Crusaders

Islamophobes who fought in the Crusades against the Byzantine Empire.

Two crusaders sparring

Devon C. Taylor

Eric Taimourian

Joshua Keim

## Members

Crusaders have to go through rigorous training in order to become perfect soldiers. Although budget cuts caused a lack of weapons and uniforms and excessive death caused a desperation for recruits.

Named members include:

* Arnold
* Norman
* Gilbert
* Larry
* Larry's brother
* Philip

## Ideology

The use of violence for communal purposes was not alien to early Christians. The evolution of a Christian theology of war was inevitable when Roman citizenship became linked to Christianity and citizens were required to fight against the Empire's enemies. This was supported by the development of a doctrine of holy war dating from the works of the 4th-century theologian Augustine. Augustine maintained that an aggressive war was sinful, but acknowledged a "just war" could be rationalised if it was proclaimed by a legitimate authority such as a king or bishop, was defensive or for the recovery of lands, and without an excessive degree of violence.

Violent acts were commonly used for dispute resolution in Western Europe, and the papacy attempted to mitigate it. Historians, such as Carl Erdmann, thought the Peace and Truce of God movements restricted conflict between Christians from the 10th century; the influence is apparent in Pope Urban II's speeches. Later historians, such as Marcus Bull, assert that the effectiveness was limited and it had died out by the time of the crusades.

Pope Alexander II developed a system of recruitment via oaths for military resourcing that Gregory VII extended across Europe.  Christian conflict with Muslims on the southern peripheries of Christendom was sponsored by the Church in the 11th century, including the siege of Barbastro and fighting in Sicily In 1074 Gregory VII planned a display of military power to reinforce the principle of papal sovereignty. His vision of a holy war supporting Byzantium against the Seljuks was the first crusade prototype, but lacked support. Theologian Anselm of Lucca took the decisive step towards an authentic crusader ideology, stating that fighting for legitimate purposes could result in the remission of sins.

The first crusade was advocated by Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095, promising absolution for the participants' sins. An equivalence was created between crusades for the Holy Land and the Reconquista by Calixtus II in 1123. During the period of the Second Crusade Eugenius III was persuaded by the Cistercian abbot, Bernard of Clairvaux, that the German's conquest of the pagan Slavs was also comparable. The 1146 papal bull *Divina dispensatione* declared pagan conversion was a goal worthy of crusade. Papal protection, penance and salvation for those killed was extended to participants in the suppression of heretical sects in 1179 during the Third Council of the Lateran.

Elected pope in 1198, Innocent III reshaped the ideology and practice of crusading. He emphasised crusader oaths and penitence, and clarified that the absolution of sins was a gift from God, rather than a reward for the crusaders' sufferings. Taxation to fund crusading was introduced and donation encouraged. In 1199 he was the first pope to deploy the conceptual and legal apparatus developed for crusading to enforce papal rights. With his 1213 bull *Quia maior* he appealled to all Christians, not just the nobility, offering the possibility of vow redemption without crusading. This set a precedent for trading in spiritual rewards, a practice that scandalised devout Christians and later became one of the causes of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. From the 1220s crusader privileges were regularly granted to those who fought against heretics, schismatics or Christians the papacy considered non-conformist. When Frederick II's army threatened Rome, Gregory IX used crusading terminology. Rome was seen as the Patrimony of Saint Peter, and canon law regarded crusades as defensive wars to protect theoretical Christian territory.

Innocent IV rationalised crusading ideology on the basis of the Christians' right to ownership. He acknowledged Muslims' land ownership, but emphasised that this was subject to Christ's authority. In the 16th century the rivalry between Catholic monarchs prevented anti-Protestant crusades but individual military actions were rewarded with crusader privileges, including Irish Catholic rebellions against English Protestant rule and the Spanish Armada's attack on Queen Elizabeth I and England.

