Historically High - The Crusades

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

In the course of human history wars have been waged primarily over two things, land and religion. Sometimes for both of those reasons at the same time. Sometimes you do it 8 times. The Crusades are the best example of using the "will of god" as an excuse to do what the Europeans did best, conquer and kill. The Church (you know the one) decreed the man up stairs wanted Jerusalem and the Holy Land back and lo and behold, if you went and fought you would be absolved of all your sins. Now for the ruling classes of Europe who were pretty much sin factories, this was music to their ears. Now coincidentally this whole reclamation of one of JC's hangouts also happened to bring the crusader armies through the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines were kinda like the Holy Roman Empire's hot ex who they fucked it up with and wanted them back. The Pope thought if they could help them out with the issues they were having on their borders with the Islamic peoples in the Middle East, maybe they would see how the H.R.E. had grown and matured and come back to them, and by come back, I mean start sending their money. And thus the Crusades, an almost 200 year mission for christianity to take back their shit when they really didn't have the shit to begin with. This one has it all folks. More Popes that you can shake his pope stick thing at, kings, knights, castles, battles, severe dysentary, friendship, betrayal. Why are you still reading this? Stop, just hit play. Support the show Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Is there any sweeter sound than that? It's learning time again, buddy. We are ready. The pipe is smoking. I got my Cardi G on. We rolled the dice this episode. Just came back from the pharmacy, and we kind of played roulette with what we were going to smoke for this one.

Turns out it was killer bees. Stung the hell out of my throat before. If we start hearing a buzzing, at any point turning to the podcast, excuse us for the interruption. If this turns into the scene from Tommy Boyce, where they're out there trying to fight the bees to get away from the police, understand that something's gone very wrong in the pod.

Today, we get to talk about, well, I can't say near and dear, but we get to talk about something that in one way, shape, form, everybody has heard the term crusades. There's sports teams called the Crusaders. It's a kind of a word that's lost its meaning. And people probably couldn't tell you, most people probably couldn't tell you, you know, what the crusades, how long they entailed.

Indiana Jones is the last crusade. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's probably where most people live. They're like, oh, yeah, I remember. Well, if you listen to our Knights Templar episode, if you listen to our first monarchy episode, another one's going to come, I promise. I'm shocked that everybody liked it as much as they did.

I'm still not ready yet. But we mentioned the crusades pretty kind of casually. It's because we had sort of an idea of what the crusades were, just not all they entailed and just how many of them than there were. It's must see TV, baby. If I'm being totally and completely honest about this, we're going to talk about maybe three crusades,

four crusades in very exact detail. But the rest of them just kind of sucked. And they're boring. And they didn't really do a whole lot. And some of it honestly was like Christian against Christian at some points. Oh yeah. There was not a lot of rymories into some of them.

This was an orgy. And it was just any hole was a whole. was a whole at one point. Like, that's just how it worked. And to know that this was all called upon by the Lord God to make all this happen. It was called upon by people who people believed spoke with the word. How do people imagine that worked? Do you think it was like more of just like a voice in the head type thing? Do you think it's like, dear God, it's me Margaret type scenario where like he talked and then a big voice was like, hello, Pope? That there's just, like, a voice. And there's just, just one room that's the echo chamber.

Yeah. And that's where he can only talk to God. But it's just him speaking up and then hearing the echo coming back. The holiest of the holy holies. He walks into the room. He walks into the room. He's like, I think we need to go to war God. Your war God. War God.

Oh, that's done. That's it. Cool. Deal. I'm in. It was just an echo chamber that just gave back to you with whatever you send. You're like, permission. Thank you.

This guy agrees with everything that I say. Mm-hmm. I'm right about everything. So yeah. This is going to be kind of a wild ride. It should be pretty fun. To get started, I'm Adam, co-host Chris. We are going to do this as much justice as we can.

And it's kind of a touchy subject because this is Christianity in Islam. This is the fight that's still going on today. And I, again, speaking from not being a historian, I'd say this is probably where a lot of that sentiment comes from between both sides. Yeah. Good chance. well this was kind of the time they go back to to say there hasn't been peace in the middle east since before the crusades true yeah so i think that's you know that's and why that's going to be we're going to we're going to answer all the questions probably not all of them but a lot of them um guys we love doing this we love doing it because of you

it's crazy to us to us that people take their time to listen to the two of us bullshit but we love you guys for it. Keep up with the feedback, the comments. Spread the word. Spread the good word of this podcast to anybody who maybe isn't the most historically inclined, but just wants to be entertained. And to be honest, we're not exactly the most historically inclined. This is just stuff that we love to do and to research and to learn about. We cram and talk. Yeah. We enjoy every second of it. There's a part of this that's just strictly facts in history, but unfortunately, sometimes strictly facts in history get a little bit boring. So we kind of have to make light of stuff to get through it and to enjoy it. All right, guys. Well, we're not going to keep the enjoyment prolonged anymore. Let's get into

the orgy of revenge that was the Crusades. Well, to essentially set the stage for what will become the Crusades, we have to go back. We've got to push the sundial back quite a bit. This whole idea. of the Crusades was made about taking back to Holy Land. And so you're going to think the crusades started pretty early because in 637, 638 CE, this guy named Khalif Omar, or Umar, who was a close companion of Muhammad, if that rings a bell, goes ahead and takes Jerusalem. They would kind of put their own little pieces in there, the dome of the rock, the, oh, anybody

that likes when we mispronounce things. This is going to be a hot episode for that, too. I think I'm going to nail this one, though. The Al-Axa mosque was built there. Of course, Christianity has its markers in this town already. Judaism has its markers in this town already. This is an area that has been populated by three of the major religions. Everybody loves them from Jesus, baby.

Yeah. Jesus is like the one unifying factor, but the argument comes out of like, what was Jesus' job? is basically what it was. Like, tell me Jesus' role. And it's just a different version in all of these belief systems, but they all love Jesus. So this city has significance, religious importance and significance to all these different groups. And even after Omar actually took this, and I'm sure it wasn't immediately after, because I have to establish and everything, but this became a place that was actually open to pilgrims of like multiple denominations. So if you were going to make a piece.

pilgrimage, the kind of rule was like, hey, don't be armed like you're a soldier and everything, which makes me kind of wonder, like, what did they consider that? Like, you got to carry something because you're on a dangerous fucking path. But I think they could probably tell like, hey, you're transporting, hey, you're transporting swords over state lines. But you could take visits. You weren't barred from visiting the Holy Land in the city of Jerusalem. It also makes me think if this is such a hot and personal thing to three major religions, is there a chance that there was a little bit of copy copy going on. Just maybe put a different spin on it to go a different direction.

And boom, we have Judaism, put a different spin on it. Boom. We have Christianity. Put a different spin on it. Boom. We have Islam. Like, that feels like maybe this religion thing might be more of a story than a... What I think of is like three buddies that are like smoking or drinking around the campfire.

And they're all talking about the same thing. But then they just have a different opinion. It's fucking talking sports. figures. It's talking about the goats. Everybody maybe has a different goat. And it's like, no, Jordan's the best. No, LeBron's the best. No, Kobe's the best. And they're like, but it's all why Jesus is the best. Jesus is the best because of this. Jesus is the best. And they are like, well, we can't get along or agree on this. They're like, motherfuckers, I'm going to go start my religion. One of them gets up and throws his long chair down and storms off. And the other one's like, you know what?

Yeah. I'm going to start my own religion too. Fuck you. And he does the exact same thing. And then another guy's just sitting there by the fire and being like, fuck, I guess I gotta start my own religion. Jordan's Jesus, Muhammad is LeBron, and then, oh, this is going to sound bad.

Whatever Judaism hangs their head on with their guy is like Bill Russell, because they're the oldest ones. Yeah. That was the explanation that happens. They're the purists. But yeah, that's what it feels like, you know,

kind of the different branches, but they can all agree, upon Jesus. Yeah. He was a guy and he was there. I hate to say it. He probably was a guy and he probably was there. Good chance of stories weren't quite as accurate on what he did. But regardless, this whole area, the centuries leading up to the crusades, because again, we have centuries between these things happening, marked a ton of political and religious strife in the Christian world. You had the great schism where Eastern Roman Empire and Western Roman Empire differed. That's how you get the Byzantine Empire happening, and then the Western Roman Empire is because the Western Roman Empire

stuck with Catholicism, and the Byzantine Empire went with Greece. They went, and they became what's called Orthodox. Latin was used as a holy language in the West, whereas in Greece and in the Eastern, you had Greek. And you have two emperors. Yeah. So you're not unified in the sense. You've been separated not only now by religion, but you've also been separated by separate rulers. To go further to that, you also have what's going on where I believe it was in Avignon, France. which is where the papacy had moved. And there's issues popping up, and I'm probably going to get this wrong

because the Holy Roman Empire still doesn't make any sense. Just to point out, the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy nor Roman. It was Germanic, and they kind of had their own spin on things. They would put up a fight saying, well, our people weren't involved in the choosing of a Pope, and that's kind of how this needs to go.

Plus, we like being able to appoint our bishops, whereas you guys do it with the church. So we're just going to create another pope. Do you think that daming had to do with the fact that it's like, so you have the Roman Empire? Yeah. And then you call it the Byzantine Empire or you called it the Eastern Roman Empire. Is that what you called it? Okay.

And then they're like, fuck, we can't just be the Western Roman Empire. How do we fucking jazz this thing up to make us seem better? People love Jesus and stuff and God. Yeah, we're the Holy Roman Empire. So, yeah, us over here. There's just so much fighting going on within the Christian world. And it all kind of starts to get boiled down into knowing that instead of just fighting among Christians, there's things going on around the world.

There's the rise in Islam. The first real clash between Western Christians and Islam took place in the Iberian Peninsula, where Spain and where Portugal are in the 8th century. So we already have Islam kind of knocking on the door. We talked about this a little bit before the episode, back to the Hannibal episode, when he's moving up through the Iberian Peninsula and going that way, that was all Roman ruled. And then that was all ruled by the Carth, fuck, I did it before. Carthenegians.

Damn it. You know what I said. I had it in my head and the way you said it just fucked me apart. Carthaginians. Yes. So, yeah, so geographically speaking, you have the Holy Roman Empire, which I wanted to kind of let you know what countries are in it because when we start naming the kings of these different countries, you're like, why the fuck are those guys fighting for the Roman Empire? So you have much of modern day

Germany, parts of Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, and parts of France. The Byzantine Empire, which is the Eastern Roman section of that, is going to be like the Balkans, Thrace, Macedonia, so that, you know, area in Greece and everything, Bulgaria, and the coast of Turkey. Yeah, we're getting close to the Middle East. Close to that area. But you would think that that's where that's where. the first engagements or the first kind of clashes would be, but no, because essentially the people that were ruling, you know, kind of the ruling class in that area of the Middle East, also were ruling the northern portion of Africa, which once you get far enough toward the Atlantic Ocean,

basically you just have a small division at the Straits of Gibraltar from the Iberian Peninsula and from Africa. So kind of like you were mentioning in the Hannibal episode, a lot of that area was from, and of course Rome had been the Carthaginians, but that area was, Kind of a package deal, it seemed like, there for a while. Yep. If you took over the area where Carthage was and there's all those holdings that they had or that the Romans had after that, you're kind of like, okay, well, we're in charge now. Where else are you guys in charge of that we get now? Go ahead and take us around.

Show us all the rentals on the block. What properties have we acquired? The Byzantine Empire was kind of interesting because they were sort of butted up against Islamic rule. and beforehand, it really wasn't too bad. Like, they weren't more angry with the Islamic people than they were with like the rest of Christiandom. It was sort of a similar relationship. It was like neither of you are doing what we believe in. So you're equally as bad.

You're not messing with this too much. Everything's going to be okay. And the Byzantine Empire used to be huge. It used to wrap that entire length around kind of the Mediterranean area. And then you get this movement from Turkey and from Southeast Asia of these Seljuq Muslims. The Seljuk Turks were from the Sunni tradition, the Sunni tribe, whereas the Caliphate, the Fatimids that were down more in Africa were Shiite. Not knowing a whole lot about this. I do remember G.W. Bush talking a lot about the Sunnis and the Shiites and how everything

happened in Iraq and how he was probably going to end up fucking up everybody that was there. But that was the division within Islam that you still see the wars going on like it was going on in Christiandom. You had different tribes, Sunnis versus Shiites, where the Sunnis started pushing in and running the Shiites out. And as they're running that Shiite rule that was previously sort of okay with the Byzantine Empire, they start taking over Byzantine lands that are in the Middle East as well. And that sort of changes the game because the Byzantines are losing what they had before that the other Islamic, the Shiites didn't want or didn't have eyes for.

Now, the Seljuks are like, well, if we're going to take your land, we're going to take the Byzantines too. We're the baddest people on the block. We're going to start taking their shit. And you see the Byzantine empire start to shrink from the south. I mean, at one point during its peak, it held all of those lands in northern Africa kind of into the Iberian Peninsula. So it kind of almost surrounded the entirety of the Mediterranean. And then you get these different caliphates that are coming in from the Islamic states. And there's just like in the same way, there's the Germanic tribes, there's the Holy Roman Empire, there's the French, there's the English. You have all of these, you know, Islamic tribes that are different in how they operate. And so they're also kind of like wanting to spread out and take their own land and everything. And the first people that are going to run into that have any relation essentially to the church are going to be the Byzantines. They haven't gotten around to the Iberian Peninsula yet. That's coming on later.

So is this happening. The Byzantines are like, well, shit, we got to do something about these Seljuks. These Turks are coming in and they're taking all of our land. They've taken so much up to that point. Hadn't they taken? So you had the Byzantines who basically had the capital of Constantinople, Constantinople being right there at the... Bosfer Strait. Oh, Bosfer Strait was just a, you know, stones throw across and you were into Eurasia,

which was like Anatolia, that kind of area. So they had had a ton of that area It had been pushed almost all the way to the point where they didn't have a huge foothold Even on that side of the boss for a straits anymore They were just kind of holding a strip of land And the rest of their land holdings were over actually like into Greece And kind of like budding up against the Holy Roman Empire What's on the other side of that?

Jerusalem Yeah And who owns Jerusalem? The Islamic State Yeah And they have since 638 yeah So, again, not Christian land down there. This is where things kind of, we'll talk about this in and out, just full disclosure here.

We're not really a, yeah, let's go takeover kind of pod. Like, if this area's been taken before, that's great, but we should know better now that we're older and that we've seen what history is done. So our beliefs about taking back lands are going to be different from what they were back then, because back then that's all they knew. now that we've broken up. They took that lands from it. Okay, well, everyone was just kind of taken land from everybody back then. But once you've established that land in your ownership for like 400 years or so, and you haven't really done anything to take that back.

There has to be a, what's the, a statute of limitations. Like if your territory gets taken over, you have to submit a formal complaint within 50 years of that happening and make an effort to take that back. you really kind of can't wait 400. Well, nowadays, unfortunately, somehow in politics right now, we're dealing with the situation where there's threats of taking land. And as lame dick as the threats of taking land are, at this point in time in history,

we should already be an understanding where like, that's just not an option. You don't do that anymore. Like, aren't we, we're really? We're not, like, that's still a thing where you can like, no. We've established that we've evolved into a group, a work. a world society that just shouldn't be cool with that. Or you're just like, you know, it'll get people excited. We're going to rename something in which nobody else will recognize

as the new name for it. So just fun and stuff like that. Yeah, just will be the one country. This will be like our measuring system. We're the only ones that do it this way. So the Byzantines know that they have to try to stand up to the Seljuks. They are continuing to move. West and finally the Byzantine Empire is like, all right, foot down, Battle of Manzacurt.

We are going to stop the Seljuge movement. We're going to start taking our shit back. The Seljuks smoke the Byzantines. Just absolutely crushed them. And the ruler at the time in Constantinople was a guy named Alexios the first. And Alexios sees this and he's like, oh, well, we just got smoked. Those might have been our better guys that we sent down there. maybe it's time that we start making some inroads back in Christendom to maybe get a little bit of help going.

And to talk about this, we have to talk about the prospect of Holy War, because if you're going to ask the Christian Church to come down and fight a war with you, war is inherently sinful. So the Christian theology that was kind of propagated at the time borrowed from essentially a Roman requirement, because again, Holy Roman Empire, that citizens had to fight the empire. the enemies. So it essentially gave them, it was basically a draft, is what it was. It was conscription. It was conscription. That they could just pretty much pull from anyone within that empire in order to go ahead and fight for them. And so, like you said, after, I think it was a guy named Romanoz Diojin, he was the one that got spanked by the Seljuks, and then I think Alexios was the guy that kind of had to... Oh, he was trying to pick up pieces. He had to come into that, give him into that situation. He ends up basically, you know,

At this point, he doesn't have a lot of options. What he does have is he knows that the Holy Roman Empire wants to try to cozy up and kind of get back into the fold. That's going to be, it's the options are either, hey, I keep seeding land to these guys and I lose it altogether, or I make my bed with someone that I don't really want to make my bed with. But at the same time, even if I'll worry about that later. I got to keep my land first to then worry about them trying to go in and take my land. So also a belief from the Western Romans that the Byzantine Empire was kind of the cork on Africa. Like, we can handle the Iberian Peninsula. That's just one area.

They have to cross a boat to get there. We can end up taking that back if we need it. But if the Byzantine Empire falls and all of those lands fall under Islamic rule, now they're right next door. I mean, there's still a little path across the Bosphorus. But not, I think at that point, the Constant. Nople and the Byzantines had a pretty good system of getting shit across there. So it was probably smaller and a lot easier to do. Yeah, I'm just talking about the Seljuks taking over the Byzantine Empire.

Oh, and then even having access to either like the Middle East or to get down to Africa. Yeah. Okay, it makes sense. If they take over the Byzantine Empire and the Byzantine Empire is right next to the Western Roman Empire, then the Seljuks are going to be taking over their land next. They're just going to round it out all the way around the Mediterranean. I'll take everything. So according to the church, aggressive war is sinful.

So no, no, can't do aggressive war. What you can do is you can do just war. But I don't mean like, hey, just war. No, I mean like a just war, which had to be proclaimed by a legitimate authority, which was basically the church. So if the church, if the church just came out, went war, everyone was like, fuck it, we can do war. Deal.

Deal. You guys are giving us permission to do this. It had to be, it was a, had to be a defensive. War, which you're wondering, like, they don't have any people in those lands. Are they going to use it in defense of the Byzantine Empire? Because I could see that defense. But how they go about it is going to throw that whole defensive thing out the window. Not to mention, you can't declare war defensively, can you?

Is that like a jiu-jitsu expert in a UFC fight walking out to the center and dropping onto his back and being like, hey, come jump on me? No, because I mean, the French got attacked during the Blitzkrieg, and then they declared war on Okay. So you can do that in response, I guess. But again, it's going to get real murky. It has to be some provocation. You could wage just war for the recovery of lands.

So even lands from 400 years ago, as long as we got the receipts, right? And then without excessive violence, which it's the fucking crusades. Like, all of these things are like horseshit reasons. But, hey, the church said we can. And so God says it's cool. So we can go over and start killing people. have swords, you have bows and arrows, you have cavalry that have spears. How's that not going to get violent? Yeah. There's no clean way to kill somebody in any of those manners. So just kind of another

little stumbling block that falls. We talked about 638, Khalifumar had taken Jerusalem. In 1071, Jerusalem is then captured by the Selbur, or the Seljuke. I think his name was at, at says, a tease. A guy. Yeah, a Seljuke came and took it from the old caliphate. And when they take that, they also take most of Syria and most of Palestine. Where's Jerusalem? All around in Palestine.

So they get all that area around there, too. Which, it just, that swath of land that they take, they didn't take from the Christians. Yeah, they took it from, like, other Islamic states. Yeah. So basically, the Seljuk Empire. encompasses Iran, Iraq in the Near East. Not the Far East? Yeah, just the Near East.

I had to look up with Near East was just to make sure I understood it. So in 1095, this Byzantine Empire, Lexios I first, writes this request for military aid for the Empire against the advancing Seljuks. There was a council of Claremont, and I don't know what in the hell it was, if it was like the Pope of the state of the church address or whatever. Pope Urban second stands up and he commands the first crusade take place in the fall he uses some language like take up the way of the Lord

Christ commands it I'm sure that came from the echo chamber we were talking about earlier So yeah like you were saying 1071 is when Aziz gets Jerusalem Palestine Syria like you're saying and part of the kicker for this

is it was reported that there was oppression against the of the Christians down there that had previously had access and everything to the Holy Land. Yeah, I mean, the guy just came in and literally just took over the area from somebody else. There's probably going to be some hostilities between kind of everybody that was in that area. Hot time. And that just is kind of, I guess, business as usual with this shit because you go into an area,

there's going to be general hostilities against the populace of that area. So, of course, some of those people are going to be Christians. It could have been 500 Christians in Jerusalem. They're like, oh, God, oh, God, the Christians, all of Christendom is in trouble in Jerusalem. Yeah, they can't be getting harassed in a place that's ours, even though it's not technically ours. Or that we have people in, which is what Hitler used to justify going in and, was it also, yeah, going into Austria, right? Yeah, liberate the German Austrians. And then I want to say it was like up past the Rhinelze.

