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- [00:02]
Matt Lewis
From long lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Elena Jarninger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life. Only on History Hit with your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit history hit.com subscribe.
- [00:42]
Hayden
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [00:50]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [00:54]
Hayden
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [01:03]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
That's right. Hey. Hey.
- [01:04]
Matt Lewis
So each week you'll get my unfiltered
- [01:06]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [01:08]
Hayden
And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next.
- [01:13]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Spoiler alert.
- [01:14]
Hayden
He'll be wrong.
- [01:15]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find Fantasy Fan fellows wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:25]
Matt Lewis
So much Baseball Direct TV has the most MLB games in one place.
- [01:33]
Hayden
DirecTV baseball stats and baseball scores and streaming baseball on your couch and at the park and wherever you want on DirecTV. Visit directtv.com today. It's DirecTV like you've never seen it. Claim based on total games on national and regional sports networks. RSNS included with choice or higher. Availability varies by zip code and package. Mobile app us only up to three concurrent streams MLB trademarks used with permission.
- [01:57]
Matt Lewis
Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the Crusades, we cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders to find the stories, big and small that that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with. Gone Medieval. The year is 1187. The charred bones of countless Crusaders litter the parched plains of Galilee. An oblique crisis has enveloped the fragile Christian states of the Holy Land. Jerusalem, the Holy City, seized from the Saracens less than a century prior, is under siege. Its city walls draped with the banners of the cross are surrounded by the forces of the irrepressible and mighty Sultan Saladin. The air is thick with the wistful peal of ancient church bells. Citizens scramble for refuge. And yet, for now, the city is not yet lost. An Englishwoman on pilgrimage finds herself trapped within the city through bad luck and poor timing. But she doesn't give up hope. Donning a borrowed coat of armor and a cooking pot for a helmet, she helps defend the city walls. Her name is Margaret of Beverly. And shunned both for fear and the punishingly narrow expectations imposed on medieval women, she fights like a warrior. She hurls rocks from a slingshot at Saladin's armies below. She ferries water along Jerusalem's narrow streets to support the defenders. Then a catapult missile plows into the ramparts and sends shards of masonry and shrapnel flying in all directions. Margaret is wounded. And when the city falls, she's taken captive and forced, like all the other prisoners, to buy her freedom. Left penniless and dressed in rags, she wanders a land in which Crusader authority has all but collapsed. Margaret's story is not the exception. It's the consequence of a near century of Crusader conquest. In the wake of the First Crusade and the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, Christian kingdoms were carved out in fervor and held through strife. But in 1187, they now stand exposed. The age of crusading has reached a reckoning. But how did it get here? And what might follow? This is the story of the battle for the Holy Land. Welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. Over the next two weeks, we're traveling across the length and breadth of medieval Christendom to tell the tumultuous story of the Crusades. For nearly 200 years, these so called holy wars pitted Christian armies against the Muslim lords of Egypt and Syria for possession of the arid deserts and sacred shrines of the Holy Land. Sanctioned by the Papacy and fought by Western knights in a perilously hostile and unfamiliar world, the Crusades changed the very fabric of the Middle Ages. A medieval epic written in blood. Earlier this week, Eleanor and I launched our special four part series. By exploring the deep roots of the crusading movement and the actions of scheming popes and desperate emperors that brought it into being. If you haven't listened, do go back and dive in. Next week we'll be turning to the 13th century, taking a look at the disasters and divisions which splintered Christendom before ending with a final collapse of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the wake of a Mongol and Mamluk storm. Today, though, we pick up in the aftermath of the First Crusade. To chronicle the age of crusading in the 12th century will follow the queens and kings who sought to build on the foundations laid by this first holy war, and Muslim lords who organized rousing resistance against them. We'll explore how Western settlers fit into the complex cultural and religious blend of the Eastern Mediterranean and the gripping crises that placed everything they had built at risk. To help US chart nearly 90 years of crusading history, a period which takes in English kings, French queens, German emperors and a Muslim sultanate, uniting Egypt and Syria for the first time in two centuries, I'm joined by crusading historian and director for the center of Research into History, Heritage and Memory Studies at Nottingham Trent University, Dr. Natasha Hodgson. Welcome, Natasha, thank you very much for joining us.
- [06:53]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Hi, Matt, how are you?
- [06:54]
Matt Lewis
I'm not too bad, thank you. How are you doing?
- [06:56]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Yeah, I'm good. I think we've got a lot to
- [06:58]
Matt Lewis
discuss today, so absolutely, we are in the very unfair world with this series of trying to get people to explain the intricacies of the Crusades very quickly. So we have got a lot of ground to cover. We left the Crusades after the. Flushed with success after the first Crusade, what the Christians from Europe would have felt like achieving their aims. After all of that success in 1099, how do they go about kind of maintaining or creating some control over the lands that they've conquered?
- [07:28]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Oh, this is an interesting one. I mean, the first thing we need to know about, you know, post First Crusade is that a lot of them actually just went home. They didn't want to stay, and they decided that, you know, they were going to head back home. They'd had enough. They'd been out for a very long time, gone through some very tough sieges, and it was time for them to pack the bags and go home. So actually only a very few, like in the small numbers of hundreds, knights stayed in the Holy Land to sort of carve out some areas of land for them themselves. But they do this around the four kind of areas that they establish. So first of all, of course, they had the county of Edessa and principality of Antioch, which they set up during the First Crusade. And then, you know, with the capture of Jerusalem, they set up the kingdom of Jerusalem. And then slightly later on, the county of Tripoli is the fourth, what we call Crusader state.
- [08:13]
Matt Lewis
So they're very much taking the approach of creating, carving out new states and new structures of power. They're not looking to take over the existing Muslim structures that are already in the Middle East. They're looking to create something new that they can run for themselves.
- [08:28]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Yeah, I suppose. I mean, it's interesting to sort of think about how, you know, these different, you know, one's a principality, others are counties, and then you have the Kingdom of Jerusalem. So how these different kind of entities form. They're all kind of in their own right. Certainly, there's a sense that some aren't establishing their own power bases. But clearly the Kingdom of Jerusalem is really important because this is governed by the holy city. It's also the seat of a patriarchate, which means it's really important for the church. And so, you know, the process of setting up the Kingdom of Jerusalem is really significant.
- [09:03]
Matt Lewis
You can kind of imagine them setting up Edessa and thinking, I'm going to be the Count of Edessa. And then someone comes along and says, well, I'll be the Prince of Antioch then. And somebody else comes along, I'll be the King of Jerusalem then. I didn't realize we were playing that game. And given that so many European Christian crusaders go home, do we see any kind of organized resistance from the people that they've defeated? Do they see an opportunity in this? Are they able to fight back at this point?