## History

### Background

Christianity was adopted by the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity and Constantinople was founded by the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great, in 324. The city developed into the largest in the Christian world, while the Western Roman Empire collapsed at the end of the 5th century. The city and the Eastern Roman Empire are more generally known as Byzantium, the name of the older Greek city it replaced. By the end of the 11th century the period of Islamic Arab territorial expansion had been over for centuries. Its remoteness from focus of Islamic power struggles enabled relative peace and prosperity for the Holy Land in Syria and Palestine. The conflict in the Iberian peninsula was the only location where Muslim-Western European contact was more than minimal.

The Byzantine Empire and the Islamic world were long standing centres of wealth, culture and military power. They viewed Western Europe as a backwater that presented little organised threat. The Byzantine Emperor Basil II had extended territorial recovery to its furthest extent in 1025. The Empire's frontiers stretched east to Iran. It controlled Bulgaria, much of southern Italy and suppressed piracy in the Mediterranean Sea. The Empire's relationships with its Islamic neighbours were no more quarrelsome than its relationships with the Slavs or the Western Christians. The Normans in Italy; to the north Pechenegs, Serbs and Cumans; and Seljuk Turks in the east all competed with the Empire and the emperors recruited mercenaries—even on occasions from their enemies—to meet this challenge.

After the foundation of the Islamic religion by Muhammad in the 7th century, Muslim Arabs conquered territory from the Indus in the east, and across North Africa and Southern France to the Iberian Peninsula in the West, before political and religious fragmentation halted this expansion. Syria, Egypt, and North Africa were taken from the Byzantine Empire. The emergence of Shia Islam—the belief system that only descendants of Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, Ali, and daughter, Fatimah, could lawfully be caliph— had led to a split with Sunni Islam on theology, ritual and law. Muslim Iberia was an independent state in modern Spain and Portugal from the 8th century. The Shi'ite Fatimid dynasty ruled North Africa, swathes of Western Asia including Jerusalem, Damascus and parts of the Mediterranean coastline from 969. Total submission to Islam from Jews or Christians was not required. As People of the Book or dhimmi they could continue in their faith on payment of a poll tax. In the Near East a minority Muslim elite ruled over indigenous Christians—Greeks, Armenians, Syrians and Copts.

Waves of Turkic migration into the Middle East enjoined Arab and Turkic history from the 9th century. Prisoners from the borderlands of Khurasan and Transoxania were transported to central Islamic lands, converted to Islam and given military training. Known as ghulam or mamluks, it was expected that as slaves they would be more loyal to their masters. In practice it took these Turks only a few decades to progress from being guards, to commanders, governors, dynastic founders and eventually king makers. Examples include the Tulunids in Egypt and Syria (868–905) and the Ikhshidids who followed in Egypt (935–969).

The political situation in Western Asia was further changed by later waves of Turkish migration. In particular, the arrival of the Seljuk Turks in the 10th century. Previously a minor ruling clan from Transoxania, they had recently converted to Islam and migrated into Iran to seek their fortune. In the two decades following their arrival they conquered Iran, Iraq and the Near East. The Seljuks and their followers were from the Sunni Islamic tradition which brought them into conflict in Palestine and Syria with the Shi'ite Fatimids. The Seljuks were nomadic, Turkish speaking and occasionally shamanistic, very different from their sedentary, Arabic speaking subjects. This difference and the governance of territory based on political preference, and competition between independent princes rather than geography, weakened power structures. Byzantine Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes attempted confrontation in 1071 to suppress the Seljuks sporadic raiding, leading to his defeat at the Battle of Manzikert. Historians once considered this a pivotal event but now Manzikert is regarded as only one further step in the expansion of the Great Seljuk Empire.

The papacy had declined in power and influence to little more than a localised bishopric by the start of the 11th century. But in the period from the 1050s until the 1080s, under the influence of the Gregorian Reform movement, it became increasingly assertive. Conflict with eastern Christians resulted from the doctrine of papal supremacy. The Eastern church viewed the pope as only one of the five patriarchs of the Church, alongside the Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Jerusalem. In 1054 differences in custom, creed, and practice spurred Pope Leo IX to send a delegation to the Patriarch of Constantinople, which ended in mutual excommunication and an East–West Schism.

