Lamb wrote 23 fiction and 20 non fiction books was a student of Asia spoke French,Latin, Persian,Arabic, and a smattering of Mancho-Tarter. Just because he wrote something contrary to what you want to hear tough shit. Bet you discount the Bible because it was written a while back. Originally Posted by i'va biggenYou'd better reread your Mr. Lamb, Stumpy the Inbred Chimp, because Mr. Lamb quite literally holds your position -- "the scoffer's" -- in contempt, Stumpy the Inbred Chimp. You lyingly misrepresented Mr. Lamb's position, Stumpy the Inbred Chimp.
"FOR two centuries of the thousand-year strife between Islam and Christianity, the cross-bearers carried the war into Asia. They fortified themselves beyond the sea, making the valley of the Jordan the front line of Christendom. At the end of the two centuries they were driven out of this front line, because they were left without support in the face of the new Moslem forces drawn from central Asia. Counter-attacks launched from Europe failed to recover this ground, and in the next centuries the Moslem attack swept on over the Mediterranean and into eastern Europe. The crusaders sacrificed themselves in taking and holding that front line. While they were on the Jordan, the rest of Europe except in Spain, where the crusaders also appeared before long was safe from Moslem aggression. And after the crusaders were wiped out, the experience gained in their wars, the new weapons and lessons learned in strategy and in fortification, and especially the new fleets built up during the crusades, aided in the preservation of Europe when Christendom was placed on the defensive.
"So, as a military venture in that long war, the crusades gained much. The loss was in the sacrifice of lives and wealth the gain in experience, so says the soldier.
"With all this the scoffer will not agree. And just at present he is very much in fashion. He sees in the crusades a waste of hundreds of thousands of lives, and uncounted wealth. He reminds us that the first cross-bearers ate human flesh at need and stained their swords by savage massacres. And that later, adventurers and plunderers filled their ranks. It seems to him that these men set out to be saints and ended by being devils. He decries the whole thing as a failure. The scoffer, however, is weighing men of the Twelfth Century in scales of the Twentieth. If he had lived when the crusaders lived, he would have known:That other men as well had eaten human flesh at need.
That the crusaders ceased the massacres after the first onrush, when they had settled in Outremer and thereafter the mamluks, for example, equaled the worst of their deeds...."For to their own dark age the crusaders brought the fire of unselfish purpose. Around this fire they drew men from all lands centuries before the first alliance of peoples in our modern world. And by this light they went out into the unknown regions centuries before Europe could send forth its colonists.
That the venturesome crusaders instead of looking for fortunes in the East sold or mortgaged their property at home in order to journey into the East, and gained little thereby....
"And this spirit of the crusades was not in the world before they came, and it has not appeared again, after their passing.
"No words of ours can alter what these men did the best or the worst of them who followed a star. They drained the cup of devotion, and if they tasted the dregs of shame, they knew also the exaltation of victory. They reached the summit of daring.
"And the memory of that will endure long after our own workaday lives are ended."
(pp. 465-66, The Crusades: The Flame of Islam, 1930, by Harold Lamb).
Expiration date? In your dreams, assup! The term "grubered" is a permanent addition to the lexicon. There is no "expiration date" on the smug, condescending and damaging libtard attitudes for which Jonathan Gruber is Exhibit A. Originally Posted by lustylad+1
poor IBIdiot! Originally Posted by Yssup Rider
