History ASMR: The Crusades (3 hours+ bedtime story)

hello everyone the late 11th century from different parts of Western Europe tens of thousands of people Nobles and nights but also Kirks soldiers and peasants and even Sometimes women and children into the cold who called to travel to the Holy Land and Conquer it for almost two centuries to cool love Faith Adventure sometimes ambition greed Or Glory would motivate Christians to become Crusaders and embark on a journey many of them would never come back from why did this crash happen how did it unfold and what were the consequences this would be our story tonight one of power struggles and politics tragedies battles social and cultural change of rise and full of states in the near East and a religious military orders such as the knights tempura and many more things we have a lot to explore so make yourself comfortable sit or lie down and as always you can follow I sweat so don't hesitate to let yourself go and fall asleep the story will wait for you if you wish to return later you have timestamps to help you navigate between the chapters and as always I invite you to check my patreon page if you wish to support this channel there is a link in the description and in the pinned comment down below and also Spotify Apple music or Amazon music if you prefer to listen to my stories there now let the tension go in your shoulders take a moment to find the right position for you we have a joyful fire gently cracking in my study tonight it is over cozy and just at the right temperature and now that we are all set off we go Our Story begins in the old world more than 900 years ago that how was this part of the world like at the time several centuries earlier in the 5th Century the Western Roman Empire had collapsed and Western Europe had fallen into a long period of decline demographic decline its population had fallen for Generations economic and urban decline too cities that shrank a lot of Roman roads aqueducts and buildings had fallen into this repair and Europe had fragmented politically it took it centuries to slowly rebuild itself and this period after the four of the Roman Empire is often called the Dark Ages these were Dark Times indeed if we consider the laws of culture the end of the rule of ramen law the setbacks in standards of living the walls but also appeared when a new States appeared and a new type of society emerged a society of a feudal kind based on a strict hierarchy that gave everyone a position and allegiance to a Master the Lord all the way up from peasants to Kings this system had variations and was not always in place there were other political forms like city-states but for a loud part of the Year European population it had become the norm by the 9th and 10th centuries the Early Middle Ages was also an even full period new States appeared and attempted to recreate political Unity such as the Empire or Charlemagne in the 8th and 9th centuries that had its Center in what would become Germany and France and for a short time Charlemagne manage to unite much of Western Europe and other major phenomenon was the expansion of Christianity to most of Europe 10 West this had began before within the frontiers of the Roman Empire which had become christianized in its last centuries but instead of collapsing with Rome Christianity survived and managed to convert the Invaders especially Germanic peoples that raised new kingdoms on the ashes of the Roman Empire by the tents and 11th centuries Christianity had expanded far to the nose to Scandinavia and also to the West including in regions where Celtic culture had survived for a long time like Scotland or Island what would the east in the lands of the slabs Eastern Europe and the Pelicans in a western European regions like Germany the Netherlands France Great Britain or the north of Italy and the north of Spain Christianity or Roman Catholicism more precisely was now a major force to be reckoned with not just paretically or because it had a large network of parishes and Bishop Briggs but even more socially it had become Central to the life of communities and individuals you could be a peasant or a lord among or a Craftsman your entire life in Western Europe happened within the Catholic phase from birth to death with rituals and coats of contacts that were determined by the Catholic Church it doesn't mean every single person was perfectly observant and it doesn't exclude the appearance of so-called heresies but to the average regular person it was Unthinkable not to be Christian and together with their social position Christianity was the single most important character of their identity well before they are belonging to the country there was very little sense of belonging to a country back then nationalism just didn't exist as a concept our perception of the Middle Ages is often based on anachronisms because much later modern categories like Nations or stereotypes about the supposed obscurantism of the period were forced unto these centuries for example the depiction of medieval times tends to associate between a very dark take with 30 people living in an age of islands and absence of love or when it is not this another extreme a colorful and joyful Vision that looks like fantasy almost met both our cliches the dark vision may have existed punctually and it is true that based on our modern tolerance of physical violence the Early Middle Ages the Dark Ages were very harsh violent period but war was not permanent people did not live in the miserable huts and they were actually not that dirty the typical Tavern for example in the shows or movies is a dark room filled with Warriors and thieves and prostitutes but in reality taverns generally doubled as baths houses and there were places where people would go to get to clean up their clothes were not all gray and black styles were died in different colors and people were not Toothless either their diet was based on grain vegetables and occasionally meat or fish depending on the regions nothing that would make them lose their teeth early it is just a detail that another anachronism is the music we identify as medieval in TV shows or movies typically it is not medieval but Renaissance inspired music from the 15th or 16th centuries so to better understand or correctly picture the medieval period in its diversity because it is a very long period several Centuries with major changes between the beginning and the end we need to let go of many stereotypes and anachronisms about people's mentalities the way they saw the world the way Society worked or the environment they lived in in this Society people typically lived and died in the same place even the same Village by the 11th century when the Crusades would begin cities were still small and the vast majority of the population lived in towns Villages or hamlets there was a small fraction of society Knights High Nobles diplomats or high-ranking members of the church who were very mobile and traveled across Europe but to most people the rest of the world beyond the frontiers of their region was a mystery they would never see a map in their life and the far away of lands including this holy land they heard about almost existed on another plane these were not places they were supposed to even go to I am telling you all this because it is important to understand what will follow now that was for Europe but what about other regions around it in the East the eastern part of the Roman Empire had survived and even for a time it had thrived when the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the 5th Century the year Eastern part had been much better preserved from invasions and overall it was in a better shape so I tried to recreate to reconquer the Empire it looked like a gigantic task but not an impossible one Roman history had been troubled several times during Civil Wars and the reunification had been achieved before so in the 6th and 7th century the eastern part of the Empire managed to get back significant parts of previously Roman lands including in Italy and North Africa we call the Eastern Roman Empire Byzantium after their Capital Byzantium or Constantinople but they just call themselves Romans weissenger is a term that has been used later in the West to name the Eastern Roman Empire and somehow distinguish it from Rome for various reasons first it was far away from the credible of the Raman state and carefully Byzantium was more Greek than Latin so it made a certain sense that there were also political reasons the Holy Roman Empire had emerged centered on Germany and the north of Italy it was not a single state but to lose Confederation with elected Emperors that claimed to be successors of Charlemagne as the new Roman emperors Roman Empire this surviving state in the East was not convenient even though on many counts bison gym was much more Ramen than the Holy Roman Empire and later there was a religious Schism between Rome and Constantinople separating Christianity into the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox traditions another reason to not attribute the term Ramen to licensure in any case from now on I would call the Eastern Roman Empire Byzantium because this is the usual name now and it is convenient but let's bear in mind that this is not how the byzantines call themselves they call themselves Romance Byzantium when H2 get back pulse of the Western Roman Empire that this was short-lived because Byzantium was facing too many enemies at once on its Frontiers and starting in the 7th century the most formidable the Arabs from Arabia the Muslim Conquest had begun a few years after the deaths of Prophet Muhammad in 632 tear raps and their new religion Islam expanded to the Middle East and North Africa had to start nothing seemed able to stop them and they took a lot of territories from Byzantium including Egypt Palestine and Syria to the West the Muslim wave went as far as Morocco and Spain and to the East Empire conversion and Conquest it ended All the Way East to Indonesia several centuries later but after a brilliant Century in the Middle East and Europe this waves stalled and the new Muslim empire was hit by political fragmentation that was the fate of all ancient empires eventually and this one was no exception rival dynasties emerged within it the reindeer initial phase of the conquest first caliphate called the Rashida and caliphate was ruled by a surviving followers of Muhammad who carries in Islam is a person considered a political and religious successor to the Islamic prophets to Muhammad and therefore a leader of the Muslim world the Uma who carry faith is the institution the state the political entity ruled by your caliph this title was claimed several times a long history it is obviously the highest possible title for a Muslim ruler foreign was the one during the very fast initial expansion of the years 640 and 650. by the end of it the Frontiers had reached tenija in the west and Persia in the east and they already included most of the Middle East living on the paths of Anatolia that is to say modern turkey to Byzantium that the resident caliphate ended in 661. and power went to a new Clan the Umayyads also linked to the origins of Islam this Gran the umagas was powerful in Mecca in pre-islamic times and actually opposed Muhammad before converting it and joining his Circle they had acquired power in Syria during the Rashid and carry fate with Damascus as their main city and when one of them could claim the title of kheriff they turned Damascus into the new capital of the Islamic world they continued the conquest taking a bit more to Byzantium but mainly to the West this is when Algeria Morocco Portugal and almost all of Spain joined their empire ruled for 90 years until 750. with succession conflicts sometimes but the unity of the Muslim empire was preserved during this period and it was still an extremely successful Empire it seemed almost Unstoppable 750 another Dynasty the other seeds overthralled the Umayyads and they established a new caliphate the third one twelve years later they moved their Capital to a new city Baghdad near the ancient site of Babylon in Mesopotamia and as a Katie fade the other seats lasted for several centuries but centuries during which the Muslim World fragmented suffered invasions and the far away provinces became independent so that the number of Muslim states increased and sometimes they were competing or in conflict at the court of the abbasids the Arab Heritage was also diluted over time and the other seats adopted a lot of control traits and customs of people that had been converted to Islam especially from the Persians and Military the Muslim expansion was stolen but Baghdad became a center of science culture and invention a place that and Beaton a lot of the intellectual Heritage from the Antiquity from Rome and Greece if the libraries centers of running and the city became emblematic of a cultural and economic golden age that lasted for decades in the 8th and 9th centuries but as I told you their empire was too loud or they were not strong enough to keep it United 150 years had now passed since the start of the Muslim expansion and the initial boost had faded there were an Audis competing dynasties for large and Wealthy territories an article considerations or ambitions tended to erase the attachment to a Unity that had characterized the first Decades of the museum expansion so the other seats had to see the Spain and Portugal to the rule of the Umayyads who had seeked Refuge to the West and more territories around the Mediterranean Sea and in Central Asia were lost to local rulers who vaguely recognized the dear authority of the Abbasid califs but in practice were independent there weakening went on and Baghdad fell to Invaders In the 945 and again a second time in 1055 by the middle of the 11th century 40 years before the first crusade these Invaders of the 11th century where the cell Duke Turks the people and a dynasty from Central Asia they had converted to Islam that they were willing to establish their own Empire eventually to seljuktux took Syria and Palestine almost all of Anatolia and their eruption in the Middle East was a huge blow to the political power of the abbasids at the time of the seljuk invasion another powerful state to their West this one was the fatty meter Dynasty the fatimids where of Arab origin and they are called the fatty Meats because they traced their ancestry to Fatima Muhammad's daughter the Umayyads still had Spain with the fatty Meats had Morocco and from there they expanded Eastward taking of all the coast of North Africa all the way to Egypt and the Red Sea in the 10th and 11th centuries the fatty Meats proclaimed themselves califs and they followed their sheer tradition as opposed to the abbasids who were study so they also were a religious challenge to them as you know Shia and sunny are the two main competing Traditions denominations of Islam after a Schism that happened at the time of Muhammad's succession so in summary this is how things were in the late 11th century when the first Crusader happened the Muslim world had fragmented into multiple States from Spain to Persia competing caliphates and was weakened by walls especially in the Middle East with the rise of the central Turks the celdrug bush did not go and noticed in the West because in 1071 24 years before the first crusade the Turks inflicted a big defeat to Byzantium and Eisenberg was seen as a shield between Eastern Europe and the Muslims and two years later in 1073 the Turks took control of Jerusalem this was the first root cause of the Crusade the cell took hold on Jerusalem was weak and later they lost it to the fatimids we will see that later but Christian pilgrims