As I have mentioned in other posts on other threads, from my ancestor's POV the crusades were literally a Godsend. Nothing, nothing gets me more ticked off than to see this rewriting of history to make the Muslim invaders look like the heroes.
You are so right! The Crusade were an overly zealous result of the Muslim hoards invading north Africa and forcing all in their path to convert or be put death by the sword. Then they moved north into SE Europe and actually reached the outskirts of Vienna before they were defeated by the Polish army led by Jan Sobieski! So much for the enlightened bigots who always belittled those "stupid Poles".
Some people never learn their history, and as the old adage says, "They will live to repeat it." Unfortunately, the rest of us will suffer alongside the idiots.
" As I have mentioned in other posts on other threads, from my ancestor's POV the crusades were literally a Godsend."
From my Greek ancestors pov the Crusades were a distinctly mixed blessing. The "Frankokratia" in Southern Greece was certainly better than the "Turkokratia" which a century+ followed it, but not a great deal better. Guillaume De Villhardouin and his people were not the tenderest of overlords, especially to my family (they occupied a castle right behind my aunt's house down in the village in Greece). They made matters very hard for the Greek Orthodox. Eventually there was an uprisng in the late 1200s and the Byzantine Emperor Michael, having retaken Constantinople from the Latin invaders, recovered Morea from the Franks. Thereafter, interestingly enough, many of the wonderful princesses who were the wives of the Despots and other Imperial officials of Morea were Normans. They brought a connection to Western Europe to the Peloponnesus, the effects of which are still to be seen in places like Mistras and in the many castles which dot southern Greece.
As for the rest of the Crusaders, well we all know the story of the sack of Constantinople and the desecration of Orthodox Churches across the Holy Land and the Empire in those times. There is the famous saying from the 1450s that the Orthodox prefered the sultan's turban to the Pope's mitre. The Byzantines came to that conclusion because of the way they were treated under the Crusader empire. Its a tough history, but then again, those were tough times.
My ancestors, Jews of the Rhineland, would beg to differ.