Hi there! My name is John Green; this is Crash
Course World History, and today weāre going to talk about the Crusades. Ohhh, Stan, do
we have to talk about the Crusades? I hate them... Hereās the thing about the Crusades, which
were a series of military expeditions from parts of Europe to the Eastern coast of the
Mediterranean. The real reason they feature so prominently in history is because weāve
endlessly romanticized the story of the Crusades. Weāve created this simple narrative with
characters to root for and root against, and itās all been endlessly idealized by the
likes of Sir Walter Scott. And there are knights with swords and lion hearts... NO, STAN. LIONHEARTS.
Thank you. [theme music] Letās start by saying that initially the
Crusades were not a āholy warā on the part of Europeans against Islam, but in important
ways the Crusades were driven by religious faith. Past John: Mr. Green, Mr. Green! Religion
causes all wars. Imagine no war ā Iām gonna cut you off right there before
you violate copyright, me-from-the-past. But as usual, youāre wrong. Simple readings
of history are rarely sufficient. By the way, when did my handwriting get so much better? I mean, if the Crusades had been brought on
by the lightning-fast rise of the Islamic empire and a desire to keep in Christian hands
the land of Jesus, then the Crusades wouldāve started in the 8th century. But early Islamic
dynasties, like the Umayyads and the Abbasids, were perfectly happy with Christians and Jews
living among them, as long as they paid a tax. And plus the Christian pilgrimage business
was awesome for the Islamic Empireās economy. But then a new group of Muslims, the Seljuk
Turks, moved into the region and they sacked the holy cities and made it much more difficult
for Christians to make their pilgrimages. And while they quickly realized their mistake,
it was already too late. The Byzantines, whoād had their literal-asses kicked at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071,
felt the threat and called upon the West for help. So the first official crusade began with a
call to arms from Pope Urban II in 1095 CE. This was partly because Urban wanted to unite
Europe and heād figured out the lesson the rest of us learn from alien invasion movies:
the best way to get people to unite is to give them a common enemy. So Urban called
on all the bickering knights and nobility of Europe, and he saideth unto his people:
āLet us go forth and help the Byzantines because then maybe they will acknowledge my
awesomeness and get rid of their stupid Not Having Me as Pope thing, and while we are at it,
letās liberate Jerusalem!ā Iām paraphrasing, by the way. Shifting the focus to Jerusalem is really
important, because the Crusades were not primarily military operations; they were pilgrimages.
Theologically, Christianity didnāt have an idea of a holy war ā like, war might
be just, but fighting wasnāt something that got you into heaven. But pilgrimage to a holy
shrine could help you out on that front, and Urban had the key insight to pitch the Crusade
as a pilgrimage with a touch of warring on the side. I do the same thing to my kid every
night: Iām not feeding you dinner featuring animal crackers. Iām feeding you animal crackers
featuring a dinner. Oh, itās time for the open letter? An Open Letter to Animal Crackers. But first letās see whatās in the Secret
Compartment today. Oh, itās animal crackers. Thanks, Stan... Hi there, Animal Crackers, itās me, John
Green. Thanks for being delicious, but let me throw out a crazy idea here: Maybe foods
that are ALREADY DELICIOUS do not need the added benefit of being PLEASINGLY SHAPED.
I mean, why canāt I give my kid animal spinach or animal sweet potato or even animal cooked
animal? I mean, we can put a man on Mars but we canāt make spinach shaped like elephants?
