Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 342 - The Seventh Crusade and the Battle of Mansurah

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

Support the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/lionsledbydonkeys Check out our merch store: https://llbdmerch.com/ A King has a fever dream and launches the 7th crusade, following the exact same battle plan as a previous failed crusade because he thinks he's built different. He isn't. Sources: Jonathan Riley-Smith. The Oxford History of the Crusades Alexander Mikaberidze. Conflict and Conquest in the Islamic World A Historical Encyclopedia Christopher Marshall, Warfare in the Latin East, 1192–1291 Douglas Sterling. The Battle of Al Mansourah and the Seventh Crusade, 1251

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and the link will also led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me is my fellow traveler, Tom. The pope has called for another crusade, and the wave of pilgrims has swept through our small Irish-Armenian village that totally exists on the outskirts of Den Haag, where together in our multicultural paradise we have invented Ska music. Caught up in the fervor of the crusade, we know we have no choice but to go with the pilgrims, otherwise we'll be put to the sword as apostates. In order to pass as normal pilgrims, we pretend to be English. I am bleeding profusely from

the head after glassing myself, and Tom is covered in dog bites from the six XL bullies he insists on walking without a leash. One day, while walking through the sands of the Levant, my glasses fall off my face. Tom, worried for my safety, glances over his shoulder at me and says reflexively, Pick it up, pick it up, pick it up. The other pilgrims around us hear him say these words of our forbidden hymn and quickly turn on us. Heretics of the horn, one yell. Satan and some of the skank says another before they descend upon us, tearing us limb from limb. Hey Tom, I've killed you again. Yeah, it seems to keep happening. You know, the, uh, I'm really enjoying this like lesser

known sequel to a Joan did Ian's book, uh, called skanking towards Bethlehem. Everybody does the most efficient form of walking is skanking. Yeah. I mean like it's a fun way to walk. I mean our intros either ended two ways. All of us dying or delivering one crisp can of white monster energy drink. I mean, as I am drinking right now. Exactly. I don't have white monster. I just have a large jug of water and a banana vape. I needed something to pick up my energy after I nearly got, you know, like hit by a car on the way to the

studio. But that's besides the point. That's why we spent 20 minutes talking about that before we recording the fate of cyclists in London. Yeah. Honestly, like cycling in London isn't that bad. Then again, I am somewhat say confidence. Some would say reckless. I also get that from time to time. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I I'm excited to be walking my six XL bullies to fight the great Saladin. All of the, all of the XL bullies have a Templar tattoo like Pete Hedzak, the Fox News guy who at the time of recording is possibly the next American Secretary of Defense, but it sounds like he may have fallen out of favor for the governor of Florida. What's his name?

DeSantis. Rob DeSantis. DeSantis, yeah. I'm not sure which of those is worse or better, but fun fact, or not fun fact, about Pete Hegseth. He is one of the reasons why Donald Trump pardoned or got clemency for a lot of the war criminals that were in Leavenworth during his time as first term as president.

Really? Yeah, yeah, he was like, he had the president's ear telling him about all of those things, that were in Leavenworth during his time as first term as president. Really? Yeah. Yeah. He was like, he had the president's ear telling him about all of those things because Pete used to be in the military. Okay. That's a shock. And his unit committed a lot of war crimes and a lot of those people he knew personally,

he himself has never been accused of war crimes. I must point out for, I assume legal reasons, but he seems to have the back of a lot of war criminals. Yeah, it's, you know, you can define the man by the company he keeps. Yeah. I said, uh, cause Pete is covered in a lot of very strange Crusader adjacent tattoos. Uh, he also has like deus volt tattooed on him. Unfortunately not on his knuckles, like the guy, you know, who's really into fisting.

And I said that like maybe Pete is actually just a huge fan of the Republic of Georgia because he kinda has the Georgian flag tattooed on him. Yeah. But it's like a Crusader flag instead. Obviously want to get into the episode, but like, because tattoos have come up and that is my speciality is like deus volt was actually not even a common phrase used during any of the crusades. Yeah. It was never this like kind of Christian like motto that all these fascists are using and also like it comes from media. Like it comes from pretty modern media, right? Yeah That makes it anybody who has a crusader tattoo in the year of our Lord almost

2025 is a fucking loser. Yeah the year of our Lord 2024 AG as in anime Goku. Yeah There's certain tattoos you can say look I say this is someone you've seen the majority of my tattoos I have some dumb fucking tattoos. I have taught a publisher school Yeah, I have talked before about how I got a Punisher tattoo when I was a teenager Before this became like a dog whistle for cops Yeah, and so like I understand what it's like to have a tattoo that could mean accidentally more than one thing. Yeah. To the point that I am planning on getting it covered up.

But like just arguing with people as you hold your shirt up is like, no, it's the other way round. It's the Indian symbol for peace. I mean, I do have an Armenian eternal eternity sign on my leg, which doesn't exactly look like a swastika at any kind of way, but for a certain kind of person, it might that one. That's just because you don't understand history. You're stupid. But the, the Punisher tattoo is like, at least that could just mean I'm a comic book nerd. Yeah. But if you, if you have a crusader tattoo, you're a fucking loser. Yeah. Like it's like the, um, oh, it's the symbol for the Basque country. I think it's like the Uskadi's.

I think that's the name of it. I'm sure someone who's Basque will correct me. Thank you. Um, it kind of has that same shape. Also the swastika. It means a lot of things. Like every caucuses country has an ancient design with the exception of Ajay Bhaishan because they're not an ancient

country at all. Had to do it. Had to do it. Like Georgia has one that looks way more like a swastika than the Armenian eternity symbol. However it still isn't at all. The thing is, and like, this is not me defending the swastika, that's not a sense I thought I would have to say on this podcast. Like the swastika as used by the Nazis is an old rune. This whole thing about like, oh they took it from

India is this kind of like, retroactive hagiography of like, trying to rehabilitate the symbol of it when it's like, they're pretty much two different symbols. Yeah, yeah. And the difference between that and all of the bullshit modern crusader things is like, you're such an insufferable nerd and almost certainly some kind of weird Christo fascist. I mean, like look at him. Oh, what's his name? I was going to say Alex terrible from a slaughter to prevail who had a massive son and rad tattoo on his elbow that he mysteriously got covered up like three years ago maybe he grew up or maybe he realized it was bad for business I'm not sure which one it is a

Russian guy with a giant son and rad tattoo yes he had like a giant change of faith yeah yeah sure anyway speaking of people who are gonna have a massive change of faith let's talk about why people are going to the Holy Land. Yeah, I've often said we love the Crusades on this show, but not for any of the reason other people on the internet love the Crusades. We love them because they're giant, they're stupid, they're full of military campaigns that could have been better thought of by a 10 year old playing Total War Games circa the early 2000s or maybe that was just me. I think the crusades are really interesting, but for the opposite side, like I find, it's

not the Umayyad, the Caliphate, it's the Ayyubid Sultanate. Like that kind of general era of like the different crusades like from the Muslim side is so fascinating. It's very, very fascinating. It's very interesting to see how, specifically from the first crusade to the last, how both sides kind of go in vastly different directions. Where one side gets more factionalized, more fucked up, and the other side kind of gets unified by all of these assholes fucking around in their backyard.