reported difficulties and the oppression of Christians who traveled to the region due to the chaotic situation in the Holy Land prior to that it was not easy but pilgrims could travel to Jerusalem and the Abbasid rule and Christian communities could continue to exist inside the caliphate they were pushed to convert to Islam and many did they were discriminated against with special taxis or they are banned from certain functions but other than that they were tolerated minorities are often the first victims when the state is destabilized and this was no exception with the weakening of the other seeds to sell drug invasion and the lack of order the situation of Christians in Palestine and in Syria became more precarious and this was noticed in Rome and Western Europe because a tradition of pilgrimage to where Jerusalem had gained Traction in the 11th century the numbers were smaller and that more and more Christian Peter creams did the trip to Palestine to visit Jerusalem the news also circulated because there were trade links between the Italian Peninsula with Venice in particular and the Middle East including Byzantium and the other seeds and fatty meat caliphates so that was the first motivation to do something about it and it was Amplified by a recent evolution in the doctrine of the church between 1050 and 1080. there was a series of reforms in Rome called the Gregorian reforms a after Pope Gregory VII these reforms touched on several areas they included enforcing compulsory celibacy among the clergy or centralizing a bit more the Roman Catholic Church and these reforms followed the Schism with the Eastern Church that had happened in 1054. the separation of Roman Catholicism and the Orthodoxy the biggest Schism in Christianity since its appearance was still fresh and so a concern in Rome was to reassert the supremacy of the popes to Proclaim that the Roman Catholic Church was the one and only and to expand its political influence the concept of separating political and religious powers is something that was not theorized during the Middle Ages it was not even a concept and there were often conflicts of influence between the Kings or high Nobles and the church the clergy the Catholic faith was so important in Western Europe that secular rulers were always tempted to intervene in matters of the church and at the same time the church had the pretention to be above a secular power this overlap was not specific to the Christian world as we have seen in the same manner and religious leaders so as the 11th century advanced the pope was increasingly I said to you very Pope said their own small state who ran Rome in central Italy but they also saw themselves as the ones who could make happy Treasures between secular submarines influence their policies designate common enemies it actually to assert this principle the pope tried 20 years before the first crusade to organize a military expedition in support of Byzantium against the celtrook Turks it didn't gain traction at all and nothing happened because no significance Sovereign responded to the call but it already showed the intent the will to be interventionist to turn the papacy into not just the religious and Spiritual Authority that a political strategic leader of the Christian world there was the fresh Schism with passenger and the two churches Catholic and orthodox had excommunicated each other that contacts had been kept with Byzantium and of two evils the Turks were the greater so that's why Rome was waiting to help Byzantine and bison champ did ask for help its situation had become precarious at the time with almost all of its Middle Eastern possessions now lost so you had this chaotic situation in Palestine around Jerusalem Byzantium asking for help against the Turks that had also taken control of Jerusalem and the papacy willing to play an active role there were also maybe other underlying reasons that led to the First Crusade one was that overall the 11th century had been a period of relative prosperity compared to previous centuries it was still a time when what would become European countries and Nations where in formation Italy was fragmented Spain was mostly occupied by the Umayyads but in the north of Spain smaller Christian kingdoms had began to push back in what would later be called the Reconquista the reconquest of Spain against the Muslims in Germany also fragmented the Holy Roman emperors were trying to assert their power in France a new Dynasty the capitans had been erected to the throne and even though the Kings had a limited power this helped keep France at peace internally and in England the Norman Invasion had taken place 30 years before the Crusade the Battle of Hastings was in 1066. and the basis of a new kingdom had been made to the north Viking Reds and invasions had turned less devastating and Scandinavia was being absorbed into the Christian world so Europe was far from United and stabilized but it was in a better position to project power outside its limits than at any point since the beginning of the Middle Ages centuries earlier the climate had also turned a bit more favorable during the 11th century more arable land had been gained on forests and slowly but surely agriculture Innovations had been developed like more meals or crop rotation the practice of growing different types of crops in the same area across a sequence of seasons to spare and rejuvenate the soils resulting in better yields all this had a allowed demographic growth and another burdening phenomenon was the reappearance of trade routes inside Europe with a bit more stability trade between Italy and France or Italy and Germany through the Alps along their own or Rhine Rivers could reopen after centuries or between England and the continent after the dukes of Normandy conquered England or around the Baltic Sea yet another notable Evolution and Factor behind the Crusades was the installation of the feudal society model it created a kind of cast of Warriors whose social function and reason to be was to fight that matter her stock of Fighters you could tap into and it also meant they needed to be used to something when a order was restored and there was no immediate threat on the Frontiers what do you do with these people when you are not at War in that case it can be tempting convenient to send them away to avoid the internal threat they could become so as you see there were a variety of cozies that led to the First Crusade from the evolution of European Christian societies to the perception of the Islamic threat the growing medieval tradition of pilgrimages to Jerusalem the internal conflicts of the Muslims or the willingness of the popes to be more interventionist and politically active after Gregorian reforms historians still debate the weight and interactions between these factors what is factual is that all these background resulted in one goal in 1095. during a council held at Clermont in the center of France cancel that is to say an assembly of Bishops so during this cancel Pope Urban II called the old Christian monarchs and Nobles of Europe to mobilize to go to the Holy Land liberated invoice from Byzantium had to ask for ED and on top of all the reasons we already discussed before the pope may have hoped that responding positively could help heal the great schism that had happened 40 years earlier and their help reunite the church the mood at the time was to a Reconciliation and interestingly Urban's sermon at this council did not just took off liberating Jerusalem or the Holy Land it was quite comprehensive he talked about the violence of European Society and the need to Channel or heal it he talked about helping the Eastern Roman Empire the Greeks as they were called at the time who were brothers in faith and had called for help and he also said that despite its condemnation of violence and War the church would encourage and sanctify a kind of armed pilgrimage kind of War that would guarantee Any Man Who Would undertake it and die in the process the remission of sins and the rewards in heaven as you see this goes beyond the simply religious or spiritual reasons the pope knew he was addressing Soul Reigns he was one himself and the considerations he gave included a strategy diplomacy and the stability of their lands the school was answered with enthusiasm especially in France where the council had taken place Urban II was also born in France which may have helped that would evolve in later Crusades but the vast majority of participants to this first crusade were actually French Knights and soldiers led by a majority of the most influential and Powerful novels of the Kingdom including the counts of Toulouse and Flinders they were joined by many other houses loud and small intruding Robert of Normandy the eldest son of William the Conqueror who was the brother of William II of England and an unsuccessful Pretender to the throne of England this mobilization went far beyond the hopes of the papacy it is hard to know exactly how many men joined that estimates indicate around 70 000 to 80 000. who left Western Europe in the year following the Council of Clem Maura joined them along the three following years of the Crusade the number of nights ranged from seven thousand to ten thousand so a significant number that shows how Europe and especially France was drained of its nights with them 35 000 to 50 000 food soldiers and including non-combatants the figure may have reached a hundred thousand for this official Crusade official because there was also a surprise also motivated by the same call another Expedition called The People's Crusade happened less organized and will saw tragically doomed to fail I'll tell you about it later the response to the pope school was so enthusiastic that not just Nobles and soldiers volunteered there were also peasants with no fighting skills monks or women who wanted to join a hundred thousand people only for the official Crusade is a huge number for the time medieval armies were small a loud battle in Europe at the time pitched a few thousand men on each side even 300 years later during the Hundred Years War the largest battles between England and France rarely involved more than 10 000 people so a hundred thousand sees a reflection of the enthusiasm around the expedition that what were these people's motivations exactly they are how to assess precisely because of the lack of Records about them it seems personal piety was a major one as I said at the beginning the secure the Medieval World many aspects of each person's life where so ingrained with the Christian faith and spiritual world of the church that it was immediately attractive to join for many people joining The Crusade felt like an obvious path an opportunity to achieve one's destiny and find at the same time glory and redemption in the eye of God there could have been social pressure too it is hard to resist a call when your peers and relatives are all answering it in at least some cases personal advancement seems to have been a goal too for powerful novels for example in the case of a Norman leader called boim of Toronto of Toronto which is in Italy because earlier there had been a conquest led by Normans from the northwest of France to the south of Italy and Normans had established fifthoms there that they used as a base had gone to war with Byzantium before to try to carve himself out a territory in the east a kind of own personal Kingdom too cool to The Crusade gave him the opportunity to try again but this time not against the byzantines but rather against the Turks and with the approval of the Pope so he did not let the opportunity Escape the logistics were complicated with men volunteering from different regions and so it was planned that different armies would travel separately to Constantinople to the capital of Byzantium they would join forces there and continue their expedition entering a enemy territory with Jerusalem and Palestine as their final destination because at the time the Turks held the most of Anatolia and to those of Constantinople I told you that while this preparation was taking place another expedition was forming one that has been called The People's Crusade Pope Urban had planned the departure of the First Crusade for August 1096. but months before this in the enthusiasm of the response to his call unexpected armies of peasants and a lesser Noble had formed and decided to set off for Jerusalem on their own they were led by a priest called Pierre ramit Peter the hermit Peter was a Catholic priest from northern France who was not sanctioned by the pope as an official preacher for the Crusader but he did it nevertheless and due to his Charisma and the fertile ground he was working on press his discourse that even peasants women and children could join the Crusade he mobilize thousands possibly tens of thousands of enthusiastic followers most of them were completely engine for combat and had never left their Village but they did with him and for him and they followed him starting to March towards Eastern Europe these people's Crusade was also joined by a few Knights and small novels it was not totally an experienced but overall it was disorganized and with very little planning the participants were poor meaning they left with almost nothing and also meaning that they would need to live on the lands they would cross you immediately understand the huge original flow this Expedition had between its lack of supplies and absence of plan emerged in separate armies that found themselves in trouble while they were still in Christian territory their food for food against the hungarians in the Pelicans who ran Belgrade even though the hungarians were feral Christians but because these people's Crusade constantly needed food and surprise they were in practice saluting the regions they crossed thousands died or abandoned on the way to Constantinople doing more harm than good in the regions they crossed but finally the various armies of this crusade reached Constantinople and there again the problem of food was pressing and the mob began to loot outside the city the byzantines tried to control them as much as they could but the only solution to get rid of this crowd they could not feed and that didn't seem to have much military value was to let them go on and send them fighting so they helped Ferry them to the other side of the bus for us the strait between Europe and the Asia Minor where Constantinople was located the territory of Tyson gem indeed not far away on the other side at the time and so the people's Crusade began to wander into cell troop territory there was no way this crowd of people could survive a battle against well-equipped and Experian soldiers and indeed they didn't a few unequal battles against Centric soldiers took place in which most of the Crusade was massacred or scattered the people's Crusade indeed there as a tragic failure and most of the crowd never returned home Peter The Hermit the leader escaped and he returned to France there is no record of what he thought or how he was seen after sending thousands to their deaths in a feat of enthusiasm he may have funded a monastery but his Trail must be disappears after 1096. and other unfortunate Legacy of the people's Crusade is a series of exactions of abuses towards Jewish populations in the region of the Rhine River when the Expedition crossed it in the enthusiasm of the Crusade willing to fight and making no distinction between non-christians the mobs attacked Jewish communities on their way one of the numerous attacks against the Jews during the Middle Ages so that was for the people's Crusade that has these events were unfolding the official Crusade and its various armies totaling about 70 000 to 80 000 people was