A class of barbarous thugs with titles were rampaging around Europe, so in an effort to send them somewhere else, the Pope asked for them to band together to recapture the Holy Land. As these thugs were highly religious, the plan worked! The knights mostly left Europe to be slaughtered by middle easterners. It also backfired! A new group of noble thugs emerged, but these ones said they were there to protect pilgrims. This lead to extortion and corruption, and many of these thugs would go on to be slaughtered by middle easterners. And eventually they were all slaughtered by other Europeans when they became too politically powerful.
The given justification was that the wrong religion has control over a particular piece of rock.
Denjin@feddit.uk 2 days ago
Or the fourth crusade which was supposed to go to Jerusalem and then onto Egypt but they got lost and just thought “fuck it, well capture Constantinople instead”
blarghly@lemmy.world 2 days ago
No better justification than that!
hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
did that actually happen??
Denjin@feddit.uk 1 day ago
Well, if you want to get specific, the Doge of Venice built a fleet to transport the crusader armies departing from Venice, but due to them mostly not having the money to pay for transit, he instead of sailing them to Jerusalem, he got the sailors to take them to Zara (on the Adriatic coast of modern day Turkey) with whom he already had issues with (they were rebellious subjects of Venice he wanted crushing).
After that, the Byzantine prince Alexios Angelos persuaded the crusaders to restore his deposed father to the throne and in payment would help them in their goal of taking Jerusalem.
They did what he asked but Alexios backed out of the deal so the Crusaders then sacked the city instead and instituted the short lived Latin Empire.