A couple of
years ago I read a book by Hilaire Belloc called The Crusades: The World’s Debate. It was a fantastic short book
analysing why the Crusading efforts ultimately failed, event though they began
with great success. “Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc…(27 July 1870 – 16 July
1953) was a French-English writer, politician, and historian. Belloc was also
an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political
activist.”[1] His broad range of talents, experience and skills means that he had a legitimate ability to evaluate this failure and articulate it well. For
reference Belloc was a Christian, a Catholic, and in some ways he was similar
to G.K. Chesterton.
The Crusades
are a fascinating topic, especially because in recent years there has been a
growing movement defending them in the West. There was once a time when various
opponents of Christianity would bring up the Crusades as a stain on the history
of the Church and Christians would blush. But now this kind of rhetoric is far less potent. It is now
common knowledge that the Crusades were in part a response to massive
incursions of Christendom by Islamic forces. It is also now quite common knowledge
that Islamic armies conquered Syria-Palestinia, the province of the Eastern
Roman Empire where Jerusalem is, northern Africa, much of Spain, Asia Minor,
parts of Eastern Europe and they were making advances in other parts of Eastern
Europe and Western Europe as well. Hence, they were as much a defensive move as they were offensive.
The narrative
has so successfully flipped that many Christians will now openly vocalize their
support for the Crusades, and of course the memes are legitimately funny and
morale boosting:
No longer are
Christians cowed by mention of things like the Crusades, they are likely to be motivated
even more to defend the greatness of Christian civilisation.
But while the
memes should flow, and Christians should not be embarrassed that Western
Knights united with Constantinople to reclaim lands that historically had been
Christian, this does not mean that there isn’t legitimate criticism of the
crusades to consider. For instance, examining why they failed. Belloc, and I would concur
with his summation, argued that they failed because of the Christian Knights
obsession with taking and holding Jerusalem. It was an incorrect placing of
this physical city in their theology which caused the whole enterprise to fail.
I find this fascinating because it has some parallels with what is happening in
the West and the Middle East today. So, let’s examine Belloc’s argument and then we will come back to those parallels.
First, let me
note that you can find Belloc’s book cheaply on Amazon. But you can also get it for
free on the internet archive and Project Gutenberg. Free is even
better than cheap, and Belloc writes in an easy to read manner.
Summary of
Hilaire Belloc's Argument
Belloc's
central thesis in The Crusades is that the Crusaders' obsessive focus on
Jerusalem—a symbolic and spiritual prize—led them to neglect the more pragmatic
military and geographical necessities for long-term success. He frames the
Crusades not just as a religious conflict but as a decisive "world
debate" between the expanding power of Islam (which he called "the
Mohammedan") and the Christian civilization of Europe. Even the memes
above show that this obsessive emphasis of the Crusades on Jerusalem is well
understood in the popular mind. Jerusalem is the central focus when discussing
the Holy Land, and has been since the first century at least, arguably even
before that when you consider the Old Testament.
Belloc’s
argument can be broken down as follows. Firstly, Belloc argues that the
Crusader states were essentially maritime outposts of Europe, utterly dependent
on sea lanes across the Mediterranean for reinforcements, supplies, and
communication. Control of the coast was their lifeline. Hence, from a strategic
perspective, if they wanted to hold the land of Canaan, Syria and the surrounding
lands, then they needed to focus their military efforts on controlling the
coastal ports.
He then notes
that their critical failure was that the Crusaders' neglect of
the cities he calls the "Gates of invasion" or the
"bridges" between the Egyptian and Mesopotamian (Iraqi) Islamic
powers. He identifies two in particular:
1. Ascalon (Ashkelon): A formidable
coastal fortress south of Jaffa, which remained a persistent Egyptian Fatimid
base for decades. From here, Egyptian armies could constantly raid the Kingdom
of Jerusalem's southern borders and interior, forcing the Crusaders into a
perpetual defensive stance:
“Yet
the town of Ascalon itself was neither attacked nor taken. It was to remain in
Moslem hands for a whole lifetime—a land sea gate open to Moslem invasion for
over fifty years."[2]
- Damascus: The key city
linking Egypt to the East. Belloc posits that by not taking and holding
Damascus, the Crusaders failed to drive a permanent wedge between the two
main Islamic power centers. As long as these powers could unite or support
each other, the Crusader states would always be vulnerable to a pincer
movement:
“On
account of all this it is Damascus throughout the ages that has determined the
fate of Syria. It was Damascus on which the Assyrian power had concentrated
centuries earlier and had found so difficult to grasp; it was from Damascus
that Pompey gave orders which made the Roman soldiers the possessors of the
whole land; it was the fall of Damascus to the first Mohammedan invasion which
determined the success of that invasion and made it permanent—and now it was
Damascus that would have confirmed the Crusading effort.”[3]
From a
military perspective failure to cut off of these ”gates of invasion” left
the Crusader movement vulnerable to being caught in a pincer of Islamic forces
from the East and the West. Which is exactly what increasingly happened over
time. The Crusaders were surrounded, and their supply lines stretched too far away.