- [09:28]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
At this point, I think it's in Jerusalem itself, the holy city. There is, you know, a significant massacre of the inhabitants which takes place after the city is captured. And therefore, no, you know, there isn't that kind of presence there. They've also taken a lot of slaves. So they've got people who are doing work for them. And their main kind of goals really are to secure the port areas, that really important sea coast where you can tax people coming in because they're bringing goods, you can control the trade so that they're nice and lucrative. Once you've got some money, you can pay for supplies, you can pay for your troops. You can even hire mercenaries if you need to. And you've got a sort of consistent supply of people coming from the West. There is almost immediately a big kind of new boost of numbers, even though some of them go home because they hear about the successful capture of Jerusalem and lots of people want to go and visit. So you then get the 1101 crusade, which happens. And, you know, the numbers of people that go on that are almost as big as that of the First Crusade.
- [10:29]
Matt Lewis
And what influence do we start to see the Italian city states have? Because they're quite interested in that access to trade Suddenly, in that area, aren't you so genuine in particular will be really dominant in that region with the trade. Are they out for their own interests or are they offering support to the Christians, or are they able to do both because supporting the Christians actually benefits them financially?
- [10:49]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Yeah, I think. And I, you know, this is something that goes across all of the Crusades is this idea, oh, did they go for God or gold? And the thing is that actually in the medieval period, there wasn't really a massive distinction between those two things. If you go and fight on behalf of God and you're successful, you will be rewarded with not only spiritual benefits, but also potentially material goods. So, yeah, the Pisans, the Genoese and the Venetians are the three big players in the Mediterranean at this time, and they're all keen to get a slice of the action as the Crusader states are established. So the Genoese were important in helping bringing supplies for the first Crusade. So even as early as that, they were kind of getting involved. And then gradually we see the Pisans and the Venetians kind of getting involved in that process too. As we move further into the 12th century, we begin to see them requesting almost their own areas of land inside the cities, their own quarters, which they can pretty much run as if they were the king themselves. They're taking kind of royal rights to their produce to get tax exemptions and all sorts of nice things in return for helping to capture some of these places. So the city of Tyre, in particular, the Phoenicians did that.
- [12:06]
Matt Lewis
Seems like a bit of a wild west going on. And everybody has suddenly realised that there's land up for grabs, there's power up for grabs, there's money up for grabs, and everybody's sort of piling in to piggyback off the success of the first Crusade.
- [12:17]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Yeah, in a sense. I mean, I think there's clearly. There's still clearly religious motivation for people going, because a lot of the time the pilgrim traffic all arrives at Easter time. They can't really sail very easily across the Mediterranean in the winter, it's too dangerous. But everyone kind of arrives in time for Easter, so they can kind of see the holy places at this special religious time. And sometimes they just stay for a sort of tour of duty. Like they visit the holy places, they do a bit of fighting and then return home. But then others do kind of try and stay, make that connection and actually kind of. Yeah. So I think it really depends on, like, individual circumstances and reasons for going
- [12:59]
Matt Lewis
and that boost in the pilgrim. I was going to say trade Pilgrim trade, is that fair? But that boost in pilgrimage numbers going to the near east and heading for Jerusalem in the early 12th century kind of feeds into the creation, the emergence of the military orders that will become so associated with the Christian Crusades in the Middle east. Unfair question number 52 for today. Can you give us a kind of a brief overview of what we mean when we talk about the military orders and how and why they emerge? What are they for sure?
- [13:29]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Okay. Well, if we're talking early 12th century, really, there's only two big players in the Holy Land at this time. Later on, there's a big proliferation of them, but the main ones are the Knights of the Hospital of St. John, which we later become known as the. We know them as the Hospitallers and the Knights Templar. The Templars are kind of a slightly later foundation. The Knights of the Hospital actually come from the establishment of a hospital in Jerusalem in the late 11th century. So they actually predate the Crusades. And they start with this kind of caring role where they're looking after sick pilgrims who've finally made their way all the way to Jerusalem, usually with loads of illnesses and ailments and sore feet and everything else. And they look after them. That's their job. The Templars come out of a kind of later, post Crusade kind of period, where in the early, sort of 11 19, 11, 20, we think, you know, they start, they have a presence. But it's not until Q of Pain goes back to the west in 1127 and asks the Pope to kind of establish them as a proper military order that they become a thing, as it were. And what they are essentially, is an order of monks who are allowed to fight, which is quite a kind of big turnaround theologically in some respects. You think, you know, surely monks are supposed to be peaceful and stay inside their monasteries, and most of them are supposed to be peaceful and stay inside their monasteries. So these are essentially fighters who are knights already, usually, and are living according to a monastic rule. The Templar's purpose was to protect pilgrims traveling to and from the Holy Land, whereas the hospitals started off with the hospital care and then gradually took on military roles as well. And really, it's by kind of the mid 12th century that they become increasingly important because they start to be used for garrisoning castles and all of that kind of thing. So they become really involved in the strategic defence. But the big problem is the only people they're answerable to is the Pope. So when kings want them to do stuff, they can say, nah, actually don't really fancy doing that.
- [15:40]
Matt Lewis
Don't fancy that. We'll check with the boss.
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Dr. Natasha Hodgson
So they're really, really independent, and that has its pluses and minuses when it comes to kind of coordinating some kind of strategic defence of the Holy Land.
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Matt Lewis
They seem like an interesting response to maybe a lack of manpower. You've got people kind of multitasking. They're performing a religious function and they're controlled by a religious rule, but they're also able to fight and to protect pilgrims. Yes, but we will know that later, during the crusading period, they become a really strong, powerful offensive force, particularly the Templars. So it's kind of. Is it a way of making up for a lack of manpower in the Holy Land to get people doing more than one role, or is there some other reason that suddenly religious orders are fighting?
- [16:21]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
I think that in part that, you know, you're right that what they need is a permanent fighting presence. And what crusading doesn't offer as a practice is, you know, that kind of permanent fighting force. You've either got the settlers who are there and they have their own knights, and each fief is supposed to deliver a certain number of knights to fight on the battlefield. But there's a lot of warfare going on, so a lot of people are dying in those wars. They're also dying a lot from disease and difference in diet and all of those kinds of things. So they need this, you know, an extra flow of kind of supporting fighting forces. And if people are coming on Crusade and going home, that's not going to plug the gap. Whereas the military orders, as a permanent fighting force, can do that. And also they have lots and lots of supporters back in the west and lots of houses back in the west, so they can kind of collect money and financial support as well as then kind of sending people out to the Holy Land.
- [17:17]
Matt Lewis
And as these military orders are beginning to emerge in 1119, we get an episode that's remembered as the Field of Blood. I wonder if you could just talk us through a little bit about what that is and what it means for the Crusader states.
- [17:28]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Well, I guess, you know, the early period of settlement is quite. It's quite successful in many respects. I mean, not, you know, straight down the line. We have periods where, you know, all of the main kind of rulers of the different principalities are taken into captivity or whatever at some point. So it's not all a big story of success, but they do gradually expand and establish some stability. But in 1119, we have Ilghazi from Aleppo. He starts off as a ruler of Mardan, and then he becomes Aleppo. As ruler of Aleppo, he comes in and essentially ambushes the army of the Prince of Antioch, Roger of Salerno, and really destroys their forces in that northern principality of Antioch and leaves a real power gap. And he himself, the Prince of Antioch, is killed during the battle. And then, you know, the Crusaders really have to. Or the settlers really have to think about how they're going to maintain the principality of Antioch and the King of Jerusalem has to bail them out. It's Baldwin II by that point, who comes up and acts as regent to try and sort out and plug the gap. But, yeah, it's a very serious defeat, and probably one of their most serious defeats in that early 12th century period.
