After the meeting at The Field of the Cloth of Gold both Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France promised to go on crusade, basically as a thank you to the Pope. Now this didn't happen, but what if it had?
Who do they fight?
Where do they fight?
Who do they take with them?
I have my own thoughts, but would like your take.
The "Crusade after the Crusades" is always a fascinating subject.
Everybody talked about the Crusade, but no one wanted to make the Crusade.
I do not see a lot of interests in Henry of England and Francis of France to realize concretely a crusade (and the subsequent Franco-Ottoman alliance for the invidia penis of Francis vs Charles V was deplorable).
In the early 1500s probably the only two persons who wanted to make a really Crusade were the Emperor Maximilian and the Hungarian Cardinal Tamás Bakócz.
I had the fortune to read different authors, in my language, who have addressed this issue in a very exhaustive and detailed, focusing mainly on how "the idea of crusade" has been preserved, but at the same time mutated within the Papal Court and the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Among the "international" sources (I call them so because written in English), I'm been really fascinated by the work of Janus Møller Jensen «Denmark and the Crusades: 1400 - 1650»: fantastic!
Møller Jensen narrates the idea of Crusade of Emperor Maximilian.
In the Holy Roman Empire, i.e. Germany, «a monarchical form of anarchy», «a monarchy to which lacked all the attributes of sovereignty, a multitude of ecclesiastical and secular princes, free cities (true "urban" republics), nobility that enjoyed of complete independence and a Diet (Reichstag) with a composition weird, whose functions were also less clear» (Henry Pirenne), after the position assumed by the papacy since Innocent III and the training national states in France and England, the Imperial idea, the same figure of the Emperor, has become even more illusory, has become a series of empty forms, and it was definitely deprived of all means to gain acceptance by Europe of its temporal primacy (supremacy).
Wrote again Pirenne: «If you still is spoken of it, is in the "Schola", where Roman law professors continue to see, in theory, in the emperor the master of the world [...] or [in some idealist] as Dante [...]. Infact, it is a dead idea, a remains of the past that would be grand, if, often, the most weak of the Emperors not contrasted too violently with the memories that they evoke. At the Emperor is still recognized the precedence over the others sovereigns, the right to create noble and to institute of officials in all countries. This is more or less what it has preserved of the its ancient universal power. A certain prestige comes still at it from its relationship with the Pope, at whom remains necessarily linked. [...] The archaic majesty of its language and its emblems, contrast in an almost comical way with their true strength».
The Emperor Maximilian seems to have been obsessed with the idea of the crusade.
As later his grandson Charles V, Maximilian the idea at the basis of his thought and of his imperial visionwas that it «was in game the discourse of imperial heritage, sacred above all else». Maximilian, and then Charles, knew that the Empire gave him a stature unimaginable, and both aspired profoundly to this. Maximilian «had called the Holy Roman Empire "Christian Body" par excellence, and the heir dreamed of combining the idea Christian-medieval of the imperial universalism with the unity of a modern national state» (Guido Gerosa, «Carlo V: un sovrano per due mondi»).
The invitation to undertake a crusade against the Turks was recovered and renewed by Pope Sixtus IV in June 1483.
Is interesting that in 1490 King John of Denmark has given his consent to the crusade's plan that was presented by Rome, according to which soldiers from the Nordic kingdoms should be part of one of the great armies sent against the Turks, but the many problemns in his war with the Swedes prevented him from giving much thought to the crusade against the Turks.
In September 1494 the Emperor Maximilian entered in the knightly Order of Saint George, which he intended to function as a pan-European brotherhood to conduct crusades against the Turks, and proclaimed his plan to organize a crusade against the Turks as well as his ambition to personally lead the army of Saint George to defeat the Turks. Although the truce concluded between Hungary and Turkey in March 1495 made this impossible, a Holy League was created against the Turks at the «Reichstag» in Worms on 7 August 1495, as well as against all other enemies of the Christian faith, including the Grand Prince of Moscow. Shortly after the creation of the league, Maximilian wrote to Elector Friederich of Brandenburg, the Dukes Magnus and Balthasar of Mecklenburg, and King John of Denmark; and admonished them to go in aid of the Teutonic Knighs in Livonia agains the Russians. He even wrote to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in Spain and asked for help «in the interest of all Christendom», and informed Pope Alexander VI of his plans. the Pope congratulated Maximilian on the formation of the league and wrote to King John of Denmark ad advising him not to harass Sweden as long as crusade against the Russians was in progress. The crusade bull («Cruciata contra Ruthenos») was issued in June 1496, but apparently it did not reach Sweden.
