What were some initial success despite the Crusades late failure?

Answer 1

The Crusaders enjoyed a resounding series of early successes in the later years of the 11th century and the early decades of of the 12th. The First Crusade, lauched by Pope Urban II at Clermont in 1096, achieved the most of any of the Crusades. This initial movement is the one that you are probably thinking of. Crusaders from the Occitan, Normandy, Sicily, Lorraine, Blois, and Flanders succeeded in defeating the Turks in Asia Minor and capturing Niceae and Iconium. Moving south, two of the crusading nobels recovered Taursus in Cilicia. Then some knights from Lorraine detached with Baldwin of Boulonge and captrued the city of Edessa to the east. The rest of the army headed south into Turkic Syria and beseiged Antioch, which then was occupied under Bohemond of Taranto, a Norman crusader lord from Sicily. Under Raymond of Toulouse, the rest of the crusaders marched south and recovered Jerusalem and Galilee.
After the first crusade, Godfrey de Boullion was proclaimed soverign of Jerusalem in 1099. The next year, he fell ill and died. His brother Baldwin, the count of Edessa, became king. Under Baldwin, the crusaders captured the cities of Acre, Beruit, Tyre, and Caeserea. Later, the southern coastal metropolis of Ascalon was recovered after a lengthy siege by king
Baldwin III. Following these successes, the crusader states in the eastern Mediterranean were established to their fullest extent. In the decades after 1150, the Moslems of Aleppo, Damascus, and Cairo became stronger and more capable of combating the Europeans. In 1187, the royal army of Jerusalem, along with the Templars and Hospitallers, rode to destruction at the Battle of Hattin. That same year Jerusalem was lost, along with most of the other cities. Soon, only Tyre remained in crusader hands. Richard the Lion Heart's Third Crusade regained the coastal cities from the Muslims, but the kingdom of Jerusalem was never as strong again as it had been following those early successes.