Oh, and Shicholzlocking or something like that. Yeah. Along with Christ commanding it and to take this up in the way of the Lord, kind of the big kicker was there would be complete absolution for all participants. If you take up the cross for the church to go down and fight in the Crusades, you get complete absolution for anything that you had done prior to and will do afterwards. So if you had been fighting wars that may not have been holy wars before and you committed some real bad atrocities and some places that weren't yours, but then became yours because of the atrocities that you committed,

if you take up the cross and go down and fight in the Crusades, complete absolution for that. All that's wiped off the board. It's like one of those triangle diagrams. that where everything kind of intersects, it's like, did you take over the land? Did you murder people? They go together, be like, go to the Holy Land. All your sins will be. Everything's clear. Everything's forgiven. You're solid. And I mean, it went back as even as far as, so after they seized Jerusalem, 1074, it was Pope Gregory the 7th who was in on that. He starts kind of planning a military campaign supporting the Byzantines against the Seljuks. now this doesn't essentially come to fruition for another 21 years when eventually like you said

alexios kind of request aid and at that point it's pope urban the second and that's when the big proclamation is made hey you know come fight for the holy land and all your sins will be forgiven so can't pass up that deal right no and i i don't know where herb stood but at the same time he's fighting this two front war at home where you have an anti pope that's still down in rome that's trying to say, I'm the Pope, I need to make this happen. So if you can get everybody that's a Christian back in line behind you and not thinking that this anti-pop has any power, it's a big win. And if you go over and spot the Byzantine Empire like we were talking about earlier,

send a bunch of men. I think the fighting force was huge. It was like 60,000 for the First Crusade, maybe. Which is crazy because if you think about it, if we had 60,000 people over there, how many do the Byzantines have? Pons, yeah, dude. Well, no, no, no, no. What I'm saying from the standpoint of, like,

You know, what if we go do this? And along the way, after we're done with, you know, the Crusades in the Holy Land, if the Byzantines are still causing his problems, we dismarch those 60,000 guys are ever going to left back up to the empire and be like, hey, so we just helped you out. Maybe you guys should think about, you know, maybe joining us, knocking down the fence. Paying us again. We liked your money. Your money was great. You guys had a big empire. Let's go clear that back up. You take what they had. Bring it back up. What the church has done for you. Maybe a little bit of something in the coffers. Exactly. Maybe your god was not quite the same one as our god. So like I said earlier, this was something that was slated for the fall. Now, the reason that it was for the fall is because you don't have a 7-Eleven to walk into. You don't have a Kroger or anything like that to go get... A Rouse. A Rouse.

Yeah. Rouse is a Middle East thing, maybe. But you got to have a way to feed this giant armies are coming through. And you also needed time because you were talking about noblemen to maybe make arrangements, get a custom fitting on your armor. Oh yeah, you're also paying for all this yourself. So you probably need to be able to afford good armor, good weapons, a good horse, all this kind of stuff. That's going to take a little bit of time. And we're also going to have food along the way through the Christian nations that you have to march through to get down to Constance. We've got to make sure that you guys have all the things that you need.

There's a lot of buildup to this. And you come to a time when, because of this proclamation from the Pope and this way they're going about, you know, the Christian theology of war, you now can call upon all of these different nations within the Holy Roman Empire to start pulling people in. So the First Crusade is also known as the Crusade of the Five Princes. So you got Raymond and it's not kings. So this was at a time when it was like, we're calling upon you to serve for Christ. And the kings are just sitting back and they're like, so yeah, we're just. going to send our kids, right? And they're like, yeah, that'll be good enough. And then they ask the Pope and they'll be like, hey, we're not going to go because like we're ruling this shit. But like, we can send our kids and that's good enough, right? They'll, they'll repent for our sins by serving down there because they'll do it really well. And he's like, yeah, fuck it, why not? Not even basically our kids. It sounds like most of it was anybody that doesn't have a claim to the throne. So this is like Megan Markle's husband. The spare kids. Yeah. Yeah. The ones that

that we can send away. So you get, Oh, no, no, no, no. We don't get that yet. That's in the fall. We have the spring. Oh, that's right. We have this gentleman who I'm sure was really popular among the people just based upon

his name, Peter the Hermit. Hermits are those guys that live up in the mountains and their cabins and don't like seeing people, right? Generally. Apparently, this guy was real good with God because him and his, donkey came down and I don't know if this is true. I heard it in two different places. I didn't verify it so I don't want to throw it out there as fact, but it's so fucking funny that I feel like I have to. Claim that he had a handwritten note from God who told him that he was to lead the first crusade.

Well, instead of waiting around for the fall, Peter's like, it's springtime now. The weather's great. It's going to be good going down through the summer. Everything will be okay. Why are we not marching? Yeah. And also, if I don't have any money to pay for armor, I'll just wear the protection of God down there. I don't have to wait for any of that stuff. I don't got to pay anything off. I'm a hermit, so I probably don't have a lot of bills going on. I can just head down there. Who's coming with me?

This is Will Ferrell. Sir, you have no armor on. God will protect me as a fucking crossbow bullet. Yeah. This is... Why God? This is Jim Brewer and HalfBank. When he's leaving the record store, he's like, who's coming with me? Who's coming with me, man?

Instead of just Jan, no, a whole bunch of fucking people who are like peasants, the serfs and the working class are just like, you know what? Shit kind of fucking sucks up here for us. It's cold. It rains. We eat nothing but fucking turnips and potatoes,

and everyone's fucking mean to us and takes our shit. So yeah, we're going to go down here because we can get right with God and maybe we can better our lives. Peter's got a note from God. We can't go wrong with. with a note from God, he definitely wrote it. He didn't God's signature look like on it.

Is it just G, you think? The G man. So these three groups of peasants leave from, I believe it was France, Germany, and it might have been another part of France. I didn't really go on there. Peter the Hermit led one of the areas, I believe, out of Germany. There was Walter Sands-Avois and Amicho of Flaunheim. They all take off from different places.

Powerhouse countries. Powerhouse nations. Yeah. And the German contingent heading their way down to fight the crusades, like, shit. Middle East is really far away. We got these things called Jews up here that seem to be causing Christendom a lot of problems. On the way down, they're going through Christian villages where Jewish people live and just massacring Jews. Just killing everybody.

There's even a name for it. It's, uh, we're going to warm up for the holy, land by killing these other people that aren't like us. Yeah. On the way to become Rhineland. Oh, they were literally called the Rhineland Massacres. So it was just them cruising down through Germany without any supplies, mind you, because, again, they took off too early or they didn't have any supplies because if you do it after harvest, you're going to be pretty plentiful. Yeah.

Come springtime, when you've got to start planning again coming off of wintertime, there's not going to be a whole lot of food to eat. Listen, buddy. God gave his son the... But just his son, the ability to make bread and fishes, just multiply him, enough to feed however many. 5,000. I'm pretty sure since we're marching to reclaim this land for God, he's going to make sure we're all set on food. We're getting mana from heaven. We're going to walk into this field, and it's going to be nothing but fruit trees and cows.

You wait and see. Well, it wasn't fruit trees and cows. It was Jews and Christian cities that they were massacring and then raiding everybody through. all three of them had a real bad time in Bulgaria. And this might be something where we devote like a Patreon episode when it comes because it's pretty incredible what happens. So they get down to Belgrade. The first group gets down to Belgrade. And they're like, hey, can we check up here?

We're headed down. We're fighting that crusade thing that you guys weren't a part of yet. That's right. There's two Belgrade's. Yeah. There's, yeah, in Ireland, Scotland. I think Ireland. I apologize if I messed that up, Ted, both of you.

And then there's one, I believe, in Serbia? Belgrade or something like that. It's pronounced if it's one of the Middle East or Jesus, Eastern European things, Grodd. Yeah, we're not geographers. Well, I'm sure cover both of those sometime. We're not map scientists, damn it. I have literally a map in front of me and it's not about that time period, though. So they're like, hey, can we come in?

Like, uh, and mind you, all these places that they're in now, are all ruled by Byzantine. So there's Byzantine forces rolling around. There's Byzantine forces in these cities and towns that are still there patrolling. What are you doing here? We're sent by Jesus. Yeah. We're just on our way through to get Jesus' house back.

You guys are six months early. What are you doing here? Like, I don't know, those are all the hoity toitties that are coming later. We're the real fighters. We're the diehards. Uh-huh. So the guy in Belgrade's like, all right. camp outside

camp outside we'll get you some supplies you guys can keep it moving we'll get you as much as we can and meanwhile this it's the wait here yeah like they're like ah that this doesn't sound you know what let me go inside for a second think about it's like just wait right here so they get into a little scuffle with the Byzantine garrisons that are walking around

they're fighting their own Christian brothers but different Christians different Christians definitely different Christians Eastern Western Roman Empire are different Christians, Orthodox. And after that fight happens, they then retreat back to the castle. Like, hey, man, let us in. We just got attacked by these soldiers.

Those are our soldiers. No shit. Why were they attacking you? So the guys are like, okay. They weren't, sorry, I'm confused. They weren't your soldiers. Seljuks or roaming around up here. I don't know what's going on.

Whatever, just let us in. So a couple of them get in. of course they rush the gates they go through and clear out the castle well then the next group that shows up to the exact same place the guys like oh no no no no no no you guys are going to get moving on through is they go on even fucking not yeah this ain't gonna happen there's a sign on the door so instead of that happening they go ahead and run through the countryside and kill a bunch of the people living outside of the city and take whatever they get as one does when they sack and pillage. Yeah. So finally, the third group comes through, and the king of Belgrade

immediately calls the troops in, and he's like, we have to reinforce. Our own people are coming through to try to save us and just masquering everything. We're not even to the first crusade because it doesn't, it's not a legitimate crusade unless people that have taken the cross. So to take the cross essentially is to, during this time frame, you would basically devote yourself to the crusade in service of the church, so they called it taking the cross. It has to be guys that the church is like, we want you leading it and doing that. That's when the crusade starts.

These guys are just, we're talking about now, are just really fucking eager to get down there and start some shit. Also, do you believe they maybe went down? And again, these are your peasant class, everything like that. Do you think they also went down there, they're like, you think if we get down there and everything, like, it'll be our first crack at all of like the loot? Yeah.

I'm sure. It was 10,000 people. To get 10,000 people on board, there has to be something that ends have to justify the means or however that saying goes. So as the third group comes back through, the guys are like, no, no, no, we have all these soldiers. We're just going to march you guys straight to Constantinople. Here's some shit. Don't take anything else. No five-finger discounts around here.

We're going to make sure that these guys usher you down to Constantinople. Finally, all these three bands get to Constantinople. King brings them in and realizes that these are just ruffians. These are people that don't have the kind of background that would lend them to be good houseguess. So after a day that Alexios

is like, ah, we're going to send you guys over. Just get the fuck over there. Go fight. They end up crossing over. Go straight from the gates to the fucking port. Don't look at anything. I don't want to see one ducking off.

That's where you guys are supposed to go. They finally just partition it off and have guards standing and they're just like walk down. Hands and pockets. Don't take them out for anything. Even if you're tripping and falling, go face first. Don't pull those hands out. Or you won't have hands. They get shipped across the boss for us into Nicaea.

And as they get to Nicaa, they would continue to cause problems there immediately because that's just sort of what these guys did. They were definitely disruptors. the force would then quickly be dispatched by the Turkish ambush at the Battle of Sivet in October 1896. Or 1096. So just so geography lesson. Geography break. So Nicaea is not even close to Jerusalem or the Holy Land. Nicaea is basically like, hey, we got across to Constantinople, and then we marched for three days, and now we're in Nicaia.

We're standing in the Middle East, and that's all that counts. We made it over here to quick. clearly be dispatched, which I don't even know. You're not really in the middle Middle East. You're more in the western Middle East. Well, and your boy, Peter the Hermit with the donkey, went ahead and took his way all the way back into Europe. He didn't even stick around to see the massacre. He's like, ugh.

Yeah. I got these people pretty fired up for no reason. So we end up pulling up into the First Crusade. Where are we at? Are we bathroom break? Oh, no, buddy. We've got 20 more minutes before we're allowed to take one. Sounds good to me.

First crusade begins happening. There's two people that are noticeably absent. Recently excommunicated for cheating on his wife, King Philip of France. He was number one. And then the Holy Roman Empire both declined the Pope's invitation to crusade. I don't know what their reasoning was. I mean, Philip definitely wasn't getting the call to come help if he just got excommunicated for

philandering. The emperor of your fucking empire that your church is supposed to technically be running an answerable to is just like, nah. I'll sit this one out for a second. There were contingents that would end up being led by Raymond the 4th of Toulouse,

Bohemond of Toronto. Okay, so Raymond French, Bohemont, French Italian. Hey, baguete. Then you'll also have his nephew you that came with him, Tancred, you will have Godfrey of Bouillon. Got to be France, right?

I believe so. You have Robert Kurtros, who was the son, I believe, that we talked about in the monarchy episode right around the time of William the Conqueror. You also, oh, they came from the north of France,

so yeah, you had Stefan of Blas, of Blas, and you had Robert of, Flanders. This isn't Ned. Baldwin of Flanders. Oh, Baldwin of... And Flanders was like where Belgium, kind of that area. Where was Robert from then?

He could have been Robert Baldwin. Who knows? We should probably know, but who... There's no way to know. Because I'm looking it up right now. Go on, sir. So, upon their arrival in Constantinople, Alexios did something that would pretty much

makes sense to anybody. He's like, hey, you guys are leading these things. You all came at different times. You're all here. Well, you guys just all, maybe just swear an oath to return all the lands that were taken back to the Byzantine Empire. I mean, technically they were ours and you're fighting for us. So if you go liberate something, maybe that's what happens here. Maybe you guys can give me that back. Anything? So this one is, let's see. So when referring to rulers, Robert's generally considered more prominent, specifically Robert I also known as Robert the Frisian. Well, Baldwin usually refers to Baldwin

the 5th, Robert's father, who was counter Flanders. I'll look up who actually went on the First Crusade. It just wasn't Ned. It wasn't Rod and Todd. So, you know, swear this oath. Give us our land back.

You guys can take what you want, probably, but just make sure that this doesn't happen. And most of them did. Most of them really, yeah, man. I got you. There were plenty of them that Alexios had to kind of grease their palms to go along with because the Byzantine Empire at this time still has some dough. But a few of them were like, I don't think this is going to happen. And to kind of prove that point, more of them that swore the oath than didn't swear the oath would end up sticking around to kind of hang out down there. It was Robert. Robert of Flanders? Yes, God damn.

So where's Baldwin from? Because Baldwin's a part of it. I'll look up that too. Okay. Nicaea, the place that we talked about where the People's Crusade met its demise, it's the capital of something called the Sultanate of Rum. It would be the first chance against the soldier or against the soldieric forces, but it was easily taken because the Sultan that was in the area, Sultan Arslan, had taken troops out of the city to handle a territorial dispute

that was going on within the Muslim Empire. So I guess he, was the count of Bologna. Bologna? And married a noble, a Norman nobleman. I don't know where half these places are from. Baldwin was there. So yeah, this first shot

that they're going to have, the sultan's out of town. The sultan took all the troops out of the city to go handle just a regular territorial dispute that's going on within the Muslim Empire. And part of the reason why he did it was because even though he heard that there were Christian troops coming down, the first time he saw Christian troops,

it was the People's Crusades. How much effort are you going to put to squashing out another group like that? Like, we'll just come get them later. They're probably not going to take the city, even though there's nobody really there to fight besides the people. Hold on a second. These ones have horses. Are they going to armor?

Okay, these guys are different. Yeah, it can't be the same people. Not at all. So they end up taking a nice little chunk of land in the beginning. And during this time, the first, like, actual clash ends up taking on out or taking place outside of Anatolia. Christian line held pretty decently. I want to say it was like seven hours against a Turkish assault until, uh, reinforcement showed up to outflank the Turks and to make them, uh, go on the retreat. But not to really point out how well or how much better they were than the people that showed.

showed up before them, but to hold a siege from the Seljuks for seven hours under all sorts of bow and arrow fire and attempts or anything like that, it's pretty good. These people seem to have it together. Also kind of looking in and weaponry, armor, stuff like that, a lot of the evolution, like, how we always talk about in like later like World War I episodes, how that war was so instrumental in the evolution of warfare and weaponry, airplanes, more artillery, things like that. the crusades kind of do that for weaponry during this the medieval period because so many conflicts are happening that whoever's going to have the bigger more effective better weapons things like that those are the people that are going to win so you have the people's

crusade coming down who are maybe thrown together some hodgepodge armor maybe some leather from hides and stuff like that no money no and then all of a sudden you come in and you're using the same tactics on guys with shields organized formations people that have actually trained you're probably going to underestimate them at first, but the same tricks that worked on those other people are that you've been running, and those are kind of the ways that you're bread and butter for warfare. As soon as you run up against things that can't penetrate the armor,

things like that, you're going to run into an issue. You can't pivot that quickly. You're also fighting a well-fed army that's not as desperate. Yeah, exactly. There's a lot more psychology going on their side. Yeah, true, very true. So this would be kind of the first like,

hey, we might have something here. We ended up pushing Christians back or the Turks back. They retreated. Niccia and Anatolia were now under Christian control before the march onto Antioch. Baldwin, the guy that we were talking about earlier that we were figuring out where he was from, decides that maybe he likes his area. Maybe he wants to go ahead and hold back a little bit. Maybe this sultanate of rum seems like a pretty good area to be in. So Baldwin's like, you guys go on ahead.

I'm going to hang back out here and actually creates the first crusader state known as the state of Addessa for himself. So already a guy that probably swore his oath to Alexios just as like, who we get a little bit of land here. I think I'm just going to park it and call myself the king of this area. Guys, listen, my dogs are barking. I got to get this armor off. You guys go on ahead. I'll catch up. I'm going to let my guys rest for a couple days.

But yeah, be right behind you. they did a runner a couple days later. Baldwin has decided he's going to actually stay and hold this area to ensure other crusaders can come support you. Baldwin actually tried out everybody's bed within the city and picked out the one that he wanted, so he's probably going to just plant some roots here for sure. The siege on Antioch was a much different story. And part of the reason why the siege on Antioch would last for eight months is because your waging war against castles that the Byzantine Empire had built themselves. Yeah, exactly. So if you're

looking at, like, thinking of where Antioch is, so you have the Mediterranean, which kind of goes, you know, left to right, right to left. The furthest point where it actually ends to the east is going to be right there where, like, Israel and Palestine and everything is. The area where Antioch is right when you get around the like northern portion and you start to turn south around the Mediterranean Antioch is very close to that point, and it's a port city. So it would be very important, especially if the Crusaders are actually holding that area where Adessa is, all of a sudden now, you don't have to march people through the entire Byzantine Empire and everything. You can put people on ships and just send them straight to that area. As long as he has the money to pay for the ships.

Exactly. And that area happens to be from a strategic standpoint, just like right in the middle. like if you were to go ahead and march north, kind of northwest, it would be like equal distance to get to the Byzantine Empire so they can start just to find taking the Seljuks out of there, and then you march a little bit further to the south, and then that's heading into the area where, like, Jerusalem's going to be that neighborhood. Did they have Crete? Is that the island that's down there?

Cyprus. Cyprus. Okay. I think Crete's got to be around there somewhere, because I heard it a few times. Crete's off of Greece, and then Cyprus is the one that's like right between, like, sandwich between like Anatolia and, and like where that area of like Israel and Palestine, everything is. Yeah. Good staging ground probably if you're going by boat.

Yep. And I believe they held that because the Byzantines had actually, that was part of their land. But I believe they were able to hold the island or take back really quickly, the island of Cyprus. And I don't know if that had to do with maybe, I don't know, you don't ever hear really a lot of like the Navy of like the caliphates.

No. That's never like a talking point. It's always about like their infantry and things like that. But I wonder if that was just a fact that, like, they didn't have, like, a naval force that could, like, take that island. If they built themselves up inland, there was probably never really a need. Like, until you get to water, you don't need a Navy. That's true. They could always march on land.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyock was a real bitch. Like I said, eight months. We're outside of growing season. We're going through winter time that you call in this area, which I'm sure there was no snow. it's probably pretty shitty rain. There's probably a lot of flooding that's going on.

