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Okay, to take those points in turn:
A little reflection should tell you that it would have been impossible for the crusaders to wade ankle-deep in blood, unless they happened to herd the entire Muslim and Jewish population into an empty swimming pool before killing them. That's a bizarre case where one guy's obvious hyperbole got taken literally for the sake of propaganda. Jerusalem and the equally bloody capture of Acre were the two most notorious sacks of the Crusades in the Holy Land--but that's a period of two centuries, or slightly less. Most of the time cities changed hands in a more or less orderly fashion by contemporary standards. Of course, contemporary standards included a fair amount of rape and looting. I've read that a number of prominent nobles went on Crusade because they saw it as the only way to save their souls after sacking monasteries, violating nuns, etc.
The Albigensian Crusade was a gruesome piece of work, but about the same as you'd expect if a largish region had declared their temporal lords illegitimate, stopped paying feudal dues, and set up their own parallel hierarchy. I suppose peasant revolts would be such an equivalent, though I'm unaware of any happening on such a scale. As for the eyeball atrocity, the same thing happened on a far larger scale in the Byzantine Empire as part of a purely secular battle against the Bulgars (who may have been Christian at the time, can't recall). Basil II ("the Bulgar Slayer") was famous for a battle where he supposedly took 15K survivors, divided them up into hundreds, and gouged 199 eyeballs per set. Dude just really hated Bulgarians.
Finally, you return to the Crusades; you seem to have some very inaccurate ideas about them. In reality, the Crusades were marked by frequent cross-confessional cooperation. They had to be; since most crusaders simply returned home after doing a bit of fighting, the kingdoms of Outremer could only be maintained by careful diplomacy, especially with the local labor. If you want Muslim farmers to tend crops for you, an infidel, you really have to offer them very generous terms. The Second Crusade failed in part because the crusaders failed to understand such realpolitik and attacked Damascus--which was one of Jerusalem's key Arab allies against Saladin. Jerusalem was recaptured shortly after. A decade or so passed, and Frederick III won Jerusalem back--by effectively leasing it from the Muslim lord who inherited it from Saladin. He didn't really give a damn if the Franks owned a third-rate city of no economic importance, provided they didn't rebuild the walls.
A little reflection should tell you that it would have been impossible for the crusaders to wade ankle-deep in blood, unless they happened to herd the entire Muslim and Jewish population into an empty swimming pool before killing them. That's a bizarre case where one guy's obvious hyperbole got taken literally for the sake of propaganda. Jerusalem and the equally bloody capture of Acre were the two most notorious sacks of the Crusades in the Holy Land--but that's a period of two centuries, or slightly less. Most of the time cities changed hands in a more or less orderly fashion by contemporary standards. Of course, contemporary standards included a fair amount of rape and looting. I've read that a number of prominent nobles went on Crusade because they saw it as the only way to save their souls after sacking monasteries, violating nuns, etc.
The Albigensian Crusade was a gruesome piece of work, but about the same as you'd expect if a largish region had declared their temporal lords illegitimate, stopped paying feudal dues, and set up their own parallel hierarchy. I suppose peasant revolts would be such an equivalent, though I'm unaware of any happening on such a scale. As for the eyeball atrocity, the same thing happened on a far larger scale in the Byzantine Empire as part of a purely secular battle against the Bulgars (who may have been Christian at the time, can't recall). Basil II ("the Bulgar Slayer") was famous for a battle where he supposedly took 15K survivors, divided them up into hundreds, and gouged 199 eyeballs per set. Dude just really hated Bulgarians.
Finally, you return to the Crusades; you seem to have some very inaccurate ideas about them. In reality, the Crusades were marked by frequent cross-confessional cooperation. They had to be; since most crusaders simply returned home after doing a bit of fighting, the kingdoms of Outremer could only be maintained by careful diplomacy, especially with the local labor. If you want Muslim farmers to tend crops for you, an infidel, you really have to offer them very generous terms. The Second Crusade failed in part because the crusaders failed to understand such realpolitik and attacked Damascus--which was one of Jerusalem's key Arab allies against Saladin. Jerusalem was recaptured shortly after. A decade or so passed, and Frederick III won Jerusalem back--by effectively leasing it from the Muslim lord who inherited it from Saladin. He didn't really give a damn if the Franks owned a third-rate city of no economic importance, provided they didn't rebuild the walls.
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