The last Estonian county to hold out against the invaders was the island county of Saaremaa, whose war fleets had raided Denmark and Sweden during the years of fighting against the German crusaders.

Nietzsche compares genuine free spirits with the Assassins: " When the Christian crusaders in the Orient came across that invincible order of Assassinsthat order of free spirits par excellence whose lowest order received, through some channel or other, a hint about that symbol and spell reserved for the uppermost echelons alone, as their secret: " nothing is true, everything is permitted ".

Meanwhile the nephew of Guy, Peter de Vaux de Cernay, arguably a stool-pigeon of De Montfort, his uncle and the papacy, wrote an account of the crusade which many have seen as a transparent piece of propaganda to justify the actions of the crusaders, whose outrages are described consistently as doing the work of God against the heretical agents of the demonic power-while outrages committed by the embattled lords of the Midi are predictably portrayed as the opposite.

The crusaders had negotiated with the Fatimids of Egypt during their march to Jerusalem, but no satisfactory compromise could be reached — the Fatimids were willing to give up control of Syria but not Palestine, but this was unacceptable to the crusaders, whose goal was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

" Mu ' in ad-Din reluctantly sent for help from Nur ad-Din and Saif-ad Din Ghazi, whose power he did not wish to see extend as far south as Damascus, and the crusaders besieged the city for only four days before withdrawing.

The crusaders believed their oaths were made invalid when the Byzantine contingent under Tatikios failed to help them during the siege of Antioch ; Bohemund, who had set himself up as Prince of Antioch, briefly went to war with Alexios in the Balkans, but was blockaded by the Byzantine forces and agreed to become Alexios ' vassal by the Treaty of Devol in 1108.

Alexios IV Angelos, the son of the deposed Isaac II, had recently escaped from Constantinople and now appealed to the crusaders, promising to end the schism of East and West, to pay for their transport, and to provide military support to the crusaders if they helped him to depose his uncle and sit on his father's throne.

The crusaders had wanted to conquer Egypt since the days of Baldwin I, who died during an expedition there.

The Fatimids, under the nominal rule of caliph al-Musta ' li but actually controlled by vizier al-Afdal Shahanshah, had lost Jerusalem to the Seljuqs in 1073 ; they recaptured it in 1098 from the Artuqids, a smaller Turkish tribe associated with the Seljuqs, just before the arrival of the crusaders.

John did accompany Frederick to the mainland, but Frederick was not well-received there ; one of his few supporters was Balian, Lord of Sidon, who had welcomed the crusaders the year before and now acted as an ambassador to the Ayyubids.

The crusaders may have been aware of the new divisions among the Ayyubids ; al-Kamil had occupied Damascus in 1238 but had died soon afterwards, and his territory was inherited by his family.

Along the way, Walter of Brienne captured livestock intended to resupply Damascus, as the Ayyubids had probably learned of the crusaders ' plans to attack it.

Damietta was captured without resistance when the crusaders landed in June 1249, but the crusade halted there until November, by which time the Egyptian sultan Ayyub had died and had been succeeded by his son Turanshah.

According to Ellenblum's interpretation the inhabitants of the Kingdom ( Latin Christians living alongside native Greek and Syrian Christians, Shia and Sunni Arabs, Sufis, Bedouin, Turks, Druze, Jews, and Samaritans ) all had major differences between each other as well as with the crusaders.

The Turks were the common enemy for everyone, as they were only very recent arrivals in the Levant, and although they had imposed their rule prior to the arrival of the crusaders, it is unlikely that they were thoroughly Islamicized as Prawer and others believed.

The crusaders were neither totally integrated with the native population, nor did they segregate themselves in the cities away from the rural natives, but rather that they settled in both urban and rural areas ; specifically, they settled in areas that had traditionally been inhabited by the eastern Christians.

The crusaders " had a natural tendency to ignore these matters as simply without interest and certainly not worthy of record.

Greeks, Syrians, and Jews continued to live as they had before, subject to their own laws and courts, with their former Muslim overlords simply replaced by the crusaders ; Muslims now joined them at the lowest level of society.

