Why look at the wars themselves
The crusades are often summarized by their ideals. This article follows the fighting instead: who marched where, how the key sieges unfolded, and what separated expeditions that reached their goals from those that did not. Details of numbers and casualties in medieval chronicles are often exaggerated, so figures here are avoided or hedged.
The First Crusade: a success against the odds
The first expedition (1096-1099) achieved something later crusaders could not repeat. Several large contingents under independent leaders, including Godfrey of Bouillon, Bohemond of Taranto, Raymond of Toulouse and Robert of Normandy, converged on Constantinople and then crossed Anatolia together. Their goals did not always match, and the leaders quarreled, but several factors favored them.
- Their opponents were divided. Turkish emirs in Anatolia and Syria, and the Fatimid rulers of Egypt, were often rivals rather than allies.
- Heavy cavalry, supported by infantry and a few siege engines, could win pitched battles such as Dorylaeum in 1097.
- Byzantine help, at least at the start, supplied guidance and some provisions, notably at Nicaea.
The siege of Antioch lasted through the winter of 1097-98. The city’s walls were strong and hunger became severe. It fell in June 1098, reportedly after an inside man opened a gate, and the crusaders were then themselves besieged by a relief army, which they defeated. Jerusalem, besieged in the summer of 1099, was taken after assault towers were built from timber brought with great difficulty.
The Second Crusade: failure on the road
The Second Crusade (1147-1149) is a lesson in logistics. The French and German armies took the land route, and the German force was badly mauled in Anatolia, partly through lack of supplies and guidance. The attack on Damascus in 1148 was abandoned after a few days. Chroniclers blamed treachery, but modern historians usually point to poor planning, weak coordination with the local Frankish nobility, and a Damascus that was able to call on help from neighbors.
Hattin and the Third Crusade
By the 1180s, Saladin had united Egypt and much of Syria. At the Battle of Hattin in July 1187, the Frankish army marched out in summer heat toward a besieged castle with little water, and was surrounded and destroyed. Most strongholds then surrendered one by one, including Jerusalem.
The Third Crusade (1189-1192) began slowly. Frederick Barbarossa’s death on the way broke up the strongest army. The long siege of Acre, from 1189 to 1191, became the central event, and its capture gave the crusaders a base. Richard the Lionheart then won a hard victory at Arsuf in 1191 and advanced to within sight of Jerusalem twice, but chose not to besiege it, probably because holding the city and supplying the army seemed impossible. The campaign ended in a truce.
Targeting Egypt
Several later expeditions aimed at Egypt, on the reasoning that Egypt was the source of Muslim wealth and power. The Fifth Crusade took the port of Damietta in 1219, but its advance up the Nile in 1221 was halted when the river flooded. Louis IX also took Damietta in 1249, but his army was defeated at Mansourah in 1250, and many men fell ill. He was captured and later released for ransom. In both cases, the Nile and the heat were as decisive as the enemy.
Why some campaigns worked and others did not
Looking across the wars, a few patterns recur, although none is a rule.
- Command. The First Crusade had no single commander, yet it held together long enough. Later armies led by kings faced the opposite problem: royal rivalry, as between Richard and Philip, damaged cooperation.
- Supply and sea access. Armies that could be fed by sea, using Italian ships, tended to do better than those marching long distances.
- The enemy’s unity. Crusaders succeeded when their opponents were divided and struggled when a leader like Saladin, or later the Mamluks, gathered the resources of Egypt and Syria.
- Local knowledge. The Latin settlers knew the land and its diplomacy, but visiting crusaders often ignored local advice.
The endgame
In the thirteenth century, the Mamluk sultans of Egypt, notably Baybars, took Frankish strongholds systematically. The final loss of Acre in 1291 followed a prolonged siege by the Mamluk army. By then, the coastal cities and castles could no longer be defended without regular reinforcement from Europe, and such reinforcement had become irregular. The wars show that the early victories rested on circumstances that did not last.