Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 421 - The Battle of Dorylaeum Ft. Failure to Launch

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Check out Failure to Launch: https://open.spotify.com/show/67k2E47btdeWWdljZAmf9A GET JOE'S BOOK: Ebook, Audiobook, and Paperbacks now available! https://www.amazon.com/Highlands-Burn-Foundling-Brigade-Saga-ebook/dp/B0GSG5CNXX/ Or you can buy the ebook and audiobook directly from us: https://www.llbdpodcast.com/products/ Get Nate's band's debut album here! https://secondhomesband.com/ Joe is joined by Chris and Quinn of Failure to Launch to talk about the first major battle of the First Crusades and how the Crusaders stumbled over their own feet to victory sources: Runciman, Steven (2005). The First Crusade. New York: Cambridge University Press Historia Hierosolymitana John France, Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade, Cambridge University Press, 1996 Richardson, Scott. Dorylaeum: The First Christian-Muslim Clash of the Crusades. military Heritage. December 2007. Vol 9. No 3.

Hey everyone, it's Joe. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon. Just $5 a month gets you access to our entire bonus episode catalog, as well as every regular episode, one full week early. Access to all of our side series that are currently ongoing and our back catalog of those as well. Gets you e-books, audiobooks, first dibs on live show tickets and merchandise when they're available, and also gets you access to our Discord, which has turned into a lovely little community. So go to patreon.com slash lions led by donkeys and join the Legion of the Old Crow today. To the crack of rifles and the acrid stench of sorcery, a sun invasion sweeps through the highlands of the Confederation, and Syatt's peaceful village life breaks with the dawn.

A sole survivor amidst the smoking ruins of all that he held dear. Siyat must make a choice, is pursuing revenge against the mercenaries that took everything from him, worth becoming one himself. As his escape pushes him into the gruff and brace of the foundling's brigade. He must learn to tread a path between his need to understand why his people were targeted for destruction and the new responsibility of his soldier's life, even as each new encounter with the horrors of battle force him to confront the terrible cost of his oath. Before long, the shifting fog of war casts old certainties into a haze of doubt, while the stuff of legend seems clear

as day, and Siat finds himself drawn into a much larger conflict that he could possibly imagine. My debut fantasy novel The Highlands Burn is now out on e-book, audiobook, and paperback. Much like our podcast, this book is a totally independent production, and I hope you'll give it a try. As always, you can find the links where you can get it in the show notes below. Hello and welcome to the Lions at By Donkeys podcast, the only military history podcast in the entire known world. Speaking of the known world, joining me today is Quinn and Chris from the failure to launch podcasts. Fellas, how are you doing? I'm doing very well. Thank you for having us. I'm doing just fine. Thank you for letting me be here. Awesome.

In the sliding scale of Chris Energy, that's actually like an 11, by the way. He sounds like he's already ready to be depressed by my show. And you know what? I'm going to hand it to you. Normally you'd be right. Fellas, how do you feel about the Crusades? Which one? Actually, the first one. We're talking First Crusade today. Okay. Well, I was going to make I prefer their earlier work joke, but okay, I don't think I like the first ones either. Actually, I kind of liked their earlier work in this one too, because we did an episode on the People's Crusade a long time ago, all the way back at episode 35, actually. I had to double check when I was writing this whole other life ago where just like a bunch

of random people whipped up into a frenzy during the lead up to the Crusades, kind of just set out towards the Holy Land on the Rhone. Okay, so this is the crusade equivalent of storming the field, basically. Yeah, it's, it's crusade January 6th. And instead of, you know, just becoming elected to be present of Jerusalem. Getting a lot of free money. Yeah. The people's crusade gets slaughtered because they're not soldiers.

It's mostly peasants. And most of them are like, have ergot poisoning and shit. Like, it's legitimately very funny to me. But that all happened before the First Crusade. And that brings us to the first large-scale battle of the First Crusade, the Battle of Dora Leia. But first, the Crusade of Context, you're welcome. What would become known as the First Crusade began with the backdrop of the larger Byzantine Arab wars?

Sparked thanks to competing imperial powers, the rise of Islam as a political, social, and religious institution. throughout the region. And this isn't a series to explore all of those things in depth. Just know that the Seljuic armies were chipping away at the borders of the Byzantine Empire. And in the time before this, they had secured a lot of stuff that used to be held by the empire. Most importantly in the context of this episode, the Levant, including Jerusalem. Meanwhile, in Europe, things had stabilized to an extent. Fudalism had taken hold along with the Catholic Church as a,

a social political foundation after the concepts of papal supremacy were solidified somewhat outside of course the Eastern Church, which the Byzantines were a part of. And since the schism between the two of them had been somewhat at least temporarily healed, the rise of all of these things led to the birth of what could best be described as but isn't entirely accurate to call a warrior cast, the knights that we all know and love today. So we've got political, we've got political conflict and schisms. We've got religious schisms. And now this is battle tech.

This is just the plot of battle tech. We've got sci-fi. We've got caste system warriors now. Yeah. I think that these pieces of meat like, Kingdom of Heaven with Orlando Bloom in it would be a lot more interesting if they all had mex. Okay. I just had a brain, a brain thing happen.

Is House Davion just Britonia? Probably? I think so. Because you have like everyone is a peasant except you have like the nobility who are the knights who are the mech warriors. Yeah. That's kind of what they're all inspired from. Slap an auto can on a horse. See what happens.

Actually, don't do that. Don't arm the horses. Honestly, I feel like it would be the targets of the crusade who would put guns on horses more than the people doing the crusades. There's only one way to find out. We need to go back in time. when you do like a ye old go fund me to auto cannon up the Seljuic horses. And my ancestors are not going to like the fact that I am on their side in the situation.

Actually, speaking of that, that weirdly does come up in a bit. Oh, no. Obviously because of like mineralism and feudalism and the power structure that need to be created to manage and enforce those things. That's where knights come from. Nobles pledged to their lord for military service. a cast that could then be further leveraged by the church for promotions and prestige within its parallel power structure.

As we know, the First Crusade begins in 1096, but it wasn't the first attempt to do something like it. Pope Alexander II expanded the military footprint of the church, which was then leveraged by Pope Gregory during the Norman conquest of Sicily. This worked really well for him. And religion aside, as is always important here to point out, always has very little to do with anything. He learned pretty quickly that it was a really good way to reinforce the power of the church,

but most importantly, the concept of the Catholic Church is a sovereign entity. So he attempted to rally support to deploy these forces against the Seljuks, who were, as always, at war with Byzantium. This failed. However, this mostly failed because there wasn't an underlying religious ideology that actually supported the concept of crusading. Okay, so he initially did. just wanted to do it for like nakedly political reasons. And now he's going to come back with a

religious justification for why the church should have a standing army that is completely sovereign of the nation that it's in. Why won't you fight and conquer for Christendom alone? Yeah. He didn't do the groundwork. You know, he just tried to immediately go to the top. You got to at least dot your eyes with this. Come on. Yeah. This is until Ansem of Luca, Pope Alexander the second's nephew and a close political ally of Pope Gregory. He begins to workshop some religious foundation for it. He's not like the guy that's responsible, but he gets the ball rolling. The most important tenant that Anselm develops is the good old-fashioned loophole around the whole nonviolence part of Christianity. You know, the whole turn the other cheek type stuff that Jesus always talked about.