It gets fucking cold. Yeah. At nights when there's, yeah, when it's just the fucking desert. There's no block. Yeah. When that wind comes halin,

it can get pretty cold. Somehow, this guy, I feel like this guy was a little bit of a trickster, a little bit of a snake, a guy named Bowemond. Boaumon and a few soldiers ended up being able to bribe one of the guards

at one of the gate, or I don't know if it was a gate or it was at a, like a... It was a gate. Oh, was it? Bribes him to let them in, and Beaumond and his soldiers

quickly dispatch those guys and then run to the main gate of Antioch and open it up. And thank heavens. Kind of a monetary Trojan horse situation. Bit of it, yeah. Yep, probably something along those lines. Good thing they get to the gates

and they let all the forces in because there is a very large Turkish advance that's coming on the way to Antioch to go ahead and get them. safe from this siege it's going on. So everybody gets inside of Antioch. All of the people in Antioch, I believe, had retreated up to. Was it the Citadel?

There was a holy building up on the mountain. Yeah. All I know is this, there was the slaughter of the Islamic population, the Muslim population. Along with there was like, it was just kind of an indiscriminate killing because there was also a lot of Christians. Orgy. Yeah. Another orgy. It was just kind of that thing that you hear.

here about in warfare almost like a bloodlust and it was just basically like in if they weren't one of the people that was with the army coming in it was probably just like I can't I can't risk the fact that if you might be Islamic and then we're just going to kill everyone we'll sort it out later God will forgive it what you and I failed to realize here that these guys knew we don't know the ins and outs of what holy war feels like yeah so maybe it's a ridiculous fucking concept Like, my brain can't comprehend that because I get to the point of like, and then God tells you to go to war. And I just start fucking giggling to myself and I can't get past that. That's what it is.

Maybe if you get past the giggling and you actually feel what holy war is, you would understand why these guys massacred, even their own people. And at the same time, all they're thinking their head is like, okay, so the church says we can do this. We're taking this city. And plus, anything I do here is like is without sin, as long as I'm doing it to take over this place. It's like murder rumspringer. Mm-hmm. let's not downplay the fact that Chris is mentioning the Christians inside these cities because there's still Christians inside these Islamic held cities.

And they don't really seem to mind too much because there's not a lot of Christian uprisings that are fighting within the city to then come and let them out. They're kind of getting sieged on too. Like maybe their way of life isn't too bad under the caliphate or under the Seljuks that are here. Maybe they're okay with it. So maybe they don't need liberated. Maybe we shouldn't be doing this because there's no uprising from the inside to come let us in.

That to me seems like it's sort of something that gets lost in translation here is these weren't just all Islamic cities that were being bum rushed and taken. A lot of Christians there too. So you have everybody trapped in the, we'll just call it a citadel up on the mountain. Those people are slowly getting starved out in Antioch because they've taken the city. you also have this Turkish advance now standing outside of the gates where you were just a few days ago trying to get you out of their city. So you're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place because you're starving the people that are up in the citadel. If so facto, the group outside is then starving you from being able to starve them.

And you finally have to make some sort of a retreat. But you need something to really garner the people behind you. And what better way to do that than if you had a real little itty-bitty tiny piece of the steel from the lance that was stabbed in Jesus as he was crucified. The Holy Lance, huh? Yeah. Not like the Holy Lance Bass, like the weapon. Yeah, yeah. Like Holy Lance.

Yeah. So one of the religious leaders has some sort of a vision, some sort of a belief that there's part of this Holy Lance down in the city. and I believe there's some like some sort of factual basis that Antioch was something that Jesus traveled back through or so I don't know. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not going to make up a story like these guys did.

I don't fucking know why it would be there. So this is in 1099, right? Yeah. Okay. I believe so. Yeah. They end up digging a hole. I don't know how many holes you would have to dig

before you found a piece of steel in the land over there. I'm betting not a whole lot. But they would end up finding this piece of steel from the spear that stabbed Jesus, and that was a sign that they were going to be able to win this war. So they go ahead and pull up their girdles. They get all their equipment on, and they head out, and somehow they blast their way through this line

and just completely overrun the Turks. There was something about the Turkish generals that were there might have been on the take at some point in time, and were just bailing out because they might have taken some money. They brought their way into the city. What makes you think they couldn't bribe their way outside the city, maybe? So they end up breaking out, and there's this long-held belief that the only reason that they did it was because they had the tip of the spear that killed Jesus or something like that.

The religious leader, I don't remember if it was a religious leader or the guy that he was following, one of the leaders that he was following was like, I believe in this so much. I know that God will protect me. If I have this, I can't be killed. And they're like, prove it. Oh, yeah. Well, it was also, yeah. So just so you guys know, they would be sent with like bishops or like cardinals to make

sure that, you know, everyone can get blessed and all that kind of good stuff and to spread the, you know, the good word of Christianity down there. So you had like almost like advisors or chaperones from the church that were going down on these crusades to give them the thumbs up before all the slaughter. Well, we also kind of forgot to mention too. the differences between these two religions and how they take things over is Islam is very business-like. They would show up.

They would look at the books. They would take what they wanted. They would start to work that way. And then if the spread of Islam happened, it's like, cool. Good. As long as we're running this place, we know our religion. That's strong. We're not going to send it and preach it on everybody.

You guys can still hang out and be Christians here. But just know, Islam's always around the corner. Like, if you got questions, we got answers. Yeah. And the Christians come in, they're like, Christian? No. Okay, you're dead. On the battlefield, when they would take prisoners,

Islamic rules that stated either you convert or we kill you. So in wartime, it was you convert to Islam or we kill you. But if we take over your city, it's like, you're cool. Come listen to our fireside every Saturday, but just understand we're in charge all the books. So as long as you're not taking up arms against them, basically. Yeah, it's all good. and oh getting back to the tip of the spear

like all right man well if this can protect you from anything why don't you walk through fire he's like deal i'm in i will walk through whatever fire holding the tip of the spear and everything will be okay this guy walked through the fire this guy literally strolled through the fire for like i want to say it was like 10 or 15 feet

just walk through an open fire he gets off on the other side he's like i'm good look at this jesus protected me everything went right i'm sure he was probably screaming a lot, but that's what he was saying on the inside. He was screaming, oh, God, oh, God. He dies like two days later from having so many burns covering his body from trying to walk through this fire. That's like, ooh, maybe that wasn't Jesus, the tip of Jesus spear. Maybe he used all the magic getting us out of Antioch.

Yeah. Just one of the other. But they're one step further to getting to Jerusalem. They're establishing now they have a place where they're, can kind of like if they had to fall back. You have the county of Odessa, Edessa, Edessa, and now you have Antioch. It would have been so much easier had the guy that I mentioned earlier,

Stefan of Blau. He went ahead and just hauled ass back up to Constantinople to get out of there. He ended up passing a garrison of Byzantine troops and like, why are you going the other way? Did he even get down to Antioch? I think he saw what happened at the same. siege and heard that there was a bunch of reinforcements coming and was just like, I'm out. Okay.

So he tells him the plan has gone south. All is lost. That's also the other thing, too, that I think there's during the Crusades, there's this, maybe this misconception that everyone was kind of on the same team. This isn't like World War II Allied Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower. If anyone, that's kind of the Pope, but he's not really making military decisions. but each of these princes and like areas within the Holy Roman Empire that are raising these troops, they're all being commanded by their own people and they're all making their own decisions

about where they're going to go and what they're going to take over. So there's not, I mean, the cohesiveness is about Jesus. That's kind of it. Other than that, it's kind of just like, well, you're fucking French and you're fucking, you know, German and everything like that. There's probably some fucking animosities, which is why they end up fucking fight each other sometimes. Yeah, we're going to be talking about a time when the French and the British both come down for a crusade. It's the English at that point. Well, yeah. So they,

the English and the French actually put off a fight that they had going on at home so they could both go on a fucking go on a crusade. They could take a fucking break. Wasn't that when the hundred years war was? I think it was right around there. As you were talking about all these leaders of this all-star team that's going down there, there was one guy that was supposed to be the spiritual leader of the crusade. His name was Adelmar. He ended up dying in Antioch. And after that, the Capacy was just sort of, they couldn't make a lot of suggestions anymore. Like there wasn't, there wasn't somebody that was. This is a fire guy.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I believe that actually might have been him. So, on the way out of Antioch, your next stop is going to be headed down to Jerusalem. You were talking earlier about a truce. Yeah, so kind of given a breakdown of kind of who this crusader army is made up of, the Franks, who were like a Germanic. speaking people were the most powerful empire within like the Holy Roman Empire, the most powerful

Christian Empire in Western Europe. Now they were kind of leading the charge because they probably had the most troops. You had people staying behind at Antioch. You already had a Baldwin that stayed back up to establish Edessa. So you're kind of almost thinning out your troops as well, but other people that still have enough guys to go forward, they're just going to keep pushing on because, well, shit, we've kind of taken over some of these cities and there's some pretty good shit in here.

Let's keep going down until. we accomplish the mission. There's a reason these dudes are staying in these cities, and it's not because they're shitholes. It's because they're really, really nice. Yeah, exactly. And so they're like, well, we're just going to keep going along the way because mission here is to recapture Jerusalem.

And around this time, the Fatimid Caliphate, who had the majority of their power in northern Africa, and then also kind of in a little bit of the Middle East, they'd actually taken Jerusalem back from the Seljuks. and that happened about a year prior to the first attack on Jerusalem.

What happened is, so the, you know, the Franks are looking at this and they're saying, these guys just retook the city. They probably don't have a real strong foothold since it was just a year ago. Let's offer them a deal. They're maybe not married to it yet. I mean, they've only had it for a year. How much can they, you know, really attached to it? So they're like, hey, we'll go ahead and give you guys as the Fatimid Caliphate all of this Seljuk

land that we actually just took and conquered in exchange for Jerusalem. And they're like, yeah, I mean, you guys haven't really been down here in like 400 years. We don't really know what to expect out of you, but it, I mean, this is our area. Like, we have a lot of guys down here. Nah, we're going to go ahead and decline. So the decision was kind of made at that point. Okay, they've only been there for a year. They haven't solidified their power base. We need to march on this thing now. And that's exactly what we lead into on June 7th of 1099. the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem. The beginning, okay.

For a second, I thought all I heard you say was the B&A. And I was like, yeah, this kind of is a breaking and entering type scenario here. It's a crazy B&E is what it ends up being, because this thing results in kind of a stalemate. And it's, you know, nothing's tipping it either way. And you get this guy, they're able to construct two siege towers. Before that, the reason that it's a mess and they're there for so long in the siege is because before the siege, is because before the siege happens, the fatomids walk all the way around Jerusalem

and just cut down all the trees and take the trees. And when you show up there, it's not like you can transport a bunch of lumber to make these, oh God, siege engines. The siege engines are the Trebyshade, the catapults. And then the siege towers are like, straight up, Lord of the Rings,

marching on Mina's Turrith, like pushed by fucking multiple men, three, four-story fucking towers that as soon as they get up to the gates, big old drawbridge like thing drops and you just unload as many guys onto the top of the gates or onto the top of the walls you can. Unfortunately, this has

become a bucket list item for me. I don't know how I'm going to pull it off. I don't know what kind of strings. Maybe we'll get famous enough to be able to do this one day. And maybe we'll be able to film it and show everybody that joy and adulation I get from this. I want to go over into England. I want them to have a replica siege tower.

They have to have them somewhere, right? If this thing takes off enough, I will commission you a siege tower of your own. Do you want something that you can have in the studio? Or do you want, are we talking like you want to scale replica? A siege tower is only as good as having a castle. And that's the issue is because if you don't have a castle,

then you're just some pervert that lowers your drawbridge and is staring into somebody else's windows. Okay, so small enough to fit on the desk. I want to be able to walk across it and walk into a castle. Do you know how cool of a feeling that would be? Climbing up the fucking ladders and everything. And then you get to the, the top and you fucking storming it.

And all of the fighting that you just had done from the ground for months in order to get past these walls, you're just strolling onto the wall. What's funny is, as, you know, because it's going to come into play as soon as they figure out that this method is successful for storming these, you know, fortifications. At this point, they had two of them. So not insanely impressive, but it was impressive enough. How did they get the two of them? They had, oh, how they end up building?

I didn't see that part. The Venetians had come down with. boats to resupply them. When the Venetians found out they didn't have any wood, they deconstructed their boats and brought the wood from the boats to Jerusalem so they could have wood to build these siege towers. Do you think, because this ends up being the whole of the Crusades, ends up being so beneficial for like the Venetians and the Genoans and pretty much anyone on the south of France, the coast there, because they make so much money transporting these guys and all of their supplies. I wonder if the Venetians looked in as like,

you know if these motherfuckers take this city? Like, they're going to need shit all the time for us. Like, give them fucking five boats. Let them build their fucking shit. And then we're just going to start raking it in. You guys hang out behind the lines and don't get close to the fighting because we need you. But just sacrifice the boats. Come back up with them on land.

Well, the man that ends up kind of breaching the walls and everything ends up being Godfrey of Bullion on July 15th. So even like this isn't a long siege. They figure out how to do this a little outside of a week. And then what takes place, just a fraction of that time is a two-day massacre and pillage of the entire fucking city. So, yeah, they're not really, I guess was this just the European way to end the Holy Roman Empire way? Because kind of, I mean, you're still very far from home.

you're in enemy territory essentially. You've captured this place. Yeah, you're able to get resupplied a little bit from the sea, but help ain't coming for a little bit. And your first thing is to be like, maybe we don't try to absolutely piss off the hostile forces around us by just killing all their people in the city. But I digress.

You know how hard. God is letting us have a pass on this one. Yeah. Okay. We can do this and it's completely resolved. pass from yeah we got a murder hall pass do you know how hard it would be to keep up a two day massacre is there a point in time in that 48 hours that you sit down and get like a strong eight so you can have enough to go back out and start killing people again or do you think that's just shift it's shift work

okay yeah so they're clocking in and clocking out yep we're nine to five five to seven seven to whatever that song goes whatever that dumb country song goes like i'm so tired of stabbing people yeah got to be something like that. That would be so tough to keep that up. And not to say that it wasn't just an absolute atrocity and disgusting, but eventually you got to strip that away and think, how does this really happen? How do you keep up that much anger for two straight days after you

just made a big accomplishment? You're just fucking war horny, dude. You've got just a fucking war rager and you can't get this thing to go down. It's like taking too much horny goatee that you got from the gas station. You're having to call the fucking urgent care because you maintain an erection for longer than six hours. That's not a personal story.

It's something I read. No, so you know what? First Crusade. Fucking mission complete. This is G.W. on the deck of the fucking aircraft carry. The Pope comes out on his fucking window sill, and he's like, we did it. We got back Jesus' house.

And everyone's like, fuck yes. You'd like to think that, right? You would. Pope Urban actually dies before getting news of the wind. I fucking love that. Yeah, that's tough. And so you would think, okay, we just took the holy city. We still got all south of us.

We got unfriendlies. Technically, to the fucking east of us. We have unfriendlies. We need to fucking fortify this place, right? Wrong. Most of the crusaders are like, all right, we did it. We made it. Okay, they give a fucking, you know, father, son, the holy ghost or whatever they do.

And then, like, so back to Europe. And most of the princes and everything like that are like, fuck yeah, we're going back to Europe. You know how badass it's going to be? I'm going to fucking Prince, and I'm the guy that helped take back fucking Jerusalem. I'm going to get so much Christian pussy for this. Except, as you mentioned, Godfrey took over the kingdom of Jerusalem.

The guy, he, it was Godfrey's show, man. But this is where we get this creation of the greater, or the crusader states. As you meant, yeah, just like you said, Godfrey got Jerusalem. He actually gets named the defender of the holy sepulcher. Don't know what the fuck that means. Sounds pretty cool. Sepulchre. Sepulch,

whatever. I don't know. I don't mean. It actually sounded even better in Latin. Or whatever. But yeah. So they're like, all right. Godfrey's like,

okay, I'm setting up shop. Staying here. You guys are going to leave a bunch of your other guys to go ahead and help defend it. And they're like, yeah,

I mean, we're going to leave you like 300 nights and like 2,000 infantrymen. He's like, the fuck. The first crusade came down with like a hundred thousand people. Now I understand that that includes our non-combatants and everything.

But you guys are leaving me. with fucking 2,300 people to defend this place. They're like, well, yeah, I mean, like, it took us to, two siege engines to take this city. Like, you guys can totally defend it if they don't have those things that they just showed, you know, I'm sure they're not aware of how to storm these fucking places either. Yeah.

It's not like they've had castles in this area for a while, right? I would understand that this all works. They only cut down the trees because they knew we were going to make siege engines and fucking towers out of them. Guess what? Trees are still cut down. They don't have siege engines either. you would have the county of

Odessa that we talked about the Baldwin took over you would have the principality of Antioch that Bohemond had bribed his way inside of yeah he goes and takes that guy back to you have the county of Tripoli which Raymond would take

as we reported before sadly for Pope Urban the second and good for us he dies before he ends up finding out or before the victory makes it back to England or I guess France at this point wherever the Pope happened to be Roman.

Yeah, wherever the papacy is. And you'd think, hey, we just solved this problem. We still got six, seven, arguably, these things left. And this was kind of a big pop. Two, a little less big of a deal. The Zengit dynasty, the leader's name was Nuraldean. Pretty sweet name. Ends up taking back Edessa in 1146.

and this is when we get Crusade Part D. Well, hold on before you start tickling yourself on the underside for the Crusade Part Duh. So you would think that as soon as Jerusalem was taken, the Fatimid Empire would be like, we just fucking got that.

Like, rally the fucking troops. Let's go take this shit back. Well, a funny thing is they're still fighting kind of an internal struggle, essentially. You still have all these other. like caliphates. Again, you had the Seljuks who were fighting the Fadamids, who were fighting people that are further to like the southeast. You have a lot of internal strife that's going on. So this is,

you're not exactly attacking like a unified front. It's just who happened to be holding Jerusalem at that time. And so they didn't really seem to notice. These Islamic world was just kind of like, okay, they got Jerusalem. And they're like, nice work. Fatimids couldn't even hold onto the holy city. And they're like, well, fuck you guys. If it's so easy, why don't you guys come and do it? then they start fighting each other again. But so, yeah, after Urban kicks the bucket 14 days after it's taken, we end up getting Pope Paschel the second. And like his predecessor, he was just like, oh, we got the Holy City.

Like, I'm not in at all opposition to any of the wholesale slaughter that went down there. So keep at it, guys, and kind of gives us thumb up for it. So we're still on. And brings us to, I believe it is in 1,100, Godfrey dies. And his brother Baldwin actually comes in. So he, brother, that's where Baldwin comes in as far as his capacity. So Baldwin, the first rules the newly established, like you said, kingdom of Jerusalem, alongside the other, I think, four crusader states that were just literally little strips that were on that far side of the Mediterranean.

They're just, they're basically holding that little 90 degree angle box right there. Do you think he kept Edessa too or you think that was like to step up? like Edessa was taken over by somebody else that he left in charge. Because technically at this point, if they're calling these things kingdoms and kingships and counties and all that shit, is there not a new hierarchical rule that comes in? Like, does his son take over in Odessa when he leaves to go take over Jerusalem? I think it does become like that. Yes, it comes into where it's, uh, fuck, why am I losing the word here? It's, uh, line of secession within the same bloodline.

Yep. And so you get, and then there's just kind of a turnover. So then essentially in we get all the way up to 18 or sorry 1118 in April, Baldwin the first dies. Guess who gets plugged in? Reaching back to that Royals episode. We're just going to get the repetitive nature of names here. So Baldwin too, of course, who else can it be? He ends up stepping in. And during this time, they've had some time to establish like their power base. Whoever is ruling Jerusalem has probably pulled in some of their own people to reinforce them. You also have all these other areas that are in these states that are being kind of trying to be broadened or have other of these kingdoms that are pulling people in from their countries to build up their strength. And because of that, and they're spreading out and wanting to take more area, you have just these constant fights that's going on this entire time, skirmishes between essentially the caliphate and, you know, different areas there against kind of the Crusader armies. We get to 1131. Baldwin 2 is out. Guess who's in?

Baldwin 3? Baldwin 3 is in. And because he was younger, he comes in to rule with his mother until 1143. Oh. His regent? Yeah. And then we get, like you were saying, 1144 on November 28th, we get the siege of Edessa, falls on the 24th of December.

So it doesn't, you know, a little bit longer of a siege in that's first siege of Jerusalem, but it still ends up Christmas yet? Well, I mean, there was the day in which, well, Oh shit. No, because that's Easter. Why? Oh, my God. Someone's going to have to comment why we have the religious significance of December 25th. Well, it was when Jesus was born. Oh, yeah. That's right.

But I mean... I don't remember every fictional character's birthday that I fucking read about. Sorry, man. Do you think that... Can't tell you when Frodo was born. Do you think that that was a story by now? Do you think they got attacked on Christmas intentionally? Like, Islam's like your guy who was born?