Yeah. It's like how people in Benidorm are kind of uniting against the British. It's like that tweet that went around the other day. It was like, this guy's like, Oh, Muslims never invented anything. It's like, bro, they literally invented numbers. Like modern mathematics was like developed by like Muslim and like Islamic scholars. Bro, what the fuck are you talking about? I mean, nobody's ever accused of like people who are religiously, ethnically or, uh, or racially reactionary of having a firm grasp on history or reality. Yeah.

As we have talked about countless times on this show, they take the concepts of the reality of the universe and just kind of mold it like clay until it makes them smile. Makes them feel better about themselves. They need to, like all racists, one of the things that they need is they feel like shit, so they need someone lower than them to make themselves feel better. As always, whenever it's me and you and we do an episode about the Crusades, the show eventually devolves into Joe and Tom's woke corner. I would finish this script but I can't because of woke.

But today's episode is no different than all of those because we're talking about the seventh crusade and the battle of el manzora The roots of the seventh crusade go back to well, this might surprise you all of the other crusades beginning in the 1090s with Pope Urban the second Call for a bunch of Christians to invade the Holy Land that first crusade was the high water mark They captured Jerusalem. They established crusader states, we've talked about all this before. It's like how Terminator 2 is the best Terminator, but they just kept making Terminator movies.

I have to go with you on that one, like I have nothing counter to say to that because it did make the LAPD the villain. But ever since that first crusade success, thanks mostly to the disunity of the various Muslim states at the time, then it had all been downhill from there as Saladin, eventually comes to power, begins whooping some night ass across the desert. By the late 1100s, Saladin and his armies had reduced the crusader holdings to little more than a few fortresses on the Mediterranean coast.

We need to do it again. That's all I'm going to say. Does a guy miss hearing me? I was like, no, I'm not Irish. I'm in ISIS. My name is Tomas. All Iran Lee or something like that. I mean, like me and who's saying, um trash features Hussein Qasbani, like have a joke that like every day I'm slowly stepping closer and closer to like saying the Shahada on a podcast because like I'll just text with it like, you know what man, Thobes look really comfy. You're going to read his book, follow me, my Anki and come out with a complete opposite idea of it. Yeah.

Also go read his book it's really good. Yeah follow me Akki is really good. We're just gonna do Four Lions 2. I fucking love that movie so much. Each attempt the crusaders sent out to battle back from the brink was met with catastrophic, totally foreseeable defeat as the heart of Muslim power in Egypt remained strong and able to counter any of their moves. This led to the crusaders coming to the understanding that if we're going to be able to retake and hold what they had previously lost, they would have to take the small step of conquering all of Egypt first.

Ooh, hard task, hard task. I like the simple campaign to conquer Egypt. Maybe I mentioned on the show before and I've been reading a lot about like the history of like art in Africa. Um, I'm like from reading that, uh, aside from like the people of the lower Nile conquering Egypt, like Egypt, very hard to take. Yeah. Famously. So for a lot of the same reason that any like large nation is, a lot of it is nothing. Yeah. And you still have to march through that. It's a problem. Yeah. And like as on this show in general, like, you know, generals have a big pot chance for, you know, uh, forgetting

to bring food and water, a thing that is really necessary when you're trying to take, you know, Egypt or Syria or Iraq. Yeah. Yeah. It certainly won't be something that happens in this episode. Oh yeah. And like, there's another problem with it because remember they're invading from Europe. What does like the north of Egypt have a fuckload of branches of the Nile River? You know, it's really hard to do back in the day and even comparatively today when it comes to modern wars. Navigate small channels of water.

Yeah. Yeah. Constantly, like hundreds of them. Why do you think Egypt was such a powerful kingdom? Yeah. If only these crusaders read about what happened in comparatively recent history to them Imagine just being the first guy to discover boats or like figure out how a boat works Like we've said before white people in boats Horrible things happen next yeah, they'd actually tried this before before what would would become the Seventh Crusade, in the Fifth Crusade, landing at the point of Damietta, which sounds like the name of an Italian drug dealer, and attempting to invade inland, only to find themselves staring down

like we said, countless crossings of the various tributaries of the Dial River in order to get to the heart of their empire, something that these crusaders, of course, did not prepare for. You know, I wasn't a big fan of the fifth crusade. It's like they changed a lot of the cast and it was, you know, the tonally was too different from the earlier crusades. You know, they tried to shoe horn some new characters in. It just didn't really work. Yeah. It's certainly my least favorite Fast and the Furious film. Paul Walker said, no, Vin Diesel is in the Fifth Crusade. It's about family.

Vin Diesel and the Rock just constantly in a never ending fist fight because both of their contract writers say they cannot lose a fight on camera. Oh God, I hate the Rock so much. I'm pretty sure like 15 people have seen a movie with The Rock in it in the last 20 years. They just keep bombing at the box office with budgets of like 200 million dollars. Yeah what dirt has he got on people. It's gotta be so much. The only thing the man can do now that generates profit is show up back to the WWE during a

writer strike or do another Moana, which he's doing both. Yeah The Rock is like the worst version of WWE where like the best version is, you know, Dave Bautista being a very good actor, you know, openly in support of LGBTQ rights. Yeah. And like has a good mindset when it comes to like health. Like he openly talked about that, like I had to stop taking steroids and lose a ton of weight because it's going to kill me. And meanwhile, the rock is blasting more gear than anyone ever has ever. On the other hand, you have Stone Cold Steve Austin, who was like Stone Cold is not a Republican, is he? He's a complicated character. Yeah. He

is. He's a carny. Yeah. recently there was a Netflix documentary about Vince McMahon, which did go Quite easy on McMahon if I'm gonna say so myself But that is because Netflix and the WWE have a deal for the future and in that documentary They're talking about like chair shots to the head Unprotected chair shots head if you're a wrestling like me, modern wrestlers will still take chair shots ahead, but they put their hands up. Just so you know Steve Austin posting a picture on Twitter of some sloppy hot dogs is like this and some unprotected chair shots. Well, Stone Cold said that he didn't really believe in CTE. Oh, of course a guy from Texas doesn't believe in CTE. Yeah. I mean Stone Cold is a complicated, he's a fucking carny man.

Take that for what it's worth. He doesn't seem to be like carny parentheses evil, like you know, Kane, Glenn Jacobs is. You know, but he's a carny. But when the Crusaders invaded northern Egypt, the Egyptian armies simply surrounded them because they know how to work in their own backyard. They surround them, cut them off from their escape at Damietta, and then ransom them to themselves to be allowed to return to Europe before they ever got close to Cairo, which is just mwah, chef's kiss.

Hell yeah. Our story picks up 40 years after that happened with King Louis IX of France, sick and dying in bed of fever. As the tale goes, in the midst of his fever dreams, he saw the images of the crusade storming through Egypt and eventually retaking Jerusalem. Thankfully those two things right next to one another. I mean, which is true if you're dumb. Remember the plan was to take all of Egypt and then hook around to Jerusalem. Taking this as a prophetic dream rather than his brain overheating in his skull, he recovers and then he goes to the Pope, Innocent IV, who had been calling for another

crusade for quite some time, and they make a vow to join forces. Famously, Pope Innocent IV is done for being the Pope who pissed off so many of his fellow Cardinals as well as Emperor Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire. He had to flee Rome for Leon while disguised as a woman in order to continue being the Pope. Yeah, you know, maybe he just wanted to do that. He had to flee Rome for Leon while disguised as a woman in order to continue being the Pope. Yeah, you know, maybe he just wanted to do that. Yeah, I mean, which I'm fine with, but the Pope would find that being a sin, so I find

his, you know, hypocrisy disgusting. I mean, you're the Pope in the 1250s. You can wear whatever you want. I mean, the Pope back then is doing some freak shit. You know? The Pope today is doing freak shit! Yeah but I don't want to think about that because I know what that Pope looks like. Yeah true. Never forget he's Argentinian.

