Behaving badly abroad

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. In their own time, the armies of the First Crusade created an ideology of holy warfare which retained its hold on European minds until the end of the 14th century, and arguably for 200 years beyond that. It also set standards of achievement for later generations which would never be attained again. The rest of crusading history is an almost continuous tale of retreat and withdrawal.

Thomas Asbridge’s account calls itself ‘A New History’, but real originality is probably unattainable in this crowded field, at least for a narrative historian.