the.com/crusade
holy wars that mostly enriched Venetian merchants and bankrupted everyone with a sword.
means A vigorous, often moralizing campaign waged for a cause one considers righteous — historically, the medieval Christian military expeditions to seize the Holy Land.
from From Spanish 'cruzada' and Portuguese/Provençal forms meaning 'marked with the cross,' all rooted in Latin 'crux' (cross) — the crusaders literally stitched cloth crosses onto their tunics and were said to be 'signed with the cross.' English absorbed it through French 'croisade,' blending earlier forms, and by the 1700s 'crusade' had stretched from sword-and-cross campaigns to any zealous moral mission, so that one can now crusade against litter or sugar.
- plot twist
- Fourth Crusade sacked Christian Constantinople instead of Jerusalem
- kids only
- 1212 Children's Crusade ended in slavery, not glory
- the count
- nine major crusades over nearly 200 years
- word now
- means any zealous campaign, often against parking tickets
first crusade — 1096-1099, resulted in crusaders capturing jerusalem and establishing crusader states
third crusade — 1189-1192, led by richard the lionheart and frederick barbarossa against saladin
albigensian crusade — 1209-1229, papal crusade against cathar heretics in southern france
children's crusade — 1212, large groups of children from france and germany marched toward holy land