Readable but somewhat out of fashion historical narrative that nevertheless gets my money for still the best. Certainly, the most influential when it comes to the modern conception of the First Crusade. Runciman’s moral opinions are largely read-between-the-lines obvious but rarely stated overtly, more in the style of a Johnson or Gibbons. ( )

To me this is the basic book for the student of the crusades. Runciman began as a Byzantine specialist, and his views are relatively free of the "Westerners good, Arabs bad" dichotomy that sometimes erupts after the latest Middle Eastern crisis. Both cultural groups are explored and the complexity of the Middle East at the time are more fully explored than usual. This first volume is relatively up close to the personalities involved, yet there is coverage of the larger issues that will be with us in the following volumes. I enjoy his prose and the maps are refreshingly adequate. ( )

This three-volume set is an exemplary history, full of the incident and hundreds (thousands) of persons (all carefully indexed) who comprise the events of two and half centuries. Sir Steven is not a "thesis" historian, although he does not hesitate to make final conclusions of great insight and soundness. His strength lies in his meticulous detail and objectivity, recounting the errors and virtues of all the players, on all sides, with great wisdom and impartiality. He shows that the Crusades were, to use his word, an epic fiasco, that set out to secure the safety of Eastern Christendom, and ended up destroying it; yet he also shows how the Crusades were an initiator of the Italian Renaissance, by driving out the humanists and scholars who could not thrive in an Islamic world whose rigid intolerance was amplified by the Crusading movement. Without ever being vitriolic, he spares no one: While the Crusaders were stubborn bigots who refused to learn from past strategic errors, the Moslems were riven by internecine power-contests that nearly sunk them, and the Mongols efficiently, ruthlessely built an empire based on Genghis Khan's organizational brilliance and policy of implacable massacre. Stylistically, the books are a remarkable crossroads of popular appeal, engaging writing and mind-bogglingly comprehensive scholarship, detailed research and narrative account. ( )

When Raymond of Aguilers later that morning went to visit the Temple area he had to pick his way through corpses and blood that reached up to his knees.

As much as I enjoyed the scholar's book on the Fall of Constantinople, I found this a well researched linear survey, but one lacking resonance. The sequence is delineated but not explained or explored other than the traditional idea that it was opportunity meshed with spiritual responsibility which encouraged the papal decree that white Christians should travel across Europe to perhaps kill brown Christians along with the obvious targets of Turks, Jews and Arabs.

There are a few Runciman bullet points which must have been provocative at the time of publication (1950).

* Augustine didn't see spiritual merit in pilgrimage but Jerome did and afterwards, cousin, business was booming.

*Maybe Islam was an improvement on Christianity, and people often forget in our regional xenophobia that Christianity was an Eastern religion in terms of relative geography. ( )

Steven Runciman in volume 1 of his History of the Crusades:The First Crusade and the Foundations of the Kingdom of Jerusalem describes an 11th century that witnessed massive movements of peoples and political reorganizations. The Byzantine and Latin churches had parted company in 1054. The Turks were causing great distress among pilgrims who could no longer make the journey to Jerusalem. Until that time the Byzantine Empire, which stretched from Lebanon to Austria to Italy, had maintained a very prosperous and peaceful empire through the use of chicanery and trickery. War was to be avoided: it represented a confession of failure. It was considered shameful, a violation of Christian principles and simply wholesale murder. Occasionally, it could be condoned if against infidels. Pope Urban II and Alexius I, the Byzantine emperor, both looked for a way to heal the great rift and as luck would have it the Turks gave them the excuse they needed. Alexius put in a call to the Council at Piazenza for soldiers to fight the infidel Turks. This played into Urban's hands. He was looking for a way to heal the wounds in the church but also to bring the East under domination of the Roman patriarch. He had become increasingly concerned about the cult of the warrior promoted by the Norman code of chivalry and barbarian heritage. The Crusade would be an ideal way to channel this bellicose activity into an endeavor he could dominate.

He got more than he bargained for. Urban had promised grants of land (with him as suzerain, of course) to crusaders who were successful in battle in the East. Not just soldiers responded to the call. Peter, the Hermit, who preached approaching apocalypse, famines and mass destruction, in 1094 led 20,000 ruffians and brigands on a rampage through Hungary toward Constantinople. At Semlin a dispute arose between the locals and the people's crusade: 4,000 Hungarians were killed. Alexius was worried. He had assumed the soldiers he had asked for would take the southern route and would be a disciplined army. When the People's Crusade finally arrived in Constantinople he moved them through as rapidly as possible. They continued killing everything in the way, mostly Greek Christians. Finally, they were tricked into an ambush by the Turks who killed thousands. The French, German and Italian princes, who arrived later, were more disciplined. When they arrived at Alexius' headguarters they were met graciously, but cautiously, and asked to swear allegiance to Alexius. Reluctantly, they agreed. Generally, they were awed by the immense wealth of the Byzantines not to mention their generally higher level of culture.

Problems of greed and politics arose immediately upon their departure for Jerusalem. At Antioch, following a long siege, the Franks took the city but instantly argued over who was to control it.

In the meantime, Alexius who was dismayed by the Franks' miserable treatment of the native Greek Christians whose protector he officially was, opened negotiations with the Egyptian Fatimids, who then ruled Palestine and who generally had been guite tolerant of native Christians and Jews. The Fatimids offered safe conduct for all pilgrims, but the Crusaders by this time saw Jerusalem within their grasp.
In July of 1099 the city fell. The massacre which followed was to sour relations between Moslems and Latin Christianity for centuries. The Crusaders murdered everyone in Jerusalem. The Moslems had been willing to accept the Franks as just one more factor in the tangled political environment of the Middle East, but the slaughter in Jerusalem became proof to them of bloodthirsty Christian fanaticism. Treatment of local Christians who had been sent out of Jerusalem before its fall was not much better. Local priests were tortured to reveal where they had hidden sacred relics of the Cross (they were reluctant to turn them over to a foreign patriarch.)

After 4 years of struggle the First Crusade ended with the creation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem under the leadership of Baldwin of Bologne, a penniless French knight who was to be a good king, but the Crusade had sown the seeds of mischief which would generate the undying enmity of the Moslem world. ( )