also approaching Constantinople and he gathered over several months outside its walls the Byzantine emperor alexios was suddenly happy to see this vast Army of her eyes join him but he was also suspicious after the bad memory of the people's Crusade and its routines press the official Crusade had a bohemo of Toronto as one of its leaders you remember this Norman Lord established in the south of Italy who had already attacked before Byzantium so that it did not help with trust issues either and there were tensions between Byzantium and the Crusaders indeed to return territories they would conquer to his Empire against his help with food and transportation to Anatolia eventually most leaders accepted and swoled the oath as we will see later it wouldn't be respected and the byzantines helped but they limited their support to food surprise fairies and a couple of generals to assist them none of the troops that they had more or less promised to contribute to the Crusade when they were pleading their case to poke Urban II but still the Army could cross to the other side of the Bus Forest after that the Crusader Army was in enemy territory and would only be able to count on itself during the first semester of 1097 18 months after the Council of Claremore when Pope Urban had called to this holy war the Lord Army crossed to Anatolia to Asia Minor the time for fighting had now arrived Jerusalem was hundreds of miles away from Constantinople and the journey would be long several months at least the Army was several tens of thousands of men strong and it had multiple leaders without a single Authority is a Leader's included Raymond IV the count of Toulouse and Adam De Monte there representative of the Pope in the Crusade they both had brought a large number of troops from Southern France another important group from upper and lower Lorena in what is now the east of France was led by Godfrey of boujon another double who had supported the Crusader early on and gathered various Noble houses with thousands of soldiers of Toronto was another figure of authority and the most experienced military Chief we already talked about him he led a group of Italy Norman troops there were also various contingents from northern France and Flinders led by the counts of Brewer vermontua and Flanders and by the Duke of Normandy Robert kathros dear eldest son of William the Conqueror so as you see the bulk of troops came from France and around it and their Leaders with their titles and vessels that also participated in the Expedition this reflected to complexity of the feudal system its chains of command based on regencies this was barely understandable to the byzantines let alone the Turks and the Arabs so they saw the Army as a whole and called the Invaders the Franks for the duration of the Crusades several Generations this is how the Crusaders would be called on the other side regardless of where they came from France or other European countries I told you the giant army has crossed to Anatolia in the first half of 1097. and they would have to cross an Italia then Syria before reaching Palestine but marching straight to Jerusalem was not an option they would have ended up isolated and surrounded in selduk territory on the way there were cities and forts that would have to be conquered and saw their first objective their first Target was the city of nicaea the city once under Byzantine rule but that had become a main city of the cell drugs after a few weeks of Siege the city fell not without big grasses on the Crusader's side that that was a good start and after that the Army marched through Anatolia and faced a router said drukami at a battle the battle of doridian that they won thanks to their members and discipline having defeated the main force of the Turks in Anatolia they could continue to the south east in the direction of Syria but they were faced with two problems first to sell drugs practiced the scorched land strategy to weaken them that is to say they destroyed all harvests and equipment that could have helped the Invaders so that as often when large armies were on the move they had to resort to routing to purities to sustain themselves and this did not Garner support from the locals second the Army did not have a single leader the spiritual and religious authority of animal the Pope's legate that is to say the Pope's representative was not questioned but each Noble had their troops and did not intend to seed control there was a degree of cooperation But ultimately each leader could take their followers in the direction they wanted and this is exactly what two chiefs did Baldwin of Bologna a brother of godfire of boyo and the count of bulani in northern France and tancred and itaron Roman leader nephew of bohemo of Toronto they broke away from the main Army together and they went Eastward towards the Armenian lands before marching South to the Limit between Anatolia and Syria Baldwin was well decided to carve himself a territory of his own in these lands and that's what he did in a chaotic campaign he conquered lands around the city of edesa and assumed the title of count of Edison in 1098. establishing the first of the Crusaders State there will be more as we will see the county of edesa was Inland around the modern Frontier of turkey and Syria and it lasted for a few decades we will see in the second part of this story not the full of Elisa to the Muslims in 1144 would be the trigger to a Second Crusade as Baldwin of pulani was pursuing his personal goals with a small Force the main Army had marched through Anatolia and prepared to besiege Antioch situated midway between Constantinople and Jerusalem Antioch at the time was a major city heavily fortified and leaving it intact in their back was not an option so they LED seed in October 1097. the seed was lengthy supplied fully missed and hundreds possibly thousands of Crusaders died of starvation it lasted eight months with the Invaders launching and the cell drugs sending armies and smaller contingents to try to relieve the city or Ambush the Franks around it or were defeated until finally the city fell in June 1098. only to be immediately encircled by yet another cell drug Force that the Crusaders managed to disperse by attacking it immediately in total the siege of Antioch cost thousands of lives on each side and to make things worse a plague broke out shortly after killing many among the Army including ademar the Pope segate at this point argument between the various videos multiplied and they spent or they lost the rest of the year in and around Antioch that they now controlled arguing over the strategy to follow in practice the friends from northern France the Normans and the provincials from Southern France did not feel like parts of a single nation at all and why would they they are languages were different and more importantly they had different rules and the initial enthusiasm of going on this armed pilgrimage together as Christians had stalled a bit after almost two years of fighting but finally at the beginning of 1099 the march to Jerusalem restarted after another spirit Boeing of Toronto stayed behind with his men as the first prince of Antioch at least his ambition was satisfied he had his own land and title and the rest of the army marched South they only had to follow the coastline for a few hundred miles to reach Jerusalem it is hard to know how many men remained at this point maybe a quarter or a third of the initial Force they had received a few more Crusaders who continued to join their effort but they had lost many more in the fights CGS and previous splits of the main Falls but at least thousands of men remained still a considerable Force and this time they encountered Little Resistance on their way to Jerusalem as they proceeded down the Mediterranean Coast two main remaining leaders at this point where the count of Toulouse Raymond IV and Godfrey of Boom the others were less than awards that had less troops wealth or authority in the meantime the situation had evolved in the Holy Land the cell drugs were now in retreat in the 11th century there had been formidable force that had erupted in the Middle East and taken it by storm that their good fortunes were turning they were surrounded by enemies they had a internal dissensions and on top of that they had been surprised by the eruption of this large Crusader Army that had taken their cities and carved new States on their lands as the Crusaders were proceeding a Antioch the fatty Meats had noticed this and advanced to the east taking Jerusalem you remember the fatty Meats where this dynasty is caliphate that controlled North Africa from Morocco to Egypt and to this they had now just Hadid the Holy Land Palestine and Jerusalem are not willing to go to war with the Crusaders so they offer the deal if the Crusaders did not Advance into their domains they would recognize a frontier with them and guarantee freedom of Passage to Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land but this was completely unacceptable to the Crusaders for several reasons several of them had their own ambitions that was the fact that launching a crusade from so far to indeed negotiating with Muslims and letting them have Jerusalem would have been absurd and they were still at nights in the army who wanted to fight at any cost so the year offer was rejected even though realistically Crusader's forces at this point now looks relatively small they have been estimated at around 12 000 including 1500 cavalry but they still began The Siege of Jerusalem with what they had with what remained even though they didn't have enough troops to encircle the city meaning do you only hoped to take it was to launch households at this time their cooperation had reached a low point and forces attacked separately which made the first household in June 1099 failed they regrouped understood that a concerted attack was the only option and after a few weeks the city finally fell on the 15th of July 1099 three years after the beginning of the Crusade Jerusalem had finally fell to Christian hands again for the first time since the 7th century between the exhaustion the excitement of victory and the burst of religious enthusiasm that followed the fall of the city massacres took place and it seems they were particularly ugly many civilian inhabitants were robbed and slaughtered the scale of these massacres is uncertain but there are multiple eyewitness accounts from Crusaders that indicate these were probably the worst exceptions of the entire Crusade Christian inhabitants had been expelled by the Fatimid governor before the arrival of the Crusader Army but Muslim and Jewish populations were decimated this could have indeed a crusade but not yet except for the capture of Jerusalem Falls of twenty thousand fatty Meats Lindy that ask Allen on the Mediterranean Coast 50 miles from Jerusalem the crusaders had only a half that number at this point nine thousand foot soldiers and 1200 nights they were also exhausted despite the excitement of their recent victory in Jerusalem but what they had was experience and troops extremely deafened by two years of combat since they had left Constantinople the Muslim force was relatively unprepared and inexperienced and that would be its Doom led by a good friend of bullion and Raymond of Toulouse what remained of the Crusader Army attacked the Fatimid Army outside haskellen by surprise and a completely ratted it with this this is a victory the Crusader ended Jerusalem now being out of danger for now you get to another state had been established the kingdom of Jerusalem and the Godfrey of puyon was erected its first king a false Crusader State the county of Tripoli was created two years later by a Raymond of Toulouse in what corresponds to Modern Lebanon Just Between the principality of Antioch and the kingdom of Jerusalem in the following months most of the surviving Crusaders left the Holy Land considering that their pilgrimage had been achieved and hundreds of them returned to their region of origin leaving only a handful to defend the new Latin states in the Middle East including the new kingdom of Jerusalem was it over far from that the First Crusade was over but our story is just beginning as we saw at the end of part one when the first Crusader ended and Crusaders returned it was considered a major success and Military it was despite the rivalries between the leaders of the Crusade and all the casualties The Crusade had achieved its goals its goals of conquering Jerusalem of giving air to Byzantium by pushing back the seldukes these Turkish people that had erupted in the Middle East in the 11th century at the expense of the Abbasid califs and at the expense of Byzantium and finally symbolically it was the most significant pushback of Christians against Muslims since the Muslim expansion of the 7th century that it didn't mean it was a very solid victory with gains that would be sustainable first because the conquest had been brutal I told you in part one about the routines and the exactions of Crusader armies on their way as they crossed regions like Anatolia Syria and Palestine where I lived Christian Muslim and to a lesser extent Jewish communities they didn't gain much popular support second because relations with Tyson Durham had the sword one of the goals of the First Crusade was to rescue Byzantium which had fallen to a low Point by the end of the 11th century and lost almost all its territories east of Constantinople Byzantium could take back some of them thanks to the Crusade like the city of nicaea that relations with the Crusaders were tensed from the beginning because the Crusader armies demanded food and supplies and threatened to take it by force also because Byzantium never provided the military help it had committed to and it will send when the Crusaders did not return conquered territories as promised on top of this some of the leaders of the Crusade like bohemo of Toronto where former enemies of Byzantium who had attacked the byzantines from their bases in the south of Italy before the Crusade so each side accused the other of treason and the third reason that made the position of the new Crusader States precarious was that the Muslims had just been repelled to Middle East who are still dominated by powerful Islamic States in Egypt and the rest of North Africa they were the veggie Meats ruling from Baghdad where the abbasit kheriffs weakened and themselves challenged the Invaders but they still held the loud regions in Mesopotamia and had influence in the entire Islamic world because of their status their Prestige as caves and the awareness Turks that had been the main opponents of the Crusaders Army on its way from Constantinople to the Holy Land they had been defeated several times that not destroyed far from that lands were still vast so in front of these large states with populations of several Millions the few thousand Crusaders who had stayed to defend the four Latin states on the coast of the 11th this wasn't much the conflict to just hold their positions and secure the frontiers of their small states continued with a lower intensity after the battle of haskaran that I told you about at the end of the previous part is when the remains of the Crusaders Army led by Raymond of Toulouse and Godfrey of puyon repelled the main Fatimid force in Palestine in 1099 after that there were no imminent threats left and the First Crusade was considered over the war with Muslims went on and on top of that another wall started quickly between Byzantium and the principality of Antioch the one created by their old enemy boimum of Toronto the byzantines considered Antioch rightfully theirs and they were trying to get it back so very quickly the Crusaders