Dan Snow's History Hit - Assassins vs Templars: The Crusades

Episode Date: April 25, 2023

This is the first episode of a special series that we made in collaboration with Ubisoft, the developers of the Assassins's Creed franchise. In Assassins vs Templars, we immerse ourselves in the real history that inspired the first game, exploring the rise and fall of The Knights Templar and the Assassins, speaking to leading historians to uncover the real histories behind key characters in the game, and unearthing the folklore around the mythical Holy Grail.In this episode, we go back to the 11th century and the beginning of the crusading period. What was the reason for hostility between Christianity and Islam? Why did the first three Crusades happen, and what do they mean to us today? Dan is joined by Jonathan Phillips, a Professor of Crusading History, to find out the answers to these questions and more.Produced by History Hit and Ubisoft, with post-production done by Paradiso Media.To listen to the rest of Assassins vs Templars, make sure you're following Echoes of History wherever you get your podcasts.If you want to get in touch with the podcast, you can email us at [e-mail], we'd love to hear from you!If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download the History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download the History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hello everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We've got a special collaboration we're announcing today. We're talking all about the Crusades. And we're talking about the Crusades with our buddies at Ubisoft, the masterminds behind the Assassin's Creed franchise. This is the launch of an eight-part series that touches on the real history of the secret orders of the Assassins and the Templars. We're going to talk about the Crusades.

We're going to get to the bottom of the Holy Grail myth. We're going to be looking at the people who inspired the key characters in the games, and a whole bunch more. You can find it on the Echoes of History feed. But here's a little taster of the first episode of our series. We're talking to Jonathan Phillips. He's been on the podcast before.

He's a friend of the pod. He's written a brilliant biography of Saladin, the great Islamic counter-crusader, a man who apparently narrowly escaped assassination at the hands of the assassins. He is the professor of crusading history at Royal Holloway University of London. And we had a chat setting the scene about the crusades. Why did they happen? What was so special about them that compared to all the other wars that raged throughout medieval Europe and the Middle East, we give these ones a particular title. We remember them in a different way. And just who were the Templars? Enjoy. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again.

And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Jonathan, good to have you in the podcast. Thank you, hi. What is it about a crusade? Why do you get the interest? Why do they choose to set the blockbuster gaming franchise Assassin's Creed in the crusading period and not just any other war? Like what makes a crusade a crusade? Crusades are a particular species of war, a holy war. And that is what I think divides them off from more sort of normal warfare, as it were, of you invading your neighbour. You do it for religious reasons. It's justified through the lens of faith. That's what drives it onwards.

Whether that's the whole reason you go to war in the Crusades is a slightly different matter, but the starting point is about faith. Yeah, because as you hint there, there's also ambition for land, wealth, prestige, all the other opportunities that young men often seize upon to go to war. That's one of the really interesting things about the Crusades. I think people tend to sort of say it's just about religion or it's just about land. I think that doesn't work. You've got to look at a range of reasons why people do things,

what motivates people to go thousands of miles from their home to leave their family, their loved ones, to go into the unknown. It's got to be some pretty powerful drivers to do that. So just quickly paint me a picture of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East in the 11th century. There's something called Christendom, broadly Christian. Is that a useful concept? Yeah, the Latin West, Western Christendom, that works. That would cover what we would say Western Europe, maybe the northern half of the Iberian Peninsula, which is southern half is ruled by the Muslims, Muslim North Africa, Southern Italy and Sicily, still in the late

11th century. And then Europe, which is Christian, as you say, nominally under the authority of the papacy, religious authority, very broken up into different lordships and some smaller kingdoms that are beginning to emerge. And then in the southern half of Iberia, modern day southern Spain, North Africa and the Middle East is one great Muslim empire? The time of the first crusade, absolutely not. The big dividing line you have in Islam between Sunni Muslim and Shia Muslim, that operates really with the, interestingly, the sort of fault line, as it were, in the late 11th century around Jerusalem. In 1098, it's ruled by Sunnis, early 1099 by the Shia, and then later in 1099, the First Crusade takes it over.

So the fluidity around that point is remarkable. The big group that the First Crusaders have got to fight are the Sunni Muslims who are ruling Asia Minor. In modern terms, you'd say Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, that kind of region. Their headquarters, as it were, the spiritual center of that is Baghdad, where the caliph lives and operates. So what are the main crusades we're going to focus on in this conversation? The main crusades we're going to talk about are the First, the Second and the Third Crusade.

