Did the Crusades “make sense” from a practical viewpoint?
I’ve long had the vague perception that the Crusades were a relatively rare example of an “ideological war” where the aggressors’ motivations didn’t make that much economic or geopolitical sense. I know that some noblemen got land and prestige for a while, and institutions like the Templars flourished, but looking at Western Europe as a whole, it seems like they wasted a whole lot of money and men for no gain in the long run, and that even if they had ultimately succeeded, the “Holy Land” wouldn’t have been that profitable or useful (or even sustainable from a military perspective.) This is in contrast to, say, the conquest of the Americas, which involved an ideological pretext of “converting the heathens,” but DID enrich the conquerors and was an investment that paid amazing dividends. Obviously, there were multiple crusades over a long span of time and they took drastically different forms (the Fourth Crusade largely targeting other Christians in the end), but overall, how correct is my understanding that the Crusades weren’t “realpolitik?”