That dude's doing some weird shit. The amount of cocaine in the Papal Palace must be just astounding. But like I do love that the, I think he's the chief designer for like the Pope's like robes and stuff. Is this like super gay Italian guy? Of course it is. He also has a side business where he may fragrances for power bottoms. It's just incredible. Now that is a hustle. No man has ever secured such a specific set of bags. Is that man? Yeah. It's like, you know, making sense for power bottoms and working in the Vatican is just like selling cocaine to cocaine addicts.

Louis and Innocent quickly went to work attempting to slap together a crusading force, which would cost, of course, a fuckload of money. Louis somewhat ironically decided to fundraise his portion of that by taxing the shit out of the clergy of France. He's posting a GoFundMe link on his pigeon clothes friend story. The Pope obviously wasn't a huge fan of that, but decided to let Louis secure the bag anyway he saw fit. Because he was also going to do something that is kind of funny.

That is, reach out to the Mongols! Oh! I did not expect that to happen. This is sliding into the Mongols. The EBS like, Hey, con you up sliding into the cons pigeon. It's around like the end of the 1240s, the golden horde is probably well established in the step at this stage. They're very, very powerful. Okay. Yeah. So this isn't, of course, it's not the peak of Mongol power, but it's up there. I mean, like if you are the Mongols, you're like, do I work with the Sultanate who is like right beside me or the whiteys who like die if they have any amount of cinnamon? So that's the thing the Mongols if anything

are very practical right? Like they didn't care for the Muslims as much as they didn't care for the whiteys or the Catholic Church as a whole. Means to an end. They wanted to conquer these Muslim lands and the Mongols were on board. They're like, yeah, we'll help you. However, the Catholic Church must bend the knee to the Mongols. Yes, we have a can in the Holy See. We're drinking fermented horse milk as part of the Eucharist ritual. Fuck yeah. Unfortunately, uh, for the comedy that could come from this, the Pope declines. And I just want to say as well, like the, a lot of more ink has been spilled about like the Mongols use of violence. Yes. They were like a very violent conquest, but also like,

like you said, the Mongols were like extremely pragmatic when it comes to a lot of this stuff. It's one of the things that like, for example, when the Mongols conquered, uh, you know, Armenia, there's a lot of stories about like their absolute brutality of which they did have some and, but what they did was very practical. Where it's like, look, we can conquer this entire place by just annihilating you or we can do it to that one town as an example. And the rest of you will probably be like, hey, we're Mongols now. Yeah, we're getting counsel online from being Mongol apologists. We're getting mongol pill.

Yeah, we're getting mongol. Honestly, Joe, that being in the steps, doing some archery on the back of a horse and drinking fermented horse milk would probably be so good for my mental health right now. To steal a line from Nate The Mongol limit break just says horse Yeah Louie went around dumping tons of money into hiring ships that he would need to transport the possibly thousands of nights that might answer the call as well as

deciding upon a plan of attack Louie wanted to conquer Egypt seeing as the only way forward for the Crusader states because remember he had that prophetic fever dream about it, and decided well, the guys back in the 5th crusade had a plan, no need to do anything differently even though it failed miserably, let's just do it again. So he used the exact same plan. Like was he expecting his opponents to be like, you know, I don't think they're stupid enough to do the exact same thing again. Let's maybe like change our fortifications or like our defense strategy. Oh, they're doing the exact same thing again. We've changed too

much. We can't defend against this. I mean, I think Louie's idea was like, I have the favor of heaven. They didn't. I'm built different. Yeah. I'm not getting punched in the face, I'm just defending with my forehead. Exactly. Using the Homer defensive tactics of getting punched in the head repeatedly until the opponent gets tired. If we just send thousands upon thousands of crusaders to Egypt over and over and over again, eventually we'll die our way inland and conquer Cairo. Yeah, you're going to eventually landfill the Nile with all the corpses so you can just walk over them.

Corpse bridge, baby. Corpse infrastructure, it all comes back to it. It's infrastructure week in the crusade. Everyone seemed to agree with them and remember it's only been about 40 years. There are some people around who probably remember how badly this went. And after a few years of planning, they set off towards Cyprus, where he and the rest of the Crusader forces were supposed to meet up and reorganize themselves. But it's important to remember here that while kings and popes and all that are involved

in organizing the crusade, much of the crusader effort itself is individual mm-hmm so people are just kind of showing up in small groups whatever numbers they could Knights are hiring other Knights to be their like their homies modern logistics and military organizations didn't exist in the concepts for Knights as much as you would imagine they would with your seven crusades deep at least but no they show up in Cyprus like onesies and twosies. Like also it's like 40 years later. So I would assume that there's probably like some high ranking military officials who fought in the fifth crusade. Possibly a few. They would be quite old. Yeah. Like they'd be like at a bare minimum in

their sixties. Yeah. Which back then is, is old. Just a crinkly old guy's like, do not do it. It didn't work. Don't go to Damietta. It sucks. Vibes are all off. They're using the same approach that I have when I get a bad takeaway. It's like, maybe it was just bad that one time. I did that last night. Yeah. Oh, Joe, I got capsulon from a place that previously got bad capsulon from and you know what I got? Bad capsulon the second time. Yeah, God, I asked I asked someone or I think I asked on the discord. It was like, how many times is too many to get a bad food from a place for you to not

go back. And I was just like, I will never learn. I never, it depends on how convenient it is. Is it five minutes from my apartment? Then I'll never learn. Yeah. But you know what's not convenient? Invading Egypt says you, Louie seemed to think it was so convenient.

He did the same thing twice. So King Louis gets there on September 17th, 1248, and by then small and large groups of crusaders from all over Europe are still just kind of trickling in behind him. And while Louis and the other crusader leaders thought ahead to stash a massive amount of supplies on Cyprus, one thing they didn't count on was just how long it would take for everyone to show up for work. Yeah. Crusaders took months to get to Cyprus, to the point that the ability to make the crossing from Cyprus to Egypt was no longer safe.

So they would have to wait there for the sea to calm down, which would require everyone to sit out the entire winter in Cyprus. Obviously, most everyone just figured, fuck sitting around here, I'll just go back home and come back in spring. But Louis issued a proclamation as commander of the crusade that nobody was allowed to leave Cyprus while they waited. I'm sure this is fantastic for morale. Great for morale and also just powerful choices when it comes to conserving your logistical system. Yeah. Because this quickly becomes a problem

for most of the knights there. Knights had to bankroll their own individual crusades with the idea of whatever debts they owed or incurred in order to do it would be paid off with loot and booty they would secure from the coming conquest right yeah many nights had mortgaged their property to pay their way and there was another part to this many nights traveled with other nights in their employ they hired dudes to be their wingman apparently yeah with the understanding that as soon as that check didn't clear they're packing up

their shit and they're leaving their night boss behind and going home. They're just mercenaries who think way too highly of themselves. I mean even for like at this stage you know actual I suppose soldiers in an army, like loyalty only stretches as far as you are fed and you are not thirsty and you are getting some sort of payment. Especially during an offensive invasion, you know, when someone's defending their own home, things are different. People will fight through all sorts of hardship, but it's like bro, I'm from some fucking shitty village in France or Germany or the Netherlands, whatever. Now I'm on Cyprus.