No, no. The siege started on November 28th. They just happened to... the city fell on December 24th. They were like, okay, here's the deal, guys. This city's going to get taken. Now, we can either let them take it a little bit early or they can take it on Jesus's birthday. They're like, fuck, no, let them take it, let them take it a day early.

So this was essentially, and again, Addessa, if we're going down the list of where these places are from north to south, Addessa is the furthest one that's to the north. Pretty high up. So now we get a situation in which, guys, what, that corridor of coming through the Byzantine Empire and everything, you don't have to walk through hostile territory just to get down to the Holy Land. So you're going to see a shift essentially in how these people are bringing in troops and kind of wage and war at this point. But you get the siege of Edessa, it falls. And then that being the Crusader's major defeat, two years later, 1146, we get the second siege of Edessa where it's reversed. You essentially have the Franks coming in. to go ahead and try to recapture the city. They end up coming up short on it. And because they came up short, that essentially is what leads to the pop-off of the Second

Crusade, because guess what, we got to clear these people out. They're going to end up taking over the Holy Land. Yeah, and we can't get enough stuff down to Jerusalem by boat. That's taken too long. We need this corridor back. It's not only that. It's because, yeah, you can send your knights down and you can send your commanders down, things like that, supplies.

you still have to march troops down. And because some of these, you know, these are being funded essentially by these, you know, by these own kingdoms and everything you think to be funded by the church because you know all that money's funneling back to the fucking paper coffers. But they're not going to pay for every single one of their guys to end up being shipped down there.

So they're still marching a lot of resources and everything over land. And if that option is out, it may not completely stem the flow of supplies and troops, but it's definitely going to put a fucking hamper on it. Yeah, you only have so many boats. You can only move stuff so fast, so far that way. Yeah, so we come to 1147, and I will let you take it from there. When the new pope, we get a new pope.

Eugene, oh, sorry, Eugenius. I like Eugene. Eugene's better. Eugene, the third, steps in, and, yeah, kicking off Crusade Part D. This is Crusade Season 2. We're getting a new cast. I mean, New Pope. A literal new cast, actually.

And the little new cast, we get New Pope, and this is a new post. why this thing is a television show. It's like American horror story or White Lotus. Same show, but you're going to get different casts. And some seasons aren't going to be as good as other seasons. There you go. Fargo is, I love all the seasons of Fargo. So maybe it's not an app description. But it's a rotating cast. Yeah. Okay. Well, same people, sometimes different characters. But there's intertwining characters that kind of like, okay, this has got that too. So our first to combatants, kind of the main two that lead this crusade. Louis the 7th of France, who Louis the 1st of France, or second France, whatever it was, was excommunicated prior to the first crusade,

so he didn't get the invite. Must have been back in the good graces because Louis the 7th of France is headed on out. Conrad, the 3rd of Germany. So we have this Holy Roman Emperor that sat out the first round, but as you said, the Franks were attacked trying to take back Odessa, or the Franks attack trying to take back Odessa and were turned down, the Roman Empire is like, we're on our way. Buddy, they're taking off the gloves.

This is the first crusade where kings are being put in charge, man. We're not fucking around anymore. We're putting kings in the field. Yeah, and this was, I'm sure, probably a well-needed break for some of these dudes. And because it was being, you know, if the kings are sending down the princes,

that they, you know, the expendable prince is essentially, the spas, there is going to be organization. There is going to be funding behind that, but they're still going to want to keep some of that back home. When the kings themselves are going down, it's going to be more organized, it's going to be more controlled.

And at this point, travel to the hoagland is going to take place mostly by sea and basically from Constantinople. So we don't have to sail as far, but now we get to bypass, essentially, like you said, it's the Zingad. We get to bypass the Zengid area that took over the county of Odessa,

and now we get to go straight to the Holy Land. We can still march most of our troops over there, but then we can send them a shorter distance. Yeah. It's perfect that you set that up that way because both forces would swiftly be defeated by the Seljuk Turks as soon as they got onto the battlefield. Both of them went down.

It was just a bloodbath, and this stall happens immediately that was like, ooh, probably should have thought that one out. Probably should have got more people. Because, again, the first crusade, everybody's fired up and ready to go. The second crusade rolls around, you're only getting two kingdoms. You're only getting two kings signing on board instead of everybody from England,

instead of everybody from France or from Germany. Shit, not Germany. Wherever else they came from besides France and Germany. And at the same time, you got to wonder if the people are like, wait, there's a second one. Didn't you tell us you captured? Yeah, I thought you said we captured the Holy Land. What do you mean? We've got to run a second one.

Oh, they're taking it back? oh fuck okay well yeah i guess we got a fight again and the the holy war in the crusades weren't just limited to that area adam already kind of or adam already covered it to where even marching through areas of like where germany and france are they were kind of doing their own holy crusades there and the second crusade it's it's no difference so there was actually um lisbon in spain was actually a like islamic territory and islamic state and so part of the crusades actually took place and actually capturing lisbon the recroman the recroman Conquista. Is that what they called it? I believe so. The reconquest. Is that what you're getting at? Gotta be. So in 1148, after a bunch of battles and everything, the Crusader Army finally reaches Antioch. And at that point, they're in Antioch. They're like, okay, the next step is we're going to go ahead and move on that area of Edessa, and we're going to go and take it back. That way, we can reopen the supply lines. We're not having to ship all our guys from Constantinople. They can cross over and they can market over land. And we can keep the Zengids from coming back into this area and we can keep conquering our shit. So the plan is to

move on Odessa, but Baldwin, the 3rd down there in Jerusalem is like, hold up. I think I have an idea. I think you guys should go and take Damascus instead. And they're like, why would we do that? We need to kind of take the Zingids out and push my out of the earth. Like, trust me, trust me. We need to take Damascus. That's what's going to be the linchpin here. It's going to work out great. for everybody. So June or sorry, July 24th and 28th of 1148 is the siege of Damascus and is basically just a big fucking shit storm for the Crusaders. It even causes it to the point where the French and Germans are feeling like betrayed by one another because they're not like supporting each other and everything. The Crusaders are still controlling Jerusalem at this time, but essentially

the reinforcements that were major, you know, sent down there. to pretty much retake Addessa, all that area. They kind of marched out into enemy territory, and they got their, they got their peepy smoke. What really comes out of it is the Reconquista going on in Liberia actually goes pretty well. They start to suppress. They start to push down kind of clearing Portugal.

The big thing that we get out of this is the rise of a general name Saladin. and Saladin would end up taking Jerusalem and Saladin is a pretty bad mofo. He is actually, he served under Nealdean for the Zengids. Oh, buddy, you're getting ahead of yourself before we even... How much further? There's some stuff that goes on. Okay.

So, and one thing that is just fucking cool as shit. So kind of the failure of these campaigns, because kind of what Baldwin is dealing with is, yeah, they've taken that kingdom of Jerusalem and everything. But with having that kingdom, you still have, all your soldiers are still up north. You still don't have that support of that Second Crusade. You also don't have a pillowy south. That's what I'm saying. That's where the, like, right to your south, that's where the majority of your opposition is coming from. And so the failure of these campaigns, like Damascus and everything, all the people that are in the Holy Land. And I mean,

they've been established there for not a huge portion of time, but they've been down there for a little while. It starts to cause this, like, rift. Two bald ones worth. Yeah, that's exactly. It starts to kind of cause this rift between the Christians that are down there established in these kingdoms and the new crusaders. They're like, you guys are supposed to come down here and do some shit that's helping us, and you guys are just kind of up there getting your asses kicked.

And it also hurts the reputation of the papal see because they were the ones that were, this was supposed to be the one that was run by kings and organized. And this was the one that was going to put, you know, everything to doubt as far as who was going to rule this area and people are looking at the church and being like, what was that again? You guys got buried in Damascus. Yeah. You're not even, you're 130 miles from, from fucking Jerusalem and you guys get, you know, they don't get wiped, but it's, it's definitely embarrassing. It reduces their ability to essentially make any type of headway in that area. In 1152, Raymond the second of Tripoli becomes the first Frankish victim of the assassins. Oh. And the assassins were a real

thing. I'm trying to remember who actually ran them. I don't think it was the Zingids. It might have been. But essentially, the order that we get the game, the Assassins Creed games and everything like that took the inspiration and the idea from this league, essentially, of Assassins. Really? Yes. Huh. And so kind of to, you know, as far as where everything sits at the time, you have North Africa, and the majority of Syria is controlled by the Fatimids. You have Addessa in that area, Zangid, Kingdom of Jerusalem, which at some point, the kingdom of Jerusalem didn't even include Jerusalem. So Jerusalem was still in the hands of the Crusaders. But the kingdom of Jerusalem, because it was kind of spread out into who had control of stuff, so the kingdom of Jerusalem was actually in control by the Byzantine.

and it was an area that kind of surrounded Jerusalem a little bit, but it didn't actually include the city itself, which is kind of funny. You had the Latin Christian states that were there, and then you have this kind of new player in Iraq and Iran. It was the Sluklids. So they're kind of the power that's kind of rising essentially, like in the east as well.

And everybody is just fighting everybody. So like you said, the Zingids end up taking Damascus. All of Syria is now under Zangid rule. And because of that, Baldwin has to end up signing a treaty. Because he's kind of been cut off from any of that support. And the Zangids are basically kind of closing in that fucking hand over the north. And Baldwin is just basically like, okay, yeah, I can tell this isn't really going well for me. I don't know.

Is there going to be a third crusade? I don't know. So ends up signing this treaty basically being like, hey, we're not going to go ahead and try to spread out or try to, you know, we'll refrain from hostilities with you and everything. Because also at the same time, the Zengids coming in from the north, they're like, probably best at this time if we're not just fighting both the Crusaders and the Fatimids. So it's like, you guys are not a threat, but at the same time, we don't want to raise resources. We'll come back for you later. But like, let's go ahead and make sure that we don't have.

your guys from Jerusalem in these areas coming and trying to attack us in the back while we're fighting the fatomids so 1163 10 years after that baldwin the third goes down and guess who comes in not baldwin four this guy named um almerich of jerusalem he's the brother of baldwin the third so i guess he didn't have any kids and he's crowned now this dude almerick the muslims say was the bravest and cleverest of the crusader kings and Apparently, I don't know how long that reputation stuck because in 1163, all the way to 1169, he's like, you know what we should do. I got this treaty going on with the Zengids. I don't got to worry about them from like the north or from the east at this point. The Fatimids, though, they don't have it. You know, they're fighting them. And because they're fighting them, maybe they're a little bit weakened. So I think what we do is we shore up our borders a little bit. And we're going to launch four fucking invasions of,

Egypt by this guy. That seems like a mistake. Just, yeah, let's, I mean, let's march our guys further away from the areas that we're able to bring in supplies and other guys. But he saw the fact that they were fighting against the Zengens as well. He's like, they've got to be weak, right? I mean, they're too busy with their attention here. So we might as well get while the Gittin's good.

Now, before he did this and these invasions, Ulmerich actually went against the treaty. that was signed and ends up attacking the Zengids and ends up defeating them in like one battle. And I don't know if he's expected it to be like, yeah, we'll beat him in one battle. We'll completely take him out of commission to make war. And then we'll go do these, you know, these four invasions. Well, that came back to kind of like bite them right in the ass because in 1164, literally a year later, the Zengids end up attacking the Crusaders while they're all in Egypt.

And that happens in August. So the guys that you just went against this treaty that you had, you end up pissing them off. You think you end up throwing a fucking knockout punch on him. You got your back turned. Mills Lane is in the corner. Count for this other guy. And the camera pans on the guy down on his knees.

He's not, he slipped. He didn't really get hit. And so while you're busy down in Egypt, he's just like, oh, your backside is exposed. I'm going to come in there and I'm going to fucking do my thing. Get you by the haunches. And while this was going on and while they attack, the Zangids actually sneak getting into you now. Well, actually, poor, poor terms of phrasing.

Sorry. Yeah, into them. The Zangids sneak this guy named General Shirka or Shirka and his nephew into Egypt. Now, this guy, his nephew, ends up becoming the Vizier of Egypt, which is kind of like a high-ranking advisor to like the Sultanate and everything or whoever is. in charge of the Caliphate at that time. Cool name. Yeah. This nephew ends up being Saladin.

I can't quite put a comp on Saladin. Because he wasn't like a Mongol. He didn't seem to quite have their success. But he wasn't nearly nothing. Like he was a pretty good general, it seems like. One of his like major things. So they get a. attacked, the crusaders get attacked by the Zengids in August. Saladin is essentially with that

Zengid empire because they snuck him in everything. And then in October, Saladin ends up, sorry, in 1169. That's when Shurka actually dies. And that's when Saladin is made Vizier. So that's when he's in a position to actually command and everything. He ends up beating this massive crusader, like joint crusader Byzantine force at this place called Damietta. And it, It was during this, of course, it's a fucking siege. They're all fucking sieges. But Damietta was on the coast of, I want to say, Egypt, and it was like a really important port city.

Yeah, this won't be the only time we mentioned Damietta in this. Yeah. So it's strategic importance is known very early on. But if you can gain Damietta, you can then bring in supplies and you can start establishing that, you know, essentially what would be like a beachhead to try to invade, you know, Egypt and kind of push them out. I believe it's on the Nile, too. So it's maybe even deeper into.

Africa, which... Even better. So much better. So we come to 1174, when finally, finally in July, we get to Baldwin 4. Oh, good. And this dude, if anyone has ever seen Kingdom of Heaven, I think it's a great movie. It's a Ridley Scott movie. And it basically covers the time frame between the second and third crusades.

The Leopard King is Baldwin the Fourth. So he's made king at age 13, and he's the lever king that has to wear like the steel mask and everything. So this guy's not projected to live very long. That's got to look for you. Yeah. So 1177 rolls around, and Baldwin, at that time now 16, Baldwin, this guy named Renaud de Chathion and the Templars. Now, just to kind of provide a breakdown of some of these different organization of knights, they'll have these group. of them where you get like the Knights Templar, which is very hilarious.

I think you've listened to the podcast where we heard this about how like a lot of dudes will like in England and Britain and stuff like that will have like Knights Templar like tattoos and like references to it and everything like that. And even people, they use so much of that iconography and everything even here in the States. We did a whole episode on them. I know, but most people don't know that it was a French order of Knights. No, no, certainly not. Yeah. So the Templars are essentially like a French order of knights. You have the Knights Hospitalier who were basically an order of knights, but they also ran like a bunch of the hospitals in the in the Holy Land. The reason why we have the word hospitals is these guys. Is the Knights of Tocetalier. And then you get the like later on you get like the Teutonic Knights,

who I believe were more like the Holy Roman Empire, maybe German type. Probably more Germanic. Yeah. Because there is a shift, I think, in this where it ceases to be the Holy Roman Empire and is just the kingdom of Germany. Oh, really? I think so. Well, it fucking takes place over a long enough period of time that there's going to be some regional changes. We'll figure it out. So, you know, Baldwin, Renard, and the Templars beat Saladin at this thing called the Battle of Montes God.

Or sorry, Jesus Christ, I can't pronounce this, Montguessard. And at that point, I mean, that's huge. you just have the 16-year-old king of Jerusalem who just defeated Saladin. That's going to really raise your credit on that. And not only does this help establish Baldwin's rule and, you know, kind of his favor, but it also makes guys like Renaud de Chetion and the Templars basically be looked upon in this very admirable light. Yeah. The Templars were a pretty big deal everywhere.

We talked about it in the episode. They were kind of the shepherds to get you into Javans. Jerusalem through these areas that were hotly contested. That was like one of the, like with all the nights, that was like on the like the mission statement. It's like, protect the pilgrims and the travelers upon the roads to the holy land. And then in fine print, it was like, and kill people that don't believe in our God as often as possible. They were the bankers. Just from that old episode, remembering that you could go cash your money in and get whatever a receipt basically.

that you could then take on your journey down to Jerusalem instead of hauling a bag of gold with you, all you have to have is this receipt to show up to a Templar bank down there and just withdraw your money. Having financial control over it, and down there is huge. Oh, yeah.

You're hugely powerful, especially if people have to come to you to reestablish and rebuild fortifications or their castles and everything that they're kind of like taking over. If you guys have time, look up like Crusader castles in the Holy Land, and it's crazy to see,

you see these things that you think should be in like, you know, France and in England and everything, but they're down here in the Middle East. And some of them are still in, you know, a couple of them are in pretty good shape. So between 77 and 83, 1177, 1183, you basically just have kind of a back and fork with Saladin. Everyone's just kind of swinging. Everyone's landed some punches, but no one's really landed like a knockout blow. Nothing official. This is post-second crusade, pre-third crusade. Exactly. This is just kind of skirmishes that are going on. We haven't brought God back into this quite yet. This is basically like, they're not really shipping a ton of, there hasn't been a holy, you know,

a papal bowl or a holy decree that says, all you motherfuckers need to stop what you're doing and head back down to the holy land. They're kind of just fighting amongst other forces down there with the, with the resources that they have. So 1185 rules around and we get Baldwin the fourth dying, you know, leprosier will do that. And Baldwin the fifth actually tags in. So sticking with the Baldwin's here. Now, his region is this guy, Raymond the third of Tripoli. And this guy basically serves as the driving force behind this negotiated truce with Saladin. So we come to the next year after Baldwin the fourth is in. And Baldwin is... Baldwin is fifth, right? Oh, yeah. Sorry,

Baldwin, the fifth is in in 1186. Baldwin, the fifth is out. And his mother, Sabilla, and Guy de Liseon is crowned. And Guy de Luzion is obviously a French name. Guy, I think, isn't it? Oh, yeah, Guy, sorry, Guy de Louisiana. I believe he is a Templar or a member of the Templar Order. But at that point, he's not? Oh, he is.

We're starting to make business a pleasure now. What do you mean? We have Templars that are now kings. Yes, correct. And even though technically the queen is, is the one as part of the official bloodline. This is in an age where the queen is just simply kind of there to marry someone who's then going to be fucking king of Jerusalem.

Placeholder. So this whole truce with Saladin and everything that's kind of been going on for the last couple of years. Yeah, that's like the first thing that's out the door. Because in 1887, Giefeld's the largest crusader army that's ever been assembled. A bunch of fucking guys, a lot of armor, a lot of swords. And guess what? If you want to beat a bunch of guys in the desert who mostly wear heavy, the most effective guys, the knights wearing heavy armor, carrying heavy shit, probably a good idea if you just kind of like draw them out in the desert, make them walk for a while, maybe keep them away from water sources and everything.

Poise in the water sources, maybe. This is 1087. You're walking around. You see it well. Everybody's filling up. Correct. Like any oasis. And these are known areas.

Like where to go. But they're known to both sides and they're heavily controlled with whoever, because that's the most valuable resource out there. That's what's going to keep your troops moving. But surely, Guy would not be stupid enough to march his army out of Jerusalem out into the fucking middle of the desert and fight a people who have lived in the desert their whole fucking lives. Probably know a few other springs and things like that that you don't know about. So you don't, though, right? Well, I mean, you do. I mean, if you're gui, you definitely do

because Saladin ends up luring them out and basically his plan is he's like, I'm just going to march these motherfuckers till they drop. And then I'm going to come in, I'm going to sweep up. And so he has his guys basically position themselves between this marching crusader army and these water sources that they're trying to walk between because you walk your army to a water source,

then you walk a little bit more. I think it was probably kind of like taking a flight where flights rarely ever go in a B-line. You're just kind of going this way for a certain number of minutes, then you turn a little bit. I think that's kind of the way you had to navigate around that area in the Holy Land is because you're marching from water to water. You still have mountains. You still have other things that you have to cross.

Yeah. And so what ends up happening should be no surprise because out of like an 18 to 20,000 man army that Ghee had assembled, the forces of Saladin pretty much just wiped the floor destroy most of them and have really, really light losses in return. You're fighting an away game and you don't know what you're doing. So what do you do? You just basically took out almost the majority of the force that has taken some time and been assembled in Jerusalem to march out.

This would be the perfect time for, you know, a siege of Jerusalem, right? Probably. They're pretty weak. Yeah. So September 20th rolls around. That's exactly what happens. We get the Saladin led siege of Jerusalem. And siege is probably a heavy word here, right?

I mean, it was quick because essentially the city was surrendered to Saladin by Billion of Eblen on October 2nd. So we've literally just covered essentially from the time when Baldwin, the leper was king and Guy gets crowned king. That's basically like the entire plot point and the length of the movie of Kingdom of Heaven. is it discusses this time. It's good, man. Ridley Scott has a director's cut

that's like, I think, like, two and a half hours long, but it, like, fills in a lot of cool, like, crusader, like, tidbits and all this kind of stuff. Of course, it's completely dramatized, and it's got a Orlando Bloom. He's so handsome. And I know we're going to get responses. I mean, like, you guys gay?

