To be honest, the title’s a bit misleading:
neither the Crusaders nor the Muslims had
a grand strategy, and in any case fragmented
medieval governments could not execute such
plans.
Rather, this video is about the strategic
problems each side faced, and their responses.
== Geography ==
 
The Crusader States of Outremer - Edessa,
Antioch, Tripoli and Jerusalem - occupied
600 kilometers of the coast from Anatolia
to the Sinai.
It was shielded by mountains to its north
and east and deserts to its south, separating
it from inland Syria and Egypt.
Agriculture flourished in the valleys.
Trade-wise, the region served as a transit
point for Silk Road goods to Europe, as well
as for Muslim caravans from Egypt to Syria
and Arabia.
The region was ethnically and religiously
mixed, home to Armenians, Arabs, Jews, Sunnis,
Shi’ites, and Druze – to mention a few
– and on the eve of the Crusades they were
overseen by a Turkic ruling class and an Arab
religious ulama class.
== The First Crusade (1096-1101) ==
 
The First Crusade – or more accurately,
one of the three Crusading armies raised between
1096 and 1101 – achieved victory through
entering a convenient power vacuum.
Infighting after the collapse of the Seljuk
Empire meant that the main Sunni powers – Aleppo,
Damascus and Mosul in Iraq – could not coordinate
amongst themselves, much less with the Shi’ite
Fatimids in Egypt.
The Muslims also misread the Crusaders, believing
that they desired border conquests like other
Christians before them.
But then again, the First Crusade was indeed
unprecedented in scale, involving 130,000
fanatics across Europe willing to suffer extreme
casualties for Jerusalem.
In any case, Muslim disunity had real consequences:
while their heavy cavalry could match Frankish
knights, none of the Muslim powers individually
had enough of them.
As such, their armies failed in conventional
battle, while the Crusaders found counters
to Muslim hit-and-run tactics.
Even the Crusader massacres had a strategic
effect, as garrisons fled before they were
besieged and cities surrendered rather than
fight.
Thus was Outremer conquered by the Crusaders:
now, the question was how to defend it.
== The Intermediate Period (1101-1183) ==
 
The key problem facing the Crusader defence
was a lack of permanent manpower.
Most Crusaders went home after fighting: at
other times, only two thousand knights remained
in Outremer.
Without enough soldiers, the Crusaders were
stretched thin – barely able to defend themselves,
much less make further conquests.
The problem was partly self-inflicted.
Firstly, the Crusader elite excluded non-Catholics
and never fully utilized local manpower.
Secondly, Crusader unity – pretty weak to
begin with – quickly collapsed, with Jerusalem
arguing with the other states and factions
fighting for control within the Kingdom itself.
The Crusaders even ruined their relationship
with Europe after the 2nd Crusade, meaning
that few leaders went to Outremer between
1150 and 1180.
For their part, the Crusaders developed three
responses to their manpower problem: settlement,
castles and military orders.
During the First Crusade, the Crusaders drove
natives away from the cities and took their
place as permanent inhabitants.
Settlers from Mediterranean Europe were encouraged
to immigrate through offers of cheap farmland,
along with criminals deported to Outremer.
Successful settlement, however, still depended
on the Crusaders being able to secure the
land first, and without the manpower to prevent
Muslim raiding, these efforts withered on
the vine.
Castles became a key component of the Crusader
defence – but with garrisons of only a couple
hundred soldiers, most Crusader castles were
not expected to block armies or hold key positions.
Instead, castles were a way of preserving
manpower, acting as places of refuge where
defeated Crusaders could flee to instead of
being captured and annihilated.
Castles were also bases from which to hold
off and distract the enemy, but the Crusaders’
defensive strategy rested upon a sort of defense-in-depth
where, in the face of invasion, castle garrisons
would combine to form an impromptu field army.
It was this field army that would then drive
off or defeat the enemy.
The field army was what ultimately ensured
Outremer’s security.
If it was lost, their castles, without their
garrisons, were essentially helpless before
the enemy, and the Crusader defence would
collapse – as happened to Edessa and Antioch
after their defeats.
The Crusaders could, therefore, not afford
to lose their military edge.
Part of this edge was provided by the Military
Orders, who, by virtue of vast estates in
Europe, were able to build castles beyond
what local lords could afford; significantly,
they could also be sent to remote and desolate
strongholds.
In war, the Templars and Hospitallers were
each able to raise about 300 of the all-important
Frankish knights, expert in the land and its
people.
But their status as permanent settlers also
meant that the Muslims tended to execute rather
than ransom them, making defeat all the more
catastrophic for them.
The Crusaders were therefore staking a lot
on battle, the risk of which was high and
increasing.
Frankish knights remained formidable, but
the adoption of the Turkic cavalry archer
meant that the Muslims were increasingly able
to lure Crusader armies beyond retreating
range of their castles.
For their part, the Crusaders also tried non-conventional
warfare, most notably in Reynald of Chatillon’s
raids against Muslim caravans.
They also invaded Egypt in an attempt to maintain
the Fatimid regime against the Sunnis.
Ultimately, the Crusaders could not prevent
Muslim consolidation.
Despite a succession system which partitioned
realms amongst a ruler’s sons, the Muslim
ulama was pushing for unity for the purposes
of jihad.
Zengi, the ruler of Mosul and Aleppo, declared
himself a ghazi or holy warrior after his
capture of Edessa, making his realm the destination
for jihadi funds and warriors.
His son, Nur ad-Din, leveraged this status
to take over Damascus and Egypt; Saladin,
the vizier of Egypt, assumed ghazi status
after his death and re-united Egypt with Damascus
and Aleppo, with the Crusaders again powerless
to stop him.
With Syria and Egypt united, the full force
of the Muslims now fell on the Crusaders.
When Saladin took to the field in 1187, he
brought with him an army of 30 thousand, including
12 thousand light cavalry.
The Crusaders, drawing on all their resources,
could only match him with an army of 20 thousand,
including a little over one thousand knights.
Hattin and the 3rd Crusade (1187-1198)
Unable to withstand the political pressure
of doing nothing while Saladin ravaged the
countryside, King Guy of Jerusalem attempted
to engage the Muslim army.
Lured beyond retreating distance of friendly
fortresses, the Crusader field army was surrounded
and annihilated at Hattin.
With most of their garrisons lost, the Crusader
castles had neither the men nor the hope of
holding out against Saladin, and between 1187-1189
the Muslims took almost everything but Antioch,
Tripoli and the port of Tyre.
The Crusaders were seemingly on their last
legs.
Yet Saladin not only failed to expel them,
but it would in fact take another hundred
years before the final bastions would fall.
The reason for this can be traced to a single
event: Saladin’s failure to capture Tyre.
Sea transport sustained the Crusaders.
With Anatolia too dangerous to cross, the
Eastern Mediterranean became the key route
linking Outremer to Europe.
Venice, Genoa and Pisa would ship soldiers
over during the sailing season, bring luxuries
back to Europe, and fight the Muslims if needed.
By the 1120s, the Italians had swept the Muslims
out of the sea – and for their services,
they were granted tax exemption, city quarters,
and favored rates on duties.
Medieval galleys could row without resupply
for only four days: friendly coasts were therefore
critical for naval control.
And for the Crusaders in 1189, Tyre was the
only friendly harbor in Outremer large enough
to supply an army capable of fighting Saladin.
This army came in the form of the 3rd Crusade,
which landed at Tyre and recaptured Acre.
Ships were critical to this effort, as well
as to Richard the Lionheart’s campaigns
along the coast: he decided against taking
Jerusalem for fear of losing his link to the
sea.
But the Crusaders were saved at a critical
juncture, and with Saladin’s death in 1193
Muslim unity fell apart once again.
== Post-3rd Crusade (1198-1291) ==
 
