First Crusade

In 324, Constantine, then ruler of the Western Empire, went to war with his Eastern counterpart, Lincinius. Ramsay MacMullen describes it as having the “character of a crusade”: “For Constantine, the battle cry was not legitimacy, though indeed he was the senior Augustus and thought he now dusted off the memories of his ties with Maximian; it was not his just claim to have defended the realm where his rival proved incapable; rather he emphasized the need to rescue his coreligionists from the oppression of a tyrant.”