I'm like, no, I just fucking can acknowledge a fucking handsome man. You say get responses? You mean, get more responses? Get more responses, exactly. But, uh, yeah. So basically, Saladin at this point, in an opposite move of the crusaders is like, okay, you're going to surrender the city. He's like, here's the terms.

I think this is what Bailey Nibblein or like requested as the terms. He's like, you surrender the city and I will give safe conduct and travel to all Christian souls out of the Holy Land and then back to the areas that you guys are going to control. The ones that we're not going to contest you for right away. Wasn't it unless you're a Jerusalem, born Christian. And you could stay, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then you would be able to stay. I'm going to go, I'm going to put it back to how it was where, yeah, these people can stay and we're not, you know, here's the thing about this history is there's no fucking dog in the fight on

this. So you can simply look at this. If you were to just say there's the A team and the B team, blue and red, whatever. And you were to go ahead and start just discussing the merits of this kind of stuff, you would be like, well, the guys that just took the city but are letting all of the people that want to leave actually leave. You're like, these don't really. sound like the bad guys in comparison to all the guys who have been just pretty much killing anything that moves once they take these cities. So take that however you guys want it. We're talking about something that's held up as a holy land through both of these forces. But at the same time, one of them kind of looks at more like, hey, this is a business.

We have some history here. The other ones are like, not a business. This is all of our history. We're taking everything. You get nothing out of it. Well, news of this gets back to wherever the fuck the Pope is at this point. And I don't know if this is exactly what caused it, but the timing, if we talk about the timing that it took the conquer of Jerusalem for the news to end up getting back to the Pope. And then we look at this timeline of surrender on October 2nd and October 19th when Pope Urban the third dies. I kind of want to imagine that he got the fucking scroll or the paper, whatever it was on. He looked at that and he was just like, just clutched his chest and fucking drop dead. This is the guy that dies upon hearing the news, isn't it?

No, no, no. It happened both times. Oh. Yes. So Urban II dies 14 days after Jerusalem was taken and never knew about it. This dude, Urban III, dies on the 19th after around the same amount of time, possibly after hearing the news that Jerusalem had been surrendered by the Christians. So just kind of a nice little, it brings it full circle on that. Yeah. The new Pope, we get Gregory the 8th.

And he's like, you know what? We ain't standing for this shit. He issues the papal bowl, the audita tremendi, which is basically the tremendous audit, which I had to fucking laugh because I wonder if this word tremendous is used a lot because it's, I don't know if it was a paper bowl or anything like that. But it issues this on October 29th, 1187. And this action here is going to lead us. to Crusades Trace.

Trace, no, not three Crusades, but Crusade numeral Trace. Yep, there you go. Number stick, stick, stick, if you're wanting to go by Roman numerals. I, I, aye, aye. Now, out of all the Crusades, this one, there's one that I find a little more entertaining

just because it's for comedic purposes, but this is the mediest of all the crusades. This is where you had season two of the show that disappointed. They couldn't recapture the magic of that first season. So what do you have to do? You got to get viewership back up. You got to get your ratings back up there. So you fucking take off.

You drop the fucking, you erase the drawing board. You flip it over and you say, who do we call in for this? We need some fucking bangers. We need a star to lead this next crusade. And who do we get? The Lionheart. Richard the first. of England. We covered this guy in the monarchy episode, and then we covered his idiot that followed

him, King John. Richard was a crusade and man. If the crusades were made for anybody, it was King Richard. This guy was born to crusade. Yep. And you basically get, you know, another call for the kings. Listen, we can't put this back in the hands of the princes, even though they succeeded the first time. we need the kings here. Mission, get Jerusalem. Oh, I just realized it screwed up. What? Philip the first, I believe, was the pervert that got excommunicated.

Philip the second is the one that joins this crusade. Correct, yep. So the non-excommunicated, Philip the second. The one that's allowed to do this. So part of the papal bowl, this Audita Tremendi, is all Christians. Drop what you're doing and take up arms. We get some, the main thing. three players here that are going to be commanding this thing. We get Frederick Barbosa, who is the

Holy Roman Emperor. Is it Barbosa or Barbarossa? I'm sorry, Barbarossa. Is this, I was going to ask you this. I had this exact same thought. Is this where we get Operation Barbarossa? I want to say the spelling was different for the operation, but I don't know because he was the Holy Roman Emperor and he was the king, which is crazy. He was an elected king of Germany, which is insane. We're going to have to dig into that later. He's one of the main guys. He ends up taking the cross, I think, in March 1188. So he takes

it like right before they're getting ready. Basically, they call him up and they're like, hey, do you want to lead this? And he's like, fuck yeah, I want to lead this. And he's like, you're going to take the cross. He's like, I haven't taken the cross. Okay, I'll take the cross. So you get him. You get Philip the 2nd of France. And then you get our boy. Dickie. Dickie

won, the Lionheart. And he took the cross, actually, I think, in 1187. So he was good to go. They know he was down to clown. He took the cross before the papal bowl even was released. Yeah. He could feel it in his loy. Horny.

Yeah. He was horny. But, uh, emperor Frederick Barbarossa was pretty old-ass dude, wasn't he? He was, and he wasn't going to sit around maybe because he knew of the, you know, he had fear of the old age because he doesn't really wait. I mean, the, the reason the Third Crusade starts in 1189 isn't because Richard or isn't because Richard is fucking like hauling ass out of town on this crusade. It's because Freddie actually starts before anyone else. So he heads out in May of 1189 and by August he's kind of in the Byzantine area and starts

a fight with the Byzantines as one does. Christian on Christian crime. A little more Christian on Christian crime and kind of gets into it with the Byzantines there on his way through. He ends up pushing his way through there and in 1190 because the business. Byzantines are like, get the fuck out. And he's like, I got to get to the Holy Land. So he pushes through to get kind of like through the Byzantine Empire.

The Turkish are like, oh, totally, dude, come in here. You can totally go through our area. And he's like, seriously, for real? And they're like, yeah, of course. Yeah, not accurate. As soon as they allow him to get in and pretty much probably get all of his army in where they can kind of close the back door on him, they basically just like are harassing his with these like hit and run attacks, causing a bunch of chaos.

and eventually the Turks are like, okay, we've got these guys softened up. They're well within our territory. Now it's time to strike. So they end up attacking with 10,000, like, I'm just going to say Turkish troops, Turk troops. I think they're the Seljuks still. The Seljuks, okay.

They weren't the Zen. Oh, no, no. The Zengids were still a little bit more south. Yeah. And then you still had a little bit of remnants for, like, yeah, the Seljuks, I think. Well, Crusaders end up winning with 2,000 guys. Pretty good win.

And you got to imagine these are guys that Richard has selected to go on this. They're probably well supplied. They're fucking warmed up after scuffling with the Byzantines a little bit. So they're probably a little pissed off as well from getting told they can walk through this area safely. And now they're fucking getting attacked. This isn't still Barbarossa. This is everybody. This is Richard, Barbarossa and Philip.

No, this is Freddie. This is just Freddie going through here. So Barbarossa. Yes. Yes. Sorry. Richard. Okay.

Freddie is who I'm, that's Barbara Rosa. Yeah. Yeah. So Freddie's like, um, yeah, this ain't cool. You've also wasted a lot of my supplies and fighting me and everything. He's like, so I'm going fucking shopping. And he ends up sacking the Turkish capital, which has the coolest fucking name, iconium. That's such a fucking, that's like a sci-fi, futuristic city or planet.

It's adamantium. It sounds like. So Iconium, that would be a fucking like, uh, uh, uh, fuck when I'm my, um, God damn it. Why can't I think of the guy, uh, Childish Gambino album. Yeah. Iconium, some shit like that. You also had Byzantium, right? Prior to for the Byzantine Empire.

You had what? Byzantium. That's just, I think, kind of a, is that a city or is that? I thought that was the city that was, uh, we did a whole episode on it. It, dude, do you know how much information? I've tried to fucking fit my head since then. I get it. You got to make room for other stuff.

There's only so much room you got. That's just where we get the name. Byzantine Empire was from Byzantium. Okay. So it's just that Eam at the end of stuff. Please don't make me go back in the Rolodex. I can't go back that far. But they end up attacking Iconium in May of 1190 and

by, and they take it. So basically, they just kind of sack the city, they resupply themselves. They feel good about themselves. They feel like they've got one back on the Celtics at that point. But it's not to be. Freddie's not destined to make the Holy Land. June 10th, crossing a river. Freddy's horse takes a tumble crossing.

He ends up getting dashed upon the rocks and drowning. And upon loss of Frederick, Barbara Rosa, holy Roman emperor, and the elected king of Germany, his guys are like, so back to Germany? And most of them are like, yep, back to Germany. Nobody wants to fight in his name. Nobody wants to get this one for the Gipper. They say, he died.

Well, hold on, because it gets, it gets fucking weird because his son Freddy ends up also named Freddie. Yeah, his son, Freddie. So Freddie Deuce. So Freddie Deuce takes 5,000 of the guys and he's like, we're going to Antioch. We're not calling this thing quits. But before we do, when we get to Antioch, what I'm going to do is I'm going to boil my father's body. And the reason I'm going to do that is I'm going to boil the flesh off my father's body and we're going to send that back to St. Peter's Church because that's where the Holy Roman Emperor is to be interned. But Pops has got to finish this crusade, right? Honor demands

it. So we're going to keep his bones with us in a sack on crusade. Was this a normal practice? because it had to be established that this had occurred previously and this is how things were done because who's going to sit there and be like, okay, here's the deal, guys. A little cram session or a little brainstorming session. The old man, he's fucking big.

And if we're being honest, it's going to start to stink. It already has. We can't be taking his body, you know, all around with us on Crusade. And he's going to kill him. me if I don't send him back to be buried in St. Peter's Church. So ideas. Someone start kicking out stuff. And some guy's like, why don't we, um, when I have chicken, when you boil the chicken, the meat comes off the bone. And then you can just eat the meat. And then you just throw the bone away.

And he's like, so what you're saying is if we boil my father's carcass, that his meat will simply strip off the bones. And then we can just take the bones and send the meat. It's like, yeah, like a fucking Costco overtis for your chicken. When you deconstruct that bitch when you get home. That's kind of what they did with, uh... What do you mean deconstruct? By deconstruct, do you mean eat it all off the bone? Is it sitting in the plastic tin and you just don't really even want to go get a plate? No, I mean, the, the process of deconstruction of a chicken is normally the rip, rip two, one mouth, rip two,

one mouth. That's usually my system. Unless you get a piece, couple of those, like a couple straight pieces with the skin on them, then those just go straight in the mouth. But you can't eat a whole rotissary chicken. Society judges you for stuff like that. That's why you don't tell them. So after sending the meat back and taking the bones with them, they end up not making the mission of taking Jerusalem. Mission is considered a failure at that point.

But consolation prize, they did end up taking the Seljuk capital. So, I mean, they had, hey, guys, we may not have made it all the way down to the Holy Land, but, you know. Good score. Yeah. I mean, they had something to show for it at least, right? Yeah. You talking about strip and meat off the bones made me remember something that I didn't remember which one it fit into, so I had to Google it.

According to historical records, the First Crusade is widely considered to be the crusade where cannibalism was documented well. Specifically during the siege of Mara, where Christian crusaders were reported to have eaten the bodies of their Muslim enemies due to extreme starvation during the siege. Yeah. So even the Christian... It's not pork. It's not against the Bible. Oh. Don't Muslims have dietary restrictions? Humans probably got to be on there, right?

I think humans should be on the dietary restrictions of any culture. Yeah. Yeah, I think that should maybe just be a no-go. I mean, even the fact, is that, does that count? Is that something that can be washed away because you took up the war? Like is that... Yeah, you're still going on crusade. I mean, you're still, I mean,

Okay, is it like a grading on a curve system where it's like, okay, let's see. So you didn't retake Jerusalem. No, but we did take the capital of the Seljuk Empire and we killed like a lot of like, you know, Muslims and everything. They're like, okay, cool, cool. So what we're going to do is we're going to forgive 80% of the sins, but we'll make them the 80% the worst ones. Like all the shit on Crusade you guys did. so like banging people outside marriage you guys will still be responsible for that one but i mean come on and they all just fucking laugh to each other like it's not a little thing philip you just got excommunicating

he was brought back in exactly so do you think because they were able to take jerusalem in the first crusade cannibalism was just wiped off too yeah like by any means necessary man okay this is a by any means necessary type thing listen we don't want to hear how you did it just tell us you did it right And now to the cream, the cream of the crop for zany crusader adventures, we come to Dick and Phil's wacky adventure in Maple Leaf Land. This isn't the one quite yet where Dick and Phil had to stop, no, they hadn't had to stop fighting each other. That comes on later on. Yeah.

But again, you have constantly warring France in England. You do, but they get buddy buddy. Yeah. during this it's just like basically like see each other and they're like you tried to kill all my guys and he points and he's like you did it first and they just fucking laugh and they know that they basically just like have it over on all of their subjects and so they have more in common probably than they want to fucking lit on about but yeah probably a pretty toxic relationship yeah you get um who would that be is it a set set rogan james franco situation no because both of them were shitbagged I really like Seth Rogan. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Seth Rogan's not a shit bag. No, no, no, I said both of these guys.

Oh, yeah, okay. Dick and Phil. Just want to clear his name. Seth, God damn, no. Great guy. You're a goddamn treasure. Yeah, I'm trying to think of like, who are two frenemies that are really,

you know what it is? It's like that George Clooney and Brad Pitt-Wolfs show where they're kind of like everyone's just like, we just wanted to see him in another movie together. I was going to say Jack Lemmon and Walter Mathel. There we go. Trump are your old men. Yeah, they were both still fun guys.

That's exactly. So in England, 1189, July 6th, I love that they also, we know these dates because they were, you know, the chronicle of the shit. I'm questionable on much of this. And also, there's also the question of which calendar was used at this point in time. I got a lot of questions about the dates. Yeah, but by us getting to state dates, we sound that much more like we know what we're talking about. Oh, yeah, no, no, then, yeah. Oh, God, yes, I don't know if these things are accurate.

Henry the second dies Richard is like fuck yes I've been waiting for this shit and he wastes no time and to start raising money he starts pulling in every fucking cent he can

because he's like guess what I took the cross back in 87 I know this issue of the papal bowl it was out on you know a couple years ago in 1887 and I've just been

fucking chomping at the bit I've been gearing up I've been making making plans. Now I'm going to have access to the cash. Basically, dad's dead. Fuck you, dad. You didn't understand what I want to do. I'm going on crusade. Nothing you can do to stop me. You let that dirty Frank Barbosa get down there before us. Yeah. How fucking dare you? I'm the goddamn, well, I don't know when he got the Lionheart name. It had to have been like during the crusade or some shit like that. potentially. Yeah. So in 1190, Richard sets out. It's going to

make a pit stop in Lisbon as one does got to you got to warm up you got to maybe resupply if you guys still have that area yeah and meets up with Phil in the middle of France they don't even like meet up on the coast it's not it doesn't even feel strategic it's like right in the middle of France and they're just like so we mean we're going to march our guys as far as we can over land I also think that he didn't take all of his guys to Lisbon I think he probably got his guys across his channel and started marching in probably the shortest distance to like the south of France and Italy. Yeah.

So that's probably where they were going to meet up anyway. You think Richard looks back to his munitions, guys, like, hey, he doesn't see we're here, fire one over his bow. Mm-hmm. You just see Philip and the rest of the French turn around, like, oh, God, oh, no, this was an ambush. He's like, I want every fucking cannon firing to announce my presence. I want, I want everyone rock hard when we walk up on these fucking French.

So July 4th, they end up setting out. And basically, they march. a little while, like all of them together, which, what was that even fucking like to have all those guys who literally had to just take a time out from fighting each other? And they're just like, oh, we're marching next to these fucking guys. So maybe seeing guys that you've met on the battlefield. No shit, right? Especially like, you know, if you're like a commander and an officer, you've definitely commanded against some of these other guys and been beaten by him. The guy that had won, like, the last battle between you is just like, sup fucking loser.

Hey, Pierre, Mons, how's it going, man? Haven't seen you since Savagnan. Yeah. Oh, I see they didn't take your rank. Oh, they did take your rank down a little bit. Oh, that's a fucking shame. That's right. We won that one.

So they end up parting ways after a little bit. They probably got tired of each other, to be honest. They're like, okay, we've shown the goddamn church that we're going to try to present a unified front, but I guess we'll meet again back down in Sicily. I think Messina is kind of like, if you were heading down, Messina is the spot to meet upward, then you could all kind of like leave together. So Richard's like, okay, I'm going to take 800 of my guys and I'm actually heading for Marseilles. Some of my other troops are going to meet in another place because most of the places you would meet would be like the Italian, like Venice, Genoa, and they just basically had the capability of getting everyone down there.

Not Richard. He's going to Marseille. He wants to see Marseille a little bit. So Philip ends up heading to Genoa. And by the time Richard gets to Marseille, and by the time Richard gets to Marseille, his fleet's not there. All those ships he sent from England that were supposed to come down that were going to carry supplies that they didn't have to take over land and also take all of his troops

to the Holy Land. It's not showing up. So he's like waiting around for a little bit and you've got to imagine you're the admiral of his fucking fleet and by the time he gets down there after marching and shit that you're not down there yet

and he's just sitting there looking at the goddamn sundial and being like, this guy better have a fucking story to tell when he gets. gets down here. And you're the French admiral sailing and you've gone through a storm and you know you're a fucking week late and you're just like, this guy's going to fucking behead me so hard.

I'm dead as soon as I get there. You just have his first mate the guy waiting in line being like, yes. Yes. So his fleet's not there. So what's a king to do? Hire a bunch of fucking ships and get me and my 800 guys down there to fucking, you know, the Holy Land. Money is no option for Richard when it comes to a situation like this. No, no, no.

He's been raising funds and he has access to the Treasury of fucking England. So not going to be an issue. And, dude, this is what he feels like he was born for. He's going to spare no expense. So he's going to actually hire ships to get down to Sicily to get to Messina on August 7th. And just kind of geographically, you have where he's getting on in Marseilles, which is basically up at the root of the dick of Italy. And then you have Messina on Sicily, which is basically like the tip of the city of the city. of the penis of Italy

and it's off just the little straight between Sicily and the Italy proper. So he ends up selling down there, but he leaves August 7th. He doesn't get to Messina until September 23rd. He's making all these

fucking tourist stops with him and his 800 best boys, and you know they're fucking seeing the sights. They stop. They got to go to Rome. They got to fucking see it. They're taking selfies in front of the Colise. a fucking month and a half to get from the top of fucking Italy down to Messina. So they're working their way down.

They're fucking partying up down through Italy. And the ship, the English fleet, ends up getting to Marseille on August 22nd. So like a little, about like two weeks after they had left, he's got to see that fucking Richard's not there. Can you imagine they pull up and he's like, please be here, please be here, please be here? And he's like, has anyone seen King Richard? And they're like, yeah, he left like two weeks ago. And he's like, fuck.

Did he say where he was going? That's probably why he took his time. He's like, I'm going to fucking get down there and be waiting on this goddamn fucking admiral. I'm going to take my time getting down to Italy. There's a second there when you know that he's not there where you're like, well, maybe he's not here yet. And they're like, oh, I mean, two weeks behind. Not a fucking chance. So he ends up bolting for Messina to try to get down there.

And Philip is just like, you know what? I'm just going to go ahead and hire the Genoese to take the army to the Holy Land, and we're just going to head down via Sicily. And then that's where we're supposed to kind of meet again with Richard's guys. Well, Richard ends up getting to Messina a little early, and instead of just kind of chilling out and waiting, Richard is like, fuck it. I'm going to go ahead and capture Messina while I'm down here. And why would Richard do that, you ask?

It's because this guy, King Tancred, end up locking up Richard's sister because she was the wife of the previous king. And when he died, he took power. And he's like, yeah, you're kind of the link essentially to like the kingdom and like your brother Richard. So I'm going to go ahead and lock you up. Richard's pretty liberal with his sisters. So I think this is... This one goes with him. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, this is, this one, she won't be heading back home. This isn't like, hey... Is this the same sister? Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, I believe so. You guys are in for a treat. Yeah.

So he ends up breaking his sister out and conquering Messina. So Philip, you know, ends up rolling up. And he's like, oh, my God, what happened? He's like, yeah, the guy had my sister. And he's like, oh, totally understandable. Weebe. He's like, so we have Messina now. And he's like, yeah, we totally got me.

