It remained essential, therefore, for the Christians to launch a new campaign. In spite of the participation of the mightiest Western rulers of the day (the German Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, King Philip II Augustus of France, and King Richard the Lion-Hearted of England), they only managed to regain control of the Palestinian coastline. The people of the West were horrified the pope was said to have died of a heart attack, and his successor launched the Third Crusade.

Finally, in July 1187, Saladin crushed the Christian army at the Battle of Hattin, and two months later, he regained Jerusalem and much of the Levant for Islam. The Muslim world took several years to understand and to respond to this new war of religious colonization, but then the jihad, or countercrusade, slowly gathered momentum. A Second Crusade in 1145-49 ended ingloriously, with the Christians abandoning their siege of Damascus after four futile days. They endured terrible hardships - starvation, enemy attacks, and sickness - but eventually, on July 15, 1099, they captured Jerusalem, the epicenter of the Christian faith. UrbanвЂ™s appeal received a rapturous response, and around sixty thousand men spent the next three years struggling across Asia Minor toward the Holy Land. To some men the prospects of land and loot were additional attractions. In spite of the intense religiosity of the time knights were, because of their way of life, deeply immersed in sin the prospect of receiving an unprecedented spiritual reward (thereby avoiding eternal damnation) and being able to continue to fight was hugely alluring. In return for their efforts, these warriors would be rewarded with the remission of all their sins. Just over one hundred years earlier, in November 1095, Pope Urban II had issued a call to the knights of France to liberate the city of Jerusalem from Islam. How could a combined land and naval force of perhaps twenty thousand men take a city with an estimated population of 350,000? In reality, the combination of a particularly favorable set of political circumstances, military and maritime skills of the highest order, religious zeal, and sheer good fortune enabled the Crusaders to succeed.Д«efore we explore the reasons behind this victory, it is crucial to explain why the Fourth Crusade arrived at Constantinople.

One wrote: вЂWe might safely say that no history could ever relate marvels greater than these so far as the fortunes of war are concernedвЂ¦.This was done by the Lord and is a miracle above all miracles in our eyes.вЂ™ Seeking to avenge the Holy Spirit they raged openly against Christ and sinned by overturning the Cross with the cross they bore on their backs, not even shuddering to trample on it for the sake of a little gold or silver.вЂ™ To the Crusaders themselves, the capture of Constantinople seemed an astonishing turn of events. Niketas Choniates, one of the inhabitants of the city, condemned the CrusadersвЂ™ actions in understandably harsh terms: вЂIn truth, they were exposed as frauds. Within months Pope Innocent III, the man who had first called for the Crusade, bitterly lamented the spilling of вЂblood on Christian swords that should have been used on pagansвЂ™ and described the expedition as вЂan example of affliction and the works of Hell.вЂ™

In April 1204, the armies of the Fourth Crusade broke into the city of Constantinople and began to loot, pillage, and slaughter their way across the greatest metropolis in the Christian world.

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