Re: Holy Cross Joining Hockey East For 2018-2019 Season
I'm sure the Crusaders did kill non-combatants . . .
That's one way to put it. The First Crusade massacred the Jewish and Muslim population of Jerusalem after the city fell to siege. The best estimates are that they killed more than 10,000 civilians.
. . . but the primary goal was to defeat an enemy in an organized pitched battle . . .
That would be news to the leaders of the Fourth Crusade, who were so dedicated to the primary goal of fighting a Muslim enemy in pitched battle that they decided to loot Constantinople and then, when the citizens objected, to besiege it and then sack the city. They again massacred the civilian population and destroyed churches and historical monuments in order to steal the wealth.
The Baltic Crusades were nothing but attempts to steal the land and extend Prussian control over what are now the states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. There was little in the way of organized resistance until they tried to go farther east into the territory of Muscovy.
The less said about the Albigensian Crusade, the better.
It's important to understand that Pope Urban's primary motivation in calling for the First Crusade wasn't really to retake the Holy Land from the Turks. It was to create an endeavor that would take the bulk of the military aristocracy of Western Europe, who caused incredible destruction, and send the hooligans off to where they would be pillaging someone else for a while. There was nothing especially admirable about them.
You also rely on too narrow a definition of "jihadi." Aside from the non-military meanings of the word, it is used to describe a much wider concept of warrior than merely a terrorist. The Arabs who went to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets were so described, although many of them did go on to later become a part of al Qaeda. If we're discussing the period of the Crusades, "jihad" was used to describe the organized military forces that the crusaders were meeting in pitched battle.
