Not So Long Ago...

Wednesday

The following is an excerpt from the excellent book, The New Concise History of the Crusades:


After Orkhan's death in 1360, the Ottomans began their European conquests in earnest. In 1361, they captured most of Thrace, including Adrianople, which became their capital in the West. By the end of the fourteenth century, they controlled all of Bulgaria and most of Greece. Constantinople itself was completely surrounded — a citizen could leave the empire simply by walking outside the city gates.

The rise of the Ottoman Turks and their successful campaigns to the West dramatically changed the stakes in the crusading movement. It was no longer faraway Palestine that was in danger but western Europe itself. Crusaders had always seen themselves as fighting a defensive war, defending the Christians in the East, Jerusalem, or the faith. Now they were called on to defend themselves. Henceforth, crusades were no longer wars to expand Christendom (to reinstate its existence after Christendom had been largely overrun by Islamic hordes) but desperate attempts to slow the advance of Islam (into Europe). Crusading had become a matter of simple survival.

The destruction of the Crusade of Nicopolis was a devastating defeat for western Europe. Hungary lay virtually defenseless before the sultan's armies, and beyond that was the German Empire. For the first time, Europeans began to consider seriously what life would be like under Turkish occupation, in a world in which there were no Christian states.

6 comments:

Traeh 2:34 AM  

Thank you for introducing me to this excellent book, and for this truly outstanding website.

Anonymous 11:14 AM  

The Crusades were a war of self-defence. We must get this word out to anyone who bemoans Christian "aggression" on the poor poor skuslims called The Crusades.

Anonymous 11:59 PM  

The Crusades were indeed a war of self defence.

Politically correct historians have distorted the truth ...

Anonymous 9:15 AM  

Robert Fisk's "Arab Spring"!

"Libyan rebels run riot":

http://www.smh.com.au/world/libyan-rebels-run-riot-20110713-1he6i.html

Reported by Human Rights Watch.

Anonymous 9:22 AM  

The one sided Fisk manifests in whatever he writes.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/robert-fisk-why-i-had-to-leave-the-times-2311569.html

Even in this article, his subjective perspective that the West & Israel are responsible for the most of the injustices in the world manifests.

Wherever he can he avoids or diminishes the injustices that take place at the hands of anti-West Arabs and Muslims.

The vastly greater human right abuses and crimes against humanity that take place in lands such as Somalia or Sudan or Nigeria or other lands troubled by Islamists hardly feature.

The crimes against humanity that were committed in Beslan by Islamists are of a greater evil than 9/11 itself.

Islamists took hostage almost a thousand children and caused the death of hundreds!

Not even the cold blooded execution of the Western aid workers by Islamists in Afghanistan compares to that, even as horrific as that was: the execution of the delicate young woman that Dr. Karen Woo and her companions is a badge of shame for all those who hardly said “boo” about that Islamist atrocity.

By turning the other way, by diminishing the significance of non-muslim civilian deaths relative to muslim civilian deaths, Fisk in his obsessive disguised anti-Semitism, his distracting celebrity journalism, has blood on his hands.

Anonymous 9:23 AM  

From Islam with Love:

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/07/13/india.blasts/

More peace loving Islamists at work!

Article Spotlight

One of the most unusual articles on CitizenWarrior.com is Pleasantville and Islamic Supremacism.

It illustrates the Islamic Supremacist vision by showing the similarity between what happened in the movie, Pleasantville, and what devout fundamentalist Muslims are trying to create in Islamic states like Syria, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia (and ultimately everywhere in the world).

Click here to read the article.


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