It's not even the years where we consider this a normal holiday. What am I doing here? I'm going home. Yeah. So now stuck on Cyprus with no loot or paycheck, they're about to fall behind on payments back home and probably lose their property, right? Yeah. Louis knew this would be a problem, and he would soon start hemorrhaging trained knights who would pack it up as soon as they were left wanting. So he had an answer to that, offering all of these knights to instead be hired into

his personal service instead of becoming homeless, creating a jobs program for the worst people in the world. As an insurance policy, he also began to forcefully conscript any people on Cyprus he found old enough to carry a weapon. However, packing around 15,000 extra men onto Cyprus from all around Europe onto a small island on the Mediterranean for months is not a great idea. Disease quickly spreads through the ranks, killing hundreds and sickening thousands. Another downside was, Louis actually did stock the island with enough supplies for the Egyptian campaign. However, he had not stocked it for

several months of sitting around plus an Egyptian campaign. It's also as well, it's probably harder to restrict rations for people who are just kind of sitting around. Cause if you're like actively on the campaign, at least there's probably some forward momentum that kind of distracts from I'm sitting around and I'm starving. And that as well as they're constantly looting, forging off the land, stealing food and supplies as they go on a campaign. Whereas when you're just sitting in Cyprus, of course, they're pillaging Cyprus as well. But Cyprus is a small goddamn place.

Yeah, they're all just eating those little birds that you have to like put the cloth over your head to eat. Was it the Ortolan or whoever? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Eating an Ortolan like an apple. All the Cypriots like, we have no tiny birds left on our entire island. All of the Crusaders are just laying around napkins on their face.

Just look over at the garrison. I was just a sea of white napkins on people's heads. Well, have you ever seen the show Atlanta? No. Okay. First of all, you should watch it. Second of all, there's a scene where they do the order on thing where they put the napkin over their face, but they're eating deep fried human hands. So much cartilage. I know. So as soon as the crusaders finally did take off on boats in May towards Egypt, they had already plowed through all of the rations. As soon as word of the crusade got to the Ayyubid Sultan, he knew immediately that they were probably going to do the exact same thing as they had done before, so he garrisoned

Dami Etta and sent another army to block the Nile River beyond it. It also didn't help that Louis had sent a formal declaration of war months ahead of time. Sigh. Now, only Louis thought this was a good idea. His entire council of knights, even the pope, thought that that was a really dumb thing to do, because they're ruining any element of surprise that you might have. Clearly Louis did not attend the Japanese Imperial Military's Battle Tactics School. Though that is a funny thought. Then as the Crusaders

were getting ready to land off the coast of Damietta, most of the fleet had gotten battered by a storm, and they didn't get sank. Some did, of course, but mostly just get scattered throughout the entire sea. Lost is all hell. Louis simply decides, fuck them, we're landing anyway. And somehow this disorganized landing actually benefits him, because as the crusaders begin to land, Muslim forces defending the beach charge forward into battle, right? Having no idea that these first landings were not all that there was. They had no idea that more ships would eventually just show up. And once the other crusader ships found out where they were actually supposed to land,

and they did land, they were able to outmaneuver the Muslim forces who had already since fully committed to battle against the previous landing. Thus the Crusaders took the beach via the power of pure unadulterated chaos, helped by the small fact that the emir in command of the troops, the beach via the power of pure unadulterated chaos, helped by the small fact that the emir in command of the troops, the same man in command of the nearby city of Damietta, caught a sword between the ribs and died. With nobody to command them, the Muslim troops withdrew back to Damietta and attempted to send a carrier pigeon to the Sultan Kaira.

However, this is where something weird happens. The pigeons never show up. So there's only like two reasons, generally speaking, that a trained carrier pigeon does not go to the place where it's supposed to go, and that is dying? In route, or getting killed. There's no evidence to suggest that Louis had some crack team of anti-pigeon soldiers out there. Anti pigeon action. It's just three pigeons going down.

Yeah, God. Or some kind of sudden pigeon based wildcat strike. But regardless, the pigeons never make it and deliver the message. I unequivocally support the the pigeon union. We fully support the carrier pigeon union of Damietta. Our thoughts are with you in this trying time. Don't cross the picket line. Don't be posting on your close pigeon story. Don't cross the pigeon line. Yeah don't cross the pigeon line. Don't be a scab. See that's easy because we can't fly. This message is for the the pigeons fellow birds. Yeah we're watching you ravens, hawks, crows. If any birds are

gonna be scabs we all know it's seagulls right? Yeah seagulls maybe crows because crows love stealing stuff. Mmm. It's on-site crows. I know what you're up to. And I know this show is popular amongst the seagulls I assume that's why I constantly get attacked by them as I go for runs by the beach Yeah, I can't wait until we have to record next week and you have to give a heartfelt apology to the seagull community The head of the seagull community of the Netherlands like no we have solidarity with our carrier pigeon brothers We know the head of the seagull union just goes, ah! I need a translator.

Whatever happened, the pigeons never deliver the message and the men inside Damietta couldn't get a response from the sultan, so they just bail, abandoning the city to the crusaders. So Louis sends knights towards the city to check a scouting report that said the city had been abandoned because it just didn't make any sense to him. And he discovers that the troops inside the city had fled so quickly that they had not only left just all of their supplies behind, but they hadn't even bothered to torch the bridges that link the city to the western bank of the river that it was built to defend. So things are all looking up for the Crusaders, right? Yeah.

This is where Louis and his army have a golden opportunity. The only army between him and a massive advance towards Cairo was how completely leaderless and retreating so quickly they were leaving shit behind. All of Louis's subordinate commander said, we need to strike out immediately. All gas, no breaks towards Cairo. Instead, Louis decides we need to wait, because his brother Alphonse is on his way with reinforcements. But they wouldn't be showing up until fall. It's now May, when it was pointed out that if they waited three goddamn months to do anything, it would only give the sultan more time to rally his own reinforcements, and since they were currently sitting in the man's backyard, that was really bad for the crusaders.

Louis just kind of shrugs and says, don't worry about it, it's fine. Once Alphonse is here, we'll figure everything out. Yeah, I got my bro Alphonse rolling up, you know, we're getting reinforcements. Yeah, all the soldiers just have to sit here for three months and they're like posting on their fucking close pigeon story. Like they're that guy who never left their hometown is like, who up partying on a Friday night? This is not tactically a good idea. So there they sat, a party on a Friday night. This is not tactically a good idea.

So there they sat, but the Sultan wouldn't be sitting back and waiting without doing anything in the meantime. Pretty much as soon as the city fell, bands of Bedouin guerrillas began raiding its outskirts. Yes. Yes. Guerrilla warfare! Guerrilla warfare! The Bedouins are getting involved! They started hitting any Christian who might be unlucky enough to be caught outside of its walls.