When Julius II was elected Pope in 1503, one of the most important articles of his election capitulation provided that he was to summon a general council to restore peace to Christendom, reform the Church, and organize a new crusade against the Turks.
The Emperor Maximilian wrote to King John of Denmark in June 1511 and told him of the most recent political events in Italy (as he entered the League of Cambrai in 1508...), and of his intention firstly of to win the Venetians, and secondly of to organize a new crusade. But the Pope had turned against his allies, continued in his letter: the Pope has used the sword not to fight for the holy faith or against the enemies of Christendom, but against the Christians and the servants of the church only out of greed for money and land.
The Emperor would want that all Christian princes make peace and then proceed on a crusade against the Turks and the enemies of the holy Christian faith. He would want negotiate a new league consisting of himself, the French, the Pope, and other princes in order to organize a new crusade against the Turks, and perhaps he really has believed that he can unite the Christian princes against the enemies of the holy faith.
At the beginning of 1500 the major enemy of the Crusade was the same Pope Julius II with his politicy in Italy.
In May 1512 the Emperor Maximilian again wrote to King John of Demnark: he told of the sad state within Christianity, where the only result of the Pope's "matirial" ambition was been the much Christian blood shed in the Italian War, resulting in the death of many great men who would otherwise have been able to fight against the enemies of the only faith. If they had united their strength instead of fighting each other and if they had fought the enemies of the holy faith as was the duty of every christian prince, they could push out the Turks from Europe and obtain a great advance into Asia. Morover, the Turks are weakened by great internal conflicts as well, and it would be easy to overpower them. But the possibility of a common front against the Turks is made impossible by this great hatred and animosity towards each other among the christian princes, lamented the Emperor.
If only the many who had fallen on both sides during the war in Italy had been sent against the Turks and other Muhammedans, they would easily have conquered Greece and the holy city of Jerusalem.
Now It was to be feared, the Emperor wrote, that the Turks, learning of the great turmoil within Christendom, could put an end to their internal conflict and move against the Christianity. He thus urged King John, as a christian prince who loved the true faith, to work to prevent such danger and the despair that threatens Christianity, helping him to negotiate the peace and the concord between the Pope and the princes to prevent greater evils in the future.
«When peace has been established in Christendom an attack ought to be made against the enemies and ill-wishers of the holy faith. It would be both usefull and beneficial and it cannot be delayed without great injury and danger to Christendom. To attack them now, would be easy and would result in the protection and advance of the holy faith».
In Hungary, the Jagiellonian kings not had the supremacy over the kingdom. To consolidate their position, they took on as allies some barons against other. The price was the weakening of the system of royal castle estates, and thus the weakening of the country’s military potential, taking account of the rising military strength of Poland, Bohemia and Venice.
The greatest threat came from the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, which endangered the very existence of the kingdom, and not just the southern counties.
The Ottoman’s success was not due to mere luck. Masses of martial and fanatic Turkish tribes arrived in Asia Minor with the desire of enrichment through western expansion. These tribes provided significant manpower for the Anatolian campaigns of the empire, and as a compensation for their services, the sultan had to guarantee the opportunity to fight and plunder from enemy territory. This continuous need for offensive military actions was not the only factor, which led to the Ottoman success in the Balkans. The political and military problems in Europe, especially in the affected regions in South Eastern, and Middle Eastern Europe, facilitated the Ottoman’s efforts. The internal struggles of the countries weakened their defensive capabilities. The differing interests among the ruling classes denied these nations to provide adequate force projection, when the Ottoman armies threatened their sovereignty. The religious oppositions between nations further sharpened the situation.
For example in the past the Bosnia was attacked several times, to convert the local population to Christianity. The Orthodox and heretic population in the Balkans welcomed the Ottomans as liberators, who were opened for less radical solutions for religious conversion. The Ottoman policy to support these nations had military benefits in the future, like the case of Serbia which became a vassal of the Ottoman Empire.
