Crusades

The only place where the crusades were justified was Iberia, the rest were wars of conquest, not "defensive" in any way.

thats retarded

Islam was attacking Eastern Europe and various christian holylands...it was certaintly a reaction to that and not just agressive

Partially, but since from the get go, since the First Crusade Crusaders were replacing Orthodox bishops with Latin ones, I'd have to say it's far from simple defense.

Said christian holylands happened to be on the other side of the world much closer to the arabs and turks than to the europeans. Defending Byzantium isnt an excuse either because a) Europe didnt help Byzantium before during the persian wars which were just as destructive and b)they proceeded to take the land for themselves, giving some backl to Byzantium only under threat.
Also western europeans didnt give a rats ass about eastern europeans, in their eyes some were pagans, some where a threath to their own power, some where schismatic and the rest outright heretics.

ahhh so it was alright for Islam to be agressive, but Europeans are not allowed too.

Catholics and Muslims lived together peacefully in Islam conquered land. It was better than the oppression they received before from Pagans and other empires. But Islam was a bi polar girl on her period during the times. One ruler would destroy Catholic structures and take away their rights and raise to taxes to where they were poor as slaves and then where the next ruler would help them rebuild and abolish taxes. There was interfaith marriages and everybody was butt buddies. Other Christians however how make pilgrimages through the area and traded couldn't stand it. And thus the crusades.

Obviously a huge generalization and probably misinformed, but this is what I remember from getting a C in my class in Uni. The crusaders would pillage and rape everywhere they went. While their motives may have been defensive to "save" the Catholics living with the Muslims their true actions never seemed so.

Read Europeans attacked and took back Iberia because it was their right. They took palestine because they wanted land and riches. Same goes for Muslims. Both sides were in it for the benefits, you need to look no further than the 4th crusade, they sacked a catholic city and conquered (and sacked) Constantinople which had been the gates protecting central Europe, effectively paving the way for muslim armies towards the balkans and Vienna.

Yes
Watch realcrusadeshistory on utube

The Byzantium only requested military assistance against the Seljuks. Alexios himself almost never discussed any religious motivation.

A defensive, the sand niggers were trying to invade us since they shitty religion was starded, we needed to stop them, and we did with the Mongols who were also trying to stop the sand niggers invasion of the Steppes.

Look mom I left /pol/ again

Without the Crusades Europe would have become completely Muslim.

Then why sack Zara and Constantinople?

>us
>we

Are you the ghost of Alexios?

Yeah, those heroic crusaders saved Europe

what the roman empire already collapsed in like the 400s dumbass

really utilizes the neurons huh

The true Roman Empire was the HRE

augustulus pls go

Lets fight with a group a people who's belief is to kill anyone who isn't peaceful with them.

They fight back.

Oh no boys self defense.

>Claim to be a hero of christianity fighting against the infidel because its the will of god
>Attack a catholic city and then the bastion of christianity in the east basically opening the way for the infidels to march west

Good job!

I smell butthurt

Nope but i'm christian

>
>
>

400 years ago a guy killed my ancestor. I'm gonna kill his family as well as a bunch of other innocent people out of rage and claim I was being defensive.

>Constantinople
>Catholic

>people literally invading Europe right now
>400 years ago

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Zara

Surely you mean
>1071
>Those guys you know that worship the same God as you ask for help fighting religious enemies that worship the same God as you
>1095 (24 years later)
>Invade an area where the same guys that btfo of your new friend are supposed to be
>woah turns out those guys are having a massive internal dispute and aren't here anymore
>capture of a lot of territory surprising everyone

>wrongly applying the word "literally"
>collectively punishing someone for something someone else only related by religious affiliation did

>religious enemies that worship the same God as you
m.youtube.com/watch?v=lpc4ygCQePM

>fighting the invaders
>punishing someone for something someone else did

Look up the word "invade" in a dictionary.

There is no organized, armed and hostile moving in to occupy happening, all of which are necessary, not sufficient, conditions to apply that term.

>no organized

wrong

>armed

irrelevant

>hostile

wrong

>invading

What did he mean by this?

migrants/refugees/jihadists

Well, at least you tried.

Oh, so then he is still wrong. Good to know.

>tfw I like the crusaders because of their armor, weapons and castles but have to deal with fellow crusaderboos who actually go all-in for the cringy 'deus vult!' LARPing

Just keep your cool and everything will be fine and dandy. Never let other's behavior influence your enjoyment of something.

