One of the worst moments for whites was when the crusaders destroyed Constantinople because it was orthodox instead of Catholic, which made it easier for the Muslims to take over. Just utterly retarded

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5114020&forum_id=2#44549722)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Latins

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5114020&forum_id=2#44551527)

There were battles when like 200 crusaders fought off thousands of Muslims bc of the armor advantage. Other battles, the crusaders fought well, but were hot and dehydrated riding around in metal ovens all day and eventually were too tired and hot to continue on.

Constantinople ended up being sacked bc the 4th crusade was originally planned to go to Cairo using boats purchased from Venice. Problem is not enough crusaders showed up with enough money to pay for the boats so the doge of Venice was like well let’s just go get the money from Constantinople then attack the Muslims.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5114020&forum_id=2#44549775)

A bunch of Frenchmen established fiefdoms that lasted a century in the middle of the levant surrounded by moslems that hated them. That’s an incredible achievement

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5114020&forum_id=2#44549870)

2. Honor culture of Europe led to idiotic military decisions. Nobody wanted to look like a coward so the Europeans would charge vastly superior forces instead of waiting on reinforcements regularly and get wiped out. Nearly every major loss before the decline was due to European overconfidence. Also, they couldn’t work well with one another or the byzantines. All they cared about was short term gain so if your bros in Antioch are besieged- fuck them. Maybe I’ll go help the Muslims and gets me some plunder.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5114020&forum_id=2#44572460)

When the actual first crusade w militaries did same thing, Muslims thought it’d be a cakewalk like the last one so didn’t attack as hard at outset. They won a few battles and got some momentum.

Still, the “finding” of the holy lance was major turning point in seige of Antioch that helped establish a crusader stronghold for 200 years

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5114020&forum_id=2#44562664)

-Feudal armies were extremely poorly-organized for long-distance expeditions. There was almost never a single unquestioned commander, but instead squabbling lords feuded over strategy, division of spoils, precedence, and everything else. This squabbling is a major reason the Second Crusade was a disaster and the Third Crusade didn't accomplish more. Even more importantly, it's why the Crusader states themselves didn't hold up better under Islamic counterattacks.

-Bad luck. Multiple times a strong crusading army under a powerful monarch gets derailed because the monarch just fucking dies. Frederick Barbarossa got an army of 100,000 all the way to Cilicia, but then he died abruptly and the army disintegrated. Just a few years later, Barbarossa's son Henry VI launched a well-planned expedition, but then died unexpectedly at Messina as he was about to embark. This caused the German lords to return home early to look out for their interests during the contested succession, and so the army only reconquered a few coastal cities and that was it.

-Lack of manpower. The Crusaders could get thousands of soldiers to make an armed pilgrimage to Outremer, but the vast majority went home once the expedition was done and only a few thousand stuck around to consolidate their holdings, and they were always foreigners ruling over a native heavily-Muslim peasantry. Given those circumstances, they actually lasted a respectably long time, but the problem was that even a single military defeat was calamitous for the Crusader states as they had no reserves to fall back on other than calling another slow-to-arrive crusade from the West.

-Bad relations with the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines tend to get left out of simple Crusade histories other than the passage of the First Crusade and the sack of Constantinople in the Fourth, but they were actually extremely important for the entire century between those events. The Byzantines had held Antioch until very shortly before the First Crusade and asserted suzerainty over the Kingdom of Antioch, which was sometimes superficially respected but more often led to conflict. John II was an enormously capable emperor and launched a serious campaign against Aleppo and its environs, but was undermined by lack of support from the Franks. If they had collaborated with the emperor more the Saracens would have been much weaker and the crusaders more secure.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5114020&forum_id=2#44549983)

Also , around 1300 the holy orders (Templars being the main one) got gutted/ converted from their original purposes

Read Dan Jones

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5114020&forum_id=2#44553930)