### First Crusade

In 1095, Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos requested military aid from Pope Urban II at the Council of Piacenza, probably a small body of mercenary reinforcements he could direct and control. Alexios had restored the Empire's finances and authority but still faced numerous foreign enemies. Most significant were the migrating Turks, in particular the Seljuks and their followers, who had colonised the sparsely populated areas of Anatolia. Later that year at the Council of Clermont, Urban raised the issue of military support again and preached for a crusade. Almost immediately, the French priest Peter the Hermit led thousands of mostly poor Christians out of Europe in what became known as the People's Crusade. In transit through Germany these crusaders spawned German bands who massacred Jewish communities in what became known as the Rhineland massacres. This was part of wide-ranging anti-Jewish activities, extending from limited, spontaneous violence to full-scale military attacks. Jews were perceived to be as much an enemy as Muslims: they were held responsible for the crucifixion, and were more immediately visible than the distant Muslims. Many people wondered why they should travel thousands of miles to fight non-believers when there were already non-believers closer to home. The end of the Peoples' Crusade was abrupt. Almost immediately after leaving Byzantine controlled territory on their journey to Nicaea the crusaders were annihilated in a Turkish ambush at the Battle of Civetot.

Conflict with Pope Urban II meant that King Philip I of France and Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV declined to participate in the crusade. But members of the high aristocracy from France, western Germany, the Low Countries, Languedoc and Italy led independent military contingents in loose, fluid arrangements based on bonds of lordship, family, ethnicity and language. Foremost amongst these was the elder statesman, Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse. He was rivalled by the relatively poor but martial Italo-Norman Bohemond of Taranto and his nephew Tancred. They were joined by Godfrey of Bouillon and his brother Baldwin and forces from Lorraine, Lotharingia, and Germany. These five princes were pivotal to the campaign, which was also joined by a northern French army led by: Robert Curthose, Count Stephen II of Blois, and Count Robert II of Flanders. The armies, which may have contained as many as 100,000 people including non-combatants, travelled eastward by land to Byzantium where they were cautiously welcomed by the Emperor. Alexios persuaded many of the princes to pledge allegiance to him; he also convinced them their first objective should be Nicaea, the capital of the Sultanate of Rum. The over-confident Sultan Kilij Arslan left the city to resolve a territorial dispute, thus enabling its capture after a crusader siege and a Byzantine naval assault. This was a high point in Latin and Greek co-operation and the beginning of crusader attempts to take advantage of disunity in the Muslim world.

The first experience of Turkish tactics, using lightly armoured mounted archers, occurred when an advanced party led by Bohemond and Robert was ambushed at Dorylaeum. The Normans resisted for hours before the arrival of the main army caused a Turkish withdrawal. The crusader army marched for three arduous months to the former Byzantine city Antioch, that had been in Muslim control since 1084. Numbers were reduced by starvation, thirst and disease, combined with Baldwin's decision to leave with 100 knights and their followers to carve out his own territory in Edessa which became one of the crusader states. The crusaders besieged Antioch for eight months but lacked the resources to fully invest the city; the residents lacked the means to repel the invaders. Finally, Bohemond persuaded a guard in the city to open a gate. The crusaders entered, massacring the Muslim inhabitants as well as many Christians amongst the Greek Orthodox, Syrian and Armenian communities.

