Later Crusades and Crusading’s Ultimate Failure

The Later Crusades—from the Fourth Crusade’s aftermath through the campaigns of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries—represent a long, complex decline in the medieval crusading ideal. Despite continued papal enthusiasm and intermittent European support, these expeditions increasingly failed to achieve their military, political, and spiritual objectives. Marked by internal rivalries, shifting geopolitical realities, and the rise of more formidable Muslim powers, the Later Crusades illustrate the gradual erosion of Christian control in the Holy Land and the ultimate collapse of crusading as an effective instrument of Western expansion. This overview examines the major campaigns, their causes, and the broader reasons behind the eventual failure of the crusading movement.

Later Crusades and Crusading’s Ultimate Failure

Later Crusades and Crusading’s Ultimate Failure

Introduction

The Later Crusades, spanning from the early thirteenth to the fifteenth century, represent the prolonged and often troubled final phase of the medieval crusading movement. Unlike the dramatic early expeditions that captured Jerusalem and established Latin states in the Levant, these later campaigns were marked by declining unity, shifting motivations, and increasingly unfavorable geopolitical conditions. European rulers, preoccupied with internal conflicts and rising national identities, grew less willing to commit resources to distant holy wars. Meanwhile, powerful Muslim dynasties such as the Ayyubids, Mamluks, and later the Ottomans became far more organized and militarily superior.

Jerusalem under Christian rule

After the Third Crusade, the re-established Crusader States managed to survive and even expand in power for the next several decades. Syria and Egypt were split between Saladin’s heirs, and the crusader kingdoms often enjoyed good relations with Ayyubid Egypt: indeed, a truce worked out between Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and the Egyptian sultan al-Kamil in 1229 resulted in the city of Jerusalem itself returning to Christian rule.

Jerusalem under Muslim rule

In the 1240s, however, forces far from the Levant brought down the Kingdom of Jerusalem. As the Mongols gradually conquered Central Asia, the Khwarazmian Turks were driven from their realm in the steppes into Syria and northern Iraq. They ended up allying with Ayyubid Egypt against the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, and, in 1244, the combined armies of Damascus and Jerusalem were defeated by an Egyptian/Khwarazmian army. Jerusalem fell under Muslim rule, under which it would remain until 1917.

Called a crusade

In response to the fall of Jerusalem, Pope Innocent IV (r. 1243 – 1254) called a crusade that would be led by King Louis IX. While it had contingents from other Western European kingdoms, this effort was primarily an effort of the French crown. Although King Louis IX was able to manage the impressive logistical feat of organizing and equipping an army that seized the northern Egyptian port of Damietta, the effort to take all of Egypt was ultimately unsuccessful.

Mamluk power in Egypt

Over the course of 1250, the French army was surrounded in the swamps of the Nile Delta outside of Cairo and forced to surrender, with Louis himself captured. The only lasting result in the Middle East was that, during the fighting, the Ayyubid sultan’s Mamluks launched a coup d’etat and seized power in Egypt, thereby creating in Egypt a military power that would dominate the Levant for nearly three centuries.

The Crusades failed

Indeed, in the four decades after Louis’s failure in the Nile Delta, the Mamluk sultans of Egypt would eventually conquer all of the Crusader States, with the last crusader stronghold in the Levant, the city of Acre, falling in 1291. Although Popes would still call crusades for military efforts against Muslim forces (and indeed, still make calls to retake the city of Jerusalem), crusading had failed.

Reasons for the failure of the Crusades

One reason for crusading’s ultimate failure was that, as Western European kings consolidated their power, they often had priorities other than crusading. England’s Edward I, for example, spent a few months fighting in the Levant in 1271; however, he spent most of his reign fighting to subdue England’s neighboring kingdoms of Wales and Scotland.

Long-term impact of the Crusades

In the end, the Crusades failed, and their greatest long-term impacts were the destruction of the Byzantine Empire and the growth of the sea power of Genoa and Venice, whose ships and sailors had transported people and supplies between Europe and the Crusader States.

Conclusion

The Later Crusades illustrate the gradual unraveling of a once-powerful religious and military movement that had shaped medieval Europe for nearly two centuries. As political realities shifted and the balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean tilted decisively toward the Muslim world, the crusading ethos lost both its effectiveness and its unity of purpose. Internal rivalries among European states, inconsistent papal leadership, and the rise of national priorities eroded the collective will that had fueled earlier successes. At the same time, opponents such as the Mamluks and Ottomans proved far more cohesive and strategically capable, ultimately overpowering the fragmented Crusader presence.

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