First Crusade 1095-1099 is the origins, self-evidently, of the crusade idea, launched by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, with the idea of recovering the Holy Land for the Christian faith. He comes up with this idea of offering spiritual rewards to the knights and nobles of Europe to travel to the Holy Land and recover Jerusalem in return for which their sins will be forgiven. These are men who are sinning all the time in thought, deed and particularly in their violent lives. in thought, deed, and particularly in their violent lives. Why now in the 11th century?

What's going on in Europe that suddenly you can see this force projection deep into the very powerful, previously very secure lands of Asia Minor and beyond? It's from within. It's from the papacy which has decided or managed to create enough strength and authority within itself that it starts needing to offer some leadership really. The Pope's job is to be the sort of spiritual shepherd of his flock and in the course of the 11th century that's not really been happening but by the time you get to the end of the 11th century a group of people have got control of the papacy, they've got the ideas that they need to spiritually clean up western christendom and that's where part of it goes from plus the papacy also wants to show its authority over the people of western europe by driving them if you

like in this particularly positive direction as they saw it and you mentioned western christendom being divided up into lots of little countries and lordships. Does that mean there's a surplus of talented, violent, weapons-trained young men knocking about? I think that's the case most of the time in medieval Europe. But the idea that there's lots of landless younger sons kicking around looking for adventure is something that is perhaps part of the reason why people went on crusade.

Although the counter to that is once they'd captured jerusalem most people come home so while it sounds like a a logical idea if you like as to why people signed up for this great adventure the reality is that most of them came home because the people who are then left in jerusalem in 1099 are going oh my god there's only about 300 knights here we really are up against it. You mentioned landless younger sons. William the Conqueror's Muppet oldest son went and his little brother stole the throne off him. So, okay, so then the First Crusade, what's amazing is it's remarkably successful.

The Pope goes, let's all go on this armed sort of pilgrimage and try and steal back Jerusalem. And incredibly, rather than just getting bogged down into a kind of disease-ridden nightmare, of which too often medieval, well, period battle armies do, they actually do march across Southeast Europe and into what we call the Middle East and capture Jerusalem. It's a remarkable idea, a remarkable story.

I mean, the thought that it would actually succeed is astonishing because, as you say, it really is against all odds. But they do manage to battle their way through Asia Minor and defeat the Muslims of the Near East. I think there's a few reasons why they do that. They have, if you like, an alliance between the religious classes and the noble classes, and that aim of recovering Jerusalem is shared between them. It drives the crusade forwards. The Muslims of the Near East are really fragmented at that time. There's a lot of

political divisions amongst them. They're all squabbling against each other. This is the first crusade. They haven't seen one before, obviously, so they've no idea what's hitting them. And that division between the religious classes and the noble classes is there in the Near East. And so the crusaders are able to sort of prise that apart, if you see what I mean. I think that's one of the reasons that enables them to succeed. And they are just determined, they're desperate, they're thousands of miles from home, and they are highly motivated. So there's a sort of element of just time and luck here.

The Christendom found itself reasonably united, the Muslim world found itself reasonably disunited and there was an opportunity. Yes, if the first crusade had turned up in, say, 1090, I think it would have just about got into modern Turkey and then been thrashed and sent home. There's a year,

1093, 1094, one of the contemporary writers says it's the year of the death of caliphs and commanders. Across the Muslim Near East, s the death of caliphs and commanders across the muslim near east uh sultans caliphs uh viziers die not all of them have natural causes it has to be said but there is this sort of turning point around that year that really causes this fragmentation that's a really very very beneficial for the crusaders imagine what they would have felt like they realize they've got a yawning vulnerability and suddenly this band of lunatics turns up crosses the bosphorus and before

you know it they're striking deep into your empire yeah but it was an empire that was inward looking at that time because i guess they didn't know what the first crusade was they thought it was another group of maybe byzantine raiders you know we've seen this lot before they'll go away in the end they're not that good and so they underestimated them I suppose. They captured Jerusalem. Yep. They have a bad reputation they put lots of people to the sword. Absolutely yes. So there's a real brutal edge to this religious element it's a sort of ethnic cleansing is there? In 1099 at the end end of the First Crusade, after all those years on the road, and they've reached their spiritual goal,

yes, there is an appalling outpouring of violence. The Muslim and Jewish defenders of Jerusalem are largely massacred, and then they have possession of the Holy City. And that violence continues for the first few years of the conquest as they mop up the coastal cities. But after a few years, they realise that's just not going to work. There's not enough of them. They do need to live alongside, amongst,

