The Crusades, Explained: What Started Each One, What It Tried to Do, and What Happened

Were there seven, eight, or nine Crusades?

The familiar sequence usually contains eight major Crusades, or nine if Edward of England’s expedition of 1271–1272 is counted separately. Seven is therefore not the usual total.^[2][12] Britannica lists eight; Edward’s campaign is often called the Ninth Crusade, but it can also be treated as a continuation of the Eighth.^[2][12]

That numbering is a convenient way to organize the major eastern expeditions—not a complete inventory of crusading.^[1][13][16] There were additional campaigns in the Holy Land, crusades in Iberia and the Baltic, wars against alleged heretics, and later expeditions against the Ottomans.^[1][13][16] Some popular movements called “crusades” were not papally authorized military campaigns at all.^[1][13][16]

This guide covers all nine in the familiar numbered sequence, then explains the important campaigns that numbering leaves out.^[2][4][12] Dates describe the main expedition; some histories begin with the proclamation or include subsequent fighting, which explains modest differences between timelines.^[2][4][12]

Before the First Crusade: the world that made it possible

Jerusalem was sacred to Christians, Muslims, and Jews.^[1][4] By the late eleventh century it had been under Muslim rule for centuries: the First Crusade was not a response to a brand-new Muslim conquest of a western Christian city.^[1][4] Its immediate geopolitical setting was the expansion of the Seljuk Turks into Byzantine territory, especially after the Byzantine defeat at Manzikert in 1071.^[1][4]

The Byzantine Empire was a Greek-speaking Christian power centered on Constantinople.^[4] Emperor Alexios I Komnenos appealed to western Christians for military assistance in 1095.^[4] Pope Urban II turned that request into a much larger religious expedition, preaching aid to eastern Christians and the recovery of Jerusalem and its holy sites.^[4]

For participants, crusading combined armed pilgrimage, a religious vow, and the promise of spiritual benefits.^[1][4] Genuine piety mattered, but so did family obligations, honor, lordship, political ambition, and opportunities for wealth or territory.^[1][4] The papacy also hoped to strengthen its leadership and improve its position in relation to eastern Christianity.^[1][4] There was never one identical motive shared by every crusader.^[1][4]

Nor were “the Christians” and “the Muslims” two unified teams.^[4][5][10] Byzantine rulers, western kings, Italian maritime cities, and the settlers of the Latin East often wanted different things.^[4][5][10] Muslim dynasties and local rulers likewise competed with one another; alliances could cross religious boundaries.^[4][5][10] Those divisions help explain both the First Crusade’s success and the shifting strategies of later expeditions.^[4][5][10]

The numbered Crusades at a glance

The dates follow the conventional sequence; Edward’s expedition is the optional ninth entry.^[2][12] The sections below explain each campaign’s trigger, strategy, and outcome with individual sources.^[2][12]

1. First Crusade — the conquest that created the problem of holding it

Lead-up and trigger. Seljuk expansion had badly weakened Byzantine control of Anatolia.^[4] Alexios’s appeal in 1095 supplied the immediate diplomatic opening.^[4] Urban II’s sermon at the Council of Clermont in November 1095 transformed it into a mass recruitment effort; the principal armies departed in 1096.^[4]

Purposes and goals. The proclaimed purposes were to help eastern Christians and recover Jerusalem and the holy places.^[4] Alexios wanted military help and the recovery of Byzantine territory.^[4] Some western leaders also wanted independent lordships.^[4] Those goals overlapped, but they were not identical.^[4]

Leaders and course. There was no single king commanding the whole expedition.^[4] Important leaders included Godfrey of Bouillon, Raymond of Toulouse, Bohemond of Taranto, and Baldwin of Boulogne.^[4] An earlier, less organized movement associated with Peter the Hermit—the People’s Crusade—was largely destroyed by the Seljuks in 1096.^[4] Meanwhile, crusading bands committed massacres against Jewish communities in the Rhineland.^[4]

