The Crusades

The Crusades (1095—1291) were a series of campaigns by Western Christendom against the Muslims of the Near East and Spain, heretics and political enemies of Rome. They began with Pope Urban II's sermon at Clermont in November 1095, calling to recover Jerusalem. The First Crusade took the city in 1099; Saladin retook it in 1187; the Third Crusade of Richard the Lionheart failed to recover it; the Fourth Crusade in 1204 ended catastrophically with the sack of Constantinople itself. In 1291 the Mamluks took Acre, the last Christian stronghold in the East.