Customer Reviews

A History of the Crusades, Vol. III: The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades (Volume 3)

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Runciman gives a comprehensive, panoramic account of the Crusades, from the unlikely success of the First Crusade to the final, inevitable defeat of the Crusading movement. He analyzes the reasons for the success and the causes of the ultimate failure of the Crusades, and therein lies a lesson for modern times.

Runciman speaks of the many causes of initial victory and ultimate defeat, and catalogs the grievous injuries to all concerned resulting from the Crusades. His analysis is sobering, and some of it is not inapplicable to the current state of affairs in the Middle East. The Crusader States were looked on by the native Moslems as interlopers to be driven into the sea. That final victory was achieved, but at what cost? Given the fiat accompli of the First Crusade, and the centuries of existence of the Crusader States, couldn't they have achieved a modus vivendi which, if not completely satisfactory to either side, at least allowed the parties to live in harmony without doing further mischief to each other. If all sides of the current conflict in the Middle East would read this book, it might expedite the peace process.

Runciman was a genius. A brilliant writer in English, whose grand ambitions never lead him astray from the most meticulous separation of fact from speculation, he was also an extraordinary polyglot. He read not only the Latin, Old French and Greek among the contemporary accounts of the Crusades, but the Arabic, Syriac, Persian, Hebrew, Gergian, Ethiopic, Slavonic, Norse and Mongolian as well, not to mention modern secondary works in many more languages still. If he shows any favoritism at all among the warring factions of the Crusades, then it is towards the Byzantine Greeks, although what looks like favoritism to me may only be due to my own ignorance. Even if I'm right about his favoring the Greeks, Runciman is still by far the most impartial historian of the Crusades known to me. He's certainly the only one who took the trouble and had the talent to read all the sources in the original. (Most people who've read widely in more than one language can probably appreciate how much tends to be lost in translation, not to mention how much is never translated at all.) As if his reading weren't enough, he often walked through the cities and over the battlefields which he describes in his works, in order to discover things which no one had yet written.

Runciman makes sweeping judgements and expresses strong opinions, although these are often decently hidden between the lines of his polite Cambridge prose. But all of his judgements and opinions have the support of the most solid scholarship.

I recommend the three-volume 'History of the Crusades'. The book 'The First Crusade' is an abridgement of the first volume, without footnotes or appendices or bibliography. In addition to the the three-volume history, I also have a copy of the abridgement 'The First Crusade', but it's the illustrated hardcover edition, ISBN 0521232554. I got it just for the pictures, many in color. The three volumes of the 'History of the Crusades' have a few black-and-white illustrations, and the paperback edition of 'The First Crusade' has no illustrations.

This series of three books provides a comprehensive and detailed history of the crusades in Outremer. It is very readable, and although there have been recent re-visualisations of this era, these books still remain the seminal secondary source for this history.

The format is perhaps a little old, but these books are invaluable for anyone who is interested in the history of the crusades.

This three-volume set is an exemplary history, full of the incident and hundreds (thousands) of persons (all carefully indexed) who comprise the events of two and half centuries. Sir Steven is not a "thesis" historian, although he does not hesitate to make final conclusions of great insight and soundness. His strength lies in his meticulous detail and objectivity, recounting the errors and virtues of all the players, on all sides, with great wisdom and impartiality. He shows that the Crusades were, to use his word, an epic fiasco, that set out to secure the safety of Eastern Christendom, and ended up destroying it; yet he also shows how the Crusades were an initiator of the Italian Renaissance, by driving out the humanists and scholars who could not thrive in an Islamic world whose rigid intolerance was amplified by the Crusading movement. Without ever being vitriolic, he spares no one: While the Crusaders were stubborn bigots who refused to learn from past strategic errors, the Moslems were riven by internecine power-contests that nearly sunk them, and the Mongols efficiently, ruthlessely built an empire based on Genghis Khan's organizational brilliance and policy of implacable massacre. Stylistically, the books are a remarkable crossroads of popular appeal, engaging writing and mind-bogglingly comprehensive scholarship, detailed research and narrative account.

Runciman's three volume History of the Crusades is the single greatest work on the crusades that I have yet encountered. Given its reputation, it's unlikely that its place will ever be usurped. However, this final volume is the weakest in the set. Don't get me wrong; it is an outstanding book, and well worth reading. It has all of the great traits which made the whole series a landmark work; the excellent prose, accurate (and extremely well documented) history, and a sharp wit that makes the reading fun. The Kingdom of Acre, however, adds two things which are, unfortunately, detrimental to the set: bitterness and haste.

Throughout the first two volumes it was clear that Runciman loved Byzantium, and was very much biased in their favor. In this volume, however, it becomes quite glaring and somewhat irksome. Runciman becomes quite bitter toward the crusaders following the Fourth Crusade and the conquest of Constantinople, and his bitterness is extremely transparent. It is understandable that he bemoans the loss of the Byzantine civilization, but his obsession with the Greeks really detracts from the volume, and it colors his account of history. If you read Runciman's account of the Fourth Crusade and the Latin Empire of Constantinople, and then read another account, like that of Jonathan Phillips, you will see a vast difference. Runciman does not necessarily report inaccurately, but he is guilty of errors of omission in his attempt to paint the members of the Fourth Crusade as villains, rendering them completely unsympathetic by failing to include information that explains (at least in part) their actions. He comes right out and declares that "there was never a greater crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade" (109). The fact that this was written a decade after World War II and the holocaust should indicate the magnitude of his love for Byzantium and hatred for the crusaders.