What caused these strategic blunders was a hyper focus on taking the Holy City
of Jerusalem. Belloc contends that the spiritual and emotional allure of
Jerusalem blinded the Crusader leaders to this grand strategy (does this not
sound familiar?). The effort and blood spilled to capture and then defend the
inland city of Jerusalem drained resources that should have been spent on consolidating
the coast by fully securing all port cities. Neutralizing Ascalon by making its
capture an absolute priority to secure the southern flank. And pushing on to
Damascus by using the initial momentum of the First Crusade to take this
strategic linchpin.
The Crusader
Knights were outnumbered by the Arabic and Islamic forces in the region. But in
a pitched battle the European Knights were far more powerful man to man, and
the Europeans won many battles even though they were heavily outnumbered. The
use of this advantage at the beginning of the war, while momentum was still hot, could have ensured a strong strategic position for the Christian powers.
Belloc argues
that holding Damascus would have broken the unity of the Islamic world and
provided a defensible geographical frontier (potentially the desert) for a
lasting Christian state.
Like many
Christians today Belloc was not against the Crusades, rather he was looking at why
their failed. Underpinning Belloc’s entire argument is his view that the
Crusades were a necessary defensive war for Christian Europe's survival. He saw
the failure to secure the "Gates of invasion" as a catastrophic
strategic blunder that ultimately allowed Islam to reunite under leaders like
Saladin (who came from the Mesopotamian sphere) and eventually overwhelm the
Crusader states, leaving Europe vulnerable to later invasions (like the Ottoman
expansion into Europe).
Essentially,
Christendom had a golden chance to return the ancient lands where the Church
originated back into the fold of Christendom, because the Islamic powers were
weakened from internal strife. But rather than capitalize on this chance, they
stumbled over Zion, to use a biblical metaphor. Remember how Peter notes that
Jesus was a stone laid in Zion that the builders rejected, they stumbled over him. Well, in this case
the stone was Zion and the Crusaders stumbled over it. Their religious oneitis
for Jerusalem made this a certainty.
I should also
note that Belloc puts forward other contributing reasons for the failure of the
Crusading effort. The feudal nature of the enterprise meant it was hard to
create any lasting unity among the European forces. Feudal armies simply did
not work how modern armies do, with an overarching command structure. There was
often infighting and jockeying for position, and the prestige of being the
leader to capture Jerusalem was just too strong an allure for many of these
leading men from Europe. Belloc, also writes with the benefit of hindsight and the
benefit of centuries of historical analysis. The Crusaders on the ground were
driven by faith, internal rivalries, and immediate pressures, not a
century-long grand strategy.
The truth is
that even had the crusading effort achieved capturing all the port cities and
cutting off all contact between the disparate parts of the Isalmic world, other issues such as the incredible expense, mixing with the local population and therefore having
changing loyalties over time, and other forces made the keeping of these lands
not entirely certain. However, it still stands that the effort failed in large
part because of an incorrect theological emphasis on Jerusalem that blinded the
Crusaders to much more important strategic goals that could have benefitted
Christian civilisation for centuries to come. The Hagia Sophia might still be a
church today if the Crusaders had not been so hyper focused on Jerusalem. At
least this is Belloc’s case, and I find it compelling.
Note, the
term “World’s Debate” in his title is referring to the clash of civilisations,
not just the question of the Crusades. Belloc's core argument is that the
Crusaders lost the "World's Debate" because they prioritized the
symbolic heart of their faith (Jerusalem) over the strategic strongholds
necessary for military and political longevity (Ascalon and Damascus), thereby
failing to permanently divide their enemies and secure their own
existence. It remains a powerful and influential, though not uncontested,
interpretation of the Crusades' failure.
There are
even other analysts who agree with his strategic argument. For instance, R. C.
Smail, in his seminal work Crusading Warfare, 1097-1193,
provides a meticulous military analysis that strongly supports this view. He
details how the fortified city of Ascalon served as a permanent
"bolt-hole" for Egyptian armies, allowing them to raid the Kingdom of
Jerusalem almost at will. Smail argues that the failure to capture and
dismantle Ascalon after the victory at Ascalon in 1099 was a catastrophic error
that left the kingdom's southern frontier insecure for over half a century.