The main armies helped recover Nicaea in 1097, crossed Anatolia, captured Antioch in June 1098, and took Jerusalem on 15 July 1099.^[4] Muslim political fragmentation helped the invaders, but the campaign also involved severe shortages, famine, and difficult sieges.^[4]

Outcome. It achieved its central territorial objective, but Jerusalem’s capture was accompanied by massacres of Muslims and Jews.^[1][4] The conquests produced the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Principality of Antioch, County of Edessa, and, later, County of Tripoli.^[1][4] These Latin-ruled states needed continuing manpower, money, and military support.^[1][4] Winning a campaign did not solve the long-term problem of defending the territory.^[1][4]

Bottom line: a major conquest from the crusaders’ perspective, purchased at enormous human cost—and the beginning of a prolonged struggle to preserve it.

2. Second Crusade — a response to Edessa that ended at Damascus

Lead-up and trigger. On 24 December 1144, Zengi, ruler of Mosul and Aleppo, captured Edessa.^[5] The loss of a major city of the first crusader state shocked western Christians.^[5] Pope Eugenius III called a new crusade in December 1145, and Bernard of Clairvaux became its most influential preacher.^[5]

Purposes and goals. Recovering the position lost at Edessa and protecting the Latin East drove recruitment.^[5] The papal appeal was broader than a narrowly defined order to retake Edessa, however, and the campaign never maintained a single agreed operational goal.^[5] This was also a multi-theater crusading effort, with campaigns in Iberia and against the Wends in northeastern Europe.^[5]

Leaders and course. Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany led the main eastern expedition—the first numbered crusade personally led by kings.^[5] Their armies suffered heavy losses in Anatolia.^[5] Once in the Levant, the surviving leaders chose Damascus rather than Edessa as their major target.^[5] The siege in July 1148 lasted only four days before the crusaders withdrew.^[5]

The choice was politically risky: Damascus had previously cooperated with the Kingdom of Jerusalem against other Muslim powers.^[5] Relations were already shifting, but attacking it did not produce the hoped-for strategic breakthrough.^[5]

Outcome. The eastern expedition failed.^[5] Edessa was not recovered, and the remaining county disappeared by 1150.^[5] Zengi’s successor Nur al-Din subsequently consolidated power in Syria.^[5] In contrast, crusaders traveling by sea helped the Portuguese capture Lisbon in 1147: failure in the Levant did not mean every campaign associated with the Second Crusade failed.^[5]

Bottom line: a failed rescue mission in the East, despite some successes elsewhere.

3. Third Crusade — Richard and Saladin, but no recovery of Jerusalem

Lead-up and trigger. Saladin had united substantial resources in Egypt and Syria.^[6] On 4 July 1187, he defeated the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem at Hattin, then captured Jerusalem that October.^[6] Pope Gregory VIII called for a new crusade in October 1187.^[6]

Purposes and goals. The primary objective was to recover Jerusalem and restore the Latin kingdom after its near-collapse.^[6] Recovering holy relics, including the True Cross lost at Hattin, also mattered to the appeal.^[6]

Leaders and course. The famous “Kings’ Crusade” involved Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, Philip II of France, and Richard I of England.^[6] Frederick drowned in 1190 before reaching the main theater, and much of his army dispersed.^[6] Philip and Richard helped bring the long siege of Acre to a successful conclusion in July 1191; Philip then returned to France.^[6]

Richard captured Cyprus on the journey east, won at Arsuf, and fought to secure the coast.^[6] Yet he did not besiege Jerusalem: the army’s leaders feared that even if they took it, they could not reliably supply or hold it against Saladin’s forces.^[6] The campaign also included Richard’s execution of thousands of Muslim prisoners after Acre’s surrender.^[6]

Outcome. The 1192 settlement left Jerusalem under Muslim rule but permitted Christian pilgrimage.^[6] The crusaders retained a coastal foothold, with Acre becoming central to the surviving kingdom.^[6] That preserved a basis for future resistance, even though the headline objective remained unmet.^[6]

Bottom line: a substantial recovery of the crusaders’ coastal position, not the reconquest of Jerusalem.

