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On November the 27th, 1095, Pope Urban II delivered a particularly impassioned sermon.

Watching him, hanging on his every word, was a large group of

French nobles and clergymen in Clermont. In the sermon he talked about the terrible violence

in European society, the necessity of maintaining peace, the peace of God, he called it.

And then, perhaps in order to achieve that, he subtly changed tack.

He talked about helping the Greeks in the East,

i.e. the rulers of Constantinople,

from the Muslim superpower that dominated what we now call the Middle East.

He pointed out those Greeks had been asking for assistance.

He pointed out that in the Middle East,

terrible crimes have been committed against Christians.

And then he laid out his solution to all of those ills,

a neat solution, a new kind of war,

armed pilgrimage. His nobles and the audience should cease

fighting, quarreling amongst themselves and instead unite and head east to take on the infidel,

that Muslim lords of the Near East. He promised anyone who would die, that they would die a pilgrim, their sins would be

remitted, they would be rewarded in heaven. The crowd roared back. Deus Volt, God wills it.

And that really was the start of the Crusades, a series of campaigns in which large groups of warriors left Europe, marched or sailed east, and tried to re-Christianize the Holy Land.

Now, some of these Crusades were well funded, some of them were led by dukes, counts, kings.

...