The second major problem is the lack of detail in this volume compared to the previous volumes. Runciman simply does not seem as interested in this period of the crusades, and as a result that this volume is not as interesting to read as the previous volumes. For example, he gives only a single twenty page chapter to the entire Fourth Crusade and the Latin Empire of Constantinople. This volume is the same length as the previous volumes, but covers a vast period of time, and so it covers each major event in a very short space. There are some occasions where he discusses things which interest him, and so goes into the same sort of detail he did in the previous volumes, but these are infrequent. The loss of Constantinople and the collapse of Byzantium really seem to have taken the enthusiasm out of him. In most cases the semi-detailed accounts (as opposed the very detailed accounts in the first two volumes) are not bad (and are still quite good), but simply not as good as they might have been. In a few cases, however, the lack of detail leaves you feeling completely lost. The chapter on the Mongols comes to mind. He just begins throwing all sorts of Mongolian names and places around (which are very unfamiliar to a Western ear, and I had no idea where almost any of the locations were), and assumes that you can follow along, but I was completely lost. I got a vague impression that Genghis Kahn rose to power and conquered things, but I didn't have enough details to really understand what was happening.

Finally, Runciman's bitterness led to a very pessimistic summary of the crusades at the end of the volume. He concluded that the entire crusading enterprise was a colossal failure which accomplished nothing, was completely misguided, and was detrimental to everyone involved, especially to Byzantium. While much of this is accurate, he misses a whole aspect of the crusades. Yes, the crusades were hopelessly misguided and corrupted by the quarrels and intrigues of its leaders, but the crusades were also incurably romantic. Runciman's bitterness led him to neglect the good aspects of the crusades; the hope, enthusiasm, piety, and the epic struggle against what they considered to be evil. The evils of the crusades may outweigh the goods, but there were good aspects of the crusades. The romantic aspect of he crusades (which I think is the main reason the crusades continued for so long) is almost entirely ignored by Runciman in this volume.

Despite all of this, The Fall of Acre is a great book. Sure it has some issues, and it could have been better, but that doesn't mean it's not a great book. Runciman's trilogy is still the best account of the crusades out there; you just have to keep in mind the fact that he isn't perfectly objective. But then again, who is?

I quote Paul F. Crawford who teaches medieval history at
California University of Pennsylvania published in the
Intercollegiate Review Spring 2011 issue,

"In 2001, former president Bill Clinton
delivered a speech at Georgetown University
in which he discussed the West's
response to the recent terrorist attacks of
September 11. The speech contained a
short but significant reference to the crusades.
Mr. Clinton observed that "when
the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem [in
1099], they . . . proceeded to kill every
woman and child who was Muslim on the
Temple Mount." He cited the "contemporaneous
descriptions of the event" as describing
"soldiers walking on the Temple
Mount . . . with blood running up to their
knees." This story, Mr. Clinton said emphatically,
was "still being told today in
the Middle East and we are still paying
for it."
This view of the crusades is not
unusual. It pervades textbooks as well as
popular literature. One otherwise generally
reliable Western civilization textbook
claims that "the Crusades fused three
characteristic medieval impulses: piety,
pugnacity, and greed. All three were essential."
The film Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
depicts crusaders as boorish bigots, the
best of whom were torn between remorse
for their excesses and lust to continue
them. Even the historical supplements for
role-playing games--drawing on supposedly
more reliable sources--contain statements
such as "The soldiers of the First
Crusade appeared basically without warning,
storming into the Holy Land with the
avowed--literally--task of slaughtering
unbelievers"; "The Crusades were an early
sort of imperialism"; and "Confrontation
with Islam gave birth to a period of religious
fanaticism that spawned the terrible
Inquisition and the religious wars that ravaged
Europe during the Elizabethan era."
The most famous semi-popular historian of
the crusades, Sir Steven Runciman, ended
his three volumes of magnificent prose
with the judgment that the crusades were
"nothing more than a long act of intolerance
in the name of God, which is the sin
against the Holy Ghost."
The verdict seems unanimous. From
presidential speeches to role-playing games,
the crusades are depicted as a deplorably
violent episode in which thuggish Westerners
trundled off, unprovoked, to murder
and pillage peace-loving, sophisticated
Muslims, laying down patterns of outrageous
oppression that would be repeated
throughout subsequent history. In many
corners of the Western world today, this
view is too commonplace and apparently
obvious even to be challenged.
But unanimity is not a guarantee of
accuracy. What everyone 'knows' about
the crusades may not, in fact, be true.

"But nothing is served by distorting the
past for our own purposes. Or rather: a
great many things may be served . . . but
not the truth. Distortions and misrepresentations
of the crusades will not help
us understand the challenge posed to the
West by a militant and resurgent Islam,
and failure to understand that challenge
could prove deadly. Indeed, it already has.
It may take a very long time to set the
record straight about the crusades. It is
long past time to begin the task."