Belloc and the glory of the Crusades and the liberation of Christians.

Belloc, in his great book 'The Crusades' retells the dramatic Christian takeover of the Levant and Israel in poetic terms. How did a small group of devout men, fighting for their faith against the Moslem Jihad, sustain territorial coverage, 2500 miles from home, against overwhelming odds for 2 centuries? It is a spectacular and significant affair, and if the Christians had taken Damascus, it would have been permanent, meaning Islam would have been riven in two, never to unite and a Christian state based on Frankish power would have survived into the modern era.

Belloc: “The main affair of these twenty years [1099-1119] was....the capture of the seacoast, on a strip very long, narrow, and ill provided with communications, crushed, north of Acre, between the sea and high mountains. The conquest of this flat coast in so short a time would seem, if we look at the map and think of the place as Mohammedan territory, and of the Crusaders (after the repatriation of the main body) as a handful of aliens, inexplicable.”

The original Crusade ended up with about 30.000 men in front of Jerusalem in July 1099, the remnant of 100.000 who had left Constantinople. Man for man the Christians overwhelmed the Moslem. Small groups of Christians routinely slaughtered forces 5-15 times their size. They were bigger men, better fed, technologically more advanced, with superior weapons and tactics. The only victories the Moslems could seize were ones of either surprise [night attacks], or ambush [guides leading the Christians who did not have good maps, into a dead end ambush].

Islam was divided. The 'north' beyond Israel was Sunni Turk. The 'south' and 'west' were Fatimid Shiite. Importantly the cult of Muhammad was degenerating in the late 11 th century. Ghazali's Koranic interpretation that all science and philosophy had to be shut down [10^th century] had already denuded Islam and its conquered peoples of any energy, intellectual vibrancy, and economic initiative that the Moslems had inherited, but did nothing to stimulate. Islam was dying by 1100.

Belloc: “...the Crusaders found Islam, in this particular region, at a low ebb in its cultural patriotism. Finally there was the large Christian population....”

Is the Levant, Syria and Israel, Christians were still the majority population by 1100. The lie that Christians converted en masse to Muhammad's cult is absurd. If they joined the cult of Mecca it was to avoid, taxes, rape, social degradation, or to move up within the reigning bureaucracy. Most people kept their Christian faith. Unlike today the medieval man and woman, was intelligent enough to know the different between a real faith, and a fascist fraud, which merges church and state, advocates misogyny, Jihad and violence; and which hates the 'other'.