stayed called for help they were ruled by Lords who had plenty of ties in France and the south of Italy they had their own domains there that could provide reinforcement and they called their friends and allies to their rescue held by The Prestige they had gained during the First Crusade and they also had support from the papacy from the Catholic Church so in the first years of the 12th century Central Expeditions answered and departed Western Europe from rombardi in Italy from the Rhine region and the northern France several armies came to the rescue in 1101 this wave was a total failure the Turks had regrouped and the decimated these rescue armies on their way in Anatolia before they even reached the Crusader States there was another Expedition coming from Norway this time between 1107 and 11 10. rather than a rescue operation it was an armed Pilgrimage by the Christian king of Norway segered yourself are this no return expedition was more helpful it arrived by sea and avoided the very dangerous route through Anatolia helped the Crusaders in a Siege to take the city of sidon on the coast of modern remnant integers 11 10. the cell drugs intensified their attacks especially against the county of Edison and the call for help from Crusader States became a structural constant they needed a flow of knights and food soldiers just to keep existing and other significant relief effort was the so-called Venetian Crusade of 1122-1124 this can get a bit confusing there are several main Crusades eight in total that happened over two centuries but these main Crusades got a number because they were initiated by high Lords or Kings with the focal support from the popes and they were relatively large-scale operations apart from them dozens more expeditions or efforts became known also as Crusades over several centuries these include relief efforts to the Middle East like the ones I just mentioned and also otherwise against non-christians that received official support from Rome that included to war in Spain the reconquest the Reconquista against the Umayyads this struggle was proclaimed a crusade in 1123 that is 24 years after the fall of Jerusalem in the First Crusade later there would be other operations against the snaps in Eastern Europe against Phoenix peoples called the northern Crusades and these Crusades that were no longer aimed at the Holy Land in the Middle East lasted until the Renaissance they also included calls to Crusades against internal enemies against Heretics like heretical Christian sects before the Reformation and when the Reformation began to approach movements that were sometimes called proto-protestant were also against the Ottomans the Turks the rising power in the 15th century by the end of the Middle Ages many of these walls or Expeditions were called Crusades retroactively sometimes centuries later but early on they were inspired by the First Crusade these were all mobilizations with a defined Target a goal their rhetoric the symbols they used their religious dimension all of these were present in all of them so the Crusade became a form of War defensive or offensive for Conquest sanctioned by the Catholic Church obviously under this blanket term of crusade you find very different conflicts and motivations that sometimes had more to see with the ambition or expansionism than anything else but if we take a broader look at the phenomenon that happened between the late 11th century and the Renaissance the end of the Middle Ages what we see is Western Europe turning more expansionists beginning to project itself this happened over a long period of several centuries including a huge setbacks and internal walls that would be the Hundred Years War and many other countries there would also be disastrous epidemics like the Great Plague that wiped out a third of the European population so this was not a straightforward move a quick Evolution at all and if we look at world history at global history in the late Middle Ages that is to say the 12th to the 15th centuries Europe was still not at the center of the most important changes and conquests that happened that would probably be the Mongols and the other Asian Empires but still there was a change of food a change of mindset that made a Christian Europe more and more outward looking more adventurous in a sense Crusades are when aspect of it that together with these religious walls we can see that Italian cities began to expand their trade networks to the east including as far as China with Marco Polo from Venice another aspect is the exploration of the Atlantic Ocean tickets before Christopher Columbus and even internally despite the devastation of plagues and walls there was a long-term growth of cities a slow increase in the yields of agriculture and systematic gains of a rebel lands on forests this was very slow and imperceptible from one generation to the next so there was no sense of linear progress at all at the time and there was no systematic expansion strategy but deep down something was happening in Western Europe something was shifting in terms of culture of economy technique a new way to look at the rest of the world with ambition and appetite rather than fear or indifference so it could be argued that somehow this prepared the rise of Europe and how it would turn Global in modern times starting to ring the times of the Renaissance now think of this was necessarily written in advance but it is interesting to consider that if we leave aside a military political moral or religious considerations for a moment the Crusades are one aspect of a broader process they reflected it and they participated in it as we will see later in our story they also favored Innovations the transmission of knowledge and techniques all the new from Dyson gym and the Muslim world to Western Europe to conclude on this aspect this is why historians specialized in the Middle Ages reject this perception that it was an age of stagnation or pure absurantism and with good reasons it was not a period of fast spectacular progress of course and if we look at it with our modern set of values it is easy to see it as violent and just and intolerant but this kind of moral judgment doesn't help understand the cozies and consequences and it also disregards the diversity of views of thought all the conflicts and the exceptions that characterize the medieval period and also these major changes to Medieval societies over almost a thousand years it indeed very different from what it was at the beginning now returning to the Middle East in the first Decades of the 12th century I told you that Crusader states were struggling to defend their borders and that day depended on the support that came from Europe Knights deciding to do a pilgrimage and stayed in the holy land fighting with the Crusaders or rescue Expeditions like the ones I mentioned earlier from Italy France or Norway but they were in survival mode and it couldn't last forever in 1144 city of edesa fell to a Turkish chief zengi short for imagini eresa had become the capital of the county of Edison this state created in 1099 by a Baldwin of bulani in a separate Expedition after he split his armies from the main body of the Crusader's Force I told you all about it in the first part of the story there had been highs and lows in the struggle of Crusader States that this the fall of erisa and the actual elimination of one of the four Crusader States this was the biggest blow to date since 1099. until then even though the situation on the ground was not brilliant seen from Western Europe the First Crusade had been a brilliant and Lasting success 45 years after the conquest of Jerusalem Christian States still held to the coast of the Levant from Syria to Palestine so the fall of eresa was a wake-up call the work of the First Crusade was at risk of being a completely undone and interestingly the Conqueror of edesa zengi introduced a strong religious rhetoric in his campaigns against Crusader States to mobilized troops and ready support the Mercedes had perceived from the start of the first crusade that to the Christians it was a religious war first and foremost but as we saw in part one Anatolia Syria and Palestine were plagued by walls and Innovations during the 11th century long before the arrival of the Crusaders so to the machines this was another Invasion to face yet another actor in the nearest alongside the byzantines the fatty meets The Airbase or the seven Dukes until zengi there was no large mobilization on the Muslim side using religious rhetoric no attempt to turn this conflict into a holy war around the control of holy places even though to the Miss dreams Jerusalem was also a sacred City the third earliest after Mecca and Medina the Quran mentions that the Prophet Muhammad reached Jerusalem during a miraculous night journey of Prayer and so soon after the city fell to the Muslims a prayer house and then a large mosque were erected on the Temple mount in Jerusalem the hill in the old city of Jerusalem that is sacred in Judaism this is where the tradition locates the first temple built by King Solomon and the second temple that was built in the 6th Century BC after the first one was destroyed by the Babylonians the second temple was also destroyed by the Romans in the first century BC and its Remain the Western Wall also known as The Wailing Wall is Holy to the Jews due to its proximity to Temple mount it has become a place of pilgrimage we could say by default because the most sacred side into Jewish faith right behind it it was the inner sanctuary of the Temple where according to the Hebrew Bible God's presence appeared and the Ark of the Covenant was kept the Western Wall became a symbol of all that had been lost so when Jerusalem fell and the Islamic control in the 7th century during the first caliphate the Small Monument was erected there on the Temple mount and later the Umayyads during the second carry fade another thing I told you about in part one the umayyas ruled the Muslim empire for 90 years from their capital in Syria Damascus so do you Mayans ordered her large mosque to be built Al-Aqsa Alexa means the furthest a reference to the distance between Mecca and Jerusalem and also the Supreme this side and the Alexa mosque received a lot of attention from the 8th to the 11th century from different Muslim rulers which cemented the importance of Jerusalem to the Muslims the mosque was destroyed twice by earthquakes in the 8th and in the 11th centuries but each time it was rebuilt when Jerusalem fell to the Crusaders in 1099. Alexa had been rebuilt 60 years earlier Knight of fatty meets who had a controlled ear Holy Land for a good part of the century the modern mosque still has this 11th century outline but it looks different now because many Renovations repairs and expansions were undertaken over the following Thousand Years by the different controllers of the city including the membrokes and the Ottomans so that's 4G importance of Jerusalem in Islam and Judaism now for Christians Jerusalem is mentioned abundantly in the Old and New Testaments the Old Testament obviously because it is the translation of Hebrew texts in the New Testament because it is in Jerusalem that the New Testament tells of the last days to death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ so from the fourth Century that is to say when Jerusalem was Ramen her church the Church of the Holy sepulkar was built in The Old City It is believed to be built on the sides of Jesus crucifixion and the sight of his tomb the place of his resurrection the church was also damaged rebuilt and renovated multiple times since the 4th century and this was and still is the first destination of Christian pilgrims to jerusera so in summary this is why Jerusalem is a holy city to three religions they are scriptures mention it and the attachment to the sight build up for each of them wrong centuries and centuries of History whoever hold the father and also the tensions that this implies I was telling you all this because from the years 11 30 11 40. the religious rhetoric mounted on the Muslim side mirroring the Christian rhetoric and zengi the Conqueror of edesa could unite behind him several Chiefs in Syria by promoting the idea that this war against the Crusaders was Jihad that is to say the holy war nowadays the term Jihad which is an Arabic world that means striving or struggling is generally translated as a holy war it implies violence and in that sense it is the Islamic equivalent of crusade that the concept of jihad is much broader than that it can refer to any effort any struggle to conform to God's guidance including struggling against one's own incarnations it can be internal it is the concept of effort with a praiseworthy goal that in any case from this momentar the different Muslim leaders that would oppose Christian Crusaders in the following decades with being kind to also label the wealth as religious holy it was probably a sincerity in this that very much like for the Christians it was also a good way of mobilizing their men and Gathering political support but for now there was great consternation increase in them when the news that Teresa had been lost reached Western Europe and the reaction was quick in 1145 the following year the pope Eugene III recently erected called for the new loud Crusade and because it would be an ambitious operation led by Kings this time it was called the second through the even though the first Crusader had been a success the popes and rulers of Christian States had noted that he'd had had its weaknesses the campaign had been chaotic due to Logistics Crusaders armies had crossed Europe sometimes living on Peter cheese on their way to Constantinople chaotique also due to the emergence of the people's Crusade which had been useless and sent thousands to their death and even more chaotic due to the lack of unity in the Crusaders Army each Lord had their troops they had often argued split and it had been almost miraculous that they had reached and captured Jerusalem with what remained of an initially much larger Force so this time they wanted none of that pope called for a more organized and centralized effort two kings answered the book School Henry VII of France in Colorado III of Germany of the Holy Roman Empire with them many lesser Nobles French and German also joined the Crusade and in total the force of about 35 000 would depart for the 11th it was less than the first crusader is third to the half of the members that had traveled in a 1096 1097. this could suggest that the enthusiasm was a bit less even though such armies were still very loud for the time but another reason is that the Second Crusade was prodent to the war in Spain in the Iberian Peninsula between the Christians in the North and the Muslims the Moors in the south this Century Stone conflict called the Reconquista the reconquest wives who would fight in Spain would get the same guarantees from the pope of remission of sins and this helped the cause of Iberian kingdoms they advance to the South but it also diverted thousands of Crusaders to the second front maybe for the best on the Christian side because as we are going to see this Second Crusade was a major failure in the east and 10 or 20 000 more men would probably not have made much difference between the IPA and peninsula an army came by sheep from England a combined force of 13 000 Flemish Dutch Norman English Scottish and German Crusaders they were on their way to the Holy Land but they stopped in Portugal as they were navigating in front of it in the Atlantic and they joined a Portuguese Army of 7 000 in the capture of Lisbon an important event because Lisbon was taken and would stay in the hands of the kingdom of Portugal it