The CRUSADES provide some of the most striking images of the Middle Ages. They were the stage on which the familiar figures of the great medieval knights, the flower of chivalry, acted out their dramas. They were the battleground on which two great and opposing religions and cultures met. Yet what exactly were the crusades? Why were they fought? What were the results of the great confrontation between Christianity and Islam? And what were the truths behind the myths of chivalry and knighthood? This book examines the bloody, violent, and sometimes farcical reality behind our images of the Crusades, traces the chronology of the campaigns from 1095, when the first crusade was set in motion by Pope Urban n, to 1291, and the fall of Acre, and looks at the lives of such legendary figures as Richard the Lionheart and Saladin.