A force to recapture the city was raised by Kerbogha, the effective ruler of Mosul. The Byzantines did not march to the assistance of the crusaders because the deserting Stephen of Blois told them the cause was lost. Instead Alexius retreated from Philomelium, where he received Stephen's report, to Constantinople. The Greeks were never truly forgiven for this perceived betrayal and Stephen was branded a coward. Losing numbers through desertion and starvation in the besieged city, the crusaders attempted to negotiate surrender but were rejected. Bohemond recognised that the only remaining option was open combat and launched a counterattack. Despite superior numbers, Kerbogha's army — which was divided into factions and surprised by the Crusaders commitment and dedication— retreated and abandoned the siege. The crusaders then delayed for months while they argued over who would have the captured territory. The debate ended when news arrived that the Fatimid Egyptians had taken Jerusalem from the Seljuk Turks, making it imperative to attack before the Egyptians could consolidate their position. Bohemond remained in Antioch, retaining the city, despite his pledge to return it to Byzantine control, while Raymond led the remaining crusader army rapidly south along the coast to Jerusalem.

An initial attack on the city failed, and the siege became a stalemate, until the arrival of craftsmen and supplies transported by the Genoese to Jaffa tilted the balance. Crusaders constructed two large siege engines; the one commanded by Godfrey breached the walls. For two days the crusaders massacred the inhabitants and pillaged the city. Historians now believe the accounts of the numbers killed have been exaggerated, but this narrative of massacre did much to cement the crusaders' reputation for barbarism. Godfrey further secured the Frankish position by defeating an Egyptian relief force at Ascalon. Now, most of the crusaders considered their pilgrimage complete and returned to Europe. When it came to the future governance of the city it was Godfrey who took leadership and the title Defender of the Holy Sepulchre. The presence of troops from Lorraine ended the possibility that Jerusalem would be an ecclesiastical domain and the claims of Raymond. At that point Godfrey was left with a mere 300 knights and 2,000 infantry to defend Palestine. Tancred was the other prince who remained. His ambition was to gain a Crusader state princedom of his own. When Godfrey died in 1100 the Lorrainers foiled the attempt of Jerusalem's Patriarch, Daimbert to seize power and enabled Godfrey's brother, Baldwin, to take the crown.

The Islamic world seems to have barely registered the crusade; certainly, there is limited written evidence before 1130. This may be in part due to a reluctance to relate Muslim failure, but it is more likely to be the result of cultural misunderstanding. Al-Afdal Shahanshah, the new vizier of Egypt, and the Muslim world mistook the crusaders for the latest in a long line of Byzantine mercenaries, rather than religiously motivated warriors intent on conquest and settlement. The Muslim world was divided between the Sunnis of Syria and Iraq and the Shi'ite Fatimids of Egypt. Even the Turks remained divided, they had found unity unachievable since the death of Sultan Malik-Shah in 1092, with rival rulers in Damascus and Aleppo. In Baghdad the Seljuk sultan, Barkiyaruq, vied with an Abbasid caliph, Al-Mustazhir, in a Mesopotamian struggle. This gave the Crusaders a crucial opportunity to consolidate without any pan-Islamic counter-attack.

### Second Crusade

The Crusader states were almost constantly at defensive or expansionist war in the early 12th century. This led to high mortality rates among the nobility as well as a policy of encouraging settlers from the West and Christians from across the Jordan. Bohemond seized Christian cities in Cilicia, refused to return Antioch and in 1108 organised a Crusade against the Byzantine Empire. The Crusade ended in failure after Alexius starved Bohemond of supplies by cutting his supply lines. The resulting Treaty of Devol, although never implemented, forced Bohemond to acknowledge Alexius as his feudal overlord. Relations between Edessa and Antioch were variable: they fought together in the defeat at Battle of Harran, but the Antiocheans claimed suzerainty and attempted to block the return of Count Baldwin—later king of Jerusalem—from his captivity after the battle. This conflict demonstrates the Crusader involvement in Near East politics with Muslims and Christians fighting on both sides. The expansion of Norman Antioch came to an end in 1119 with a major defeat by the Turks at the battle of the Field of Blood.