Messina. And during this time that they're meeting up in Messina, apparently there was this arrangement. And the reason that I think Philip and Richard were getting on is because Richard had kind of, I don't know if he'd fully agreed to it, but there was an implied agreement that Richard would actually marry Phillips half-sister, which I think is a little bit insulting that, like, and I don't know if he had a full sister, but to offer the fucking king of England, your fucking half-sister, that kind of seems like a backhanded offer to me. I'm not here to judge, but, you know, it's a half of something. Her right leg is a half inch shorter than her left leg. Uh, she has a glass eye. It's still in pretty good shape, though. She's used. You're not getting one

fresh off the lot. This is, this is coming with two previous owners. Well, and Richard is like, so I'm totally going to marry this other woman. And Philip is like, yeah, but remember, like, my half-sister, dude, like, totally check her. And he's like, yeah, I'm not marrying her. He's like, I've already selected somebody I'm going to marry. And sorry, dude. And so basically, this leads to the breakup of Philip and Richard. So what were once as close as brothers, having mouth kissed on several occasions, probably,

or not. Yeah, they have a little bit of a falling out because someone won't marry someone else's half-sister. Problems, man. First world problems for these guys. But they're still on the way to war, right? I mean, yeah. It'd be good if you were a team in one cohesive unit going in there. Fuck that at this point. So 1191, Phillips's like, well, guess what? You're not going to marry my half-sister. I'm fucking out of here. I'm heading for the Holy Landy English, bitch. and basically arrives in Tire, Tire, Tire. I'm going to go Tire, because that's had the E on the end of it, and arrives there in April. And basically, he's able to engage and kind of join the siege of, and would we decide, Akre? Acre, Akre, Akra, Akra.

So basically joins the siege of Ackre. And Richard ends up not even leaving Sicily until April 10th. So basically, I think it was like April 30th, that, Philip was there in, uh, entire. And basically Richard was just barely, had barely left Sicily with his guys. It did make sense, though, because he had to wait for his fucking admiral to get there, which I'm guessing, oh, man, I would love to know if that guy remained the admiral or alive. I would probably say more alive than admiral.

Yeah. He probably had a better chance at staying alive. Maybe. You're on thin fucking ice buster. You better get us to the Holy Land without any issues. and that's exactly what he didn't do because there was 180 ships that set out with Richard and his squad

they end up fucking hit in a storm the ship I'm gonna try to remember this because I didn't write down every detail but it's fucking hilarious somehow the ship that had all of the money and treasure and funding for that kind of stuff along with his sister oh no

and his wife ends up like running like a ground or something like that. And in some crazy fucking series of events, this leads to this ship being possessed by the island of Cyprus.

And so Richard ends up, I'm not sure if he got taken captive or he just ended up landing on Cyprus. This was also kind of a staging ground. You could kind of get all your ships together, get them kind of all timed up, and then all of you sail the much shorter distance into the Holy Land at that point.

Makes sense, I guess. So this, leads to what I have deemed as the Cyprus incident in which Richard proceeds then to conquer the island of Cyprus. You just conquered that last place. Probably need to conquer this place, I guess. Wasn't very hard to conquer the last place, and I mean, dude, you kind of got all my gold. Yeah.

And so what am I supposed to do? Take my eyes, but not my gold. Exactly. So after conquering Cyprus, which I think he probably got all this. boys together. He's like, hey, guys, guess what? Set up shop here. This is our new island. We now have the big one for the north, and we have another little one here. We just brought home that much closer. Yeah. Tis odd land now. Richard ends up getting to Ackray on June 8th, and because this siege still isn't broken, he's like, all right, fucking big boys here and gets like immediately to work.

like he shows up all of his guys come in the other guys have settled in for probably what they have determined at this point is already a long siege they're comfortable they're relaxed hey we're not in a huge rush richard comes in he's like get to fucking work and basically um has him start building like siege engines siege towers he gets there on june 8th the city is captured on july 12th sounds pretty good sounds pretty fast pretty efficient

you don't think no what i'm saying is you can't deny the guy's a, what you would call a force multiplier. But yeah, comes in and already he's the darling. And because now you have Philip, who is not on good terms with Richard, you have Richard, and then you also had the guy there that was before Philip even got there that was running the siege. So you basically have this squabbling and arguing over how they're going to kind of divvy up, like the spoils and all this shit from Ackre. And this whole thing then comes out.

because there's some questions over down in the kingdom of Jerusalem about who should actually be king. There apparently has been a little crisis of secession, some questions being raised, and it comes to this kind of argument. And I think one of the guys that was down there at Akra was also Leopold of Austria. There's a whole backstory set up to everything that's going on down there that almost deserves an entire episode with who King Richard may have been aligned with and all that kind of stuff that is so absolutely fascinating because there was like a lot of backstabbing going on. It's like a political intrigue and like that kind of shit. I don't know if you'll get to it, but there's a couple of assassinations that go on in this

point in time. I get to it. Yeah. I'm not leaving that kind of shit out. So we end up getting to be the situation where you have basically kind of two front runners for the kingdom of Jerusalem. And again, the sole goal or the sole public or, you know, goal that's put out to the public of these is to capture Jerusalem and make sure we, you know, maintain the Holy Land. Dude, it's a crusade.

What else would you crusade for than capturing Jerusalem? We're not capturing it. Keeping Jerusalem because they had it at this point. Sorry. Isn't it just the kingdom? Mm-hmm. Do they have Jerusalem proper? No, no.

I think it was just the kingdom at the point. Okay. Because that's the whole point. They lost it at the end of the second. So two guys. One of them should sound familiar. Guy Deluzion, the guy that marched his entire army out into the fucking desert and got completely just, just money shot it all over the face. He found bum fuck Egypt and they marched to it.

Here's a thing about that, kind of an aftermath of that battle with Saladin where he wiped out those guys. So he didn't kill, he obviously. and he was like a king doesn't kill a king. So he even had a recognition of him. He did, however, murder the fuck out of Renaud de Chateon because Reynard had done some shit either to, like, family or had gone on kind of indiscriminate killing of like Islamic people in the land when there was supposed to be some type of like relative peace before this whole thing went down. So. Because his name was Renard. Yeah.

So Guy ends up being like released as a prisoner some years before and has some. somehow still has loyalty. I don't know if it's because of his standing within like the Holy Roman Empire or France or what the fuck it was. But he was somehow kind of one of the guys that was being pushed for this, this, you know, king of Jerusalem. So you had Guy and then you had this guy Conrad. And I don't know exactly what Conrad's significance was. I should have looked into it more or should have remembered it more. But we all make notes when we're stoned. Philip and Leopold are like Conrad's the dude. This is the dude that, Austria and France are backing for the kingdom of Jerusalem.

And Richard's like, I don't know if he just did it at his spite, or if he was just like, no, Guy is the guy. And I don't fucking know why Richard chose Guy. I don't know why the choice was there. If he had something against Conrad or he thought that Conrad would be more favorable toward Philippe or Leopold, all he know is that this kind of just even made a larger rift. So now you have crusaders in the Holy Land

that are essentially at odds with who they think should be fucking basically king of the Holy Land. In addition to all of the Islamic states that are against you at this point as well. In addition to actually having to do this, like having to complete the mission. Yeah. And the thing is too is because of Saladin, you had a lot more unity in the Islam states as far as like who they were fighting and everything. So that was, you were fighting, you weren't fighting as many factions that were kind of scattered and even in fighting with each other. Yeah, I forgot to mention it. Just during this whole entire time, we've been playing the Christian side of this.

All of the Syrian and Egyptian forces had been concentrated under Saladin. So he has risen, or risen to the ranks to where he can call from pretty much anywhere. He has risen. Yeah. From pretty much anywhere that he needs backup. So you're not just facing one guy that has this roving group that's very tough to beat. You're facing a guy who now has, has amassed a ton of forces. So Philip and Leopold, I don't know if they just got butt hurt about this situation.

But basically they're like, hey, we made it down here. You know, Holy Land. We did some stuff. We got Akrae back. They end up leaving the Holy Land. So Philip ends up leaving 7,000 Crusaders and 5,000 silver marks to end up paying them with, which I was looking at that number. and I was like, okay, what's the value of silver marks?

Because you've left, basically left less silver marks than you've left Crusaders. And is everybody just getting a portion of a silver mark? Like, how the fuck are you paying these guys? That's a good point. Is that one week's salary? I don't know. He just, he's like, okay, here's a bag of money and just fucking pieced out. On August 20th, Richard thinks that Saladin, you know, they've had some skirmishes and

everything like that. And they basically have a situation in which they're negotiating, I think, for prisoner release for exchange of POWs. And that was something that was more common than people actually think back then because it really didn't want to, it's a self-preservation thing. You don't want to kill all your enemies guys because you know that you have guys over there and that they'll get all killed too. It's kind of a wild thing, too, to think that they would be doing that because at this time, I don't know if we really pointed it out in the beginning, but the Muslim Empire was almost like the more futuristic, well thought out. Like, they were almost leaps and we're talking about people that helped with geometry and shit like that.

Like, they're more, I wouldn't say scholastically inclined, but possibly the more intelligent, a little bit further along in society. They're more advanced. More likely to pursue intellectual pursuits. Whereas England was, or the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire, obviously, because they were both teamed up.

We're more like the, we're going to mash it in there, we're going to get it done without really having to think a whole lot about it. They're fighting so much that it's all about development of like warfare and shit. And that's the way that the Muslims look at the Christians. Like, you guys are so caught up in trying to win a war. You don't understand, like, how to hold stuff up in society, which, I mean, obviously, that's a little off. And it was probably a little bit of an extreme thought. But at the same time, when you think about how the Christians viewed the Muslims as savages and terrible people,

there's a lot of, like, they believe kind of different things about each other. Yeah. To be able to come together and be like, oh, you guys would be willing to exchange POWs with us? Well, okay. Well, hold on. Well, this instance is not a good example of that because Richard ends up thinking that Saladin is kind of like pussyfoot and like delaying this on purpose. I don't know if he's expected like he was trying to gather forces or do something like that. But basically because he thought he was delaying it, he takes 2,700 of the Muslim POWs and has them decapitated in full view.

It was a bad time to bring that up. of Saladin's fucking army in full view. And so Saladin's like, I can do the same thing and basically just has all of the Christian POWs killed as well. So that's an exchange of sorts. It's an exchange of blood, not an exchange of prisoners. I mean,

is it a wash at that point? You're either going to get back a similar amount or you're going to kill a certain amount. So it's all... You're feeding less people? I hate the fact that I'm even trying to boil it down when it comes to human lives like that. But it's so ridiculous that you're just like, off 2,700 people's heads.

How fucking long would that take? It's a lot. It's a lot of people. Do you set it up? I just had a really horrible thought. Like, how many, how many would you have to? Because it's not 2,700 troops probably lining up. It's probably like, you know, they're doing it in, like, in waves. Like, at what point do you think you'd, like, get into your groove?

There's the question of getting in your groove with a hack move. Do you line them all up and then just ride a horse and hold the sword out and see how far you can get. Oh, no, no, you're not getting that much force. And your hand couldn't hold it like that. Like, there would be a very specific sweet spot between getting in the groove and tiring enough to get it done in one. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's a pretty morbid thing to go down, but it does kind of make you curious. Moving on. So September 7th. So apparently that did not, you know, that did not progress the, um, any type of peace negotiations or thoughts of peace in that area. Because literally about, you know, a little over two weeks later, the battle of Arsurf was 30 miles from Jaffa.

And Jaffa essentially was just working its way down, essentially toward more of where it starts curving toward Egypt and everything. And during that battle, basically this was like Richard making his statement because he was kind of the main guy. The other time he came in, you know, he came in. Of course, he sped up the fucking. siege of Ockre really quick, but this was basically Richard running the show, and Saladin ended having to retreat losing, I think, like, 700, or sorry, not so, Jesus Christ, 7,000, 7,000

troops. This is where I fell on that Saladin's a great general, but is it one of those things where like maybe Richard is just that much better? Because that's a pretty clear and concise. Do you have fresher troops? Potentially, yeah. More well-supplied, less. battle weary and shit. But you're also talking about a guy who is able to resupply on the mainland

and bring people up instead of Richard bringing people in on ships or hoping that the Byzantines will come down and help them. And that's the reason they were trying to capture Jaffa is because it was, you know, it's on the way, essentially. It's a key step to Jerusalem. So Richard, you know, moves past the 30 miles because I think they attacked him 30 miles north of Jaffa. And then after making Saladin retreat, he's able to actually capture Jaffa. And I think at this point, too, because Richard is on a hot streak at this point. He hasn't been beaten. In fact, he very heavily beat Saladin during this last engagement.

And so them seeing him get closer to Jerusalem, they kind of, I think Richard is, he knows what he has in his hand. He knows that the momentum he's got. And so at this point, he actually reaches out and he's like, I want to meet with Saladin. And at that point, you know, you've got to imagine the conversation's going to go, hey, you've seen how, you've seen what happened in the last battle. I'm just going to, I'm gaining more guys. I'm shipping more guys down. We got the momentum.

What do you say? Maybe we just, you know, you just kind of get out of Jerusalem. And Saladin's like, yeah, I'm not going to come meet with you, but you can speak to Al Adil, who's his brother. So his brother ends up meeting with Richard, a couple different. times enough so to where richard tries to marry his sister that he had just rescued to all a deal in order to essentially establish family ties with saladine it's the most european answer to this question it's because it's i mean and i'm not saying that was like a currency because you did intermarry within that empire of thing.

But not that, no, not anywhere to the degree I don't believe that they did in Europe. In Europe, it was fucking currency. Yeah, exactly. That's what I mean. I think this was a purely European tactic. No, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. To Rolidine's brother was like, what?

You want me to, her skin is fucked down here, man. It's not going to work. What are you talking about? He's like, yeah, that's how we do things. I offer you a sibling. We're friends. And you give me shit. How is this guy not getting this?

Everybody in my country and all the other countries around me. This is what we do. Maybe we're wrong. Maybe it happens more down in the Muslim. We'll figure that out later. I'm trying to figure it out. Were you going to offer me your sister or someone for me to marry? That's we, this is, we go back and forth.

We offer family. We offer relatives. Yeah. Until we get down to the family pets. That's as far as we go. Your corgi or your corgi will mate with my poodle. We'll figure it out. I don't know.

Al-A-Dil is like, no. No, I don't, no, I don't want to do that. So, in November. I can get my own dick wet. Huh? I can get my own dick wet. So November, basically, this is when Richard's like, all right, you're not going to fucking, you're not going to make.

He does the exact same thing that Philip just fucking, he's like, so you're not going to marry my full sister. This is so fucking insulting. So he advances toward Jerusalem and gets 12 miles away from Jerusalem. He's got his guys, he's fucking ready for this. And all of a sudden, bad weather. and the storms roll in. And it pins down his guys.

And I mean, just the constant probably coal and everything doesn't allow you to put yourself in a position to like get ready for a siege and to really like fight an effective siege. Your routes are washed out. How are you supposed to follow a trail that may be gone? And you're 12 miles. You can probably see shit in the distance

and you're like it's right fucking there. By the time that it gets to where, because again, I think we actually talked about this pre-show. during some of these, most of these situations, it was like you were on the clock. It was like a police response time. So when you came upon like a fort or a city to siege and try to conquer it, you basically hit the stopwatch.

Just like, okay, we have 26 days max before their troops are able to amass an army to try to come, you know, lift the siege of this city. If we don't have this thing conquered and fortified and control in those days, we got to fucking get the fuck out of here. And that's exactly what happens with Richard. He's basically like, God damn it, we've lost the surprise. We're basically giving them time to fortify their defenses to bring in other troops from other areas. And he's like, I just imagine him looking at the city and being like, fuck, and having to turn around.

He's ridden up fairly close a couple times, just scoping it out. Who does he call for help? Please tell me it's Phil. It's the guy. Oh, Guy. No, it's the guy that Phil was backing. Conrad? Yes.

Oh. Because I believe during that time, Conrad had actually been like the figure that was favored to actually become the king. So I think he had more power and more authority in Jerusalem than Geed. And he calls Conrad. And he's like, dude, he's like, I'm literally like 12 miles away from the city. And in case it's kind of confusing when we keep saying kingdom of Jerusalem, again, this is at a time when like the kingdom of Jerusalem was like the area between the sea and then kind of up closer to Jerusalem. Even when it shrank, it still maintained that name.

They can't just be like, well, we're quite a ways away from Jerusalem now. Do we just call ourselves the kingdom that's kind of a far way away from Jerusalem? So he calls Conrad, who's still the guy that's essentially kind of the recognized future king. of Jerusalem and eventually the city when they recapture it like they're going to do. And Conrad's like, fuck you, dude. He's like, weren't you the guy that was like all gung-ho about Ghee getting this sweet position that I'm about to get in?

And he was basically, I don't know if there's a good description, he was the leader of the United States that was going to be put in the presidency of Washington, D.C. when they got it back. But like Canada owned it basically. kind of a little bit maybe so not only are you trying to ask him for help in this the the mentils don't work and uh guys we're two hours and 30 minutes into this we still got stuff to discuss so y'all might be getting one of the rare treats of a three to three and a half hour podcast yeah

you don't got to worry uh not to spoil it much but four through eight are kind of a crap shoot yeah well four's they're light and they're kind of funny yeah so This is where, you know, this is also the one that's kind of got all the shine. So it's got the most information on it. Yeah. Back to it, you get Conrad being like, nah. So in 1192, Conrad is voted in as the new king. Very, very soon after that, Conrad gets assassinated.

He found himself at the wrong end of a dagger, I'm pretty sure. A couple of them. and there's reason to tie some threads together. Who knows? Speculation, conjecture, conspiracy, call it what you will. But the person that stand to benefit the most for Conrad's death was going to be Richard. And so there's reason to believe that Richard, that old slick dick may have had Conrad whacked. Yeah, more than reason.

A mere eight days later, Richard's nephew, Henry II, who was 26, married Queen Isabella, who was 23. And the way that Conrad actually became king is because the line was actually through Isabella. I thought you said, oh, yeah, okay. And so she didn't have a husband anymore because Conrad was. And so, of course, and I looked this up. I was like, oh, my God, I'm like, it's Richard's nephew. I'm like, Richard's only like 28. Wasn't he only like

28? Something this time he was pretty young. And oh my God, his nephew's got to be like fucking 12 and he's marrying him off to this lady. Well, yeah, 26 and 23. So hey, maybe these two crazy kids are going to make it. He's now the fucking king of Jerusalem

and Richard's got him in his pocket. Life can't be better, right? I mean, I could be better because you could actually have Jerusalem instead of just being the kingdom that's kind of in the proximity of Jerusalem.

You're a king of a place that you're not allowed. The former kingdom of Jerusalem. But ends up July the next month the Battle of Jaffei. Again, there's another one. There technically wasn't a first one. It was the battle that was 30 miles

north of Jaffay. Am I pronouncing that right? That sounds good. Jaffa. Jesus, yeah. Jaffa. Good. God. And Saladin kind of takes it. He's able to get in there. And this is before Richard shows up. I think he took it. I think he took it pretty hard because his guys were pissed. Yeah. So, well, no, no, no. What I mean is that the debate about

if he took it was how long he held it for them to consider it. But he ends up actually taking the city. Like he's not just caging it. He gets in there. And crazily enough, they get in there and there are like Christian troops and everything and Saladin gets them all barricaded in like the citadel and the citadel is essentially the interior portion. Think of it like the fort within the fort. So basically like a more fortified position within there and gets the guys in there as like you guys need to stay the fuck in here

because I need to cool my guys down because if those guys get in here right now they're going to fucking murder every single one. of you. They remember what happened earlier. They remember what happened at Akrae. They know what you guys did. Didn't go too well. There's been two of these fucking crusades before you guys were back at it. Like, there's still fucking bad blood. Of course there's fucking bad blood. So that ends up happening. And then Saladin doesn't hold it for long because then Richard ends up getting there. And basically there's like a retreat and then Richard ends up taking it back. Um, September 2nd, so stuff I mean progresses with Richard through the Crusades pretty quickly.

There's a treaty with Richard that's actually signed, again, weird that the treaty is with Richard and not the king. Yeah, you'd think. Yeah. So there's a treaty with Richard that basically allows unarmed access to Jerusalem. So he's kind of pulling a, do you think that part of this, and I mean, again, it's only like a little more than a month later. do you think essentially what Saladin did at Jaffa by, you know, saving those guys and keeping them from getting fucking butchered? Richard looks at this and is like, yeah, you guys used to allow all of our people down here if they were unarmed to come to this city. Okay, we'll sign the treaty that your people, you know, can go ahead and access it as well. I don't know, man.

I feel like this was a situation where you knew that it was strategic. Sorry, Saladin Oh yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, I reversed that. Saladine's the one. So even he stepped up again and was like, hey, we still have it, but you guys can come into it as long as you're unarmed. And there's, Saladin was given back Ascalon.

So he's also gaining more land out of this whole thing. And not to mention, if they used to let him come in and out all the time, he's probably pretty friendly to these people. Like, there's no reason why this can't still work out. He's still... Like, how many times are you going to try to burn him, though? Like, again, if we're breaking this down, and we're, instead of saying Saladin, we're saying it was a fucking fight between Jim and Bob.

