The Crusades

Chronology of European Crusades

'Women on Crusades'

From the first expedition of 1096–99, many female crusaders traveled to the East. Albert of Aachen and other authors report that on the one hand the women supported the army, but on the other hand could be a hindrance on the long marches. The pattern repeated itself on later expeditions. The Itinerarium regis Ricardi tells that before Acre in 1191 the women helped with the earthworks, and the Anglo-Norman poet Ambrose reports in his Estoire de la Guerre Sainte that there were women fighters among the crusaders. Some of these tales became part of the edifying literature of the age as exempla of moral behavior—such as the story of the wounded crusader woman who asked to be thrown into the ditch at Acre so that in death she could help fill it and thus aid in the city’s conquest. But it was not only fighting women who accompanied the expedition. Prostitutes, too, took part, and were sometimes blamed for military failures: God’s army, moralists declared, had sinned and therefore justly suffered defeats. This was an important reason for the prohibitions against women taking part in crusades. But they had little effect, and there is evidence that many nobles and princes took their wives along to the East. Some of them, like the French queen Eleanor of Aquitaine (d. 1204), also had an active influence on political relations in Outremer.