Instead of going out of style, Crusading was
actually quite regular in the Late Middle
Ages.
Yet these subsequent Crusades failed to change
the fate of Outremer.
Two reasons exist for this: firstly, new Crusades
in Iberia and Prussia increasingly competed
with Outremer for manpower.
Secondly, Crusading was slowly made subject
to national goals, which often did not involve
Jerusalem: the 8th Crusade, for example, was
almost an entirely French undertaking, and
its destination was diverted to Tunis on behalf
of the French King’s brother.
Holy war was also taking a backseat to trade,
not just for the Italian merchant states,
but also for the Orientalized Crusaders as
well.
Despite this, the Muslims remained unable
to stop Crusaders landing in Outremer.
The 5th and 7th Crusades attacked Egypt intending
to exchange it for Jerusalem, while the 6th
Crusade obtained the city through diplomacy.
The Muslims, caught up in the internal feuds
of the Ayyubids, spared little thought towards
jihad.
This stalemate ended with the Mamluks, who
reunified Syria and Egypt by the mid-13th
Century.
Not only did the Muslims regain their advantage
in numbers, but Mamluk cavalry were more than
capable of defeating Frankish knights one-on-one.
They retook Jerusalem, destroyed the last
Crusader field army at La Forbie, and turned
back the Mongols at Ain Jalut.
But there was still the possibility of reinforcement
from Europe.
In order to prevent this, the Mamluks destroyed
the castles, towns and especially ports of
Outremer, enslaving or massacring any Franks
who remained.
The last vestiges of the Crusader States were
isolated and destroyed: Antioch in 1268, Tripoli
in 1289, and Acre in 1291.
Europeans still controlled the sea, but without
bases on the coast they were reduced to raiding,
rather than the invasions of the past two
centuries.
== Conclusion ==
 
The security of the Crusader States relied
on Muslim disunity.
Once that disappeared, their numerical inferiority
quickly worked against them.
The Crusaders depended on battlefield success
for survival, uncertain even in the best of
times, and Europe could not rescue them from
defeat forever.
Crusader failure wasn’t guaranteed, but
without a fundamental shift in their religious
and ethnic orientation, the odds were always
going to be stacked against them.
Thanks for watching the video!
