Crusades are a great tool for blundering through allied territory, stealing, raping, pressganging and generally making yourself an unpleasant twat towards your fellow Catholic neighbours. The problem with crusades heading towards the Holy land is that upon arrival, many macho multistarred muslim men (M.M.M.M.M.) will be preparing to viciously board your holiest of holy. Therefore, one of your own (mostly incompetent) peers should be volunteered to lead your bunch of merry men. In this thread I will discuss the various types of leaders I've personally used and report their effectiveness.

1. High Ranking General
Using one of your best generals, will really set you back in the defence and conquest of your immediate vicinity. Even though your crusade will be somewhat more successful (maybe they'll scare off some Constantinoplians), I personally do find this worth the sacrifice.

2. Low Ranking General
The use I've found for a miserable crusade like this is to really not go forward at all, unless you have to. Using inquisitors to up the zeal in a neighbouring territory, and then soaking up all the troops with your crusade is fun Flanders is a good place to park, as is Ile de France, Venice and Hungary. Spain seems to be inhabited with zealots so that might be a good idea too. The problem with this is that over time you'll have alot of worthless units who won't stand a chance against a pair of fighting grandmas.

3. Kings, heirs, problematic figures.
Have a King that does nothing but sit on his lazy boyloving obese behind? Have a heir whose facial profile extends into his not-so-muscular chest? Want to get rid of them? Send them on a crusade Your royal highness will love trudging through the desert with 50 disillusioned compagnons What's more, when the crusade has failed and all hope is lost, the darkest days have come for your royal flower, somewhere, somehow there will be one of his superior offspring sadly picking up the crown.

There's probably more but I'll leave that for a rainy day because I really need to go to bed now.