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How to Survive a Medieval Crusade

Dan Snow's History Hit

Tue Jan 07 2025

What dangers would you have faced on the gruelling journey to the Holy Land?

Summary

Episode Summary: "How to Survive a Medieval Crusade"

Dan Snow's History Hit episode titled "How to Survive a Medieval Crusade," released on January 7, 2025, delves into the harrowing realities of the Crusades, exploring the myriad challenges faced by those who embarked on these perilous journeys. Hosted by historian Dan Snow and featuring guest historian Matt Lewis from the podcast Gone Medieval, the episode provides a comprehensive examination of the logistics, dangers, and personal experiences that defined the Crusades.

1. The Call to Crusade: Pope Urban II’s Sermon

The episode begins with Dan Snow recounting the pivotal moment on November 27, 1095, when Pope Urban II delivered a fervent sermon in Clermont. Addressing a crowd of French nobles and clergymen, Urban II lamented the rampant violence in European society and introduced the concept of the "peace of God." He then shifted the focus to aiding the Greeks in the East against the dominant Muslim powers, framing the Crusades as an "armed pilgrimage" to the Holy Land. As Dan states, "God wills it" (00:55), a rallying cry that ignited the fervor leading to the Crusades.

2. The Perils of the Crusades: A Grim Reality

Dan emphasizes that Crusades were "absurdly dangerous," with survival rates dismally low. He cites the legendary Frederick Barbarossa, who met his demise in a Turkish river, and other noble figures like Raymond of Poitiers and Conrad of Montferrat, who were brutally killed or assassinated (00:55). The dangers extended beyond the battlefield:

Travel Hazards: The journey to the Holy Land was fraught with peril, including treacherous terrain, extreme weather, and hostile territories.
Disease and Starvation: Medieval armies were vulnerable to epidemics and struggled with securing consistent food and water supplies.
Battlefield Dangers: Even powerful leaders were not spared, as exemplified by Roger of Salerno and King Richard I, who faced shipwrecks and imprisonment (00:55, 24:20).

3. The People's Crusade vs. the Prince's Crusade

Matt Lewis provides historical context by distinguishing between the People's Crusade and the more organized Prince's Crusade:

People's Crusade: Led by Peter the Hermit, this spontaneous movement saw tens of thousands embark without proper organization or resources. They faced immediate hardships, such as starvation and hostile encounters in Hungary, leading to massive casualties before even reaching the Holy Land (09:07, 09:53).
Prince's Crusade: In contrast, the Prince's Crusade was better funded and led by nobility, though it still suffered high attrition rates. Matt explains that "getting out of Europe is problematic and potentially deadly," highlighting the logistical nightmare of moving large armies through unfamiliar territories (09:53, 15:22).

4. Logistics and Survival Strategies

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the logistical challenges of sustaining a medieval army:

Food and Supply Lines: Matt details the immense amount of food required, noting that "14 articulated wagons full of bread and grain" were consumed daily (09:07). This reliance on local sourcing often led to inflation and scarcity, forcing Crusaders to continuously seek new supplies.
Transportation Methods: Early Crusades predominantly used land routes, which posed greater risks. Over time, sea routes became more common, though they introduced their own dangers, such as shipwrecks and piracy (14:56, 15:22).
Impact on Host Regions: The massive influx of Crusaders strained local resources, leading to tension and sometimes violent confrontations with neighboring communities (07:26).

5. Attrition Rates and Survival Odds

Dan and Matt discuss the staggering loss rates among Crusaders:

Survival Statistics: Of the estimated 50,000 to 60,000 who set out for the First Crusade, only about 12,000 made it to Jerusalem, translating to an 80% attrition rate (23:17, 24:14).
Reasons for Death: The primary causes of death included disease, starvation, battles, and harsh environmental conditions. Matt summarizes, "once they actually get to Jerusalem and lay siege to it, the reports tell us that of the 50 to 60,000 people that left Europe, there were about 12,000 people left" (23:17, 24:14).

6. Social Status and Survival

The episode highlights how social status influenced survival rates:

Wealth and Privilege: Wealthier Crusaders had better access to food and medical care, increasing their chances of survival. In contrast, foot soldiers and ordinary participants faced higher mortality rates due to their inability to afford adequate provisions (26:26, 27:27).
Medical Provisions: While medieval medicine had its limitations, wealthier individuals could afford physicians and better sanitary conditions, slightly mitigating disease spread. However, the lack of understanding of germ theory meant that camps were often breeding grounds for epidemics (27:39).

