Rodney Stark's "God's Battalions"

This is a very good read. Not only is the author clear and well-paced in his writing, he has a point of view that deserves consideration. He is pushing back against the view that the Crusades were carried out by ignorant barbarians from a benighted "Dark Age" Europe against the "enlightened" civilization of the Moslems. He carefully tears apart this entrenched view with a review of facts and a lively history of the five crusades.

The book provides a nice discussion of the background of the Crusades in Europe. I now have a good feeling for it. One new fact I learned was that the crusaders were a network of family and friends. Many in Europe had not time for or interest in the crusades, but some took up the challenge. Stark is very good at explaining why the Crusades happened, i.e. the background of Moslem expansion and the atrocities against Christians in the Holy Land. I can now appreciate this wasn't a "manufactured" event stirred up by a Pope to get idle knights out of Europe.

The book also explains why the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople (the treachery of the Byzantine emperors). Stark also points out a double standard when people talk about the "horrors" of this sacking. In fact it was quite mild by the standards of the day. He points out how many scholars have been very uneven in their attribution of brutality and cruelty.

The sacking of Jerusalem is put into context and it too ends up being nothing special despite the over-heated rhetoric about Crusading knights riding in blood up to their stirrups. The facts are that all warfare in this era was brutal and that all accounts coming out of this era are deeply unreliable with numbers and accusations that simply are incredible. Stark gives a good estimate of numbers and levels of violence. He makes a good case that the the Muslims and Byzantine Christians were extremely treacherous and brutal. He paints the Crusaders as simply brutal.

It is an easy book to read and well worth the time. It gives you a very good feel for the Crusades and height of the Middle Ages. And it gives you a good appreciation of the fact that the "Dark Ages" weren't all that dark. Finally, it restores balance by correcting the hyperventilated claims of civility and civilization attributed to the Muslims (he points out that much of it was a holdover from the conquered Romans and Persians and that there really is not much evidence for a truly great accomplishment of "Muslim civilization".