Speaker 1: Meaning a man like this man letting butterfly flapping his wing.
Speaker 1: They've down in a force. Man, it gonna cause the
Speaker 1: tree fall, letting five thousand miles away. Man, nobody see
Speaker 1: nobody else.
Speaker 2: You see.
Speaker 1: You don't need no Man, don't they like you? Follow
Speaker 1: another story and.
Speaker 2: You got back. That's the way. Man, don't blackly not
Speaker 2: on the panel. Man, you don't don't matter. Man. Known.
Speaker 1: History is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. History
Speaker 1: and identity are rough synonyms, and so it's no shock
Speaker 1: that in this era, when identity is under assault from
Speaker 1: all angles, well history is two. Now. There are a
Speaker 1: number of ways in which specific identities are under attack.
Speaker 1: The identity of Christian, the identity of European, the identity
Speaker 1: of white, the identity of male. All of these things
Speaker 1: are being deliberately deconstructed, turned into dust. But we have
Speaker 1: to understand that this process has gone on for a
Speaker 1: long time, right well before the kind of most recent,
Speaker 1: most egregious examples. And I think it's important to well
Speaker 1: ponder why at least one example or one angle of
Speaker 1: this is capitalism in and of itself. It is difficult
Speaker 1: to sell to differentiated people, but if everyone's basically the same.
Speaker 1: If you are not a Christian, you were not a European,
Speaker 1: you are not a man. You are simply a consumer,
Speaker 1: one of many fungible, unindividuated units. You can be moved
Speaker 1: from anywhere to anywhere to perform any task. You have
Speaker 1: been turned into a gear in the machine. And these gears,
Speaker 1: these fungible pieces, they don't have a hiss and have
Speaker 1: an identity. They don't have a story about why their ancestors,
Speaker 1: why their culture is different or unique. Now that's part
Speaker 1: of it, but we understand some of this is malice.
Speaker 1: A large portion of this is deliberate desire to destroy
Speaker 1: the true, the good, and the beautiful. And when we
Speaker 1: are re examining certain bits of history, certain bits of
Speaker 1: our cultural narrative, there are certain pieces that are especially controversial.
Speaker 1: Obviously World War Two, the sort of founding religious narrative
Speaker 1: of the current instantiation of the World Empire, but also
Speaker 1: the civil rights movement. There's been an interesting move, first
Speaker 1: on the radical fringes and now closer and closer to
Speaker 1: the center of the conservative movement to re examine MLK.
Speaker 1: That is effectively an argument over history. What is the
Speaker 1: story we tell ourselves about ourselves, where we rescued from
Speaker 1: hundreds of years of irredeemable darkness by this August and
Speaker 1: wise civil rights leader and religious scholar. Or was this
Speaker 1: a con Was this a cultural revolution with a puppet
Speaker 1: head who lied and stole and horrid around at the head.
Speaker 1: That's the fight, And obviously some of it is scholarly,
Speaker 1: some of it is a description of what actually happened.
Speaker 1: But in a broader context, it is a claim about value,
Speaker 1: a claim about faith. There are other examples the United
Speaker 1: States Civil War, which has been reinterpreted in the last
Speaker 1: several decades, but also American figures like Andrew Jackson, who
Speaker 1: in his time was a liberal has now looked back
Speaker 1: on as a vast murderer in the same line as Cortes.
Speaker 1: Another part of that is the Crusades. And today's episode
Speaker 1: is the second in my series on the Crusades. The
Speaker 1: first one I and when I say I, I mean
Speaker 1: my guest, I don't know anything about the Crusades, at
Speaker 1: least not enough to put on an hour of content.
Speaker 1: Was on the first. This next one with guests who's
Speaker 1: I'm really excited for you guys to listen to. It's
Speaker 1: about the third and in that we see the men
Speaker 1: as they were, the history of honorable men fighting it
Speaker 1: out for God, for country, and for glory. But that
Speaker 1: narrative has been twisted, and it's been twisted at least recently,
Speaker 1: in two ways. The first is the most obvious, the
Speaker 1: woke stuff. Right, you are the descendant of bloodthirsty murderers,
Speaker 1: men who killed women, children, non combatants for no reason
Speaker 1: at all after they had surrendered. You are the descendant
Speaker 1: of vile imperialists who journeyed across the world. Clearly, this
Speaker 1: is not honest. This is a lie. This is a
Speaker 1: desire to justify current actions taken against you. Well, even
Speaker 1: if you didn't do anything, your ancestors did so it's
Speaker 1: fair karmic if you will, your dispossession. But on the
Speaker 1: other side, the narrative of the crusader of dais fault
Speaker 1: has been used since buy to be blunt American zionists.
Speaker 1: American zionists, if you will, put scare quotes around that
Speaker 1: to justify stupid foreign wars. You were not journeying halfway
Speaker 1: around the world to fight for another nation. You are
Speaker 1: participating in this long civilizational duty to push back the
Speaker 1: hordes of Saracens or Hodgi's or Taliban and we need
Speaker 1: to continue the fight. The same language is used often
Speaker 1: in the UK right the counter Jihad of Tommy Robinson
Speaker 1: and others. And sure, I don't particularly like the Taliban.
Speaker 1: I do not like Muslim immigration into Europe. But the question,
Speaker 1: of course is why why are you bringing up that trope?
Speaker 1: Are you doing it to inspire the men of that
Speaker 1: nation to clean house? Are you doing it to inspire
Speaker 1: men to take action? I was going to use another
Speaker 1: word there, but you too, is watching right? Or is
Speaker 1: it to motivate you to fight on someone else's behalf?
Speaker 1: To fight on behalf of the Judeo Christian worldview. That's
Speaker 1: why I think that this series is important as a corrective,
Speaker 1: but also because the foundation of civilization is hero worship
Speaker 1: is looking at the men who came before you in
Speaker 1: your line, either literally or figuratively, and strive to imitate them.
Speaker 1: Great men, men who did courageous things, who defied the odds,
Speaker 1: who threw themselves into the fray, trusted to their arms
Speaker 1: and to their God to save them, and they were
Speaker 1: rewarded for it with glory, with honor, and with victory.
Speaker 1: And this is a long, long tradition of hero worship.
Speaker 1: You have Julius Caesar weeping in front of a bust
Speaker 1: of Alexander, I will never be that great, Washington comparing
Speaker 1: himself to Cincinnatis Lee comparing himself to Washington. All of
Speaker 1: these men looked to the great men of history and
Speaker 1: strove to imitate them. Even Christian, of course, or little Christ. Well,
Speaker 1: what is that? It is a life of imitation of
Speaker 1: the greatest man, the greatest hero, possibly the man who
Speaker 1: slew death. This is how humans conceptualize themselves. That story
Speaker 1: you tell about yourself, that story you tell about the
Speaker 1: men you strive to imitate. It's what we've always done.
Speaker 1: It is how we, traditionally speaking, learned. Back when education
Speaker 1: meant to anything, we had a truly liberal education. A
Speaker 1: large part of it was copying the rhetoric, the speeches,
Speaker 1: memorizing them, delivering them of great men. You learned to
Speaker 1: be a good rhetorician by memorizing Cato, by understanding how
Speaker 1: he used his words. You learned to be a fighter
Speaker 1: by looking at the military successes of the greatest generals
Speaker 1: the world has ever seen. You learned to be a
Speaker 1: saint by copying the lives of the saints. This is
Speaker 1: fundamental and this is why these men matter, both because
Speaker 1: they are ours, right, they created the world we lived in.
Speaker 1: There is a line connecting them to us, but also
Speaker 1: because if we are to be better, and unfortunately we must, well,
Speaker 1: this is how you do. Thomas Carlyle wrote a book
Speaker 1: about this, one of my favorites heroism. Well, shoot, I'll
Speaker 1: just look it up on Heroes, hero worship, and the
Speaker 1: heroic and history. And in this book, which is where
Speaker 1: we get that phrase, the great Man Theory of History,
Speaker 1: he tracks seven of these great men, include such disparate
Speaker 1: figures as Cromwell, Mohammed, Martin Luther and others. And he
Speaker 1: isn't making a sectarian point that you should like Mohammed
Speaker 1: and therefore become a Muslim, or you should like Martin
Speaker 1: Lutheran become a Lutheran. But what he's saying is each
Speaker 1: of these men, at some in some way in their
Speaker 1: life had a supreme virtue, a virtue that ought to
Speaker 1: be imitated. That by learning about them we can become
Speaker 1: like them, We can copy a little bit of their greatness.
Speaker 1: And in a time where greatness scenes very distant, when
Speaker 1: our heroes seem very dim, and there is a deliberate
Speaker 1: desire to recontextualize, to say Alexander was not a great man.
Speaker 1: He was simply a homosexual Nepo baby or Napoleon was
Speaker 1: simply a simp, right, a man controlled by women. A
Speaker 1: desire to focus on the nastiest, most irrelevant, the most
Speaker 1: kind of venial aspects of great men, to pull them
Speaker 1: into the mud. Well, that ought to be fought against,
Speaker 1: because that sort of civilizational acid masquerades is honesty, masquerades
Speaker 1: as realism. But what it is is it's poison. It
Speaker 1: destroys that line, that history, that narrative we tell about ourselves.
Speaker 1: It turns it to dust all of a sudden. You
Speaker 1: were not a man in a line, You were not
Speaker 1: connected to a tradition, tradition that you owe certain piety to,
Speaker 1: that you owe a certain respect to. Well, if they
Speaker 1: were all horrible, evil, racist philanderers, I owe them nothing.
