Originally Posted by
Philippon
Teutonic Joe: Historically, the crusades were the mixture of military and economical resources in taking a designated sites.
Me: That's the fashionable theory of today. But it simply does not jibe with the written records we have of the people who actually went on them. While there are those today who's superficial approach to deep beliefs led them to conclude that the faith claims were just the 'poltiical' response, cynically delivered, the simple fact is that most of the crusaders were doing what they claimed to be doing .. . going on a pilgrimage (which is what they called them) and making sure that anyone who tried to stop them got stompped.
Now there were of course, folks who got all wrapped up in the taking of cities and dutchies and counties and such, and were going for that reason alone . . . but as the eyewitness reports show, when Bohemond was determined to stay in Antioch, his own men began to systematically tear down the walls of Antioch so that he would be left with a very large and easily plundered principality for the first Turkish warlord who took a fancy to it.
Now can anyone here imagine the American Army deliberately blowing up their own nuclear missle bases, sinking their aircraft carriers, and dumping their own tanks into the ocean until the President promised to send them to Israel to fight Al Quada? The President being unable to stop it since his own Generals were helping the deliberate sabotaging of the countries defenses?
That's how seriously Bohemond's men took their vow to pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
They didn't stop until Bohemond agreed to continue with the crusade and gave a date for the march south.
And when he didn't keep that, they left without him.
So that left Bohemond with half torn down walls, and no troops, in his 'precious' city of Antioch with envoys of the Byzantine Empire knocking on his door reminding him that he had sworn an oath to turn that city over to them, and an army of 30,000 Greeks on the hill outside likewise rather annoyed at his duplicity up to that point.
Upon taking of Jerusalem, 95% of the crusaders went back to Europe. And that was the persistant pattern throughout the crusading period.
The real problem you see, is that it's hard for many modern men to grasp that a man would pay his own way to march in an army of people likewise paying their own way, and then take nothing back save a few souvineers, like pebbles from the River Jordan or rocks from the Temple Mount. It simply boggles the imagination that people died by the tens of thousands on these journeys and did not fear such a fate.
Death on the way there or back wasn't regarded as a failure . . . but a triumph.
As G.K. Chesterton put it in his poem, "Lepanto".
"It is he that says not Kismet.
It is he who knows not fate.
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey at the gate.
It he who's loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth . . ."
Soldiers today expect to get paid. On the crusade, they actually thought they were going to become better people by doing this without any reward.
As Europe progressed the political considerations gained dominance, helped by short sighted Popes who let the power of it go to their heads and destroyed over time, the ideal of the crusade. But it never completely died until the Reformation destroyed the idea of Christendom.
Dr Regen Pernoud, the Medieval French Achivast in Paris, wrote a very good book on the history of the crusades which lays out the typical mindset of the crusader. It is titled appropriate enough "The Crusades".