The Hungarian Diet created a soldiers recovery system (Telekkatonaság): in a defensive war was required the equipping of 5 mounted archers for every 100 tenant peasant plots. This, however, meant that really the soldiers were peasants, and were difficult to mobilise. The barons were increasingly less willing to participate in defence of the country’s borders. At the end, the Hungarin Diet in 1439 decided that mercenaries should be employed for border defence.
The defeat was definite proof that the main task of the following decades would be to halt the Ottoman expansion. Since the reign of Sigismund of Luxemburg, every available source of revenue in the country was been directed to provide a line of defensive forts, under a centralised command.
The burgeoning Ottoman Empire not only threatened the southern border lands, but has endangered directly the kingdom itself, and in subsequent decades, defence against Turkish conquest became the prime task of the Hungarian military.
«When King Sigismund began to assemble his coalition army against Sultan Bayezid, the French monarchy was still struggling with English conquerors on its own territory, and the Habsburgs still had a position no higher than many other more-or-less-independent princes. By the time of the tragic death of Louis II of Hungary in 1526, France had grown into a great power, and its King Francis I was fighting a life-or-death struggle in Italy with Emperor Charles V of Habsburg, who had inherited a world empire through the felicitous marriages of his forebears. In the meantime, the Byzantine Empire and the Burgundy of the Valois princes had disappeared, and political unity had been established among the countries of the Iberian Peninsula. The Christian ideal, of which the Nicopolis campaign [25 September 1396, also called "the Crusade of Nicopolis"] was the final embodiment, was swept away by the Reformation, and King Francis I of France’s intention to seek an alliance with the Ottoman Sultan against the Emperor hardly aroused any outrage. The Protestant German estates soon entered an alliance against their Catholic king, and promised armed assistance to France against the Catholic Emperor, even though France was the old enemy of England, whose monarchy had reorganised and become Protestant. In short, medieval Christendom gave way to the modern system of European states based on state interests» (Tamás Pálosfalvi, «From Nicopolis to Mohács 1396-1526»)
In 1453 Constantinople was captured.
Although it was not an unexpected event, it aroused astonishment and horror in the Christian world.
The Pope proclaimed a crusade. Pope Nicholas V tried to organise a crusade to recover the city, but it was yet another failure. Pope Callistus III did manage to organise one, funded by the sale of indulgences, but it was diverted and finished up attacking Genoa. Pope Pius II was so keen to revive the Crusades that he went himself, but hardly anyone else could be coerced into going with him. (see Silvia Ronchey, Marco Pellegrini, etc.).
Mehmed II turned against Serbia, and decided in early 1456 that he would attempt to take Belgrade.
Since King Ladislas "Posthumous" was came into conflict with his Austrian relative, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, the Hungarian barons did not rush to fulfil their duties of raising militias to preserve their country. Additionally, for the raging epidemic and the rising social dissatisfaction, the idea of offensive action against the Ottomans was come off the agenda for a long time.
For more than a century Hungary had managed to stop the advance of the Ottomans without consistent aids from the western European kingdoms.
The Jagiellonian kings of Hungary did not underestimate the Turkish threat.
During their reigns, constant efforts were made to improve the military system and to secure military and financial support from other Christian states, especially from the Holy Roman Empire and the Papal state. The Papacy sent significant sums of money to help the Hungarian war effort against the Turks, while the Habsburgs agreed to send 2.000 infantry in 1522, after Belgrade was occupied by the Turks. The Habsburgs were interested in the security of the Croatian-Slavonian border, from where the Turks might launch a direct offensive on their own territories.
The Jagiellon power collapsed in 1526 with the Battle of Mohács, installing the Turks as a menacing presence in the heart of Europe.
This was the "baggage" that had the Cardinal Tamás Bakócz, joined to a sincere Christian faith and a strong nationalist sentiment, a strong love for salvation of Christendom and for his country.
To imagine a crusade after Julius II, you must also imagine a different Pope after him.
Leo X, of course for reasons other than Julius II, was not conducive to the "concrete" realization of a crusade.
The same election of Giovanni de' Medici to the papacy was (also) made to prevent a imminent "concrete" Crusade.
