THE FIRST CRUSADE by Steven Runciman...

THE FIRST CRUSADE by Steven Runciman (Cambridge/Canto: $7.95). Based on the author’s acclaimed three-volume history of the Crusades, this concise study combines impeccable research with the vitality of a historical novel. When the shrewd Byzantine emperor, Alexius Comnenus, requested aid from the West for his beleaguered empire, he expected disciplined mercenaries--not an unruly group of armies led by independent and often ambitious princes. Runciman notes that “The desire to be a pilgrim is deeply rooted in human nature. To stand where those that we reverence once stood, to see the very sites where they were born and toiled and died, gives us a feeling of mystical contact with them and is a practical expression of our homage.” Many of the men and women who responded to the call of Pope Urban II for a war to drive the infidel from the Holy Land did so out of sincere piety; others, especially the land-hungry younger sons of noble families, were driven by less exalted motives. The lofty ideals of the Crusaders foundered amid internecine struggles and the harsh political realities of the Near East. The Frankish nobles and their troops distrusted the Byzantines, whom they considered sneaky and probably heretical, and failed to see the impossibility of maintaining Western-style feudal states in the Mideast without the support of Constantinople. An excellent introduction to a fascinating and often tragic story.