And we were like, so Jim was kind of an asshole. And Bob was like, hey, man, you can use my lawnmower. Just like, you know, put it back when you're done and everything. And he's like, fuck you, Jim. Or Bob, I can't remember who's who now in this story. But anyway, he's like... He's like uncalled for. He's like, but you can fuck it.

I'm still, I'm nice. Use the mower. Just don't fucking break it. And don't come in and use the mower to murder my people. It's a good thing that Richard, I don't, Richard's unceremonious end doesn't feel too bad for me. The thing about this, though, is that's the closest to being able to say he conquered Jerusalem or correct Jerusalem. Because that was basically Richards kind of like,

the stamp of Richard's ticket of getting out of the Holy Land. It was almost like a token gesture that, do you think Richard went to him? He's like, oh, fuck. Give me something. Dude, does anything. And he's like, God damn. And he's like, if you shut the fuck up, I'll let your Christian people still use Jerusalem. He's like, okay, thank you.

And I have to go up and touch the wall. Then we're good. Yeah. I just have to say that I've been here. Let me, let me walk in. And as he walking, he's like, I've breached the gate. And he's like, mm-mm. he's like, I've walked through the gates.

It's like, yeah. Deal. You walked through the gates. So Richard actually fails out of the Holy Land in October of 1192. Worst mistake he could have made. Yep. And that was essentially access, essentially for Christians to access the Jerusalem and everything was called the Treaty of Jaffa. Well, the Treaty of Jaffa is not good enough for the Pope.

which pope you might ask because there's a new fucking pope we're not skipping the end of Richard right you oh you want to actually like explain how Richard meet is this our discussion on well we actually did the real episode

I don't think Richard's gonna need his own episode no but let's give a quick two minutes on how Rich's trip back went and then how his end was met they were coming back by ship a storm would then push them off and as they

pushed off the Duke of Austria, who goes ahead and looks at Richard, he's like, you could be a pretty good bargaining chip. Again, Christian, Austria. He was supporting Guy. This is like Leopold or someone at least related to him, who was just like, you're the guy that tried to get the other guy as the King of Jerusalem, aren't you?

And he's like, no. I'm Phil. So Duke of Austria gets him. There's probably some favors exchanged. He ends up in the hands of the Holy Roman Emperor. He just keeps sending him around to different castles. I'm guessing to probably keep him hidden. But I secretly think he was literally like a little traveling trophy.

Probably. Yeah, that the emperor of the fucking Holy Roman Empire was just like, okay, so who wants him next? And France is like, me. I do. I do. He's like, okay, we got a list, France. But as soon as we're done shipping them around to all these people in the Holy Roman Empire, we'll send them over your way. But instead of heading over to France, they're like, well, shit, we got the King of England.

What do we do here? We can leverage them for 150,000 marks. And we can put them under fiefdom, which technically means that we're sort of a part of England. No. Or England sort of a part of us? Yes. Richard made an agreement to be released. and basically was like 150,000 marks and England.

He's like, as long as I, you know, I get to run the fief. So basically he would be a fiefdom of the Holy Roman Empire. God, can you fucking imagine what that would do to the Holy Roman Emperor, the position? If he was like, yeah, by the way, I just got his fucking England motherfucker. And nobody died. And nobody died. He's like, I just got us England. And the Pope would be like, the fuck did you do?

And he's like, yeah, that was me. Not the Pope. I got England. But that was a deal that was made. And so guess what? As far as he's concerned, after he releases Richard, guess what? That's now his fiefdom. Yeah, that never fucking came to be.

No. That was backed out of, that was a fucking fuck you on the way out. And you're not getting your fiefdom. Well, and it's good because Richard going back home could then, like, set his bags down and take a breath and really rule as the ruler of England, right? Yeah, I mean, you're the king. You maybe take a year in your freshman year of kingdom building up your, you know, reserves and you're going to make war. You go down, you crusade for a while, you get fucking captured, you cost the country, a lot of money. And in fact, and I'm guessing the people didn't know this, but you actually fucking sold your people out to the fucking.

Holy Roman Emperor, you'd think you'd want to get back and gratiate yourself, dispel those nasty fucking rumors. I mean, like, of course I didn't do that. And in fact, I'm going to go ahead and enact some new reforms. We're going to get the people happy. And we're going to make up the 150,000 marks that it cost to actually set, you know, set me free. And we're going to get to work people. And then, before I do all that, you remember Philip. Yep. But before all that happens, I was disrespected by Philip of France. And everyone's like, yeah, we fucking hate France. And he's like, so we'll get to the reforms and everybody getting what they need after I'm done in France. And he fucking heads for France for the next five years. This French pervert offered me his half-sister

instead of his full sister. And he goes and travels around and fights in Normandy and deals with the French. And then on his way back, he goes ahead and takes... a crossbow arrow to the shoulder and as he's sitting on his deathbed they end up finding the one that fired the crossbow at him and bring him forward they're like okay he wants to see you Richard looks over at him was like why'd you shoot me kids like you killed my dad in a war and Richard's like god damn it respect you go ahead you're out of here you're fine I feel like the modern equivalent to this would be a batter is hitting their season best home run.

Yeah. Their highest season total ever, kid in the crowd catches it. All of a sudden, security goes out, and he's like, get the, you find the kid, I want the ball and everything. So they go out and they bring him back to the locker room, and he's sitting there, and he's talking to the guy,

and he's like, hey, that's a really important ball to me. And the kid's like, yeah, well, my dad died. And I've never caught. And I've never caught a home run ball before. My dad was killed by the, The home run. You killed my father with the home run.

He's like, oh, he can't really take the ball away from this guy. I already killed his dad. All right. You can fucking keep the ball. And I'm going to die anyways. Killing you are going to make my, I'm not going to live. Yeah.

I'm never going to get these home run. I'm never going to get this home run record again. And so ends the third crusade. So ends Richard. And so ends the third crusade. All right. You got anything between three and four? No.

Okay. I do not. So as well, what do you always get with a new crusade? You get a new pope or is that with a new pope you get yourself a new crusade? I think every pope secretly wishes they got their own crusade. And when there's still a crusade going on and a pope dies and a pope has to come in and run that crusade, he's just, it's got to be, it's got to take it away just a little bit. This is your infrastructure built. This is the first thing in office that you do to get the people fired up, I'm sure.

Yeah. No one likes to come in and try to deal with anybody else's policies. No, no. But unfortunately for Crusade Quatro, the fanfare in the decisions to go kind of shrink. Everything goes off the rails at this point. This is where the Crusades, season four, this is Fonzie, jumping the fucking shark. which for those of you that actually don't know that reference of jumping the shark, Happy Days was a show that Ron Howard actually started on the famous director.

And there was a character, Henry Winkler, played Arthur Fonsorelli. If you've seen any Adam Sandler movies, you're well aware of who Henry Winkler is. He's Coach Klein in the Waterboy. And he gets covered in Bees and Little Nicky. Exactly. So anyway, so there was an episode at the end of what people would consider actual Happy Days, where it's like Happy Days in Hawaii, and Fonzie wearing his trademark leather jacket

and Hawaiian board shorts, ends up being towed and jumps over a shark in the water. And that's why they call it jumping the shark because it was so fucking ridiculous that the show actually just took a huge shit after that. Kind of like when Zach Braff left Scrubs. Yeah. And you try to continue it.

But anyway, getting back to the Crusades. The Venetians were contracted to build these ships. Wait, wait, wait. Who was the Pope? Oh, uh, innocent? Come on, man. Pius? No, no, no, it is innocent.

I'm saying the name. Oh, yeah. Like a little on the nose, you're just like, hey, Pope Innocent the third wants to start a new crusade, but it's a just war, baby. So, yeah, who do we call in this time? Maybe Pope Innocent 1 and Pope Innocent 2 weren't, they didn't set the bar high for Pope Innocent 3? Well, I mean, if they took, no, no, because remember, they choose the names of the Pope, based on who they think were admirable or did good things. It's like an homage.

It's an opposite Richard or opposite King Jong situation. So you don't think he's trying to get in front of how bad this crusade goes? Did I say King John or Kim Jong? Same time. Wow. Yeah. This is what happens on these late-night, these late-run episodes is stuff really starts clicking. It's hitting everything.

Who do you bring in? Okay. So it was going to be led by three Frenchmen. One of the Frenchmen dies, so they're bringing in an Italian guy. I didn't even put their names in because it's going to be funny what we talk about. I'm not going to want to pronounce him anyway. So you get this dude. He's not one of the three Frenchmen or two Frenchmen at this point.

And he's not the Italian guy, but his name is Philip of Swabia. Philip of Swabia has this brother-in-law, Alexios IV. This guy was exiled from the Byzantine Empire. He was one of the guys that possibly had a claim to essentially being the emperor. He was actually exiled. So Philip is boys with this guy, Alexios VIII. And he ends up running into these two Frenchmen and Italian crusaders making their way down to the Holy Land. And he's like, hey guys, guess what?

If you help me actually get Alexios the fourth into the, am I wrong? You're missing a big part of this. Okay, go ahead, fill it in. So before that happens, in Venice, they're contracted. to build these ships. They didn't have enough soldiers to pay for all of the ships that were built. So they were indebted to the Venetians before this. Didn't have enough soldiers or money?

Well, the soldiers paid their way. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So if they didn't have enough soldiers to fill this quota for the ships, they were going to be indebted to Venice pretty much immediately. The Frenchmen, essentially, the lead guys were supposed to be paying for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So to pay for these ships, these soldiers would go to the Christian city of Zadar that were causing problems for the.

Venetians and just wreck the city. Just kill everybody that they could, take everybody out, and immediately the Pope's like, uh, Venetians, excommunicated. Crusaders, excommunicated. Just before they've even really left

the area of Venice, excuse me, we see the Crusades used to wipe out another Christian city just because they had to pay the bill to go down and fight Muslims. That's how desperate some of these people still were to do this. So they end up knocking out Zadar. Venice eventually becomes unexcommunicated somehow. And then they get to take these boats.

And these boats are headed down to what you were talking about. Alexios Angeloos. Is that what you said his name was? The fourth? Yeah, I just put Alexios the fourth. Yeah. So he ends up convincing these crusaders to help restore his father, who was deposed. who was King Isaac the second. I thought he was trying to, it was his brother-in-law. I thought it was his father. Maybe it was just... So, oh, no, okay.

So, yeah, this is where the confusion is. Philip of Swabia, Alexios IV, is his brother-in-law. Okay. The guy that's currently in power, Alexios III, is Alexios the fourth's uncle. Okay. And they had deposed Alexios' father, King Isaac. Perhaps. Okay.

Too many of the same name to keep you. I'd probably pass by it and I was just like, same name. And regardless of all this going on, basically what you have is the Christian crusaders are setting up a force to help out somebody who was exiled from Constantinople out of the Byzantine Empire to help him be swept back into power to make him the ruler of another Christian kingdom. Yeah, it was kind of like they were, they're heading toward the Holy Land. And then all of a sudden, they're like, they see Alexios sling up against the wall. And he's like, hey, hey, you want to go get some more troops? You want to go, you know, I can offer you guys, you know, money made a little 200,000 marks. And also, how about this?

How about I make some allowances once my guys back in office, we make allowances for some of that Holy Roman Empire church that you guys like so much? How about we start lit and our people like dip their toes in that a little bit? How would that tickle your fans? And they're like, hmm, we can either head to the desert or we could head up. People also speak our language up there. Yeah, we can make money. And you're going to give us more troops. And then after we help you, we're just going to, oh, fuck, yeah.

Because guess what we can do? If the church asks us about or anyone asks us about, they're like, yeah, not only did we, no one's going to ask because they're advancing also the Holy Roman Empire interest in that area. And then what are they going to do? they have 10,000 more troops to march down to the Holy Land, you would be absolved of all your transgresses. And again, we're talking about a fighting force that just raided the city of Zadar to pay for their boats to get down to Constantinople.

Desperate for fucking money. So, yeah. So they invade Constantinople. Uh, fucking Alexios the third fucking high tells it and gets out of there. And the guy that they were trying to get in there, Alexios the fourth is emperor. So they're in Constantinople. It's going to take them a little bit. They got to build up 10,000 troops for you.

They got to collect all the money and all that stuff. And they got to get the paperwork for the church shit that, you know, they promised. So the, you know, the French guys and the Italian guy, their armies are going to be hanging out. And during this hangout period, kind of this lull, fucking Alexios the fourth goes and gets himself murdered. And so they haven't been paid yet. the troops aren't going to fucking march with them because they have no fucking Byzantine leader to order them to do it. What are they going to do? You got to sack the city, right?

You got to sack the fucking city. It's your only option so. We covered this a little bit in the Byzantine Empire episode, the Constantinople episode. But just to rehash how insane this was, it's so just bonkers to me. The fact that, what is it? Isn't there like two bronze lions or something like? that that they had taken from the city of Constantinople and brought back to Rome. Rome, yeah. Yep.

So just... Well, that's what you get when you sack the city for three days. And you're just, you're stealing from one another. This is a crusade to try to fight the Muslim people. And then what do you do at that point? Well, you got these leaders of this like crusader army. Yeah, we're just going to divide up some of the land. Mm-hmm.

We're going to go ahead and just hang out here. And guess what? Holy Roman Empire is going to be like, oh shit, we got some control over that area now. So win-win, baby. Also, unless you're out. At the same time, you're pretty tired from second Constantinople. Three days? Oh, you're so exhausted. So only a few of them would continue on to try to fight in the Crusades.

Only a few of them took passage into the Levant region. Like a token force. Yeah. Basically, they had to, it was basically just to kind of. placate them and being like, yeah. And in addition to getting, you know, that area in the Byzantine, we also still went down and fought for the Holy Land. Like, you did all that? Like, yeah, we did all that. Just a rough way that the Fourth Crusade pretty much ends by starting kind of the toppling of the Byzantine Empire. Okay. So at this point with Crusades, we've had four. The objective of the Crusades has been to

capture Jerusalem. First Crusade? Successful. The next. The next. three, unsuccessful, failed. So you are at 25% now batting average wise. I'll give them 30% because the Lionheart allowed them passage back into Jerusalem. No, no, no. That was Saladin that allowed the passage. Yeah, but who got up for him, the Lionheart? He needed just something to be able to go home. He wasn't going home as a fucking loser. He wasn't going to pull a Philip that went back and before any of the work was done. I mean, if you're one for four at this point and you've taken three kind of

L's in a row, there's no shame in going for it for a fifth time, right? Like, that's a choice that you can make from 1217 to 12, I believe it was 21. I mean, that's a good four-year run that you're going to take with Andrew the second of Hungary, Leopold, the 6th of Austria, John of Berline, leading these forces into Syria. I mean, that's, everybody's going to be a solid group there, right? Well, I mean, you got to at this point, the old trick of trying to invade the Holy Land and everything, that's old hat man. You got to do something big, you got to do something bold. So, Fifth Crusade taking place between 1217 and 1222.

And I think for the last couple of Crusades, we haven't actually stated the dates in which they, we've stated some dates during talking about him, but we didn't state the dates that they were through. So I'm not going to go back and do that. but they took place between these other ones. You get Pope Innocent the Third. Guy is still at it. This Pope has staying power. Oh, well, the fourth was an utter failure. Oh, yeah, yeah.

So you've got to go for it again. Well, hold on. To whom? It kind of worked out, but it didn't achieve the objective of capturing Jerusalem. So, yeah, you do have to go back at it. So Innocent the Third calls for it. He runs them back to back. And, well, while he's getting that thing kicked off, he dies.

So you get this new Pope, honoris the third. And you're like, dude, honoris, this guy's honorable. He's going to be like, you know what? Let's fucking give it a rest. No, fuck that. Honoris says, keep it going. And basically he gets Andrew the second. It's from Hungary.

Frederick the second from Germany. And he's like, you're going to be my, you're going to be my boys on this. You guys are my right hands. I don't have, I don't want you to be a left hand. you're my two right hands. And so this time, though, what we're going to do is we're going to hit them where they don't expect it. We're going to hit them back in Damietta. Not in the Holy Land.

Not in the Holy Land. What we're going to do is we're going to go down. We're going to take Damietta and then we're going to sweep back up to the Holy Land. So that way we have this big buffer zone and we dig into the Fatimid. Was it still Fatimid at that point? Oh, or it was the... No, no. Zygd?

Zingid? I think, yeah. So, and then we'll just sweep up from there. And while we're moving up, we've already got guys up in the Byzantine Empire. If we need to call on them to sweep down, we can do that. And if we conquer Egypt, where are they going to come back to? Where is the caliphate going to come back to? If we push them far enough and decimate them far enough, they can't, you know, rise in another threat. And honestly, for as poorly as this was playing and as bad as it goes,

besides Andrew of Hungary just be like, nah, I'm not going to come. I'm going to bail out on this one. I think there was like a like some type of like thing about his succession. Yeah. It's supposed to be.

Oh, that's what it was. And he was just like, yeah. So there's apparently something's going on where I might be, you know, being crowned or there might be some questioning behind it. I got to take care of shit. Yeah. So he takes off.

The German army will kind of take another me I feel like that phrase makes it into a lot of podcasts. What? The German army. Yeah. This probably one of the earliest instances that it would happen. They finally make it into Acre or Akr, or Akrae. They're going to move down to conquer Egypt.

The Templars, the Hospitlers, and the Teutonic Knights all would join. And the Sultan was like, that's a lot of guys. Didn't really expect Egypt to go down this way. do you guys just want Jerusalem? It's a trick. Well, they actually get to Damien and they put it under siege, right? Yeah, but I don't think they ever take it, do they? I believe that they launch an assault on it,

so they're actually besieging it, and then as they're getting ready to do that or preparing to do it, once they can tell essentially that they're going to do that. That's, I think, when they're just like, yeah, seems like you guys really want Jerusalem, kind of going about it a weird way in this instance. It's kind of different from the other three.

Sorry, the other four ways you guys have gone about it. So if you guys just kind of back off and get out of here, yeah, just go ahead and take Jerusalem. The thing that you're supposed to, that's the one goal, that's the main goal of these crusades, is to take it. I'm going to give it to you. And they're like, huh,

it's got to be a fucking trick, right? Yeah, there's no way that this is going to go real simple. So why don't we attack El Camille? Because if we attack Al Camille, then we can slowly continue to move our way towards Jerusalem. Plus, if we take him out, there's going to be less of a force to protect it. They end up going head to head with them at the Battle of Massara. And they go ahead and just get absolutely obliterated and end up having to surrender at the Battle of Massara. You got anything else with them?

Failed. Yeah. Failure to the point to where they sign an. eight-year truce, which is hilarious that they're just down to be like, okay, we know you guys are going to come back for the sixth time. So why don't we just sign an eight-year truce? Give us eight years to be ready for you to come back. Does that work? We've kind of determined by how often and how much time has passed when you guys have come down in your previous crusades. You guys don't get much done when you do it quickly.

So take eight years. Take your guys' time and then come down here and really make an effort of it. Try to figure this out. You guys, we offered you Jerusalem, and you said no. And then we beat you with the next battle. Just think it through next time. Just give it one more second of pause. Just spanking them by being like, you should have taken the city. Uh-huh.

Exactly. It's incredible how that just continues to happen. So in true crusader fashion, after signing an eight-year truce, seven years later, we come to what is known as Frederick the Seconds Crusade. Hey, that was almost eight. Yeah. If this has built up any expectation, it's that like, and then the next year. Well, Frederick the Seconds Crusade gets off to a less than good start because Frederick ends up getting himself excommunicated.

And him getting himself excommunicated, and he's like, well, just because you kick me out of the church doesn't mean that this whole taking up the cross. Whoa. Whoa. Let's not fucking get past the excommunication so quickly because the way this went down is is hilarious. So again, and we're deep into this. We're talking about number six, right? Yeah. Seven and eight or quick. Okay. So this one is, yeah, this is Freddy's crusade. And this one is all about political savvy. He's going to go about it that way. But before he's able to be politically savvy, Freddie has to. to get over the plague. So Freddie catches himself the plague from probably one of his,

his many mistresses, wenches, whatnot. Perhaps gentleman callers, I don't know. I don't know what the guy was into. Because he gets the plague, he is unable to, you know, really muster his forces and go and lead his forces in the timetable that the Pope has dictated this thing should happen. He's kind of dragging his feet. How bad can the plague be, really? Yeah. So the Pope is like, listen, I ain't hearing no plague talk. You're out. You've been excommunicated. That happened September 12.

Oh, sorry, not September 12th. Yeah, September 1227. So the six crusade takes place 1228 to 1229. It's going to be a theme here. Some of these crusades are going to be quick the later on you go. Well, this one's tough because, excuse me, you got excommunicated from the church, which means that you're probably not going to be allowed to take part in crusade. But in your favor, news travels slow.

