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The thing is, for all the Islamist outrage over infidel crusader imperialist domination, etc., most of the crusades to the Holy Land proper were remarkably ineffectual:
First Crusade goes overland, recovers a couple of cities for Byzantium, struggles through Asia Minor, takes control of Antioch, Edessa, Jerusalem and...Tyre? I don't recall, but they established some little kingdoms. The Second goes in the footsteps of the First, but gets mauled so badly along the way that not enough troops arrive to do anything significant. Then Saladin retakes Jerusalem, and the Third is launched to try and retake it. It fails, but it does take Acre instead. The Fourth, as noted, never even gets to the Levant. They capture Zara in the Balkans, then loot Constantinople and set up a Latin Kingdom. It takes Byzantium sixty years to kick out the usurpers, and their Empire is a pathetic stump of its former glory when they do.
The Fifth Crusade aims to take over Egypt, but various blunders get it cut to pieces, and King Louis IX is actually taken captive and needs to be ransomed. Somewhere in there, Jerusalem is actually reclaimed, but by Frederick II (excommunicated at the time), who makes a diplomatic deal with the Saracens of Damascus. They don't let him rebuild the walls, though, so when the Mamluks come to power in Egypt they easily take it back, along with everything else. Acre falls in 1291, and the holdouts are butchered soon after. Total lifespan of the Crusader Kingdoms: less than 200 years, and most of that was spent on defensive action and internal intrigues.
The problem was, crusading was only ever a temporary vocation for the vast majority of people who did it. They went, they mucked around for a couple of years, they went home. Except for the Military Orders, there was a perpetual manpower shortage. Which, incidentally, is why they massacred almost nobody after the fall of Jerusalem in 1099. They couldn't afford to butcher like that routinely, or they wouldn't have anyone to work the fields, pay taxes, etc. I've read that they actually offered Muslim tenants a better deal than most Muslim rulers, at one point.
The point is, it's an open question whether Byzantium's lifespan would have been longer or shorter if the Crusades had never happened. On the one hand, we got a couple of cities back, and they distracted the Muslims somewhat. On the other, if the Muslims hadn't been internally divided and distracted already, the Franks wouldn't have lasted much more than a decade, and it's hard to overstate how badly we were ruined by those sixty years.
First Crusade goes overland, recovers a couple of cities for Byzantium, struggles through Asia Minor, takes control of Antioch, Edessa, Jerusalem and...Tyre? I don't recall, but they established some little kingdoms. The Second goes in the footsteps of the First, but gets mauled so badly along the way that not enough troops arrive to do anything significant. Then Saladin retakes Jerusalem, and the Third is launched to try and retake it. It fails, but it does take Acre instead. The Fourth, as noted, never even gets to the Levant. They capture Zara in the Balkans, then loot Constantinople and set up a Latin Kingdom. It takes Byzantium sixty years to kick out the usurpers, and their Empire is a pathetic stump of its former glory when they do.
The Fifth Crusade aims to take over Egypt, but various blunders get it cut to pieces, and King Louis IX is actually taken captive and needs to be ransomed. Somewhere in there, Jerusalem is actually reclaimed, but by Frederick II (excommunicated at the time), who makes a diplomatic deal with the Saracens of Damascus. They don't let him rebuild the walls, though, so when the Mamluks come to power in Egypt they easily take it back, along with everything else. Acre falls in 1291, and the holdouts are butchered soon after. Total lifespan of the Crusader Kingdoms: less than 200 years, and most of that was spent on defensive action and internal intrigues.
The problem was, crusading was only ever a temporary vocation for the vast majority of people who did it. They went, they mucked around for a couple of years, they went home. Except for the Military Orders, there was a perpetual manpower shortage. Which, incidentally, is why they massacred almost nobody after the fall of Jerusalem in 1099. They couldn't afford to butcher like that routinely, or they wouldn't have anyone to work the fields, pay taxes, etc. I've read that they actually offered Muslim tenants a better deal than most Muslim rulers, at one point.
The point is, it's an open question whether Byzantium's lifespan would have been longer or shorter if the Crusades had never happened. On the one hand, we got a couple of cities back, and they distracted the Muslims somewhat. On the other, if the Muslims hadn't been internally divided and distracted already, the Franks wouldn't have lasted much more than a decade, and it's hard to overstate how badly we were ruined by those sixty years.
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