Speaker 1: They're great victories. Well they're not really so great. It
Speaker 1: was simply trends and forces, simply the role of the die. Well,
Speaker 1: then I'm not inadequate. There's nothing wrong with me, because
Speaker 1: no one is really great. Fundamentally, it is equality, It
Speaker 1: is egalitarianism taken to its logical conclusion. It's that Harrish
Speaker 1: and de bergeron right. The idea to run around with
Speaker 1: a hammer and smash the good looking so they don't
Speaker 1: offend the ugly, the idea to put the put the
Speaker 1: short unstilts and the tall and no shoots at all,
Speaker 1: so that everyone can be exactly the same. And it's
Speaker 1: no shock that the people most interested in this project
Speaker 1: are the most craven, the most uninteresting, the most villainous,
Speaker 1: to use that term in archaic sense. But the modern
Speaker 1: works just as well, because there is a sense of inferiority. Well,
Speaker 1: why have I not accomplished what Alexander did? Why have
Speaker 1: I not accomplished what Richard the Lionheart did? Be something
Speaker 1: wrong with me? I can't be broken in some way,
Speaker 1: I can't bear any responsibility for the situation I find
Speaker 1: myself in. So they must be torn down. This sort
Speaker 1: of spite for beauty, the spite for the heroic, we
Speaker 1: see echoed again and again and again, and let's be honest,
Speaker 1: another part of its civilizational sour grapes. You know, if
Speaker 1: your society never invented the wheel, didn't invent a written language,
Speaker 1: you could understand the impulse right, the desire to minimize
Speaker 1: the great men of history, and I think it's important
Speaker 1: to take that attack blunted right, to say no, these
Speaker 1: men were honorable, these men were great, They did amazing things,
Speaker 1: They were heroes. We ought to emulate them, and also
Speaker 1: right to completely and totally demolish this sort of narrative
Speaker 1: of eternal synesism, that no man could have done something
Speaker 1: dangerous for a principle, no man could have done something dangerous,
Speaker 1: gone on an adventure for anything other than the most
Speaker 1: base reasons. And I think that's hard for us. It
Speaker 1: is we live in a time of merchants, right, a
Speaker 1: time where currency were tender, or wealth is seen as
Speaker 1: the highest virtue. And to look back into a time
Speaker 1: we're sure men were greedy and were venial, men had
Speaker 1: their passion, but there was sincere belief. There were men
Speaker 1: who knew they were going to their deaths and nonetheless
Speaker 1: conducted themselves bravely, because that stirs the spirit of any
Speaker 1: man worth is salt right to see someone willingly bearing
Speaker 1: great risk, not for their own benefit as mercenaries, but
Speaker 1: because they believed they owed something to their tradition, to
Speaker 1: their creator, to God itself, which was much higher, much
Speaker 1: more important than any kind of personal enrichment. And that's
Speaker 1: why I think the Third Crusade is worth discussing. One
Speaker 1: because it is one of those narrative turning points, one
Speaker 1: of those cracks in the current facidy the current narrative,
Speaker 1: but also because it's a great opportunity to witness that
Speaker 1: sort of heroism I explained earlier. So without further ado,
Speaker 1: I think it's best to start this episode before I
Speaker 1: get into it. Of course, this episode is brought to
Speaker 1: you by my sponsors and cuns Fox and Sons. Excuse me.
Speaker 1: Coffee code Jay Burden. You get I know, fifteen percent,
Speaker 1: I think some percent off. I drink it every day.
Speaker 1: It's pretty good. The guy who runs it is a friend,
Speaker 1: so be sure to check that out. He's my code.
Speaker 1: Coffee's good. I try to Ethiopian. I highly recommend it.
Speaker 1: And also, as you guys know by now, it's what
Speaker 1: I do. You want to support me. It's like twenty
Speaker 1: some cents an hour less than that. Now that I'm
Speaker 1: doing these monologues, you should check it out. You don't
Speaker 1: have to listen to annoying ads. You get the episodes
Speaker 1: early and so I appreciate it. Anyway, here's the show
Speaker 1: the first obviously, and I realize this is slightly out
Speaker 1: out of the scope of what specifically I told you
Speaker 1: to research, but if you could quickly, could you provide
Speaker 1: a kind of generalized context to the Third Crusade?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: What happens before? How do we get to this conflict?
Speaker 2: All right? So excuse me. So there's the Second Crusade,
Speaker 2: which I'm not an expert in and we don't have
Speaker 2: to go into, but it happened several decades prior to
Speaker 2: the Third Crusade. Essentially, after the First Crusade, most everybody
Speaker 2: goes home. A handful of people stay and they sort
Speaker 2: of create the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Crusader States the
Speaker 2: Muslim world over the course of the decades, begins to
Speaker 2: sort of unify, take them as a serious threat, and
Speaker 2: starts to pressure them some more, eventually leading to the
Speaker 2: calling of the Second Crusade, which is, I would say,
Speaker 2: to sum it up, a relative failure. Everybody goes home.
Speaker 2: From that, the kingdom sort of has increased. Infighting within
Speaker 2: the nobles of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Crusader States,
Speaker 2: and an priest unifying of the Muslim world, which eventually
Speaker 2: unifies for the most part under Saladin. The way that
Speaker 2: that happens for the Kingdom of Jerusalem is that Baldwin
Speaker 2: fourth is made king, and after he's made king, they
Speaker 2: discover he has leprosy, which means that he can't marry,
Speaker 2: can't have a legitimate heir, and that he's His condition
Speaker 2: worsens pretty quickly, so he realizes he's going to die
Speaker 2: pretty soon. So he's trying to find essentially a successor
Speaker 2: for himself. He's trying to abdicate. He invites Western lords
Speaker 2: to come over and visit the Kingdom of Jerusalem so
Speaker 2: he can offer them the kingdom. He would like to abdicate.
Speaker 2: He'd like to have an orderly succession. He's just not
Speaker 2: able to make it happen. Essentially before he dies. He
Speaker 2: of Lusignan, who is originally a knight from Poatu under
Speaker 2: Henry the second Richual Lionhardt's father. He ends up getting
Speaker 2: exiled from Platu and making his way to Kingdom of Jerusalem,
Speaker 2: eventually coming the King of Jerusalem by marrying Baldwin's sister Sibyla.
Speaker 2: That's very contentious because he's very unpopular. It kind of
Speaker 2: seems like he's somewhat incompetent, although maybe we're in hindsight
Speaker 2: we're giving we're a little hard on him. But essentially
Speaker 2: that leads to him and the nobles responding to the
Speaker 2: increased threat by Saladin, which culminates in the Battle of
Speaker 2: Hateen the destruction of the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Speaker 2: What happens then is Saladin starts quickly taking other castles
Speaker 2: in the area. So when Saladin had originally invaded, which
Speaker 2: led to the calling of the army under Ghee and
Speaker 2: the rest of the nobles. Essentially the Crusader states had
Speaker 2: survived by having this network of castles, and they would
Speaker 2: They didn't really want to fight out in the open
Speaker 2: too much. They preferred to travel the castle kind of
Speaker 2: maintain their area by using the castles as these sort
Speaker 2: of fortifications that the Saracens couldn't They couldn't really breach them,
Speaker 2: and they couldn't meet them in open combat close up.
Speaker 2: But the Saracen army was mounted archers or mounted light cavalry,
Speaker 2: which could skirmish very well, fight them from a distance,
Speaker 2: harass them for long periods of time, or if you
Speaker 2: caught them out in the open, you could kind of
Speaker 2: surround them, and you know, they could surround you and
Speaker 2: keep you from supplies and things like that. So essentially
Speaker 2: you got into this sort of a rock paper scissors
Speaker 2: dynamic which the Crusaders could win in a close quarter fight,
Speaker 2: and they could win if they stayed in their castles,
Speaker 2: but they didn't want to get caught too far out
Speaker 2: in the open. And that's essentially what happened to the
Speaker 2: Battle of Hateen. And so Saladin, over the course of
Speaker 2: fighting Baldwin and Ghee, sort of develops this strategic idea
Speaker 2: of how to essentially lure the Crusaders out into the open,
Speaker 2: which he does at a Hiteen and destroys the army.
Speaker 2: And now normally the Crusader states had an adequate defense
Speaker 2: because they had garrisons of men, but most everybody got
Speaker 2: called up into the army, and so when Saladin wins
Speaker 2: at the Battle of Hateen, most of the remaining castles
Speaker 2: don't have much of a garrison. The problem with that
Speaker 2: is that if somebody shows up to besiege your castle,
Speaker 2: you're relying on having an adequate number of men to
Speaker 2: defend the castle, and you're also relying on what would
Speaker 2: happen in previous times is that if Saladin showed up
Speaker 2: to besiege one castle, the army would get called up
Speaker 2: from garrisons and the remaining castles that would come to
Speaker 2: the relief and so then you know, they would be
Speaker 2: trying to essentially catch Saladin's army or the besieging army
Speaker 2: in between the relief army and the defenders of the castle,
Speaker 2: and you know, sandwich them and squash them. But that
Speaker 2: doesn't work if you're you know, the remaining castles have
Speaker 2: no garrisons, so a lot of the towns, a lot
Speaker 2: of the castles essentially surrendered pretty quickly, and Saladin, in
Speaker 2: order to take advantage of this, allowed them to surrender
Speaker 2: and basically shipped all of them off to the city
Speaker 2: of Tire, which is sort of in the very north
Speaker 2: of the King of Jerusalem. So he's going through and
Speaker 2: essentially capturing all these castles and just shipping everybody off,
Speaker 2: you know, to make a quick deal. He's shipping everybody
Speaker 2: off to the city of Tire. Conrad of Montfarat shows
Speaker 2: up at the City of Tire kind of at the
Speaker 2: same time as Saladin has captured everything except for the
Speaker 2: city of Tire, and Conrad of Montfarat is not about
Speaker 2: to let him take the city of Tire and mounts
Speaker 2: a very stout defense. So Saladin he ends up having
Speaker 2: some internal politics to go take care of, so he
Speaker 2: kind of just leaves the city of Tire for the
Speaker 2: time being. Gi of lusin On shows up again after
Speaker 2: being defeated, captured, imprisoned, and released to the city of
Speaker 2: Tire and you know, and says, hey, I'm the rifle
Speaker 2: King of Jerusalem when you let me in. But Conrad
Speaker 2: of Montferat is not having any of that either and
Speaker 2: doesn't let him in. So Ghi of Lusignan takes his
Speaker 2: followers and decides that he really doesn't have many other options.
Speaker 2: He's just going to go besiege the city of Acre,
Speaker 2: and so he marches down the coast with I guess
Speaker 2: a few hundred people or maybe a thousand, something like this,
Speaker 2: and just starts besieging the city of Acre, which Saladin
Speaker 2: sort of doesn't treat very seriously at the beginning. But
Speaker 2: this sort of beachhead in the city of Tire and
Speaker 2: then gee sort of beginning the siege of Acre is
Speaker 2: what begins the whole thing, and the Siege of Acre
Speaker 2: is one of the largest, most culturally diverse sieges in
Speaker 2: medieval history, ends up going on for I believe, almost
Speaker 2: about three years and attracts princess nobles from all over
Speaker 2: Western Europe and of course many throughout the Muslim world
Speaker 2: as well, and so that ends up developing into sort
Speaker 2: of one of the key the starting point and one
Speaker 2: of the key features of the Third Crusade.