remained a major christian City for the rest of the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula at the same time Anatolia though east of Constantinople the armies of Louis VII and Conrad III had marched separately and they were defeated also separately by the seljukes two kings could escape with the remnants of the armies and they both could reach Jerusalem from there they participated in an attempt to Siege Damascus in Syria which also failed and they did not even try to reach edesa and retake it after that the armies they had brought were lost and this made very little difference in the 11th the guarantee of Edison would never reappear leaving only three Crusader States Antioch the principality of Antioch and the county of Tripoli both sent a huge pressure from the Muslims and the larger kingdom of Jerusalem the Second Crusade ended in 1149 without changing the balance of power in the Holy Land and if anything it showed the machines that the Crusaders could be defeated even in large numbers something that had not really happened until then the first Crusader had won all its loud battles even when it had suffered big losses in the process that the Second Crusade was terribly unsuccessful now apart from regular armies and really fixed petitions another type of organization was gaining importance in these Christian States religious military orders such as the Knights Templar tonight's hospitalia or the order of the Holy sepuluger what were these orders and why were they relevant military orders where religious societies of knights created to defend Christendom and their members were not part of the clergy that they took religious votes such as those of poverty Chastity and obedience and they would not fulfill their commitment through a life of Prayer in a monastery but as Fighters either to protect pilgrims or as combatants to defend the church or expand Christendom the orders owned houses called the commandaries and they had a strict hierarchy with a Grandmaster at the top this kind of organization was not exactly born with the Crusade they appeared shortly before the first crusade in 1053 so a bit more than 40 years before the first crusade the Pope Leo IX created one the Knights of Saint Peter and he did this to counter the Normans I mentioned in the previous part that there were Norman incursions expeditions to the south of Italy in the 11th century they ended up establishing fifth terms there and so it is in this context that the first order was founded as a militia to encounter this Norman invasion from the beginning the popes the church in general saw these orders favorably as a way to channel the devotion of European Nobles achieving their temporal goals so they encouraged such orders by recognizing them and after the first crusade in those years when Crusader states were struggling to defend themselves and the kingdom of Jerusalem received the flow of Christian pilgrims several Waters appeared in the Holy Land including the most influential and loudest of them all the knights Temple that were funded in 1118. before them 15 years earlier in 1103 there have been the order of the Holy Sepulcher founded by Godfrey of Boom originally as an association of knights who guarded the Church of the Holy separger in Jerusalem Ten Years Later tonight's hospitalia originally to support a hospital dedicated to John the Baptist in Jerusalem that provided care for pilgrims the Knights of Pizzeria became a powerful organization that had its Siege its headquarters in Jerusalem and received a charter from the Pope that made it charged with the care and defense of the Holy Land that is to say something much broader than taking care of the original Hospital that this is where their name comes from later in the 15th century the Knights of Pizzeria moved to the island of Rhodes that wasn't their control until the Ottomans expelled them in the 16th century and they moved to Malta under the protection of Spain the Knights Templar also started as a society of knights but of all disorders it is the one that had the most extraordinary growth Temple Knights War distinctive white Mentos with a Red Cross and from two years had even 50 after the Second Crusade they increasingly engaged militarily in many of the battles and CGS in the Holy Land as the altar became significant as a military force in the 11th it also happened more and more headquarters commanderies across Christendom becoming a kind of multinational organization tied to the Crusades they didn't just defend peer creams during their Journey they also collected enormous donations and started to provide Financial Services to pilgrims and Crusaders for example European doubles who needed to fed their Journey to the Holy Land could sell them or mortgage them their assets they received a voucher a letter of credit that they could easily take with them and once arrived in the kingdom of Jerusalem or during their Journey they could obtain money equipment or accommodation thanks to their credit with the order they could just go to any commentary of the knights tempura this is the oldest known example of International Financial Services so the Knights Templar became extremely wealthy as an order and even became Bankers to the Kings at the peak of their order they were 15 000 to 20 000 members that only 10 percent of them were Knights who actually vote the other 90 percent were non-combatants administrators and people in support positions individually the members owned nothing they had taken those of poverty and the order provided for them but the order itself the organization was rich so rich that it began by England and properties it granted loans it managed farms and Vineyards it even became involved in manufacturing and trade quite far from its original location at one point the Knights Templar even owned the entire island of Cyprus and this is why some historians have called the Knights Templar the first example of multinational corporation they had started as a religious order but in a matter of decades they had turned into something else or at least much more than a society of Pious Knights still this human and financial contribution helped keep the Christian presence in the near East alive for the remainder of the 12th century that their wealth and power and immediately became their damn fool in the early 14th century that is to say almost 200 years after their Foundation most of Christian Holdings tied to the Crusades had been lost we will see that later with the story of alteria Crusades and so the Knights Templar had become more and more an europe-based organization their original reason to be had vanished or weakened at least the beholder was wealthier than ever they were International that their center of gravity was in France and the order had lent a lot of money to the King Philip IV to offend his campaigns especially since at the time Philip IV was at war with England the crown had no means to repay the debt and found itself in financial trouble at the same time the pope now based in Avenue in the south of France and no longer in Rome was in the strong influence from the French crown and also had reasons to resent an order that had become too powerful and influent why had the popes left Rome because in the early 14th century Rome was out of Center and had lost importance as a city and also the king of France Philippe the fourth wanted to keep the papacy through that hand and was in a position to demand it City of Avenue in the southeast of France was seen as a better strategic location for the papacy it was connected to Western and Northern Europe the heart of Christendom naidoron River the city was already significant developed and so between the need to find a siege for the popes and the pressure from Philip IV who was in a strong enough position to make demands an agreement was found to have the popes living in the Avenue with their Court this Arrangement lasted for almost the whole 14th century after which there was a conflict in Christendom is schism with competing popes in Avenue and Rome until the papacy reunited and returned to Italy so in the Years 1300 the Knights Templar had at the same time the king of France entered Pope turning against them which would be their downfall claims were made against the order without any actual evidence but very serious claims telling that the Knights Templar had turned and Christian that they forced to recruits to spit on the cross that they worshiped idols or that they engaged in indecent kissing or homosexual practices this was all meant to discredit them and justify the suppression of the older these claims and the secrecy of the order instilled different Legends around the night's temper that they would have a hidden fabulous treasure that was never retrieved or that they worshiped the mysterious deity who hold the Baphomet I will tell you about all this in an upcoming mystery story but more concretely the consequence was the elimination of the order and the seizing the confiscation of its possessions that paid out Philip IV The Grandmaster at the time was a man called Rector Murray and with his growth Circle all the leaders were executed then thousands of other tempers were either arrested and tried but most of them were not convicted or they joined other orders and some event just returned to a civilian knife without more consequences now that their order had been dissolved returning to 1149 and the failure of the Second Crusade we had left the three Crusaders states on the defensive but after 50 years of existence they were now part of the landscape in the 11th and their relative weakness left them no other options and find alliances including with Muslims as we have seen before the Muslims were not unified at all they're aware the fatimids in Egypt to sell drug Turks themselves with different and competing factions the abbaside caliphate with its capital in Baghdad trying to hang to its territories and all these factions were in competition the Conqueror of erisa zengi the one who had eliminated the county of Elisa and triggered the Second Crusade had died but he left behind the dynasty zengis the new Sangeet ruler nuradin managed to unify Syria that he was also at war with other enemies and so an alliance was formed between the zengids and the kingdom of Jerusalem if you remember zengi had called to Jihad against the Christians and the Crusaders were initially opposing the idea of any alliance with the Muslims but out of necessity both parties had to tone down their rhetoric and their principles no red Deen also allied with the byzantines against to sell drug Turks Kurdish they came from Kurdistan in the north of Mesopotamia and the south east of Anatolia by the middle of the 12th century they were a rising power in the Middle East holding large territories in and around Syria including Damascus the main city the zengit monarch neuratine tried also to gain influence at the court of the fatimids and so he sent to Egypt one of his generals with the General's nephew who would soon become famous and very powerful and that the epithets of Saladin once in Egypt at the court of the fatimids saratin crimes the ranks of the Fatimid Government after fighting alongside the fatty meets against Crusader households the same Crusaders who were also Allied to the zengids where he came from as you see diplomacy at the time was messy saradin had a meteoric rise at the Fatimid School and he was appointed vizier in heaven 69 aged 32. the physio was a kind of prime minister following the death of the Fatimid Calif two years later he took control of the Fatimid state and abolished this Fatimid caliphate why did he do this Saladin was sunny and the Fatimid carry Faith was sheer the two main denominations traditions in Islam for decades there had been this competition between two rival caliphates the Shia that he meets in North Africa and the Sunni adasis in Mesopotamia Saladin realized the Fatimid state with the abbaside caliphate he recognized the religious authority of the Abbasid kharif in Baghdad but he didn't see the control at all he kept control of the Fatimid state pacified it and turned against the kingdom of Jerusalem in the Years 1170 in 1175 aged 38. he expanded to Syria against the zenget faction he had originally come from and after brilliant military operations he took control of Syria he was on good terms with the absids having abolished the Fatimid caliphate and the Abbasid kharif proclaimed Saladin Sultan of Egypt and Syria he was now at the head of estate almost entirely enveloping the three surviving Crusader States the rise of celadin and the unification of a big chunk of the Middle East and the hymn was terrible news for the Crusaders they had been able to exploit the divisions of the Muslims during the First Crusade and the following decades but now the Muslims were unified at least the ones they were in contact with and with a powerful and astute Master at their head who was well decided to expel them the kingdom of Jerusalem would mobilize everything it had to survive that its situation now looked very complicated almost tragic in 1174 while saradin was busy expanding his power and prepared to take Syria a new king Rose to the throne of Jerusalem Baldwin IV also known as the leper King he was a teenager 13 at the time and was not expected to live long because he suffered from leprosy since childhood and along his life his hands and face became increasingly disfigured despite this and to almost everyone's surprise he should considerable determination and voting battles personally despite gradually losing sensation in his dreams in 1177 Against All Odds the Crusaders rebelled the forces of Saladin at the Battle of moshizao even though they were outnumbered Baldwin was 16 at the time and he participated in this battle and earned a lot of prestige with this victory his courage despite his condition plus the fact that he was progressively disfigured by leprosy this created an aura of respect and admiration around him which did a lot to pronounce the dates of the kingdom of Jerusalem against the forces of Saladin that also against internal feuds and conspiracies between Nobles who were anticipating his succession he could never marry and have children due to illness and accounts of Tripoli Raymond III and the prince of Antioch boemog III the two other Crusaders States were actively plotting to take control of Jerusalem when he would die Baldwin tried to prepare his succession by marrying his sister to ghee of Louisiana the Knight who ultimately succeeded him but all these intrigues forced him to stay on the throne until his death instead of abdicating as he intended he repels again in 1182 aged 21. but his illness was approaching terminal stage the following year he became blind and unable to walk he died in 1185 aged 24. and at this point the situation of the kingdom of Jerusalem had become hopeless celadine had defeated the France twice in 1187. capturing many of their leaders including Guild russino the new king and so in 1187 the kingdom of Jerusalem collapsed all of Palestine fell back through Muslim hands including the city of Jerusalem later in the same year after 88 years the holy city was lost and the legacy of conquest of the First Crusade was almost erased by the source safe for the existence of the principality of Antioch and the county of Tripoli now reduced to enclaves with little space around their capitals the news of these disasters reached Europe in 1187 and 1188. and right after the four of Edison 43 years earlier it caused a big commotion the pope now Gregory ate Earth or Christians to take up arms and go to the head of their brothers in faith in the occupied kingdom of Jerusalem so in practice he called for a new Crusade