Stories From The Crusades Serapis Classics

"Stories from the Crusades" by Janet Harvey Kelman rlates how Peter the Hermit, with the Pope's blessing, gathers men to his side and leads the first crusade, resulting in the capture of Jerusalem and installation of Godfrey as defender of the holy sepulchre. After the Muslims recapture Jerusalem, three great kings of Europe vow to regain the Holy City: King Richard the Lionhearted of England, King Philip of France, and the Emperor Frederick of Germany.

The two hundred years which cover, roughly speaking, the actual period of the Holy War, are crammed with an interest that never grows dim. Gallant figures, noble knights, generous foes, valiant women, eager children, follow one another through these centuries, and form a pageant the colour and romance of which can never fade, for the circumstances were in themselves unique. The two great religious forces of the world—Christianity and Islam, the Cross and the Crescent—were at grips with one another, and for the first time the stately East, with its suggestion of mystery, was face to face with the brilliant West, wherein the civilisation and organisation of Rome were at last prevailing over the chaos of the Dark Ages...

King Richard the First, the Crusader, was a boisterous, reckless, and desperate man, and he made a great deal of noise in the world in his day. He began his career very early in life by quarreling with his father. Indeed, his father, his mother, and all his brothers and sisters were engaged, as long as the father lived, in perpetual wars against each other, which were waged with the most desperate fierceness on all sides...

Brings the Crusades to life through stories of its most famous participants. Relates how Peter the Hermit, with the Pope's blessing, gathers men to his side and leads the first crusade, resulting in the capture of Jerusalem and installation of Godfrey as defender of the holy sepulchre. After the Muslims recapture Jerusalem, three great kings of Europe vow to regain the Holy City: King Richard the Lionhearted of England, King Philip of France, and the Emperor Frederick of Germany. Despite winning many battles in this third crusade and capturing the city of Acre, they fail to win back the city of Jerusalem. King Louis of France launches the last crusade, but dies before achieving his objective. Throughout the narrative we meet all sorts of men. Some, like Bohemond and Baldwin, fight for selfish ends; others, such as Tancred and Louis, do battle like the great knights they are; while a few, Francis among them, carry goodwill wherever they go.

Two thousand five hundred and fifty-eight years ago a little fleet of galleys toiled painfully against the current up the long strait of the Hellespont, rowed across the broad Propontis, and came to anchor in the smooth waters of the first inlet which cuts into the European shore of the Bosphorus. There a long crescent-shaped creek, which after-ages were to know as the Golden Horn, strikes inland for seven miles, forming a quiet backwater from the rapid stream which runs outside. On the headland, enclosed between this inlet and the open sea, a few hundred colonists disembarked, and hastily secured themselves from the wild tribes of the inland, by running some rough sort of a stockade across the ground from beach to beach. Thus was founded the city of Byzantium...

Composed by soldiers who fought in the Holy Wars, these two famous French chronicles are among the most important portrayals of both the dark and light side of the two hundred year struggle for possession of Jerusalem. The first trustworthy and fully informed history of the Crusades, Villehardouin's Conquest of Constantinople describes the era of the Fourth Crusade - the period between 1199 and 1207, during which a planned battle with Moslem forces ironically culminated in war against Eastern Christians that led to the sacking of Constantinople. The Life of Saint Louis, by Joinville, was inspired by the author's close attachment to the pious King Louis, and focuses on the years between 1226 and 1270. It provides a powerful, personal insight into the brutal battles and the fascinating travels of one nobleman, fighting in the Sixth and Seventh Crusades.

The story of the First Crusade, as witnessed by contemporary writers 'O day so ardently desired! O time of times the most memorable! O deed before all other deeds!' The fall of Jerusalem in the summer of 1099 to an exhausted and starving army of western European soldiers was one of the most extraordinary events of the Middle Ages. It was both the climax of a great wave of visionary Christian fervour and the beginning of what proved to be a futile and abortive attempt to implant a new European kingdom of heaven in an overwhelmingly Muslim world. This remarkable collection brings together a wide variety of contemporary accounts of the First Crusade, including Pope Urban II's initial call to arms of 1095, as well as the first-hand writings of priests, knights, a Jewish pilgrim, a destitute noblewoman, an Iraqi poet and the historian Anna Comnena. Together they provide a vivid and nuanced picture of the First Crusade and the people who were swept up in it. Edited with an introduction and notes by Christopher Tyerman

The two hundred years which cover, roughly speaking, the actual period of the Holy War, are crammed with an interest that never grows dim. Gallant figures, noble knights, generous foes, valiant women, eager children, follow one another through these centuries, and form a pageant the colour and romance of which can never fade, for the circumstances were in themselves unique. The two great religious forces of the worldÑChristianity and Islam, the Cross and the CrescentÑwere at grips with one another, and for the first time the stately East, with its suggestion of mystery, was face to face with the brilliant West, wherein the civilisation and organisation of Rome were at last prevailing over the chaos of the Dark Ages. A very special kind of interest, moreover, belongs to the story of the Crusades in that the motive of the wars was the desire to rescue from the hands of unbelievers But we shall see, as we read the story, that this was only a part of the real motive power which inspired and sustained the Holy War. Even if the land of Palestine and the Holy City, Jerusalem, had never fallen into the hands of the Saracens, some such war was inevitable. The East was knocking at the doors of the West with no uncertain sound. An extraordinary force had come into existence during the four centuries that immediately preceded the First Crusade, which threatened to dominate the whole of the Western world. It was a religious forceÑalways stronger and more effective than any other; and it was only repelled with the greatest difficulty by Christendom, inspired, not so much by the motive of religion, as by that curious mixture of romance and adventurous design which we call chivalry. Let us try, then, first of all, to get some idea of these Men of the East, the Mohammedans or Saracens, who managed to keep Europe in a state of constant turmoil for upwards of five centuries, and to do that we must go back to the latter years of the sixth century after Christ. About fifty miles from the shores of the Red Sea stands the city of Mecca, one of the few important towns to be found on the fringe of the great sandy desert of Arabia. During hundreds of years Mecca had been the venerated bourne of pilgrims, for, embedded in the walls of the sacred building known as the Kaaba, was the "pure white stone," said to have fallen from heaven on the day that Adam and Eve took their sorrowful way from the gates of Paradise.