What Stan? We havenāt put a man on Mars? Stupid world, always disappointing me. Best wishes, John Green One last myth to dispel: The Crusades also
were NOT an early example of European colonization of the Middle East, even if they did create
some European-ish kingdoms there for a while. That's a much later, post-and-anti-colonialist view that
comes, at least partially, from a Marxist reading of history. In the case of the Crusades, it was argued,
the knights who went adventuring in the Levant were the second and third sons of wealthy
nobles who, because of European inheritance rules, had little to look forward to by staying
in Europe and lots to gain ā in terms of plunder ā by going to the East. Cool theory,
bro, but itās not true. First, most of the people who responded to the call to Crusade
werenāt knights at all; they were poor people. And secondly, most of the nobles who did go
crusading were lords of estates, not their wastrel kids. But more importantly, that analysis ignores
religious motivations. Weāve approached religions as historical phenomena ā thinking
about how, for instance, the capricious environment of Mesopotamia led to a capricious cadre of
Mesopotamian gods. But just as the world shapes religion, religion also shapes the world. And some modern historians might ignore religious
motivations, but medieval crusaders sure as hell didnāt. I mean, when people came up
with that idiom, they clearly thought Hell was for sure. To the Crusaders, they were
taking up arms to protect Christ and his kingdom. And what better way to show your devotion
to God than putting a cross on your sleeve, spending 5 to 6 times your annual income to outfit yourself
and all your horses, and heading for the Holy Land? So when these people cried out āGod Wills
It!ā to explain their reasons for going, we should do them the favor of believing them.
And the results of the First Crusade seemed to indicate that God had willed it. Following
the lead of roving preachers with names like Peter the Rabbit- Peter the Hermit? Stan,
youāre always making history less cool! Fine, following preachers like Peter the Hermit,
thousands of peasants and nobles alike volunteered for the First Crusade. It got off to kind of a rough start
because pilgrims kept robbing those they encountered on the way. Plus, there was no real leader
so they were constant rivalries between nobles about who could supply the most troops. Notable
among the notables were Godfrey of Bouillon, Bohemond of Taranto, and Raymond of Toulouse. But despite the rivalries, and the disorganization
the crusaders were remarkably ā some would say miraculously ā successful. By the time
they arrived in the Levant, they were fighting not against the Seljuk Turks but against Fatimid
Egyptians, who had captured the Holy Land from the Seljuks, thereby making the Turks
none too pleased with the Egyptians. At Antioch the Crusaders reversed a seemingly hopeless
situation when a peasant found a spear that had pierced the side of Christās side hidden
under a church, thereby raising morale enough to win the day. And then they did the impossible:
They took Jerusalem, securing it for Christendom and famously killing a lot of people in the
al-Asqa mosque. Now the Crusaders succeeded in part because
the Turkish Muslims, who were Sunnis, did not step up to help the Egyptians, who were
Shia. But that kind of complicated, intra-Islamic rivalry gets in the way of the awesome narrative:
The Christians just saw it as a miracle. So by 1100CE European nobles held both Antioch
and Jerusalem as Latin Christian kingdoms. I say Latin to make the point that there were
lots of Christians living in these cities before the Crusaders arrived, they just werenāt Catholic -- they were
Orthodox, a point that will become relevant shortly. Weāre going to skip the second Crusade because
it bores me and move on to the Third Crusade because itās the famous one. Broadly speaking,
the Third Crusade was a European response to the emergence of a new Islamic power, neither
Turkish nor Abbasid: the Egyptian (although he was really a Kurd) Sultan al-Malik al-Nasir
Salah ed-Din Yusuf, better known to the west as Saladin. Saladin, having consolidating his power in
Egypt, sought to expand by taking Damascus and, eventually Jerusalem, which he did successfully,
because he was an amazing general. And then the loss of Jerusalem caused Pope Gregory
VIII to call for a third crusade. Three of the most important kings in Europe answered
the call: Philip "cowardly schemer" the Second of France, Richard "Lionheart" the First of
England, and Frederick āI am going to drown anticlimactically on the journey while trying
to bathe in a riverā Barbarossa of the not-holy, not-roman, and not-imperial Holy Roman Empire.
