There were eight crusades between 1096 and 1270. Except for the
rowdy mobs of ravaging peasants who were later massacred by the Turks,
the First Crusade began in high spirits, with a righteous purpose and ban-
ners flying. The response to the call came mostly from the knighthood of
France, which left an enduring French stamp on the movement. The cru-
sading army fought its way through Asia Minor and Syria, taking
Jerusalem from Muslim control in 1099 and setting up a Latin Kingdom of
Jerusalem.
Turkish attacks on the new Frankish protectorate, followed by the fall
of Edessa in 1144, inspired a new crusade. The second effort achieved lit-
tle against a revival of Muslim military aggression, but the capture of
Jerusalem by the famed Saladin in 1187 quickened a new papal call. The
Third Crusade attracted the support of the Holy Roman Emperor, Freder-
ick I, Philip II of France, and Richard I, called the Lion-Hearted, of En-
gland. Known as the King’s Crusade, it did little more than capture a few
cities along the Mediterranean coast. In the chronicles of chivalry, the ro-
manticized King Richard must remain unhonored: Saladin released his
Christian captives; Richard massacred 2,700 of his own prisoners of war.
The Fourth Crusade of 1204 debased the chivalric ideal of crusading
knighthood. Its forces overwhelmed the Christian world of Byzantium, par-
titioned much of its territory, and impressed upon the land a Frankish im-
prisonment that, fortunately for the Greeks, did not last longer than 1261.
In 1212, the response to the religious call was answered by bands of
adolescents from France and Germany. Called the Children’s Crusade, it
was not a crusade at all but a calamitous outpouring of innocent faith that
displaced countless numbers of children from their homes and led many
into the slave markets of the Levant. The Fifth Crusade accomplished noth-
ing, and its successor, under Frederick II, managed to negotiate some
treaties favorable to the Christian side.
The earlier high purpose of the crusading movement was regained
during the last two fated crusades led by the sainted Louis IX of France.
His first expedition was an assault on Damietta in Egypt, where he sur-
passed his knights in valor by leaping into the surf on landing and wading
ashore with shield and lance. It was an act of daring that might have earned
him an honored place in the heroic lines of the chansons de geste (French;
songs of heroic deeds), but his effort was of no avail in Egypt. He tried to
redeem himself in 1270, an enfeebled old warrior, but he failed again, giv-
ing up his life on an alien Tunisian shore.
In the fourteenth century, the crusading movement was briefly re-
vived, and French chivalry was again represented at Nicopolis in 1396,
when the king of Hungary led a campaign against the advancing Turks.
Early battle successes were reversed when the French knights, spurning78 Chivalry