the third one to be led by Frederick Barbarossa Holy Roman Emperor and Richard the first of England better known as Richard the lionheart they were joined by the Third King Philip II of France this Trio at the time were the three most powerful sovereign and hopes we have that there combined strength would be able to repair Saladin and restore the kingdom of Jerusalem that who were these these three kings Frederick Barbarossa in 1188 had been the Holy Roman Emperor that is to say the erected head of this confederation of small states in Germany and Northern Italy for 32 years and at the time of the call for the Third Crusade he had considerable Authority he was 66 very respectable age for the time that apart from his longevity he had shown great ambition military skills and political ability for three decades which made him appear almost superhuman to his contemporaries Barbarossa which means red beard in Italian his a nickname he got after campaigns in Italy his Emperor name was Frederick the first as a Holy Roman Emperor and with his own fifth terms he could raise thousands of men and he traveled to the east with 12 000 to 20 000 troops including three to four thousand nights Richard the first was younger 31 in 1188 and he actually became Richard the first of England the following year in 1189 but when he took the cross that is to say he joined the Crusade he was already the ruler of large territories in France foreign all of these were in the west of France it is another story but you remember King Henry VII of France in the Second Crusade his wife was Eleanor of akiten heires to loudlands in the southwest of France Louis xivants and her became estranged and their marriage was finally dissolved Eleanor then went on to remarry with Henry the father of Richard the lionheart of Richard the first at the time Duke of Normandy and Future King of England as a result of their Union almost a third of France Norman D Puerto ricita became possessions of the same family the house of plantar Gene which happened to also be Kings of Finland since the dukes of Normandy since William the Conqueror had taken the throne the crown of England this was the starting point of many conflicts that were only settled 300 years later at the end of the Hundred Years War but for now in 1188 this made Richard the first the hair of a small Empire in Western Europe including also in Grand when he became king at Henry's death even before departing for the Third Crusade Richard had already acquired a reputation as a military leader and his Fame would only grow during the Crusade as we will see the Third King was Philip II of France also known as Philip Auguste another major figure of medieval history his Reign would be long more than 40 years and when he departed for the Crusade he had been reigning for eight years only Philippe was well decided to reinforce royal power in France at the expense of his vessels to various roads of the Kingdom and after he came back from the Crusade he became a very successful King he took back large territories from the plantation defeating them after the third crusade at the Battle of buvin in 1214. an important date because short term it reinforced the authority of the kings in France but in England it had dear opposite effect and a consequence of that was the imposition of the Magna Carta a real Charter of Rights that English Nobles obtained from King John of England but that would happen later in 1188 as the Third Crusade was about to depart Philip II not yet Philip August because his accomplishments would come later ruled over a relatively prosperous kingdom for their possessions on the continent nominary because in practice the plantation and the capitans the dynasty of Philip II were already in conflict the truth was agreed upon for the Crusade and in 1189 to the 12 000 to 20 000 troops provided by Frederick Barbarossa Richard added about 10 000 English Norman Welsh and hakitanian from his different lands and Philippe 7 000 French 7 000 to 40 000 more from the rest of Europe and from the Crusader States would also participate in this operation making the Third Crusade the largest mobilization since the first crusade would the three kings stay United and could defeat Saladin who was waiting for them in the nearest this and many more alteria events is what we will explore in the third and final part of this story the end of the 12th century since we began this history of the Crusades a hundred years earlier we saw how two main expeditions to the Holy Land the first and the second Crusades and various others of her lesser magnitude had departed Western Europe to conquer and defend Jerusalem Jerusalem and other territories the Crusader States created in the Levant we also saw how the concept of crusade had been prudent to other regions like in Spain war against internal enemies what it reflected and told us about medieval societies and politics how monastic orders had risen and gained importance not only in the Holy Land but all of Christendom I also told you about the role of Bison gym the Eastern Roman Empire in these Expeditions that were initially aimed at rescuing it appeared with the Crusaders we also saw what happened on the mess inside with the competition between different states or factions like the selduk Turks the other seeds or the fatimids and finally we ended episode 2 with the rise of celadin the new certain of Egypt and Syria who led the Victorious campaign against Crusader States retaking Jerusalem after 90 years of Crusaders presence when I left you at the end of part two in heaven 89. the situation of Crusader states in the near East was a very precarious their worst position since the late 11th century and I told you that the fall of Jerusalem had triggered a new cool to retake the Holy Land and this time the Crusade the Third Crusade was to be led by Three Kings Frederick Barbarossa of Germany the Holy Roman Emperor Richard the first also known as Richard the lionheart of England and Philip II later known as Philippa guest of France the year is 1189 and the Third Crusade is leaving Western Europe for a clash with the four seas of Saladin the crash that had had no equivalent since the first crusade almost a century earlier after three rival Expeditions that were headed to the nearest the first to reach it was the one led by Frederick Barbarossa coming from Germany and the north of Italy in 1190 they had arrived by land and like for their predecessors this meant that they would need to cross Anatolia turkey on their way to the Holy Land when Natalia at the time was still disputed between the byzantines and the central Turks the byzantines were happy to let this Army go to the territories of their enemies and soon fighting with the Turks began victoriously at first for the Crusaders who advanced and would soon reach Antioch this concerned Saladin who was still fighting the Crusader States the remaining forces of the kingdom of Jerusalem that kept fighting despite the loss of Jerusalem itself two years earlier and also the county of Tripoli and the principality of Antioch Saladin was forced to send troops to the north to block the arrival of the Germans in anticipation but the confrontation would not happen because an unpredictable events stopped to March forward of the Crusader's Army Frederick Barbarossa died unexpectedly crossing a river the old Emperor drowned in circumstances that are unclear either because he was thrown from his horse while crossing or he decided to swim and was Swept Away by the current or maybe he suffered from hydrocation there are conflicting testimonies but in any case he died and this beheaded his army some of the Crusaders decided to return home and others joined the forces of Philip II and Richard the first that we are now also approaching the two other kings had set sail from South Italy to avoid the longer and dangerous route through Anatolia we have to plan to land directly in the Holy Land ready for battle they landed near the city of acre in Palestine acre is now in the North of Israel the site was an important city it still exists and it is one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the world because its location was strategic with a natural Harbor and just on the coastal Road of Palestine the remaining forces of the kingdom of Jerusalem had tried to counter-attack inacar that they were proceding with their Crusaders realize including monastic orders like the Knights Templar and the hospital ears but their forces were insufficient to completely surround the city and the city could also receive supplies by the sea which is why the arrival of the Third Crusade was very good news for the attackers Philip II was the first to land a few weeks before Richard and he joined the siege starting to construct seed equipment six weeks later Rich had arrived also joined the siege and another month later the city fell through a Crusader's hands the first significant Crusader victory in the Holy Land in years and a significant setback for Saladin even though he was not present at The Siege but by the time the siege ended in July 1191 the motivation of Philip II to go on with the Crusade had already dropped and he considered living to return to France why this Sudden Change after such a long travel a victory and only three months in the Holy Land first because he was sick he was weakened by the century he had cooked the disease during The Siege second because Philip and Richard did not get on well at all they were inner Truth for the duration of the Crusade because all their feuds for the control of large lands in Western France were not sorted out I told you about this last time so they had plenty of reasons to dislike each other but also on a personal level Philip disliked that Richard had arrived late at the seat of acre that he had done most of the heavy work and the King of England was now harvesting half the glory and apparently behaving like the main winner maybe they had other Petty conflicts but the bottom line is that they hated each other and Philippe went as far as writing to the pope to complain about the Bad Manners of Richard the prospect of spending a month maybe years campaigning with the other was unbearable probably for both of them but apart from disease and disagreements Philip also had more political and strategic reasons to want to return to France a strategic reason was that during the siege of acre one of Philip's most important vessels to counter Flinders had died and this death was bad news for Philip it threatened to balance between his vessels the succession that was now going to take place in Flanders could possibly let this important County into the hands of the faction led by the Council of champagne and threaten his power so he felt the urge to return quickly to France to settle this succession and eliminate an existential threat for his crown and finally he may have had a less honorable but tempting idea Richard was in the Holy Land and if he stayed there for a few years or even better if he died that would let his possessions into North of France and defend it especially the turkey of Normandy which was the historical base of the Kings of England since William the Conqueror and indeed this is what would happen years later Richard did not die in the Middle East but Philip would retake by force more than half the possessions of the plantation family on the continent but for now Richard the lionheart remained in command of the entire Crusader Force Philip left an army of ten thousand behind him and another one of his vessels the Duke of burgundy with instructions to keep fighting alongside Richard so the king of England was now the sole Commander and with an army of more than twenty thousand he moved South in the direction of Jerusalem the target of this Crusade being to retake the city and re-establish the kingdom of Jerusalem in its Frontiers from before 1187 when the city was lost at first the campaign was Victorious acre at foreign in July 1191 Philip of France had left by the end of July and in September of the same year the Crusaders met an army of Saladin that was twice bigger than theirs but they managed to repel them at the Battle of alsoof after that Richard captured the port of Jaffa another important city that had fallen to Saladin four years earlier when the messims were crushing the kingdom of Jerusalem and he kept pushing forward arriving only 12 miles away after Jerusalem that the city was not attacked and he decided to retreat to the coast because he didn't have the strength to at the same time lay Siege around Jerusalem and keep in check how the mass enforces following year 1192 was less favorable for the Third Crusade first because like in previous Crusades there was a split the leader of the French faction of the army the Duke of burgundy who had been left in charge by Philip II you remember wanted to directly assault Jerusalem Richard was in favor of defeating saladin's forces first and this split the Crusader falls into two factions and none of them were strong enough to achieve its goal the Crusaders were also victims of phenomenon Saladin was perfectly aware of attrition they could not replenish their ranks when they had losses they were moving in hostile territory most of the time whereasthimist teams had a vast reserves of Manpower and equipment they could just win by staying in the war long enough provided the Crusaders did not receive reinforcements in 1192 there was Heavy fighting again around Jaffa on the coast of Palestine the city was taken and retaken and at this point both sides were willing to end these hostilities Saladin because he had other problems to deal with and did not manage to completely eliminate the Crusader threat and Richard because he understood that taking Jerusalem had become an impossible goal with the remnants of the Third Crusade and so they entered negotiations to find a way out an agreement was found the Treaty of Jaffa Jerusalem would stay under Muslim control that Christian pilgrims and Traders would be allowed to freely visit the city hostilities would end preserving the existence of Crusader States and the presence of monastic holders with their fortresses in a christian-controlled territories so this was a stalemate the Third Crusade ended without reaching its goal of recapturing the holy city so in that sense it was far less successful than the First Crusade but on the other hand it probably saved the existence of Crusader States by stopping Saladin and it resolved for the time being the problem of pilgrimages to Jerusalem so unbalanced it was an improvement on the Second Crusade that had failed even before reaching Palestine this treaty the Treaty of Jaffa was between Saladin and Richard the first predicted the state of things in the holy land when it was signed that it didn't mean Christendom has a whole had a signed piece with saradin and so it did not put an end to hostilities it just suspended them for example only five years later in 1197 there was another Expedition by Henry VI the successor to Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa who had died in the Third Crusade and the following year in 1198 a new Pope Innocent III announced a new crusader called The Fourth Crusade in the meantime on the mastering side Saladin had died shortly after signing peace with Richard the Reinhardt that his sultanate remained it is called the iub the dynasty and in these years it still held Egypt and most of Palestine and Syria so any expedition to the 11th now implied fighting against the IU Beats a powerful abundant this false Crusade is remembered as the worst from the Christian standpoint it barely reached the Revenant and instead it ended in the dislocation of the Eastern Roman Empire of