7. Captivity and Treatment of Prisoners

The fate of captured Crusaders varied based on their status and the circumstances of their capture:

Noble Prisoners: Often ransomed, treated with a degree of respect, or held for leverage.
Soldiers and Templars: Frequently executed or brutally treated, as seen in the aftermath of the Battle of Hattin where Templars were slain by Saladin's forces (36:17, 26:03).
Reciprocal Cruelties: Both Christian and Muslim captors exhibited severe treatment towards prisoners, reflecting the broader brutality of the era's warfare (36:17).

8. Case Study: The Second Crusade and Royal Strife

The Second Crusade serves as a poignant example of the internal and external turmoil faced by Crusaders:

Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine: Their expedition was marred by leadership conflicts and personal strife. Matt recounts how accusations of infidelity and military blunders led to both military failures and the eventual dissolution of their marriage (34:38).
Leadership Challenges: The lack of unified command and strategic disagreements often undermined the Crusaders' efforts, contributing to their high failure rates (34:38).

9. Conclusion: The Grim Realities Behind the Glory

Dan Snow and Matt Lewis conclude by juxtaposing the romanticized vision of the Crusades with the stark, often brutal reality. The Crusades were not only battles between civilizations but also ordeals of logistics, survival, and personal resilience. With only about 20% of Crusaders surviving to reach their goal, the Crusades epitomize one of history's most daunting military endeavors.

10. Additional Insights: Reconstructing Richard III’s Voice

While primarily focused on the Crusades, Matt Lewis shares his involvement in a fascinating historical and technological project: reconstructing the voice of Richard III. Utilizing skeletal analysis and linguistic studies, experts achieved a 90-95% accurate vocal reconstruction, merging history with modern technology to bring a 15th-century monarch back to auditory life (39:03, 41:24).

Notable Quotes:

Dan Snow: "The peace of God, he called it." (00:55)
Matt Lewis: "What the people in the regions are really good at is hiding their food out of the way." (23:22)
Dan Snow: "Astonishing optimism of young males that they think, well, most of us will die, but it won't be me. Let's get on with it, let's go." (39:00)
Matt Lewis: "If one in five is coming back, you better believe I'M gonna be that one." (39:03)

This episode paints a vivid picture of the Crusades' immense challenges, emphasizing that survival required more than just bravery; it demanded logistical acumen, resource management, and an acute understanding of the perilous landscape both physically and politically. For listeners seeking to grasp the true cost and complexity of these historical campaigns, "How to Survive a Medieval Crusade" offers invaluable insights.

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Transcript

Dan Snow (0:00)

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Dan Snow (0:55)