Under the papacies of successive popes, smaller groups of crusaders continued to travel to the eastern Mediterranean to fight the Muslims and aid the crusader states. The third decade of the 12th century saw campaigns by French nobleman Fulk V of Anjou, the Venetians who captured Tyre, and King Conrad III of Germany, as well as the foundation of the Knights Templar, a military order of warrior monks which became international and widely influential. The Templars, along with the other Military Orders, are estimated to have provided half the military strength of the kingdom of Jerusalem.

For the first time, the rise of Imad ad-Din Zengi saw the Crusaders threatened by a Muslim ruler attempting to restore jihad to Near Eastern politics. After his father was executed for treason in the Seljuk succession crisis little is known of his early years. He became Atabeg of Mosul in 1127 and used this to expand his control to Aleppo and then Damascus. In 1144 he conquered Edessa. After a delay of nearly two years preaching began for what subsequently became known as the Second Crusade. Initially, support was sluggish, partly because Pope Eugenius III delegated the preaching. The French Benedictine abbot, Bernard of Clairvaux spread the message that the loss was the result of sinfulness, and redemption was the reward for crusading. Simultaneously, the anti-Semitic crusade preaching of a Cistercian monk called Rudolf initiated further massacres of Jews in the Rhineland. This formed part of a general increase in crusading activity, including in Iberia and northern Europe.

Zengi was murdered in uncertain circumstances. His elder son Saif ad-Din succeeded him as atabeg of Mosul while a younger son Nur ad-Din succeeded him in Aleppo. For the first time ruling monarchs were campaigning—King Louis VII of France and Conrad III—but the crusade was not a success. Edessa had been destroyed, making its recovery impossible, and the crusade's objectives were unclear. Hostility developed between the French and the Byzantines. The French blamed the Byzantines for defeats suffered against the Seljuks in Anatolia, while the Byzantines laid claims on future territorial gains in northern Syria. As a result, in a decision that historians now criticise, the crusaders attacked the Seljuks of Damascus. This broke a long period of cooperation and coexistence between Jerusalem and Damascus. Bad luck, poor tactics and a feeble five-day siege of Damascus led to internal arguments; the barons of Jerusalem withdrew support and the crusaders retreated before the arrival of a relief army led by Zengi's sons. Morale fell, hostility to the Byzantines grew and distrust developed between the newly arrived crusaders and those that had made the region their home after the earlier crusades.

### Third Crusade

In 1153 the conquest of Ascalon opened a strategic road south from Palestine and Jerusalem demonstrated an increasing interest in expanding into Egyptian territory. In 1160 King Baldwin III’s planned invasion was only halted by an Egypt tribute payment of 160,000 gold dinars. In 1163 Shawar visited Nur ad-Din in Damascus. He had been deposed as vizier in an outbreak of systemic and murderous Egyptian political intrigue. He wanted political and military support that would aid in regaining the viziership. Nur ad-Din prevaricated, but responded when it became apparent that the crusaders might otherwise gain a strategic foothold on the Nile. Some historians consider this decision a visionary attempt to surround the crusaders. Nur ad-Din provided his Kurdish general, Shirkuh, who stormed Egypt and restored Shawar. However, Shawar asserted his independence. He formed an alliance with Baldwin's brother and successor King Amalric. When Amalric broke the alliance in a ferocious attack, Shawar again requested military support from Syria. Nur ad-Din sent Shirkuh for a second time. Shirkuh was joined by his nephew, Yusuf ibn Ayyub, who became known by his honorific 'Salah al-Din' ('the goodness of faith'), which has been westernised as Saladin. Amalric retreated and Saladin captured and executed Shawar. Saladin successfully intrigued to be appointed vizier in succession to Shirkuh when his uncle died two months later. Nur ad-Din died in 1174, the first Muslim to unite Aleppo and Damascus in the crusading era. Saladin assumed control and had the strategic choice of establishing Egypt as an autonomous power or attempting to become the pre-eminent Muslim in the eastern Mediterranean; he chose the latter.