That being the concept of remission, that not of cancer, which would have been cool. Instead, it's remission of sins, the total forgiveness and a golden ticket to heaven if a man committed murder for holy or legitimate purposes. Okay. Like, it's a get out of jail free card. Because I thought for sure the loophole was going to be like, oh, this is against people and we're going to make them not people. But no, we're just going with like, you can just apologize after. Well, they already believe that nonbelievers were inherently inhuman. They were heretics, right?

killing heretics is tried and true foundations of most European countries. But the idea of just going out and slaughtering and conquering was kind of like, it didn't have the Christian foundational work done until the concepts of remission of sins under the banner of heaven. The concepts of indulgences are kind of weave into this whole thing of like, well, if you do something wrong, well, you can go get forgiveness doing this. The church officially adopts the policy of it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Yes, exactly.

The Pope coming to, yeah, like, looking at all of these blood-drenched nights and just bestowing them the wisdom of Pobody's Nerfect. You can do whatever you want so long as you say, I'm super ultra-mega, super-duper-sari at the end, and it'll be all okay. The papal mulligan stems from this moment, actually. That's exactly what is, the papal mulligan. and this idea that like if you take up the cross as the saying goes like that's a ticket to heaven like no matter what you've done in your life this gets you to this one simple trick heretics hate

him it's a belief that continues to this day even the pearly gates hate this one simple trip and as time goes on pope urban the second comes the power and the Byzantine's wars against the Seljuks continue though the possibility of like the losing Anthium, that had all kind of gone away. The two sides were something of a stalemate. The Byzantines had held them off, but they had lacked the power to retake the parts of Anatolia they had lost. They certainly would never be able to retake the Levant at large, right?

And this is alongside more and more news coming from Jerusalem, thanks to the Caliph, al-Hakim Mir Amir Allah, who was pretty much insane. He had already been dead for decades by the time that we're talking about in Europe, but he did enough to fuel Christian nightmares for generations to come, to become something of a boogeyman to rally against. Even though he was gone and everyone who replaced him was more normal, everything that he did would be the thing that everybody would always do because this is what the Wiley Saracen does, right?

The sane ones are just hiding their insanity. They are all like this. They're all ready to. We're like invading Iraq today because any leader could be a Saddam and we all remember what he was like. Yeah, it's the pre-crime unit for Saddam. The geo-political minority report. Like all of the stories of brutal Christian persecution, the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, all the other horrors of that period are all pretty much.

because of this one guy. Tellings and retellings of the shit that he did became a standard for understanding how Muslim rulers govern the infidels, even if, like I said, pretty much every other guy after him returned to normal. Like, there were things that non-Muslims had to do under Muslim rulers in order to get on and get along and all that other shit. But just abject slaughter and having their houses blown up was generally not the case. Normally it was an extra tax or one of my personal favorite things that he did that was very stupid was forced the the people of the book that being Jews and Christians to wear different colored shoes like okay so not like did he pick the colors or was it just like no I don't I don't think there's a specific color chosen like we're

not talking arm bands here or just no no I think it was more like you can't wear certain colors but both of your shoes must be different colors so we could point you out You cannot wear this year's style. Yeah. Only last years. You better put those white Jordans back in the closet. You're not allowed to wear those. I'm sorry, sir.

You are too styling right now. You're making us all look bad. In order to be a part of this unit, you have to wear one white Jordan and one red air force. Your gates are going to be all fucked up. You know, you're not going to be able to rebel against me because you're going to be walking funny. And then this didn't mean that things still didn't happen. Like, for example, pilgrims were sometimes turned away, sometimes they got robbed on the road, which may or may not have been a function of the state. They could have just been robbed by some guys.

But it didn't matter. So when the Byzantine ambassadors arrived to meet with the Pope in 1095, they appealed for the church's help to rally forces to end the stalemate, and then, if possible, reclaim as much lost territory as they could. This was all perfect for Pope Urban II, who used it to. call the Council of Claremont. There he turned the Byzantine's pretty normal appeal for military aid into a call for religious crusade to retake Jerusalem. This is not at all what the Byzantines were asking for. I should point out.

We need trained soldiers. We need reinforcements. We need supplies. All right, best I can do is like several thousand lunatics. You're good. The thing that he really wanted was like a tight cadre of professional knights, you know, maybe some money in supplies to go and retake things

for the Byzantine Empire and then they fucking leave. Most importantly, all this is supposed to happen under Emperor Alexios's command. None of that happens. And I'm guessing the church wants it so that anything they conquer

is their territory. You know, they're not giving this back. Well, we saw what like after the First Crusade is successful, arguably the only successful crusade on the part of the Christians.

That's what the church wanted. the Byzantines did not to make a long story short he was like whoa whoa like I just need you know some of your nights and not 10,000 of them or anything we really can't support

10,000 of you guys moving in the invite had a max participant number on it I didn't want everybody to show up yeah and then the Pope is just like yeah how about you just sit the fucked out over there we don't need you anymore the Pope lays out all the grievances

that were said to have befallen the Christians of the Levant and the pilgrims who traveled there. According to one account, and there is many differing accounts, the Pope said, quote, on this account, I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ's heralds to publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of whatever rank,

foot soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians, and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. All who die by the way, whether by land or sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. Let those have been accustomed unjustly to wage

private warfare against the faithful, now go to war against the infidels, and end with victory. I do appreciate the, you get to go to heaven even if you die on the way. Like, if your feet wrought off halfway, like halfway along the road, you're going

to heaven. If you get run over by a cart, you're still making it. You made the attempt. Yeah, I would love to be. I know this didn't exist, but imagine like if like notifying of the families existed back then like it does today for a soldier that falls like someone shows up to some shitty hovel to deliver the folded crusader flag to someone's wife. Like I would like to tell you that your husband died gloriously and is now in heaven. Oh, did he die in battle? Like, nah, hit by a cart. It sucked. It took like three weeks for him to die. Smeared for a hundred feet. You should have seen it. The horse just wasn't

stop stomping on him. It was the craziest thing. Just like at the pearly gates, like, within milliseconds of the crusade being declared by the Pope, people are just showing up at the pearly gates, like split in half by Cartwheat. He was like, what the fuck happened? Like, no. And again, you know, he's asking Richard Pore, knight or nobody, anybody, everybody and anybody go and take up the cross and Emperor Alexios is like, no, no, no. After this, the Pope goes on tour throughout Europe, the world's worst ever stadium tour, delivering speeches to rally more and more people to the cause. Soon tens of thousands of people from across Europe, though mostly from France, begin to head towards the agreed-upon meeting point of Constance and Ope,

as if things couldn't get worse. It's mostly French guys, which is how they earn the nickname, like even later on in the Crusades, like Saladin and other Muslim commanders call them the Franks, most of the time, because their first contact with them was mostly French dudes. The first use of chemical weapons, just the smell wafting ahead of them. We have brought you our finest cheese. It does not hold up under the sun.

