Crusades
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Later Crusades Essay.
After the first Christian Crusade that begun in 1095 there were eight classified crusades that generally aimed towards the area of Sirya and Palestne that lasted until
the 1270s. Yet after much humiliation and the repeated defeat of the Crusaders in the Lavant, most of the Eropean powers understood the fact that the Holy Land was unnatainable. Most the crusading efforts were aimed at the enemies of Catholics such as the Turkish invaders who sought to destroy Christianity and the doctrinal heretics in Bohemia. Two such crusades are The Crusade against
the Ottoman turks which started around the mid 14th century and the crusade against
the Hussite heretics which started in 1420. To further understand the similarities and differences between these two crusades perhaps it would be best to associate them to our definition of a crusade and see how they compare and differ from each other as well as compare them to the first crusade. The reason I chose to analize particularly these two crusades is because they fall into the same time frame, have different objectives and perhaps hinder the each others succes.
After the defeat of the Seljuk Turks by the Mongols in 1243 a Ghazi prince by the name of Ertugrul had assimilated a small state by his death in 1280. This state, later ruled by his son Osman had spread its rule over a large area in north-west Asia Minor, as far as the Agean and the Black sea. This was the beginning of the Ottoman Turks as well as the beginning of their wide spread conquest of the region due to their state being well governed as well as having a disciplined army. By 1331 the Ottoman Turks have taken Nicaea and Uskudar (across the Bosporus from Constantinople) and by 1389 had singificant dominance over the Balkans. In 1370 the new Catholic pope, Gregory XI was already raising the threat of the Ottomans to the European lords. Yet a major unity of European powers were wrecked by the self-interest of each country and its benefit. For example the German princes did not want to have a major crusade for the fear of rising imperial authority. During this time every ruler in Europe “Ðacknowledged the need for a crusade, as the only practicable means of pooling the resources required to combat this massive and hostile power; but in practice nearly all of them blocked its organization” . Thus except a few small naval victories such as the victory of a Christion colatiotion over a Turkish fleet in 1359 , the Eropenas were drastically unsuccessful
at pushing the turks back.
How does this compare with our definition of “crusade”. We define a crusade as an holy war that is sanctioned by the pope where the aims and objective are clearly laid out by the pope as well. Where a votum (oath) is taken to carry out the crusade from beginning to end. In the crusades against
the Ottoman turks the European royalty controlled all the military actions (however unsucsessfull) and were not obligated to the pope. Perhaps It was more of a direct threat of annialation by the destructive armys of Ertugruls descendants that threatened the Catholics then their belief in a different god.
Perhaps the lack of military success against
t the Ottomans can be contibuted to the fact that between 1420 and 1431 a major crusade against
herecy was launched against
the Hussites in Bohemia. Within the Bohemian lands a preacher by the name of John Hus was responsible for radically reinterpreting basic Catholic beliefs and thus creating a mass population of heretic followers, the Hussites. The King of Hungary who had inherited the crown after 1419 had very strong concerns about this problem and as a commander had diverted a large Hungarian army to enter its own lands on a crusade to exterminate the Hussites. This was a very foolish move as those same men were fighting the Turks at hungarys southern border.
This long term military conflict that lasted up to 1467 proved ultimatly unsuccsessfull in wiping the Hussites out. In the primitive condition of 15th sentury warfare the Hussites benefited from the military knowledge of John Ziska whos short lines of communication and supply proved victorious over the crusader abilities to launch surprise multi-directional attacks.
This crusade also did not match up with the traditional crusade definition as it was fought mainly in the interest of the Hungarian Kings dominance of his own land. It was also not defined by the pope as to what the objectives would be and the final solution