Who won the Third Crusade?

Who won the Third Crusade?

  • Crusader Victory

    Votes: 17 68.0%
  • Muslim Victory

    Votes: 8 32.0%

  • Total voters
    25
Who won the Third Crusade?

Watched a video recently on the Third Crusade and it had me rethinking my opinion of the topic. I have myself have always viewed it as a Muslim victory based on the fact that Saladin held Jerusalem. A good opposing argument however can be made that the Third Crusade was actually a success and a victory for King Richard. The Crusaders retook alot of territory and forced Saladin to make concessions. I suppose in many ways it depends on the significance you place on Jerusalem?

I'm curious as to the boards thoughts on this?
 
In my opinion,the Crusaders won.The fact that the crusader situation was far better than they were before the third crusade,taking back a lot of the land conquered by Saladin, meant that it was a Christian victory,unless you include the Hattin campaign as part of the Third Crusade.
 
The Crusaders won. Not as big a win as they'd have liked, but enough to keep the show on the road for another century.
 
It's complicated because the third crusade was a response to hattin.

The hattin campaign saw the muslims take a bunch of land from the Christians, the third crusade saw half of that regained.

So overall the third crusade was less successful than the hattin campaign so the Christians were still behind on total. But individually it was obviously a victory.

It's like saying was the Chinese entry into the korean war successful? Because certainly the capitalists were driven back but they never were driven back all the way to where they were prior to the American entry
 
It's complicated because the third crusade was a response to hattin.

The hattin campaign saw the muslims take a bunch of land from the Christians, the third crusade saw half of that regained.

So overall the third crusade was less successful than the hattin campaign so the Christians were still behind on total. But individually it was obviously a victory.

It's like saying was the Chinese entry into the korean war successful? Because certainly the capitalists were driven back but they never were driven back all the way to where they were prior to the American entry
Yep.In the Chinese view,they did win the Korean War.The only one that actually lost was North Korea.
 
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It was more of a stalemate. The kingdom of Jerusalem never truly recovered. It's rural populations vanished and the trans-Jordanian castles, which were so vital to defense, were never recovered. It become a collection of semi-independent city states after 1187. No wonder so many of the nobles opted to settle in Cyprus.
 
If you assess it from the POV of how capable each was of projecting power post-bellum, you'd say it was of course a victory for the Muslim powers, but then anything else was always an improbable situation. I would probably say that the crusaders made greater gains, but in a Canutish fashion.
 
In my opinion,the Crusaders won.The fact that the crusader situation was far better than they were before the third crusade,taking back a lot of the land conquered by Saladin, meant that it was a Christian victory,unless you include the Hattin campaign as part of the Third Crusade.
The crusaders lost a lot of manpower in the siege of Acre. It was the only city of any significance that was recaptured. Tripoli and Antioch never fell. Considering the size of the crusader army, and the fact that the kings of England and France went on crusade, I consider the results to be rather mediocre.
 
The crusaders lost a lot of manpower in the siege of Acre. It was the only city of any significance that was recaptured. Tripoli and Antioch never fell. Considering the size of the crusader army, and the fact that the kings of England and France went on crusade, I consider the results to be rather mediocre.

Plus it got Frederick Barbarossa killed along with most of his army.
 
The crusaders lost a lot of manpower in the siege of Acre. It was the only city of any significance that was recaptured. Tripoli and Antioch never fell. Considering the size of the crusader army, and the fact that the kings of England and France went on crusade, I consider the results to be rather mediocre.
Arsuf,Ascalon,Jaffa and the rest of the Palestinian coast were also recaptured.Saladin was defeated in two consecutive field engagements against Richard with heavy loses.I would consider it a success even in it's day.If you think such an achievement was mediocre,especially since you have to take into consideration that the crusaders were operating far from their homebase and that they were often divided(the French and the Germans practically walked out on Richard and the French in particular attacked his possessions back at home),Louis IV's wars during the 17th century were downright pathetic.The guy practically went to war and only won a few cities on average during each of his wars while bankrupting his country.
Plus it got Frederick Barbarossa killed along with most of his army.
Barbarossa never arrived,and his army simply just evaporated after he died for some reason.
 
Arsuf,Ascalon,Jaffa and the rest of the Palestinian coast were also recaptured.Saladin was defeated in two consecutive field engagements against Richard with heavy loses.I would consider it a success even in it's day.If you think such an achievement was mediocre,especially since you have to take into consideration that the crusaders were operating far from their homebase and that they were often divided(the French and the Germans practically walked out on Richard and the French in particular attacked his possessions back at home),Louis IV's wars during the 17th century were downright pathetic.The guy practically went to war and only won a few cities on average during each of his wars while bankrupting his country.

I've heard that Richard used this crusade to lay the groundwork for a future planned Crusade that would take both Jerusalem and Egypt. If this is true then everything was going according to plan. I'm curious to think what would of happened if Richard, had he lived longer, launched a new Crusade....
Barbarossa never arrived,and his army simply just evaporated after he died for some reason.

He did fight the Turks at Iconium and won. I guess that counts as part of the Crusade too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iconium_(1190)
 
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