and as overlords of the people of the Near East. And that population is incredibly polyglot. You've got Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, you've got Jews, Nestorians, Jacobites, Maronites, Armenians. I know that's a sort of an endless list, but that's the reality of it. And you as an outside invading force have got to find a way of making your rules stick. And so you've got to live alongside these people. So you've got a kind of odd European colony now in the Middle East. It wouldn't be the last. Why do you need the subsequent crusades? Is that to shore it up or is that to expand it? In the first instance, the second crusade is about shoring it

up. They established what we call the crusader states in the first 10 years of the 12th century and consolidate their hold on the region. But the Muslim Near East begins to react, begins to start pulling itself together. The idea of the jihad, the Muslim holy war, starts being invoked again, and they start beginning to threaten the crusaders. And the first big threat is the city of Edessa, which is up in the north. And in 1144, a man called Zengi, who's a very brutal Muslim warlord, he's comfortable fighting Muslims as well as Christians, takes it. And that is the trigger for the call of the Second Crusade. I guess the problem with the Crusaders have, unlike subsequent empires that people might be

thinking of, where a big army is defeated in the field in a Portuguese force or English force or British force, and you can send reinforcements, the state can send reinforcements. There is no, no one's in charge. This is just a sort of voluntary whip round in Europe. Yeah, crusading is entirely voluntary in some senses. I mean, the longer it goes on, the more other pressures start appearing. And in the case of the Second Crusade, the pressure is, if you like, the success of the First Crusade

because it created heroes of the generation of men who captured Jerusalem. No other event in medieval history attracted such attention and such fame and glory. Okay, they're driven by religion in part, but some of those nobles were going on the First Crusade because they want to become heroes. And my God, they did. going on the first crusade because they want to become heroes and my god they did and so 50 years later the successor generations are well you know you've got to live up to the deeds of your fathers it will be a disgrace if you let down the deeds of your fathers that's if you like the sort of psychological pressure that the pope puts on them shame but it's still maybe it's not as effective as if these colonies were just French or German or British,

then there would be a sort of organised effort. So it's still just kind of trying to get people to get up on their horse and head off, is it? They're not colonies in that structured sense at all. They are an outpost, if you like, of Latin Christendom. And so that the connection is one of faith. In other words, you've got to help your co-religionists hold on to these places. But also, you know, family relations. Your uncle might be a noble in France

and so he should come and support you, things like that. Jonathan, tell me about the Second Crusade and it will become very obvious, I think, why the makers of Assassin's Creed did not select this Second Crusade to base their game in. It's a disaster. It's the King of Germany, the King of France. They are overconfident, underprepared. They get hammered by the Seljuk Turks in Asia Minor. And then they try to besiege Damascus. And after only five days, they have to retreat. It's an utter humiliation.

Is that the one that's so bad that the King of France's wife leaves him afterwards, because he's revealed himself as being totally hopeless? Yes. Right. Okay, so it's bad for them. So they haven't even shored it up, but they weakened the crusader states. I don't think they've weakened it. What they've done is actually in reverse, they've given the Muslims a lot more confidence, because the success of the First Crusade obviously left its mark on the

Muslim Near East. You know, this group of invaders look extremely powerful, extremely effective, but hang on, they are not invincible after all. When the Second Crusade retreats from Damascus, there's a real sort of sense of, ah, okay, we could really confront this lot now. And in part, that's this drawing together of the religious classes and the noble classes. It's a man called Nur al-Din, who is the sort of hard-edged warrior, and he's a very pious man as well. And he draws those together and gives the jihad, the Muslim response to the crusaders, a much harder, more effective edge. And they start to take back territory. Yes. I mean, he starts to, he's got

the big cities of Mosul, Aleppo, Damascus, and he starts increasing the pressure on the crusaders. And that's what gives us the third crusade, which is where Assassin's Creed is set. It is. Nur al-Din's protege is a man called Saladin, who's a Kurd, who ends up taking control of Egypt. Neurodine's big project is to capture Egypt because it's incredibly wealthy, and he manages to do that. Saladin rebels against his patron, who fortunately for him dies, and then Saladin, in the course of the 1170s and early 1180s, assembles his own empire, if you like, 70s and early 1180s, assembles his own empire, if you like, which is made up of Egypt and Syria. And that gives him the strength with the call of the jihad to take on the Christians, the Franks,

as we call them, and defeat them at the Battle of Hattin and recover Jerusalem for Islam. And that is the great shock. The Pope is said to have died of a heart attack when he heard the news. And so Western Europe has to respond. So you've got a more united Muslim world. You've got a military genius in charge, Saladin. He's captured Jerusalem. The Third Crusade is like a desperate scramble to try and reverse that, but there's some pretty useful people on the Third Crusade, unlike the Second. Yeah, I'm not sure I'd say Saladin is a military genius. He is really... You've only written his biography.