Speaker 1: So you've done a masterful job of setting the stage
Speaker 1: right for the Third Crusade. So as far as I understand,
Speaker 1: and I'm not an expert in this, but we see
Speaker 1: just before the Third Crusade is launched a cessation of
Speaker 1: hostilities between England and France correct at least temporarily, and
Speaker 1: then both of those men, so I can see I've
Speaker 1: got that partially wrong. I'm curious what happens there, right,
Speaker 1: because we have the respective monarchs of two warring nations.
Speaker 2: Well, so I wouldn't say that they were at war.
Speaker 2: There's a very complicated relationship between England and France at
Speaker 2: that time, and England should be really described more as
Speaker 2: the Antelin Empire because it began with Henry the Second,
Speaker 2: which is Richard Lionheart's father, and he ends up inheriting
Speaker 2: Normandy and Anjou and not Platsu. That's that's part of
Speaker 2: his mother's Aquitaine. He marries Eleanor of Aquitaine, so he
Speaker 2: inherits Aquitaine, and he inherits England from his mother, so
Speaker 2: England and Normany from his mother Andrew from his father,
Speaker 2: and then he marries Eleanor and gets aquitained, so he
Speaker 2: actually control a huge area, actually way more than the
Speaker 2: King of France. So he's technically the King of England
Speaker 2: and a vassal of the King of France at the
Speaker 2: same time, which causes the King of France to I'm
Speaker 2: I'm a Plantagenet fan, if you will, a fan of
Speaker 2: you know, Henry and Richards. So you know, you could
Speaker 2: take what I say on this with a grain of salt,
Speaker 2: but it triggers, in my opinion, some real insecurities in
Speaker 2: the King of France. Who is louis the always mix
Speaker 2: these guys up seventh Phillip the Second's father, I believe
Speaker 2: sixth or seventh, And basically it starts this. It's not
Speaker 2: really a war so much as they're sort of the
Speaker 2: King of France is always sort of trying to use
Speaker 2: his royal power to take an edge off of, you know,
Speaker 2: the Plantagenet ruler. And at the same time, the Plantagenet
Speaker 2: ruler sort of can't. He can't handle he can't tolerate
Speaker 2: any sort of disrespect or lack of status in his
Speaker 2: own right. You know, he's a king in his own right.
Speaker 2: So they sort of have this bickering. I suppose maybe
Speaker 2: you could call it. It doesn't quite until the end
Speaker 2: of Richard's reign. It doesn't quite erupt into what I
Speaker 2: would say is like a full blown war, but there
Speaker 2: it's very contentious, I would say. So.
Speaker 1: Also, we have the death of a pope, correct, we
Speaker 1: have Urban the third dies in late eleven eighty seven,
Speaker 1: and the new Pope, Gregory the eighth, as far as
Speaker 1: I understand, puts out a proclamation basically sort of beating
Speaker 1: the war drums. So I'm not at all to say
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert on medieval history as an understatement.
Speaker 1: Even that being said, I know less about twelfth century
Speaker 1: Catholic politics than I do about the Middle Ages writ large.
Speaker 1: So if you could, could you explain what was the
Speaker 1: how did Rome view these the Crusades r What were
Speaker 1: they sort of striving to get out of them? Was
Speaker 1: it genuine piety and interest in reclaiming the Holy land?
Speaker 1: Or was there were there other reasons that this was
Speaker 1: sort of what you did at the time.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a lot of theories, I suppose, and I
Speaker 2: think this is maybe a good time to mention that
Speaker 2: in talking about medieval history in particular, but I think
Speaker 2: probably any historical period, you kind of have to be
Speaker 2: able to hold these figures and their lives and motivations
Speaker 2: in a paradoxical state, because you can't say that they
Speaker 2: were completely pious and only pious. But you also can't
Speaker 2: say that they were completely cynical or complete machiavelians, or
Speaker 2: they were only concerned with materialistic matters, or they were
Speaker 2: only you know, they were only ascetics who were concerned
Speaker 2: with spiritual matters. There's a huge variety of motivations and
Speaker 2: things that worked together. I mean, you'll hear, of course,
Speaker 2: a variety of theories from people who latch onto maybe
Speaker 2: one thing or the other. One that I find I
Speaker 2: think particularly funny is where they say, well, there's just
Speaker 2: a surplus the young men, and they just needed they
Speaker 2: just need all these young violent guys to go somewhere
Speaker 2: instead of fighting each other. So they called a crusade,
Speaker 2: and that's a pretty big stretch in my opinion. I
Speaker 2: think they were pious. I think they were genuine, and
Speaker 2: I think that, you know, I think it's hard to
Speaker 2: make a lot of materialistic arguments for the crusades. Maybe
Speaker 2: you can for the pope or for you know, Catholicism
Speaker 2: generally that hey, it's it's better for us to have
Speaker 2: our Christian you know, it's better to have our Christian
Speaker 2: leaders fighting the rulers of foreign religions rather than fight
Speaker 2: each other. I mean, you can, I think that's reasonable
Speaker 2: that I'm sure that that crossed somebody's mind at some point.
Speaker 2: But for the rulers themselves, it's pretty hard to make
Speaker 2: a cynical or machiavellian a very practical argument, which this
Speaker 2: is something that comes up. You know. I'm sort of
Speaker 2: one of Richard the Lionheart's strongest soldiers on X and
Speaker 2: every time I post about them, you know, I get
Speaker 2: all kinds of people in the comments. All he cared
Speaker 2: about was adventure, All he cared about was conquest. All
Speaker 2: he wanted to do was fight, And are.
Speaker 1: Those strikes against him. I mean, even if it's true,
Speaker 1: you know, that's hardly the mark of an uninteresting man.
Speaker 2: But sorry, right, yeah, well, but they're trying to sort
Speaker 2: of they're trying to be reductive about how great of
Speaker 2: a ruler he was, or how great of a king
Speaker 2: he was, or something like that, that he only cared
Speaker 2: about fighting, or he only he just wanted to go
Speaker 2: on adventures or these types of things. It's really hard,
Speaker 2: I think if you look at the history, I think
Speaker 2: it's really hard to make those kinds of arguments in
Speaker 2: a way that where you're not just being silly, because
Speaker 2: if Richard just cared about conquest, he would have just
Speaker 2: conquered France. It was right there, Like, there's kind of
Speaker 2: no reason to travel two thousand miles away to go
Speaker 2: conquer places that he I mean, you have to sort
Speaker 2: of transport yourself back to medieval times. How's he going
Speaker 2: to hold England and the king of Jerusalem or the
Speaker 2: island of Cyprus at the same time. That's a logistical nightmare.
Speaker 2: It's takes eight weeks or something for a letter to
Speaker 2: get from one place to the other. How are you
Speaker 2: going to govern anything? And the king is expected to
Speaker 2: be where a conflict is happening in order to resolve
Speaker 2: the conflicts. So he's if you were going to be
Speaker 2: conquering things two thousand miles away, what's the expectation that
Speaker 2: you're going to somehow go there when there's a problem
Speaker 2: and then come back here when there's a problem. And
Speaker 2: it's completely ridiculous. So, you know, there's a lot. All
Speaker 2: of this is to say that there's a variety of motives,
Speaker 2: and I think I think that generally they were very
Speaker 2: pious and genuine believers. You know, at the Siege of Acre, Ambrose,
Speaker 2: who's one of the primary chroniclers who was there, he
Speaker 2: wrote that at the end of the Siege of Acre
Speaker 2: that five hundred prominent land owning nobles had died at
Speaker 2: the Siege of Acre. I mean, these are guys, these
Speaker 2: are five hundred of the richest men in Western Europe.
Speaker 2: You know, these guys didn't have and what they got
Speaker 2: for going on crusade was just dying in a foreign land,
Speaker 2: probably unpleasantly of disease, most of them. So you know this,
Speaker 2: and after the first Crusade too, I mean people knew this.
Speaker 2: It's not like after the first Crusade, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: before the first crusade, they had ideas of what was
Speaker 2: going to happen, and most of them in the charters
Speaker 2: that they left, they thought they were going to die,
Speaker 2: and that's what they wrote. It is like, you know,
Speaker 2: here's my will, here's what I want you to do
Speaker 2: when I die. I'm going to recapture Jerusalem, and you know,
Speaker 2: probably I will die. They basically just wrote that, and
Speaker 2: many of them did. The fatality rate on the first
Speaker 2: crusade I think is estimated somewhere around fifty is, you know,
Speaker 2: half to two thirds probably died, and they knew that.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was an incredible as you know you discussed,
Speaker 2: there was lots of starvation, lots of them died, and
Speaker 2: most of them went back empty handed afterwards. So I
Speaker 2: don't think that any of them were under any illusions
Speaker 2: that this was like how you get rich, this is
Speaker 2: how you're going to get more land. Like there's no
Speaker 2: real material for rulers in particular, there's no real material
Speaker 2: gain for going on crusade, So I think it's really
Speaker 2: hard to attribute materialistic motives to them. I will add.
Speaker 2: I will add briefly, Uh, crusading was in a way
Speaker 2: after the first crusade somewhat expected of rulers that they
Speaker 2: because essentially, you know, the first Crusade, what they wrote
Speaker 2: after it happened was that that was essentially the third
Speaker 2: most the third most incredible event that had ever happened
Speaker 2: after the creation of the world and you know, the
Speaker 2: and and Jesus Christ himself, so so you know, and
Speaker 2: they viewed that they viewed like the king, the king
Speaker 2: being a Christian servant of God that he and and
Speaker 2: you know, God blessing, uh, you know, the king as
Speaker 2: a Christian ruler, they viewed it as as somewhat of
Speaker 2: his obligation in order to go on crusade, Like you
Speaker 2: couldn't really be of France in particular, you couldn't really
Speaker 2: be a king of France, where France is essentially the
Speaker 2: pre eminent kingdom of Christendom and not go on crusade
Speaker 2: because crusade is viewed as God's will essentially, so you
Speaker 2: can't not participate in God's will and be a good
Speaker 2: Christian king at the same time. So, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: not saying that they were completely devoid of you know,
Speaker 2: material concerns per se, but it's more they were sort
Speaker 2: of obligated as a responsibility, not as like, oh I'm
Speaker 2: going to get lander money. Well and two things.
Speaker 1: On that point, it can't be overstated how expensive crusading was.
