They were almost defeated by the Turks in crossing Asia Minor; they almost starved during the siege of the great fortress city of Antioch. They were saved by the fact that the feudal army was invincible when it had anything like decent leadership and by the sharp divisions among their opponents. A great victory over a Moslem army at Antioch opened the way to Jerusalem, and the Holy City fell to the Crusaders in July 1099—almost four years after the Council of Clermont and three years after the main armies had started their journey to the East.
The success of the Crusade had a tremendous moral effect on Europe. There were already some reasons for optimism, but they were based on small, local, unspectacular gains. Now an almost impossible task had been accomplished, and everyone in Europe was aware of it. God had set them the task, and God had given them the strength to perform it. It is not surprising that there was an increase in confidence, in self-assurance, in optimism in twelfth-century Europe.
Even more important, the successful Crusade, following the successful reform movement and the successful struggle with the Empire, firmly established the leadership of the Church. From the late eleventh well into the thirteenth century, the Church set the goals and fixed the standards for Western European society. This was leadership and not dictatorship; the Church did not and could not control all secular interests and activities. Loyalty to the Church was like patriotism today; it was taken for granted, and therefore ignored, in the ordinary transactions of daily life. Men were selfish in the Middle Ages as they are selfish now; they sought power and profit for themselves without considering the general welfare. But, just as the most corrupt politician or predatory business man of today can hardly defy openly the national interest, so the barons and the townsmen of the Middle Ages found it difficult to defy the Church. They had to conform, at least outwardly; they could not pursue indefinitely lines of conduct which the Church condemned. And the completely selfish man was rare,