The Church was suffering "physically" and financially for the wars that Julius II had caused, he was still at war with some Christian principles sowing division within the Christian world; the Church suffered also "spiritually" for a schism
forgotten by history, but that was the last manifestation of the spirit of the
conciliarism that with the Council of Constance has attempted to establish itself above the Papal supremacy, and that if it had found other conditions, almost scored again the Church, ravaged by time policy of Julius II: the Council of Pisa(-Milano), known as «Conciliabulum», which at its last session (21 April 1512) had declared deposed Julius II and proclaimed Pope the "rebel" Cardinal Bernardino López de Carvajal, who took the name of Martin VI.
The program proposed by Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici was firstly of pacify the European monarchs, and only then think about the Crusade, but once he become Pope, the foreign policy of Leo X is been perhaps more disastrous than that of Julius II, and the idea of Crusade found no realization because it never came the pacification of Europe.
At the conclave of 1513 Cardinal Tamás Bakócz was one of the favorites, the greater antagonistic to the idea of a Medici Pontificate.
Bakócz was a man so saint, devout, so much determined to a renewal of the Church through the catharsis and the washing of the Holy Crusade that he came to regard a (Machiavellian)
necessary evil procure the election as Pope also through simony (condemned by last just by Julius II).
Bakócz worked on two fronts: get the support of the most powerful cardinal, Raffaele Riario, and much "wealth" from his Hungary.
In the plan of Bakócz, even if the Cardinal Raffaele Riario Sansoni was the Dean of the College of Cardinals and papabile on paper, he had the disadvantage of being a relative of the hated Julius II and of being known for his morals not too much of churchman, as well as covetous of money: buy him it meant buy all the cardinals his
clients, and gain the favor of the "Cardinals elders" ("elders" for the cardinal's appointment date), promising to him to make the pope's vicar in Rome because Bakócz thought to participate directly at the Crusade.
But the first obstacle to the plan Bakócz came from his Hungary: the quarrelsome Hungarian barons not welcomed favorably the demand for money, ed only the Count Nicholas, Bakócz's brother, Szkamary, Teleki, Rakoczi, Daranyi and a few others have responded to the request, while the others, led by the Transylvanian John Zápolya and Esterhazy, refused, citing as an excuse that riches were to stay in Hungary for help against the Turks.
Thus the river of gold that was to poured on Rome promised by Bakócz, was reduced to twenty-two wagons full of all kinds of wealth.
At the entrance into the Conclave the support of Riario and "Cardinals elders" was, however, guaranteed to Bakócz, who yet would not be exposed until that had not been assured the votes necessary. For this reason at the first scrutiny (10 March), simplifying, Cardinal Serra received 7 votes, Grosso della Rovere 4, Accolti 3, Bakócz 3, Fieschi 4, Del Caretto 3, Grimani 1. The votes of Serra and Grosso were for Bakócz, and with the votes of Accolti, the election of Bakócz probably was secure at the next scrutiny.
But the maneuvers of Giovanni de' Medici are known to all (delay as much as possible the first scutinio with a long week of
negotiations; pretend to be very ill (anal fistula) in order to have, through his entourage, communications with the outside, because others supporters were working to intercept the wagons of Bakócz from the Hungary; corrupting the already corrupt cardinals by Riario for Bakócz, and the same Riario; fear the danger of an "impulsive" Crusade for the Church devasted by Julius II; etc.) led to his election the following day (11 March).
The whole history of Bakócz and the Conclave of 1513 is described in a masterly way in the work of Corrado Gasco; about the early 1500s and the Cardinal Giovanni de'Medici Noemi Rubello, Jonathan Dumont, Alain Marchandisse, Marcello Simonetta, Ladislao Pàlinkàs (Papal armies in Hungary), Richárd Botlik (Anglo-Hungarian relationship), etc.
If you bring a black line above Medici, you have a different Pope, favorable at an "imminent" Crusade...
Now, after the fall of Constantinople (1453), although in the imaginary of the Crusade remained the aim to liberate Jerusalem and the Holy Land, "politically" it was clear that it was neccessary first win back Constantinople and liberate the Balkans from the Turks.
But in the Balkans, in addition to the power struggles between the various barons in Hungary, there were also many other reasons for friction, as the dynastic and power struggles in Wallachia, the religious conflict between Catholics and Orthodox, the forced Islamization of regions such as Albania...
The panorama in Balkan Europe and in the Middle East was not more quiet than that in Western Europe...
However for the historic period that you want to cover in your thread,
http://thehistoryfix.tumblr.com/post/51891521909/the-second-to-last-crusade-the-abandoned-crusade
Good luck
