This book is a brilliant depiction of the true nature of the Crusades. A general review is offered here. Thankfully Madden offends the political-correct Marxist and Western self-loather, who has read Walter Scott's Talisman or the rather ignorant ideas behind Voltaire and Gibbon and in order to side himself with 'really smart people', parrots the inane belief that all Muslims, including a savage murdering Allah-true believing warlord such as Saladin, are Victorian gentlemen wearing top hats, speaking in clipped Enlightenment English, prone to rationality, science and penitent humility and courtly sophisticates who never ever murdered, pillaged, plundered or raped. Madden destroys this PhD ideal. This book is not for mal-educated true-believer.

When the Allah-cult spreads, death and violence are never far behind. The Muslims eradicated millions of Jews and Christians from conquered territory through enslavement, war, murder, or forced conversion to the Mohammedan cult. Some of these 'conversions' took the form of raping and abducting young females and coercing them into joining the Allah gang. This practice is still widespread in India and South East Asia and parts of Africa. Stealing, raping and impregnating infidel women, who then produce Muslim babies, is an old Muslim form of demographic treachery. One ignored of course by Muslims themselves who in the main chatter that the Allah power spreads through preaching and social harmony.

One aspect of Madden's book that I want to present is the character Baibars. Saladdin's murdering conquests were quickly erased by the third and fifth crusades. Jerusalem was retaken by the Christians for about a decade in the early 13^th century through a negotiated settlement. Most of the territory lost to Saladin who butchered literally tens of thousands of Christians, was back in the hands of the Crusaders. Some of this reconquest was due to internal Muslim division and civil-warring., not to mention the irruption of the Mongols in the 13^th century which destroyed Islamic power in Iran and Iraq and almost over-ran Syria and Egypt. Much credit must be given as well to the renewed spirit which animated the third Crusade under Richard the Lionheart and the energy and piety involved in the fifth and sixth Crusades under the French and German Kings. With some better generalship and a little more cohesion the Christians should have conquered Egypt by 1250. By this point in time most Muslims were resigned to the permanency of the Christian presence in the Levant.

Than came Baibars. The great Muslim general crushed the Mongols at the crucial battle of Ayn Jalut in 1260. This victory probably saved Islam from being completely wiped out. Baibars was a Mamluke or Turkish military slave. He and his men took over Egypt, reformed it, and rebuilt the Muslim army. He added Syria to his possessions and unified the Muslims in the Levant against the Crusaders. He preached a Jihad against the Franks – or the French – who were the main component of the Christian presence in the Levant. As Mr. Madden recounts:

It did not take long for Baibars (Baybars) to settle matters in Syria and turn his attention to the Christians. The Mamluk sultan waged a vigorous jihad aimed at removing once and for all the problem of the Christian presence in Palestine. In 1263, he led a successful raid into Galilee and destroyed the cathedral of Nazareth. Two years later, he conquered Caesarea and Arsuf. In 1266, he took the Templar fortress of Safad, massacring the inhabitants after promising to spare their lives. Indeed, Baybars made it a point to massacre or enslave Christians wherever he found them, by they in great citadels or modest villages. In 1268, he captured Jaffa and brutally sacked the city.

Not much multi-cult love from the Muslim sultan. Not too much in the way of inter-faith harmony. But of course the Crusaders are to blame. The Muslims had only been attacking, conquering, enslaving and masscring Christians since 636 AD. The Muslims were the aggressors. But we must blame the Christians of course.

Later that same year (1268), Baybars led his forces north against the great city of Antioch. It fell after only four days. The sultant ordered the doors of the city closed and the inhabitants, including women and children, massacred. This atrocity shocked even the Muslim chroniclers. It was the single greatest massacre of the entire crusading era. Upset that Count Bohemond IV was not in his city, Baybars wrote to him to describe the carnage he had missed;

You should have seen your knights prostrate beneath the horses hooves, your houses stormed by pillagers, and ransacked by looters, your wealth weighed by the quintal, your women sold four at a time and bought for a dinar of your own money! You would have seen the crosses in your churches smashed, the pages of the false Testament scattered.....cutting the throats of monks, priests, and deacons upon the altars....the Cathedral of St. Peter pulled down...

How enlightened. Maybe Hollywood should make a movie of the great sack of Antioch in 1268. I am sure if they did that the Antiochans would be blamed for the general murder and destruction of 40.000 souls by the Muslims. Baibars would be recast as a Savile-row suit wearing Professor, quiet, demure and pious. The Muslims would be prostrated scholars teaching the dirty barbarian Christians about bathing, math and true spirituality.

Twenty three years later, in 1291 the slaughter at Acre by Baibars successor was just as immense. The Muslims murdered the remaining population after breaking their word that the Christians could leave the surrendered city. They raped, looted and sold into slavery the choicier morsels of Christian flesh. Acre was the last Crusader stronghold and was wiped out by the Mamluke Turks. The Turks had long since taken over the mantle of Islamic leadership. The Osmam fief would form in the early 14^th century and grow into the Ottoman empire which would dominate the Mediterranean basin for 300 years. The Ottomans would enslave and kill literally 10 million white European Christians. Yet few comment on this genocidal Jihad of death and obliteration. Most historians seem obsessed and driven to calumny in their lust to conflate the Crusades with the conquests of Chinghis Khan.

Not so for Mr. Madden. One can only hope that he continues to write on the topic and set the truth and the record straight. Islam is a warring, intolerant, pagan-fascism which has no respect for the Infidel. Read the Koran. Read Islamic history. This fact is as plain as a Gladstone top-hat.