>Islam was attacking Eastern Europe
They barely even reached the place at the time. And if you're talking about Byzantines, those guys saw barbarians in the west as well as the east.

Byzantines were defending themselves. Not for a bunch of Catholic barbarians.

Poseur faggot.

DEUS VULT

The First Crusade in the Levant was not defensive because it was waged against a kingdom that had hardly done anything to warrant it. The Fatmids waged war against other Muslims more often than they did Christians. Just because Manzikert was also perpetrated by Muslims, doesn't mean every Muslim country at the time was responsible for it.

Crusader history is interesting.
The armenians in the first crusade initially thought the Frankish were simply soldiers like the varangian guard in employ of the Romans to re-exert control that had been lost. So, they initially bent the knee to them as they came in and were ordering people around. Warlord commanders were normal in the borderlands of the ERE like Armenia.

But they then realized that it was actually a rogue force working in alliance with the ERE but not subservient to them. Caught them all by surprise.

the first crusade was mostly against the seljuk successor states. the fatimids got got by the crusade because their decision to retake jerusalem from the turks just before the crusaders arrived was one of the worst cases of bad timing in history

Even so, considering that the Fatimids suffered the most damage and were the main subjects of further crusader state expansion after the First Crusade, thus prompting their successors to retaliate decades later, it's very difficult to consider the "Crusades" in their entirety a blameless justified defensive action.

They also slaughtered the shit out of non combatants which is never just nor holy.

It was done on both sides, which why Christian rule was so accepted after the first crusades. Rough tolerance was the status quo in the holy lands, regardless if the ruler was muslim or christian.

While true, that doesn't really detract from his point. The narrative of the crusaders being justified holy liberators is difficult to believe when they had the same medieval tier morality as everyone else at the time. You can't be on a moral high ground compared to the other side when you chimp out just as often, if not more.

War didn't need to be justified at the time, there was no ethnic cleansing, and the crusades would have been a footnote in history were it not for Arab intellectuals unifying in the 19th and 20th century over the shared experience of the crusades to unite them against both the ottomans and the British/french influence.
/thread

>/threading yourself
Whether or not war needed to be truly "justified" back then, isn't really relevant. None of us should be surprised that 11th century warlords behaved like 11th century warlords. The point of contention arises when groups of modern day people pretend like these 11th century warlords were behaving on some greater plain of morality than their contemporaries, when they clearly weren't.

True that, the chimp out after the conquest of Jerusalem in the first crusade was assyrian-tier.

The only reason why the crusades matter in discussion in the 21st century was their elevation to duh shoah for arabs in the 19th/20th century in opposition to colonization. It is still so relevant, Bin Laden called the U.S crusading scum as too did/does ISIS today.

All that means is that the those people are just as bad as the other side that essentially does the same thing. Modern politically motivated propaganda should not get in the way of honest discussion about historical events no matter who it's coming from.

It was such a minor inconsequential event in history. It was folded into western intellectual thought as being a precursor to European thirst for exploration to beat out the muslim impasse to the holy land, but even then would be an impractical suggestion since Portugal would have explored along the coast of Africa regardless.

>It was such a minor inconsequential event in history.
Which I don't deny. They're often called a meme here for a reason.

>but even then would be an impractical suggestion since Portugal would have explored along the coast of Africa regardless.
Which I don't deny either.

Crusades had a big impact in history if you consider the reconquista and the forced christianization of the baltic which eventually led to the creation of modern Prussia.

Both of which are not given anywhere near the same level of attention as the Crusades in the Levant, even though they really ought to be significantly given more.

Eh. That isn't truly a part of the formal papal crusades? They were a byproduct of christian fervor of kingdoms at the borderlands to heathan populations that were weak and divided. If the kings of Leon and Castile did not, the French king would have regardless. Domains are domains.

Those are important, but when people usually talk about crusades they imply the holy land which were huge memes. Maybe Barbarossa Crusade may have broke the back of Muslims there and reinforced christian grip there. Maybe the fourth crusade erased any chance of a byzantine resurgence..