What is kind of incredible here is that the church is not paying for any of this. Anyone who wants to go, no matter their ranker status, has to pay their own way. Entire noble families leave their domains, They loan them out to other nobles or sell off as much shit as they have to to afford the trip with their armies. The church, ironically, profits from this massively, which is, again, part of the point, right?

You have these nobles selling their holdings to the church who then gets to pick who's going to be in charge of them now. Like, for example, Godfrey of Bouillon, who is considered like the Crusaders crusader for the lack of a better term, sold off almost everything he owned to the church to pay for the war. That was being called for by the church. And you said that like based on how much they donated, that could be like rank within the crusade, right? Well, there's status as like who they were already in the, mostly France again, like in their domains.

The wealth they already had was important. But they're also bringing their bannermen, like their own feudal armies raised from their lands. And they have to pay all them too. So they're selling off everything to afford the dudes they took from their own backyards. Just picking up my entire estate. Like whatever I'm not selling, whatever isn't bolted down, I am taking with me and we're just going to walk to Turkey. Yeah, exactly.

Nowadays, normally when this many Europeans go to Turkey just to get really fucked up teeth installed. I'm caught on this idea that like the church is raising all of the funds and guys and then is also just not doing any logistics whatsoever. ever and is making that the Byzantine's problem. Oh, the church isn't really doing anything. They're also not doing logistics, but they're also not doing anything. Like, once the church puts out the call for the crusade, then they just kind of step back. But you guys handle it. Like, they're not under the command of the Pope.

I mean, they are sworn to the Pope and therefore God to quote his speech. Ma'am, I'm so sorry your husband passed. How did he die gloriously starving to death? Yes. That is normally or shitting out his insides in the desert. He made it as far as the suburbs of Paris. But he just left three hours ago. I know.

I mean, that was pretty much what happened with the People's Crusade. They spent a lot of their time getting lost in parts of Germany and doing anti-Semitic pogroms along their way. Oh. I mean, that's just something Europeans do. They can't help themselves. But there's a lot of different commanders and sub-commanders in the Crusades by just the general nature of the chaotic and disunified str.

structure than most crusader armies had because all these guys are just kind of smashing their forces together to create one big army. And then they just kind of bicker who's the most important guy. Like the church isn't really involved in this. You would think for a holy crusade launched by God under the command of God that there would be a little bit more like, hey, maybe like maybe he should set the hierarchy here. Like as soon as the church just puts out their announcement, God has, you know, all right, all right, let's just see how this goes. Well, the Pope did select the most important commander, Prince Beaumont of Toronto.

He liked him the most. And that's why this sometimes gets the nickname the Prince's Crusade. We've got a French prince from fucking Toronto. It's just like, going this far back in time, he's still disappointed in the Maple Leafs. The Pope picked him because he liked him the most. But like, he didn't pick how things.

broke down under BoaMod. Like, yeah, they'll figure it out. The Pope isn't a details guy. And by the time the Crusaders trickle into Constaninople, the mob of psychos known as the People's Crusade had already come through town and been destroyed over in Anatolia.

I don't want to cover them again. We did an episode about it, however many years ago. Okay, so the People's Crusade is like a bow wave ahead of the real crusade. Yes. Gotcha.

They're unorganized. They're mostly just following this really nasty looking priest that stumbled out of the woods. Some argue, not even a priest at all. He whips everybody into a frenzy. They start marching to the Holy Land. After killing and fighting a lot of people along the way that they absolutely didn't need to,

they end up in Consensinople. And while they're there, they're looting and killing and burning shit until Emperor Alexios of the Byzantine Empire agrees to just put them on boats and get them over to the Levant if they'll leave. they do they agree they get sent over and almost all of them are killed pretty much immediately like they have like one battle and the seljuks just roll them the fuck up so we have just deedayed all of these unwashed basically unarmed dudes into the levant and and just gone and most of them had been kind of losing their minds from ergot poisoning of course that's where you get the best visions on the bright side they didn't know they're getting run through by a spear by a Turk on horseback. They were too out of the road mind. They're just in like pyroland from TF2.

They're just in like this drug-fueled haze. We're like, oh, a tree's growing out of my belly button. Wonderful. Yep. I feel warm and now I'm cold. Oh, I feel like lying down. And honestly, Emperor Alexios is like the funniest character of both of these episodes because he's like, will you please just get the fuck out of my yard?

Because now more crusaders show up. Tens of thousands of crusaders, which he did not ask for show up. So everybody is already pissed at these so-called Franks because of the people's crusade. Okay. No matter where they're from, they call them all Franks. It doesn't really matter. So now with tens of thousands of more dudes showing up outside of Constaninople, completely unsupplied, mind you, because they assumed they would be supplied when they got to Constantinople.

Again, something Alexios did not agree to. they start asking the emperor for food and water and stuff. Nobody cares about the feelings of the poor people in Constantinople, nor did the emperor have the supplies they requested because, you know, he didn't ask for these guys to be there. And we often say on this podcast, it's never a good time to go camping with 10,000 of your homies in the woods. But we often leave out to part that's also not a good time to be next to the 10,000

homies who are camping in the woods. We, God's holiest warriors, are here to save you. Are you going to finish that? Are you going to eat the crust? Cool. Give me everything you own for God or else. You're welcome. So they just start robbing people.

Anybody that refuses them gets killed. There is something of a low intensity conflict going on inside of Constantinople between the Byzantines and the Crusaders. They become a biblical plague on the land. The second plague, by the way, in like months. Oh, God, there's another group of French people outside eating the grass. Your cheese sucks. Stab.

The idea of these like knights on all fours chewing on grass like a cow. And this isn't something that Prince Boamund is really too concerned about, which is hardly surprising because he actually really hates the Byzantines and had invaded Byzantine land multiple times. with his father prior to the crusade being called and the schism being healed. So he knows the terrain. Perfect guy to send. Do you think I give a shit if my soldiers steal from you? I was stealing from you last week. Just wandering through telling.