While Nur al-Din's territories fragmented, Saladin legitimised his ascent by positioning himself as a defender of Sunni Islam, subservient to both the Caliph of Baghdad and to Nur al-Din's 11-year-old son and successor, As-Salih Ismail al-Malik. He claimed to be the young prince's regent until the boy died seven years later, at which point Saladin seized Damascus and much of Syria but failed to take Aleppo. After building a defensive force to resist a planned attack by the Kingdom of Jerusalem that never materialised, his first contest with the Latin Christians was not a success. Overconfidence and tactical errors led to defeat at the Battle of Montgisard. Despite this setback, Saladin established a domain stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates through a decade of politics, coercion and low-level military action. In 1186 his survival of a life-threatening illness provided the motivation to make good on his propaganda as the champion of Islam. He increased campaigning against the Latin Christians. King Guy responded by raising the largest army that Jerusalem had ever put into the field. Saladin lured the force into inhospitable terrain without water supplies, surrounded the Latins with a superior force, and routed them at the Battle of Hattin. Guy was amongst the Christian nobles taken prisoner, but he was later released. Saladin offered the Christians the option of remaining in peace under Islamic rule or taking advantage of 40 days' grace to leave. As a result of his victory, much of Palestine quickly fell to Saladin, including—after a short five-day siege—Jerusalem. On the 19 October 1187 Pope Urban III died of deep sadness after hearing of the defeat according to Benedict of Peterborough.

Urban III's successor as pope, Gregory VIII, issued a papal bull titled *Audita tremendi* that proposed what became known as the Third Crusade to recapture Jerusalem. In August 1189, the freed King Guy attempted to recover Acre from Saladin by surrounding the strategic city, only for his own forces to be besieged in turn. Both armies could be supplied by sea, so a long stalemate commenced. The crusaders became so deprived at times they are thought to have resorted to cannibalism. Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I drowned in the Saleph River travelling overland to crusade and few of his men reached their destination. Richard the Lionheart, King of England, travelled by sea. In 1191, he conquered Cyprus when his sister and fiancée were captured by the Cypriot ruler, Isaac Komnenos. Philip II of France was the first king to arrive at the siege of Acre; Richard arrived on 8 June 1191. The arrival of the French and Angevin forces turned the tide in the conflict, and the Muslim garrison of Acre finally surrendered on 12 July. Philip considered his vow fulfilled and returned to France to deal with domestic matters, leaving most of his forces behind. But Richard travelled south along the Mediterranean coast, defeated the Muslims near Arsuf, and recaptured the port city of Jaffa. He twice advanced to within a day's march of Jerusalem. Richard judged that while Saladin had a mustered army he lacked the resources to successfully capture the city or defend it in the unlikely event of a successful assault. This marked the end of Richard's crusading career and was a calamitous blow to Frankish morale. A three-year truce was negotiated that allowed Catholics unfettered access to Jerusalem. Politics in England forced Richard's departure, never to return; Saladin died in March 1193.

### Fourth Crusade

In 1198, the recently elected Pope Innocent III announced a new crusade, organised by three Frenchmen: Theobald of Champagne; Louis of Blois; and Baldwin of Flanders. After Theobald's premature death, the Italian Boniface of Montferrat replaced him as the new commander of the campaign. They contracted with the Republic of Venice for the transportation of 30,000 crusaders at a cost of 85,000 marks. However, many chose other embarkation ports and only around 15,000 arrived in Venice. The Doge of Venice Enrico Dandolo proposed that Venice would be repaid with the profits of future conquests beginning with the seizure of the Christian city of Zara. Pope Innocent III's role was ambivalent. He only condemned the attack when the siege started. He withdrew his legate to disassociate from the attack but seemed to have accepted it as inevitable. Historians question whether for him, the papal desire to salvage the crusade may have outweighed the moral consideration of shedding Christian blood. The crusade was joined by King Philip of Swabia, who intended to use the Crusade to install his exiled brother-in-law, Alexios IV Angelos, as Emperor. This required the overthrow of Alexios III Angelos, the uncle of Alexios IV. Alexios IV offered the crusade 10,000 troops, 200,000 marks and the reunion of the Greek Church with Rome if they toppled his uncle Emperor Alexios III.

