Explain the story of the crusades?

Question: Explain the story of the crusades!?
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The Crusades were a series of military conflicts of a religious character waged by much of Christian Europe against external and internal threats; there was also rioting!. Crusades were fought mainly against Muslims, though campaigns were also directed against pagan Slavs, Jews, Russian and Greek Orthodox Christians, Mongols, Cathars, Hussites, and political enemies of the popes!.Crusaders took vows and were granted an indulgence for past sins!.The Crusades originally had the goal of recapturing Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim rule and were originally launched in response to a call from the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire for help against the expansion of the Muslim Seljuk Turks into Anatolia!. The term is also used to describe contemporaneous and subsequent campaigns conducted through to the 16th century in territories outside the Levant usually against pagans, heretics, and peoples under the ban of excommunication,for a mixture of religious, economic, and political reasons!.Rivalries among both Christian and Muslim powers led also to alliances between religious factions against their opponents, such as the Christian alliance with the Sultanate of Rum during the Fifth Crusade!.The Crusades had far-reaching political, economic, and social impacts, some of which have lasted into contemporary times!. Because of internal conflicts among Christian kingdoms and political powers, some of the crusade expeditions were diverted from their original aim, such as the Fourth Crusade, which resulted in the sack of Christian Constantinople and the partition of the Byzantine Empire between Venice and the Crusaders!. The Sixth Crusade was the first crusade to set sail without the official blessing of the Pope,establishing the precedent that rulers other than the Pope could initiate a crusade!.[citation needed] The Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Crusades resulted in Mamluk and Hafsid victories, as the Ninth Crusade marked the end of the Crusades in the Middle East

After the First Crusade

On a popular level, the first crusades unleashed a wave of impassioned, personally felt pious Christian fury that was expressed in the massacres of Jews that accompanied the movement of the Crusader mobs through Europe, as well as the violent treatment of "schismatic" Orthodox Christians of the east!. During many of the attacks on Jews, local Bishops and Christians made attempts to protect Jews from the mobs that were passing through!. Jews were often offered sanctuary in churches and other Christian buildings!.In the 13th century, Crusades never expressed such a popular fever, and after Acre fell for the last time in 1291 and the Occitan Cathars were exterminated during the Albigensian Crusade, the crusading ideal became devalued by Papal justifications of political and territorial aggressions within Catholic Europe!.
The last crusading order of knights to hold territory were the Knights Hospitaller!. After the final fall of Acre, they took control of the island of Rhodes, and in the sixteenth century, were driven to Malta, before being finally unseated by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798!.

Europe and the West

Until recently, the crusades were remembered favourably in western Europe (countries which were, at the time of the Crusades, Roman Catholic countries), and in countries largely settled by Western Europeans, including the United States!. Nonetheless, there have been many vocal critics of the Crusades in Western Europe since the Renaissance, and in recent years, critical views of the crusades have come to dominate most assessments!.Defenders of the Crusades now present their viewpoint as that of an embattled minority as against a standard view in which the Crusades are regarded as bloody and unjustified acts of aggression!. More comprehensive treatments seek to take account of both the brutality of the Crusades and the sincere religious motivation behind them, of "religious devotion and godly savagery"
A crucial recent development is the recognition, variously interpreted, of the parallel between crusades and the Islamic concept of jihad [4]!. Secular critics of the crusades see both jihad and crusade as providing a religious justification for war and intolerance!. Supporters present the crusades as defensive responses to Islamic jihad and, in some cases, advocate a renewal of the crusades a view that may be linked, by both critics and supporters, to current US policy in the Middle East

Politics and culture

The Crusades had an enormous influence on the European Middle Ages!. At times, much of the continent was united under a powerful Papacy, but by the 14th century, the development of centralized bureaucracies (the foundation of the modern nation-state) was well on its way in France, England, Burgundy, Portugal, Castile, and Aragon partly because of the dominance of the church at the beginning of the crusading era!.Although Europe had been exposed to Islamic culture for centuries through contacts in Iberian Peninsula and Sicily, much knowledge in areas such as science, medicine, and architecture was transferred from the Islamic to the western world during the crusade era!.The military experiences of the crusades also had their effects in Europe; for example, European castles became massive stone structures as they were in the east, rather than smaller wooden buildings as they had typically been in the past!.
In addition, the Crusades are seen as having opened up European culture to the world, especially Asia:
(The Crusades brought about results of which the popes had never dreamed, and which were perhaps the most, important of all!. They re-established traffic between the East and West, which, after having been suspended for several centuries, was then resumed with even greater energy; they were the means of bringing from the depths of their respective provinces and introducing into the most civilized Asiatic countries Western knights, to whom a new world was thus revealed, and who returned to their native land filled with novel ideas!.!.!. If, indeed, the Christian civilization of Europe has become universal culture, in the highest sense, the glory redounds, in no small measure, to the Crusades)
Along with trade, new scientific discoveries and inventions made their way east or west!. Arab advances (including the development of algebra, optics, and refinement of engineering) made their way west and sped the course of advancement in European universities that led to the Renaissance in later centuriesThe invasions of German crusaders prevented formation of the large Lithuanian state incorporating all Baltic nations and tribes!. Lithuania was destined to become a small country and forced to expand to the East looking for resources to combat the crusaders!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Crusades were serious of wars by Western European Christians trying to recapture the Holy Land from the Muslims!. The crusades was first undertaken in 1096 till the late 13th century!.

The Crusades are an important part of the story of the expansion and colonialism of the Europeans and they marked the first time Western Christendom underwent military initiative far from home and left to carry out their culture and religion abroad!.

In addition to their movements in the East, they not only had wars against Muslims but also wars against pagans and people who didn't believe in what they believed in!. Christians learned to live in different cultures, absorbing and imposing something of their own characteristics on those cultures!.

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