Hey, I remember you? Remember when I stole the shoes off of your horse? Oh, you got new ones. In an effort to get rid of these guys, Emperor Alexios got them on the road, getting them to join his army for an attack on the city of Nassia. The crusaders agreed, despite everyone involved wanting to kill. kill each other because they were sure to secure a bag. The emperor tried to get all the men to swear oath to him and promised to return any land

that their army took, but only one of the Crusaders leaders did, leaving Alexios to really question what they were going to do if they took something over. And you could assume that one crusader's like, it doesn't count. I had my fingers crossed behind my back the whole time. He's never heard of remissions before. I could lie to this motherfucker's face. And there's another part of it as well where like the guys who did take an oath

to make Alexios happy, it means nothing to them because in their mind, they've already sworn an oath to God on earth, therefore the Pope, which means nothing is more important than that oath. Yeah, they can break it with this dude. Yeah, the armies meet up,

they march on the city, they dig in for a siege, and the siege goes on for a while, but eventually they agree on a date to assault the city of Nassia. They agree upon it. it's supposed to happen the next day, but then the Byzantine army

storms the city without the Crusaders so they can plant their flag over the city walls. Dude's rock. And honestly, yeah, they fucking deserve it. You cannot blame them. They know what's going to happen if the Crusaders get in there. And obviously this is a slight against the Crusaders' knightly honor and all of that,

but the real middle fingers that rob them of looting the city and ransoming Seljuke nobles. A huge source of income that pretty much every crusading noble was really fucking depending on because they're all piss broke because they're on the crusade. This is again just coming back to like

this is battle tech. You know, you make money off of salvage, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. I mean, that's where like, obviously everybody,

when they talk about the warrior cast of the knights and chivalry, like they like to pitch a lot that says honor, but it's all money based. Run his pockets for trinkets. Exactly.

They make their money off. of stealing, looting, sometimes stealing people as well, ransoming back. Like, nobody gives a shit about honor because the two are only connected because obviously if you take a city, it makes you look good. But they really only care about the fact that they're now incredibly wealthy. I am concerned about the new predicament of the Byzantines have reoccupied their city and there is still a siege camp outside with tens of thousands of francs in them, you know? Was there, to your knowledge, anyone in the crusade who just wanted to like, hey, the Byzantines are kind of weak right now.

What if we just rolled over on them? To be fair, that does happen in a couple Crusades that we've talked about on the show. But this is not well-draud territory, right? The Crusaders are pretty worried that if they just attack the Byzantines, the Pope would get mad at them. And Alexios does try to smooth things over by giving the money that they had taken from the city. But this relationship is pretty fucked at this point. So, can I give you $50? to fuck off.

Yeah, exactly. And the Crusader's like, yeah, but we're not going to like it. So when the emperor pitches this idea of how to march towards Jerusalem, it is to, you know, follow the coastline, which makes sense. The Byzantine Navy could secure their flank and keep them supplied by sea. And the Crusader commanders all told him fuck off. So this is where we find out that Doroleum is like several hundred miles from the coast. And it's solidly in the middle of Anatolia.

Awesome. Okay. The wrong fucking direction. Now, despite Alexios already screwing them over once, let's just think about this for a second. Alexios knows how to fight in the region. This is his backyard. He's been fighting the Seljuks his whole life. He knew what needed to be done on a campaign through Anatolia and into the Levant. None of the Crusaders do. Most had never been to the region before. None had fought the Seljuks. They quite literally had no idea what they were marching into. Instead, they banked on the success of Nasea because it had been easier than they thought it would be, even if the Byzantines had ripped them off. They hadn't fought though. Well, they did fight a siege,

which mostly just involved digging a hole and sit in it. Nice. Which, to be fair, is most of war fair for my pastime, yes. Yeah, it's most of my experience at war anyway, sitting around waiting for someone to try to kill me. Of course, the Crusaders had no idea why it was so easy to take the city of the first place. The Crusaders were generally unified, politically, religiously, or otherwise. Sure, there were problems. We've already talked about some of them. For example, between the Crusaders and the Byzantines, they were technically sent to help, but they had pretty much all been flying the same flag at the end of the day, even if it was temporarily, and even if they were occasionally stabbing one another.

The Seljuks across Anatolia were not. Following the collapse of the general authority of the Seljuk Empire. The ones mostly unified empire had fractured to several different kingdoms and principalities. Okay, so we have balkanized the Seljuk Empire at this point, and they are all kind of trying to Yugoslavia and army together. Yeah, or they were just doing Seljuk stuff, whichever. So they were not really unified.

The crusade was just kind of hitting whichever mini empire's border happened to be there. Were they, like, coming to each other's aid? Well, kind of. There were several different kingdoms around the crusaders' path towards the Holy Land. Many of them had their own beefs, just like Europeans did most of the time. For example, one of the reasons why Nasea had fallen so easily is because its ruler, Kaleiji Arslan, was just not there. He had led the majority of his army off to handle his own business against a regional rival kingdom,

known as the Danish-Mendi Balit. And it was only after that they were fighting one another that he heard about the crusaders going in and kicking in his front door. And he figured it was too late. to rally forward and save the city, so instead he held back and prepared for future fighting. When the first things he did

was turned to the guy that he was fighting, Ghazi bin Donish Med, and tell him, hey, let's just hit pause on this. The fucking Christians are back. Let's stab them together. I don't know if I as a guest can deploy this show's thing

that this is the most poster child case of. Yeah, yeah. This is definitely a greater unifying theory of fuck that guy moment, but there's actually more than one. Okay. Because Arslan had had to deal with these people before.

He had been the guy who killed the People's Crusade, meaning he's the closest thing to anybody has an expert in the arena of killing European trespassers. Though that didn't really set him up for success because the People's Crusade was more like slaughtering an armed mob than fighting a battle. So he did kind of underestimate them at first. I know I'm jumping between sci-fi settings here, but this is like medieval Caiaphas-Cain

of someone who has a shitload of fame for maybe something that wasn't actually all that brave. Yeah, yeah, you're about right. Soon the Saldrugs had gathered their army and were tracking down the Crusader forces as they prepared for their overland march across Anatolia towards Jerusalem. And as for the Crusaders

who had rejected the emperor's suggestion of skirting the coast and using the Navy for resupply, they had to think of something else. And what happens next is actually two different explanations depending on which source you use. So for the sake of being totally fair here, I'll explain both of them. Also because one of them is really funny. One thing that is generally agreed upon is that the Crusaders fell onto the idea of advancing inland through Asia Minor and through the kingdom of Armenian Silesia. For people who maybe don't listen to our side series history of Armenia over on Patreon, there's your Patreon plug, go listen to it.

This is a completely separate Armenian kingdom from the kingdom of Armenia. Armenian Silesia is in Anatolia and was founded by nobles and refugees that had fled the other Armenia's fall at the hands of the Seljuks, since that kind of thing just never stops happening to us. Nowadays, you just found Glendale. It also is sometimes incorrectly called a crusader state, which isn't true. They're not Catholic, for starters, which means they don't listen to the Pope.

