AHC:Worst possible Crusades

Wouldn't a bigger, longer, more violent Crusade/s result in a longer lasting Outremer in the Levant? I imagine the reason the Crusades weren't longer and bloodier was because of the small size of the Crusader states once the big European forces went home. Bigger, bloodier Crusades would be the result of more evenly matched forces in the area, so Outremer may use these forces to survive for longer.
 
While your average Crusader was, more often than not, a bloodthirsty and, especially, landhungry thug motivated by a varying mix of religious fanaticism and self-interest peppered by general bloodlust, they were NOT hell-bent to the destruction of the Islamic faith and civilization* as such. Actually, Muslim subjects lived in the Crusader states and were not necessarily forced to convert at swordpoint or wantonly killed (although both things happened). The behaviour of the Crusaders, while certainly brutal, was more acquisitive than destructive in its overall goals. They sacked cities, but their plans was more about ruling them than destroying them.
Their Muslim opponents were generally more tolerant, more cultured, more sophisticated (that's part of why they ultimately won I would say) but they also waged war frequently and brutally, and "tolerance" in a Medieval context was almost always a relative concept (well, the Middle Ages were more tolerant than Early Modernity in most of both Islamic and Christian societies anyway). Remarkably, in the Islamic world of the time at large, the Crusaders, and the Western Christians at large, were often seen as a nuisance, while the real threat was seen to be the Mongols - which, by the way, was largely correct, as the Mongols were in general FAR more destructive than the Crusaders ever were.

*Not that they would have understood such a notion as "Islamic civilization".
 
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ThePest179

Banned
The behaviour of the Crusaders, while certainly brutal, was more acquisitive than destructive in its overall goals. They sacked cities, but their plans was more about ruling them than destroying them.

Is it possible to change them to be outright genocidal and intent on killing all Muslims and destroying their civilizations?

Remarkably, in the Islamic world of the time at large, the Crusaders, and the Western Christians at large, were often seen as a nuisance, while the real threat was seen to be the Mongols - which, by the way, was largely correct, as the Mongols were in general FAR more destructive than the Crusaders ever were.

Hence why I made the comment on bonus points; what if the Crusades kept happening during the Mongol Conquest of the Muslim civilizations?
 

ThePest179

Banned
The Mongols would easily beat the Crusaders as the Crusaders had much weaker discipline in battle.

Oh I never doubted THAT, I just wondered if the Crusaders would try to make an alliance with the Mongols, or if they would make peace with the Muslims against them, or if they would attack both the Muslims and Mongols.

Which do you see them doing in the event that the Crusades are bloodier and longer? And keep in mind that there is probably more to it than that.
 
If the Crusader prince who hired pirates to attack Mecca succeeded, or the Crusaders successful took over Egypt as they tried, or the proposed alliances with the Mongols took off...that could make things ugly.
 
Is it possible to change them to be outright genocidal and intent on killing all Muslims and destroying their civilizations?

Difficult. "Genocide" as such was not really a Medieval thing, again not counting the Mongols. "Kill all the Muslims" was hardly ever a conceivable goal for the relatively tiny foreign ruling elite of a Crusader state.
However, you can certainly the Crusaders more violent and brutal. You can ramp up their numbers and give them some more success. You may prevent Nur al-Din and Saladin from ascending to power, so that Egypt remains a subservient quasi-pawn of the Franks under a weakened Fatimid rule. This won't work for very long but would give the Crusaders in the Levant some breathing room, so that they can consolidate and counterreact more effectively when the Fatimids fall and/or rebel. They might take, and probably sack, Damascus and Aleppo, which would hit the local Muslim society pretty hard. You can handwave some particularly rabid preacher into the Crusader ranks to make them even more fanatical. The can pillage and rape their way into a larger chunk of the Levant and wherebouts. It'd be nastier and more brutal than the not inconsiderable level it was IOTL.
They won't be ever a realistic existential threat to the Islamic civilization as a whole, for simple logistical reasons. Too much of Islam was simply way out they reach. However, they could wreak considerably more havoc in the Eastern Med.
In the end, though, they'd want to stabilize. They would not want to kill all the Muslims, because the taxpaying base of their states will be Muslim to a significant percentage, probably the majority (even counting massacres and expulsions). The Mongols did so after all. You'll have mixed-populated, Frank-dominated, ideologically rabidly Western-Christian states. They won't be very nice places to live, especially for non Catholics, but their rulers weren't interested into turning their fiefdoms into hellholes for the heck of it. There is nothing I can see to change the basic attitude from being acquisitive rather than destructive.

Hence why I made the comment on bonus points; what if the Crusades kept happening during the Mongol Conquest of the Muslim civilizations?

They did. The last Crusader outpost in the Levant fell in 1291. The Mongol invasions in Muslim lands had begun around 1220. Ultimately, the Mamluk state in Egypt repelled both, with a really major effort that, however, was essentially focused on the Mongols.
 
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