- [18:41]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah. And I want to get to Baldwin II himself in a little moment, too, but I wondered if you could also talk us through. So we mentioned that Crusader states are established. We get two counties, a principality and a kingdom. How does the monarchy work in the Kingdom of Jerusalem? Who are kind of the. The first kings? How are they appointed and what kind of power do they actually have?
- [19:00]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, we tend to think about kingship as being, you know, inherited to the eldest son and all the rest of it. And this is, you know, a clear tradition from the year dot. But actually, monarchies across medieval Europe are all quite different and have their own idiosyncrasies. This one, because it's captured by a collective of people, the city of Jerusalem. They start off by electing the King of Jerusalem. They even briefly discuss having a religious ruler instead of one of the knights. But they end up, in the end, choosing Godfrey of Bouillon, who was one of the key leaders of the First Crusade. And they select him partly because of stories about his bravery and things that he did on the Crusade, but also partly because he seems to be one of the ones who's willing to stay. You know, a lot of the others are returning home. It starts as elective, but Godfrey dies very quickly after having Tengren. And he decides that, he says, actually, I don't want to be called king. I don't deserve to be called king in the city where Christ was walked. So he seems to be quite humble. But the next one, Baldwin, his brother, who was the ruler of Edessa, decides to take over after his brother's death, and he becomes Baldwin I of Jerusalem. He is a really significant figure in establishing the successful capture of those port towns, Sidon, Caesarea, Acre, in that early kind of expansion period. He also Works very closely with the Church. He's very close to Arnulf of Shock, who later becomes patriarch of Jerusalem. And together they kind of work to expand the Latin Kingdom and organize some of the structures that. That stay in place for quite some time after that. And then he kind of makes alliances. He gets married to the daughter of an Armenian lord who we know as Arda. They then get divorced in rather shady terms, and he marries another wife from the West, Adelaide of Sicily, who brings lots of wealth and money to help him with his campaign. So that's essentially what they need, is money to keep fighting during this really early period. But he doesn't treat her terribly well and sends her back home after having spent all her money, which isn't very polite.
- [21:12]
Matt Lewis
He was sounding like a reasonable guy up until that point. You know, he was doing quite well and working with the Church and all that sort of stuff, but turns out he's a rotter.
- [21:20]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Yeah, yeah. Well, the guy who was in charge of the church was a bit of a rotter as well, but therein lies another tale. So. Yeah. And then we have Baldwin ii, who kind of follows on that legacy. And interestingly, again, you know, the throne could have been elective at that point. It could have passed to Eustace, who was the third of these three brothers, Godfrey Eustace and Baldwin. Eustace was back in the west by this stage, but essentially another cousin, Baldwin of Labourc, nipped in at the 11th hour and Eustace was still packing back in the west to come and take the crown of Jerusalem. He already said, no, I'm here, I'll do it. And he had, like 18 years of experience ruling the county of Edessa, so he was well known by everyone, well recognised and seemed to be a good, stable pair of hands. So he got the job. So it's still elective even by that point. And it's only really at the end of his reign that it begins to
- [22:14]
Matt Lewis
change and almost a little bit of a meritocracy. It seems like both the Baldwins have come from experience in Edessa of ruling part of the Holy Land to step. It's like a promotion to then become King of Jerusalem, rather than someone who has zero experience in any of them.
- [22:30]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
But they're all integrally involved in the First Crusade as well, which I think gave them a lot of power and kudos. You know, they weren't sort of later settlers coming out. I think had Eustace come out, he would have struggled in that role.
- [22:42]
Matt Lewis
And crisis hits when Baldwin II Dies without a male heir. Can you just talk us through what happens then? Because he kind of. He has Melisande a daughter, but he's looking to find her a husband. And the relationship between Melisande and the husband that she gets seems a little bit tricky. Are we clear what Baldwin II intended to happen?
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Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Yeah, so it is clear he was quite happy to have his eldest daughter as his heir. I mean, he has four daughters. Melisande's the eldest, and he, you know, is mentioning her as heir in charters before his death. She's specifically described as his heir, and she's not alone in, you know, inheriting a ruling kind of area in this time period. Women do inherit property, and they do inherit, not always a kingdom, but they do inherit property if they're the eldest female heir. But it is expected or hoped for that they will have a partner husband or a partner who will then do the military service and engage with that side of things. So they really want a good partner for her, and they choose Fulker of Anjou, who most people might be familiar with because he's the grandfather of Henry II of England, but he gives up his patrimony in Anjou and comes out to marry Melisande. And William of Tyre tells us that even though the couple get together, they have a child, Baldwin III. In around 1130, as Baldwin II was nearing his death, he was a bit worried that Fulk was trying to edge Melisande out of power or maybe might think about just taking over in his own right. So he says that Baldwin made them inherit together jointly, husband, wife and child, which is quite an unusual constitutional situation to see in a medieval kings. But it has kind of ramifications then, for the reign of Melisande as well.
- [24:29]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, it's interesting how all of these things happen, because they've got this new kind of kingship to forge and create, and maybe they're still playing around with the best way to do it. How much power do we actually see Melisone wielding during her reign? Because I guess, you know, listeners will be aware that we associate particularly traditional Western Europe with excluding women from any form of power during this period. And yet, in the Latin east, you do seem to have several women who will rise to positions of quite significant power. So how powerful is Melisande while she's Queen of Jerusalem?
- [25:08]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Okay, so in terms of Melisande herself, she is really powerful. She clearly has the support of the nobility who kind of know her, know her family. She's been there, you know, she's been established there. For quite some time. Whereas Fulk is kind of the newcomer with all his new guys that kind of get annoying. He's putting all his friends in the top job that is annoying everyone. So it's partly about her own power, but partly about her support network that makes her important. Baldwin was also very clever in that he married off her sisters to important positions in other Crusader states. So we have Alice in Antioch and we have Hodierne later in Tripoli. She has these dynastic family connections to other people who can help her if needs be. And. But Fulke does try to exclude her from power, we think, because she's not in many of the early charters for their reign. And it's only after they have a big spat around 11:34, which results in the revolt of Melisande's cousin, Hugh II of Jaffa. That means that the situation changes and Fulke apparently has to do, you know, has to say mega sorrys for being such an idiot and accusing her of having an affair, which potentially he did. And at that point onwards, she's back in the charters, so her power's back and she's got authority in the kingdom, so you can kind of see it in the historical record as well. But she does a lot of things jointly with Fulk. They build a lot of castles, they patronise a lot of castles, they undertake other kind of patronage work of the Church. So spending money is a big way of showing your power and authority. And then he dies in 1143, and she then is a regent for her young son, Baldwin iii. But she's also in this odd position where she is the legitimate heir alongside her son. And that then leads to conflict a bit with Baldwin as he gets to his kind of what would be a normal age of maturity, but, you know, so they too come to blows briefly. But then that's kind of sorted out and she kind of retires a bit gracefully at the end of her career. But clearly he still listens to what she says. She's involved in various different councils and has quite a key role. So she is the kind of linchpin. She is the sort of steady person through the mid 12th century that keeps the kingdom of Jerusalem afloat.
