One of the major things that Gerald of Wales was involved in was the crusade to recover the Holy Land.
During the late summer of 1187, astounding and terrible tidings spread through western Europe. The great Moslem warrior, Salah-ad-Din Yusuf, the dreaded ‘Saladin’, had surrounded the Christian army of Palestine at the Horns of Hattin, and utterly annihilated it: the Holy Cross of Christ, the sacred relic borne before the crusaders, was in the hands of the infidel. Within three months even worse news followed. Sweeping all before him, Saladin had taken the Holy City of Jerusalem, and only the desperately defended fortress of Tyre now held out against the final Moslem conquest of the land where Christ had lived and died.