60 Fun Facts About Crusades

Which pope proclaimed the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont in 1095?

Urban II promised remission of sins to all who marched east, yet never learned how it ended: he died two weeks after Jerusalem fell, before the news could reach Italy.

Which Seljuk capital, site of a famous church council in 325, surrendered in 1097 during the First Crusade's opening siege?

Nicaea gave up in June 1097, but to the Byzantine emperor's envoys, who had bargained in secret with its Turkish garrison; the crusaders camped outside were left without the plunder they had expected.

Which Byzantine emperor's appeal for help against the Seljuk Turks sparked the First Crusade?

Alexios I Komnenos had asked the West for mercenaries to help him win back Anatolia; what arrived instead were vast armies with a goal of their own, Jerusalem.

Where was the 1071 battle in which the Seljuks captured a Byzantine emperor and opened Anatolia?

Manzikert left Emperor Romanos IV a prisoner of the sultan Alp Arslan, who freed him on terms; his rivals at home then overthrew and blinded him, and Anatolia lay open to the Turks.

The Latin battle cry of the First Crusade, 'Deus vult', means what?

God wills it: one eyewitness chronicle has cross-wearing crusaders chanting it three times with one voice in 1096, and shouting it again with glad voices as they seized an enemy city's towers.

Which French priest led the peasant 'People's Crusade' of 1096?

Peter the Hermit was away asking the Byzantine emperor for help when the Turks wiped out his followers, so he survived, joined the princes' armies and preached on the Mount of Olives before Jerusalem fell.

On their way east in 1096, crusaders led by Count Emicho carried out massacres of Jews in which region?

The Rhineland towns of Worms and Mainz saw Jews killed even inside the bishops' palaces where they had sought shelter; Emicho never reached the Holy Land, for the Hungarians routed his band on the way.

Which city did the First Crusade capture in June 1098 after a siege of more than seven months?

Antioch fell when an Armenian guard let the crusaders climb into his tower by night; within days a huge Turkish relief army arrived and trapped the victors inside the city they had just taken.

Which relic did Peter Bartholomew claim to unearth during the 1098 siege in Syria?

The Holy Lance, dug from under a church floor after Peter's visions, rallied the besieged crusaders, but doubts never died: he tried to prove it by walking through fire and was dead within two weeks.

Which Shia dynasty ruling from Cairo had retaken Jerusalem from the Turks a year before the crusaders stormed it?

The Fatimids of Egypt won Jerusalem back in 1098, so a crusade preached against the Turks ended on 15 July 1099 by storming a city held by the Turks' own enemies.

Godfrey of Bouillon would not be called king in Jerusalem and, by tradition, took which title?

Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre is the title tradition gives him, with the story that he would not wear a crown of gold where Christ had worn thorns; his brother and successor had no such qualms and was crowned king in 1100.

The crusader states were also known by the French name 'Outremer', meaning what?

Overseas, literally 'beyond the sea': Outremer was always short of fighting men, because most crusaders went home once Jerusalem was won.

The Second Crusade was called after which crusader state fell to Zengi in 1144?

The County of Edessa, the first crusader state to be founded, was also the first to fall: Zengi struck while its count had marched most of his army away, and the city was his by Christmas Eve 1144.

Which abbot preached the Second Crusade in a famous sermon at Vézelay in 1146?

Bernard of Clairvaux drew such a crowd that he had to preach in a field; when the crusade he had raised collapsed, the blame fell on him and he sent the pope a written apology.

The Second Crusade's main army under Louis VII and Conrad III failed to take which city in 1148?

Damascus had once been an ally of the crusader kingdom, yet the two kings chose it as their target and abandoned the siege after only four days, short of water outside its walls.

Which queen of France rode on the Second Crusade beside her husband, Louis VII?

Eleanor of Aquitaine came home estranged from Louis; the marriage was annulled in 1152, and within two months she had married Henry Plantagenet, the future Henry II, taking Aquitaine with her.

Crusaders sailing to the Second Crusade stopped in 1147 to help capture which Iberian city from the Moors?

Lisbon fell after a four-month siege: bad weather had driven the crusader fleet into Porto, where Portugal's king won its help by promising the city's plunder, and many settled there instead of sailing on.

Saladin, founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, was of which ethnic origin?

Kurdish: Saladin was born into a Kurdish military family and first reached Egypt on the staff of his uncle Shirkuh, whose command he took over in 1169 at the age of 31.

Saladin destroyed the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem on 4 July 1187 at which battle?

Hattin was won by thirst: Saladin lured the army away from its springs onto an arid plateau, and after a night without water it broke; King Guy was captured and the relic of the True Cross was lost.

The 'Horns' that give Saladin's great 1187 victory its name are the twin peaks of what?

An extinct volcano: the waterless crusader army, already choked by smoke from the brush fires Saladin's men had lit, made its last stand on the slopes of its twin peaks.

Which crusader lord's raid on a Muslim caravan during a truce provoked Saladin's 1187 campaign?