- [27:29]
Matt Lewis
I find it just so fascinating that kind of within half, less than half a century of establishing the kingdom of Jerusalem, it's so radically different from the Western European kingdoms that these people have come from, that, you know, they're willing to have women in positions of power. And when you get men like Fulk come over with their Western European attitudes, that Already the institutions and the structures that are in Jerusalem are able to stand up against folk and allow Melisande to assert her position. He's not able to just sweep her away in a way that he might have wanted to.
- [28:02]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Yeah, I mean, I guess so. But there are plenty of women who do get swept away in some of these, you know, like wives that are unwanted sometimes. But having said that, I would challenge a little bit that was the situation in Western Europe. I think a lot of modern scholarship now on queenship and on kind of women in power more generally. So looking at not just queens, but countesses, duchesses, all of those different roles, if you start to plot all of the women who actually have quite significant roles, either as regents or inheriting land or all of those types of things, it's not that exceptional. There are quite a lot of women doing it. We just tend to think about, because people say, well, there were no real female ruling queens before Elizabeth 1st in England, therefore there were none. No women had any power across all of Europe. But in fact, that's not the case. But it's because the chronicles don't talk about it so much, but the charters do. So when you look at the charters, you begin to see, actually, oh, there are a lot of women who have a say over what happens to land, what happens to wealth, what happens to that sort of thing. And they do take on legal roles and they do direct military stuff as well. So, yeah, I think it's not as unusual as you might think. I think that it being a crusader state, and the fact that there is a high turnover of men, because people are dying quite a lot, leaving widows holding patrimonies and those sorts of things, maybe. But that's the same, say, I don't know, in other wars across Europe. So I don't think it's necessarily as different as we think it is.
- [29:36]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, interesting. And so, just after Fulk dies, kind of around 1144, we get the emergence of a man named Zengi, who will be the first kind of real threat to the Crusaders. Can you tell us a bit about how he emerges and the threat that he poses?
- [29:54]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Yeah. So, I mean, Zengi is kind of a key early figure in this kind of, I guess, developing unity in northern Syria. And he's really, you know, kind of starts to put up a significant. He just. He's basically, you know, kind of a. He's a bit of a conqueror. He starts to build his own kind of base of power, which is expanding in northern Syria. He's trying to get towards Damascus, which is kind of the key threat area for the Kingdom of Jerusalem. So he's already a big presence around the principality of Antioch, but his domain is sort of expanding further south and is causing concern for those. So the big things that he does really is to kind of unite. I mean, he starts off as kind of governor of Baghdad and then he becomes governor of Mosul and then Aleppo, and then he takes Hama. He marries the widow of Buri of Damascus, who is a woman called Zummerud, fantastically named Zummerud. She's like a terrifying person in herself. And he also. Yeah, he has a reputation for being extremely terrifying. Both amongst Christians and Muslim authors who write about him. He was kind of quite a brutal ruler. So when it comes to 11:44, essentially he starts expanding into Edessa and he successfully manages to sack the city of Edessa. Jocelyn II is the ruler at the time, so he is kind of squeezed out. The Prince of Antioch doesn't come to help, gets a lot of criticism for that. And essentially he is extremely brutal to the Latins, but not necessarily to the other Syrian Christians who live in that city.
- [31:42]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, it's an interesting distinction, I guess. And is it mainly Zengi's sort of taking down of Edessa? Is it the shock of that that ultimately leads to the Second Crusade? Because it's around about this time that we get the Second Crusade being called in Europe.
- [31:56]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
There's different kind of theories about that. It certainly is a key impetus. And the papacy is very concerned about, you know, the news of the shock of Edessa. I mean, the city itself is taken, I think, on Christmas Eve 1144. And it takes a bit of time obviously for the news to get back to the West. And we think that Louis VII of France, who goes on the Second Crusade, was also thinking about going on a crusade around that stage. So there is that sort of crossover. You know, did he decide, is it his thing or is it because of events in the Holy Land? But I think ultimately we get another major expedition and the big change this time is having kings. So you've got Louis vii, you've got Conrad of Germany, and these are the two kind of key players that take part in the Second Crusade. But we also have a bit of an expansion with the Second Crusade because they include not just crusades to the Holy Land, but in Iberia and in Northern Europe as well, against pagans, so so called pagans. So you have this kind of real expansion of crusading activity during the Second Crusade. So it says to me that it's not all about Edessa and certainly when they get to the Holy Land, they don't actually do anything about it.
- [33:10]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. And was it considered a boon to have two kings going? What difference does that make? Because there is the recipe for disaster there in terms of who is the. The senior figure on the Crusade.
- [33:23]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Yeah, yes. But I guess that was also a problem with the first Crusade because that was a conglomerate of various different knights and magnates, which perhaps potentially is even more confusing. So the good thing about kings is they got loads of money so they can afford to help people come, they can pay for troops, they can organise finance and go in style, as it were. But potentially also there is that risk of conflict because of people's egos and, you know, power, the power of kings and who's going to take ultimate kind of authority for what's going on. And the two kind of do seem to work quite separately. I mean, one of the big issues with the second Crusade, of course, is that the German crusaders go first and then they're followed by the French and the French are kind of, you know, complaining all the time that the Germans have stripped everything bare or that they haven't, you know, or there's been indiscipline and therefore they meet lots of hostility from people. So yeah, there are all sorts of issues with having those two different groups on crusades. But, but I think it's not necessarily a new problem for crusades. Like there's always problems with who's going to pay for it and who's going to be in charge and that, you know, whenever there's a major expedition, it's always an. Picture.
- [34:49]
Matt Lewis
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- [36:49]
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Dr. Natasha Hodgson
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- [38:49]
Matt Lewis
And I guess they also, as you mentioned, they highlight one of the the persistent problems of simply getting to the Holy Land because neither army have a particularly safe or comfortable or easy journey there. They're being harassed, you know, almost as soon as they cross into Asia.
- [39:03]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Yeah, yeah. Sort of straight away. You know, the Germans have some really serious setbacks against the forces of the Sultanate of Rome. Conrad himself has to turn back and kind of stay in Byzantium for a while and is looked after by the Byzantine emperor. When the French troops go, travel down, they end up being caught out at the Battle of Mount Kadmos. They kind of get strung out over the mountains, and they're easy pickings for the Turkish forces. They're slowed down by their baggage train, and this leads to, you know, a very serious defeat. They lose a lot of their supplies and also their troops. Interestingly, this is when the military orders come to the fore because Louis has to hand over the army, the discipline in the army to the Templars because it's become so indisciplined to get them, you know, safely what's left to Antioch. He has to hand them over to the Templars. And then, you know, they arrive in Antioch. And this is, of course, where the situation with Eleanor of Aquitaine, his wife, flares up.
