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Pope Urban II initiates the First Crusade in response to a request from Alexios I Komnenos for assistance.
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On July 15, 1099 the Crusaders entered the city of Jerusalem. After getting in, they proceeded to kill all remaining Jews and Muslims in the city and destory all signs of their religions. This event ended the First Crusade
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The Second Crusade came to when the County of Edessa, the first of the Crusader states formed during the First Crusade, fell to enemy forces. A Cistercian monk named Bernad of Clairvaux was one of the many that preached for this Crusade.
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The Second Crusade ended up being mainly a failure. The city of Jerusalem was once again under the control of the Muslims and the Crusaders had been met with many losses throughout the war.
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Jerusalem changed hands once again in October of 1187. The Muslim king of Egypt and Syria, Saladin, had successfully taken control of the city for the Muslims.
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The Third Crusade was led by the toughest of the Western rulers. Some of those rulers were the king of England, the king of France, and Richard the Lion-Hearted.
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The Crusade ended in 1192 after Richard the Lion-Hearted decided against the capturing of Jerusalem. Instead he wrote up a treaty with Saladin that allowed unarmed Christians and Muslim merchants to freely enter the Holy Land, Jersualem, as they wished. Jerusalem would stay under Muslim rule as well.
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The Fourth Crusade began just as all the others before it had, in that it was another conquest to capture the Holy Land away from the Muslims. The plan was initiated by Pope Innocent III and was to travel through Egypt in order to get at the Holy Land.
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While the Fourth Crusade started out with the idea that it would be a conquest on the Holy Land, it actually turned out to be a commercial venture initiated by the Venetians. The crusaders were essentially hired by the Venetians to destory rival Christian ports, and went as far as to take out Constantinople.