4. Fourth Crusade — the expedition that attacked a Christian empire

Lead-up and trigger. Jerusalem remained outside Latin control after the Third Crusade.^[7] Pope Innocent III promoted another expedition, but unlike the Second and Third, this crusade was not kicked off by one recent spectacular territorial loss.^[7] It arose from an unresolved objective and a renewed papal initiative.^[7]

Purposes and goals. Recovering the Holy Land remained the declared purpose.^[7] The leaders planned to attack Egypt first, striking at the resources supporting Muslim rule in the region.^[7]

Leaders and course. Boniface of Montferrat was a principal crusader leader; Venice supplied the fleet under Doge Enrico Dandolo.^[7] Fewer crusaders arrived than expected, leaving the army unable to meet its transport bill.^[7] To obtain Venetian assistance, it helped capture Zara—modern Zadar—a Christian city on the Adriatic in 1202.^[7] Innocent III condemned the attack.^[7]

A further diversion followed when the Byzantine claimant Alexios IV offered money and assistance in exchange for help restoring his family to power.^[7] After intervention at Constantinople in 1203, the promised support failed to materialize, hostility intensified, and another change of emperor undermined the arrangement.^[7] In April 1204 the crusaders stormed and sacked Constantinople.^[7]

Outcome. The main expedition did not recover Jerusalem or conquer Egypt.^[7] Instead it established a Latin Empire and partitioned Byzantine lands among western rulers and Venice.^[7] Looting, destruction, and violence against the population made this a catastrophe for the eastern Christians whom crusading rhetoric had originally promised to help.^[7] Byzantine successor states survived, and Constantinople was recovered in 1261, but the empire was gravely weakened.^[7]

It is misleading to describe the sack simply as “what the pope wanted”: papal sponsorship of the original expedition and the crusaders’ subsequent diversions are different things.^[7] Financial pressures, contingent decisions, Byzantine politics, and commercial interests all contributed.^[7]

Bottom line: failure against the declared Holy Land objective; conquest and devastation of a Christian capital instead.

5. Fifth Crusade — trying to trade Egypt for Jerusalem

Lead-up and trigger. After the Fourth Crusade’s diversion, Innocent III organized a more tightly supervised effort.^[16] Preparations intensified in 1213, and the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 established the campaign’s framework.^[16] Innocent died in 1216, leaving Pope Honorius III to oversee it.^[16] Again, this was a planned renewal, not a reaction to a single new conquest of Jerusalem.^[16]

Purposes and goals. Egypt was the operational target; Jerusalem was the ultimate objective.^[8][16] The crusaders hoped that conquering Egyptian territory would cripple Ayyubid power or provide something valuable to exchange for the Holy Land.^[8][16]

Leaders and course. Early contingents included Andrew II of Hungary.^[8][16] The Egyptian phase involved John of Brienne, king of Jerusalem, and the papal legate Cardinal Pelagius, whose competing claims to authority contributed to divided leadership.^[8][16] The crusaders besieged Damietta and captured it in November 1219.^[8][16]

Sultan al-Kamil offered terms that included the return of Jerusalem.^[8][16] John favored agreement, but Pelagius and other leaders rejected it.^[8][16] They feared an unfavorable strategic settlement and hoped for a larger victory, especially if Frederick II’s promised reinforcements arrived.^[8][16] The campaign then stalled before advancing toward Cairo in 1221.^[8][16]

Outcome. Near Mansurah, Muslim forces, disrupted supply and retreat routes, and the Nile’s flooding trapped the crusaders.^[8] They surrendered in August 1221 and gave back Damietta in return for being allowed to leave.^[8] They finished without Jerusalem or a lasting Egyptian conquest.^[8]

Bottom line: an initial siege victory squandered by divided command, rejected compromise, and a disastrous inland advance.

