From a purely military point of view, the Crusades ended in disastrous
failure, for they left the Mohammedans in absolute possession of the
Holy Land. Although this is the twentieth century since the birth of
Christ, the Mohammedans still continue in that possession. But in
spite of their failure these wars brought great good to England. In
many respects the civilization of the East was far in advance of the
West. One result of the Crusades was to open the eyes of Europe to
this fact. When Richard and his followers set out, they looked upon
the Mohammedans as barbarians; before they returned, many were ready
to acknowledge that the barbarians were chiefly among themselves.
At that time England had few Latin and no Greek scholars. The
Saracens or Mohammedans, however, had long been familiar with the
classics, and had translated them into their own tongue. Not only did
England gain its first knowledge of the philosophy of Plato and
Aristotle from Mohammedan teachers, but it also received from them the
elements of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and astronomy.
This new knowledge gave a great impulse to education, and had a most
important influence on the growth of the universities of Cambridge and
Oxford, though these institutions did not become prominent until more
than a century later.
Had these been the only results, they would still, perhaps, have been
worth all the blood and treasure spent by the crusaders in their vain
attempts to recover the permanent possession of the sepulcher of
Christ; but these were by no means all. The Crusades brought about a
social and political revolution. They conferred benefits and removed
evils. When they began, the greater part of the inhabitants of
western Europe, including England, were chained to the soil (S150).
They had neither freedom, property, nor knowledge.
There were in fact but three classes, who really deserved the name of
citizens and freemen; these were the churchmen (comprising the clergy,
monks, and other ecclesiastics), the nobles, and the inhabitants of
certain favored towns. The effect of the Crusades was to increase the
number of this last class. We have seen that Richard was compelled,
by his need of money, to grant charters conferring local
self-government on many towns (SS182, 183). For a similar reason the
great nobles often granted the same powers to towns which they
controlled. The result was that their immense estates were broken up
in some measure. It was from this period, says the historian Gibbon,
that the common people (living in these chartered towns) began to
acquire political rights, and, what is more, to defend them.