Anyone who was captured alive by the Bedouins was given the old chop chop treatment. And then their pieces were left in full view of the city. They're doing like psychological warfare. So Louis forbids any counterattack or any effort to drive them away, seeing it as a trap. This is the one time I'm going to give Louis credit here. That is almost certainly true. How many times have we talked about that on this show where like they're trying to lure

them into an ambush of some kind. Louis sees that instead men sit inside the city for months as the area outside the walls Slowly gets covered with the severed heads of their bros God, you know They should have just been using like the Bedouin like saying is a guy I'm against my brother my brother and I are against my Cousin my cousin and I are against the stranger You know like they really needed to solidify the nuclear core of their forces So their heads wouldn't be

cut off and placed on spikes. Yeah, I mean, I've never had my head cut off and put on a spike for a reason. Yeah. So far, I should say. You know, if you're down with the homies, you don't get your head cut off. No. There is a general geographic spread of places where it is good to go and, you know, huddle with your homies.

Like if it's, you know, a European forest with your homies. Like if it's, you know, a European forest, not too bad. Homie huddle. Yeah. In like an encampment on the banks of the Nile in Egypt surrounded by Bedouins who are cutting your head off. Maybe not that good. I mean the concept of a homie huddle I feel is like beyond the physical, you know? It's a metaphorical homie huddle. I'm metaphysically huddling with my homies. Exactly. And the main difference

between the Crusaders and the Bedouins is the Crusaders did not believe in the Great Malinko. So the power of the homie huddle was lost on them. Yeah. They're saying the meaning of the minds, it's passe, it's too old, I'm doing the homie huddle of the mind. Exactly. Finally, the crusaders got ready to march in November. So they have been there a long time. But another argument starts as the King advisor said, look, someone tried this before, they got surrounded and they got caught off from resupply and then ran some back to Europe like a bunch of goddamn losers. Someone, someone, this has happened so many times on this show, on this show alone, let alone actual military history. Like just fucking like

learn how many times has this happened in the past, like 10 years in this period. It's like the battle of Damascus, Carrere, like fucking yeah. Stop getting surrounded like a bunch of fucking losers. Stop going into the desert and getting surrounded and having no supplies. Like actually think and learn from what mistakes you've made in the past. Lesson number one, stop invading the desert. Yes. That's all the lesson I have for you. Generally, you'll be fine if you stop doing like that is the place where Poseidon fears to go. Exactly.

So their plan was, you know, we need to do something so that doesn't happen again. be fine if you stop doing that. Like that is the place Poseidon fears to go. Exactly. So their plan was, you know, we need to do something so that doesn't happen again. If we march and take Alexandria, at least we'll have a large harbor to fall back to. We can get reinforcements and possibly we can evacuate. We gotta return some books, you know? They're well overdue. I got, I look, do you mind if we make a small detour? Alphonse is really getting his ass kicked by late fees.

I did take out the whole song of ice and fire series that are out. You know, I like, I'm going to get slammed with fees. I'm already over leveraged to all of the principalities of Genoa. Yeah. And then, you know, Alphonse and Louie are getting an argument about like, why did you even check these books out? You know, they're never going to be finished. And he's like, you know what, it's just, I like it for the pros. And then, and then that's it turns into a whole thing. Yeah. Now, instead of listening to this, admittedly, good advice in the context of, well, we're already here. Louis listens to his other brother, Robert of Artois, who said, nah, we just need to march to Cairo really, really fast like

it nothing bad could possibly happen to us. And he goes, Robert's got a good point because it's the idea I already had. On the march from Damietta, the crusaders, like the predecessors in the Fifth Crusade, follow the right bank of the Nile. Their fleet shadows them going down the river carrying their supplies because they would need like wood for bridges to cross the countless parts of the Nile that they're now going to have to cross while infantry and Knights are on the shore. They're also carrying siege engines for their eventual attack on Cairo. Everyone wasted so much time militarily domesticating

dogs and horses when we should have been doing beavers. Mm. Like, imagine if you were an army at any point in history before, like, you know, the combustion engine and you had just a garrison full of like militarily trained beavers that you deploy to create a river crossing. Yeah, but you still have to carry all the wood for them because you just like dump them on the banks of the Nile Like build the damn beavers like bro. This is the fucking sand. What do you want us to do with this?

There's nothing to just slap my weird flat tail down on to yeah, you know like but then again like you know I'm not just talking about the Nile I'm talking about in general like you know if you're in the black forest you need to or you're trying to cross the Tiber Yeah, lots of lots of trees there. And perhaps the beavers invent their own logistical networks and organization. Ah shit. The beavers have unionized. Again, the beavers are reading Lenin again. Leninist beavers. Oh, I shed a tear for what's happening to the beavers and the caucuses.

Then we just have like, yeah, like political infighting among the beavers, some of them have become dangists. What, these beavers are getting killed with an ice axe? Then three days in, something nobody could have ever foreseen happens. The Sultan, old and mostly out of his mind, drops dead. Damn. This could have led to what it normally does back then, a massive infighting around the Egyptian elite to try to grab power, secure their holdings, and would have immediately benefited the crusaders, who could use that to make their advance easier. And that probably would have happened if it not for one specific person, Shagir Eddur, a member of the Sultan's harem. She was the first to discover his dead

body due to it being her designated time to go and fuck his old ass. The first thing she did was run and tell a court advisor, and that court advisor had a brain between his ears because he knew a power struggle during a time of an invasion would be fucking awful, so he and Durr conspired to keep the Sultan's death a secret. They're doing weekend parties. Yeah, yeah. So now the court advisor and the harem queen effectively took control of the entire country, running everything while keeping everyone else in the dark.

Yeah. The harem queen just like holding the Sultanultan's body up doing a dance like, he says we need to unify and drive out the crusaders. Meanwhile the eunuch is like, my lord is, he has a sore throat, he cannot speak. I might smell like piss and jasmine but please listen to me. I have dribbled a bit too much today. Meanwhile, the Crusaders continued to advance, harassed by hit and run attacks the entire way because the Bedouins, much like Benghazi, ain't going away. I did not expect a fucking Benghazi joke.

Oh, God. Oh god. This episode really is like a greatest hit. Every once in a while I am the funny one. Louis had again given strict orders not to pursue the Bedouins, but the knights had started to ignore his orders. Small groups of knights broke formation here and there to chase after the attacker, each time getting slaughtered, catching that Bedouin smoke and not coming back. Yeah, once again, not really a smart idea to try and chase indigenous people to an area in a kind of like Erzatz guerrilla battle where they

know the local landscape and are very adept at fighting in it and you are some dickhead from you know along the Rhine. And like even getting rid of them having to understand indigenous people because that is so far beyond the pale of like any possible European mind is like simple practicality. These guys are all supposed to be trained soldiers and many of them are veterans of various wars. You'd think they would look down at their heavily armored ass and realize there's no way I can catch that light horseman. Yeah. We just talked about this on the Battle of Damascus.

Yeah. Yeah. The next pass of hit run attackers would would actually ride close to the Crusaders and just throw pieces of bloody armor at their surviving knights and be like, hey, look what I did to your bros. Oh, so cool. Then when that wasn't happening, there was the hell that was the march itself. Constant river crossings, which are slow, followed by the men having to drop all their weapons and armor to go out and build ad-hoc dams and bridges across canals and shit, which was even slower.

