The beautiful Crusades and saving civilization.

There were five to eight crusades [depending on the author you are reading], which were initiated to retake once former Christian lands, occupied by the violence of Turks and Muslims during the pre-modern period. These episodic events ranged over a period of roughly 200 years from 1096 to 1299 A.D and they constitute the awakening of Europe from a fetal-positioned backwater to emerging colossus. These complicated, seemingly futile but ultimately transformative feats of military, religious and economic power, are of course hated today by the ignoramuses in the media and academia. Without the crusades the modern world would not exist as we know it.

There are many reasons to make this claim – but none of them will appear in 'academic' circles or in the media disinformation outlets. The Crusades were critical for the creation of the modern world, premised on European ideals, economics, science and innovation. The Crusades though they ultimately failed in achieving their primary objective – the retaking of the Holy Lands for Christianity – did succeed in forcing Europeans and their gathering civilisation to create the basis for the world as we know it.

How did this happen? We are relentlessly told by multi-cultural relativists, lovers of all things Muslim, or the weak and effeminate that the Crusades were a failure and that worse, they were bloody orgies of violence and death. The truth is as one would suspect, rather different.

The Crusades were a very slow response to Muslim aggression, war, piracy, rape, looting and occupation of vast tracts of land and sea which had once been Greek, Jewish and Christian. The lands stretching from Judea, through to Turkey and the Balkans and around the North African coast to Spain and southern France, once completely Judeo-Christian had been savagely Islamicized.

Sources, first hand accounts, and archeological evidence makes it clear that literally millions of Jews and Christians had died in this Muslim imperialism. Cities were ransacked, treasures looted, women raped and millions were sold into slavery. Millions more were forcibly converted on pain of death, obscene taxation, or total loss of assets, to Islam. Contrary to the multi-cult myth making, Arabs and Muslims were not 'native' to any of the lands of the Near East, Africa or southern Europe. Their vicious onslaught slaughtered millions. Their predations included the rape of Rome and other major European centers. Design for the complete conquest of Europe were always in planning.

Yet from about 630 A.D. until 1096 A.D. the European Christian powers did nothing. For 400 years they bickered amongst themselves, made alliances with the pagan Arabs and their Muslim converts, ignored the obvious threat to their survival and engaged only in ad hoc and sporadic efforts to push out the invading Muslim hordes from their bloody holdings.

The Franks under Charles Martel who defeated a 40.000 strong Muslim army under the Spanish Emir at Tours in 732 A.D., and his grandson Charlemagne who took punitive expeditions against the Muslims along the Franco-Spanish border, were alive to the threat that Islam posed. For many other states however, weak, divided, feudal and dis-organised, the threat whilst real, was too potent to face. Europe was partitioned and failing.

As the tide of Islamic violence and cruel imperialism continued to flow the Europeans in the late 11th century finally reacted. The Seljuk Turks, recent converts to Islam had smashed the Byzantine army – and Eastern Rome's empire – at the seminal battle of Manzikert in 1071. The Eastern Roman Emperor appealed to Catholic Rome and Christian Europe for help. Without Western aid he said, Christianity in the East would be extinguished.

Fired by the thoughts of destroying the heathen Turks and Arabs; reconquering the Holy Land; the attraction of plunder and women; and the purging of all sins; the Western Christians, after 400 years of being on the wrong side of the global war finally took action. In a huge staged performance in 1095 Pope Urban II at Clermont France roused the crowd and Europe with chants of "God wills it !" -- "God wills it !" The Pope declared that these words should be the battle cry of Christ's soldiers in the holy war, and commanded that all recruits should attach to their garments the form of the Cross. For all who participated taxes would be abolished, sins expiated and a sure path to the side of Christ reserved.

This first crusade headed by eminent knights and leaders was the most successful. It was an expensive undertaking for a relatively small force. Perhaps 30.000 professional military men from across Europe participated in the first crusade with maybe 3.000 heavily mounted knights. This force ably lead and bold, retook the holy Christian sites of Antioch, Tyre, Acre and Jerusalem. It was a stunning achievement and within 3 short years, by 1099, Jerusalem and was again Christian.

The first crusade was an enormous achievement that still remains unappreciated. The crusading armies had to be transported over 1500 miles from the European heartland, to Constantinople and then to march southwards through Turkish territory over rough, unknown terrain to the Levantine coast. The logistics of food, water, weapon and material supply were complex enough.

The political and military complications were even more worrisome. Rivalries, jealousies, language and national ambitions all played their part to dis-unify the crusading hosts. Yet somehow they persisted. With the help of the Byzantine Greeks, the Europeans were able to overcome various Turkish forces and eventually with good leadership and some luck, force their way into Jerusalem.

This first crusading force whilst small compared to the Turkish hordes of the Near East, were nonetheless far better equipped, trained and resourceful than their Turkish adversary. Yet to equip just one mounted heavily armed knight might cost 6 months of the average knights income and many more months of expenses for retainers, food, and weaponry.

In short perhaps each knight would cost one year's revenue for the average European squire. The crusades were thus enormously expensive yet somehow for 200 years they were maintained. Given the crudity of intra-European trade and economic flexibility in the pre-modern period, and the amount of treasure expended in the waging of war against the infidel, it would not be a surprise to learn that 25% or more of European GDP was spent on the crusades. A feudal system after all is far less elastic than one built around on an industrial-technological base.

The new Kingdom of Jerusalem did not long last. Of the eight crusades only the first and perhaps the third under Richard the Lionheart were successful. The Muslims eventually drove out the Christians and massacred and sacked Christian forts, towns and treasuries. The crusades were certainly bloody, but war usually was and usually is.

Much is made of the Christian destruction of Muslim and Jews alike in 1099 in the retaking of Jerusalem. This was hardly unique. Muslims enthusiastically slaughtered Christians at Antioch, Acre, Tyre, Sidon, Hebron, Constantinople, and Nicosia to name but a few cities put to the Islamic sword. Rape, gold, slaves and power were never far removed from the Muslim mind in their zeal of conquest. More important to the West was the degrading and evil spectacle of the Venetians using the fourth crusade to attack, destroy and loot Constantinople. An ungodly act which ensured that the Turks would take the city and its empire – which they did in 1453.

The crusades were in the main however a success on many levels. The latent power of Europe – when united – was plain to see. The crusades stimulated trade, industry and lead directly to the destruction of feudalism. In the Knights Templar international trade and banking was pursued transforming the European economy; and in the Knights Hospitallers modern ideas of medicine and caring for the sick were introduced. Most importantly the crusades helped vivify the idea of Europe; of European civilisation and of European superiority. All of the energies and missionary zeal of the crusades lead to a more confident, more international and more prosperous Europe. It set the stage for the European domination of the world.

The crusades also forestalled of course the seemingly remorseless Muslim advance. No longer would Europe sit idly by and subject itself to the depraved depredations of the Turks and Muslims with their dhimmi-class system, onerous taxation of the infidel and swaggering arrogance that the moon cult should dominate the world. Finally the Europeans, however superficially, united and proved that Christian civilisation, however imperfect, was worth defending and able to project power across vast distances.

The crusades are a crucial turning point in history. They mark the beginning of the end of Muslim designs on Europe and world domination. They herald the awakening of the great European enlightenment and renaissance and they mark the first steps towards European world domination.

Hurray for the crusades!