- [40:04]
Matt Lewis
So, yeah, I was gonna mention that we shouldn't go too much further without giving a massive shout out to Eleanor of Aquitaine. Big, big fan of hers. And obviously, she will get mired in an awful lot of controversy around this. So the idea that she had an affair with her Uncle Raymond, a later, you know, much later invention, the idea that she was gonna run off with Saladin, and all kinds of things swirl around her. But how significant is Eleanor's presence on the ground during the Crusade? Is it kind of. Is it blown up because of the later stories that get attached to her, or is it significant that she's there?
- [40:37]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
I think it's always significant when a queen goes on Crusade in some form or other. The problem that we have is that possibly because of her divorce from Louis later on, she does obviously get quite a bit of negative press. But she also. She seems to have been kind of partly removed from one of the main sources that we have for the French part of the Crusade. She's also. But what we know about her, you know, she does have lords with her who are from the region of Aquitaine that, you know, her duchy. So she is kind of, in a sense, there as a feudal lord. We also have. We know that she wrote letters to the Empress of Constantinople. So she was doing a bit of diplomacy. They were exchanging letters and talking to each other as they went through Byzantium. And then we have this situation where she gets to Antioch, and essentially her Uncle Raymond is Prince of Antioch at this time. He marries the daughter of Alice, Constance, and he wants Louis to help him fight in northern Syria. He wants help and support in order to kind of pursue his aims in northern Syria against Aleppo, you know, and that's his goal. The natural way to achieve that is to sweet talk his wife and kind of say, can you put in a good word for me with Louis and do this? But clearly there are rumors that they get too close or that, you know, something else is going on, or Louis just doesn't want to do it. And it seems that Eleanor gets annoyed with the fact that Louis doesn't want to help her uncle. And she says, well, actually, I'll stay. You know, you go on to Jerusalem, I'll stay with my people and I'll help my uncle. And he won't have any of that. So he takes her with him by force. And I think this is what causes then the kind of big dispute between them. Yeah.
- [42:21]
Matt Lewis
And I always think that one of the interesting things that's going on just beneath the surface there is that clearly Raymond of Antioch has his own preoccupations and his own motives for what he's trying to convince Louis to do. But Louis is willfully ignoring the advice of a man who is on the ground about where they should go, where they should attack, where they should target, how they should behave in the Holy Land. And he's almost, you know, he's saying, no, no, I'm going to ignore all of this advice that is born of experience, and I'm going to do what I think is right. And almost you get a sense that Eleanor is saying that is absolutely mad. Why are you going to ignore all of this advice and expect me to abandon my uncle as well when he says he needs help, you know? And all of that is what gets turned into this idea that she must have been having an affair, because how else could Raymond have got into her head if he wasn't getting into her bed kind of thing? But they, nevertheless, they decide to ignore Raymond and they head off to lay siege to Damascus. Which kind of doesn't go very well.
- [43:18]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
What? No, I mean, it's a complete waste of time, to be honest. They're only there for a few days. They fight for a bit. They have really tough, like, three days fighting through orchards where people are like snipers with arrows all around the trees. Really tough fighting, Manage to make some headway, and then for some unknown reason, they decide to move camp to the other side of the city and then realize there's no water and they can't support the troops. They have loads of water and fruit in the orchards. But they go around to the wrong side of the city and then it's game over. And after three days, they have to give up because. Because the only way to overcome it would be to go back through the orchards again. And they've got a worry that Nur Ad Din is coming, so they really can't, you know, they can't stay and they decide to withdraw. So it really comes to nothing. But that decision is a very poor one, to go to Damascus. Generally.
- [44:11]
Matt Lewis
I love the idea that when they get back home, you know, Louis has to go to Eleanor and Elena's like, so how did it go? How did ignoring Uncle Raymond go? Did you get what you wanted?
- [44:20]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Did you.
- [44:20]
Matt Lewis
Might it have been an idea to listen to Uncle Raymond?
- [44:23]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Well, there's a bit of marriage counselling that goes on on the way back home because they have to stop off at Rome. And Eugenius iii, the Pope, knows that they're having these marital problems, and he says, you have to stay in my. You can stay in my bed in order to make up. And they do later on have a daughter. So clearly it works for a little while, but after that it's like, okay, that's enough now. Game over. Yeah. And that's when she decides to get divorced.
- [44:50]
Matt Lewis
And the Second Crusade is ultimately, it's a failure. I mean, Louis and Eleanor get to Jerusalem. They spend some time in Jerusalem, which must have been an incredible thing for them to witness and to be there for Easter and things. Is there a cause of the failure of the Second Crusade? Do we have a sense of why it fails so badly?
- [45:10]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
It's a difficult one. I mean, they had the choice. So they have this council at Palmyrea, Louis there, Eleanor's there, Conrad's there, Melison there. The Queen Melisande is there with her son, who's still a minor sort of at this stage. And they have to decide, are they going to go for Ascalon, are they going to go for Damascus? Ascalon they need to capture. But it's going to be difficult because it's the kind of port that the Fatimid Egyptians are holding at that time, Damascus. They are worried that Nuredin might take it, so they're keen to go there. But they have a truce with Damascus. So it's not in the interest of the Kingdom of Jerusalem to break a truce that they've organized with Damascus. So it doesn't leave them in good stead with the Damascenes after that. But it's not the only thing that goes wrong. You know, there's all of the logistical problems that happened on the way. There's the battles that they face as they come through Asia Minor against the Seljuks of Rum. There's this failure to kind of pick up on the opportunity to do something in Antioch. And they've also completely forgotten about Edessa. It's like, what about Odessa? Then they just realise, I mean, I think, you know, when they get to northern Syria, they realise that it's just not feasible to save at that stage.
- [46:24]
Matt Lewis
But still, this was not the package holiday that we signed up for.
- [46:28]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
But having said that, if you look at some other areas in the Second Crusade that could be called successes, you've got an Anglo Norman fleet which successfully helps capture Lisbon in Portugal. You've got the Genoese successfully capturing Almeria and Tortosa in Spain. So there are some small successes, but not the main one. To the Holy Land is a washout.
- [46:49]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah. Not where the kings are, which is where they would have liked it. And you mentioned Nur al Din emerging there. So he's Zengi's son and he will ultimately take control of and leverage the wealth and the power of Egypt. So does the Muslim threat becoming slightly more unified, but also shifting its. Its base to Egypt, does that change the dynamic in the Near East?
- [47:13]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Absolutely, yeah. As Syria becomes more and more consolidated under one ruler, that is when they can begin to look towards Egypt and think about how to capture Egypt. And if you can imagine kind of the way that the eastern Mediterranean Seaboard looks, basically you've got this thin strip of Latin states along the coast, and then you've got Syria on one side of that, and then you've got Egypt on the other side. And if those two are united, it's a really dangerous position for those Latin states to be in, because they're in between a nutcracker, basically. It's as they won't last. So you have kind of Nuredin then, building his power. One of the things that he does do successfully exert his authority over Damascus. He's the one that achieves what his father couldn't do and brings Damascus into the fold as well and is kind of increasingly expanding. He does seem to have been prepared to ally with the Christians sometimes, though, which is quite interesting. So he does make alliances both with the Byzantine emperor and with Baldwin III in Jerusalem. But then after 1163, he seems to have had a bit of a kind of personal conversion moment and become a bit more religiously inclined. Starts making more use of the idea of jihad in kind of Getting involved in warfare. And he goes on the Hajj as well. He does the pilgrimage to Mecca.