6. Sixth Crusade — Jerusalem recovered through negotiation

Lead-up and trigger. Frederick II had repeatedly postponed fulfilling his crusading vow and had failed to join the Fifth Crusade.^[9] His marriage to Isabella II of Jerusalem in 1225 gave him a dynastic interest in the kingdom.^[9] After illness disrupted another departure in 1227, Pope Gregory IX excommunicated him.^[9] Frederick nevertheless sailed in 1228.^[9]

Purposes and goals. He sought to restore Jerusalem while asserting his authority over its kingdom and demonstrating that he could fulfill his crusading obligation.^[9] Al-Kamil, meanwhile, was dealing with rival Ayyubid rulers and had reasons to avoid another expensive front.^[9]

Leaders and course. Frederick’s comparatively limited military position and al-Kamil’s political calculations made negotiation attractive.^[9][18] On 18 February 1229 they concluded the Treaty of Jaffa: much of Jerusalem and other important Christian sites returned to Latin control, while the Temple Mount’s Muslim holy places remained under Muslim authority.^[9][18] The agreement provided a ten-year peace.^[9][18]

Outcome. This was a striking diplomatic success, not the result of a great battlefield victory.^[18] But the arrangement left Jerusalem difficult to defend and was opposed by important religious and political constituencies.^[18] Frederick’s disputed authority also helped perpetuate conflict within the Latin kingdom.^[18]

Two cautions prevent a misleading version of the story.^[9][18] First, descriptions of the treaty’s treatment of Muslim residents differ: Britannica says they retained homes and property, whereas World History Encyclopedia describes residents leaving while retaining pilgrimage access.^[9][18] The uncontested point for this overview is the continuing Muslim control of the principal Islamic holy precinct.^[9][18]

Second, Jerusalem did not simply remain continuously in Latin hands from 1229 to 1244.^[18] It was lost in 1239, restored through subsequent negotiations associated with the 1239–1241 expeditions, and lost again in 1244.^[18]

Bottom line: a real but fragile restoration of Jerusalem through diplomacy, not a durable settlement of the region’s conflicts.

7. Seventh Crusade — Louis IX’s Egyptian disaster

Lead-up and trigger. Khwarazmian forces captured and devastated Jerusalem in 1244.^[10] That October, an army combining Latin forces with Muslim allies from Syria suffered a crushing defeat at La Forbie.^[10] Louis IX of France took the cross in December 1244, during a serious illness; his decision preceded the formal papal call for the campaign.^[10]

Purposes and goals. Louis intended to restore the Holy Land by defeating Egypt, again treating it as the key to Jerusalem.^[10][14] His effort also reflected a deeply personal commitment to the crusading ideal.^[10][14]

Leaders and course. Louis departed in 1248, assembled his forces through Cyprus, and captured Damietta in June 1249.^[10][14] The crusaders advanced into Egypt, where fighting at Mansurah in February 1250 brought heavy losses, including the destruction of the rash advance force led by Louis’s brother Robert of Artois.^[10][14] Muslim forces intercepted supplies; hunger and disease weakened the army.^[10][14]

During the retreat in April, Louis and many survivors were captured.^[10][14] In May he obtained release through ransom and the surrender of Damietta.^[10][14] In the same period, a violent change of power in Egypt helped establish Mamluk rule, creating the regime that would eventually eliminate the remaining mainland crusader states.^[10][14]

Outcome. The invasion failed to conquer Egypt or restore Jerusalem.^[14] Louis nevertheless remained in the Levant until 1254, negotiating the release of prisoners and strengthening defenses.^[14] That is why the crusade’s dates extend beyond the military collapse of 1250.^[14]

Bottom line: a failed invasion, followed by several years of more useful—though insufficient—defensive and diplomatic work.