Okay a byzantine resurgence was never going to happen unless they became Catholics and accepted the pope in Romes dick. When Constantinople fell, it was not because the Turks were superior in number and a horde at the gate. It was because 10,000 men were trying to defend a city that could staff 125,000. Which is what makes the fourth crusade such an impressive feat. They actually broke Constantinople when it still held glory as the most impenetrable city on earth. That city could hold out, without stress from besiegers for three years due to cisterns of water and grain that were stored below the city. The turks would have literally had to level wall after wall with their e-peen cannons if they wanted to break into the city, and even then they would have been walking into certain death.

Yes.
Why do you even ask?

>implying that all other Crusading powers weren't granted the legitimate authority to ensure the integrity of their domains when taking their majority of military power abroad
>implying that the Adriatic wasn't Venice's legally ordained domain
>implying the Pope's decree that Venice didn't have the right to put down Zara's open rebellion wasn't totally unjustified
>implying that the only reason Zara wasn't supposed to be quelled was that the King of Hungary who had taken up the cross was backing it
>implying that the King of Hungary ever crusaded and didn't just use the cross as shield to attack other Catholic powers
>implying that Zara wasn't going to surrender peacefully before some faggot bishop that didn't understand at all how military and political issues worked told the leaders of Zara that the Crusaders weren't going to do anything

>other side of the world
It isn't
>much closer to the arabs and turks
Proximity isn't justification in the slightest, I don't even know how anyone can reason this.
>Europe didnt help Byzantium before during the persian wars
Yes, and now (then) they were.
>proceeded to take the land for themselves
Literally the only reasonable point you made

>Catholics
>in the Holy Lands
Read some history user

Yes, very aggressive Russians, Byzantine, Saxons, Balts, and Wends.

God, the crusades are such a fucking meme.

>what is the massacre of the latins

you should read some history as well

>hurr muh gurmonic masdur race teutonic order
kys

Something I'm quite positive the Balts didn't do.

Also add Cathars do that list, user. They dindu nuffin.

not really, you're just roleplaying hard and it's very fucking autistic

>what is the sack of Thessalonica

t. shitskin

balts and wends really don't have any right to complain about "teutonic aggression" since they were merrily raiding christian poles and other brethren slavs before that for decades
if you act like a bunch of backwards swampniggers, don't cry when you're treated as such tbqh
cathars were proto-commies, so naturally they got what was coming

This

Why is Veeky Forums constantly being flooded by paranoid /pol/ posters?

Being this stupid

>Christcucks permanently get BTFO out of palestine after the crusades.
>the only time they take control of it is when a british general wins it back with pagan soldiers.
CAN'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP

indeed they were
they really make me feel ashamed of my ancestry

It was a holy war to set out and reclaim the holy land, manzikert was the excuse. If it was a European defensive war why didn't they attack the Andalusian Muslim states? The split in between Orthodox and catholic was still fairly recent so they weren't friends of the Byzantines, it was really an offensive war driven by religious fervor and the want of europeans, noble and peasant alike, to visit and retake the birthplace of Christ.

Then why did you say balts raided their slavic bretheren. Slavic is a language group and baltic people usually don't speak salvic languages but correct me if i'm wrong

slavs are just balts that got lost in the woods, tbqh
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balto-Slavic_languages

"You" did jack shit mate, it was all the mongols doing.

Then why did the golden horde and the ilkhanate convert to Islam, Genghis Khan was famous for religious tolerance in his empire you stupid fucking cucksader.

>What is the pre-crusades Arab Slave Trade?
You're a moron

>permanently
>except that time they did have it

>Muzzcucks eternally BTFO of Israel after the British
>The only thing they control is a FUCKING TINY COAST IN GAZA bombed daily with the support of every christian organizations

forgot the pic

What a horribly inaccurate image

Why would they be butthurt? Christians lost the Crusades when Acre fell.

Bit inaccurate, since we also attacked Tunis and Egypt.

But whatever helps foster islamophobia.

>Islamic aggression
This is probably one of the most retarded memes out there, the crusades weren't directed at Islam, it was an armed pilgrimage towards Jerusalem in fact the actual enemy of the First Crusade were the Seljuk Turks which invaded the Byzantine territory just a few decades prior.
From Latin perspective it was a war of aggression against the turks in order to take Jerusalem and the Holy Land while from Byzantine perspective it was a defensive war against invaders.
All following crusades had the same central goal as the first: taking Jerusalem regardless of who controls it

Palestine was christian waaay before the shitskins (muslims) invaded. pls learn history