Yeah, they're beaver maxing. They're trying. Look, I would say they're getting beaver-pilled, but they're not beaver maxing. Okay, yeah. There's a beaver attempt. There's a beaver deficit between beaverpill to beavermaxing. Their beaver deficit is reaching critical mass. After a month of doing this, the army came to the part of the Nile called the Osmantana, on the other side of which was the city of Mansoura, which, this is true, was built as a monument to the 5th Crusade's defeat. Oh, this is so fucking on the nose. For shadowing is a literary device. Sometimes true like reality is stranger than fiction. Like if

you wrote this in a book, like some like respected author, be like, you know, very witheringly like, you know, I enjoyed the plot elements, all the revolving characters, but, you know, the final culmination of the battle was a bit too on the nose. I find subtleties for cowards. Yeah. On either side of them were further branches of the Nile with Mansura being at its point. They're kind of in a triangle Mansura at its point and Nile River branches on either side of them. So it's kind of like a miniature Delta where like multiple kind of tributary streams come together?

Yes. Okay. Any advance toward Mansora would pretty much be suicide. But of course, retreat is unthinkable because that's not just not what soldiers of God do, is it? Yeah. And because of the placements of those branches meant that if they tried to cross the river on either side, maybe go around Mansoura, the garrison of Mansoura would see it coming

a mile away. Yeah. So of course, Louis orders his army to begin crossing the base of the river into the triangle towards Mansoura. Oh god. This would require them to build a causeway, protected what is known by what they're called cat castles, or something of a slapdash fortification over the people building said causeway as they went. Okay. So the defenders can't just make it

rain on top of your laborers. That makes sense. Yeah. It's in their CBA. You have to build this cat castle. So we're not building your causeway. Once again, ye old sharks is showing up with a clipboard, just a lawyer and homespun rags. Like according to our agreement, according to the agreement, there's need needs to be some coverage over the Wookers. They need to build us some wicked cat castles. Like they're not getting their like three recommended smoke and Duncan breaks. They're not being covered from artillery. What was their early rate on this?

Yeah, we need to stop the work. We need to renegotiate. Many people don't know this, but this is why there is a Dunkin Donuts in Egypt today. I don't know if there's a Dunkin Donuts in Egypt, but I'm assuming there's definitely a Dunkin Donuts in Egypt. If there's a Dunkin Donuts in Tbilisi, there's at least one in Cairo. That's the way I look at it. First time I ever had Dunkin Donuts was in Amsterdam. Interesting. Yeah, I guess that makes sense.

There's probably not. Is there Dunkin Donuts in the UK? There's one in the UK, but I had moved to... I was still living in Ireland at that time. Boston has yet to open an embassy in Ireland. It's okay, there's not one in Armenia either. Once again, Armenian-Irish relations come closer. As soon as the Crusaders begin building, the Muslim forces begin making it rain with a combination of arrows and what amounts to be Greek fire or ye old napalm. First-hand accounts of the use of this fire describe it as a scene not unlike that of like a Vietnam War film when napalm hits. Each time it would burn away an

entire group of men building the causeway. After each dose of fire, the crusaders would retreat. Then in the middle of the night, laborers from Mansura would hurry out under the cover of darkness to dig down the bank of the river. They would widen the river as the crusaders were building. This is like a jackass prank. Going out with a Minecraft pick just digging out the sand. Imagine what the mindfuck these like the mind fuck these levers are going through and they wake up every morning to go back to building the cause they're like hey Francois did this fucking river get wider or is it just me just making

it slightly wider but not wide enough that they notice that's that's exactly what's happening then as if that wasn't bad enough the defenders of Mansora got 16 massive catapults working and began chucking boulders at the crusaders as they worked. The crusaders continued with their own catapults leading to something of an artillery duel. Just as the crusaders were getting their hopes up, a Muslim cavalry force attacked them in the rear, reminding them how out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of someone else's kingdom they were, and how the dead sultan's army was slowly working its way around them, the longer they stayed put in this very badly

thought out siege. Once again, ye olde shawks is just there with his cliffboard as like boulders are just thudding into the ground. I'm pretty sure in our agreement we said we wouldn't be under artillery attack. Now everything's on fire, the river seems to be getting mysteriously wider, the Dunkin' Donuts has been looted. They've stolen the munchkins. Then a Bedouin man appears in the crusader camp telling him he could totally show them

a secret way across the river which would allow them to flank the muslim army that had since camped on the opposite shore, opening up the way to mansora, and if they won there, open the road wide open to Cairo. Now I don't know what you're thinking here, this Bedouin guy is obviously setting them up to get ambushed, but this is a bit of a red herring here, this guy is being completely honest. So on February 8th 1250, after keeping track of how that means they have been doing this for nigh on a year at this point. Jesus Christ. Fuck. Me. Their crusaders forwarded the river and marched toward the Muslim forces on the opposite bank

in front of Mansoura. Louis gave an order again that nobody was allowed to break contact with the main army and nobody was allowed to launch any attacks without specific orders. Because Louis must listen to the show and knows how these crusades tend to go. Once they make it to the opposite side of the river, a column of enemy cavalry appears and Robert of Artois immediately orders his force to charge them, ignoring Louis' orders, who's also his brother. The Muslim cavalry was only a small detachment of scouts, so it turns and runs for its life back towards their camp to warn the rest of their army.

Rather than breaking off the charge, Robert drives onwards. This led to an argument at the vanguard of the crusade, which was being led by, of course, the Knights Templar. They were pissed because if anybody was to be the first to meet the enemy, it should be them, not the King's brother. After all, that is why they are in the vanguard. According to them, any other Knight seeing combat before them would just be shameful. So without talking to the king or anyone else, the Templars also charge, trying to keep up with Robert. As Louis looked on in horror, his army just suddenly starts all playing catch up with

Robert, dissolving piece by piece as they sprint after the dude in front of them. Though Louis' horror was actually eased, because this might surprise you, Tom. The charge worked. What? It did have an element of surprise, and Robertsmen stormed through the enemy camp so quickly nobody was ready for them, and in many cases were still in bed. The camp's commander got connected to Allah's Wi-Fi because he stepped out of his tent still naked fresh out of a bath. Which I have to say this man's camp and his personal tent? Sick. He had his own personal bath. Quite literally stepping out of your tent and being naked and afraid. I love that he didn't even throw on a robe or anything. He's like, nah, I have to see what is happening right now

Dick and balls out just catching a lance to the face. Yeah dying tentiles down and hog out Yeah, yeah dogs out hogs out. Yeah, the enemy camp was in complete and total disarray Enemy soldiers were fleeing their commander was dead Crusaders were storming through and wrecking shit. Robert's charge had worked. He had taken the camp. But looking around in his son's surprise victory, he didn't know what to do next. Kind of like, you know, a dog who chases a car who actually catches it. A mule with a spinning wheel. He didn't know what to do. and he decided suddenly this isn't enough.