8. Eighth Crusade — why Louis went to Tunis

Lead-up and trigger. Under Sultan Baibars, the Mamluks captured or dismantled important Latin positions during the 1260s.^[11][14] Louis took the cross again in 1267; the loss of Antioch in 1268 then made the deteriorating situation still more urgent.^[11][14] Antioch reinforced the need for the expedition, but it did not cause a vow made the previous year.^[11][14]

Purposes and goals. The broad purpose was to aid the Latin East.^[11][14] Yet the expedition’s first target was Tunis, far west of Egypt and the Holy Land.^[11][14] The reasons are less straightforward than the familiar Jerusalem objective: accounts emphasize strategic hopes for a North African base and the Mediterranean interests of Louis’s brother Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily.^[11][14] Britannica treats Charles’s influence as a probable explanation, not a settled single cause.^[11][14]

Leaders and course. Louis landed near Tunis in July 1270.^[11][14] Before the campaign could achieve a meaningful strategic result, disease spread through the camp.^[11][14] Louis’s son John Tristan died, and Louis himself died on 25 August.^[11][14] Charles arrived and helped negotiate withdrawal.^[11][14]

Outcome. The settlement with Tunis included financial payments and concessions concerning Christians, but it did not recapture Jerusalem or relieve the Holy Land’s military crisis.^[11][12][14] Most participants went home.^[11][12][14] Prince Edward of England, arriving after the settlement, continued east with a smaller force.^[11][12][14]

Bottom line: a fatal detour for Louis and no significant rescue of the Latin East.

9. Ninth Crusade — Edward’s limited attempt to hold the line

Lead-up and trigger. This grew directly out of the Eighth Crusade rather than a fresh, separate papal mobilization.^[12] Edward had intended to participate in Louis’s expedition, reached Tunis too late for the fighting, and chose to continue to the Holy Land after most of the army abandoned the enterprise.^[12] He reached Acre in 1271 while Baibars’s pressure on the remaining Latin territories continued.^[12]

Purposes and goals. The immediate task was to support the surviving coastal states and restrain Mamluk expansion.^[12] Recovering Jerusalem remained an aspiration, but Edward’s force was too small to carry out a decisive reconquest on its own.^[12]

Leaders and course. Edward—still a prince, not yet King Edward I—worked with local rulers and military orders, conducted raids, and sought cooperation with the Mongol Ilkhanate.^[12] A Mongol incursion into Syria did not become a sustained joint offensive capable of overturning Mamluk dominance.^[12]

Outcome. A truce between the kingdom and Baibars was reached in May 1272.^[12] Edward survived an assassination attempt the following month and left Acre in September.^[12] He gained no major territorial restoration, although the expedition supported the kingdom during a dangerous period.^[12] Its larger goal of reversing the Latin East’s decline remained unmet.^[12]

Bottom line: limited relief and a temporary pause, not a recovery of Jerusalem.^[12] Calling it “the Ninth” is reasonable, but counting it as the concluding phase of the Eighth is also why some histories stop at eight.^[12]

What the numbering leaves out

The People’s Crusade, 1096. The same preaching that mobilized the First Crusade also inspired an earlier, less organized movement.^[4] Its participants sought the Holy Land, but most of the force that crossed into Anatolia was destroyed before it could reach Jerusalem.^[4] It belongs to the First Crusade’s story rather than functioning as a separate number in the standard list.^[4]

The so-called Children’s Crusade, 1212. Religious enthusiasm and frustration with failed expeditions helped inspire popular movements associated with Nicholas of Cologne and Stephen of Cloyes.^[16] The participants were not exclusively children, and there was no normal papally authorized invasion army.^[16] The movements did not recover Jerusalem; later storytelling should not be mistaken for a reliable campaign record.^[16]

The Barons’ Crusade, 1239–1241. Expeditions associated with Theobald of Champagne and Richard of Cornwall used negotiation to regain Jerusalem and other territory after the 1229 truce expired.^[18] Their gains were lost in the renewed upheavals of 1244.^[18] This is an important example of a real eastern crusading effort omitted from the familiar numbered sequence.^[18]