They are apostolic, as most Armenians are. And they were actively fighting the Byzantines because the Byzantines wanted to swallow them as well because that had once upon a time been Byzantine land. So they're fighting the Seljuks and the Byzantine. Instead, much like the various Seljuic kingdoms were doing, they saw it as a good moment to throw their lot in with the guys who would fight their enemies for them. Not only the Seljuks though, but also the Byzantines. because King Constantine the first of Armenian Silesia assumed that when whatever they were doing

over there and the Holy Land was done, they would definitely start killing one another and that would benefit us. So, like, okay, yeah, you mentioned multiple theories of fuck that guy and we have like all, we have these two coalitions, these unwilling coalitions coming together of people who hate each other,

but hate the other guy slightly more. Or like you're mentioning here, just fully believing that like, as soon as this is over, all of our enemies are going to implode and start stabbing each other in the back. Yeah, pretty much. Like, it's a coalition of different groups of people following the grand unifying theory. Fuck that guy.

Is the coalition of the unwilling thing? Has that ever been applied in history before? I mean, everybody here's willing, just for their own reasons. I think the true crown does go to King Constantine the first, because unlike everyone else, he wants everyone else to lose. You know what I mean? Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, no, I want all of you to get.

Also, he does not send our soldiers at all. He makes out like a bandit. He just tells the crusaders, you can march through my land. But he doesn't send any soldiers to help them. He loses nothing. He's giving them a nice pat on the back and just that away. Yeah, best case scenario, they defeat the Seljuks, take Jerusalem, and then implode on one another. Worst case scenario, they fight the Seljuks, all y'all motherfuckers kill each other.

And then you leave me alone. The reason why the crusaders picked this route was they believed going down the coast, even with Byzantine help, would require them to take multiple Seldrick-held cities, meaning a series of very lengthy, costly sieges. And despite being longer on the map, the path through Armenian Slicia was seen as being much faster because they'd be passing through friendly territory and therefore less sieges until they got to the Holy Land where the moneymaker is, right? And this brings us to the supply issues, because you're probably all assuming this is where I tell you that all the crusaders eventually just wander off into the mountains and starve to death, but that isn't actually what happened.

According to some sources, Beaumond knew immediately that marching his army of around 20 or 25,000 men and just as many camp followers was going to hit the countryside just like he had hit Constantinople. And there wouldn't be enough food taken from the land because foraging. for both men and horses was the name of the supply game for an army on the campaign at that time. Much easier to just steal from people, I think. Yeah, that's what forging is. Oh, okay. Sure, they might be not stealing sometimes, like hunting wild game or whatever, but like 99% of forging is just stealing the locals.

Yeah, I was initially imagining like picking berries, but I don't trust any of these guys to know which berries to pick or eat in an unfamiliar land. Only one way to find out. I was very doubtful of the land's ability. to suddenly adjust its carrying capacity to support 50,000 more people. Yeah, it's not something that Anatolia is really known for, for my own personal experience. Running out of Brie in the first week, desperately trying to find a way to concoct it out of, like, human shit in blood.

I call it Mother Nature's Brie. It's disgusting. I love it. It's mud and blood. Give it a taste. So he decides to split the army. The first part was a vanguard of around 5,000 men, which would be led by, by the prince himself. The larger, slower, second part would be led by Godfrey. The idea was that

these two armies would move and opposing zigzags, so the two of them never hit the same plot of land while they were marching and foraging. So they could kind of stagger where they pulled resources from. Yes, it would still just hit the land like a wildfire, but they would be fine. Do the Crusades have the military competence to pull off maneuver warfare? This does work. be fair. Like, this is the first time in a Crusades-related episode that their supply situation isn't killing them. Okay. Also, the Vanguard would do what vanguards do, acting as a forward force to scout and secure the general route ahead. Makes sense, right? Like I said, it's the best logistical plan I have ever seen the Crusaders come up with. I guess they've lost their initial

bow wave, which is the tens of thousands of peasants who are already dead. So now they need to build up a new one. Yeah, but now it's not made of peasants, so it's a van go. Made out of Frenchmen and Torontonians. That's right. The second explanation of the split is my personal favorite, and it's quite simple. Beaumann simply broke camp and marched out into Anatolia on June 26th, 1097, without telling Godfrey, who did his best to keep up, but since his force of around 15,000 was mostly

on foot and Bowman's was mostly on horseback. He can never quite keep up and was at best about five kilometers behind it. Okay. Question. Is this a race for the loot scenario where like Bolemon wants to get there first? It's always a race for the loot scenario. For the most part, it does make sense that the plan was to split up. But it also equally makes sense knowing what I know about Crusader history that one dude

absolutely left the other dude behind. Oh yeah. Because this has happened before. And actually it will happen during this episode. Having the vanguard out front makes sense, but him leaving the rest of his army behind and running off without telling anyone. And this accidentally ends up being a masterstroke. One that Bowman did not know he was making. Whatever happens, the Crusader army remains split as Bowman's vanguard approached the town of Doralam.

And that's when he noticed he was being shadowed by Seljuk Scouts. That night, his vanguard camped in a place that would have been perfect to defend. if he had been fighting his fellow Europeans. The camp was protected by a river at their back, meaning he couldn't be surrounded, and had marshy riverland soil on either side of his flanks, meaning he'd be protected from a heavy cavalry charge. He didn't know that the Seljuks did not have heavy cavalry,

but in his mind, this is a great position. So simultaneously, the enemy are godless heathens, who we will easily sweep from the lands. Also, they will fight with exactly the same heavy, armored cavalry tactics that I use. Exactly. Awesome. This is something that's really common for any military,

especially one that sees themselves as being who they are, right? Like, they can't imagine someone fighting not how they would. Okay. It's a failure of imagination. But also, these guys might as well be fighting space aliens. They've never done this before. I don't know. I imagine the Byzantines could have filled them in if they bothered to listen.

Or asked. So, like, who are we? here to fight, is what I'm wondering. We just gonna go east until they look slightly different. What the fuck? These guys are poor. Unfortunately, in front of them was a wide open plane, which was perfect for the Seljuk Light Cavalry. And the Marshalin also wouldn't slow them down.

Their light horses could easily walk across it. Of course, this is something Bowman did not know. Speaking of the Light Cavalry, Bowman was introduced to them the following morning. At first, the attack was a total surprise. At first light, Seljuks rode freely into the Crusader camp, cutting soldiers down. Now, Bowman had expected an attack, which is why he had them set up there. But not one so early, because for him, normally you wake up and have breakfast first.

Which is just very funny to me. It's like, no, no, it's too early for this shit. Through the power of intermittent fasting, the Seljuks have reached new heights of military tactics. Hey, that's relatable because I don't eat my first meal the day until afternoon. Exactly. You would be able to overpower any crusader. I would be able to defeat the crusader force who needs to have Brecky first. You have embraced Seljuk wellness planning. So the camp was caught totally unprepared.

Most of the soldiers who were killed during this phase weren't even wearing their armor. They were milling about waiting for their food to get cooked. Soon things were so confused that Bowman ordered his heavy knights to get on their horses and go on to counterattack to get them the fuck out of the camp. And this brings us to the Seljuk tactics. And we have talked about these tactics before on the show, but off to do it again. Maybe some people have missed these episodes in the past.