Both Richard and Saladin were great generals who earned the respect of their troops. And while from the European perspective the
crusade was a failure because they didnāt take Jerusalem, it did radically change crusading
forever by making Egypt a target. Richard understood that the best chance to take Jerusalem
involved first taking Egypt, but he couldnāt convince any crusaders to join him because Egypt had
a lot less religious value to Christians than Jerusalem. So Richard was forced to call off the Crusade
early, but if he had just hung around until Easter of 1192, he wouldāve seen Saladin
die. And then Richard probably could have fulfilled all his crusading dreams, but then,
you know, we wouldnāt have needed the 4th Crusade. Although crusading continued throughout the
14th century, mostly with an emphasis on North Africa and not the Holy Land, the 4th Crusade
is the last one weāll focus on, because it was the crazy one. Letās go to the
Thought Bubble. So a lot of people volunteered for the fourth
crusade ā more than 35,000 ā and the generals didnāt want to march them all the way across
Anatolia, because they knew from experience that it was A. dangerous and B. hot, so they
decided to go by boat, which necessitated the building of the largest naval fleet Europe
had seen since the Roman Empire. The Venetians built 500 ships, but then only
11,000 Crusaders actually made it down to Venice, because, like, oh I meant to go but
I had a thing come up... etc. There wasnāt enough money to pay for those boats, so the
Venetians made the Crusaders a deal: Help us capture the rebellious city of Zara, and
weāll ferry you to Anatolia. This was a smidge problematic, Crusading-wise,
because Zara was a Christian city, but the Crusaders agreed to help, resulting in the
Pope excommunicating both them and the Venetians. Then after the Crusaders failed to take Zara
and were still broke, a would-be Byzantine emperor named Alexius III promised the Crusaders
he would pay them if they helped him out, so the (excommunicated) Catholic Crusaders
fought on behalf of the Orthodox Alexius, who soon became emperor in Constantinople.
But it took Alexius a while to come up with the money heād promised the Crusaders, so
they were waiting around in Constantinople, and then Alexius was suddenly dethroned by
the awesomely named Mourtzouphlos, leaving the crusaders stuck in Constantinople with
no money. Christian holy warriors couldnāt very well
sack the largest city in Christendom, could they? Well, it turns out they could and boy,
did they. They took all the wealth they could find, killed and raped Christians as they
went, stole the statues of horses that now adorn St. Markās Cathedral in Venice, and retook exactly
none of the Holy Land. Thanks, Thought Bubble. So youād think this disaster would discredit
the whole notion of Crusading, right? No. Instead, it legitimatized the idea that Crusading
didnāt have to be about pilgrimage: that any enemies of the Catholic Church were fair
game. Also, the fourth crusade pretty much doomed
the Byzantine Empire, which never really recovered. Constantinople, a shadow of its former self,
was conquered by the Turks in 1453. So ultimately the Crusades were a total failure at establishing
Christian kingdoms in the Holy Land long term. And with the coming of the Ottomans, the region
remained solidly Muslim, as it (mostly) is today. And the Crusades didnāt really open up lines
of communication between the Christian and Muslim worlds, because those lines of communication
were already open. Plus, most historians now agree that the Crusades didnāt bring Europe
out of the Middle Ages by offering it contact with the superior intellectual accomplishments
of the Islamic world. In fact, they were a tremendous drain on Europeās resources. For me, the Crusades matter because they remind
us that the medieval world was fundamentally different from ours. The men and women who
took up the cross believed in the sacrality of their work in a way that we often canāt
conceive of today. And when we focus so much on the heroic narrative or the anti-imperialist
narrative, or all the political in-fighting, we can lose sight of what the Crusades must
have meant to the Crusaders. How the journey from pilgrimage to holy war transformed their
faith and their lives. And ultimately, that exercise in empathy is the coolest thing about studying
history. Thanks for watching. Iāll see you next week. Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan
Muller, our script supervisor is Danica Johnson. Our graphics team is Thought Bubble, and the
show is written by my high school history teacher Raoul Meyer and myself. If you enjoyed
todayās video donāt forget to like and favorite it. Also, you can also follow us
on Twitter or at Facebook. There are links in the video info. Last weekās Phrase of
the Week was: Ali-Frazier. You can guess at this weekās Phrase of the Week or suggest
future ones in comments where you can also ask questions that our team of historians
will endeavor to answer. Thanks for watching. I apologize to my prudish fans for leaving
both buttons unbuttoned and as we say in my hometown, Don't Forget To Be Awesome. Whoah! Globe, globe, globe...
I wholeheartedly endorse Crash Course. I love the world history episodes.
The biology episodes however generally go over my head with all the terminology.
So, what about the Mongols?
What an amazing video...I learned so much!