When the crusade entered Constantinople, Alexios III fled and was replaced by his nephew. The Greek resistance prompted Alexios IV to seek continued support from the crusade until he could fulfil his commitments. This ended with his murder in a violent anti-Latin revolt. The crusaders were without ships, supplies or food leaving them with little option other than to take by force what Alexios had promised. The Sack of Constantinople involved three days of pillaging churches and killing much of the Greek Orthodox Christian populace. While not unusual behaviour for the time, contemporaries such as Innocent III and Ali ibn al-Athir saw it as an atrocity against centuries of classical and Christian civilisation.

The majority of the crusaders considered continuation of the crusade impossible. Many lacked the desire for further campaigning and the necessary Byzantine logistical support was no longer available. The result was that the Fourth Crusade never came within 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of its objective of Jerusalem. Instead it increased Latin territory in the East including Constantinople, demonstrated that poor organisation could wreck an expedition and set a precedent that crusades could legitimately attack not only Muslims but other enemies of the Papacy. A council of six Venetians and six Franks partitioned the territorial gains, establishing a Latin Empire. Baldwin became Emperor of seven-eighths of Constantinople, Thrace, northwest Anatolia and the Aegean Islands. Venice gained a maritime domain including the remaining portion of the city. Boniface received Thessalonika, and his conquest of Attica and Boeotia formed the Duchy of Athens. His vassals, William of Champlitte and Geoffrey of Villehardouin, conquered Morea, establishing the Principality of Achaea. Both Baldwin and Boniface died fighting the Bulgarians, leading the papal legate to release the crusaders from their obligations. As many as a fifth of the crusaders continued to Palestine via other routes, including a large Flemish fleet. Joining King Aimery on campaign they forced al-Adil into a six-year truce.

The Latin states established were a fragile patchwork of petty realms threatened by Byzantine successor states—the Despotate of Epirus, the Empire of Nicaea and the Empire of Trebizond. Thessaloniki fell to Epirus in 1224, and Constantinople to Nicaea in 1261. Achaea and Athens survived under the French after the Treaty of Viterbo. The Venetians endured a long-standing conflict with the Ottoman Empire until the final possessions were lost in the Seventh Ottoman–Venetian War in the 18th century. This period of Greek history is known as the *Frankokratia* or *Latinokratia* ("Frankish or Latin rule") and designates a period when western European Catholics ruled Orthodox Byzantine Greeks.

### Last Crusade

In 1912, 13-year-old Henry "Indiana" Jones, Jr. was horseback riding with his Boy Scout troop at Arches National Park in Utah. While scouting caves, Jones discovered a group of grave robbers who found a golden crucifix belonging to Francisco Vázquez de Coronado and stole it from them, hoping to donate it to a museum. The men chased through a passing circus train, leaving Jones with a bloody cut across his chin from a bullwhip and a new phobia of snakes. Jones escaped but the local sheriff made him return the cross to the robbers, who immediately turned it over to a mysterious benefactor wearing a Panama hat. Impressed with the boy's bravery, the leader of the robbers gave Jones his hat.

In 1938, Indiana Jones fought "Panama Hat" and his henchmen on a ship off the coast of Portugal. Escaping overboard just before the ship explodes, he recovered the cross and donated it to Marcus Brody's museum. Later, Jones learns from Walter Donovan that his father, Henry Jones, Sr., was searching for the Holy Grail using an incomplete inscription from a stone tablet as a guide and had since vanished. Jones received Henry's Grail diary via mail from Venice and headed there with Marcus, where they met Henry's Austrian colleague Dr. Elsa Schneider.

