Was there ever an attempt to call a crusade after the christians lost the holy land in the end of the 13th century?

by Gwenzao
Rhodis

Yes, many. Crusading didn't end after the loss of the Holy Land in 1291, and for some countries like England and Scotland, the fourteenth century was the great era of crusading.

Shortly after the fall of Acre in 1291, the Pope called for a new crusade. Donations were raised across Europe and preaching began. However, this new expedition didn't materialise, beginning a theme that continued throughout the late medieval period. From 1300 to 1350, crusade preaching was ordered again in 1308, the 1310's, 20's, 30's, and 40's. Of these, only 1308 resulted in a significant expedition. The Papacy and the French crown both commissioned plans for new crusade expeditions. The Pope asked the Templars and Hospitallers to provide one in the 1290's, and the Hospitaller grandmaster wrote another one around 1305. In the 1320s Philip V of France held a series of conferences with former crusaders, consulting them on his plans for a new expedition. A new literary genre arose, the recovery treatise, texts devoted to planning how the Holy Land could be retaken. However, crusading had changed, both in how people chose to crusade and where, and so this preaching and these recovery treatises, aimed at the Holy Land, had little effect.

The major crusades, mass expeditions launched by the Pope and often led by kings, like the Third Crusade, became rarer, occurring only in 1365 (Alexandria), 1396 (Nicopolis), and 1444 (Varna). There was no longer a foothold in Palestine for the crusaders to strike out from. Crusading to the East became more risky and more expensive. In response, crusading rose in popularity elsewhere. Crusading shifted towards the hethenesse, a Middle English word that refers to the non-Christian borders of Europe and Africa. The hethenesse included Spain, where the Christian Spanish kingdoms had been slowly beating back the Muslim Moors for centuries, the Baltic, where the Teutonic Knights were fighting pagan Lithuania, Greece and the eastern Mediterranean, where the Knights Hospitaller and the Byzantine Empire were fighting the Turks, and North Africa.

Another difference was in how people crusaded. Instead of these mass expeditions to the East, crusaders went abroad in small groups to temporarily fight alongside another institution, and then return home. In the East, crusaders would sign up with the Hospitallers, in Spain, they'd join the Spanish kings, in the Baltic, they'd join the Teutonic Knights. The Teutonic Knights developed a whole system for attracting and supporting these temporary crusaders. Crusaders would travel to the Baltic and join the Teutonic Knights on their raids in Lithuania. There would be feasts, competitions, prizes for the most chivalrous knight, and so on. Because there were no longer these massive crusades like the First or Third Crusades, it can seem like people didn't crusade in the late medieval period, but they did, just more spread out geographically and chronologically. There were still a couple of large scale crusades in this period, like Alexandria in 1365, Nicopolis in 1396. However, neither of these was successful, the former took Alexandria but then withdrew, whilst the latter was defeated by the Turks.

The motives of these were little changed from those of early crusades. Religion was still the main declared motive, with wealth and prestige also helping attract crusaders. Defence became a more common motive, particularly in the eastern Mediterranean. Here the Turks were beating back the Byzantines, and so some crusades, like Nicopolis in 1396 and Varna in 1444, were launched to help support the Byzantines and other eastern European powers. The Hospitallers also participated in these campaigns, occupying and defending some of southern Greece, including Corinth, against the Turks.

Some of these later crusades were still quite successful. The Hospitallers led a small expedition from 1308-10 to capture Rhodes. This was intended to be the first of a two-stage crusade, with Rhodes acting as a launching point for a further expedition to retake the Holy Land, but this was never followed up on. The Rhodes crusade was also the last expedition to the East to receive major popular support in England. The Hospitallers managed to hold onto the island until 1522. A naval league of the Hospitallers, Papal States, and Italian cities took Smyrna on mainland Turkey in the 1340s, which remained in Christian hands until 1402. In the Baltic the Lithuanians, under pressure from Teutonic raids, eventually converted to Christianity in the late 14th century. Spain was the most successful theatre of the hethenesse. The Spanish kingdoms continually drove back the Moors, finally conquering what was left of Muslim Spain in 1492.

Sources:

Timothy Guard, Chivalry, Kingship and Crusade: the English Experience in the Fourteenth Century (Woodbridge, 2013).

Norman Housley, The Later Crusades (Oxford, 1992).

Antony Leopold, How to Recover the Holy Land: the Crusade Proposals of the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries (Aldershot, 2000).

Alan Macquarrie, Scotland and the Crusades (Edinburgh, 1985).

Christopher Tyerman, England and the Crusades, 1095-1588 (Chicago, 1988).