But as soon as the knights get their shit together, the Seljuks pull back immediately without fighting and to start shooting the hell out of them with arrows. That's because the Seljuk light cavalry were primarily mounted archers, who would ride in, make it rain, circle around their enemy, do that constantly. It's good to see that the Parthian tactics

of the region continue to exist in the region. And how no one has learned about it. Yeah, this is the classic Parthian shot, right? Like if an enemy charges them, they simply fall back out of reach and do it all over again. If their horses got tired, they would cycle them out, pulling

fresh horsemen up. Through the same kind of like in and out, they could also make sure there's always a fresh load of arrows. They would never run out of shots. This is a fully belt fed arrow machine gun basically. Like horse powered maximum machine gun of arrows.

Matching logistics. And if the horses get a little tired, they can go get some water and whatnot. The sell jerks have a very high APM. They're clicking a lot to micro their units. They have a very misunderstood CBA between the horses and their commanders. Like, no, I got to have my post 100 arrow union break now.

I get to go lap water out of that puddle over. there. Watching a French knight bearing down on me, but then I see Ping 200 appear over his head, and he rubber bands a hundred feet away. So normally, those caught in this death loop are given two choices. You charge out, you get cut down under a hail of arrows, or you bog down, try to fight defensively and die a death of a thousand arrows. Now, the Crusaders had never experienced this before and knew no effective counter to it. Now, the actual counter to this, for people who are actually curious because the crusaders never figure this out during this battle is like cavalry. Cavalry that is as fast as the archers.

They simply don't have it. Awesome. But what they did have is something I have dubbed Knight Brain, which is probably just CTE. Due to the rules of bullshit chivalry and honor that govern taught and framed knighthood as a whole, knights were always expected to react the combat in the most aggressive way possible. And I'm not saying that this is wrong in all cases of warfare. Like there's something to the tempo of violence being controlled in a battle. But you do that organizationally, right?

You don't just like fling yourself individually into combat. I was going to say, isn't that like part of the Parthian shot that you run away and you bait the enemy into chasing you by pretending to be a coward? And like, you're telling me that every single one of these Crusader knights has been true, had it drilled into their head that, they need to individually break formation and start sprinting. Yeah, pretty much. They're the perfect victims of the Parthian tactics. And like a slow grinding defensive battle was just not something they're expected to do.

Because it's not something they're good at. It's not something they train for. And that's not how knights fight each other. Furthermore, two other things are at play. The game of earning personal honor on the battlefield. And of course, thinking Muslims were backward in human savages that could in no way

fight the brave boys of Christendom. So they're like, yeah, well, chase these fucking cowards down. It's simple. But their horses are big. There's a big armored dude on their back. They can't keep up with the lighter, smaller, faster horses. Yeah, like, you're chasing some dude down and the horse archer does like perfect contortionism bending over his back, firing an arrow right at you. Yeah, if you get too close, they're just going to like do the Bollywood horse slide right under your horse. So the knights charge out on their heavy horses and they never have a chance. of catching the Seljuic-like cavalry. They were predictively shot to pieces.

The Seljuks are also similarly unfamiliar with these weird Frankish knights. But thankfully for them, when your tactic is run away and shoot a bunch of arrows at something, that generally tends to work out, even if it needs to be adapted somewhat. So, like, they don't have arrows that can puncture, like, the plate armor

that a lot of these guys are wearing. Okay. But they don't need to, right? First of all, they realize, like, well, they're on a horse. We'll shoot that. Oh. So the horses get lit the fuck up, right?

And then they just, when they're now slowed down and on the ground, they just pelt them with arrows. They eventually find gaps in their armor, their eye holes, whatever it may be. And they still get brought down. Maybe they're only winged. They're slowed down somewhat. So then they just like beat the shit out of them with melee weapons or run them down with their actual horses. It's just that aircraft like survivability chart, except it's a night. It's the outline of a knight with like, 100.

hundreds of arrows in his armpits, eyes, and groin. Exactly, yeah. I love cat archers. They're my favorite unit. Yeah. I have done this in total war. It still works. Yeah, these knights have the same AI as like total war in 1996.

The Seljuks are fighting easy difficulty AI. Yep. That's exactly what it is. Like they're running right at me. This is so stupid. They just pour arrows onto these men of iron as the Seljuks nickname them. They score arrows. and they finish them off at close range.

And I hate handing anything to the Crusaders, but they kind of had no choice in the situation. They had to secure their camp and their army in order before they could do anything else. And this did achieve that. The camp was clear the Seljuks did run off. And the rest of the Vanguard was able to stop screaming long enough to get suited up and form something that looked like a defensive line.

Okay, so another example of the Crusaders accidentally doing something tactically smart, which is the Knights sacrifice themselves to, like give the rest of the vanguard time to do their jobs, but they're doing it well, like, frothing from ergot poisoning and, and arrows. Oh, no, I got arrows in my ergot poisoning. The light of God can't get through anymore. And while the knights were getting hit with dozens of arrows, the attack did work for that

purpose, even if it never had a chance of actually defeating the cavalry. And Bowman, to his credit, figured out, who, boy, this shit isn't going to work. And he learns and figures this out, much faster than other people we tend to talk about on this show. After watching several knights get ripped to pieces by arrows, he orders the knights off of their horses and to join the defensive line on foot that had formed around the camp. He knew that the main force wasn't too far away,

and he sends out messengers telling him like, hey, you guys about want to speed up a little bit. I have an arrow sticking out of my armpit. So his battle plan changes to simply hold out and wait. Hope Godfrey can come and pull their collective asses of the arrow-filled fire. But of course, because these are knights we're talking about. Some dudes were just not going to listen to this shit.

In one zies and twosies, and in one case, a group of 40 knights rush out after the archers. Other people like scream and demand they be allowed to slay the heretics. Pretty much all these dudes are killed. Yeah. In one case, one of the guys that led the group of 40 survives, mostly by himself. His horse had been shut up from under him. He had like multiple arrows sticking out of his armor and just kind of like shuffles his feet

with his eyes downcast back into the defensive line. Sorry. I got all my friends killed. And every other night there is just like, I'm built different. I'm going out. Yeah. I like my odds better.

He sucks as an arrow slots him perfectly in the eye. Due to the incoming wave of arrows, though, the lightly armored foot soldiers of the vanguard, had to hide inside the nightly perimeter along with the camp followers, because there was nowhere for them to go. So they just stood there, forming a human wall, with thousands of people hiding behind them, as thousands of Seljuk archers just kept riding by doing horse-borne drive-bys

directly into the ranks. If I were them, I would almost feel let down because you're doing your cool, elaborate Parthian shot routine, and they're just not even moving anymore. Yeah, it's just, ding. Like, buddy, ding. Come on, I'm doing fucking acrobatics over here with a horse and a bow. Somewhere there's a guy in that line that's really disappointed because he does mortgage his fucking domain.

