Why the ‘Failed’ Crusades Still Inspire

Were the Crusades a glorious and heroic venture, or were they a
shameful and disastrous failure?

This is an important question with important ramifications: If, for
example, the Crusades were nothing more than epic defeats, as many are
fond of insisting, what on earth should anyone find inspiring about
them?

To be brief, the answer comes down to numbers: the Crusaders lost, and
the Muslims won, ultimately because of numbers—large Muslim
numbers against small Christian numbers.

And what caused this imbalance? Simple, unlike the cold logic that
fueled history’s Muslim conquests, the Christian desire to take and hold
the Holy Land was motivated by purely idealistic reasons, and these
ultimately proved too impractical to sustain.

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Consider: history’s Muslim conquests were wholly pragmatic and
followed the usual model. Muslim armies always targeted whichever
“infidel” populations were closest to them. That’s because all non-
Muslims were enemies, and their conquest proceeded wherever and
whenever it was most convenient for Muslims.

By contrast, the Crusader effort was not aimed at conquering infidels per
se, but at securing and holding a specific and highly important piece of
real estate: the Holy Land—where Jesus walked, taught, died, and was
resurrected.

To better understand all this, let’s take a closer look at how the Muslim
conquests of history unfolded.