Speaker 1: I mean, the King of England had to institute a
Speaker 1: special tax, right the salad and tithe and tax collecting
Speaker 1: was very difficult in the medieval world and it wasn't
Speaker 1: something that is done as easily or conveniently as we
Speaker 1: imagine it now. And to bolster that, travel was extraordinarily
Speaker 1: expensive and dangerous. This wasn't simply you mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: eight weeks to send a letter. Well, okay, now you
Speaker 1: have to collect people, collect money, collect resources, and go
Speaker 1: halfway across the world, you know, across multiple jurisdictions, which, okay,
Speaker 1: this is maybe not exactly the correct term. This is
Speaker 1: a difficult undertaking. And once you've left the whole time,
Speaker 1: you are not I mean, you're still in charge of
Speaker 1: your country, but you're not there. You do not know
Speaker 1: what's happening. You're in a very precarious position. Even if
Speaker 1: everything goes exactly according to plant and to look you know, menorvenal.
Speaker 1: We understand this. People have passions, they're ambitious. But the
Speaker 1: idea that this was like it was a good decision
Speaker 1: on the balance sheet. You know that it was a
Speaker 1: way to balance accounts. It's simply it's simply not true.
Speaker 1: So returning to the narrative, right, we have the kingdoms
Speaker 1: of Plantagen Empire, the French sort of putting their differences aside.
Speaker 1: But along the way right in response to the new pope,
Speaker 1: we have all sorts of other, say, factions that makes
Speaker 1: it sound like a video game, but other nations right
Speaker 1: coming to join. So other than England and France, well,
Speaker 1: who heeds the call of Rome.
Speaker 2: Well, the big one was Frederick Barbarossa is the Holy
Speaker 2: Roman Emperor, and he had actually been on the Second
Speaker 2: Crusade with his father, and you know it meant poorly
Speaker 2: for them, but he had a lot of experience because
Speaker 2: of that, traveling across land, through Eastern Europe, through Anatolia
Speaker 2: and fighting against the Saracens. So although I guess from
Speaker 2: our perspective now, when we look back, it's really the
Speaker 2: Third Crusaders really framed as a big conflict between Richard
Speaker 2: and Saladin. Before it happened, I think they expected it
Speaker 2: to be a big conflict between Frederick Barbarossa and Saladin.
Speaker 2: I think he was supposed to be sort of the
Speaker 2: big boss leading the crusade. Unfortunately he dies on the way.
Speaker 2: He drowns in a river as far as we know,
Speaker 2: and his son sort of tries to lead the rest
Speaker 2: of the army there, some of them get there, and
Speaker 2: then his son dies eventually at the siege of Acre.
Speaker 2: Leopold of Austria is sort of the pre eminent German,
Speaker 2: if you will, Holy Roman Empire, the leader of the
Speaker 2: of the he's the Duke of Austria. He sort of
Speaker 2: becomes the pre eminent leader of that faction I guess
Speaker 2: for Couldham factions. And then you know, then you have
Speaker 2: the remaining knights and nobles of the Crusader states I guess,
Speaker 2: who are kind of led by Conrad of Montferrat and
Speaker 2: Raymond of Tripoli in Jerusalem, although I guess they're not
Speaker 2: in Jerusalem. They're entire and those are really sort of
Speaker 2: the main players from the European angle.
Speaker 1: One other thing, and I realized we're sort of breaking
Speaker 1: the direct flow of the narrative. But walking through this,
Speaker 1: I remember, uh, it's sort of this this aside where
Speaker 1: if I'm if I'm correct, on the way, you know,
Speaker 1: down into the Mediterranean. Uh doesn't the English force stop
Speaker 1: stop off in Portugal. It's sort of a little side
Speaker 1: quest to help out during the reconquista. At the Siege
Speaker 1: of I can't say Portuguese words. I can barely speak English.
Speaker 1: As you probably figured out, the Siege of Oh, well whatever,
Speaker 1: that's the Second Crusade. I think that you're thinking of, Oh,
Speaker 1: excuse me, my mistake.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: So point is we're seeing these these forces drawn together
Speaker 1: right slowly, and where do they land?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Where does this formally start, at least as a war
Speaker 1: in the Holy Land.
Speaker 2: Well, once Gee has his foothold, it's a siege of Acre,
Speaker 2: and Saladin kind of leaves him alone until it's a
Speaker 2: little bit too late. He's kind of too dug in.
Speaker 2: And so the Siege of Acre ends up becoming the
Speaker 2: rally point for all the forces of Christendom to meet at.
Speaker 2: And so so that's where everyone just starts heading. And
Speaker 2: I believe in the first year, I believe Duke Leopold
Speaker 2: is one of the first ones to arrive, Henry of Champagne.
Speaker 2: He's a very important lord in France. He also arrives
Speaker 2: with a large force. James, I'm in a butcher of
Speaker 2: this Davinces he's also very big lord. He also arrives
Speaker 2: pretty early, and so basically that becomes the rally point
Speaker 2: and you end up with a double walled in siege
Speaker 2: because the Crusader camp is there besieging them. Saladin, once
Speaker 2: he realizes that it's very serious, he starts rallying his
Speaker 2: army to come to relief. And so the Crusaders wall
Speaker 2: in in front of the castle and then they wall
Speaker 2: in behind for Saladin's army, basically with a beachhead for
Speaker 2: everybody to land and for ships and supplies to go out.
Speaker 2: So they're sitting there in front of the city with
Speaker 2: essentially his beachhead and a big double wall coming behind
Speaker 2: them into a siege that lasts for three years. Basically
Speaker 2: that's where everybody lands at.
Speaker 1: So we've spoken about this a little bit and I
Speaker 1: realized this is very much. I mean, there's hours that
Speaker 1: could be done on this in its own right. But
Speaker 1: how does that siege develop? You mentioned the kind of
Speaker 1: you know, the double envelopment, but how does it shake out?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: What happens here? How are these five hundred land owning
Speaker 1: men killed. You mentioned disease, of course, but if you
Speaker 1: could walk us through it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, disease is a big one, and I will say
Speaker 2: for anybody who's interested in it. John D. Hostler has
Speaker 2: written a book, The Siege of Acre, which is widely considered,
Speaker 2: I think, the most comprehensive look at the siege that's
Speaker 2: been written today. And he did one of the more
Speaker 2: recent podcasts that I put out with on Richard The Lionheart,
Speaker 2: and so if you want an in depth look, that
Speaker 2: would be where you can go. But essentially it's pretty
Speaker 2: interesting because a siege, when you're sieging a castle, most
Speaker 2: of the time nothing is happening. You're kind of waiting
Speaker 2: for somebody, you know, for an opportunity to attack. You're
Speaker 2: waiting for the next supplies, waiting for the defenders to
Speaker 2: get hungry, or waiting for some plot to happen that's
Speaker 2: maybe gonna somebody's gonna be able to open a door
Speaker 2: or something like that. For most people at a siege,
Speaker 2: most of the time nothing is happening. You're kind of
Speaker 2: just sitting there in the dirt waiting. And so it's
Speaker 2: interesting because there's long periods of boredom, it seems, where
Speaker 2: people are criticized for sitting around doing nothing. And then
Speaker 2: there's also periods where after a long period of boredom,
Speaker 2: they do some outlandish attack that you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of people get killed something, you know, it's it just
Speaker 2: kind of goes sideways, doesn't really work, and then they
Speaker 2: kind of go back to like, well that didn't work,
Speaker 2: and we're just kind of hearing the walls again, and
Speaker 2: you know, we're going to wait for an opportunity, and
Speaker 2: Saladin's kind of waiting for an opportunity, and the people
Speaker 2: inside the city are waiting for food or they're waiting
Speaker 2: for an opportunity, and so it's it seems like, you know, I
Speaker 2: mean it went on for almost three years. It's a
Speaker 2: lot of sitting around and looking at each other, basically
Speaker 2: waiting for an opportunity. So you get really interesting stories
Speaker 2: about what they were doing when they were bored or
Speaker 2: these particular contests, you know, like an archer on the
Speaker 2: wall and an archer down you know in the siege camp,
Speaker 2: you know, shooting at each other in these different exchanges. Eventually,
Speaker 2: eventually Philip King of France shows up. And one of
Speaker 2: my favorite anecdotes of Philip is that he shows up
Speaker 2: and I believe he shows up in April, the year
Speaker 2: that the siege ends, and you know, everyone's just kind
Speaker 2: of sitting around. They're all kind of just looking at
Speaker 2: each other. A bunch of naval gazing and Philip shows up.
Speaker 2: They blow the trumpets. He gets off the boats and
Speaker 2: they're like, you know, thank you, Philip. You know, we're
Speaker 2: so glad that you're here. And he goes, what are
Speaker 2: you guys doing? Like what's going on here? Like nobody's
Speaker 2: fighting and nobody's shooting anything. And he basically just gets
Speaker 2: off the boat and he's like, what's going on here?
Speaker 2: Like what's everybody doing? And so he starts whipping everybody
Speaker 2: into shape, you know, getting the siege. He's like, you know,
Speaker 2: get the catapults going again. He has his own catapults.
Speaker 2: He's like, you know, build our own you know, build
Speaker 2: our own siege equipment and all this stuff. Get the
Speaker 2: miners going. He's he's kind of chopping everybody back into shape.
Speaker 2: Richard had his own problem landing in the island of Cyprus,
Speaker 2: so he was late and he didn't get there for
Speaker 2: a month later, basically until I believe the end of
Speaker 2: May or beginning of June. And then Richard arrives and
Speaker 2: they both got sick. Philip and Richard both ended up
Speaker 2: getting sick, but basically they were able to stave off
Speaker 2: a naval blockade. They had a naval blockade, essentially was
Speaker 2: able to stave off reinforcements. The arrival of Philip and
Speaker 2: Richard reinvigorate, reinvigorated everybody, and I mean Richard in particular
Speaker 2: was becoming a real expert in siege craft. And although
Speaker 2: as John D. Hostler said that Philip should get more
Speaker 2: credit than Richard, which I'll bow to his expertise, and
Speaker 2: you know, I think that's fair for whipping everybody into
Speaker 2: shape and getting things done. Richard was sick for quite
Speaker 2: a bit of it. But eventually just the city seems
Speaker 2: to have you know, they they couldn't really get in
Speaker 2: touch with Saladin, and they were just they just ran
Speaker 2: out of supplies, and they negotiated for terms of surrender
Speaker 2: that Saladin was unable to agree to because he, you know,
Speaker 2: he was sort of out of touch with everybody at
Speaker 2: the time. That basically the city felt like they just
Speaker 2: couldn't hang on any longer and had to come to
Speaker 2: terms in order to save their own lives, and so
Speaker 2: they negotiated terms of surrender, which became a contentious point
Speaker 2: later when Saladin failed essentially to meet the terms of
Speaker 2: surrender and Richard executed the prisoners. This is another thing
Speaker 2: that people will say, you know, like Richard was a monster,
Speaker 2: he massacred the prisoners or whatever, But it was it
Speaker 2: was pretty standard when when you win a siege, the
Speaker 2: prisoner's lives are forfeit unless you make a deal. And
Speaker 2: if you make a deal and then the deal hasn't
Speaker 2: come through, then the prisoner's lives are forfeit again. So
Speaker 2: this was not anything extraordinary or you know, out of
Speaker 2: the ordinary per se, and and everybody kind of looked
Speaker 2: at it that way at the time. I think.