I mean, I can't believe you're arguing about it. He's very good at organising. He's very good at diplomacy. He's very good at propaganda. And he's good at drawing the resources together. I'm not sure he's a military genius. He's a very able military commander. He is. He's a very effective ruler. He has the Muslim nearies together. I'm not sure he's a military genius. He's a very able military commander. He is. He's a very effective ruler. He has the Muslim nearies together. Okay, I know he won the

Battle of Hattin. But he knows, in a sense, he's pressed the starting button on the Third Crusade the moment he captures Jerusalem. He knows Christendom is going to respond. And the leading men of Western Europe, he's going to have to face them. And they're not too bad this time. They are considerably better than the leaders of the Second Crusade. You've got Frederick Barbarossa, the Emperor of Germany, who was on the Second Crusade, so he's seen it all before. He is the most powerful man in Western Europe. He's got hundreds of knights come with him on the Third Crusade.

He marches their overland. He bullies his way past the Byzantine Empire. He defeats the Seljuk Turks in Asia Minor. Nobody's done that before. And then he tries to cross a river in the summer of 1190 and has a heart attack and dies. I mean, no one saw that coming. That's a big turning point.

It is. Saladin was very, very worried about the imminent arrival of the German emperor because it would have been an extremely formidable opponent to face. The German army melts away fairly quickly. A lot of them get sick too. So Saladin, one of his attributes is luck, and the death of Frederick Barbarossa is part of that. So yes, in terms of what he would have had to have faced, a big, big part of it doesn't really have to. Which leaves then Philip of France and Richard the Lionheart of England. I should say there's, before those two, the big names turn up, there's a siege at a place called Acre,

and for two years, Western Europeans have been coming over, trying to capture this city. So you've got swathes of nobles from, particularly from France, coming across and besieging this city many of them died due to illness but you've got this big siege of Troy that is in the medieval imagination is taking place there then finally in summer of 1191 Philip of France turns up he's got a sort of small group of knights and nobles with him, well-equipped, well-armed. And then Richard the Lionheart turns up as well. And he provides a huge impetus of strength and military drive. To be continued... We're talking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes,

who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. I think because of the characters, it's just proved incredibly exciting. That's the right word. Fascinating for people. You've got the man who'll go on to be Richard I of England, Richard the Lionheart. You've got a very effective French commander.

You've got Saladin. You've got these military orders, and that's what's given us Assassin's Creed, the Templars. These are names that sort of resonate. Is it just the drama of what's going on here, the characters? Why is the Third Crusade loomed so large?

I think it's in part because it's a struggle for Jerusalem. So it's got that sort of headline, the most important spiritual site in Western Christendom, third most important site for the Islamic faith. It's got these epic characters, as you say, Saladin, Richard, to a lesser extent, Philip and Frederick. It's well written up. It lasts a long time. So there's people there, there's sort of embedded reporters there talking about it, writing about it. So we have a lot of information about it.

And these are two of the great figures of medieval history. And the people who are writing up their stories do like saying how fantastic their leader is. So you've got two great reputations. And if you're important and brave, then I have to be as well, because you can't fight somebody who's feeble and hopeless. Oh, that's interesting. So sometimes the Christian chroniclers and the Muslims are almost building up the other side as well. There's a sense of that, yes. You've got to have a worthwhile opponent. But I think you can certainly see that they are great figures. I don't think it's over-exaggerated, but there's a part of it. And then we should talk about the assassins and the people like the assassins, the Templars.

Who are these groups that kind of emerge? And is it just a product of generations of warfare? The assassins are a splinter group of Muslims. They're a Shia group, and they're based really in northern Syria. They've given Saladin some trouble on the way through. Saladin is positioning himself as the lead warrior of Sunni Islam, and you've got the tension between those two branches of Islam. They threaten to kill him, to assassinate him a couple of times.