Beneath the library where Henry was last seen, Jones and Elsa discovered a set of half-flooded catacombs that house the tomb of a First Crusade knight that contained a complete version of the inscription that Henry had used, revealing the location of the Grail. They fled when the petroleum-saturated waters of the catacombs were set on fire by the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword, a secret society whose mission was to protect the Grail. Jones and Elsa captured Brotherhood member Kazim. When Jones explains that his only goal was to find his father, not the Grail, Kazim told them Henry's location. Looking through the diary, Marcus found a map drawn by Henry of the route to the Grail, which began in the ancient city of Alexandretta. Jones removes the map from the diary, gives it to Marcus for safekeeping, and sends him to İskenderun, the city built on the ruins of Alexandretta, to rendezvous with their old friend Sallah. Elsa began a relationship with Jones before they departed to find Henry.

Jones and Elsa headed to a Nazi-controlled castle in Austria where Henry is being held. Jones found Henry and freed him only to be quickly captured by SS Colonel Ernst Vogel. He learned that both Elsa and Donovan were Nazis who used the Joneses to find the Grail for them. Elsa kissed Jones goodbye as she departed with Donovan and Vogel. Marcus was captured in Hatay State while meeting with Sallah. After their escape from the castle, Henry told Jones that the Grail is guarded by three booby traps and his diary contained clues needed to pass them safely. Disguised as a German Army colonel, Jones recovered the diary from Elsa at a Nazi book burning rally in Berlin and comes face to face with Adolf Hitler, who autographed the book without recognizing it or him. Indy and Henry board a Zeppelin to leave Germany, but were discovered and forced to escape in its parasite biplane. A dogfight with Luftwaffe fighters ensued; although Jones and Henry were forced to crash-land, they survived and successfully brought down their pursuers.

In Hatay, Sallah tells them of Marcus's abduction. The Nazis had been equipped by the Sultan of Hatay and were already moving toward the Grail's location, using the map possessed by Marcus. Jones, Henry, and Sallah found the Nazi expedition, which was ambushed by the Brotherhood. During the battle, Henry was captured by Vogel while attempting to rescue Marcus; Kazim and his comrades were killed. Jones pursued the tank on horseback and, with the aid of Sallah, saved Henry and Marcus. He was caught up in a fight with Vogel, but escaped just before the tank went over a cliff, sending Vogel to his death.

Jones, Henry, Marcus, and Sallah caught up with the surviving Nazis, led by Donovan and Elsa, who found the temple in The Canyon of the Crescent Moon where the Holy Grail was kept but were unable to get past the first trap. Donovan shot and mortally wounded Henry to force Jones to risk his life in the traps to find the Grail and use its healing power to save his father. Using the information in the diary and followed by Donovan and Elsa, Jones safely overcame the traps (which included fast-moving saw blades, a word puzzle, and a hidden bridge over a bottomless pit) and reached the Grail's chamber, which was guarded by a knight. The man had been kept alive for 700 years by the power of the Grail, which was hidden among dozens of false grails. The true Grail grants eternal life, while the false ones killed any user. Elsa intentionally selected a wrong cup for Donovan, causing him to rapidly age and crumble to dust after drinking from it. Jones drank from a simple clay cup that proved to be the true Grail, but the knight warns that it cannot be taken out of the temple and that its guardian must stay within in order to remain immortal.

Jones filled the Grail with holy water and brought it to Henry, healing him instantly. Elsa disregarded the knight's warning and tried to take the Grail with her, causing the temple to collapse around them when she crosses the Great Seal set in the floor at the entrance. When the Grail fell into a chasm in the floor, Elsa plummeted to her death trying to recover it. Jones nearly suffered the same fate before Henry persuaded him to leave it. The Grail Knight bid them farewell as they escaped. After leaving the temple, the Joneses, Marcus, and Sallah rode off into the sunset.

## Gallery

Arnold talking headNorman talking headGilbert talking headPhilip talking headLarry talking head