Now he is dense in his new armor. Man, I'm still paying off the loan on this shit. Camp followers, stand in front of me. Quinn, have you ever seen a video of horse archers shooting? It's so cool. I have not, but. So what, like, a trained horse archer, it's like, you know how like, if you put a camera on a chicken's head, it's like stabilized, right?

Like a chicken head is stabilized, right? The way that you're a good horse archer is the way that you stand in the stirrups is like your legs are stabilizing your body so that you're, you in the bow are in a fixed position while the horse is going underneath you. We've got the Bollywood horse slide, except like the upper half of the archer is perfectly gyroscopically stable the whole time and shooting. Yeah. And like, again, when you're like mass occurring heavy infantry on horseback,

it's like you can get pretty close because I mean you just have to stay at a reach of their weapons and you're just on your horse so you just walk faster than them you know yeah you're not gonna get out here and hit me with your sword you fucking loser and like they do start to get really close to the lines they get better shots at the gaps in their armor

getting like three feet away from the guy like leaning in like what what what oh oh oh that's two for flinching two for flinching two arrows right through the eye slots yeah and some knights are dropped but most of the casualties come from the unarmored civilians

or lightly armored footmen inside the perimeter because there's not that many people and there's thousands of archers swooping in on them. It's thought that maybe two thousand of them are killed via arrows. A, Jesus Christ, B, that's got to be negligible

to the knights and the crusaders. The knights don't give a shit. I mean, the knights have lost a few people, but they're still mostly fine, right? It's just like there's so much tripping hazards around now. Well, they're not going anywhere. I mean, they've gotten off their horses

because they were ordered to. And most of their horses are now dead. So they're not moving around too much. They're just standing there and getting it's hailing and you're sitting in your car in traffic. And there's a constant stream of new arrows and fresh archers creating a perfect logistic system to kill dudes from France. But thanks to the Crusader's strong position,

it also meant they couldn't go in for the kill because like normally these guys want to surround you entirely. So there's no good way to hide or get away. And Arcelon thought that he had them trap. Obviously, they can't retreat over the river either. Okay. So he didn't press the attack. In theory, it didn't matter how long it took him to wipe them out. He had them pinned in. Did he know about the rest of the army? He sure didn't. Awesome. Okay. Idiots on both sides. When his scouts found Bowman's Vanguard, He thought, up, there they are. They're the only ones.

Because, you know, like I said, accidentally, whether Bowman left Godfrey behind or did it on purpose, it ended up being the thing that saved the army. Because altogether, the Seljuks outnumber them by about 10,000. So in a straight up battle, who knows what it looked like, but he accidentally created a wave reserve system. But more on that in a second. Okay. It had now been six hours.

and the second part of the Crusader army was finally starting to show up to Doralam. Well, kind of. The messenger rushed to Godfrey, and Godfrey took a few mounted men that he had, only about 50 knights, and rode as hard as he could to Bowman's aid, so the rest of the army could then follow up.

So the triumphant reinforcement of only about 50 dudes rolled in, blasted through the Seljuk lines, and joined the Crusaders in the camp. But this cut Arslan completely by a super, surprised because like we had pointed out, he was under the impression that Bowman's vanguard was the only thing he had to worry about. This is when he finally decides, oh, I have fucked up. I need to press the attack on the camp now to wipe these guys out. And this turned out was a mistake. For all of their flaws, the heavily armored crusaders were in the right

conditions killing machines. Yeah, because it sounds like you mentioned he picked this location to be like a good place to make a stand. And now it sounds like the, the Seljuks are giving up their winning tactic in order to fight exactly the way the Europeans want them to. It's like running into a wall of steel. The correct answer here is simply withdraw. Yeah.

But yeah, like you pointed out Quinn, they're in a perfect position. Hand-to-hand combat is their jam. They're heavily armored. The Seljuks have never fought these people before. So they aren't entirely sure. They're not equipped.

with little cheat ways to get around the armor. Like, you know, they eventually would be further down the crusading line in the timeline. Meanwhile, the crusaders, they've never fought these guys before either. But if you close in with them, it makes that unimportant. They just have to stab you now. And that's something they're, they excel at. They're really good at stabbing people. Who would have thought that wearing very heavy and nigh impenetrable armor makes one very good at stabbing things?

This is what they dreams. Like, I have trained. for so long to hit a dude with a sword. And their morale had been tanking somewhat, you know, due to being shot at for the last six hours. But Godfrey, again, like God's perfect crusader, all crusaders love Godfrey and respect him deeply. He just rocks up and their morale goes through the fucking roof,

despite the fact they are still wildly outnumbered. 50 extra dudes. Yeah. He brought himself and 49 of his friends to fight checks notes here. tens of thousands. I like where this is going. A frontal assault against these dudes is not a good idea unless you happen to have some kind of armor piercing round,

which they didn't have yet. But Arslan tried that anyway, feeding his men into the Catholic meat grinder. This went long enough for another smaller chunk of the crusader force to show up, as well as several allied Byzantine units. At this point, the Seljuks and Bowman had been fighting for seven hours. and no matter how many line changes you do, because remember they've been switching out

over those first six hours to get fresh arrows, give their horses their agreed upon union breaks with the puddle. Everybody's tired at this point. The Seljuks are exhausted, and when the main army arrives under the command of Raymond of Toulouse and charges directly for them, it's too late to withdraw now. They have no choice but to meet them in the field on their footing.

Now the Crusaders expect the Seljuks again to just crumble under the force of their holy assault. But they don't. The battle devolves further into a nightmare of blood, bones, swords, arrows, and worst of all, horses.

And this makes sense, right? Yes, the crusaders are much better suited for this kind of warfare, but the Seljuks got them in numbers, and we don't have very reliable numbers about how many Seljuks are present.

Early chroniclers inflate these numbers to the point that they are just comical to make the crusaders sound more heroic. For example, in the earliest chronicles that I have found put the Seljuks army at a quarter of a million men. Jesus fucking Christ. Which would have just been impossible. How could you support that logistically?

Heresy, godlessness. Our Turks will blot out the sun. It's so insane to think about it. It's just like, what if, what if Fire Festival had 250,000 people at it, right? That's the expectation. Yeah. And they were all shooting at you. Yeah. What if Fire Festival?

out of a quarter of million people and you gave them all swords. I would have paid more attention. I mean, we don't need to really go into why this had been wildly impossible to do with logistics and supplies of the day, not to mention the manpower resources that Arslan had at his abilities. It's generally believed that the Seljuks, like I said, outnumber the Crusaders by at least 10,000, meaning their army was probably around 35,000 strong. Okay.

Which is still quite large. You never want to be in a situation where you're out. outnumbered by 10,000 people. And they outnumber the combined crusader force, right? Or just Boaum. Yes. Okay. Yes.

So while much less armored, they fought off the crusader counterattack through sheer force of bodies. And not to mention their flanks are secure. Their supply lines are still good. They're still an advantageous position. Things are still looking up for the Seljuks, at least for a little while. During the rushed march over to Doraleim, after they received Bowman's cry for help via his messenger.

