Pope Urban really wanted to stir
things up that didn’t need stirring. The Muslims had had control of Jerusalem
for 400 years. However, knights and even
regular people listened when the Pope spoke, and off they went. Europe in the
latter part of the 11th century was a very spiritual place. Christianity was much more prevalent than
today, and spirituality governed nearly everything in peoples’ lives.
Christians were obsessed with sinfulness, contamination and the impending
afterlife, and if the Pope suggested that each man in an army could gain
salvation by marching 2000 miles, and in the bargain likely get killed, they
were all for it.
Once Urban II began the cry for
Christians to march to save Jerusalem for Christianity, preachers and other
holy men, large and small, crooked and honorable, picked up the message. One of
the first groups, made up of some 15,000 “poor rabble,” mostly Germans, was particularly
half-cocked . These, later called “The People’s Crusade” didn’t coordinate with
anyone. As they marched , still in the Rhineland, they carried out a terrible
massacre of Rhineland Jews. But, heading into Asia Minor, as soon as they
entered territory defended by the Turks, they were mostly annihilated.
The main force of 60,000 to 100,000,
and 7000 to 10,000 knights along with women and children, left their homes in
France and Germany and Italy and marched to Constantinople, led by Count
Raymond of Toulouse, Behemond of Taranto, Godfrey of Bouillon, Baldwin of
Boulogne and Tancred of Hauteville. In Constantinople, the seat of the Eastern
Holy Roman Empire, they hoped to pick up support from the Greek Orthodox
Christians under Emperor Alexis I Comnenus.
Alexis showered the Latin princes
with gifts when they came to his court, but he extracted from each a pledge
that whatever cities, forts or countries they might subdue would be handed over
to an officer appointed by the Emperor.
He then whisked them across the Bosporus and on to Asia Minor.
The Latin crusaders continued their
march across what today is southeastern Turkey. At Nicaea they laid siege to
the city. The same Turkish Seljuk force that had wiped out the People’s Crusade
were out tricked by the Latins, who had gotten help from a Turkish spy. Also,
Emperor Alexius kept his distance, but sent a fleet of Greek ships which were
portaged 20 miles to a lake before the city. Using these ships to penetrate the
city defenses, the Latins were able to overcome the defending Turks and win the
city.
On they went, heading south toward
the Levant, into Syria, until they arrived outside of Antioch. The walled city
stood between them and the Holy Land. The Latins expected Alexius’ Byzantines
would assist them in taking the city, but this didn’t happen. They laid siege
to the city, employing all the medieval weapons: wooden towers and ladders that
could be pushed up to allow attackers to scale the walls, huge catapults (mangonels)
to launch boulders into the city, fiery bundles of pitch and reeds, and
battering rams. Of course, the defenders rained down thousand of arrows, and
through burning pitch, red-hot stones, etc. on the attackers.
Both sides used terror to discourage
their opponents—beheading captives and flinging their heads back among their
forces, desecrating graves, and all manner of atrocities. Although this was a
“Holy Pilgrimage” both sides never avoided the cruelest terror techniques.
The Latins had now occupied the
Syrian ports of Latakia and St. Simeon and were able to receive ships bringing
supplies and food to the troops. One group of English ships brought important
building materials, crucial to creating the tools to defeat the defenses of the
city.
The Latin Christians exploited the
split between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and used treachery and sheer willpower,
but the stroke from God that many believe led to victory was the discovery of a
fragment of the lance that Roman soldiers used to pierce Christ’s side while he
was nailed to the Cross. Whether authentic or not, this was a tremendous boost
to the morale of the Latins. Soon they
were able to finally arrange a surrender and capture Antioch.
From there, the Latin Crusaders
marched toward their objective of Jerusalem, and laid siege to the Holy City. By
now, there were about 15,000 battle-hardened warriors, including some 1300
knights. In racing from Antioch to Jerusalem the Latins had failed to build a
strong line of supply and they were now racing to take the city before an Egyptian
army could arrive.
Luck again came from the sea, as a
small fleet of Genoese ships anchored at nearby Jaffa. These ships brought
ropes, hammers, mattocks, nails, hatchets. The Latins had also arranged for
Local Christians to cut down timber from nearby forests and use camels to ferry
it to the troops outside Jerusalem.
The
final assault on Jerusalem began at dawn on July 14, 1099. One siege tower had
been constructed so that it could be quickly relocated, so that the defenders
awoke on that morning to find that the tower had moved half a mile, from a
well-defended place to a poorly defended place. Soon after midday on July 15
the Latins had conquered Jerusalem and there was widespread killing and
indiscriminate slaughter. One crusader described it: “Piles of heads, hands and
feet lay in the houses and streets, and men and knights were running to and fro
over corpses.”
Now
that Jerusalem, Edessa and Antioch and other parts of the Levant were in Latin
hands, they became “Outremer”, or overseas, the first instance of Europe extend
its reach. During this period, from 1099 to the beginning of the Second Crusade
in 1147 the Knighthood orders of Templars and Hospitallers were created and
were central to events in all the remaining crusades.
In
the early twelfth century several marches like crusades took place, with
knights and marching to attack Muslims, sometimes Jews, here and there; papal
power was challenged, and many were killed in various encounters. However history established that the Pope Eugenius
III launched the second crusade in 1147. The miraculous success of the first
crusade drove this one, but internal conflict doomed it to failure.
In
1188 Muslim troops succeeded in capturing Jerusalem, which had been in
Christian hands since 1099.
The
crusades kept happening—too numerous were all the forays recorded. However,
history counts nine Crusades, the last ending in 1272. Nineteen years later, in
1291 English-led crusaders were defeated at Acre, which represented the end for
Latin power in the Levant. The Muslims regained control of Palestine.
S.W. Coulbourn
HISTORY BOOK CLUB TOPICS FOR 2019
Wednesday,
August 28, 2019: Intelligence Gathering and Spying in History: Julius Caesar’s Spy Network; Sun-Tzu, Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg, Espionage Act of 1917, the KGB, MI-5, the OSS, CIA, Pinkerton’s
Union Spies, Confederate Spies. . [Proposed by Sam Coulbourn]
Wednesday,
September 25, 2019: El Norte, the story of Spain’s exploration and colonization
of North America. Often
Americans study the growth of America from the standpoint of English
colonization and the push westward. There’s another, very complex story, of the
exploration of the Caribbean, Mexico, Florida and onward to California by the
Spanish. It’s the story of Conquistadors, Priests and Indigenous peoples who
created the Republic of Mexico, the nations of the Caribbean and Central
America, and made the first cities in Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and
California and more. [Proposed by Sam Coulbourn]
Wednesday, October 30, 2019: Charismatic leaders in History. What were the keys to Hitler’s, Churchill's, Mussolini's, FDR's successes? Keen perception of public moods? Oratory abilities? Character, firm ideology? Connecting to the people? How did they deploy their charisma? How could Napoleon manipulate the masses without TV ads? Why were people so perceptive to a madman in Germany? Recurring questions. [Proposed by Janos Posfai]
Wednesday,
November 13, 2019 [Two weeks earlier because of Thanksgiving and
another conflict] History of Farming in America. Examine the American Indians and their farming techniques, the
early colonists and the skills they brought from their home countries;
the food discoveries in the New World; Tobacco and Cotton and slavery; Farming
and the Dust Bowl; Government and Agriculture; Modern Agribusiness. [Proposed
by Sam Coulbourn]
NO
MEETING IN DECEMBER
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