Sun, Jun 11, 2006
The unsettling true story of the First Crusade, an orgy of Christian fanaticism and violent opportunism, 1095-99. Byzantine emperor Alexios asked the pope for help in his desperate defense against the Sedjuk Turks, but instead of a knightly contingent got huge waves of only low-class desperadoes, committing plunder without military experience. He was relieved to set them on the road to Jerusalem through Asia Minor, at least they regained Nicaea for him, fought the Turkish Saracens and succeeding against odds to found crusader states for some of their noble generals, who thus broke their promise to the legitimate but Orthodox emperor. The first was Antiochia, through treason.
Sun, Jun 18, 2006
The first Crusade continued, 'crowned' by the conquest of Jerusalem, drowned in another sea of blood, Jewish as well as Muslim. The crusader territories, the Jerusalem realm and its vassals (Antioch, Edessa and Tripolis) and the military orders (Templars and St.John's Hospitallers) are under 'guerilla' siege from Muslims. The Muslims themselves are internally divided by the Sunni-Shiah-schism and political divisions, until the ruthless Ayyubite usurper Saladdin re-united Egypt and Greater Syria. After the Second and Third Crusade, starring French viz. English kings Philip August and Richard the Lionheart, the Catholic implantation was only prolonged, not saved. The ultimately inevitable results were disastrous in the Orient, even to this day.