Speaker 1: So after the siege is concluded, as far as I understand,
Speaker 1: there's some some minor kind of inland skirmishes in Galilee,
Speaker 1: But the next major objective is Jafa one. Why does
Speaker 1: Jaffa matter? Why is that an important point to control?
Speaker 1: And then what does that struggle look like?
Speaker 2: Well, so I think I think the real point of
Speaker 2: contention was Ascalon, which asked the And the reason Ascalon
Speaker 2: is so important is which is a little south of Jaffa,
Speaker 2: is because Ascalon is essentially the fork in the road
Speaker 2: between Egypt and Syria and Jerusalem. It's sort of the
Speaker 2: where where all those roads meet. And so that's a
Speaker 2: very important city for Saladin because he's controlling Egypt and
Speaker 2: Syria and Jerusalem, and so he wants to sort of
Speaker 2: maintain his most express lines of travel and communication. And
Speaker 2: it's an important point for the Crusaders because they obviously
Speaker 2: want to break that up. So, but Jaffa's on the way,
Speaker 2: it's on the way down the coast, and you know,
Speaker 2: the crusade from the crusader's point of view is an
Speaker 2: incredible logistical challenge. The first crusade worked because, you know,
Speaker 2: aside from sort of just saying that God wills it
Speaker 2: and he gave them victory, but it worked because logistically,
Speaker 2: the Muslim forces were not united in their defense. They
Speaker 2: weren't prepared for a defense, and so therefore they were
Speaker 2: really unable. You know, the Crusaders were sort of able
Speaker 2: to just be audacious and just keep going and hit
Speaker 2: them with something that they had never seen before and
Speaker 2: were unprepared for and had no response for. Things were
Speaker 2: very different this time. Saladin was waiting for them. He
Speaker 2: had an army, and he was prepared to defend what
Speaker 2: he had. So he learned pretty quickly, I think at
Speaker 2: the Siege of Acre at the end of it, and
Speaker 2: certainly at the Battle of Arsouf, which is the first
Speaker 2: major battle down the coast, that he, excuse me, was
Speaker 2: not going to be able to fight them directly, very effectively,
Speaker 2: man for man in close quarters fighting. The Frankish knights
Speaker 2: for the most part, were much superior, I mean just
Speaker 2: in terms of equipment, much superior, better equipped for that
Speaker 2: type of fighting. So he's found on that a little bit.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously you have the you know, the material
Speaker 1: advantage of metallurgy, your arm or whatever, but like, what
Speaker 1: what made that the group of fighting men so effective
Speaker 1: in comparison?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean is there equipment for one? I mean,
Speaker 2: they were more heavily armored. So Ambrose, for example, writes
Speaker 2: about how it Arsaf. I believe it was that originally
Speaker 2: they tried, the Saracens tried to fight with their swords,
Speaker 2: but they were basically just unable to do anything against
Speaker 2: European chain mail and helmets and stuff like that. So
Speaker 2: they basically switched to clubs and maces and things like
Speaker 2: that to try to bash the crusaders because you know
Speaker 2: they're fighting, you know their their their weapons just weren't
Speaker 2: as effective. It's the same thing for the arrows. They
Speaker 2: were more of a lighter cavalry, so their arrows didn't
Speaker 2: pierce the European armor as much. Ambrose talks about how Richard,
Speaker 2: for example, when he comes out from this one charge,
Speaker 2: he's just got arrows sticking out of him and he
Speaker 2: looks like a hedgehog. So they just in terms of equipment,
Speaker 2: you know, they didn't. And in terms of fighting styles,
Speaker 2: you know, the fighting style of the Muslim army is
Speaker 2: more of a hit and run, a little bit more
Speaker 2: of like raiding, catching people by surprise. They weren't really
Speaker 2: geared up. And it's the same thing with the castles.
Speaker 2: You know, they weren't really geared up to fight a
Speaker 2: heavily armed opponent. They weren't really geared up to besiege
Speaker 2: a supremely fortified location. Their style was more and I'm
Speaker 2: not saying that they were nomadic, but it's a little
Speaker 2: bit more of as you would think of like a
Speaker 2: nomadic fighting style was sort of raiding, hit and run,
Speaker 2: catching people by surprise, a little bit more of that
Speaker 2: type of a fighting style, if you will, were as
Speaker 2: opposed to the European fighting style is very like fortified,
Speaker 2: very heavy, everyone's heavily armored. You're looking to get into
Speaker 2: close quarters fighting that sort of thing. You know. Of
Speaker 2: course they had they had archers and crossbowmen and stuff
Speaker 2: like that as well, but you know, like the Europeans
Speaker 2: didn't have mounted archers for example. Uh So it was
Speaker 2: it was just stylistically, it's just a very different, uh
Speaker 2: sort of way that they thought about war and the
Speaker 2: way that they generally wage war. So it's a very
Speaker 2: interesting conflict in styles.
Speaker 1: Well, and I think that's what that's what is sort
Speaker 1: of romantic about this, you know, is that you have
Speaker 1: that that sort of mismatch, you know, you have that
Speaker 1: you know, the heavily armored you know, Frankish knight against
Speaker 1: a force that he is on one level sort of
Speaker 1: unprepared for. Right, it's not exactly what he's been training for,
Speaker 1: but it's the it's the sort of you know, styles
Speaker 1: make fights of history, right where it is more interesting
Speaker 1: because of how different they are. One thing I'm sort
Speaker 1: of curious to get your opinion on is what was
Speaker 1: the what was the leadership and culture like in each
Speaker 1: one of these armies, and I realized this isn't I've
Speaker 1: interrupted the broader narrative. But I do want to get
Speaker 1: to this because obviously the night is both a military
Speaker 1: and a social construct, right, it is two things at once.
Speaker 1: So was the Muslim force roughly analogous in that way?
Speaker 1: Or was it organized differently?
Speaker 2: I'm not an expert on the Muslim end of things,
Speaker 2: although from what I can tell it seems fairly similar.
Speaker 2: They had a variety of emirs or princes or these
Speaker 2: kind of other nobles who controlled territory and acted as
Speaker 2: as administrators, and also were expected to bring fighting men
Speaker 2: and do the fighting themselves, lead armies essentially, So I
Speaker 2: think in terms I think generally, as far as I
Speaker 2: could tell, I'd say it's fairly similar.
Speaker 1: So back to the narrative, right, building towards the Battle
Speaker 1: of Arsouf, How does this start, right? What are the
Speaker 1: terms of engagement? Initially?
Speaker 2: So, well, after the siege of Acre, Philip goes home,
Speaker 2: and so he leaves, and so you have essentially several
Speaker 2: contingents of crusaders left. Interestingly, most of the local nobles
Speaker 2: stay home. They Conrad of Montferat is kind of the
Speaker 2: main guy for them, and he and he was kind
Speaker 2: of aligned with Philip, and he's let's say, cautious of Richard,
Speaker 2: wary of Richard, so he basically just stays entire for
Speaker 2: most of the time, and a lot of the other
Speaker 2: local nobles and knights sort of stay with him. Richard
Speaker 2: does have local contingents of hospitallers and templars who are
Speaker 2: with him. He's got the French contingent under the Duke
Speaker 2: of Burgundy and Henry of Champagne, who are also kind
Speaker 2: of under him. He gets along with Henry of Champagne
Speaker 2: very well, he does not get along with the Duke
Speaker 2: of Burgundy so well, and then he has his own forces.
Speaker 2: The Germans also go home immediately afterwards, so Leopold takes
Speaker 2: you know, his contingent for the Holy Roman Empire and
Speaker 2: they go home as well. So this is how it
Speaker 2: ends up being basically Richard leading this coalition of the
Speaker 2: local whatever local knights have kind of cobbled together, the hospitallers,
Speaker 2: the templars, and then Henry of Champagne with sort of
Speaker 2: his guys, and the Duke of Burgundy his guys, and
Speaker 2: then Richard with his sort of mixed. You know, he
Speaker 2: controls obviously. You know, he's got knights from Anjou and Patu,
Speaker 2: and then he's got Englishman with him and some Normans
Speaker 2: as well. And so Richard just starts marching down the coast.
Speaker 2: Saladin's army is shadowing him as he goes. They realize
Speaker 2: the logistical challenge now is that Saladin has an army
Speaker 2: in the field and Jerusalem is I forget the exact distance,
Speaker 2: something like twenty miles or forty miles inland. And so
Speaker 2: the problem is is that if you're going to go
Speaker 2: besiege a city that's let's say twenty miles into the desert,
Speaker 2: you have to have a way to get water, and
Speaker 2: you need some sort of supply line because you're in
Speaker 2: a foreign country to you know you're going to be
Speaker 2: able to forage. There's not so much to forage there,
Speaker 2: there's some, but they need fresh water is the biggest concern.
Speaker 2: And that was what really led to the disaster the
Speaker 2: Battle of fighteen is that they camped at a spot
Speaker 2: they ended up they ended up sort of being forced
Speaker 2: to camp at a spot where there wasn't any water.
Speaker 2: So everybody woke up the next morning in the heat,
Speaker 2: extremely thirsty. So they were aware of these extreme logistical concerns,
Speaker 2: and so the problem that they had was that they
Speaker 2: didn't have enough. I mean, I ask, I'm getting ahead
Speaker 2: of myself here. So they're marching down the coast, and
Speaker 2: so Richard's got his sort of coalition forces marching on
Speaker 2: the coast. Salad In is shadowing him, and Richard knows
Speaker 2: that he needs to essentially march down the coast and
Speaker 2: take cities as he to get as close as possible
Speaker 2: to Jerusalem, so he has the shortest supply line possible
Speaker 2: between the coast, essentially because they control the Mediterranean. Long
Speaker 2: story short, Saladin's navy made a run to relieve the
Speaker 2: city of Acre, got trapped inside and then got captured
Speaker 2: by the Crusaders when they captured the city, So Saladin
Speaker 2: has basically no naval control anyway, So he needs to
Speaker 2: go down the coast and take as many cities as
Speaker 2: possible so he can basically get down to around Jaffa.