Jerusalem collected money through tribute payments, first from the coastal cities which had not yet been captured, and later from other neighbouring states such as Damascus and Egypt, which the crusaders could not conquer directly.

Innocent III declared that those who took the vow to become crusaders but could no longer perform the tasks that they had promised to complete, they could be released of their oaths by a contribution of funds to the original cause.

In 1224, after additional troops led by prince Vyachko of Kukenois had been installed in the fort, it was besieged and conquered for one last time by the German crusaders.

These men, who had gone to Palestine from Europe either as pilgrims or as crusaders, chose Mount Carmel in part because it was the traditional home of Elijah.

He shared the poor opinion of Alexius I Comnenus that had developed during the First Crusade, although he was also critical of some of the crusaders ' dealings with Alexius.

By mid 1209, around 10, 000 crusaders had gathered in Lyon before marching south.

The crusaders had taken Belcaire and besieged Marmande in late 1218 under Amaury de Montfort, son of the late Simon.

It has been suggested that this may have actually been a strategic decision by Richard rather than a failure as such, as he may have recognized that Jerusalem in particular was in fact a strategic liability as long as the crusaders were obligated to defend it, as it was isolated from the sea where Western reinforcements could arrive.

" He argues that greed was unlikely to have been a major factor because of the extremely high cost of travelling so far from home, and because almost all of the crusaders eventually returned home after completing their pilgrimage rather than trying to carve out possessions for themselves in the Holy Land.

Meanwhile, the crusade had been diverted to Constantinople, where the crusaders restored the imprisoned Isaac II Angelos ( now enfeebled after his captivity ) to the throne along with his son Alexios IV.

This was the second movement of crusaders ; the first, the People's Crusade, had been composed of the lower classes and caused much destruction on their march before being destroyed in Asia Minor.

The crusaders heard a rumour that Antioch had been deserted by the Seljuk Turks, so Raymond sent his army ahead to occupy it, offending Bohemond of Taranto who wanted the city for himself.

A politique, Bohemond was resolved to engineer the enthusiasm of the crusaders to his own ends ; and when his nephew Tancred left the main army at Heraclea Cybistra, and attempted to establish a footing in Cilicia, the movement may have been already intended as a preparation for Bohemond's eastern principality.

However, recent analysis of the 15th-century Annals of Jan Długosz by Labuda suggests that the German crusaders may have been added to the text after chronicler Długosz had completed the work.

" The term Latin has been used because the crusaders ( Franks, Venetians, and other westerners ) were Roman Catholic and used Latin as their liturgical and scholarly language.

The city of Sarahmul had been sacked by the crusaders on various occasions and according to Jamal ad-Din Hajji the crusaders even manipulated the Assassins to kill his three elder brothers.

On the morning of July 4, the crusaders were blinded by smoke from fires that Saladin's forces had set to add to the Frankish army's misery, through which the Muslim cavalry particularly the divisions commanded by Gokbori pelted them with 400 loads of arrows that had been brought up during the night.

The first documented record of the island of Dageida was made by contemporary chroniclers in 1228, at the time when Hiiumaa, along with the rest of Estonia, had been conquered by Germanic crusaders.

This land been occupied by German crusaders and Swedish, Polish, Prussian, German and Russian armies.

The latter use would have been familiar to crusaders, who often had to face massed bands of Saracen shawms and nakers, used as a psychological weapon.

Although Kaloyan had offered the crusaders an alliance against the Byzantine Empire, his offer had been declined, and the Latin Empire expressed the intention of conquering all the lands of the former Byzantine Empire and its neighbours.

On 7 May 1099 the crusaders reached Jerusalem, which had been recaptured from the Seljuks by the Fatimids of Egypt only a year before.

It has been converted to a church twice during occupation by the crusaders and Louis IX of France's son John Tristan, Count of Valois was baptised by a legate of the Pope in this mosque.

He lost his possessions in Cairo, and on the way to Damascus his retinue was attacked by the crusaders and Bedouin nomads, but in June 1154 he safely reached Damascus, which had recently been captured by Nur ad-Din.