Raynald of Châtillon had earlier sent ships down the Red Sea to threaten the pilgrim road to Mecca; captured in 1187, he was killed, by most accounts, by Saladin's own hand.

Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, who beat Saladin at Montgisard in 1177, is known by which nickname?

The Leper King's illness was first noticed by his tutor, the chronicler William of Tyre, who saw that the boy felt nothing when playmates scratched his arm; he still led armies against Saladin in his teens.

The Third Crusade was led by Richard I, the King of France and which emperor?

Frederick Barbarossa, by then in his late sixties, was the first of the three to set out, and chose to march his army overland through the Balkans and Anatolia while the two kings went by sea.

How did the German emperor die on the Third Crusade in June 1190?

He drowned crossing a river, the Saleph in what is now Turkey; accounts differ on whether he fell from his horse or stopped to bathe, but most of his army turned for home and only a remnant reached the Holy Land.

On his way to the Holy Land in 1191 Richard I conquered which island from Isaac Komnenos?

Cyprus fell within weeks: its ruler had seized Richard's shipwrecked followers, and tradition says that Richard, having promised not to put Isaac in irons, had him bound in chains of silver instead.

Richard I defeated Saladin in September 1191 at which battle during the crusaders' march south along the coast?

Arsuf was decided by a charge Richard may not have ordered: after hours under arrow fire the Hospitallers at the rear broke ranks, and he threw every knight in behind them and drove Saladin's army from the field.

The 1192 Treaty of Jaffa left Jerusalem in Muslim hands but granted what?

Access for unarmed Christian pilgrims was the most Richard could win: he had marched within sight of Jerusalem but judged that he lacked the men to hold it even if he took it, and settled for a three-year truce.

In legend, which minstrel found the captive Richard I by singing beneath castle walls?

Blondel belongs to a tale first told around 1260. The real captive was passed from Duke Leopold of Austria to the emperor Henry VI, who set his price at 150,000 marks, a sum raised by heavy new taxes on Richard's subjects.

Which relative plotted with France's king to seize the captive Richard I's throne?

John, his younger brother, allied with the king of France and tried to seize the throne while the 150,000-mark ransom was being raised; once free, Richard forgave him and in the end named him heir.

Richard I survived the Third Crusade only to be killed in 1199 by what weapon while besieging a minor French castle?

A crossbow bolt at Châlus ended a ten-year reign of which he had spent barely six months in his own kingdom; the rest went on crusade, in a German prison and at war in France.

The Fourth Crusade, meant for Egypt, ended instead with the 1204 sack of which Christian city?

Constantinople lost even its landmarks: the Venetians, whose fleet had carried the crusade, shipped the four bronze horses of the Hippodrome home to St Mark's, where they stood until Napoleon looted them in turn.

Which aged and blind Doge of Venice steered the Fourth Crusade towards Zara and the Byzantine capital?

Enrico Dandolo had the leverage: the crusaders could not pay for the fleet Venice had built them, so he offered to defer the debt if they first retook rebellious Zara. He died in the conquered capital in 1205.

After the sack of the Byzantine capital, who was crowned emperor of the new Latin Empire in Hagia Sophia?

Baldwin IX of Flanders was chosen over the crusade's own commander, Boniface of Montferrat, then reigned barely a year: the Bulgarians captured him in battle in 1205 and he died in their prison.

Which 1212 movement set out, in legend, believing the Mediterranean would part to let its marchers walk to Jerusalem?

The Children's Crusade, led in the tales by a French shepherd boy and a German youth, found the sea unmoved; in the legend merchants offered ships instead and sold many of the marchers into slavery.

The Fifth Crusade captured and held which Egyptian port for two years from 1219?

Damietta mattered so much to Egypt that its sultan offered to give back Jerusalem for it; the papal legate Pelagius refused, marched up the Nile instead, and lost army and port alike when the sluices were opened.

Which saint walked into the Fifth Crusade's camp in 1219 asking to visit Sultan al-Kamil?

Francis of Assisi expected to convert the sultan or be martyred; instead he was received graciously, preached in the Muslim camp for a few days and walked back to the crusaders, leaving the war as it was.

Which emperor, excommunicated by the pope, won back Jerusalem in 1229 by treaty without fighting a battle?

Frederick II sailed under a papal ban for his delays, bargained a ten-year truce out of Egypt's sultan that handed over Jerusalem, and then set the crown on his own head in its holiest church.

Which pope called both the Fourth Crusade and, in 1209, the Albigensian Crusade?

Innocent III soon lost control of the first: he excommunicated its army for storming the Christian city of Zara, and it sailed on to sack another Christian capital anyway.

Which French king led the Seventh Crusade to Egypt in 1249 and was captured with most of his army?

Louis IX paid a vast ransom for himself and his army, then, instead of sailing home, spent four more years in the Holy Land strengthening its fortresses; he is the only king of France to be made a saint.

The Eighth Crusade collapsed in 1270 when its royal leader died of disease outside which North African city?