- [48:43]
Matt Lewis
And all of this is bad news for the Crusaders and the Crusader states that the Muslim world, they'd essentially been so successful because the Muslim world was so fractured when they arrived there. But the fact that they're coming together now must have felt like it was a growing threat. And Nur Al Dining will die in 1174, but he'll be succeeded kind of. Saladin will steal power, I guess, in Egypt a little bit. And he's a name, you know, people will know the name of Saladin being associated with this period of crusading. And we see Saladin really jumping on that idea of jihad and ramping up the idea of holy war. Do we have a sense of how much, to what extent that is genuine religious zeal and how much of it is the ways in which he's come to power? But it suits him to focus attention outside and on the threat of the Crusader states and point people at them rather than worrying too much about his legitimacy. So having solidified his power in kind of northern Syria and around Damascus and things like that, how does Nur Ad Din manage to take Egypt?
- [49:42]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Well, I mean, there's this whole period really in the 1160s, when it's a bit of a race between Nur Ad Din and the forces of the Kingdom of Jerusalem under then King Amalric as to who's going to get Egypt. They really want Egypt. There's lots of natural resources there. There's the River Nile coming up with all of the sort of agricultural produce coming all the way up through Africa. You've got sort of slave trade, you've got good tax collection, really good tax system. So it's good to make money. And what gets Noureddin in there is that the rulers at this stage are really very weak in terms of the Fatimid Caliphate. And that's kind of infighting between the viziers, who are kind of basically in control of citizens. So in 1163, Nureddin actually gets invited by one of the viziers, Shawar, in order to help support him against his enemies in Egypt. And obviously, once invited in, you know that you're never going to get rid of him. So he keeps sending troops to aid things. And then Amalric, the King of Jerusalem, he tries to invade Egypt like five times. So there's constant kind of battles and strategic warfare going on there throughout the 1160s. But really it's by 1169 that the General Shirkuh takes Nuredin's General Shirkuh takes charge of Egypt, and then when he dies, it's Saladin, his nephew, who takes over.
- [51:00]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, And Saladin is a name that will be familiar, I think, to anyone who knows anything about this period of crusading. And Saladin will kind of really lean into that idea of jihad and of moving against the Christian crusader states. Do we have a sense of. Of how much of that on Saladin's part is religious zeal? Has he simply spotted a weakness in the Christian Crusade estates that he could exploit? Or is this partly because of the ways in which he's come to power in Egypt? It suits him to focus attention outward on somebody else and unite people against a common foe?
- [51:33]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
I think that in a sense, it's the last thing that you mentioned. There is the key, because we have to remember that there are two caliphates at this time. There's the Sunni Caliphate and the Shi' a caliphate, and the Fatimid Caliphate is the Shi'. Iwon. So the first thing that Saladin wants to do in Egypt to assert his own authority, is to make sure that people are following Sunni Islam. So this is part of the reason why he gets involved in that process. There's a political element to it for him, which has got nothing to do with the Crusaders. It's actually to do with establishing himself in Egypt. But the benefit of that for him is also that those policies that he puts in place then do have this additional end of unifying both the Syrian and Egyptian Muslims under this banner of Sunni Islam. And, you know, so it helps to establish his authority there. But, you know, there are lots of Coptic Christians in Egypt and various, you know, so there's lots of different groups. I think we, you know, we often forget that this isn't just a Christianity versus Islam. There are so many different sects. And, you know, there's Eastern Christians, there's Jewish people, there's. There's all of these different groups that are involved. And largely they are able to exist within the Islamic world as long as they pay taxes. They might not get to positions of power and authority, but they still form a part of some administration and have particular roles. And that Saladin seems to stick to. I think that he does get canny about using kind of religious calls for getting military support to fight against the Crusaders. And positioning himself as the champion of Sunni Islam only helps with that. But it's not necessarily something that he's doing specifically to oppose the Crusaders. It has lots of benefits for him, too.
- [53:34]
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- [54:47]
Matt Lewis
And around this time, Saladin is consolidating his power. Jerusalem is facing a new crisis in that there's Baldwin IV there who develops leprosy and this leads to kind of dynastic crisis which sees the emergence of another powerful woman, Sybil of Jerusalem. So how bad is this situation for the kingdom of Jerusalem and how significant is Sybil during all of this?
- [55:11]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
I mean, it's an interesting one. Yes. So Baldwin iv, bless him, suffers this awful and terrible disease which is discovered really in his early teen years. And it is going to be quite, you know, it's a debilitating disease. It means that he needs Regents, he needs people to rule on his path. Not all the time. And I would like in his defence say he was a very active king when he could be. And he, you know, shows bravery on the battlefield. He has a big successful defeat of Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard in 1177. So he's not just an ailing kinglet, but there is this issue that he won't be able to have heirs, he won't be able to have children. So who's going to come next? And there are two options. There's his full blood sister Sybilla, who's the daughter of Agnes of Courtenay alongside Baldwin, and then his half sister Isabella, who's the daughter of Maria Comnena, and that's Malrick's second wife. And it's clearly Sybilla is the preferred heir. She had had a son, Baldwin V, but he dies sadly shortly after he's crowned. So after Baldwin IV dies Baldwin V. And he's just a child at the time, so at that stage, really, it's Sybilla who needs to take the throne. Isabella is a potential option, but her husband doesn't fancy throwing his hat in the ring and says, no, thanks. And the big stumbling block is Sybilla's husband, Guy of Lusignan, who gets quite a rough ride in a lot of the Chronicles because he's the K who presides over the Battle of Hattin. But it said that they tried to kind of divorce Guy and Sybilla before she took the throne, but then she took Guy back as her husband and said she wanted him. So he can't have been completely horrendous.
- [56:57]
Matt Lewis
About as much of a glowing endorsement as he's going to get anywhere, I think, isn't it? It can't have been all that bad. And we mentioned the Battle of Hattin there, which is, you know, that's a crushing blow for the Christians and for the Kingdom of Jerusalem. And hot on its heels, the city of Jerusalem falls. So how does this affect the region? And how should we compare Saladin's capture of Jerusalem to the First Crusade's capture of it in 1099, which was a horrifically bloody affair.
- [57:27]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Yeah. So the Battle of Hattin really is the big significant one because that is where most of the nobility, the Latin army, the big problem with that is that Guy stripped all the garrisons bare and the whole army of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was on the field. So when they failed and they were surrounded by a larger number of troops, most of them were taken into captivity. But Saladin deliberately killed all the military orders. So it's not like there was no bloodbath at all. He kind of singled them out and thought, they're the worst. I'm going to get rid of them all.