Speaker 2: Jaffa is a good entry point into Jerusalem or ascalon
Speaker 2: to be able to have the shortest route into being
Speaker 2: able to besiege Jerusalem on the way, Saladin decides that
Speaker 2: these forests outside of Arsouf are the best place to attack,
Speaker 2: so he lines up his army in the forest, and
Speaker 2: as Richard is marching through it's the crusading army. Saladin
Speaker 2: comes out of the forest and tries to pin them
Speaker 2: up against the coast and crush the army. So we've
Speaker 2: mentioned several times the Holy Orders, right, these sort of
Speaker 2: warrior monks, obviously highly mythologized, and the hospitallers at least
Speaker 2: become very relevant in the battle we are about to describe.
Speaker 1: So just some context on what are these institutions, right,
Speaker 1: what was their purpose? What did they look like, because
Speaker 1: it's sort of like many things about this period in history,
Speaker 1: the popular conception is inaccurate. I'll put it that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, they start, as you know, the knights of
Speaker 2: the Temple. They start as essentially protectors of pilgrims, because
Speaker 2: a pilgrimage, you know, through those hostile territories was very dangerous.
Speaker 2: So they initially started as this sort of a maybe
Speaker 2: you could think of it as like a church security
Speaker 2: service walking people to their cars in a dangerous neighborhood.
Speaker 2: That's maybe sort of how they start. And as they
Speaker 2: kind of get going, they get more recruits they get,
Speaker 2: they become much more powerful, they become formalized by the
Speaker 2: Post as a holy order, and you end up with
Speaker 2: prominent noblemen leaving them things upon their death to where
Speaker 2: they start acquiring a lot more wealth for the Order generally. Now,
Speaker 2: to be in the Order is basically a vow of poverty.
Speaker 2: You're going from you know, let's say you're a knight
Speaker 2: in Europe and then you're going to go be a templar.
Speaker 2: You have to renounce. You know, you're renouncing all of
Speaker 2: your family inheritance. You know, you're renouncing essentially all of
Speaker 2: your worldly goods. And you know you can you can
Speaker 2: take sort of your war equipment and you know, maybe
Speaker 2: some clothes with you and that sort of thing, but
Speaker 2: you're not going to get any more money or property
Speaker 2: or anything like that. You're basically renouncing all of that
Speaker 2: to join the Order. And when you do that, you know,
Speaker 2: the Order has its own resources. They outfit people, and
Speaker 2: maybe about ten percent of the Order was knights. The
Speaker 2: rest of the Order was sort of I guess supporting brothers,
Speaker 2: which would be you know, either foot soldiers or logistical
Speaker 2: guys or you know, priests and uh, you know cooks,
Speaker 2: guys that sort of run the kitchens and there in
Speaker 2: their facilities and things like this. And basically for the
Speaker 2: for the knights and the warriors, you know, for the
Speaker 2: foot soldiers and things like that. Their whole thing was just, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, they went to mass, they trained to fight,
Speaker 2: and then they escorted pilgrims around and just tried to
Speaker 2: make the parking lot safe for people who are coming
Speaker 2: to on pilgrimage. They have very strict rules of engagement
Speaker 2: where they're not allowed to retreat from fights and things
Speaker 2: like that. So if they have to be very judicious
Speaker 2: in a way of which conflicts that they engage in,
Speaker 2: because if they are engaged in a conflict, they are
Speaker 2: not allowed to retreat. The Nights Templar specifically, and then
Speaker 2: then the nice hospital ers they started in a similar way.
Speaker 2: They're the Knights of the Hospital. So their thing is
Speaker 2: they're more of a They begin to sort of treat
Speaker 2: the people who get injured in the parking lot on
Speaker 2: their way into the into the church. Uh. And you
Speaker 2: know that sort of develops in a very similar way.
Speaker 2: They sort of start receiving some inheritance from other people
Speaker 2: that have died. The Order grows, and you know they're
Speaker 2: basically training to fight and go to mass and help
Speaker 2: medically help people who get injured in the parking lot.
Speaker 1: So the battle of our Souf, the hospitaer's in particular
Speaker 1: play a role right in this engagement. So what happens, right,
Speaker 1: because this is another decisive battle, and yeah, if he
Speaker 1: could walk us through it, I'd appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Richard's got his forces marching along the coast,
Speaker 2: Saladin's forces come out of the woods. Richard's plan and
Speaker 2: I guess I'm going to relate this as Ambrose ptells it.
Speaker 2: That's the one I'm most familiar with, although you know
Speaker 2: that's only part of the story perhaps, and maybe Ambrose's
Speaker 2: view of the story. You know, Richard's plan was to
Speaker 2: let the Saracen army sort of tire itself out so
Speaker 2: he could get to a point where they could actually
Speaker 2: then charge Saladin's army and be able to catch them
Speaker 2: and you know, have a decisive encounter where they destroy them.
Speaker 2: But the army is under a lot of pressure because
Speaker 2: Saladin's forces outnumber them, maybe two to one, and there's
Speaker 2: of course all kinds of archers and light cavalry that are,
Speaker 2: you know, throwing particular implements at them, and you know,
Speaker 2: the strategy of the Saracens is to ride down, you know,
Speaker 2: try to bait people out. And for the European Knights,
Speaker 2: they view it somewhat as a matter of pride of
Speaker 2: being able to engage an enemy when challenged, if you will.
Speaker 2: And medieval armies are a little different than how we
Speaker 2: might think of as a modern army. And this is
Speaker 2: kind of relevant to this story in particular because it's
Speaker 2: not like a professionalized army where you have the general
Speaker 2: and then he's got his colonels and then they have
Speaker 2: their whatever division commanders and things like that, and so
Speaker 2: the general says, hey, you know, you move over here,
Speaker 2: and you go over here, and we're going to do this,
Speaker 2: and then everybody just says yes, sir, and then that's
Speaker 2: sort of the plan that they do. They are all
Speaker 2: sort of nobles who, in particular you can think of,
Speaker 2: you know, the contingents of Richard's army who are not
Speaker 2: directly his vassals, so you know, like the Duke of
Speaker 2: Burgundy and all of the frenchmen, or you know, Henry
Speaker 2: of Champagne and his Frenchmen or the templars and the hospitals.
Speaker 2: Although these guys sort of nominally follow Richard and you know,
Speaker 2: agree to take orders from him if you will it,
Speaker 2: you know, they they are sort of in their own
Speaker 2: domain when you know, like the Duke of Burgundy he
Speaker 2: can sort of do whatever he wants, or you know,
Speaker 2: the leader of the hospitallers can do whatever he wants.
Speaker 2: And so Richard's got everybody organized and he's telling them like, hey,
Speaker 2: we're going to wait until everybody can charge at the
Speaker 2: same time, I'm going to give the signal and that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. But everybody's kind of got their own
Speaker 2: thing going on. Who's not his direct vassal. Eventually, you know,
Speaker 2: Richard's kind of riding up and down the lines, just
Speaker 2: making sure that everybody's cool. Just tell them, hey, you know, relax,
Speaker 2: we're going to charge eventually. Now. The Saracens have had
Speaker 2: a particular success because the army is on the march,
Speaker 2: so it's you know, when an army of these sizes
Speaker 2: are on the march, it's stretched out for several miles.
Speaker 2: The Saracens have had success in the past of sort
Speaker 2: of detaching the rear from the rest of the army
Speaker 2: and then encircling that and defeating it. So they have
Speaker 2: particular pressure attacking the rear and trying to separate that
Speaker 2: from the rest of the army because the army is marching.
Speaker 2: Richard's aware of this, He's not gonna let this happen.
Speaker 2: But the hospitallers on this particular day. Richard did a
Speaker 2: good job of rotating his army out on particular days,
Speaker 2: and on this particular day, the templars were in the
Speaker 2: vanguard and the hospitallers were in the back. So the
Speaker 2: hospitalers were under particularly heavy pressure, having things thrown at them,
Speaker 2: shot at them, arrows, lots of charges, and Richard just
Speaker 2: kept telling them like, hey, you have to just relax,
Speaker 2: you know, you gotta just take it. We're going to
Speaker 2: all do it at the same time. We got to
Speaker 2: all do it at the same time or it doesn't work.
Speaker 2: And he's kind of right on that. But eventually a
Speaker 2: knight who's back there with the hospitalers, I believe Baldwin
Speaker 2: of CAREW and a member of the hospitalers whose name
Speaker 2: escapes me. They the two of them just eventually designed
Speaker 2: they've had enough and they start charging and so then
Speaker 2: everybody near them who is also you know, like you know,
Speaker 2: it's like an immediate thing, right, Like a couple guys
Speaker 2: are just like I've had enough, you know, and he
Speaker 2: just rides forward. And then his buddy next to him
Speaker 2: is like, I've had enough too, and that looks better
Speaker 2: than standing here and you know, having another several hours
Speaker 2: of arrow shot at me or whatever. And so basically
Speaker 2: the back, the back part of the army starts charging.
Speaker 2: Richard sees this happening and blows the signal and the
Speaker 2: whole army charges. Saladin's army is caught completely by surprise.
Speaker 2: A lot of them at this point, because this has
Speaker 2: been going on for several hours, a lot of them
Speaker 2: had even started to dismount to kind of up close
Speaker 2: to try to get close shots, you know, get better shots,
Speaker 2: you know, and just you know, why ride back and
Speaker 2: you know, bait them out. You could just dismount it,
Speaker 2: like guys started just dismounting, you know. So these guys
Speaker 2: are all just dismounted. Their horses are tired, and so
Speaker 2: a lot of these guys just got ridden over and
Speaker 2: killed immediately as the whole basically, the whole Crusader army
Speaker 2: loads into Saladin's army. Richard. Basically, after about a mile
Speaker 2: of this charge, Richard sort of rallies, everybody brings them back.
Speaker 2: There's a little bit of a Saladin's army sort of
Speaker 2: regroups and comes back. There's a little bit more of
Speaker 2: a skirmish, but Saladin gets his army off the field.
Speaker 2: They took pretty heavy casualties, pretty demoralized, and the Crusaders
Speaker 2: they took some casualties, notably James Dovin says, who was
Speaker 2: one of the first and powerful nobles to arrive at
Speaker 2: the Siege of Acre, is killed at the Battle of Arsif,
Speaker 2: But it's generally a victory for the Crusaders. Saladin's armies
Speaker 2: pretty beaten up, and Saladin kind of used this as
Speaker 2: sort of the moment where he's like, you know, I
Speaker 2: don't really want to have another decisive battle.
