The Crusades, Jerusalem and the myth of 'rivers of blood'

Pathologically ill and untrue 'pop' culture effusions about the Crusades continue to impair a real understanding of their importance and centrality to the basic survival of civilization. Without the Crusades, the 300 years of 'breathing space' they bought, the necessity of confronting the Moslem Jihad with force [a fact lost on most contemporaries]; it is arguable if European civilization – or large parts of it – would have survived as Christian entities. It is highly likely that Islam would have conquered much of Europe without the Crusades, a process which began not in 1095, but in 722 at the battle of Covadonga in northern Spain, a seminal event which stopped the Moslem hordes and began the 1000 year counter-attack against Moslem fascism.

Part of the lurid propaganda against the Crusades is the 'sack of Jerusalem' on July 14^th 1099. apparently the Crusaders were wading up to their knees in blood after slaughtering thousands of pious and innocent Moslems and Jews. In order to have blood up to your knees you would need to murder millions, not thousands of course. Besides the fictional hyperbole, about 3000 mostly Moslem men who were still fighting and innocents were killed. But 3000 deaths do not create rivers of blood.

While there is no doubt many were killed, we must not exaggerate what happened. Many inhabitants of the city (including Jews) were not killed but captured and ransomed; others were expelled from the city.¹⁸¹ The idea that this event, which occurred over 900 years ago, is the reason for Muslim hatred of the West is absurd and illustrates a complete misunderstanding of the Crusading movement and its impact on the Islamic world.

It is probable that anywhere from several hundred to 3,000 were slain by the Crusaders.

Compare the 'sack of Jerusalem' to the Moslem sacks of Antioch [1258], Tyre [1292], Constantinople [1453] in which well over 30.000 were butchered and the rest sold in slavery. Zengi murdered a similar total in 1144:

“The Muslim warlord Zengi massacred 6,000 Christian men, women, and children on Christmas Eve 1144 when he conquered the city of Edessa.¹⁹⁵ Likewise Baybars, the thirteenth-century Mamluk general-turned-sultan of Egypt, pursued a policy of aggressive jihad in his campaigns against Christian settlements. After conquering Antioch, he ordered the city gates closed and locked with the entire Christian population trapped inside. All were massacred in a bloodbath so repulsive that it shocked even Muslim chroniclers.¹⁹⁶” [Weidenkopf, Glory of the Crusades]

So Moslems slaughtering 40.000 at say Antioch or Tyre in 1292, or Constantinople in 1453 is fine. But 3000 or so dead Moslems who in the main were still fighting around the Dome of the Mosque in 1099, well that is just beyond all civilized comprehension....so the claptrap and stupidity of the mutli-culti intones.

In Medieval warfare if a city did not surrender and was taken; there was a 3 day sacrament of pillage, rape and theft. That is what happened. Yes moderns can express horror at this, but comfortable on your sofas, you cannot impose your world view on an earlier age. A city was usually given a choice, surrender now and spare us the costs and blood of a siege, or pay a higher price later. There is something boldly rational, if indeed violently savage about such a policy. Soldiers apparently, do enjoy being paid. Food is apparently indeed scarce during most sieges and yes diseases, most of them water born and related to human excrement, did quite efficiently, wipe out large parts of besieging armies. It is little wonder that a siege once broken, resulted in chaos and plunder. This is not to condone wanton pillage and destruction, but only to state the obvious that it did happen and had nothing to do with the Crusader ethos.