Will Durant described the Crusades as "the culminating act of the medieval drama, and perhaps the most picturesque event in the history of Europe and the Near East." Few students of that era would disagree. At the same time, most historians speak with a single voice in pronouncing the Crusades a failure. Durant himself opines:

Of their direct and professed purposes the Crusades had failed. After two centuries of war, Jerusalem was in the hands of the ferocious Mamluks [Egyptians], and Christian pilgrims came fewer and more fearful than before. The Moslem powers, once tolerant of religious diversity, had been made intolerant by attack. The Palestinian and Syrian ports that had been captured for Italian trade were without exception lost. Moslem civilization had proved itself superior to the Christian in refinement, comfort, education, and...