Beautiful books - simply gorgeous. But books are also meant to be read, and I am now halfway through volume 3. It was interesting and enlightening for me as I knew little about the crusades. My interest start up with the Last of Crysaders - the Knights of John from the Siege of Rhodes onward. But now I have a lot deeper contextual understanding. Depending on your tastes in writing style, it may be a bit too dry and matter-of-fact; and at least for me, it seemed like there were maybe five different names used by the Crusaders and that's it. So you get Raymond hated Raymond but was support by his vessels, Ray one, Ramond and bob. Lol. But I enjoyed the writing. Once I got into the rhythm of it I began to pick up on the writer's dry sense of humor, use of understatement and irony; and without really knowing how he did it, it was a page turner like a good thriller where you don't know the ending. If you just picked a chapter at random and started reading you would reasonably think I am crazy or a shill, but I am definitely not a shill (jury is out on the first one). I actually found out much later that Runciman's Trilogy - this one - was a milestone achievement in the historiography of the crusades. I believe it is still considered one of best of its kind,though certainly more _facts_ must be known now.i doubt the overarching narrative sweep Runciman's created has been altered or bettered. He was completely objective in his recounting of the facts; he was able to pull off the difficult task of truly bring objective while simultaneously bringing out what the crusades were really like and what the crusaders were like as people. I trace all my aced try to various Euopean people and I am astounded that we survived. It is absolutely clear that the vast majority of the people from Europe that "went to save the Holy Land" were vicious, selfish, violent, utterly intolerant and hugely bigoted. Their appetite for slaughter was of such proportions that I have trouble thinking of any other people in history who were consistently so horrifically indifferent to wholes sale murder and Genevieve. I am sure there really ARE other cases like this, but what amazing to me was that over the first three crusades, hundreds of thousands of aristocrats, landless Knights, peasants, and peoples of all walks of left in groups at different times, from different places, and with different cultural makeup. Yet virtually every single army that arrived made the same mistakes, wrought the same havoc, and generally made it seem. As if the west truly WAS. Itching but a wasteland of violence and stupidity. I don't think that is true of course, but I would not blame the Byzantians or Islamic people's for thinking so. Every army from Germany, some as large as 100,000 people - Every single one - could not refrain from pillaging, looting,meaning,ms telling and murdering the local CHRISTIAN population. They could do this at all, mind you, because the Byzantine Emporer gave them permission to cross his lands and did his best to keep the hordes fed and sheltered. There treatment of the Greeks was appalling. Nonetheless, when one of the many groups was ready to move on to the holy land, the Emperor and his advisors gave them all the good counsel possible, provided local guides and current intelligence. Pall this from the empire that had been fighting over Asia Minor for 1000 years. Maybe they knew a thing r two about the terrain, conditions and likely enemy moves? Naturally, as with apparently any advice given by anyone to the westerners, they promptly ignored all the advice, chose terrible routes to march through Anatolia and were destroyed. One particularly stubborn king led his men into a barrow defile that could have had giant neon signs linking (ambush sight!!!!!) at the entrance - this was the place the Emporer had also said to avoid at all costs because once in, if ambushed?0, you were doomed regardless of numbers. None guess as to what the crusaders did. Yep. And the were slaughtered. It really was tragic in so many ways - once the first crusade conquered much of coast from Antioch to Jerusulem, pathetic personal agendas of the crusaders surfaced and there was immediate conflict as everyone scrambled to claim a little kingdom for themselves. It is likely that the Christians spent as much time and energy bickering and posturing with each other than the did with the supposed enemy. It was not very long in fact, before rival Christian lords would have Muslim allies in a battle against another lord with different Muslim allies.
It is far to simplistic to say that the hostility o the Islamic people's towards the west is directly due to the crusades; but there is abs outlet no doubt that it was a major contributor. When the Christians took Jerusulem, the had sworn oaths to protect certain groups within the city such as the Jews, who they hated but hpoffered great wealth; other wealthy citizens and various other people with dome hope of cutting a deal. After the walls were breached, the army entered the city a began butchering EVERYONE regardless of sex, age, religion, or prior promises. Many groups of Christians, as well as Jews and Muslims would flee to the holy places in hopes that there, at least, these foreigners who came to "liberate the holy city in the name of Jesus would be moved to pity and reverence. Instead, there are several contemporary accounts of the difficulty some of the crusaders turned looters had trying to strip everything o value from the churches, mosques, etc. what wa the difficulty? Primarily finding a way to get out through rooms piled high with the bodies, body parts, and copious amounts of human sides rpthat covered the floors and were piled 6 feet high in places. The people massacred in such places were mostly women, the elderly, children babies and infants. Can you imagine a blood and gore spattered soldier with his bright Red Cross just visible through the filth on his armor as he tried to drag The gold-thread shrouds that had covered images of Jesus and the saints. He was cursing with frustration because the Sirius were heavy and he kept slipping off or plunging into the pile of rated and murdered 10 year olds that happened to bloc the exit? The bodies that were simply hacked to death he would sometimes be able to ge firm footing by crushing the face or skull. Sometimes they were still alive and the screMs were annoying. But it was the ones who had been tortured and so sprawled across the top of a 3 foot high pile of naked young girls, some infants, several young boys, all of which had had ATMs and legs and heads hacked off. Had leaked their insides out through the gaping jagged wound where there vagina used be u til a broadsword had been shoved up it to see if would be long enough to exit through the neck.
I am not writing these things for simple shock value - it is shocking and sickening and even at the time - which was a fairly brutal world considered the rape of Jerusulem, the holy city of three religions, a city left open and kept safe for Christian pilgrims throughout most every era of the prior Islamic rule - this city, the very goal of the crusades in the first place because the religion of peace supposedly wanted to make sure it was safe for Christians - the destroyed it and committed some of most extensive cruelty and greed and love of killing in history. The Rape if Nanking cones to mind as a good comparison. And it mattered - not all at once, but we in the west were never forgiven for that unprecedented barbarity - and the fact that in most cases, we repeated such scenes again and again (there was some noblemen there who kept their promises and treaties) accelerated the transformation of Muslim culture up in the Middle East to a more bigoted, violent, and merciless perspective.
The Normans in particular but every type of people's seemed to be ferocious, incredibly brave warriors; but beyond that most of them were naught but greedy, childish, utterly mercenary, and incapable of NOT trying to kill any person or people that had the misfortune of doing something that appeared an affront to the average middle age warrior. There was only one interpretation and only one appropriate response - slaughter. It would not be a stretch to say the vast majority of the crusaders and many of those left behinfpd in Europe with psychotic in every sense of the word.
Many hundreds of years of benevolent tolerance was destroyed, then reversed by the western world within only a couple hundred years. Before the crusades, Islamic leaders of states with large populations of Christians and other religions - not equality it is true, but with relatively little censure and in some times and places they were even treated equally under the law to a Muslim.
Sorry to go on so long, but it's a result of the power of the narrative to really absorb the real history. The author pulled no punches when describing Islamic butchers,or breaking of promise, receipt, etc. those occurred too.
Cannot recommend any higher, and if the price is do-able, get this slipcase set. You won't regret it. I can't remember if this was direct from Amazon or a 3rd party, the condition was exactly as described and the purchasing and shipping went flawlessly.
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Not Used-like-New quality
Opened up the box and found that the slip case almost ripped off on one side. The spine of the books were coming detached from the pages. But the pages itself look crisp and unread. I don’t think it quite classifies as “used-like new”
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