Crusades forever!

[Elidor]

Is there a way we can have the Crusades go on forever, and be seen as "morally right" by all Europeans? It need not be against Muslims and it need not be a war of Conquest. Just warfare for the sake of Christendom and on the behalf of the Bishop of Rome.

Would it be possible to pull something like this in a world where the Mongols Invade Europe and subdue it (much like Russia) save for a few enclaves in the south, that manages to launch a protracted centuries-long war of reclamation?

 

[Grey Wolf]

Curiously enough I'm writing a timeline much like this at the moment tho I haven't posted here yet - you can find it at Sargon's Stronghold tho

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

 

[Elidor]

Link?

Anybody else a fan of the Crusaders?

 

[Iori]

Anybody else a fan of the Crusaders?

I doubt it, why would people be fans of what amounts to a bunch of pompous asses invading and forcing their religion on others,
committing ethnic cleansing and forced immigration and annexing territories because they thought they should be Christian?

 

[Cynovolans]

Onward Christian soldiers. . .

I am sort of a fan.

 

[tehShifty]

I doubt it, why would people be fans of what amounts to a bunch of pompous asses invading and forcing their religion on others,
committing ethnic cleansing and forced immigration and annexing territories because they thought they should be Christian?

It is heresy to doubt the will of the Emperor, I mean The Pope.
I wanna seek a Super Crusader state.​

And your take on history is stale rhetoric.
Oh, no, the Christans were killing people in the name of religion a 1000 years ago. Because no one used to do that a 1000 years ago.
Not to mention that the crusaders ended the dark ages in the process, but they killed people!
An army killed people. Unimaginable.

 

[False Dmitri]

I'm in the middle of The Crusades by Jonathan Riley-Smith: it's a general survey, admittedly, but it's a good one, and I haven't read much on Crusading specifically.

The movement did persist an awfully long time. Some things that brought it down:

Persistent failures on the part of the crusaders
The rise of nation states
The Reformation
Humanism

Those, anyway, are some of the internal forces within Western Europe that helped bring the movement down. Those are the forces that would need to be addressed for Crusading to survive. If the Mongols made more advances into Western Europe that could disrupt things enough that crusading remains a strong motivator.

I know there have been AH attempts to make the Latin states in the Eastern Mediterranean survive longer. That's not quite the same as the idea of crusading, but a Kingdom of Jerusalem that endures into the 1600s or beyond could continue to attract "crusaders" from the West.

And I understand the tension on this thread. What the crusaders did was bad, sure, but there's something about the movement that's undeniably... cool. Or at least, there are aspects of it that touch the imagination in certain ways - hence all the romanticism surrounding it. The whole idea of knights sailing to the Middle East to capture cities in the name of God and His relics is certainly ridicuous to us, but they were dead serious about it. I guess it's the theme of fighting for your convictions that people find fascinating, even if those convictions appear so very misguided to us.

 

[Elidor]

I'm in the middle of The Crusades by Jonathan Riley-Smith: it's a general survey, admittedly, but it's a good one, and I haven't read much on Crusading specifically.

The movement did persist an awfully long time. Some things that brought it down:

Persistent failures on the part of the crusaders
The rise of nation states
The Reformation
Humanism

Those, anyway, are some of the internal forces within Western Europe that helped bring the movement down. Those are the forces that would need to be addressed for Crusading to survive. If the Mongols made more advances into Western Europe that could disrupt things enough that crusading remains a strong motivator.

I know there have been AH attempts to make the Latin states in the Eastern Mediterranean survive longer. That's not quite the same as the idea of crusading, but a Kingdom of Jerusalem that endures into the 1600s or beyond could continue to attract "crusaders" from the West.

And I understand the tension on this thread. What the crusaders did was bad, sure, but there's something about the movement that's undeniably... cool. Or at least, there are aspects of it that touch the imagination in certain ways - hence all the romanticism surrounding it. The whole idea of knights sailing to the Middle East to capture cities in the name of God and His relics is certainly ridicuous to us, but they were dead serious about it. I guess it's the theme of fighting for your convictions that people find fascinating, even if those convictions appear so very misguided to us.

Well if the Crusaders were defending their lands, rather than attacking someone else's (as what happened during the Defense of Vienna against the Ottomans) then a lot of moral ambiguity goes out of the way. Doubtless that's what would happen when the Mongols invade Europe.

What was most fascinating about the Crusades was that it was a pan-European thing. And almost the entire Catholic world was behind it-- despite it being fragmented into thousands of states, ethnicities and language. It seemed that if the Crusades went on, there could be some degree of peace maintained between European nations. A Pax Christi if you will.

I also like the concept of the crusades extending into a time period with advanced technology. Crusaders with Tanks, anyone?