Before the bodies were cold and before the entire crusader force had even crossed the river and caught up, Robert ordered a charge directly into the city of Mansoura. Oh no. No. No. No. The leader of the Templars attempted to slow him down, but not out of pride or him wanting to go first this time, but because even he knew charging a fortified city alone and unsupported

was a pretty stupid thing to do. Yeah, Robert of Artois thought the Mashallah department was calling, but no, it was not. They were calling, it just wasn't for him. Getting a wrong pocket dial from the martial law department. Another man, the Earl of Salisbury, agreed with the Templar leader and urged Robert to calm down his murder boner for five seconds. To counter this, Robert deployed the one insult that always worked during the crusades. He called them all cowards, forcing them to join him. And soon everyone is mounting up and charging directly at the city.

Louis was once again screaming and yelling at everyone to cut it out, but nobody cared. The crusaders rushed directly towards Mansoura. The city's gates were wide open. The crusaders thought that this was like a sign. It meant the Muslim forces were so broken and leaderless they lost all cohesion and now Mansoura is wide open for the taking. But in reality, it was a trap. Because of course it was.

I hope you listening at home can like sense the palpable physical frustration I am feeling listening to this. I mean if anybody listening is planning their own crusade then you know not to discharge into an open city. The city beyond the walls is a maze of small narrow streets and the vanguard of the crusaders, this time actually the templars, the heaviest of their heavy horsemen, all of that shit, would not be able to maneuver within its confines. The defenders had set up choke points and garrisons within the city at intervals so

they could corral crusaders into tightly packed groups and then slaughter them in mass. This is exactly what happened. As the crusaders packed into the streets of Mansoura, they ran into roadblocks and barriers. Defenders hiding up on the rooftops began to rain arrows and fire onto them. And failing that, dropped big goddamn bricks and wooden beams directly down on top of them. Imagine being the knight that escapes the arrows. They escape the homemade napalm and they just catch a brick straight to the face and die.

Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best one. Yep. Sometimes returning to tradition is good. We're going Cro-Magnon mode. Cro-Magnon Maxing. We're Mag Maxing. We're like hitting people with bricks and large wooden clubs. As soon as a large enough party of crusaders were trapped in an area, the defenders would throw barrels, beams, bricks and carts in their way to cut them off and then begin the

killing. Only a few crusaders who are at the rear of the advance into the city saw what was happening and were able to make a run for it, including the leader of the advance into the city saw what was happening and were able to make a run for it, including the leader of the Templars. Robert, at its very head of course, got caught in the middle, broke into a nearby house for cover from a hail of garbage and fire, and we have no idea how he died, but we know that he died real, real bad, trapped at a house all alone. Ugh, stabbed to death by angry Saracens. He died alongside the Earl of Salisbury and most of the English Knights, which I call a good start.

Yep. It was only after the slaughter inside the city that finally the rest of Louis's force had completed the river crossing and now they had taken that camp on that side of the river the rest of the Crusader army that had been trapped on the other side could cross they could complete their crossing and get closer to Mansoura something that Louis obviously needed now that Robert had just led hundreds of his best knights directly into a

halal woodchipper. But as the crusaders did that, the defenders of Minasaurra charged out and attacked. The crusaders thought that the crossing was so secure that they didn't need to be prepared. They were nearly driven back across the river that they had just crossed with dozens of crusaders being cut off and surrounded and deciding jumping into the river and trying to swim across was a better chance of survival than fighting it out. Men and horses drowned as they tried to swim across, still armed and wearing all of their gear, creating something of a large waterlogged swamp of corpses and armor.

Yeah, human-dom, corpse infrastructure. Yeah, happened again again this time on accident Yeah in a Mario type situation you might be able to jump across the river of dying men and horses But outside of that you're fucked jumping on Like Crusaders head like a Koopa Troopa Boing boing Like a Muslim arrow catches you the back and coins fall out

However even with his full well what was left of his full army on the other side of the river Louis and his army were fucked they had nowhere left to run their backs were now against the river with no escape route They were forced to quickly reinforce their own camp as Muslim forces began to besiege them. Mansoura still blocked his way to Cairo and he wasn't getting any reinforcements due to the fact that the new Sultan had finally been crowned and after that whole situation had stabilized, the first thing he did was send his fleet down the Nile to wipe it clear of any Crusader ships and then cut it off from any possible Crusader reinforcements.

There is of course another problem. He was now camped on a river that was full of corpses, a river his men kept drinking from. Dead bodies were shrewd across the countryside and now thousands of men were shitting into holes into the ground in the few spots that weren't covered with dead bodies. They swelled up and exploded in the heat of the desert and we got disease again. Oh yeah, the river water somehow has this kind of florid taste of a New England double dry hopped IPA. That's actually how IPAs are created. The hardest part is stuffing all the dead crusaders into a vat.

Inflated putrid armour? I mean that could be an IPA flavour put out by somewhere in like Western Washington or Oregon. Crusaders began dropping dead left and right. They were shitting blood and vomiting blood in every which direction. And it's not me making a joke. That is actually what happened. They were shitting and vomiting blood. Oh, shitting blood inside your armor definitely sucked.

Turning your armor into a blood bag. Oh, no, Joe, that is such a disgusting image. Hey, if they're also pissing blood, then you got a grand slam. Louis sat in that camp for four months as the dead piled up around him from disease, starvation, and thirst, and not to mention the constant counterattacks. So Louis tried the masterful gambit of geopolitics. He offered the Egyptian salt in the city of Damietta, the city that he had just captured in exchange for not his freedom, but for Jerusalem. Like real, that's a moron's gambit right there.

But I'm just going to say personally, and this is just me. I don't know, Joe, if you're going to disagree or you listening at home is going to disagree after the first corpse explodes in the sun, I'm going home. Yeah. That's a hit that things aren't going your way anymore. I'm not going to try and like do the fool's gambit of like, yeah, I'm going to trade you this city. I stole for the thing that we have wanted for the six proceeding crusades. Yeah. Not to mention off for you a city you're certainly by all means going to take away from me at any moment. Yeah. I'm like, you know, I'm sitting in my tent, I'm coordinating what to do next.

I, all I just hear is like a, as the next body explodes in the river. Oh, there goes another one. I'm packing up. I'm like on fucking Uber or free now or like whatever Uber Uber horse. And it's just like some bed by the Mongols. Yeah. The Mongols just show up on a horse and like bring you back and they're like, Bismillah, you will be, uh, you will be brought home. I'm focused on surviving because we just have like, you know, those little things that you had when you were a kid, they're like the kind of aluminum foil packets. And if you burst them, there's like a little pellet inside and they'd like, like explode. Yeah. Yeah. If I am surrounded with the physical rotting manifestation of those,

I am going home. I go home on a night out at the slightest chance. I am not sitting fucking miles outside of Mansoura with exploding bodies around me and thinking, do you know what? I think I can actually come out on top of this. I got it right where they want them. It's like when you're at the bottom, the only way you can, the only way is up. Exactly. And sometimes that bottom is full of sun exploding corpses. Sometimes you cannot top from the bottom. That's all I'm going to say. You got to like cut your losses. The Sultan promptly looked at his offer and told him to go fuck himself. Yeah.

Finally, Louis gave up and began marching back toward Damietta, all while being constantly harassed by attacking forces. The Sultan looking at him with the disdain of a GameStop employee when you've like… I give you store credit for Damietta. I could give you your life, that's the best I'm gonna give you. And even that is marketably worse at this point. Louis himself was violently ill at this point and barely able to walk when his army finally shattered at the Battle of Forest Cure.