Speaker 1: Basically, it's part of why I love pre modern warfare
Speaker 1: is that you really can have that knife edge moment
Speaker 1: where it sort of all comes down to one charge.
Speaker 1: And then we invented like gay stuff like the radio
Speaker 1: and unpowder, and it's like, oh, you can't do that anymore,
Speaker 1: and like, look, that's that's not I'm not a military
Speaker 1: man or historian very clearly, but there is just something,
Speaker 1: there's something really awesome about that. So, as far as
Speaker 1: I understand it, the march up because they have, you know,
Speaker 1: they've won this battle and they now have a relatively
Speaker 1: unimpeded path towards Jerusalem. But as we know, ultimately they
Speaker 1: never take it right. They're not successful. So seemingly right
Speaker 1: at this moment, seems like the way is paved, the
Speaker 1: door is open, and you can read accounts about the
Speaker 1: mood in Jerusalem at this time it was not particularly good.
Speaker 1: So well, why wasn't it successful?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Why after this great, you know, heroic charge, did the
Speaker 1: crusaders not effectively waltz into the city of Jerusalem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, after Philip leaves the crusade, he goes home
Speaker 2: and he starts working with Richard's brother John to try
Speaker 2: to undermine the Angevin m hire, to basically undermine Richard's
Speaker 2: rule at home. It's not very successful, I would say,
Speaker 2: you know, they do cause some troubles. But Richard, as
Speaker 2: he's continuing in this campaign, he's starting to get letters
Speaker 2: from home where people are showing up saying you know, hey,
Speaker 2: you know they kicked out the Chancellor John controls these castles.
Speaker 2: He's saying that he's the king now, like they're saying
Speaker 2: you're dead or whatever. And so he's basically getting disturbing
Speaker 2: letters from home as he in sort of an increasing
Speaker 2: frequency as he as the campaign continues, basically saying like, hey,
Speaker 2: if you don't come home now, you may not have
Speaker 2: quite so many lands by the time you get home,
Speaker 2: if you have any. At the same time, they don't
Speaker 2: really have the manpower. You know, this was supposed to
Speaker 2: be originally a crusade of three kings, Frederick Barbarossa, Philip
Speaker 2: Augustus and Richard Lionheart, and now it's just Richard, and
Speaker 2: it's I still am not really clear on how many
Speaker 2: of the French forces still remained. Richard himself only brought
Speaker 2: if I recall, about nine thousand men. Some of the
Speaker 2: French forces remained, he wasn't getting support from the locals,
Speaker 2: and basically all of Frederick Barbarossa's forces had died or
Speaker 2: gone back home. So he's you know, I think it's
Speaker 2: fair to say he's well below fifty percent of the
Speaker 2: anticipated forces. The problem that he has, in my view,
Speaker 2: is that he's sort of run into like a logistical
Speaker 2: Chinese finger trap that you know, you sort of need
Speaker 2: something to change in order for and it seems like
Speaker 2: he was pretty aware of this. You need a certain
Speaker 2: amount of men in order to be able to secure
Speaker 2: a twenty mile supply line between the coast and Jerusalem.
Speaker 2: You also need a certain amount of men to be
Speaker 2: able to correctly besiege the city of Jerusalem, like to
Speaker 2: be able to properly surround it and you know, force
Speaker 2: their surrender or take it. So you need and you
Speaker 2: need water to be able to supply all of those
Speaker 2: men with. And you know, at the same time, you
Speaker 2: also need enough men to be able to you need
Speaker 2: enough men to be able to fend off because Saladin
Speaker 2: still has an army in the fields. You need enough
Speaker 2: men to defend against the relief army. Essentially. Now, in hindsight,
Speaker 2: if Richard had attacked immediately, which in my opinion, would
Speaker 2: have been very reckless, and he thought it was very reckless,
Speaker 2: so I think that's fair. You know, he might have
Speaker 2: caught Saladin with his army inside the city, surprised them
Speaker 2: had been able to do it. It's possible. But if
Speaker 2: you look at it logistically and It's kind of said
Speaker 2: about Richard that he was reckless with his own life
Speaker 2: but very careful with the lives of his men, which
Speaker 2: I think is to his credit. It seems like a
Speaker 2: logistical impossibility with the number of men that he has.
Speaker 2: The other problems is that he's getting these letters from
Speaker 2: home saying you need to come home immediately. He's also
Speaker 2: not getting a huge amount of help from the local
Speaker 2: contingent because they're all sitting entire with Conrad of Montferat,
Speaker 2: and then his own contingents are bickering between the hospitalers
Speaker 2: and the Templars and the French forces with the Duke
Speaker 2: of Burgney in particular, the hospitaal ers and the Templars
Speaker 2: wanted him to actually just march to Egypt and just
Speaker 2: go break up Saladin's power base there. The French forces
Speaker 2: basically said like, hey, we're only going to march to Jerusalem,
Speaker 2: you know, and just only take Jerusalem. So now he's
Speaker 2: got a conflict between his you know what even remains
Speaker 2: of his own coalition forces, so he's got to try
Speaker 2: to navigate this, you know. And then of course he's
Speaker 2: got Saladin, who's a very crafty guy, and you know,
Speaker 2: capable commander, although Saladin has his own challenges and problems
Speaker 2: with sort of maintaining his own forces because you know,
Speaker 2: he has to sort of manage all of these other nobles,
Speaker 2: you know, that are under him and sort of these
Speaker 2: different continents of Egyptians and Syrians and other Saracens. But
Speaker 2: you know, for Richard, he's got all of these like
Speaker 2: internal problems. He's got logistical issues, he has a shortage
Speaker 2: of manpower, and he's getting letters about how things are
Speaker 2: going poorly back home and he needs to come home immediately.
Speaker 2: He's sort of in this thing where he needs something
Speaker 2: to break one way or the other, and Saladin is
Speaker 2: now basically refusing to fight him. You know, the army's
Speaker 2: just sort of continually shadowing him. They don't have you know,
Speaker 2: the Saracens are the ones that are mounted, so he's
Speaker 2: not going to catch them and be able to force
Speaker 2: a confrontation. Saladin sort of has to you know, be
Speaker 2: baited or decide to just fight, so he's not really
Speaker 2: going to be able to force a decisive engagement. He's
Speaker 2: not going to be able to get more men anytime
Speaker 2: soon where he can have adequate supply lines and resources.
Speaker 2: And enough men to do the thing, and the situation
Speaker 2: at home isn't going to fix itself without him being
Speaker 2: there for to allow him to have more time. So
Speaker 2: he sort of is in this, you know, this sort
Speaker 2: of Bermuda triangle of escalating problems that he sort of
Speaker 2: can't get anything to move on to where eventually he
Speaker 2: just says, you know, like hey, I'll stay here for
Speaker 2: one more year, but then I'm I'm going to go
Speaker 2: home next spring. Basically I'm gonna I'm gonna leave and
Speaker 2: you know, in the in the spring or whatever it is,
Speaker 2: around Easter, and you know, that's basically sort of that's
Speaker 2: almost what happens.
Speaker 1: So there's one more, I guess, major battle in this crusade,
Speaker 1: which is I guess you could say that the second
Speaker 1: I won't number the siege of Jaffa, where Saladin comes
Speaker 1: back for vengeance. And this is sort of an interesting
Speaker 1: event in its own right right how it shakes out
Speaker 1: with the relationship between Saladin and his men. So if
Speaker 1: you could just briefly run through that battle and then
Speaker 1: where that leaves us, right the negotiations at the end.
Speaker 2: I'll be as brief as possible, But this is probably
Speaker 2: one of the most extraordinary conflicts in all of history.
Speaker 2: So to my best. So Richard, as I.
Speaker 1: Mentioned Michael, I've really given you a very difficult task, right,
Speaker 1: the entire Third Crusade in one podcast.
Speaker 2: Look trying to the point.
Speaker 1: The point is you people listening to this, this is
Speaker 1: a primer. You're listening to a man who's done a
Speaker 1: ton of work on this. So if you want more,
Speaker 1: don't ask me. You're listening to the guy now. But sorry,
Speaker 1: back to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, So I mean, like I said,
Speaker 2: Richard says, he's going to go home. So basically, you know,
Speaker 2: saladin armies are not like they are today. Like you
Speaker 2: think of an army and you think of an army camp.
Speaker 2: Armies were much more porous back then, meaning that like
Speaker 2: civilians are kind of coming in and out, you know,
Speaker 2: like there's sort of an inflow of goods and things
Speaker 2: that are happening. So Saladin, you know, and and they
Speaker 2: you know, Richard has intelligence roughly into sort of what
Speaker 2: Saladin's doing and that sort of thing. He's got people
Speaker 2: that you know, local you know, Christians that he's got
Speaker 2: working for him that are sort of infiltrating Saladin's forces
Speaker 2: and given him a little bit of intelligence and stuff.
Speaker 2: But he doesn't have the advantage of that like Saladin
Speaker 2: does because Saladin is on his home turf. So Saladin has,
Speaker 2: I think, a lot more, He has a lot more
Speaker 2: intelligence on what's happening with Richard's army than Richard does
Speaker 2: on Saladin. So basically, you know, as I mentioned, Richard
Speaker 2: just says like, hey, I'll stay and then I got
Speaker 2: to go home. He basically stays. He sort of you know,
Speaker 2: marches up towards Jerusalem a couple of times, can't make
Speaker 2: it happen. He goes all the way back to Acre,
Speaker 2: which is up the coast. So they had taken cities
Speaker 2: all the way down to Ascalon and darrehim and then
Speaker 2: he goes all the way back up the coast to Acre,
Speaker 2: and he's going to leave. As soon as he does this,
Speaker 2: Saladin says, all right, let's put our foot on the gas.
Speaker 2: Let's not give him, you know, any chance to fortify anything.