They get extremely close and they wound him once. But in the end, they come to an understanding because they are a small group, and Saladin, if he put his mind to it, in the end could probably break them. But they might get to him first. So really, they do a deal. He says, look, I'll leave you alone if you don't kill me.

The assassins, they've left behind this extraordinary reputation. They've underpinned this giant games franchise, Assassin's Creed. There's something that we want them almost to be sort of supernatural in their ability. It's like watching a kind of modern movie. We want them to be sort of lifting skylights off and dropping down on rope and stuff to kill people. Or were they just committed assassins? That is something that they do very effectively

in the Muslim world, as well as murdering Christians from time to time or being accused of it. They are secretive. They are hidden in the mountains. There's the stories around their use of hashish. They are, if you like, sort of vague enough and remote enough that you can make things up around the edges of them.

But they undoubtedly have those elements in their behaviour as well. And then we get Templars, we get these orders, these religious orders, these kind of religious military orders that emerged in the crusading states. But again, why is that? Is that because it's not a recognisably modern sort of government-led military operation to get these sort of freelancers who come in? The military orders are founded to protect pilgrims. That's the principle behind them. The Templars are founded in the aftermath of a big attack on pilgrims. You've got all these Westerners coming over to the Holy Land after the capture of Jerusalem who want to visit the holy places.

And they're being picked up by sort of bandits and allegedly lions as well. And this group of French knights decide that they should look after them and they swear an association, which then becomes a formal religious order of the church, to protect the pilgrims. And pilgrims come over and they're grateful. They give them money, land, and resources. And the Templars become stronger. They become part of the political fabric of the Near East. They get churches, they get and build castles. They are a political force in their own right. It's funny, I can imagine people listening to this who are familiar with modern history, interstate warfare.

And it sounds to me like there's lots of kind of curious NGOs taking part in the violence of the Crusades. It's quite a kaleidoscope. It is. I mean, you've got groups like the Templars and the Hospitallers who founded originally to look after the clues in the name, the healthcare, to look after people's well-being. They become militarised as well. Both of those groups are independent. The King of Jerusalem might say, I want us to go and do something, they go, well, maybe. It's up to them. They are not sworn to follow his lead. Usually they are going to pull in the same direction, but part of the sort of fascination, it's a sort of rather curious one of the history of the Crusades, is the amount of infighting that takes place between nobles and the tensions between these different groups. And does that mean there's more opportunities for curious cross-religious understandings and alliances as well? Are the tensions within the two sort of broad sides, but do you ever get examples of kind of collaboration groups

sort of working live and let live within that? That's one of the really interesting things that Crusades looks like. It's sort of A against B, sort of simple binary. And the realities of living in close proximity in the near east means that doesn't work. Within about 10 years of the first crusade, you've got Christian and Muslim groups fighting other Christian and Muslim groups. I mean, you've got the overarching religious tension, but that's not to mean that individuals or nobles can't form relationships, or from time to time cities or political groups need to form relationships. You've got a situation in the mid 12th century where Jerusalem and Damascus are in alliance. Christian Jerusalem, Muslim Damascus are in alliance against Aleppo because they're both scared of it. It suits both of them to work

together against this other power. And that seems paradoxical to us. Hang on, what's Jerusalem doing in alliance with Damascus? It's just the reality of it. Yes, in Assassin's Creed, I think it's very 20th century, isn't it? It's black and white. It's like Soviets versus the Nazis. You are absolutely on one side or the other,

and there's nothing but hatred and murder between the two. Yeah, and that's, again, one of the other. And there's nothing but hatred and murder between the two. Yeah, and that's, again, one of the interesting things about the Crusades, the truces, the tensions, the contradictions within that. And yes, at times you can have personal relationships. That truce between Jerusalem and Damascus, it's negotiated. The diplomats, they share a love of hawking and hunting. And things that are sort of shared between noble groups form, if you like, an easy bridge.

And in the course of the Third Crusade, there's an awful lot of fighting. There's also an awful lot of diplomacy too. And so you use your shared cultural markers of things like hawking and hunting to build those bridges. Sir Landon and Richard Lionheart had a wary respect for each other didn't they? They did they never actually met but Richard spent a lot of time with Saladin's brother Safadin and so I think our view of Saladin is a bit sort of blended with his brother and they were

sanding each other out trying to see their weaknesses in the other side from time to time but they also in the course of their diplomacy, they have to exchange gifts with one another. They spend time together hawking, hunting, feasting. They like music. And so there is definitely a respect between them. You mentioned we talked about some battles like Hattin, which the first wins a battle.

