Crusade is the second book of the Destroyermen series. Matthew Reddy, and the crew of USS Walker (DD-163), are reunited with the destroyer USS Mahan (DD-102), and set out to fight the Grik. Reddy and Walker's marine detachment, continue training the Lemurians to defend themselves and take the war to the Grik. The Grik have now taken over the ship that was chasing them, the Japanese battlecruiser Amagi.
The first Plantagenet king inherited a blood-soaked kingdom from the Normans and transformed it into an empire that stretched at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. In this epic history, Dan Jones vividly resurrects this fierce and seductive royal dynasty and its mythic world. We meet the captivating Eleanor of Aquitaine, twice queen and the most famous woman in Christendom; her son, Richard the Lionheart, who fought Saladin in the Third Crusade; and King John, a tyrant who was forced to sign Magna Carta, which formed the basis of our own Bill of Rights.
Added by: Kahena | Karma: 11525.36 | Fiction literature | 1 January 2012
2
The Heart of the Lion
At the age of thirty-two, Richard the Lionheart has finally succeeded Henry II to the English throne. And, against his father’s wishes, he intends to make Berengaria, daughter of the King of Navarre, his Queen. But first he must fulfil his vow to his country to win back Jerusalem for the Christian world. Leaving England to begin his crusade, Richard’s kingdom is left in the hands of his brother, John, who casts covetous eyes on the crown, and his sister, Joanna, adored yet willing to defy even a king.
The Fourth Crusade was the first and most famous of the 'diverted' crusades, that is, ones diverted from their originally intended target. It was also the first to be directed against a fellow Christian, though Orthodox, state. Initially preached (from 1198 onwards) as a campaign against Ayyubid Egypt, which was correctly seen as the most potent threat to the Latin or 'Crusader' Kingdom of Jerusalem, its first Christian target was the city of Zadar in what is now Croatia. The greater part of the crusading army then attacked the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, again as part of their obligations to Venice.