The Second Crusade (1147–49) was a fiasco. The fall of Edessa to the Mosul-based
Turkish warlord ‘Imad ad-Din Zengi raised fears for the remaining three Christian states.
France’s Louis VII determined to seize the advantage from the papacy and to lead the
new campaign himself. This crusade would be, he hoped, a wholly French affair. The
revered abbot of Clairvaux, Bernard, was conscripted to preach and raise recruits—which
he did with great success. The soldiers gathered at Paris and set off for the East, by land
once again, trailing a German contingent that had taken the cross despite French hopes to
exclude them. Most of the German forces were cut down in Asia Minor. Popular tales of
Louis’s errant wife Eleanor of Aquitaine’s scandalous behavior while traveling with the
army have been exaggerated, but she does appear to have complicated tactical and
diplomatic matters along the way with her willful behavior. The French army, arriving
safely in Jerusalem, made the disastrous decision to march against Damascus, whose
Arab ruler was actually allied with the Christians against Zengi’s successor Nur ad-Din.
Caught between the crusaders and Nur ad-Din’s forces, the Damascenes sided with the
Turks and forced the withdrawal of the French troops. Defeated on the battlefield, the
crusaders returned home humiliated and confronted with angry demands for an
explanation of their heavy losses.
The Third Crusade (1189–92) hoped to restore Europe’s tarnished reputation by
removing the new Mus-lim leader ‘Al-Nasir Salah ad-Din (Saladin), who had come up
from Egypt to unite the territories from the Nile to Aleppo under his control. At the Battle
of Hattim (July 1187), Saladin had routed the army of the kingdom of Jerusalem and
become master of all the Holy Land. This setback triggered the Third Crusade. Led
jointly, if somewhat chaotically, by France’s Philip II Augustus, England’s Richard I the
Lionhearted, and imperial Germany’s Frederick I Barbarossa (who died en route), the
crusaders fought surprisingly well against high odds and managed to secure Christians’
right of free entry to Jerusalem, although the city remained under Saladin’s control.
The Fourth Crusade (1202–04) was doomed from the start. Prompted by Innocent III’s
desire to reassert papal control of crusading after the two preceding monarchical efforts,
the Crusade was preached throughout Europe by envoys from Rome. The crusaders
gathered at Venice, whose government had contracted in advance to transport and supply
the expected number of recruits. Too few crusaders enlisted to meet the Venetian bill,
however, which necessitated a change of plans. Venice offered to forgive the crusaders’
debt if they agreed to restore Zara, a Dalmatian colony formerly subject to Venice, to
their control. With no alternative, the crusaders took Zara by force, even though it was a
Christian city. Innocent responded by excommunicating the entire army. Hoping to
restore themselves to the church’s good graces, and spurred on by the promise of aid
from the exiled claimant to the Byzantine throne in return for their help in ousting his
rival, the crusaders then sailed to Constantinople, which they sacked in April 1204 and
pillaged ruthlessly. Constantinople remained under Latin control until 1261. Content with
their success in returning the Orthodox East to western rule, the crusaders never
continued on to the Holy Land.
France’s sainted Louis IX led two crusades against Islam (1248–54 and 1270) and had
earlier sent a third crusade force against the Cathar heretics in southern France. Both of
his overseas campaigns began in high hopes and ended miserably. After a well-executed
assault on Damietta in mid-1249, delay and confusion set in, and Louis’s army wasted
five months sitting passively in the Nile delta. Strategic miscalculation in 1250 resulted in
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