Post by The Herald Erjen on Aug 3, 2017 9:40:01 GMT
Did the crusades save Europe? From Islam? Not so sure...
After the first five crusades...the big ones...Constantinople still fell, and the Turks did advance well into Europe. The Battle of Lepanto definitely stalled them, but they held on into the 1800's. That's several centuries of dominion in European land.
But, they held parts of eastern Europe and the Balkans, and fuck those places, right? So maybe it's more accurate to say that the Crusades saved Western Europe? But how true is that? The video briefly mentions the Albigensian crusade, where the Catholic forces massacred > 200,000 Cathars in southern France. So...the defenders of Europe turned on themselves. Just goes to show you that the only thing medieval Christians hated more than muslims were Christians of a different denomination. Meanwhile Islamic states still resided fairly comfortably in Spain, while most of the military forces went down to the holy land instead of participating in the reconquista. So, life in western Europe still sucked.
So then maybe the Crusades saved Christendom? Sure. But how much of a threat were the muslim forces prior to the Crusades? Islamic advances in Spain had already been checked a couple centuries before, and the unified Islamic world had already split into the fractious, infighting mess that it has been pretty much up to the present day. Perhaps, if the Islamic arabic dynasties of the Mid-East were allowed to remain in power, then the invading Seljuk Turks from the east would have been checked, or at least stalled in their eventual conquest of Anatolia. Also, Christendom was fighting among itself (again, Albigensian Crusade and the Fourth Crusade) and would only continue to get worse in the Reformation in the coming centuries. The wars of religion following the Reformation far outweigh the crusades in casualties...but it's Christian on Christian killing, so baby Jesus can at least feel a little better about that. As long as those sand loving rag heads don't kill any of our guys, it's all good.
So, perhaps the most accurate thing to say is that the Crusades saved (mostly) western Europe (except Spain) from being killed by Muslims, although western European Christians did plenty of killing among themselves in the process. I dunno, seems like it's all kind of a wash.