Crusaders.

This is coolbert:

Go here to see an excellent site on the Crusades.

The views expressed in this site are very similar to mine. The Crusades were not rapacious wars of conquest. More along the line of defensive wars. Reaction to the Muslim aggression against the Christian world that had been going on for four hundred years.

[I blogged on this subject some time ago. Said to consult the chronicles written at the time. My belief was that the Pope did not "preach" a Crusade.]

Here is some heavy stuff from the Crusades web site.

"Why did they do it? The answer to that question has been badly misunderstood. In the wake of the Enlightenment, it was usually asserted that Crusaders were merely lacklands and ne'er-do-wells who took advantage of an opportunity to rob and pillage in a faraway land. The Crusaders' expressed sentiments of piety, self-sacrifice, and love for God were obviously not to be taken seriously. They were only a front for darker designs."

This is exactly the motivations given to the Crusaders by James Michener in his book, "The Source". Knights that lacked property and most importantly land [lacklands] went crusading as a means of gaining wealth. DARKER DESIGNS.

However.

"During the past two decades, computer-assisted charter studies have demolished that contrivance. Scholars have discovered that crusading knights were generally wealthy men with plenty of their own land in Europe . . . Europe is littered with thousands of medieval charters [wills [??]] attesting to these sentiments, charters in which these men still speak to us today if we will listen . . . But the truth is that the Crusades were notoriously bad for plunder. A few people got rich, but the vast majority returned with nothing."

NO, the vast majority did not even return. The casualty rates from all sources was enormous in all Crusades. It is estimated that only about 5 % of the original crusaders that set forth on the FIRST CRUSADE returned to Europe. A very small number.

Be your own judge.

coolbert.