But I sometimes think the Crusades, they're almost less about the battles in the field than they are about the sieges. These are extraordinary, powerfully defended cities, aren't they? And there's just these grinding sieges that go on, one of which you've already mentioned. Yes, I mean, you do have a couple of battles, very decisive battles like the Battle of Hattin in 1187.

There's one called La Forbie in 1244, which again, hundreds and hundreds of Christian knights are killed. But the Near East is very urban, big cities in the Near East, and the effort to get into them requires a huge, huge outlay of men and materials. And that's warfare that isn't as much of knights galloping on horses as it almost is First World War style. You know, tunnels, trenches, long-range weapons. It's a very different style of fighting. It is. The Siege of Acre lasts almost two years, and the Crusaders build this enormous earth embankment around the city. And it's quite interesting, you know, they're living there for two years, so you think what you need to live.

So you start growing crops, you start growing herbs, you dig out baths, you must have a sort of a medical centre, you must have a scriptorium, all the sort of different groups, religious groups, and institutions and regional groups are going to have their own little sort of campsites in it. It's quite fascinating to think how actually you would operate if you effectively camped out for two years. And I guess if you look at Siege War for the medieval period set, like if you look at the Hundred Years' War between England and France, that's where you do get this opportunity for subterfuge and spies

and opening back gates with keys and tunnels. So perhaps that's also some of the sense that underpins games like Assassin's Creed because there's opportunities for individuals to sort of make a bit of a difference in those situations. Yeah, I mean, brute force is clearly not working if you're stuck outside somewhere for two years. You do need to gather information. So yeah, there's a current of spies. There's also some of the sort of realities of trading. The Christians must be trading with some Muslims to get things and vice versa. So again, the simple binaries are broken down a bit. But you will have individual acts of, in Acre, there's quite a famous swimmer

who manages to swim out two or three times from the city and get messages to Saladin. He dies in the end. So how does the Third Crusade end? So how does the Third Crusade end? The Third Crusade finishes in 1192. Really, I suppose I see it as a bit of a nil-nil draw. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga.

And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, kings and popes who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. hit wherever you get your podcasts. Saladin loses the city of Acre. Richard the Lionheart defeats him in a couple of battles, but he's never able to besiege Jerusalem. Saladin has managed to hold him off just enough that Richard never actually gets outside.

Great military genius. Gets outside the holy city. And by the end of it, the two of them, they're both ill, endlessly ill, both of them. They're both running out of money. Their troops are exhausted. They're like two heavyweight boxers who've gone 15 rounds with each other and are still just about standing. They have to stop. There's tensions within Saladin's empire. Richard the Lionheart's got Prince John being a menace back at home, King Philip who's gone home. So they really cannot defeat one another. So they make a truce, a treaty. The Christians keep the coastline, which allows the crusader states to

survive and pilgrims to go to Jerusalem. Saladin has kept Jerusalem. I think he would see that as a great success. And then England and France just falls into civil war, fighting each other, absolute chaos, feel that as the Plantagenet Empire is picked apart by the French. So I guess that's an example of where it's good news for the Muslims because the people in Christendom are sort of busy. Yes. I mean, the fact that Richard the Lionheart ends up in prison on the way home, rather than getting ready to come out again, as he said he would, is obviously beneficial to the Muslim Near East. Although it has to be said, Saladin, when he dies in March 1193, his sons are fighting one another within months. The Ayyubid Empire, which is what his family empire is called, fragments pretty quickly. So it's not as...

It's the world princes, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of spares. You know, they are unable to, if you like, consolidate the fact that the Crusaders have left. So here we are. We think of the Third Crusade as this kind of climax almost, but it's certainly not the end, is it? How many more are there? There are several more major crusading expeditions.

The numbering system takes you down to the Eighth Crusade. 1291 is the fall of Acre, the end of the Christian hold on the Holy Land. And so they don't succeed in winning back the Holy Land. In fact, the opposite is the case. Well, the Fourth Crusade is the crusade that sacks the greatest Christian city in the world, Constantinople. They accidentally sack Constantinople on the way. No. The Fifth Crusade tries to attack Egypt, fails completely. The Sixth Crusade is interesting. That's Frederick II of Germany and its negotiations. That's a really curious episode, if you like, when Frederick II of Germany manages to get Jerusalem back through peaceful negotiation. You're not going to make an award-winning, internationally renowned video game out of that, are you?

