Hay I just want to now the route the crusaders went on to reach the holy land?

Answer 1

During the Crusading Era (1099-1291), there were generally two main routes that were followed by outgoing knights and pilgrims. The first route was only used prior to 1200. Before 1200, knights leaving Western Europe would travel throught the Rhineland in Germany, then head south through the Kingdom of Hungary. Then they would enter the Balkans, and finally Greece. Once in Greece, the crusaders would proceed to the Bosphorus Strait, at Byzantium. There they would be ferried across the Strait by the Byzantines into Asia Minor. Then it was along the coast of Anatolia and into Armenian Cilicia, or, prior to 1143, the County of Edessa. At that juncture, the crusaders took a sharp south and were at Antioch. If they were going to Jerusalem, they proceeded south along the coast. This over-land route remained popular at first because sea travel was seen as difficult. It was easier to transport large numbers of men and materials by means of horse than it was to gather enough ships and brave the Mediterranean. However, that all changed during the Third Crusade. A tragedy occured that would make the over-land route very unpopular, and it was never used again. In 1189, the Holy Roman Emperour Frederick Barbarossa I embarked as the first leader of the Third Crusade to recover Jerusalem, which had been lost in 1187 to the Sultan Salah al Din Yosuf al Ayyubi, or Saladin. One day in 1189, just as Frederick and his army arrived in Armenian Cilicia, having crossed Asia Minor, he decided to take a swim in a local stream and drowned. This catastrophe made the overland route forever unpopular, and Barbarossa was the last man ever to lead his army across the Bosphorus. The new route taken to the Holy Land was the over-sea one. Richard I of England and Philip Augustus of France, both of whom followed Frederick on the Third Crusade, travled by means of the Mediterranean Sea. Richard departed at the port of Marsaillse in France, and Philip traveled from Genoa in Italy. Both fleets stoped at the port city of Messina in Italy, which would become a hub of crusader maritime traffic. From Messina, Richard and Philip proceeded to sail to Acre in Palestine, and there they retook the city from Saladin and began the third crusade again, forever chaning the way be which crusaders would travel to the Holy Land.