This shattered the Crusader Army into different parts, as everybody rushed to get there as fast as they could. So, as these two armies are fighting in the middle, every, like, 30 minutes or so, another group of Crusaders just rolls up and runs right into the fighting. Meanwhile, Arslaan has already fully committed his reserves. He's nothing left to give, and every time they hit, it raises the Crusader morale. But the final army finally arrives under the command of Bishop Aldemar de Pugh. Now, it sounds like Pepe's weird brother who went to seminary. With the entirety of the Seljuk armies slugging it out with the crusaders on the line, De Pugh had a master plan.

Simply go around them. And he did. Because the Seljuks had left their rear camp completely unguarded. Because they didn't think that there was more crusaders coming, but then they just kept coming. They all just keep like these Frenchmen just keep like bubbling out of the swamp in front of them. I didn't know we were fighting on the French respawn point. Where the fuck do these guys keep coming for? I like the idea that Pew's not doing this for a tactically sound reason, but because his entire

group is starving and they want to eat the food at the camp. You're almost right. He wasn't starving, but he did know all of the army's loot would be in the rear camp. Oh, hell yeah. Doesn't even contribute to the battle. He's the kind of guy who starts looting before all of the killing is done. He lutes immediately. and this ends up being, again,

like a lot of other things the Crusaders do, an accidental master stroke. He storms into the largely unguarded camp and he finds Arslan's personal tent, which just so happened to include his entire treasury, all of which is stolen. And then they burn the camp.

So now the Saljuks see their camp burning behind them. Our camp, my shit. Arslan's like Oh God, how am I going to pay any of these guys now? And you know, when they're in battle, they see that their flank had been turned because DePue had just rushed right through it. And now there's crusaders behind them.

This is the master stroke that ends the battle because seeing this, Arslan orders a retreat because he isn't sure how many fuckers are behind him or not or if there's more of them coming from God knows where. So the first major battle of the Crusades is over and the Crusaders win. I think this is the first time we've ever told all these stories and the Crusaders emerged victorious. Purely by accident of purely by like what should be bad decisions of like slowly trickling

in your reinforcements and whatnot. But if it works, I guess. Hey, if it's dumb and it works, it's not dumb. You know, like can you blame these guys for thinking that like God wills it? because like I can't believe we actually just did that. Like you shouldn't win when you do these things. Obviously the only way this could have worked out is divine intervention. Yeah, God has pity on you.

Meanwhile, Bishop Lepew is riding up like decked head to toe in stolen cold. It's like that scene from Breaking Bad where the two guys are the pile of money. Now, what's interesting here, and I hate dabbling in what is called alternative history, but. Just think about this for a second. There's a lot of what ifs floating around. Remember, this is the first crusade. If Arsland scouts do a better job and see the full Crusader army, what if he just wipes out Bowman immediately,

rather than thinking he has seven hours to shoot at him? I mean, this still would have been a massive battle of attrition on his part, but it's hard to see how he would have lost. Because if the crusaders get crushed here at Dora Leum, It changes everything. That'd be what, like half of their full numbers wiped out and Arsena's army still mostly intact. Well, even more than that, because if the first crusade fails before it even gets out of Anatolia, there probably never would have been a second.

And the crusader period of history dies with them. It would have just been that weird story that you hear probably on this podcast about that time a bunch of European nights tried to invade the Avant. Wasn't that dumb? Instead they win. The news of their victory travels back to Europe. More and more people take up the cross, both for monetary gain, but also to your average person who had a deep, held sense of belief. It really did seem like God was on their side after they got the news of the victory. Soon, tens of thousands more people would be flooding in. So would money. Because most importantly, once victory was assured, more people were willing to spend money on this shit because it didn't seem so insane. And they continued their march towards

Jerusalem, which of course they would take the end. I don't like to dabble in alternative history at all. I think it's it leads to weird places. Almost all of them ends with someone asking the question, how the Nazis would have won. But like, it's always these very pivotal moments that could have changed everything because if they are defeated, like convincingly defeated there, I don't see how there's ever a second crusade. Byzantium never would have asked for them to come back. The Pope almost certainly would have taken a pretty serious hit. And not to mention, all of these lords spend all of their worldly possessions to go and then die.

It also creates a lot of very weird class shit back at home. All of your nobility is dead. The entire upper crust of your entire society has died in Turkey. Yep. Yep. That reminds me. Someone asked me recently. why I keep calling it Turkey

and not how they insist it's pronounced. And that's because they don't call Turkey what I insist it's pronounced, which is Western Armenia. But fellas, we do a thing on this show called Questions from the Legion. If you'd like to ask us a question, support us on Patreon.

You can ask us on Patreon. You can ask us on the Discord, which you'll also have access to. You can attach it to an arrow and shoot it directly into the eyehole of my armor at our next live show. and we will answer it on air. And today's question is,

tell us something about your podcast that nobody else knows. I thought this would be a good question since obviously there's now two of us that have shows. I mean, well, all of my normal hosts also hosts like 20 of their own other shows. But so one of the things that I do

before I read a script on the podcast is obviously I write it, I edit it, and then I read it aloud to make sure that it sounds good, which means technically my dog is the first, person to hear every podcast because she sits on my lap as I work and stares at me intently as I read at her. So yeah, shouts out to Cammy, my first audience. Editor or yeah, editor in chief.

That's right. See, for me, the issue is that like I completely forget what I have and have not said on the show. So like, I have very little idea what stories are still secret and what aren't. But I guess for our show, I could say that ours only came together because of Joe Cat, the YouTuber, who doing a bunch of D&D videos like eight years ago, nine years ago, I want to say. And just like this incredibly circuitous logic of winding up on a D&D Discord server and deciding like, I'm going to talk fucking space. Oh, so you guys all kind of met in a Discord server from a YouTube creator. And that's how you all met.

Yeah. Interesting. But fellas, we've done a podcast here together, but you host a different podcast. Plug that podcast. Yes, we are both hosts. We are two out of the three hosts of Failure to Launch, a podcast about bad space history and bad things happening to people who go up. If that sounds interesting to any of you, Lions listeners, then please give it a check. You can find it anywhere you find podcasts. You can find periodic. We're getting better at it. videos with slides to kind of give you visuals. And you can find us on Instagram, TikTok, Blue Sky, all of that stuff. This is the show that I host. You're listening to it. Thank you for that.

Consider supporting us on Patreon. You make everything we do possible. You get eight years of bonus content, Discord access every episode early. Shoot an arrow into Quinn's Eye. I don't know. I also have a book out called The Highlands Burn. You can get it.

Wherever you get your books, whether it be digitally or paperback on Amazon. We also sell the audiobook, which is also available and wherever the hell it is you listen audiobooks. But we also have it on our store, l-lbd-store.com. If you just want to buy it from us directly, the link will be in the show notes. And until next time, shoot a horse with a bow and arrow.