Byzantium what happened he starts to different leaders and their forces that answered to the call remained disorganized for several years it only restarted in 1202. more than three years after the Pope School and these forces went on separate routes some coming from Flinders water south of France sailed to the holy land where they fought that did not make any difference the main Falls gathered in Venice an agreement had been found for Venice to provide the ships that would transport the Crusaders but Venice was not willing to do it for free the city wanted to be compensated and as no one was willing to pay the venetians proposed that their City would be bad with the profits of future conquests beginning with the seizure of Zara a city in Croatia on the coast of the Adriatic Sea Zara was a Christian City and taking it had nothing to do with the goal of the Crusade which was officially once again to retake Jerusalem the capture of Zara only serves the expansionist views of Venice but so it was done and the Crusade was transported to Croatia as mercenaries to fight for Venice in the siege of Zara this was the price to pay for Venetian ships and the crusaders had accepted to pay it in fact Venice was hijacking The Crusade to serve its interests and at the expense of other Christians which caused indignation in Christendom innocent III condemned this move but only once The Siege had already been LED too late and he was judged harshly for that it appears likely that the Pope disapproved that his desire to salvage The Crusade at any cost was Stronger and so after a Siege and at least hundreds of dead Zara was taken by Venice but the West was due to come after that the venetians took the Army to Constantinople by sea one of the leaders of the Crusades was the king of swabia in Germany Philip of swabia in his number one aim in participating in this crusader was not to go to the Holy Land but instead to install his brother-in-law on the throne of Byzantium his brother-in-law had excused the force was the nephew of the reigning Emperor Alex he was the third he was a pretender to the crowd of Byzantium The Pretender had no fortune or Army of his own that he made big Promises to the Crusaders if they helped him take the throne in Constantinople he would provide them with thousands of troops a fortune 200 000 marks and the reunion of the Greek Orthodox church with the ramen Catholic Church you remember from the first part of this story that breaching the Schism between Rome and the Orthodoxy was one of the factors behind the First Crusade the first Crusader was also a relief Expedition for the byzantines that had been overwhelmed by the Centric Turks so these promises were attractive even though The Pretender Alex yours was promising things he didn't have at least yet and went to Crusade arrived in Constantinople it was not with the intention to make a quick stop and go on to Palestine through Anatolia but instead foreign the reigning Emperor had excused the Third fled the city and the Crusaders installed Alexius IV on the throne after a few months of Chaos had exceeds the fourth was murdered he had not been able to deliver on any of his promises to the Crusader Army and so the Crusaders who were still there without any surprise or food or ships because the venetians had gone they decided to take by force what had been promised to them Constantinople was sacked for three days including the pillaging of churches and the killing of thousands of Greek inhabitants again when news that this had happened reached the west and even the Muslim world there was widespread condemnation has a beacon of anti-culture and civilization which it was and the way to Crusader had derailed to turn into the Looting of a Christian city was seen as unacceptable The Losers of this episode were first of all Byzantine it broke apart into several States some loyal to the Eastern Roman Empire heritage like the nician kingdom in Anatolia and others called Latin States in Greece where European Catholic rules carved new States for themselves like the Crusaders of the First Crusade had done in the 11th more than a century before it was not the end of the story for Byzantium not yet because later the kingdom of nicaea got back Constantinople and recreated reproclaimed the Byzantine state but only as the shadow of what it once was The Fourth Crusade can also be considered a losing party here because this is how it ended Without Really intervening in the 11th except for the troops that had taken a different route and sailed straight instead of negotiating with Venice despite the blow to its reputation Venice was actually a beneficiary of this Crusade because the town full of Byzantium helped it become a great Maritime power in the east of the Mediterranean Sea apart from Zara it could create a small Empire on islands and with trading posts that contributed to its Fortune the derailing of The Fourth Crusade is an extreme example but not the only time when the exactions and related to the military or religious purpose of Crusades happened in the previous part I told you how the concept of Crusader had been rodent to turn against internal enemies considered a heretical better population that was also targeted repeatedly was the Jews it happened in the Middle East when armies crossed Syria and Palestine but on a larger scale also across Europe anti-Semitism did not appear with the Crusades there are records of attacks by mobs and spoliations in previous centuries but it's certainly intensified probably as a result of the defeats of ferva that the course to Crusades generated in many regions Jewish communities were the most visible non-Christian minority often the only one and four mobs attacking them was a way of doing something to satisfy their violent impulse against non-christians most of the time attacks and massacres were not decided by authorities they were spontaneous and incontrollable I told you in part one about the massacres that took place in the Rhine region as the people's Crusade you remember this expedition of peasants and lesser Nobles that also traveled Eastward at the time of the First Crusade but these episodes multiplied they were incense in France during the second and third Crusades and they often happen near the trails of Crusader armies or in countries that provided a lot of Crusaders authorities actually often tried to count things down especially the successive popes or locally the Bishops that defeat the mobs and there was clearly a tolerance to it because only exceptionally did the perpetrators face legal banishment so in Jewish memory the Crusades and their bursts of violence are remembered as a particularly Dark Times there are many signs that anti-Semitism Rose in Europe in those years they left deep scars and they made thousands and thousands of victims in some cases anti-semitic policies were implemented by authorities too for example Phillip August who participated in the Third Crusade is also remembered for the mistreatment of Jews in France or innocent III the pope who called to The Fourth Crusade that we just talked about also passed anti-jewish legislation now if we return to the Levant because we still have almost a century to cover the situation in 1204 when the fourth Crusader ended was unchanged since the main outcomes of the Fourth Crusade had been the explosion of Byzantium and the sack of Constantinople so overall The Fourth Crusade ended up essentially beating Christians against other Christians more than 10 years passed during which the enthusiasm for another expedition was limited in Western Europe filibuster of France was aggressively expanding especially at the expense of the plantation day the English games and the coerition formed against him that included England and the Holy Roman Empire he came out of it Victorious that obviously it is long and Cosby War meant that several of the larger States in Christendom we are not in a position to launch any far away Expedition so in the Holy Land the situation remained roughly the same Jerusalem was firmly in the hands of The Sultans of Egypt at the time the certain was aladil saradin's brother who had inherited the throne after his brother's death the poop innocent the Third had not taken the initiative of a new Crusade since the failure of The Fourth Crusade in 1204. and finally in 1217 years later he called for a new campaign also aimed at Jerusalem but this time with a different plan first the Crusaders were to conquer Egypt the main base of the iupids saladin's successors and from there they will move to Palestine this was the fifth crusade and we can go relatively fast on it because as we are going to see it did not really achieve anything it's mainly those where the king of Hungary and the Duke of Austria they were joined by the count of Holland and a mixed Army of touch Flemish and phrygian soldiers there were also the tempers the hospital ears and the new Rising order the Teutonic Knights that sent troops to support this Expedition they started a Siege around the port of them Yeta on the coast of Egypt and successfully because the city fell in 1219 at the time there was a new ayubit certain alchemil and he was in a civil war fighting with his brothers and other factions for the control of the sultanate so he was willing to make peace as quickly as possible and he offered surprisingly attractive peace terms that included the return of Jerusalem to a Christian rule with three access for Muslim pilgrims but the Pope's representative the legate who led to Crusade rejected the terms and took the offer as a sign of weakness that had to be exploited so from them yet the Crusaders marched South toward the Cairo Egypt's main city in 1221 but instead of the expected Victorious March these offensive turned to a nightmare on the way the Crusaders attacked the stronghold at the Battle of Mansura they lost and they were forced to surrender this time obviously the terms on offer would not be that attractive who saved their lives they had to accept the surrender of damietta they also had to accept to leave the Egypt altogether and obviously Jerusalem was now off the table and this is how the fifth crusade ended in failure in 1221 having accomplished nothing now as I just mentioned the situation of the hyubid certains the rulers of Egypt and Syria was complicated in the Years Around 1221 they were internal feuds that left them in a situation of weakness and a piece of herbs of certain alchemil to the fifth crusade after they had taken only one city damietta was already a sign of this but it got worse in the following years and these left the IU beats in a situation of extreme weakness in front of any other enemies Phillip August had aged and was now approaching the end of his reign in the Holy Roman Empire the emperor had changed and was now Frederick II Frederick II had promised to participate in the fifth crusade one of the years 1217-1221 but he had done nothing and 10 years later he still hadn't honored his promise to go to war he finally decided to move in 1228. seven years after the failure of the thief's Crusade and his expedition is called the sixth Crusade or sometimes the crusade of Frederick II this Expedition involved very little actual fighting both sides were more willing to compromise and so diplomatic negotiations had already begun even before the Expedition reached the 11th in fact other Crusades that did not receive a number actually so much more fighting than this one but it is called the sixth Crusader because it was led by a king Frederick II was Holy Roman Emperor and also king of Sicily and importantly because it achieved results a diplomatic victory the IU beats were in such a state of weakness that they accepted to give back not only ports like sidon and Jaffa but also Jerusalem itself the sultan had a Camille was fighting his brothers in this Civil War and the dress could not afford to fight on another front so he had to sign peace whatever the cost was the second to fifth Crusades had failed to achieve with large battles and tens of thousands of troops the sixth Crusade achieved by diplomacy armed diplomacy but still this crusade did not see any large engagement the kingdom of Jerusalem had lost almost everything in the counter-attacks of celadin in the Years 1180. but 40 years later it still had not disappeared it had a king and a tiny territory south of the county of Tripoli it was also under the protection of monastic holders that had helped keep it alive so after the Diplomatic agreement that indeed the sixth Crusade it expanded again to a strip of land that went from Beirut in modern Lebanon almost to ascaran to the South and Inland it now included Jerusalem again that was returned to Christian hands 42 years after its conquest by Saladin so even though the sixth Crusader had nothing spectacular it was actually the most successful one since the first it ended in a peace agreement more exactly a truce agreement for 10 years and it included significant gains like Jerusalem Frederick had not forgotten himself he became the new king of Jerusalem by marrying the previous King's Daughter on the mess inside only certain Alchemy was pleased with the result because in the rest of the Arab world the loss of Jerusalem with so Little Resistance was considered dishonorable on the Christian side it was generally considered a success but one that annoyed the Pope even before and it went on during the Crusade Frederick II and the pope wearing now open conflict to the point that before sailing to the Levant and achieved his Crusade Frederick had been excommunicated by the Pope but despite this excommunication he had been successful and recovered Jerusalem this made the pope look powerless and on the wrong side of History who was not in God's favors so he wasn't pleased with his success and finally a year after the Crusade he had to lift the excommunication it is another story that the Rivalry between Frederick II and the papacy did not end there it turned to a long conflict in which the popes ultimately prevailed but before that Frederick woodex communicated three times and there was even a call to a crusader against him returning to our topic this revival of Crusader States after the sixth Crusade with the first significant expansion of the kingdom of Jerusalem in 40 years this kept the flame alive across Christendom several years passed there was this truth signed with the sultan the new Expedition projects appeared in the Years 12 30. especially this time in England and France the unglow French war was mostly over at this point Philly bogust had died in 1223 leaving France larger than ever mostly at the expense of the plantation who only had a kitten left in the southwest of France hostilities between the two kingdoms were on hold and the nobility on both sides was now in a position to look overseas and so in the Years 1239-1241 there was a series of Crusades especially one from France led by the count of champagne and the Duke of burgundy and one from England led by the Earl of Cornwall these Expeditions are called the Barons Crusade and they were successful at re-expanding the kingdom of Jerusalem a little bit to the South and Inland to the east so that by 12 41 the situation for the Crusaders looked better than it had since the rise of Saladin they hadn't returned to the frontiers of 1099 after the first crusade they never would but they had got back not only Jerusalem but also several strongholds and cities that gave them a bit of strategic depth however this positive feeling was not going to last very long because far to the east here Shockwave had reached the Middle East and his repercussions were about to reach them the Mongol invasion in the previous Parts I told you about the episode uh