One of my favorite novels by Robert Shea is All Things Are Lights, set mostly in medieval France. The hero of the book, a troubadour and knight named Roland, is dragged against his will into two bloody crusades: The attack on the Cathars in southern France, and King Louis' Seventh Crusade, an attack on Egypt. Those two wars, and Roland's complicated love life, are the novel's main plot.
I have been reading The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium by Anthony Kaldellis, an American history professor who has become the leading modern scholar of Byzantine history. It's the first long, comprehensive history of the Eastern Roman empire from beginning to end issued in many years. I recently finished the chapter that deals with the Fourth Crusade, i.e. the unprovoked capture and sacking of Constantinople in 1204. Aside from the killings and rapes that accompanied the capture of the city, Kaldellis writes that "Whole chapters of ancient history, art and literature were erased in mere hours," as the city was looted and large sections of it were burned down.
Kaldellis shows the full horror of the attack but also puts it in the context of the crusading movement: After explaining why the attack on Constantinople was an unjustifiable crime, Kaldellis also writes about "the moral rottenness of crusading in general, which not only channeled hatred against perceived enemies of the faith but generated, armed and funded it .... Crusading may have been experienced by many as a pious pilgrimage for the expiation of sin, but it had quickly become a means by which to justify and drum up war against any opponent upon whom a crusade's leaders had set their sights, even for outright wars of conquest and against other Christians."
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