 

[general]

Crusades

It is worth pointing out Elidor, that to the Crusaders they were defending their own lands. They saw the Holy Land, Palestine as an intrinsically Christian place stolen by the Muslims. That is certainly not how we see it, but it was part of their motivation. You can add that the Crusades can be seen as a counter-attack after 4 centuries of Muslim aggression against Europe. In the late 9th/10th centuries - not sure exact dates, Muslim pirates had sacked Rome and had bases on mainland Italy and Southern France.
That said, I cannot see how they could be continued beyond their OTL date. They were always a cause of controversy within the Latin church.

 

[AlanJWhite]

please at least try to look at the facts

before touching the keyboards

Palestine was Byzantine - i.e. Christian - territory before being overrun by successive waves of Arabs and Turks
Early waves pagan (~600 AD), later Muslim (800-1000)

At first, there was a kind of Stand off with the Byzantine and Christians were allowed to visit the holy sites - that Muslims also reverered
(though many purely Christian shrines were destroyed)

but in the 1000s the Seljuks had even greater success against Byzantium (research manzikert)
and they began to restrict and hassle the pilgrims.

The First Crusade in the 1090s was called to obtain free access - and was the only true success. It established an independent Christian kingdom that lived fairly peacefully with Muslim neighbours for 150 years

The second was an Europe wide push by the church against all pagans and heretics on its borders. Nothing much achieved in Palestine.

The Third began not as a true crusade - but a defence by Outremer against the latest Muslim attacks. That failed and most of the Christian lands were again lost.

Lionhearts contribution and all subsequent Middle east crusades were attempts to recover those lands (all failed)

In general Crusaders over estimated their abilities
but none were ever stupid enough to think they could total eradicate Islam

 

[Elidor]

before the flamewars start...

I never said I wanted the Crusaders to destroy Islam as a whole-- I want a scenario where the Crusading movement unites Europe against external invaders and thus lasts to this day. Mongols just seemed like the right bogeyman to fight. It took Russians several centuries to kick their successors out, if they had taken Europe, a crusading movement could last a similar length of time and more, they'll have to kick the mongols out of W. Europe and then Russia. After that they could live on, either for aggressive purposes (Holy Roman Empire all the way to Siberia, anyone?) or something like Catholic NATO.

 

[tehShifty]

I also like the concept of the crusades extending into a time period with advanced technology. Crusaders with Tanks, anyone?

Crusaders with Crusader tanks?

 

[Grey Wolf]

Link?

Anybody else a fan of the Crusaders?

Sorry I just abandoned it as all the work I did over 5 hours last night got wiped out - you can still find it on Sargon's Stronghold but won't now be updated, as rewriting it all is NOT fun and I was writing it for fun...

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

 

[machine3589]

Crusades forever?

BLACK TEMPLARS!!!

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Black_Templars

 

[False Dmitri]

before touching the keyboards

Palestine was Byzantine - i.e. Christian - territory before being overrun by successive waves of Arabs and Turks
Early waves pagan (~600 AD), later Muslim (800-1000)

Zoroastrian =/= pagan. Or are you talking about something else?

At first, there was a kind of Stand off with the Byzantine and Christians were allowed to visit the holy sites - that Muslims also reverered
(though many purely Christian shrines were destroyed)

but in the 1000s the Seljuks had even greater success against Byzantium (research manzikert)
and they began to restrict and hassle the pilgrims.

The First Crusade in the 1090s was called to obtain free access - and was the only true success.

That's not true at all. The Fatimids had damaged the Holy Sepulchre, true, but that was almost 100 years before the First Crusade (henceforward C1) was launched. Pilgrimage to the Holy Land became more dangerous during the Seljuk era, but not because pilgrims were specifically "hassled" in any way. It was because crossing overland through Anatolia (the way most of them had to go, since going by ship was too expensive) meant crossing through a war zone: the Seljuks were in the process of conquering the region from the Byzantines, and were meanwhile fighting one another. Pilgrimages increased steadily from the 1070s. The idea for C1 came from a request for help from the Byzantine emperor, and from ideas that had been tossed around Western intellectual circles (such as they were) for years.

It established an independent Christian kingdom that lived fairly peacefully with Muslim neighbours for 150 years.

The second was an Europe wide push by the church against all pagans and heretics on its borders. Nothing much achieved in Palestine.

C2 was an expedition to Palestine - what are you referring to?

The Third began not as a true crusade - but a defence by Outremer against the latest Muslim attacks. That failed and most of the Christian lands were again lost.

Also, Jerusalem and almost all Latin land in Palestine was taken by Saladin in the 1180s.

Lionhearts contribution and all subsequent Middle east crusades were attempts to recover those lands (all failed)

In general Crusaders over estimated their abilities
but none were ever stupid enough to think they could total eradicate Islam

C5 honestly would have "won", but the Crusaders refused to accept the incredibly generous terms of surrender offered by the Ayyubid sultan. For whatever reason, they felt that recovering the Kingdom of Jerusalem wasn't good enough and tried to conquer all of Egypt. It didn't go so well.