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Orthodox Greeks fought also in the Crusaders.
Jolanta Komornicka, Ph.D. in medieval history
During the Crusades, did any Orthodox Christians or other non-Catholics participate on the side of the Crusaders?
In short, yes. The First Crusade began in part due to a request for aid to the West made by the current emperor in Constantinople, a member of the Greek-rite Church. During the first and subsequent crusades, Greek and Armenian Christians frequently fought alongside or in auxiliary positions to the Western knights. The two groups didn't always get along (indeed, they very often did not), but they were the ones most heavily invested in combating the various Muslim groups in the region, as the Byzantines were the ones who felt any kind of territorial threat from the Muslims.
There were also various times when Muslims allied with the crusaders against other Muslim forces, which would fall under your "non-Catholics" category.
Some Examples:
When the crusaders first arrived in Constantinople, the emperor supplied them with provisions and guides.
During the First Crusade, the Western knights were in the midst of a very bad siege at Antioch. To put it mildly, things were not going well for them. The emperor, Alexios, had sent out reinforcements to help break the siege and would have come to the crusaders' aid if it hadn't been for the actions of Stephen of Blois, one of the crusade leaders, who ran away. Convinced that the siege was lost and likely the crusaders broken by the point he (Stephen) met up with the reinforcing army, Stephen told them that there was no point in continuing on and the Greek troops turned around.
The Greeks had been in conflict with various Muslim groups in the region for a while (which is part of why they called for aid in the first place). Part of the reason the First Crusade was successful was that some Muslim forces (beyond not being one unified force at this time, but a series of disparate groups and interests) were engaged in fighting the Greeks elsewhere in the region. So while the Greeks were not always fighting alongside the crusaders in the same battles/skirmishes, they were on the same side (in a sense -- this aspect gets very complicated).
As hinted at above, the Muslims were not a unified group. Certain Muslims, like those in Damascus, saw it as being to their advantage to ally with the crusaders against other Muslims whom they saw as more of a threat to their interests and way of life. Other Muslims used the crusaders for their own political gains, such as encouraging the crusaders to go after Fatimid Egypt.
As for the question about what happened to these soldiers after the crusader states were established: the conflict didn't end with the establishment of the crusader states (indeed, their existence ended up prolonging and intensifying a lot of the conflicts and led to the launching of new crusades). Greek soldiers were still fighting against Muslim groups, particularly in the north-eastern regions. Because most crusaders returned home after the success of the First Crusade, those who remained needed at least a tolerable relationship with the Greeks in order to persist, at least initially (of course, this was a big issue as the leaders of the crusade had promised to hand over all conquered territory to the Byzantine emperor, which they very much did not do). Some Greeks stayed with the crusaders in the new crusader states, but most did not.
With regard to the Muslim alliances, most of those came about in the wake of the First Crusade, and so during the time of the crusader states.
https://www.quora.com/During-the-Cru...-the-Crusaders
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Originally Posted by Sinan Zirić
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