What the Crusades Accomplished—And What They Didn't
hopesfor Consta ntino ple were dashe d when Murad sound ly defeat ed
a Crusader armyof thirty thousand at Varna, Hungary, in November- Although in reaching Varna, the Crusaders had entered Turkish
territor y theMuslims had conquered the town in 1391), it was a far cry
from the days when the crusaders established their own kingdoms in
Antioch and Jerusalem and struck fear in the heart of the Sultan in Cairo.
After the disaster of Varna, it was only a matter of time before
Constantinople fell. The end came an Tuesd ay, May 29,1453.After
week s of resistance , the great city final ly fell to an overwh elmin g
Musli m force---which, as we have seen, brutally massacred those
inside.
Even then the jihadist advance was not over, The Turks besieged
Belgrade in 1456 and even tried to get toRome, butat this point they
were turned back. Finally, the tide was starting to change. The
Muslims were turned away from Malta in the sixtee nth centur y and
failed in their first siegeof Vienna in1529, Later,they defeated the
Poles in 1672 and seized largeporti ons of the Ukrai ne, but they lost
what they had gaine d fewer thanten years later. Finally, they besieged
Vienna again, only to be turned backby Poland's King Jan III Sobieski
and thirty thousand Polish hussars onday that marks the high point of
Muslim expans ion in Europe: Septemb er11, 1683,
The Crusad es had accompl ished nothi ng of what they had set out
toandwould go down in histor y as one of the West's most
spectac ular failur es.
But were they really?