Holcomb,Brown

The Crusades

**The First Crusade 1096-1099**

The First Crusade played a very important part in Medieval England.The First Crusade was an attempt to re-capture Jerusalem. After the capture of Jerusalem by the Muslims in 1076. Any Christian who wanted to pay a pilgrimage to the city faced a very hard time. Muslim soldiers made life very difficult for the Christians and trying to get to Jerusalem was filled with danger for a Christian. This greatly angered all Christians. Many people did voluntered to fight The First Crusade, those who volunteered to go to fight the Muslims cut out red crosses and sewed them on their tunics. The French word "croix" means cross and the word changed to "croisades" or crusades. The fight against the Muslims became a Holy War.

There were true Christians who wanted to reclaim Jerusalem for their belief and get the Muslims out of the city. There were those who knew they had committed sin and that by going on the Crusade they might be forgiven by God. They had also been told by the pope that if they were killed, they would automatically go to heaven as they were fighting for God. There were those who thought that they might get rich by taking the wealth that they thought existed in Jerusalem. Any crusader could claim to be going on a pilgrimage for God - pilgrims did not have to pay tax and they were protected by the Church. The crusade was very very difficult.



**The Second Crusade 1147-1149**

The Second Crusade was a result of urging from St. Bernard to the Pope at the time. The Second Crusade started with a postive feeling, and in the end it had a negative feeling. Out of all the people who started fighting, only a few thousand came out alive and escaped the massacre by the Turks. The remainder of the armies joined together and started a revolt against Damascus, but had to quit a few days later. It did not turn out very well, The Second Crusade accomplished nothing really.



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 * The Third Crusade 1189-1192**

The news of invading Jerusalem spred throughout Western Christendom. The news of a third crusade bummed people out horribly bad. When the four greatest rulers of Europe King Philip Augustus of France, King Richard the First of England, and The German Empire, as well as Frederick Barbarossa all sent out an army to recover the Holy City of Jerusalem. King Richard raised the taxes among all of the social classes, he persuciated Jews of robbery, The Germans were sadly defeted, and they retreated back to Germany. At the end, there was a truce between King Richard and Saladin for Holy Peace.




 * The Fourth Crusade 1202-1261

The Fourth Crusades were about Pope Innocent asking Europe to join the Crusades again to take back Jerusalem from Ayyubids. The Europeans had a different plan, instead of going in directly, they decided to go south to Egypt and then up to Jerusalem. They went to Venice to get their ships, but they didn't have enough money to pay for them. The Venetian said that instead of paying they fight to get the city of Zara back from the Hungarians. They got back Zara, and on their way to Egypt Alexius asked the crusaders to help him get back to power, and in return he would pay for the rest of the crusade.

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**The Children's Crusade 1212**  A 12 year old boy, Stephan of Cloyes, began preaching in France claiming that he had been visited by Jesus and told to lead a crusade to peacefully convert Muslims to Christianity. Through a series of supposed portents and miracles he gained a considerable following, including possibly as many as 20,000 children. He led his followers southwards towards the Mediterranean Sea where it is said he believed that the sea would part when he arrived, so that he and his followers could march to Jerusalem, but this did not happen. Two merchants gave passage on seven boats to as many of the children as would fit. The childrenwere either taken to Tunisia and sold into slavery, or died in a shipwreck on the island off San Pietro(off Sardinia) during a gale. In some accounts they never reached the sea before dying or giving up from starvation and exhaustion.



Works Cited //c.gif//. N.d. //yesnet//. Web. 30 Apr. 2010. . //The Christian Crusades- 1095-1291//. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2010. . //Crusade-5//. N.d. //How stuff works//. Web. 30 Apr. 2010. . //The First Crusade//. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2010. . //History For Kids//. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Apr. 2010. . //History For Kids//. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2010. . //innocent.jpg//. N.d. //History For Kids//. Web. 30 Apr. 2010. . //ORB- Online Book Reference for Medieval Studies//. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2010. . //The Second Crusade//. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2010. . //The Third Crusade//. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Apr. 2010. .

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