- [57:56]
Matt Lewis
But Guy's very much put all of his eggs in one basket with this battle. He's got everybody down there, so this is make or break.
- [58:02]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
And so that is why Saladin is able to sweep across and, you know, kind of. Of basically kind of besiege one city or fortified town or castle after the other, and they end up capitulating. Jerusalem is a 15 day siege. We have the fantastic story of Margaret of Beverley, who walks, she's from Yorkshire, who arrives in the city just in time for the siege to start. She fights on the walls of the city with a cooking pot on her head. But it only lasts for 15 days, after which it's given over by a negotiated truce. And that means if you're wealthy enough, you can pay a ransom to escape. But a lot of people aren't wealthy enough and get taken into slavery. So it's a bit less bloody than the 1099 capture and a bit more organized. Saladin does then burn the laws of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. So he kind of makes a statement about, you know, what he wants to happen. And, yeah, he installs the minbar that Nureddin had built to put in the city of Jerusalem to kind of show his. Yeah, his power and authority. But, yeah, seems to have been a more civilised affair.
- [59:12]
Matt Lewis
And getting on to. What are we on about? Unfair question number 422 for today, because we're now gonna try and power our way through what becomes known as the Third Crusade. Presumably, unlike Edessa, the fall of Jerusalem is a genuine existential crisis for the Catholic Church in Europe.
- [59:30]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, so immediately we get the bull for the papal bull for the Third Crusade sent out Auditor Tremendi. And this is kind of circulated widely. People do take it very seriously. And one of the things that they're most upset about is the loss of the peace of the true cross that was found by the Crusaders after the siege of Jerusalem. Initially, it's captured at the Battle of Hattin, and it's mentioned in lots and lots of the literature. So that's clearly another kind of sign of divine disfavor, which is a horrendous shock to people. Gradually they start to build up the impetus to do this, and the key players are involved. So you've got the King of France, who at the time is Philip ii. You've got the King of England, who, when the initial news come out, is Henry ii, but he then dies. Richard the Lionheart takes his place, and Frederick Barbarossa in German Germany, who had taken part actually in the Second Crusade already. So he was a seasoned, unexperienced crusader and also the Holy Roman Emperor. So you have three very powerful monarchs taking part in this expedition.
- [60:35]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, and I mean, the Second Crusade, we'd said it was positive that we'd got two crowned heads involved in that. Well, now we're ramping it up to three, promising to be even better, except that, you know, to what extent is personal, our personal relationships at play here because Philip and Richard in particular aren't good friends. They seem quite competitive to me. So, again, is having that many cooks gonna spoil the broth?
- [61:04]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
I think, yes, partly. But I also think it depends. Kind of. People went into this crusade with a lot of different agendas, I think. And we have the issue that Frederick Barbarossa goes, but he dies on the way. He cleverly decides to swim across a river in his elder. Yeah, not the best way. So he dies. And because of his death, a lot of the troops who were going to come on that crusade then go back to Germany for the new election of the new king. So really, it's more about that relationship between Richard and Philip. And Richard really does almost everything he possibly can to annoy Philip on this crusade. I really do think he's just. And they have had a reasonably good relationship in the past. They had allied with each other in the past against Richard's father. So, you know, they clearly did have sometimes a friendly relationship. But Richard was betrothed to Philip's sister, Alice, and he used the crusade, I think, as an excuse to get out of that marriage because Philip couldn't attack him while they were on crusade and brought his new bride along, Berengaria, and married her. He also managed to capture Cyprus and didn't want to share any of the loot with Philip, so. So he kind of broke a lot of promises, was doing what he wanted to do, and I think he was kind of doing it deliberately.
- [62:27]
Matt Lewis
And I guess then Philip's nose is rubbed even further in the dirt when Philip gets there first. They're laying siege to Acre and it's kind of long, prolonged, hard, difficult siege, and kind of Richard turns up and it's almost like the next day they win the siege. And Richard's like, well, obviously that's cause I'm here now.
- [62:43]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Yeah, well. But to be fair, he also turns up with a massive stack of. Of cash that he got from Cyprus and was literally throwing money at people, saying, I'll give you this much money if you. If you get over the walls first, you know. So, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, Philip. It added insult to injury, I think. And Philip decided not long after to. To go home. Whether, you know, specifically to go back and attack Richard while he was away or whether he was genuinely ill, as some sources say, is open to question. But, yeah, he thoroughly got an opportunity, annoyed, and I think probably rightly so with the way Richard behaved.
- [63:18]
Matt Lewis
I think it's really just to get across that there is, you know, guy is still there, but there is also comrade of Monferat who's. Who's cropping up. And it's kind of just, you know, to what extent are the Crusaders pulling themselves apart here? Because there seems to be a real lack of unity. And, you know, Philip and Richard are playing out their own rivalry through these two kind of candidates to rule Jerusalem. And are the Crusaders sort of setting themselves on fire here?
- [63:44]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
There is a history of kings of Jerusalem reaching out to the rulers in the west to help them make decisions about things like succession and other stuff. You know, they want to get the powerful kings on side to help kind of secure succession and that sort of thing. So it's not exceptional that they get involved in the politics that are going on there. Clearly, Guy of Lusignan is struggling, although he's the one who starts off the siege of Aiken. You know, he could have just disappeared, but, you know, he goes to Tyre and Conrad of Monferrat is holding Tyre against Saladin and says, I'm not giving this to you. I've earned it with my hard work. And so this is why. Then Guy decides, okay, well, I'll go and lay siege to Achir instead. But by this stage, Sybil has died, his wife, who is the kind of key link to the throne of Jerusalem. So it makes it much more difficult. And also there's that whole legacy of Hatti, makes it much more difficult for him to hold the position. So it makes sense, really, to kind of buy him off with Cyprus and then to put Conrad in place. But then, of course, Conrad is murdered by assassins very soon after his elevation to the kingship of Jerusalem through marriage to Isabella, the new heir. And, you know, some people suggested, is Richard behind this or not? Did he want to get rid of him? And then it's a cousin of Richard, Hugh of Champagne, who then marries Isabella. Poor Isabella, she has about four husbands. And he becomes King of Jerusalem.
- [65:09]
Matt Lewis
And the stated aim of the Third Crusade is to recapture Jerusalem after it fell to Saladin. How close do they get to that? Was it ever a realistic aim for them to have?
- [65:22]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Well, again, you know, the most important thing they have to do first is get the ports back. They have to kind of expand the areas they're holding onto. So. So Conrad managed to hold on to Tyre. They have the siege of Acre, and they managed to get Acre back. And then it's Jaffa. There's this big kind of battle at Arsuf where Richard shows off how brave he is, because then you can always get support in. You can send ships and get more and more people to come in. The problem with Jerusalem is it's inland and it has very little strategic importance. Its importance is mainly religious. So it's important. Important culturally and to people's mindsets. But actually, in terms of a trade center or anything else, it's not that viable. And it's difficult to keep supply lines open. So they do try. They try twice to get to Jerusalem, but they just can't make it because the supply lines get sort of stretched out and it doesn't happen. So in the end, they have to solve it by a treaty and they decide to negotiate with Saladin. So they have the Treaty of Jaffa in 1192.
