Note on Crusades

As a friend of mine on FB noted:

The Most Recent Crusade Began in Spain 90 Years Ago Today

He seems to have been off by a few days, this was 20 July and the rising started on the 17 July. Never mind, up to today, I was confusing Niceto Alcalá-Zamora (the president who went into exile) with José María Gil-Robles y Quiñones (who was leader of CEDA, which I thought was the party in government and hence that of the president who would have been its leader ...)

Have Crusades involved abusive events?

The First Crusade involved the sack of Jerusalem and on part of the popular Crusade sacking of Jews in the Rhineland. The one approved by Pope Pius XI involved Badajoz.

Do abuses like these make a Crusade unjust?

Usually not, since the provocation (like harrassing of pilgrims by Seljuks or Red Terror involving the killing of Calvo Sotelo and José Antonio Primo de Rivera) is more typical of the régime one crusades against than the abuse of the leaders of the Crusade.

After Badajoz, Franco told Yagüe off. Nothing more like that, or Franco would even ally with the Reds to get rid of the Rifans.

At the sack of Jerusalem, Geoffrey of Bouillon did what he could to stop it, and succeeded on the third day. He marked his distance from the acts by refusing to wear a crown (also in reference to Jesus wearing a crown of thorns, not to forget).

In the Rhineland, he wasn't there to try to stop anything, the leadership was different. Peter the Hermit took his distance from that popular Crusade bc of such events.

Meanwhile, the Seljuk rulers of Palestine had harrassed pilgrims for long, and Manuel Azaña seemed to have no interest in repressing the Red Terror, though it was nominally peacetime and it would have been easier for him to do so, in theory, than for Franco to keep an eye on how Mola or Yagüe were behaving.

Please note, the bloodiest acts under Franco's own direct command in Spain were in the Asturias, 1934, where he was not remotely anything like chief of state. Once the Spanish Crusade began, with him taking over after Sanjurjo, things under his command were among the cleanest in all of the Spanish war, left or right sympathies, wrong or right sides.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Mary Magdalene
22.VII.2026

Apud Massiliam, in Gallia, natalis sanctae Mariae Magdalenae, de qua Dominus ejecit septem daemonia, et quae ipsum Salvatorem a mortuis resurgentem prima videre meruit.