Say I'm a squire to a Knight from Europe going to conquer the Holy Land in the name of God. Despite his prayers and prowess in battle, he gets bested but I escape. What happens to me now?

by shoecat
[deleted]

What happens to me now?

You continue on to Jerusalem, fulfill your crusading vow (assuming you made one), and return home, just like all the other crusaders. Failure to do so would have profound spiritual repercussions.

Knight from Europe going to conquer the Holy Land in the name of God

To be clear, this is a pretty terrible understanding of what the crusades actually were. Only a very small minority of Crusaders actually stayed in the Levant after fulfilling their pledges to visit the Holy Sepulchre, and while possession of the territory was considered important, crusades were first and foremost an act of penitence just like any other pilgrimage. God, after all, expunge all non-believers from the face of the earth, if he so chose. The Islamic possession of Outremer was thus an opportunity provided by god to aid in your spiritual salvation, regardless of actual outcome.

Also, the formal position of squire was an innovation which significantly postdates the First Crusade, and it is thus unlikely that you would have existed at all.

Some reading:

  • Riley-Smith, Jonathan. The Crusades: A Short History. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
lngwstksgk

OK everyone, this is a question in AskHistorians. Like any other question, it will be moderated according to our rules. The tl;dr of that is: answer the question in an in-depth, comprehensive manner such as an historian might do.

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idjet

Unfortunately this question has an incorrect foundation. The 'squire' is a late medieval formulation which never saw action in the crusades of the central middle ages.