Which is often called a battle, it wasn't much of a battle at all, it was more of a kicking a guy while he was down, or the battle version of a dead guy exploding in the sun. It's not killing him any worse, he's already dead. But if, you know, there was... Louis was captured, and a few of his knights made it back to Damietta, where they were trapped. Just like in the crusade before, they were held for ransom. Somewhat hilariously, word of the battle that Louis had been capturing reached Europe, but not as a defeat, as a magnificent victory, until a short time later when someone actually found out what happened.

Yeah bro, like we totally took the city, you know, don't ask why there is thousands less men here with me, you know, like they're all just chilling out there, like I decided to let them run the city. So at this point everyone knows Louis captured, his men are being held for ransom. Then on Easter of 1251, note the time here, it's been a while, an old decrepit Hungarian monk named Jacob, who was living in Northern France, declared that he had a vision delivered to him personally by the Virgin Mary She told him that he was to raise an army and march on Cairo to free King Louis from captivity

He marched through France eventually getting to Paris spreading the word to everyone You must join me or face the fires of hell He gathered 60,000 people. Yes, for anyone who's interested in this, this is called the Shepherds Crusade. Yes, it's mostly peasant men, women, children. The government of France and its nobility wanted absolutely nothing to do with them, nor did the church. So Jacob and his godly crusade go on a rampage. They attack

churches, chuck priests into the Seine River, got into a pitched battle with college students at the University of Orlan, but eventually of course, because this is France and because it's Europe in general, but specifically in the 1200s, they eventually begin an anti-Semitic pogrom. Yep. As it always does. This happened during the paupers crusade we talked about, often times called the peasants crusade.

It happens. After this, French soldiers are eventually dispatched, Jacob is killed, and everybody else got excommunicated. Yeah, that's probably the scariest sentence that a Frenchman in the 1250s could hear is that a decrepit Hungarian monk has had visions from God. That is just a FromSoft game. That's also probably just Viktor Orban as well. Oh God, true. He doesn't look decrepit, he looks like Gru from the Minions. Kind of sounds like him too.

Eventually the Sultan, the Church and France all cut a deal, the Crusaders would leave Damiyetta, pay the salt a huge sum of money, and in return, Louis and the surviving Crusaders would be released. But just because he was freed after getting his ass kicked across Egypt didn't mean Louis had lost the love of the game. He kept trying to whip up crusades for the rest of his life, eventually succeeding in 1270 and dying in Tripoli of disease. He was later made a saint, I assume because it is truly a miracle that anyone listened to him after the first time he melted an army in the desert.

How the fuck did he become a saint? Veneration. I'm looking this up. Louis the ninth is often considered the model of the ideal Christian monarch, AKA a fucking loser. Like, you know, the entirety of the crusades are just like people from Europe getting their shit pushed in, like, constantly. Yeah. So, the end! That is the story of the Battle of Mansurah and the death of the Seventh Crusade. But Tom, we do a thing on this show called Questions from the Legion. If you'd like to ask us a question, you could donate to the show on Patreon, you can ask us in our Patreon DMs, or ask us on our Discord, which you'll also have access to. We have a channel for that and we will pick it from the list.

And today's question is kind of perfect for Tom and I. If you could have any historical figure blast steroids, who would you give it to and why? Uh, Albert Einstein. The argument in my brain is who do I give it to to make it the funniest? Yeah. Yeah. This is what I thought of as well. Yeah. Funniest for me would be like Robert Oppenheimer or like Einstein, like these two, like the ER nerds. What if like Einstein was jacked would be very funny.

What if Einstein is just absolutely blasting trend and Anovar? He certainly wouldn't have lived as long. It's just like Einstein is just the size of Ronnie Coleman. The atom bomb goes out, he's like, yeah, but I figured out E equals MC squared in order to maximize protein intake. I'm just like inventing new branch chain amino acids. Oh God. I have to think here. Um, Adrian DeVeert. Oh God. No, no, we have to figure out what stack he's on. I mean, he is a guy that just loves ultraviolet. So I'm thinking

rather than being on like a bodybuilding stack, he's he's not gonna look like Jay Cutler He's gonna go for but like the shit that over him was on when he was fighting in pride. Oh Like he's gonna be pride FC Gearing, you know blasted to the gills but not cartoonishly huge still big but able to chase you down like a fucking still big but able to chase you down like a fucking animalistic predator and tear you apart with his bare teeth. Yeah like on definitely on HGH. He's on testosterone, EPO maybe. Bit of windstroll maybe. Yep yep cuz he's got a cut you know. Yeah like so he's like super lean and still nimble. He's got that Jesus on the cross look. Oh god Korean Jesus ripped Korean Jesus. He's also got that Jesus on the cross look. Oh God.

Korean Jesus, ripped Korean Jesus. He's also got a B on like EPO, so like he has like cardiovascular abilities of a geared out marathon runner or Lance Armstrong. Yeah, yeah. Nothing is stopping this man except eventually his own heart. Imagine you put Attila the Hun on powerlifting stack. You'd have to give it to his horse too. To be able to hold him up.

No. If you gave Attila the Hun gear he would just look like Radahn from Elden Ring. He wouldn't even need a horse anymore. He would transform. Much like Frieza going into his next form, the next form of the Hun is a centaur Who for you would be the funniest though to give it to? Oh, man, like imagine Barack Obama on steroids My fellow Americans. Let me be clear. My heart is about to stop Yeah, who would be the funniest?

I mean, it's gotta be somewhat like Patton who has already like had roid rage before he was doing roids. Also because I hate him and that means he dies by the time he's 35. Give like Henry the eighth like steroids, but he'll just still eat his way past them. He'll look like the world's strongest man. not a single bit of definition for him, you know? Okay, I finally have my funniest one. Hands down.

Charles II of Spain. The guy that was so inbred, he had the Habsburg jaw of a god and couldn't chew his own food, but now make him an absolute trend beast. He's like chain maxing while also just being fueled by Huell because it's the only thing he can consume. Unstoppable. He couldn't have kids anyway. Now he certainly can.

I want to introduce Bacchy into the Habsburg line. Oh God. What if the Habsburg jaw was also a tricep? Then the Habsburgs would just end up looking like the fucking fish people from Shadow over Innsmouth. I mean, the car already did. They did it on their own. And also it would kill their line because they would die so early.

Yeah. You know, Charles the second Instagram influencer dies mysteriously at 32 while a snorting pre-workout. Would you know who really reached their pee before doing steroids will have made them even funnier? Moammar Gaddafi. I want to believe that he was like, maybe he didn't do steroids, but he was involved in the trafficking of them. I feel like Gaddafi being how weird he was, was definitely like doing some like TRT. He was gacked out on dick pills at minimum. Yeah. Yeah. Or like give fucking Kim Il Sung like a full like cycle of Anovar.

Yeah. But following the principles of Juche, it would have to be North Korean Anovar The North Koreans are not only making crystal meth. They are making steroids. They got the pre-workout. They just needed the post Send Kim Il Sung to Mexico to those pharmacies where you can buy steroids Well Tom I think that's a podcast and you host another podcast. Plug that other podcast. Beneath the Skin, show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing and glue factory, a podcast that has like no theme, nothing but riffs. Um, yeah, check it out. And this is the only podcast that I hosted. You're already listening to it, but consider

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