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@ Laeserin
2025-03-10 19:10:02
You are confusing the fact that the Byzantines had lost the Near East to the Muslims hundreds of years before the First Crusade, and they appealed to Pope Urban II for help, after also losing part of Asia minor to the Turks in 1071. The Muslims were descending upon Constantinople.
The Crusaders returned part of Anatolia and then went on to found Outremer (Edessa, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Tripoli), which stayed in Christian hands until Edessa fell to the Muslims (they were constantly under attack). The Second Crusade was an attempt to reconquer Edessa, but ended in Jerusalem falling to Saladin. On the positive side, Christendom regained Lissabon, Portugal, from the Moors in the West (that was the start of the Reconquista of the Iberian peninsula).
Third Crusade was hopeless.
During the Fourth Crusade, the Crusaders were on the way to Jerusalem and were asked to help the deposed Byzantine emperor and ended up in the middle of a Byzantine civil war.
It's a long complicated history, and the Byzantines don't necessarily come out looking good.