caliphate and state that control the match of Mesopotamia at the time of the Crusades from their capital in Baghdad and walls of particular importance relevance in the Muslim world because the kharifs were seen as the heads of the Uma the community of the faithful now east of the abbasids in Persia and Central Asia another Muslim empire had risen around the 12th century the quarasimian empire which originally were vessels of the central Turks that they had taken their independence and expended dramatically merging turkic and Persian cultures in the 13th century the Mongol invasion coming from the steps of Asia had arrived and the quarasbian empire was one of its numerous victims it was overwhelmed and destroyed in 1231 should be after the sixth Crusader had secured the return of Jerusalem to the Christians as a state the Aquarius made Empire no longer existed that some of its armies had escaped they had survived and one of them which was ten thousand kaveri strong had reached the 11th it had no State left no regions but the guarasmine Riders had stayed together they were ready to work as mercenaries who live on the land and the ayubit certain quickly saw the advantage of hiring them if he did he would have a new Army to Rebel the Crusaders that had began to expand again during the Barons Crusade and if he didn't the quares means would probably loot his lands so an alliance was made between the sultan and this Army to attack Jerusalem with forces that far exceeded the city's defenses in 1244 three years after the last of the Barons expeditions in July 1244 surrounded Jerusalem with the blessing of the sultan and after a quick Siege the city fell leading to a new sack and Massacre for the second time and after 15 years since the sixth Crusade Jerusalem was lost by the Christians and retaken by the Muslims that in a terrible State because the sack left large Paths of it in ruin and the right Army of Crusaders was hastily raised and met the combined forces of the IU beats and there were as men are three months later at the Battle of lafobi knows these together the Crusaders were outnumbered their enemies were twice as many and this time there would be no miracle the Crusader is lost and the balance of power shifted again Jerusalem was lost Christian power and presence in the Holy Land had collapsed and the situation was now very complicated again for the kingdom of Jerusalem the loss of the holy city and the spectacular setback for the Christians encourage the new reaction in Europe once again and this time it came from France the new Crusade the seventh with a soon depart and its leader would be read IX of France also known as saint rui in the Years 1240 calls to Crusades by the boat multiplied the pope was now innocent the fourth and he preached at the same time a crusade to the Holy Land the one that we denied would lead against the old prussians pagans who lived east of Poland this one was read by the Teutonic Knights also against Mongol incursions to the east of Europe and finally an internal one against Frederick II this conflict I mentioned earlier but let's focus on the one to the Middle East the seventh Crusade like for the fifth the plan was to attack Egypt first for some time now the Christians had identified Egypt as the main seat of Muslim power in the near East and with good reason Syria and Palestine had been unstable since the first Crusader and even before their way I can't speak walls they changed hands often and his regions were not as wealthy or as populated as Egypt in contrast Egypt had a large population several million it remained the Bread Basket that it had been since the early antiquity and it provided the iubs like the 30 minutes before with considerable resources Manpower Food Equipment income so Landing directly in the holy land or in Syria was a guarantee that a counter-attack would come probably from Egypt and it didn't really attack the power base of the how you beat certains Louis designs Saint Louis had a ascended to the throne early aged 12. and he had a long and even full reign that lasted 44 years until 1270. his involvement in the seventh Crusade began in 1244 when he was 30. still in France he was a stricken with malaria to the point that his life appeared in danger and on what could have become his Deathbed he wrote that if he recovered he would set out for a crusade and he did recover the following year so he took the cross as promised and started to make preparations these preparations took three years one reason was that he was still too weak to travel and then that enthusiasm for Crusades had decreased markedly yes Jerusalem had been lost again in 1244. but we were now 150 years almost after the starts of the First Crusade and it was not the first time Jerusalem was asked Crusader states in the 11th didn't seem to make any sustainable progress after all these decades actually they were again at a low point and so even though it was not acceptable to publicly say that Crusades were in vain this idea was circulating in the high nobility there was some Crusade fatigue in France and in general in Europe so finding roads who would come along with their troops was not easy finally the counts of Provence and artwork and a bit later the Duke of burgundy and an English Detachment joined reikili for him with the ninth had a loud human and financial resources the 13th century was a period of ongoing prosperity for the kingdom of France it had been expended by Philip August at the beginning of the century and the development of cities or the expansion of cultivable land that I told you about in the previous part went on this Prosperity was reflected in architecture this is the century when large Gothic Cathedrals were constructed blood fortunes were amassed I told you about the night's temper in the previous part this was a century of immense prosperity for them but there were also Traders abase fiefdoms that prospered in their economic activity agriculture the taxis the corrected or donations they received it was not all perfect it was also a period of conflicts with peasant travels occasionally food went missing remote places or cities were very unsafe but relatively to previous centuries there was economic progress and demographic expansion the army that accompanied reunites was 20 000 to 30 000 strong a big effort for France alone given that most participants came from this country but this is far from the numbers of the First Crusade about three times it is to put things in perspective on the positive side Louis bad for almost everything by collecting extraordinary temporary taxis or confiscating properties Jewish money lenders were exfoliated and expelled for example another example of anti-jewish policies during the Crusades the fact that he bid gave him unprecedented control over his army he was the only one in command of the bulk of the Crusade and there was no risk of splits and disagreements right in previous expeditions so in 1248 he sailed with the Army from the south of France to Cyprus a good base near the 11th and at the time Cyprus wasn't a crusader control decades area in the Third Crusade the army of Richard the lionheart had occupied the island and Richard had sold it to the knights tempra soon after that the losing your family who were also Kings of Jerusalem occupied the island and created a kingdom on it a separate Kingdom the kingdom of Cyprus the population was mainly Greek but the island was ruled by a minority of Roman Catholics who lived in cities so it was a friendly base for the seventh Crusade and the plan to attack Egypt rather than Orlando directly in Palestine was finalized there the following steps in this campaign looked a lot like the fifth Crusader including the disaster at the end the Army arrived by the sea and besieged them yet this sport on the Egyptian ghost with success was taken the sultan was now as Sally the son of the previous Sultan during the First Crusade the one who had offered to trade them Yeta for Jerusalem and like his father before him he offered the same deal give us back them yet and we will give you Jerusalem and the truth the offer was less attractive than during the feast Crusade because at this point Jerusalem was still in Ruins and how to defend but in any case like in the fifth crusade the offer was rejected and redanides advanced towards Cairo this implied fighting the IU bids again at Mansura the place where the fifth crusade had been destroyed but this time after six weeks of intermittent fighting the Crusaders were victorious a victory that was on the temporary because a few weeks later as read the knights was looking at how to keep advancing and how to take Cairo another battle took place the Battle of Fairy School and it was a disastrous defeat for the Crusade so these are stress that rui was made prisoner her King was a very valuable prisoner and the IU beats used him and other captured Lords as bargaining chips to recover damietta and receive a loud Ransom a ransom that the Knights Templar agreed to pay they had the means and this was how Louis IX was released from captivity in 1250 two years after departure The Crusade had failed it had achieved nothing and caused a fortune that Louis didn't leave immediately he stayed four more years in acre to reorganize the defense of Crusader States and also because the whole hope had not been lost the news of his capture had reached France there was no money or motivated rules left to send a rescue Expedition and other European Kings were certainly in no hurry to help him the king of England Henry III had also taken the cross in 1250. but he convinced the pope to postpone a healing Expedition because he didn't mind having the king of France far away and in trouble there was also nothing to Hope from the Holy Roman Empire which was at war with the Pope who remember there was this interval Crusade hold by the pope against Frederick II Frederick II who died at that same year in 1250. but his son the new emperor inherited this war so no official help for Saint Louis but in the wider population the flame of the Crusades still existed to the surprise of authorities a new popular Crusade arose in northern France and the low countries something similar to The People's Crusade that had taken place during the First Crusade and its subjectives were the liberation of Louis and reclaiming the Holy Land the movement spread rapidly in an army of nearly 60 000 men was formed many of them were shepherds which is why this movement was called The Shepherd's Crusade but this one did not go very far instead of marching to the 11th it began pillaging and attacking Church properties in the north of France it was uncontrollable and it ended up dividing himself into several armies which spread Terror across France these armies of routers were reduced or scattered at Great cost and this is how the shepherd's Crusade ended in 1251 finally there would be no relief for the seventh Crusade and in 1254 four years after his Liberation from captivity Louis returned to France on balance the seventh Crusade was a disaster militarily humanly and financially times were really changing in the 11th now the Mongol invasion in the Middle East now threatened to overwhelm everything the ayubit Dynasty in Egypt the successors of Saladin who had been weakened for some time now by internal fields finally collapsed and it was replaced by new rulers the man looks and the Crusader states where on the defensive losing ground during the following decade they were reduced to a few Coastal outposts no new Expedition would reach the Holy Land we the ninth wanted to take a Revenge but never returned he tried an expedition called the eighth Crusade that targeting Tunisia fell to the west from Palestine and this is where he died in 1270 at the siege of tennis between 1272 and 1302 many crusades to free the Holy Land were proposed that's known actually materialized the city of Tripoli was lost in 1289 after almost two centuries of Western European presence acre in 1291. and the last Crusader Bastion in the 11th ruad fell in 1302. a few years later the night's hospitaliers found refuge on the island of Rhodes that they conquered from Byzantium the night's temper would soon after be disbanded for a Time the Mongols became the new masters of the Middle East they converted to Islam that has a fighting force that disintegrated in Egypt the memories would continue for another century that the Crusader states were gone for good and the Crusades to liberate Jerusalem and The Holy Land were now over so that's for the Middle East that as we have discussed in previous parts the legacy of the Crusades went well beyond this region I told you about other Crusades in Europe not necessarily against Muslims and how Society the mindset of Christian Europeans were affected by this movement that had began two centuries earlier there were other impacts for example an art and architecture with such a long occupation and abundant travel between the 11th and Western Europe the Crusades favor the synthesis of European Byzantine and Muslim traditions it can be seen in the military architecture of the Crusader States fortresses and castles that influenced her European castles for the rest of the Middle Ages with Innovations or techniques taken from Byzantium and your abs all the Turks this also influenced Monumental architecture until the 11th century European architecture was dominated by the Romanesque style quite massive with very thick walls and few windows the byzantines and your abs had so much more audacious styles of building with thinner walls and columns using their engineering and experience to build a higher and in a more ornate Style is influenced the nascent Gothic architecture there were other influences too of course that some of the techniques of the gothic style were the product of this synthesis or influence that started in the 11th manuscripts were produced over several decades in Crusader States in Cyprus or by European Travelers who visited Byzantium and this also ensured a transmission of some aspects of the cultures they were in contact with despite at the end and the failure of the Crusades to secure Jerusalem and the Holy Land the volume of goods traded between Europe and the Middle East kept growing Merchants ventured further to the east and is also shaped the economy of the Middle East cities that were far away from the Crusades like Baghdad or cities along the Silk Road indirectly benefited from increased relevance in trade and For Better or Worse there is a legacy of national mythologies or Tales of heroism on both sides Christian and Muslim figures like Saladin Richard the lionheart Godfrey of bullion of the First Crusade Frederick II oh part of their Aura as historical figures to their involvement in these wars the term Crusade keeps being used sometimes by supporters of a political Islam who encouraged the idea of a Century's long struggle against Christians and a similar position exists in some Christian circles so even though the Last Crusade the last religiously motivated expedition to the Middle East happened more than 700 years ago the term Crusade remains loaded with plenty of different possible meanings from religious War to manifestations of imperialism or in common language in a much more trivial sense to qualify any struggle for a cause like Crusade for the environment or to popularize something that we have reached the end of our overview I hope you like this introduction to the history of the Crusades and I'd be back soon with another story for you sleep well sweet dreams oh wow

Channel: The French Whisperer ASMR

Views: 411,578

Keywords:

Id: KdJVkTUa82Y

Length: 209min 47sec (12587 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 15 2023