You could, you could actually, but maybe down the line, maybe not. But that's quite a short-lived occupation, isn't it? It is. It only lasts 1229 to 1244. And then you have a big push by the Muslim Near East that tries very hard to shift the crusaders out and does so. And the response to that is Louis IX, Saint Louis, the great crusader king of France, which is the biggest crusader of the 13th century. And that is a failure ultimately, but it's important, not least in the sense of development of French identity and things like that. Having a Crusader king as a saint is quite significant.

But then by the end of the century, 1291, the fall of Acre, is the end of the Crusader states in the Near East. And that's where I suppose we mark the end of the Crusades to the Holy Land. The idea doesn't go away, but 1291 is the end of the line of Christian rule in the Near East. Is the legacy of the Crusades any different just from the legacy of so many other terrible, costly, barbaric wars that we fought over the years? What is it about the Crusades? I think the Crusades' legacy is sharper and harsher, the sense that it's done for religion and the binary that it manages to create. I think in the Muslim Near East, it's the memory of the Crusades.

Okay, the Crusaders are thrown out in 1291, but the memory of that Christian occupation doesn't disappear entirely. You've got the successor dynasties of the Ottoman Turks. You've got people who are trying to attack Europe. So they're on the receiving end of an Ottoman invasion. And then there are crusades back against the Ottomans. The idea doesn't disappear from the consciousness of the Near East. But the big changes in the 19th century, when Western Europeans start coming into the Mediterranean again, and they themselves look back to the crusading era, the French go, ah, you know, our crusading ancestors, we're

recovering those lands. And the Muslim Near East recognises, ah, it's the Europeans again. We've seen this before. So that then brings this idea that's been there in the ether, shall we say, back to prominence. And that's why I think the language, the rhetoric of crusading has such a strong place, particularly in in the 19th then the 20th centuries doesn't that french commander in the first world war go into saladin's tomb in jerusalem and say we're back yeah general guru goes into damascus saladin's tomb he kicks it and says saladin we have returned this symbolizes the triumph of the cross over the crescent. So the disrespect to this hero of the Muslim Near East is remarkable. Whether it's true, whether he said it or not, actually is disputed,

but it's in Syrian school books today, it's in the Hamas doctrine, it was in Nasser's speeches in the 60s, you know, it's there as this great calculated insult. So it's interesting, so it is, the Crusades are more remembered than the countless constant other wars that were being fought by all of these powers at the same time and before and after. So it is almost like with the way we talk about, you know, Assassin's Creed as a game, it is almost about the brand of the Crusades. They, for whatever reason, they have stuck with us and are

more, seem to be more mobilising than any other war. It's a very effective shorthand for the West, attacking us, killing our people, taking our land. It happened in the medieval period, it's happening or happened in the modern age, and that's why it's a very attractive, potent symbol. I mean, in Western Europe, how we remember the Crusades is a different matter. I think they carried on in the medieval age.

You had Crusades in Spain and the Baltic against enemies of the papacy. But really, by the time you get to the Reformation, they've sort of fallen out of fashion. The ideas lost steam and it's discredited. It comes back in the 19th century with a sort of romantic literary element, Walter Scott and things like that, and Westerners being in the Mediterranean region. But it's more chivalric, it's more of a noble cause, it's a good idea. You can have crusades against alcohol, you can have crusades against illnesses, crusades against litter, crusades for fair play and sport, whatever. It's a shorthand for a noble cause that's going to be a struggle.

And I think that's how the danger is. That's how it's seen in the West and not understood, if you like, to have the sharp edge that it does in the Near East. In retrospect, was the level of violence, the intensity, any worse in a crusade than it would have been in, again, the other wars I keep referring to. You can think of countless wars in Western Europe or the Near East where the levels of violence are the same. But I think it's the nominal motivation is what distinguishes

crusades and gives them this longer legacy. Well, thanks for listening, everybody. That was Jonathan Phillips talking about the crusade's part of our collaboration with Ubisoft, the geniuses behind the Assassin's Creed games. If you want to hear more, go to the Echoes of History podcast where we're breaking down some of the main characters, the feature in the game that actually existed in real life. We're looking at the Grail myth in detail. We're looking at the Templars and the Assassins.

This is all your Crusader content, really. So head over to the Echoes of History and check out the new series from History Hit and Ubisoft. you