On November 27, 1095, Pope Urban II delivered a particularly impassioned sermon. Watching him, hanging on his every word, was a large group of French nobles and clergymen in Clermont. In the sermon, he talked about the terrible violence in European society, the necessity of maintaining peace. The peace of God, he called it. And then, perhaps in order to achieve that, he subtly changed tack. He talked about helping the Greeks in the east, that is, the rulers of Constantinople, from the Muslim superpower that dominated what we now call the Middle East. He pointed out those Greeks had been asking for assistance. He pointed out that in the Middle east terrible crimes have been committed against Christians. And then he laid out his solution to all of those ills. A neat solution. A new kind of war. Armed pilgrimage. His nobles and the audience should cease fighting, quarreling amongst themselves, and instead unite and head east to take on the infidel, the Muslim lords of the Near East. He promised anyone who would die that they would die a pilgrim. Their sins would be remitted. They would be rewarded in heaven. The crowd roared back, deus vault. God wills it. And that really was the start of the Crusades, a series of campaigns in which large groups of warriors left Europe, marched or sailed east and tried to re Christianize the Holy Land. Now, some of these Crusades were well funded. Some of them were led by dukes, counts and kings. Others were organized on a wing and a prayer. But all of them really had one thing in common. They were absurdly dangerous. Your chance of getting home were not great. It was dangerous getting there. Even the superhuman, the legendary Frederick Barbarossa, he drowned or somehow died in a river in Turkey on the way to the Holy Land. And he was by no means alone. The terrain, the heat, disease, shortage of food cost the lives of thousands of crusaders before they ever even set eyes on the holy sites. It was dangerous being in the Holy Land. It was dangerous being a foot soldier, because it always is. But it was even dangerous being powerful. In 1119, at the Battle of the Field of Blood, Roger of Salerno had three and a half thousand men around him, killed, hacked down, stamped beneath the feet of the Muslims. And he was among the dead. One of the great lords of the Holy Land, Raymond of Poitiers, he was killed in battle, his head presented to the legendary Muslim commander Saladin. It was dangerous even being away from the front lines. Conrad of Montferrat was killed by assassins just after he'd been elected King of Jerusalem on his way back from the baths. It was also dangerous coming home. English King Richard I, Richard the Lionheart was shipwrecked. And folks, those are the rich people. Some of the accounts of the normal people that we know about are harrowing. In the very early 1200s, a 12 year old Stephen of Cloy, he managed to attract large gangs of youths. He convinced them he's a miracle worker. He convinced them he was touched by the divine. They ended up leading thousands of young people to Marseille, telling them he'd take them to the Holy Land. They survived by begging for food along the route. When they arrived in Marseille, two merchants offered them to take them to the Holy Land and promptly sailed them off to Tunisia and, and sold them into slavery at the same time. Oddly, it must have been a fashion. Another spontaneous kind of bottom up crusade was organized by a shepherd in Germany who led thousands of men across the Alps. Two thirds of them died on that crossing of the Alps. They arrived in Italy where he'd promised that God was going to part the waves and allow him to walk to the Holy Land. God did not part the waves. Nicholas died crossing the Alps on his way home. The big question is, how on earth do you survive a crusade? It's a question I think many of them would like to have known. It's sad for their sake. They kind of listen to this podcast because we're going to answer that question. I've got Matt Lewis on the podcast. He is the host of our sibling podcast Gone Medieval. He is the presenter of our recent program on Richard iii in which experts recreated the voice of Richard using his skeleton, using what we know about linguistics in medieval England to come up with what they think is a pretty accurate version of the voice of Richard iii. It's an amazing documentary. Please go and check it out on history Hit tv. Please go and subscribe to that. But in the Meantime, folks, here is Matt Lewis telling us how to survive a crusade. Useful stuff. T minus 10. Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. God save the King.

Matt Lewis (9:53)

The People's Crusade was utter chaos. So this was. The Pope has preached the First Crusade in kind of 1095. It's taken a little while for the noblemen to gather what they need. There's an issue for the nobility in terms of funding it, but also who's looking after all of your lands while you go, you know, if you've got someone trustworthy who can take care of all that stuff while you're not going to be there for a long while. So we see people like Robert, the Duke of Normandy, the oldest son of William the Conqueror, will mortgage Normandy to his brother, William II of England for 10,000 marks to raise money for the Crusades. So there is a long process for these men to organise themselves and their forces. And in the crusading fervor that's been whipped up by the Pope, you get a lot of ordinary people who think, well, we don't have those issues. We could just all go to the Holy Land right now and get the job done. Isn't this brilliant? We don't have to wait. So you get this guy called Peter the Hermit, who nominates himself as leader of this huge group of people to tens of thousands of people who then decide to plow off across Europe. They make it a fair distance, but then they get to Hungary and they realize they don't actually have any food left. They begin pillaging, they begin trying to steal food and all of that kind of stuff. They fall out with the. The Hungarians, who clearly don't like this there, ends up in a massive battle. And most of the people of the People's Crusade are killed by soldiers in Hungary. So they don't even make it out of Europe in their effort to get to the Holy Land. And they are torn to shreds. And then this causes another problem for what's called the Prince's Crusade that follows them, the noblemen that are behind them, because when they get to Hungary, all of a sudden the Hungarians are like, woo, woo, woo, woo. We've seen this before. You are not welcome. And it takes them weeks to negotiate entry, even into Hungary. So just getting out of Europe is problematic and potentially deadly. You know, people die inside the bounds of Europe trying to go on crusade.

