ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES AND THE CRUSADER KNIGHTS, AN

The medieval knights of Western Europe were central to the Crusades, and this book tells their story. Knights who took the cross did so for many reasons, and their experience in the Holy Land, in the Palestinian states they founded, and in the long journeys home are epics in themselves. This book examines the international chivalric brotherhood of crusading knights, typified in the military orders of the Knights Templar and Knights Hospitallers. It also details the battles and sieges fought, lost and won by the crusaders, the castles they built, the states they founded, the marriages, alliances and dynasties they began, their triumphs and victories, and their diversions, corruptions and failures.