This is a direct validation of Belloc's point.
I can’t help
but see in this historical misadventure a very strong parallel to what is
happening with the Church and Israel today. An emotional attachment to the land
of Israel or the city of Jerusalem has caused just as many strategic blunders. For
instance, early Arabists in the American government bureaucracy noted that the
establishment of Israel in the land of Canaan would cause a conflagration in
the region, the King Crane Commission of 1919 comes to mind here. They warned that the century
long good relationship America and other Western powers had with Arab states
would be eroded if America got behind Israel to the expense of other nations.
And this is exactly what has occurred. Some Christians seek to deny this but it
was predicted, because it was self-evident and this is exactly what has
transpired. However, the Middle East was so weakened after the fall of the Ottoman Empire the West thought it could do what it liked. Strategically speaking making Israel its closest ally has caused anarchy in the Middle East, weakened
America’s standing on the world stage, and this standing is deteriorating the
longer their joint forever wars continue.
Also, Israel is not a good location strategically. Historically the land of Canaan changed hands so often because it was a thoroughfare for larger powers marching through. Many theologians have argued that God put his people in such a precarious position so that they might rely on him, not armies. Though some Christians argue Israel is on the frontlines combatting Islam stopping it from conquering the West, this is nonsense. Israel is surrounded by Islamic nations, and many other Islamic countries do not need to go near it to go anywhere in the world. The great exodus of Muslims into Europe in 2015 shows this myth to be the lie it is. The truth is that Israel is surrounded by Islamic nations on every side and costs the West a lot in both finances and political capital just to maintain its position. Strategically Israel is a stumbling block for the West, and seeking to hold Jerusalem is as much a strategic error today as it was during the crusades. It just causes more and more conflict. But this is not just true from a strategic
political perspective.
Many
Christians will publicly talk about how supporting Israel is a pillar of
Christianity. I see it all the time all over Social media and with Christians
in the real world too. Consider what this does to many people interested in
Christianity? It makes them look at evangelicalism as unhinged, particularly
when Christians are stating publicly, often, online that they “stand with Israel” no matter what Israel does. This is spiritually a stumbling block for many
people. In fact, there are many testimonies of people turning to Catholicism
precisely because they don’t want to have to choose Christ + Israel. Which is a
something no Chrisitan should ever put forward anyway. Jesus is Israel. As
Matthew the Apostle says, “Out of Egypt I brought my son” (Matt. 2:13-15),
applying a prophecy about Israel to Jesus. In John Jesus claims to be the “true
vine” (John 15:1), which is Jesus claiming to be Israel, because the vineyard
of the Lord of hosts is Israel (Isaiah 5:7). Many other passages in the Bible
justify this stance.
Physical
objects and symbols have long been a stumbling block for Christians. Some
Christians put Mary in the wrong position in their faith, and many evangelicals
have done the same with Israel. We see this ancient stumbling block manifesting
as it has done historically, simply in a different way.
The Crusaders
were blinded by their genuine religious zeal for the physical homeland of our
Lord. A land that is special for that reason, no doubt. But their quest to
secure it, at all costs, cost them their ability to actually secure it for the
long term. Modern evangelicals have the same oneitis for the modern land of
Israel. Their desire to see prophecy, as they understand it, fulfilled in the land of Canaan has
blinded them to the great strategic loss that has happened by the West’s
unconditional support for the nation of Israel. Both the western Church and the West in general have stumbled in incredible ways because of this situation.
If instead of
using the military to establish a colony of the West called Israel in the Islamic
world, what could the region today look like if instead while the powers of
Britain and America were friendly with the Arab nations they had used this
influence and relationship to send missionary after missionary there? The
region could look very different. We have seen how such missionary efforts have
transformed parts of Africa, Asia, South America and more lands. What an opportunity
we have squandered. One day Christian authors will be writing about how the
West achieved great dominance over the world, but squandered it for a host of
reasons. One of those reasons is the same reason the crusaders lost their
conquests eventually: an incorrect view of the place of a historical city in
our faith. Our real hope is the Jerusalem above (Heb. 12:22-24; Gal. 4:26).
List of
References
[2] Belloc,
Hilaire. The Crusades: The World's Debate (p. 146). Cavalier Books. Kindle
Edition
[3] Belloc,
Hilaire. The Crusades: The World's Debate (p. 93). Cavalier Books. Kindle
Edition.
