Download or read book With Great Violence - The First Crusade written by Simon Leitch and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The year is 1096. Western Europe is weak and divided. The forces of Islam have crushed the Byzantine Empire's armies and penetrated deep into Asia Minor. The Christians of the East call for aid and the great magnates of the West unite for a daring counter-attack to recapture Jerusalem and save the Christian East. What followed has become one of the great cautionary tales of the consequences of religion when followed to excess. Marching east from France and Germany, the aspiring Crusaders quickly turn to violence against Jews, Catholics, Hungarians and Greeks alike in a surge of greed and misplaced rage. Braving hunger, travelling vast distances, fighting local warlords and each other, the ill-prepared but devoted Crusaders soon realise that God does not intend to hand them an easy passage to Jerusalem. Will they make it to the Holy Land, and will their faith survive the journey? Join a cast of diverse characters, including knights, children, Jews, ladies, monks and magnates as they take to the road and experience the harsh reality of war in the eleventh century. Carefully researched and full of historical details that bring the era to life, this novel shines a light on what it meant to participate in this bloody but little known phase of the earliest crusading movement.