Matt Lewis (17:49)

I think it was because it has that religious element to it. You know, you are fighting people who, from the previous year, when the Pope has preached the Crusade, Muslims, have been othered. And from the Muslim point of view, you've suddenly got this Christian army invading what you understand to be your lands, your territory. So you do have a kind of really vicious edge to this. There is no need to give quarter. The Pope has told you that if you go and kill Muslims, you will go to heaven. All of your sins will be forgiven, and you'll go to heaven. So there is a real motivation for the Christian army to seek out and kill as many Muslims as they possibly can. They've been told that they're doing God's work. The counter to that, I guess, is that during this period, pitched battles are still not really a thing. So in Western European Christian military training, they will teach you to avoid battles wherever you can, because they're way too unpredictable. And if you're moving into territory that you don't know very well, that's kind of doubled. So warfare in Europe in this period will rely an awful lot on sieges, siege warfare, and that's what the Western Christians will take to the Holy Land with them. So the First Crusade in particular, is an awful lot about sieges of cities along the way that they will try to capture, and even that, you know, that brings with it its own difficulties and challenges. The biggest problem for an army of this size on campaign in the medieval period is disease. So if you sit outside the walls of a city for weeks and weeks and weeks with a small camp that you need to be able to defend with all of the toilets inside it and all of the sweaty men and everything else that's going on inside the camp, it's kind of a breeding ground for disease. So while you're sitting outside this town trying to starve them to death and deprive them of water and cause them to surrender. You're actually facing all of your own problems as well. And we see a big attrition rate for disease in the camps during the period. So the spiritual leader of the first crusade will die when there's an outbreak of plague in one of the crusader camps during a crusade. Obviously, when they dig a hole to bury him, they find a piece of the true cross in the hole that they dig. As you do. You know you have to find things like that on crusade, don't you?

Dan Snow (20:04)

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Matt Lewis (31:03)

So this would be the second crusade. We have Louis VII of France and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, which is a name we probably don't need to say any more about. But Louis is quite a funny one in that there's a doubt whether he ever really wanted to go on crusade so much as he just wanted to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He's an incredibly pious and devout man, not much of a soldier. He then thought, well, you know, I'll be the first king to lead a crusade. But then the King of Germany hops on alongside him. So then I think, I think Louis is a little bit like, oh, I wanted to be the only king. So then you've got problems of leadership going on around it and all of that kind of thing. They travel there together. We will get later stories that Eleanor rode with all of her women, bare breasted all of the way to the Holy Land, which is just bizarre and weird and definitely never happened. I'd imagine the wind burn would have been pretty atrocious if you tried anything like that. And then when they get to the Holy Land, we have this famous incident where Eleanor is accused of having an affair with her uncle Raymond, who is Prince of Antioch, one of the the Crusader states there. And this seems to be the result of Louis arriving there, Raymond of Antioch giving him some military advice about good targets, ways to approach this so that they can secure Jerusalem, and Louis ignoring him. And it seems like Eleanor was saying, well, hang on, we've got a guy here on the ground who knows what he's talking about. We should hear him out and listen to his advice. And Louis utterly refuses to pay any attention to Raymond. And then it seems like because Eleanor took the side of her uncle over a husband, the only possible explanation that medieval chroniclers can come up with for this was that they were having an affair together. So we get this random story that Elena was sleeping with her uncle during the Second Crusade. But then they will go on towards Jerusalem. There is an incident when they're crossing over a mountain, they call it Mount Cadmus. And the army gets a bit too strung out and they're attacked by Seljuk Turks who try and ambush them. Louis is almost killed. A couple of his bodyguards are killed during the fighting. And this is blamed on Elena because one of her vassals is the man at the front of the army who's apparently been moving too far forward, strung the army out too much. So it's Eleanor's fault that Louis almost gets killed on the Crusade as well. Just to highlight as well the difference between the higher and the lower fortunes during this. After this incident, Louis decides to take ship and sail down the coast with some of his men and sends the rest of the army to march on. And they end up getting ambushed all the way south. They lose vast numbers just on that march south. And then kind of Louis and Eleanor get off ship and go, oh, that was a lovely journey. How's everybody else? And everybody else is not really very well. And Louis will essentially end up, he gets into Jerusalem, but only as a pilgrimage. So they will spend Easter in Jerusalem, but there's no kind of military victory to this. After Easter they will turn around and go home. Their marriage is looking pretty shaky by this point. There's Talk of them splitting up. The Pope gives them a bed to sleep in and blesses it and tells them if they spend the night in that bed, they'll have a child. And nine months later, they do have a child, but it's a daughter. It's not the son that Louis wants. And that journey seems to have been the real catalyst towards the end of Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine's marriage, which will break up kind of a year or so after they get back to France. So, as you say, you know, travel can put a weight on the relationship as well.