Jonathan Sumption

Behaving badly abroad

issue 20 March 2004

The First Crusade is one of the great historical adventures. Whatever one may think of the consequences or the moral issues, the migration of perhaps 100,000 people across Europe and Asia Minor, and the conquest of a large part of the Middle East by the 20,000 or 30,000 survivors, all over the space of three years from 1096 to 1099, was an astonishing feat of endurance and martial skill.

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