So if you can beat the news down to where you're going... If you can race your excommunication? Yeah. If you can beat the messenger that's taking that down there, you can probably gain a little bit of support down there to where you're going and really rally the troops by the time you get there. It's like that... Okay, so Freddie leaves this area going this fast with this many troops.

A boat leaves fucking Rome or Venice, wherever the Pope was, going this fast. Who's going to reach Jerusalem first? This is Pepe Sylvia sending him and Max pink slips back through the mail to buy him a couple more days of work. So this actually might be my favorite crusade strictly on the fact that while being excommunicated, essentially unsupported. And, you know, what am I trying to say? what do you like shit what's the term they always use in Mission Impossible when one of the agents dies

fuck I haven't seen a Mission Impossible in so long I know that's why I can't remember it okay anyway so you basically have him cut off and yet he is the first crusade since the first crusade

to actually accomplish the mission and take Jerusalem without papal involvement It was a cheap victory. Hey, he succeeded. That was the mission. And not only did he do that. Do you think that was a case where once it was actually like, so he's racing the excommunication, he takes Jerusalem.

And as the guy's running up with the excommunication, all of a sudden he sees that the flag and the crosses of Jerusalem. And he's like, what the fuck? And he gets in. He's like, what's going on? He's like, oh, yeah. He's like, Freddie got us Jerusalem back. And he's like, huh. And he goes and talks to the fucking Cardinal or whatever, the guy that was traveling with him that still hadn't received the news.

And he's like, so yeah, this guy's like excommunicated. Like, what do we do? And he's like, we can't say that the dude that actually accomplished what we like told everyone we were doing to set out. What did actually not have the church's support? I wonder when this information came out because I feel like, so the news of his excommunication would have been local and would have been known to probably, I would assume that something that big would have also gotten out to some degree and where it was going around like Rome or wherever the posts were stationed out at that time. But I would assume that that information didn't get directly to Freddie or anything like that,

but it had to be known pretty widely within 20, 30 years, like disseminated. Yeah, but it caught up to him in Acre. Oh, shit. I didn't know he knew about it that quickly. The people found out about it. Oh shit. He was down there rallying support to go down there or to go fight again when he gets to Akra. In the city's like, yes, we, this is perfect.

We want you to go take Jerusalem again. We have you. We support you. And then in preparation, they find out that Frederick had been excommunicated. It was like, oh, no, we can't help you anymore. We're not going to fight for you anymore. Oh, so he legit did it. Yeah.

Without, oh, fuck it. Okay, that makes it even better. Fuck yeah, Freddy. But of course, he's un-excommunicated upon... Immediately. Yeah. He's... The cardinal runs in to his throne room.

It's like, please come back to us. Well, this whole thing has to get cut short, and there's like no fighting that goes on because Frederick is worried about an invasion back home because, again, he was excommunicated. So there's going to be a claimant that's going to try to come depose him.

him. Because wasn't in an elected position, right? Okay. Try to kick him off the throne. So it was like, I, shit, I got to try to negotiate something here as soon as I can. I got to fucking have a bargaining chip. Yeah. I got to have something that they, that's something irrefutable that they can't possibly turn down.

Well, Al Camille was off in Damascus, where we had a little run in before, trying to fight his own nephew. So there's enough dissension going on in Israel or, or, the, yeah, the Muslim ranks that there's so much infighting that they're just finally like, okay, this crusade thing just keeps happening. We need to fight this war at home because we don't know when they're coming back. Who are you? Speak. Oh, they're German.

Yeah. They're German. Okay. So last time it was a bunch of guys that were like, hello. And then there were some guys that were like, ha, ha, ha. And then there were some guys that spoke something weird. I don't know what Austrian sounds like, hello, something like that. Pretty close.

And he's like, but. We actually haven't heard it. Heard a German in a while since like, what is it, guys? Like two, two, three crusades ago? It's been a minute. It's been a minute. Where are you guys been? Yeah.

So without Al Camille back to defend because he's off fighting his own little war, like, okay, we need to sign this treaty. We've got to get this figured out. I got to get back home. Frederick's got to get back home. And the Muslims cared just enough about it to the point where they seated Jerusalem to the Franks along with the coastal corridors. So, like, hey, we're going to sign a 10-year truce. You guys can have Jerusalem back. We'll give you a little passageway to get down there.

Don't get out of that passageway. You're not coming to try to take anything else, but just take Jerusalem. Stick to the fucking path. Yeah. So just like you said, Frederick walks back up with the deed to Jerusalem again. The fattest fucking hog. He has it rolled up in his pants and just walks in to fucking Roman is just fucking swinging it back and forth. He's like, guess what, Freddy, God.

Guess what Freddy got? Home Alone, Marv. Daniel Stern? Yeah. Daniel Stern and workaholics when they pull their dicks out to talk to him. You think that's what Frederick was doing in front of the Pope? Was he just had his dick hanging out the front of his pants? He's like, yeah, so here's the deed to Jerusalem.

Holding his dick in one hand and the fucking deed to Jerusalem and the other. And he's just like, who's excommunicated? he's like, Pope's like, I don't know what you're talking about. He's like, that's right. Exactly.

Say it to him. Spread the news. Say it to him. Say it to little Freddie. So yeah. I mean, they're finally back in. It's just they have Jerusalem again.

Dude. And didn't have to really kill anyone. No. No. In comparison to any of the other fucking crusades, like to be able to also do that and be like, how many guys did you lose? You know,

you took Jerusalem. He's like, yeah, really, I had like, I don't know, like 100? Yeah. 200. And he's like, whoa, he's like, yeah, crazy, right?

I knew that I had to wrap this up. Don't fuck with me. So it would stay in their hands from 1229 until it would be lost again in 1244. This is where we run into kind of the seventh and then we'll combine them. We'll save a little bit of time here and combine these. So the seventh crusade took place from 1248 to 1254. and the Eighth Crusade took place in just 1270, and we'll talk about that. Louis the 9th of France wanted to capture Egypt, and that was going to be the main...

As one does. Yeah, the same reason they tried to do it before, because it's kind of the main seat of Muslim power. Didn't Napoleon hear about Louis trying to capture it? And that's why he did it. Or there were probably many Louies after that that also tried to capture France. We're still early on in history. Yeah, I think there's a whole lot of tie-in to what Napoleon does here, or does, like, later on.

Wait, is Napoleon later on? Yes. Yeah, way later on. Yeah, fuck yeah. Like 600 years. The dates, they blend together at a certain point. History is meaning this.

So, uh, Lou of the ninth is like, if I can get Egypt, I can get Jerusalem back. It's, it's just that simple. That same Damietta that we've talked about so many times that's on the, uh,

the Nile. I'm sick of the fucking Germans talking about, oh, we got Jerusalem back. We got Jerusalem back. He's like, No, and then you fucking lost it. So guess who's going to step up to plate?

Old Philly boy is going to fucking conquer the holy city, and then it'll all be about Philip in the French. Yeah. You got to put your name on it. Phil's time. You got to, Damietta got hit so many times. They're probably great. Another one.

What's he talked? Yeah, what's... They know the flags. It's the French this time. They would end up just getting absolutely crushed at Mansour again in 1250. just did not go well. And part of the reason that this didn't go well is because a lot of stuff that we haven't mentioned yet

and are way too late in the game to do it. Glad that you're still here. I know this is a long one. Oh, we're only at 312 right now. Okay, but it's still a long one. Dysentery was a pretty big issue. Not only dysentery was an issue. Disease in general.

What did the sailors get? Scurvy. Scurvy was huge. And scurvy is just a lack of vitamins that you're taking in. diet, these people are... Lack of vitamin C, right? I believe so, yeah.

I always just think of the Swedish stuff. Scurvy. But they're suffering from these afflictions so bad that it's just they're getting beaten with biological warfare that they're causing themselves before you can even go out on the pitch and fight. It got so bad. King Louis had such bad dysentery that he actually had the ass cut out of his pants. So he didn't have to continue to pull them.

down to go to the bathroom anymore. I don't normally agree with French. Actually, I do agree with a lot of French inventions. I take that back. Um, but this is one that I can give two thumbs up to. The assless chaps. Yeah. Of their day. You're cut, you're literally cutting out the middle man. True. It's a good point. And after that, um, when they get beat, most of the army and King Louie are captured by the Muslims. So they have a, you had to expect this coming. Yeah. You can't just say that fact and that fact right after each other. When they captured Louis, is there any documentation of him having the butt cut out? Be wearing those types of pants when they captured him.

Because can you imagine if you're the guys that capture him and you're just like, you get him from the front, then you turn him around to march him and one of the other guys like, what the fuck? It's like, what's going on here? Why does the king only have this technology? I have these shits. so bad so

since they're captured of course this is another situation where they're then ransom back to France alive just worth so much more alive than dead

oh yeah so much more because people would pay dumb amounts of money just for fuck well

in the seventh crusade is kind of an interesting point and it's not something that we're going to hamper down on right now

because it's definitely going to be a part of an episode because I wouldn't have guessed that their reach was as far

but the Mongols are starting to move on Levant, which is insane to think that the Mongols are that far west. It's crazy to think that, and I forget when I listen to that Dan Carlin, like that six-hour Jangas Khan, that's the reason I say Jenghis Khan now, that episode. But when he's talking about, like, when they are moving in on, like, the medieval areas,

you forget that that's what we consider the Middle Ages, but when we think of Jenghis Khan, because of just the look of it when it seems more primitive on horseback bows and arrows shit like that you always make that weird visual distinction of like those guys who wear in armor and like knights and shit that had to have happened way after the Mongols is just fucking different cultures and like using different resources they had

but yeah to the can you imagine the first time like they run up on an actual like fucking night and they're just like this guy can't move for shit this is going to be so easy so you have another player kind of entering the area. And you have Louis back in by 1254, back in France, or probably a little after 1254, maybe 1255, regardless.

He wants to go back and fulfill his crusader promise, probably because he had a few skeletons in his closet that he wanted some absolution for. Yeah, word made it, it's way back to Europe that he was captured with the ass cut out of his fucking pants. The only option he has her redemption is to try to actually succeed. seat at this thing. You can't be having the ass cut out of the back of your pants and also be a failure at the same time. Pick one. Yeah, that's a bad

deal. So by 1270, we get the 8th Crusade, 7th, whatever. Louis is back again. The Mongols are now attacking the Levant region and he tries a little bit of diplomacy. The

Great Khan, Goliak Khan, I believe he was one of Jengis's like grandsons or something like that is in power. Wait, this is after Jenghis Khan? I think so. He's one of the cons. Let's just say that. Yes. He could be pre or post

Jengis. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure. Oh, that makes sense because King Richard, I think, was after was he? We'll explore it deeper in the, yeah. So him being back in Paramongolia, he dies. Louis runners are there in the royal court trying to be like, hey, let's work together. Let's kind of maybe take this whole thing. We only want a couple little portions of this.

And probably at this point, he's like, dude, I just want Jerusalem. You can take everything else. Him explaining it. Okay, I'm going to, I'm in, I'm in it. You're the con. I'm Louis. Okay. I feel like you're setting me up for a bad accent here.

No, no, no, I'm not. I'm not going to do an accent either, so don't feel pressure. Okay. Okay. Hey, this is all we want. There's so much area over there. You guys have seen it. All we want is just like a little strip at the very western portion or the very eastern portion of the Mediterranean.

That's where like a really important city is. And then you would ask me, what is the significance of this city? Thank you. Perfect. Okay. So there was this guy. and he actually is the son of God. And he's like, okay.

And you would say, Jesus. I almost did it bad. What? Oh, you almost tried to do an accent? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

You just hear him go, Jesus? You're like, oh, my God. He's a part of your religion, too? You guys have a claim to Jerusalem? No. We've just heard stories about this guy. Hold on. So what's the, so with this city, wait, I forgot whom I'm playing.

You're the con, right? Yeah, okay. I'm calling. Okay. So this city is where he died. Oh, okay. And he's the son of your God. He's like, well, he's the son of, you know, everyone's God.

But all we want is this. And he's like, so I can have all of this. And you want the place where the guy, that lived here that said he was the son of God died. Well, well, I mean, he was murdered here technically.

And so it's kind of like a place we like to celebrate. Like, huh, you're, you're kind of fucking crazy and you're dressed very, very fancy. It doesn't happen. It doesn't matter.

There's really no explanation. And I don't know if it's because it just ends so quickly. Because if you think about it, getting all the way to Mongolia, in one year talking to the courts, you probably have one crack at it. I assume that if you brought

correct, like, tribute or gifts and stuff like that, you could buy favor and get in there, especially if you were bringing things over that they had never seen before or had like in very, like, rare quantities. But like in a year's time? No, no. What I'm saying is to get over there

to introduce, to try to propose the plan, to try to hash out details about who's getting what, all that kind of stuff, and then have him agree to it, muster forces, and then march back, yeah, it's going to take some fucking time. Yeah. Which is unfortunate because dysentery doesn't know time. As the dysentery ravages through the French, ultimately killing Louis in Tunisia. Hold on, hold on, hold on.

You think he was killed at the back of his pants intact? No, hold on. Okay. Do you think, knowing that that was an issue the first time, that when they were designing the French military outfits for these people to wear, and they were showing them to Louie, and they're like, this is what the soldiers were wear during this crusade. Look at this.

And he's like, turn the pants around. He turns around. He turns around, he's like, there's too much fabric back there. And they're like, well, okay, like, you want it to, you want us to, like, cinch it up a little bit, like, tighter. And they're like, no, I want you to just get rid of the entire back. I want it to literally be the band around. I want it to be some like sleeves that go down the legs.

Actually, get rid of the back of the legs because I had experiences when stuff would get on the back of the legs. And I want you to just have little cuffs at the bottom that kind of hold the front pants on. And then we shall march. Yeah, maybe it was an ass flap. Maybe that was the first, the advent of the ass flap. That was the innovation. Could have been. Okay.

Absolutely. He only dies in Tunisia, so he didn't get too far. I mean, it's Africa. Yeah. Curiously enough, too. Even though he dies in Tunisia, he was able to get something called the Treaty of Tunis, or Treaty of Tunis, which opened up trade to Tunis with the French. I mean, it's early kind of trading and all that kind of stuff.

He had it drawn up. You're still making money. What if he had it drawn up? up. Yeah. He was just like, okay, I want you to write me just a shit ton of treaties. And then when I get down there, I'll kind of test the waters. And then maybe I can see one that fits for us. And so they just went in after he was dead. They're like, fuck, which one do we have them signed? They're like, just fucking grab one. Yeah. Yeah, whatever you can get. Um, so really after this time, the Crusader states would kind of peter out because the focus on the holy lands would slow down. They, there was so much infighting that they were dealing with. And we covered some of this stuff in the, uh, the monarchy episode. I'm not positive when I say this, so I'm going to shoot this one in the dark. Maybe I'm right.

Maybe I'm wrong. We'll get to it. I think the Protestant Reformation was going on sort of maybe around this time. So the church had, it sounds correct to me. I'm not sure, but I don't know.

The church had bigger fish to fry. I could also see that being a position when they're like, how many fucking crusades are they going to ask us to go and fight in? Like, Richard wasn't even fucking here at all because he was off doing this crusade shit. Like,

this kingdom's fallen apart. So at that point, too, because that took place in England, right? The Protestant Reformation. Oh, I was so far off. So it didn't happen. 16th century. But I see the justification had a Protestant revolution occurred at this time. Yeah.

Which it did not. No, not yet. But there's other things going on at home that you're trying to very old. Plus, you're dealing with Constantinople falling. Mm-hmm. Which even though you guys were kind of on the outs and even though, Constantinople was falling to pieces, at least it was still there. Now there's the threat of anything moving up. Yeah, you have to shore up your own borders because stuff's going to be coming up. And it

just makes it that much harder to maintain any presence there. Because it used to be when, you know, the Byzantine Empire was established, even when it was just on that side of the boss first or whatever, you still had something that was much closer, closer as like a response area or a place for armies to fall back to. At that point, if you're surrounded completely on that, little strip the only way of getting your guys out or a boat and you're going to lose a lot of people so it just it just became something that was probably too costly and again people are going to this took place over the course of such a length of time that people were just fucking done with it it was like people were living lifetimes like one person was alive during the first crusade and more

people were alive during the eighth crusade it it just got you got fucking crusade fatigue yeah it was just like shits falling apart here we need to kind of turn our attention inward i wonder if a part of that too is I don't know how long the Mongols were there but if like I saw these dudes back in Mongolia let's slow our role with the Holy Roman Empire knowing that they were coming closer into that territory that had to be a huge priority to try to kind of like defend against that it also doesn't probably help the the death toll and this is at a time just think you know we talk of when we talk war episodes the death tools are insane even for battles and stuff there's been higher death tolls than in this actual like the span of the crusades

But there's 700 years more people. There's not only that, but this is also a time when it's cannons and rockets and all this kind of shit. At this point, you're going bows and arrows, crossbows were a thing here. You also had guys that were swords, males, flails, lances. Greek fire. And Greek fire, like little grenades filled with Greek fire that you would light Molotov cocktails, basically Greek Molotov cocktails.

like oil like you were medieval weaponry that you were racking up a body count for you know between one and three million so long ago and you know you're not going to get accurate accounts from any fucking buddy agreeing to the same thing but yeah they think between one and three and that also you know you had a lot of people you're in an area where it's probably not super easy to be sustainable and get food and everything like that you also have just disease ravaging places because there's so much like death and spread and people traversing between different cities and just like spreading stuff. Did you say one in three million?

One to three million. Oh my. I didn't realize it was that much. Yeah. I guess I just never really looked at what the total toll was. Think of just the span of time, the amount of time that places were taken over by other places or like decimated during sieges, like crop burning stuff like that. It's just like in World War II when we talk about the death toll, you have the actual

death toll related to like the fighting that you would think when it's not really that high. And then it's like, but the civilian death toll was also 400% higher or 500% higher than the actual soldier death toll. So I think that's where you get a majority of the deaths. But that still is as a direct result of the fucking crusades. A lot of them were probably Christians killed by Christians. Which all just fucking came at the whim of the fucking church that was like, hey, we need to go over and make sure that this territory that technically is kind of like, but isn't really like us. We want to make sure we can take that territory and these other people are encroaching on it. So we need, we need something the people can rally behind. What is something

everybody fucking loves? And it's like, they love fucking Jesus. And it's like, fantastic. Find me something Jesus related anywhere in that vicinity. And they're like, okay, we're looking, we're looking, we're looking. He's like, where was Jesus murdered? They're like, he was murdered in Jerusalem. They're like, fucking Jerusalem. That's what we're going to do. We can sell that to everybody. will hand out fucking pardons for all of their sins and all of this crazy shit. And while we're taking Jerusalem, well, we got to march into the Byzantine Empire and we got to march down to that area. And so we'll just maybe hang out there and, you know, take all the fucking spoils and the riches from that place. Because once we have those territories and we have kingdoms down there, where are they going to be paying, our religion is going to be down there, where are they also going to be sending all these tithings and stuff back to.

Yeah. All of that's going to flow back to us. us. And then framing it as like, yeah, so God totally wants you to take over the city and claim the city where his son got murdered. Like the fuck. Yeah, it's a lot of things that go on during this whole thing that you just wonder how God would have allowed it to happen. So who are we taking it from? It's such a poor success rate. Yeah. So who are we taking it from? We're taking it from, you know, the Islamic Empire. Okay. And they hate Jesus, right? And they're like, um, Actually, they're pretty fucking crazy about Jesus is why they have the city too.

And they're like, they fucking love Jesus. We love Jesus. And they're like, yeah, but they don't love Jesus like we love Jesus. They think Jesus is something else. Not as good as our Jesus. They're like, oh, well, fuck them then. Yeah, we're taking the city. Yeah, I don't think they do.

I think they were more of the Muhammad tie to Jerusalem than Jesus. Okay. But at the same time, I do think that he was maybe a part of their scripture. Like, he was reference. Okay. So it's... I just went on a really long rant without knowing what I was talking about.

No one's listening at three hours and 28 minutes in any way, right? At the same time, it's just such an area where they had a claim to it. Everybody sort of had their own claim to it through religion.

And was it used as a pawn because it had been gone out of them for so long? Like, the Crusades had 400 plus years to happen. before that, but it just so happened to take... That's the limitations, my friend. You got to open your claim on this territories within 50 years.

That's just a wild thing to think about. But yeah, crazy, long, long topic, but you got to kind of... We can't come back and be like, we talked about the first three Crusades and then have a 45-minute episode. The next one, with the last two or three being very focused on shitting one's pants. Yeah, a lot. Literally and figuratively. Yes. All right.

You got anything else, man? No, I think we're good on the Crusades. All right, guys. Well, thanks for hanging in there, and we'll catch you on the next one. Peace. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining us for another episode. If you like what you heard, hit that subscribe and like button. Follow us.

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