- [66:29]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. And there's a really interesting dynamic between Richard and Saladin, I think, isn't that they. They kind of seem to respect each other, almost like each other, but maybe that's also a recognition that neither were going to be able to defeat the other as well. I mean, Richard is. Is wildly successful as a commander and a general in the Holy Land without doing anything as spectacular as recapturing Jerusalem. But Saladin is also consolidating his power. So it's kind of the unstoppable force meets the immovable object. And as you say, is the Treaty of Jaffa just a result of that stalemate?
- [67:02]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
It is partly. I think Saladin's kind of overreached himself and is at a stage where he needs to kind of consolidate and can't continue with this level of campaigning. And Richard is. He is cautious enough that he can hold onto what he's gained. But he also knows that Philip is threatening his lands back at home. He needs to get back to make sure that those are protected so he can't stay. So in that situation, the only thing you can do, really, is to make a truce.
- [67:35]
Matt Lewis
And then once Richard does leave for home and find that Philip has been thoroughly harassing all of his lands, how does the dust settle in the Holy Land? Because again, we've mentioned Sybilla's sister, Isabella has risen to prominence again. So there is another powerful woman in Jerusalem. How can we leave it in the wake of the Third Crusade?
- [67:54]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
What the Third Crusade achieves, really, is a continuation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Although the city of Jerusalem is no longer in crusader hands, the kingdom's now based at Acre. And that's kind of the kind of royal area. Isabella and her husband, Henry of Champagne, they continue ruling. I think it's till 1197. Henry has a weird death and then she gets married to Guy of Luc, brother Amory. So she's. But again, she goes on to have female children. So there's always. There's a continuation of this kind of female heirs to the throne of Jerusalem. Both think this is not necessarily a problem or an issue. They are kind of inheriting the throne. There's a tradition of inheriting the throne, and it also means that they can encourage new crusaders to come out from the west to marry, bringing troops, bringing support, bringing finance. And so it can be actually a positive in this kind of frontier situation.
- [68:55]
Matt Lewis
And if we've left Saladin, having overstretched himself, does the treaty of Jaffa by him time. What happens to Saladin and his dynasty, his empire?
- [69:04]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Well, sadly, Saladin dies not too long afterwards. He dies in 1194, I think, and this kind of unity that he's forged between Syria and Egypt is quite fragile. And pretty soon it kind of breaks up again into two separate entities as his heirs kind of are fighting over who's going to take charge of various bits. So in a way, that gives the new kingdom of Acre a bit of a breather in order to establish itself and recover from, you know, some of the really devastating defeats that Saladin inflicted.
- [69:39]
Matt Lewis
Can't help wondering whether Richard ended up wishing he hadn't gone home. I mean, given that everything that happens on the way and what happens to him when he gets home home. If he'd stayed in the Holy Land for a little bit longer, Saladin would have been gone and he would have been able to exploit maybe some of those breaches that were appearing in the Muslim unity that Saladin had forged. So maybe he'd have been better if he'd stayed there a little bit longer, potentially.
- [70:00]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Yeah, there is that possibility. He'd had a big boost of cash and various different things from the conquest that he'd had. But he also kind of needed to quit while he was ahead, because that would have disappeared very quickly, I think, had they stayed longer.
- [70:17]
Matt Lewis
Always key to that forging of a myth and a legend, isn't it, to quit at the peak of your powers and get out while you're winning. Is it fair to say that the story so far up to the end of the Third Crusade of military activity in the near east during this period, seems to be a story of initial Muslim disunity and then growing Muslim unity, tying in with Christianity, fracturing, and then all that seems to be swinging backwards and forwards a little bit to determine who is ever kind of on the up?
- [70:48]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Yeah, I think, obviously, kind of this is a time and just a Period. Generally where land equals power, in a sense, it's an agrarian society. The more lands you have, the more troops you can call on, the more things. I mean, cash is also good, but you can look at the Byzantine Empire and mercenaries and sort of see, well, how successful are they? I think it is partly about the amount of one ruler can control a large area of land. They've got a lot of resources to call on. They can be quite successful. What's interesting with the Crusades, of course, is that they aren't all just one ruler's initiative. They really are a mixture of peoples from different places with different agendas. And that kind of makes it difficult then for them to have a clear objective sometimes, because people go with different objectives in mind. I think for the settlers, their objectives are reasonably straightforward, but because they're broken into these four different pieces, they also have their own personal objectives. And we do see conflict in the settler states as well, as they're kind of establishing themselves and allying with one another against each other. I think if unity can be forged, it can be a very powerful tool. But there are a lot of ambitious people vying for power and a lot of different interest groups. So it very much depends on the individual power and the person in power, their relationships with people as to how successful they are. And once that person goes, like when Saladin dies, it's hard for a successor to repeat that process unless they're equally skilled.
- [72:26]
Matt Lewis
Well, thank you very much, Natasha, for this. I mean, I joked about how many unreasonable questions I've asked you, but you, you've.
- [72:33]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
It's a bit of a whistle stop, Tom.
- [72:36]
Matt Lewis
Well, you've taken us through two Crusades and everything before, in between and after. So thank you very, very much for. For handling that with such incredible ability.
- [72:45]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
You.
- [72:45]
Matt Lewis
You've swept us through all of those complex events and made it really kind of understandable for us. So if you need to go and have a lie down in a quiet room with a glass of something strong, I think you've probably.
- [72:57]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Yes, yeah.
- [72:58]
Matt Lewis
But thank you very, very much for joining us and explaining all of that to. To us, Natasha.
- [73:02]
Dr. Natasha Hodgson
Oh, you're very welcome. It's been a pleasure.
- [73:04]
Matt Lewis
Well, that was such a fun and interesting conversation and we covered so much. It's probably worth recapping a little bit. With the age of Crusader kings and queens rising and faltering across the 12th century, the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 wasn't the end of the story, but the beginning of a fragile and experimental new political world declared Crusader states survived not simply through force of arms, but through negotiation, diplomacy, and uneasy coexistence with their Islamic neighbours. And the struggle for the Holy Land was shaped as much by figures like Zengi and Saladin as by the ambitious Baldwin, Melisande and Richard the Lionheart. If you want to discover what happened when that delicate balance began to fracture, then join Elena next week for episode three in our series on the Cross Crusades. She'll be exploring the disastrous course of the Fourth and Fifth Crusades, the sack of Constantinople, and the extraordinary career of the excommunicate crusader Emperor Frederick ii, moments when crusading turned in on itself and the movement began to splinter under the weight of its own contradictions. I hope you've enjoyed this episode and a huge thanks to Dr. Natasha Hodgson for joining us. If you want to hear more more from her, go and listen to our fantastic episode with Elena on Women Crusaders in our back catalogue. There are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please do come back and join Elena and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original original documentaries with a new release every week. Head over to historyhit.com forward/subscribe right now. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just Gone Medieval with History Hits.
- [75:18]
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