Speaker 2: Let's just go start taking cities. And so they immediately
Speaker 2: go and besiege the city of Jaffa Richard. Richard's army
Speaker 2: leaves and the next day, as Richard is preparing to
Speaker 2: leave with a small force behind them. He gets a
Speaker 2: messenger saying Saladin is besieging Jaffa and if you don't
Speaker 2: come save the city of Jaffa, then Saladin's going to
Speaker 2: take it. And according to Ambrose, Richard says, I will
Speaker 2: certainly go, And so instead of going home, he gets
Speaker 2: on his boat and sails south to go relieve the
Speaker 2: city of Jaffa. Henry of Champagne agrees to come with him,
Speaker 2: and so he leaves by land and they're going to
Speaker 2: meet up at Jaffa. Unfortunately for Richard, or I guess
Speaker 2: maybe fortunately I don't know, there's no wind for a
Speaker 2: few days, so he basically sits in the Mediterranean for
Speaker 2: the wind to pick up so he can sail down
Speaker 2: the coast. Eventually, when they get there, so Saladin had
Speaker 2: besieged the city, the city realized like, you know, hey,
Speaker 2: we can maybe hold out for a few days to
Speaker 2: see if they sail back down the coast, but otherwise
Speaker 2: we're screwed and we got a surrender. So they're negotiating
Speaker 2: surrender terms as Richard's boat shows up with you know,
Speaker 2: like his initial boats, with all of his troops off
Speaker 2: right off of the coast of the city, and they
Speaker 2: show up and Saladin's banners are hanging from all the
Speaker 2: walls because they're literally negotiating the terms of surrender and
Speaker 2: like processing the payment of the ransom for the guys
Speaker 2: in the citadel. According to the Muslim sources, a singing
Speaker 2: priest from the top of the citadel jumps out at
Speaker 2: one of the windows and lands in the sand and
Speaker 2: then runs out into the beach and swims out to
Speaker 2: Richard's boat because they're all they're all sitting out there
Speaker 2: and they're all going, okay, Well, his banners areund the city,
Speaker 2: so it looks like this is over. And this priest
Speaker 2: jumps off of the thing and swims out to his
Speaker 2: boat and says, they're negotiating the terms of surrender now
Speaker 2: if you like, if you don't get in there right now,
Speaker 2: they're going to take the city. And so I'm ashamed
Speaker 2: to not remember the quote exactly, but Richard says, according
Speaker 2: to Ambrose, something to the effect of God, if God
Speaker 2: has brought us here to die, you know, let no
Speaker 2: man be a coward, and they basically just row right in.
Speaker 2: He jumps off of the boat into the into the
Speaker 2: surf with no leg armor on, and you know, a
Speaker 2: crossbow and a sword, and they just work their way
Speaker 2: up to the city. Saladin's forces are taken essentially completely
Speaker 2: by surprise, because you know, one minute, they're kind of like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, these guys are just sitting there whatever, and
Speaker 2: they just basically sail right up and drop off and
Speaker 2: are just running up the coast. Richard himself personally is
Speaker 2: like at the front. He's the first person off the boat.
Speaker 2: He runs up there. They go through an entrance through
Speaker 2: the at the bottom of the castle that leads up,
Speaker 2: i believe, into the the templars headquarters in the castle,
Speaker 2: and so they work their way in there. They're you know,
Speaker 2: killing people as they go, pushing them out of the
Speaker 2: city and so and then you know, when the people
Speaker 2: in the citadel hear this, then you know, they're all
Speaker 2: sort of standing there waiting for their paperwork to be
Speaker 2: processed essentially, and they you know, they hear that something's
Speaker 2: going on, and so then they just grab their weapons
Speaker 2: and start fighting and you know, fighting their way to
Speaker 2: Richard basically, and they push Saladin's forces out of the city,
Speaker 2: and so Saladin has to camp outside the city. Richard
Speaker 2: Henry comes down and joins them. But as this was
Speaker 2: just you know, I mean, Richard wasn't there with his army.
Speaker 2: Really he's there. He's got about two thousand Genoese crossbowmen
Speaker 2: and they have about I believe five hundred infantry, and
Speaker 2: Ambrose says that they have somewhere between nine and seventeen horses.
Speaker 2: And actually the Muslim sources also mentioned this as well,
Speaker 2: which is notable, and he mentions this, like on the
Speaker 2: part of the account when he's talking about the initial invasion,
Speaker 2: they only have nine and nine to seventeen horses something
Speaker 2: like that, because there's going to be a decisive cavalry
Speaker 2: charge later, which sounds insane. And so anyway, a few
Speaker 2: days later, you know, basically Richard Kamps's army there, they're
Speaker 2: rebuilding everything, and Saladin he's got about ten thousand men,
Speaker 2: Richard's got about twenty five hundred, and so Saladin, you know,
Speaker 2: he didn't want to engage Richard, but now he realizes, hey,
Speaker 2: we're out. We've got these guys out numbered four or
Speaker 2: five to one. We've got him pinned on this city.
Speaker 2: He can't even be inside the city because Saladin ruined
Speaker 2: the walls and the siege really quick. You know, they
Speaker 2: blasted up the walls and they you know, so they
Speaker 2: can't they can't even hide in the city. He's like,
Speaker 2: you know, this is kind of my is my chance
Speaker 2: to get him. And so basically on I believe it
Speaker 2: was like Saturday landed and so on Wednesday morning, Saladin's
Speaker 2: gonna basically assault, try to do a sneak attack. And
Speaker 2: according to Ambrose, some guy is out there going to
Speaker 2: the bathroom and he hears the rattling, you know, the
Speaker 2: rattling of the army coming and they're actually arguing, you know,
Speaker 2: like because Saladin told him like, hey, be as quiet
Speaker 2: as you can get up there, and you know, charge
Speaker 2: King Richard's tent. We're going to capture him and all
Speaker 2: this stuff. And the guy, here's the rattling, and he
Speaker 2: here's the two guys arguing, like the two emirs arguing
Speaker 2: about who's going to actually capture Richard, and you know,
Speaker 2: he's out there, like going to the bathroom or whatever.
Speaker 2: And so he runs back into the camp and tells everybody,
Speaker 2: you know, like, eh, Seriousin's they're coming. And so they
Speaker 2: all just leap up and they put on their armor
Speaker 2: and they get out there. Richard basically puts them in
Speaker 2: like a little turtle formation out in front of the
Speaker 2: city with spearman and then the crossbow teams, and the
Speaker 2: crossbow teams have you know, the pavise shields with you know,
Speaker 2: the loader and all these so they can have a
Speaker 2: guy shooting and a guy loading and a guy holding
Speaker 2: the shield and then they have spearman. So they're in
Speaker 2: this sort of turtle wall outside the city. And basically
Speaker 2: there's just hours and hours now of Saladin's army, his
Speaker 2: mounted archers coming up. They're shooting, they're trying to charge,
Speaker 2: they're trying to lure them out. Richard's making sure that
Speaker 2: everybody's you know, stand where they are. Eventually they kind
Speaker 2: of break into the back into the city. And actually
Speaker 2: right before that, like some of the guys had kind
Speaker 2: of get just decided like, hey, we're just gonna go
Speaker 2: kind of wait on the boats and you know see
Speaker 2: how this goes. So Richard, according to Ambrose, with two nights,
Speaker 2: rides back into the city, pushes them out of the city,
Speaker 2: then rides to the boats and tells everybody like, hey,
Speaker 2: leave five guys on the boats and everybody's coming with
Speaker 2: me right now. And brings all those guys from the
Speaker 2: boats back to the fight. And then you know, this is,
Speaker 2: you know whatever, seven eight, nine hours of this this onslaught,
Speaker 2: you know, on this sort of wall of shields and
Speaker 2: spears and crossbows, until eventually, you know, I don't know
Speaker 2: what it is. Maybe Richard just has the sort of
Speaker 2: sixth sense and he can just tell that like, now's
Speaker 2: the time for the decisive cavalry charge, and so he
Speaker 2: orders a charge of I guess, twelve nights. You know,
Speaker 2: it's kind of unclear exactly how many, but Ambrose says
Speaker 2: there's only nine to seventeen horses, and he mentions by
Speaker 2: name the guys who have the horses, who are allowed
Speaker 2: to ride on the horses, I guess. And so they
Speaker 2: charge across the field, twelve of them. And according to
Speaker 2: the Muslim sources, Richard rode the length of Saladin's army,
Speaker 2: yelling for challengers, and nobody would fight him, and so
Speaker 2: then Saladin's army basically just you know, retreated into the
Speaker 2: into the woods further out from the city. So Richard is,
Speaker 2: you know, he's he's unable to defeat Saladin, essentially, but
Speaker 2: he demoralized his army so badly that they just retreat.
Speaker 2: Richard is physically ill from the exertion of according to Ambrose,
Speaker 2: you know, basically chopping people in half all day, and
Speaker 2: and Saladin his army is basically like completely demoralized, and
Speaker 2: he realizes that like they're going to break up and
Speaker 2: he needs to come to the negotiating table. So originally
Speaker 2: Richard was going to leave with no negotiating no truce,
Speaker 2: no no, no, nothing, basically, you know, just the cities
Speaker 2: that he had captured, sort of left behind for Henry
Speaker 2: of Champaign, who's going to be the King of Jerusalem.
Speaker 2: But after this battle, he's able to bring Saladin to
Speaker 2: the negotiating table and negotiate a three year truce and
Speaker 2: then finally leave on his way home.
Speaker 1: You know, after that that was masterfully done, kind of
Speaker 1: tying it in a bow. And like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: this is we're moving at like one hundred miles an
Speaker 1: hour here, right, really kind of skimming the tops of
Speaker 1: the waves. But it really is, in my mind, some
Speaker 1: of the most just fun and fascinating bits of Western history.
Speaker 1: And I did a sort of primer at the start
Speaker 1: of this Manture series on the Crusades. I basically said that,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like Vaudreaude's comments about the Gulf War,
Speaker 1: like the Crusades never happened. And of course I don't
Speaker 1: mean they literally never happened, but to say, the common
Speaker 1: mental image of what those were is so completely divorced
Speaker 1: from reality. You know, it's sort of a punch and
Speaker 1: Judy show, not an actual contest between men. And so, Michael,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. This was, like I said, very
Speaker 1: very well done, and I appreciate your time and expertise.
Speaker 1: If people are interested in learning more both about the
Speaker 1: medieval world and about the Third Crusade, well where can
Speaker 1: they do so? Well?
Speaker 2: You can find me on substack, at Memory Medieval, on
Speaker 2: x at Memory Medieval, those are the two main places
Speaker 2: that I post, and on substack you can find that
Speaker 2: medieval publication Feigned Flight Magazine under my profile as well.
Speaker 2: If you'd like to read some longer form essays of
Speaker 2: medieval history.
Speaker 1: Well, again, thank you very much. Everyone should check that out.
Speaker 1: Everyone at home, keep your head up. Well, I can't
Speaker 1: last forever. Good night,