Crusades

The Sixth Crusade started in 1228 as an attempt to regain Jerusalem. It began seven years after the failure of the Fifth Crusade. It involved very... little actual fighting. The diplomatic maneuvering of the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II resulted in the Kingdom of Jerusalem regaining control of Jerusalem and other areas for fifteen years. Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, had involved himself broadly in the Fifth Crusade, sending troops from Germany, but he failed to accompany the army directly, despite the encouragement of Honorius III and later Gregory IX, as he needed to consolidate his position in Germany and Italy before embarking on a crusade. However, Frederick again promised to go on a crusade after his coronation as emperor in 1220 by Pope Honorius III. In 1225 Frederick married Yolande of Jerusalem , daughter of John of Brienne and Maria of Montferrat. Frederick now had a claim to the truncated kingdom, and reason to attempt to restore it.
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The Albigensian Crusade or Cathar Crusade was a 20-year military campaign initiated by the Catholic Church to eliminate Catharism in Languedoc. The... Crusade was prosecuted primarily by the French and promptly took on a political flavour, resulting in not only a significant reduction in the number of practicing Cathars but also a realignment of Occitania, bringing it into the sphere of the French crown and diminishing the distinct regional culture and high level of Aragonese influence. When Innocent III's diplomatic attempts to roll back Catharism met with little success and after the papal legate Pierre de Castelnau was murdered, Innocent III declared a crusade against Languedoc, offering the lands of the Cathar heretics to any French nobleman willing to take up arms. The violence led to France's acquisition of lands with closer linguistic, cultural, and political ties to Catalonia . The Albigensian Crusade also had a role in the creation and institutionalization of both the Dominican Order and the Medieval Inquisition.
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The Eighth Crusade was a crusade launched by Louis IX, King of France, in 1270. The Eighth Crusade is sometimes counted as the Seventh, if the Fifth... and Sixth Crusades of Frederick II are counted as a single crusade. The Ninth Crusade is sometimes also counted as part of the Eighth. Louis was disturbed by events in Syria, where the Mamluk sultan Baibars had been attacking the remnant of the Crusader states. Baibars had seized the opportunity after a war pitting the cities of Venice and Genoa against each other had exhausted the Syrian ports that the two cities controlled. By 1265 Baibars had captured Nazareth, Haifa, Toron, and Arsuf. Hugh III of Cyprus, nominal king of Jerusalem, landed in Acre to defend that city, while Baibars marched as far north as Armenia, which was at that time under Mongol control. These events led to Louis' call for a new crusade in 1267, although there was little support this time; Jean de Joinville, the chronicler who accompanied Louis on the Seventh Crusade, refused to go.
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The Fourth Crusade was originally intended to conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. Instead, in April 1204, the... Crusaders of Western Europe invaded and conquered the Christian city of Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire . This is seen as one of the final acts in the Great Schism between the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church. The crusaders established the Latin Empire and other "Latin" states in the Byzantine lands they conquered. After the limited success of the Third Crusade , there was little interest in Europe for another crusade against the Muslims. The crusaders had lost Jerusalem to the Ayyubid dynasty, which ruled all of Syria and Egypt, and only a few cities along the coast were still held by the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, now centred on Acre. The Third Crusade had also established a kingdom on Cyprus. Pope Innocent III succeeded to the papacy in 1198, and the preaching of a new crusade became the goal of his pontificate.
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