A History of the Crusades II

Runciman’s great Crusades trilogy, reissued in Penguin Modern Classics.

“The whole tale is one of faith and folly, courage and greed, hope and delusion.”

The triumph of the First Crusade transformed the eastern Mediterranean, creating a series of European-ruled states along the coast and in Armenia. But the region’s Muslim rulers were far from defeated, and the major cities of inland Syria, Egypt and elsewhere now rallied to expel the colonisers. How could the crusaders stabilise their rule and continue to attract the thousands of new recruits needed to replace their terrible losses, both from battle and disease?

A triumph of prose-writing, argument and research, Steven Runciman’s A History of the Crusades is an unimprovable account of events which changed the world and which still resonate today. In this second volume he tells the story of the catastrophic Second Crusade and the inexorable rise of the crusaders’ nemesis, Saladin.