Tunis was as far as the crusade got: disease swept the summer camp, the king died within weeks, and his newly arrived brother Charles of Anjou took command and brought the army back to Sicily.

Lord Edward's Crusade of 1271–72, sometimes called the Ninth, was led by the future king of which realm?

England's future Edward I killed an assassin who stabbed him with a dagger feared to be poisoned, then learned in Sicily on the way home that his father had died and he was already king.

The Knights Templar were founded around 1119 with what original purpose?

Protecting pilgrims on the roads to Jerusalem was the whole job at first; the king lodged the knights in the former Aqsa Mosque, which crusaders called the Temple of Solomon, and the address became their name.

On Friday 13 October 1307 which king had the Templars in France arrested?

Philip IV was deep in debt to the order he destroyed: his officers extracted confessions of heresy from the arrested knights, and under his pressure Pope Clement V dissolved the Templars in 1312.

After losing the Holy Land, the Knights Hospitaller ruled which island from 1310 to 1522?

Rhodes stayed theirs until the Ottomans took it in 1522; eight years later Charles V settled the homeless knights on Malta, for a yearly rent of a single falcon.

Which military order began as a field hospital on the Third Crusade and later carved out its own state in Prussia?

The Teutonic Knights started as a tent hospital run by merchants from Bremen and Lübeck, became a fighting order in 1198, and ended up ruling a state of their own from the fortress of Marienburg.

Krak des Chevaliers fell to the Mamluks in 1271 reportedly by what trick?

A forged letter ordering surrender, supposedly from the Hospitallers' own Grand Master, is said to have ended the five-week siege: the knights opened the gates, and the sultan spared their lives.

The Mamluk general Baibars helped halt the Mongols' westward advance at which 1260 battle in Galilee?

Ain Jalut was won by a feigned retreat: Baibars drew the Mongol cavalry into hills where the main Mamluk army lay hidden. Weeks later he joined the plot that killed his own sultan and took the throne.

Who was the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, burned at the stake in Paris in 1314?

Jacques de Molay took back the confession forced from him and went to the fire protesting the order's innocence; the king and the pope who had destroyed it were both dead within the year.

At which Persian castle did Hasan-i Sabbah found the Order of Assassins in 1090?

Alamut was the sect's headquarters for over 160 years and was thought impregnable; it fell at last in 1256 to the Mongols, who took the Assassins' castles one by one.

The Albigensian Crusade of 1209–1229 was launched to wipe out which heresy in southern France?

Catharism outlived twenty years of war: the crusade's lasting result was political, bringing Languedoc under the French crown, and it took the Inquisition, set up afterwards, to hunt down the last believers.

The Northern Crusades aimed to Christianise pagans around which sea?

The Baltic crusades ran from the 1140s into the 15th century: Lithuania's grand prince accepted baptism in 1386, and in 1410 Poland and Lithuania together crushed the crusaders at Grunwald.

Crusaders knew the feared leader of the Assassins by which nickname?

The Old Man of the Mountain ruled from hill castles and killed by stealth: his agents twice tried to murder Saladin, and in 1192 they stabbed the newly chosen King of Jerusalem in the street.

The Reconquista, the Iberian counterpart to the crusades, ended in 1492 with the capture of which city?

Granada's last emir handed over the Alhambra in January 1492; Columbus was waiting in the royal camp, and with the war won Ferdinand and Isabella agreed to fund his voyage west that same year.

After losing Jerusalem in 1187, the crusader kingdom was re-established in 1192 with its capital in which port?

Acre, retaken in 1191, served as the kingdom's capital for a century; when the Mamluks stormed it in 1291 the crusaders lost their last major stronghold in the Holy Land.

Which princess did Richard I marry on his way to the Third Crusade?

Berengaria of Navarre was brought out to him by his mother and married on the voyage; tradition has it that she never once set foot in her husband's kingdom, which Richard himself scarcely saw again.

The seal of the Knights Templar showed two knights sharing what?

One horse under two riders is often read as a sign of the order's early poverty, an odd badge for what the Templars became: trusted bankers with whom the kings of France kept their treasure.

Whatever their homeland, the western settlers of the crusader states were known to their neighbours by what name?

Franks was what Greeks and Arabs alike called every western settler, French or not, and the label outlived the crusades: words descended from it still mean 'Westerner' in languages from Persian to Thai.

The crusade of 1365, led by the Lusignan king Peter I, sacked which great port before sailing away within days?

Alexandria was looted for days, but Peter could not keep his prize: his own troops refused to stay and defend it, and the crusade sailed home with its plunder.

Where was a French and Burgundian crusading army crushed by the Ottomans in 1396?

Nicopolis began with a quarrel over precedence: the French knights insisted on charging first, ahead of their Hungarian allies, and were cut off; Burgundy's heir was captured and freed only for an enormous ransom.

Which knight negotiated the surrender of Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187?

Balian of Ibelin, the hero of the film Kingdom of Heaven, won terms by threat: he told Saladin the defenders would destroy the holy places and their own treasure before yielding, and Saladin let the inhabitants buy their freedom.