The Albigensian Crusade, 1209–1229. In southern France, crusading was directed against the Cathars and their protectors rather than against a Muslim power.^[13] Years of unsuccessful efforts to suppress what the Church regarded as heresy, followed by the murder of a papal legate in 1208, prompted Innocent III’s call.^[13] The campaign devastated the region and advanced northern French royal control; suppressing Catharism continued through the Inquisition afterward.^[13]

Northern or Baltic Crusades. These campaigns aimed at conquest and Christianization of pagan societies, not recovery of Jerusalem.^[1][16] They included the Wendish campaign of 1147 and later expansion by military orders, especially the Teutonic Knights.^[1][16] They produced territorial conquest and a powerful order-state, with coercive conversion and extensive violence—not a simple overseas pilgrimage war.^[1][16]

Crusading in Iberia. Some campaigns of the much longer struggle conventionally called the Reconquista received crusading authorization and spiritual privileges.^[1][5][15] Lisbon’s capture in 1147 illustrates the overlap with a numbered crusade; later warfare culminated in the fall of Muslim Granada in 1492.^[1][5][15] The whole centuries-long Reconquista should not be treated as one additional numbered crusade.^[1][5][15]

Later anti-Ottoman crusades. The loss of the Latin East did not end crusading.^[15] Campaigns such as Nicopolis in 1396 and Varna in 1444 sought to check Ottoman expansion and ended in major crusader defeats.^[15] Their setting and immediate aims were different from the earlier expeditions to capture Jerusalem.^[15]

These examples are representative, not an exhaustive list of every campaign ever granted crusading status. The answer to “how many?” changes with geography, period, and the definition being used.

How the Holy Land story ended

Edward’s departure in 1272 was not the immediate end of the crusader states.^[12][15] They survived for nearly two more decades, but remained divided, isolated, and increasingly vulnerable to Mamluk military pressure.^[12][15] Tripoli fell in 1289, and Acre fell in 1291; the remaining mainland positions were abandoned or destroyed.^[12][15] Latin-ruled Cyprus survived beyond this collapse, so “the crusader states disappeared” needs a geographical qualification.^[12][15]

The central pattern is easier to understand than nine disconnected war stories: the First Crusade conquered territory; later expeditions tried to recover losses, sustain the settlements, or find a different route to Jerusalem. Direct attacks, Egyptian invasions, diplomacy, and the disastrous diversion to Constantinople were different responses to the same persistent strategic problem.

Judging only by Jerusalem, the First and Sixth achieved notable recoveries, the Third rebuilt an important coastal position without recovering the city, and most other numbered expeditions missed their principal goal.^[4][7][18] But territory is not the whole ledger: massacres, enslavement, destruction, coerced conversion, and worsening divisions were integral to this history, not incidental footnotes.^[4][7][18]

So the short answer is: learn the familiar eight or nine—but do not mistake that numbering for the full history of the Crusades.

Sources

Research checked on 7 October 2026. The overview uses edited reference works, with Wikipedia used for the separately numbered Edward expedition. Source disagreements are identified in the text.

1. Crusades - World History Encyclopedia
2. Crusades | Definition, History, Map, Significance, & Legacy | Britannica
4. First Crusade - World History Encyclopedia
5. Second Crusade - World History Encyclopedia
6. Third Crusade - World History Encyclopedia
7. Fourth Crusade - World History Encyclopedia
8. Fifth Crusade - World History Encyclopedia
9. Sixth Crusade - World History Encyclopedia
10. Seventh Crusade - World History Encyclopedia
11. Eighth Crusade - World History Encyclopedia
12. Lord Edward's crusade - Wikipedia
13. Crusades - Holy Wars, Jerusalem, Europe | Britannica
14. Crusades - Holy Land, France, King Louis IX | Britannica
15. Crusades - Jerusalem, Reconquista, Defeat | Britannica
16. Crusades - Children, Europe, Faith | Britannica
18. Crusades - Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, Mediterranean | Britannica