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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 with a brand new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe. Over 90 of the top 100 US accounting firms trust Bill to handle bill pay processes. Why? Because our tools are built on over a trillion dollars of secure payments. We're not just moving money, we we're powering financial workflows for half a million customers. That's a level of expertise you just can't fake. Ready to talk with an expert? Visit bill.comproven to get started and grab a $250 gift card as a thank you. Terms and conditions apply. See Offer page for details.
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Lunch was great, but this traffic is awful. Um, can we stop at a bathroom? Are you alright? I keep having stomach issues after eating like diarrhea, gas and bloating, abdominal pain and sometimes oily stools. Sound familiar? Those stomach issues may actually be a pancreas issue called exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, or epi. Creon pancrelipase may help manage epi. Creon is a prescription medicine used to treat people who can't digest food normally because their pancreas doesn't make enough enzymes.
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Creon may increase your chance of fibrosing colonopathy, a rare bowel disorder. Tell your doctor if you have a history of intestinal blockage or scarring or thickening of your bowel wall, if you are allergic to port, or if you have gout, kidney problems or worsening of painful swollen joints. Call your doctor if you have any unusual or severe gastrointestinal symptoms or allergic reactions. Take Creon as direct by your doctor and always with food. Do not chew capsules as this may cause mouth irritation.
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Other side effects may include blood sugar
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changes, gas, dizziness, sore throat and cough.
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These are not all the side effects of Creon.
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Call 800-633-9110 or visit creoninfo.com to learn more. That's C R E O N info.com
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I'm asking my doctor about EPI and
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if Creon could help.
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At VRBO, we understand that even the best of plans sometimes need a little support, so we plan for the plot twists every Booking is automatically backed by our VRBO Care guarantee, giving you confidence from the very start. Whenever you need help, it's ready before your stay, through the moments in between and after your trip. Because a great trip starts with peace of mind and maybe a good playlist, but we've got the peace of mind part covered. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Jennica and welcome to Gone Medieval From History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes to the Crusades, we delve into the rebellions, plots and murders that tell us who we really were and how we got here. The year is 1095. The shade of winter is closing in and a council of great men has gathered at Clermont. In the rugged heartlands of Francia. Archbishops and abbots, noblemen and clergy stand arrayed before a wooden platform wrapped in black cassocks and ornate vestments. Banners strain against the wind. The bustling crowd thickens. The air is tense with expectation. For this is no ordinary gathering, but a council freighted with consequence, called by the father of the flock, Pope Urban ii. And he is about to launch a rallying cry that will echo across Christendom.
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An urgent task belongs to both you and God. You must hasten to carry aid to your brethren in the East. For the Turks, a Persian people have attacked them and devastated the kingdom of God. With the sign of the cross on
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your forehead or chest, set out on
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the road to the Holy Sepulchre. Deliver that land from a wicked race and obtain remission of your sins.
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For a moment, there's silence. Then the crowd breaks. Bodies surge. Voices rise. Deus vault. Deus vault. God wills it. God wills it. An archbishop rises to the pulpit and prostrates himself before the Pope, begging to be allowed to travel on this illustrious campaign. Nobles pour forth declarations of acclaim and support. A mass frenzy breaks out. Absolution is demanded, penance promised. The cross is taken. Pope Urban's theatrics have proved a roaring triumph. A spark has been lit. The great stirring that will birth the age of the Crusades is here. Welcome to gone medieval. I'm Dr. Eleanor Jaoniga. Over the next two weeks, Matt Lewis and I are taking you across the length and breadth of medieval Christendom to tell the tumultuous story of the Crusades. We'll go from the very beginning, the First Crusade, when the so called Holy War painted Christian armies against Muslim lords. For possessions of the arid deserts of the Holy Land. Then we'll explore the remarkable lives of the Crusader queens who played pivotal roles and the Muslim sultans who fought tooth and nail to push back the Christians. We'll dare to look at the darkest years of crusading, when survival meant desperate and dark actions against all morality. And finally, to the collapse of the kingdom of Jerusalem and the snuffing out of the Crusader dream 200 years after that first fateful voyage. One thing you need to know from the the Crusades changed the very fabric of the Middle Ages. This is a medieval epic written in blood. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. First we need to ask a more basic what exactly was a crusade and what caused them? What spurred thousands upon thousands of medieval Christians, noble and poor alike, to abandon their homes and risk their lives on the long and arduous journey to the Holy Land? To answer that and kick off our series, I met up with Matt for a gone medieval crusades 101. I've dragged my co host Matt Lewis up from his dungeon. Okay, Matt, let's be historians. All right, let's do a little bit of defining our terms Crusades 101. What's a crusade?
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There's a couple of things, isn't there? There's what's a Crusade? And what are we talking about in this series?
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Yeah, all right.
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I mean, when we talk about Crusades, we're probably most likely talking about papal sanctioned attacks on. On identified targets, generally for a religious purpose. So the classic being let's go to the Holy Land and retake Jerusalem.
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I think that's a really important point because especially later in the medieval period, we get all kinds of crusades. You know, you got your Albigensian Crusade, you've got the Crusades in the Baltics, you got your crusades against the Hussites. Boo. Et cetera, et cetera. But that's. Well, I think when people do say the Crusades, though, we're usually specifically talking about these expeditions where you're going to the Holy Land. You're attempting to make encourages Persians very specifically, I think, against Muslims often. That's what springs to mind.
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Yeah. Because I think these crusades to the Holy Land are something really clearly defined. So, you know, in this series, we're kind of not talking about the Baltic stuff and the Teutonic knights up there. We're not really talking about Albigensian Crusades. We're not particularly talking about the stuff that's going on in Iberia either, which sort of overlaps either side of the crusading period in the Holy Land. So we frame that because that creates this whole movement, this whole thing that hadn't really existed before.
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And I think so here, more particularly too, when we're saying the Crusades in this context, there's like eight of them, right? You know, you've got your original flavor. First Crusade, AKA the one that works.
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Yeah, we're so close to getting like film cycles of sequels here, aren't we? The first is always the best.
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It's really true. And then they just kind of get sadder and weirder from there, which are technical historical terms, I think that we can all agree. But it is interesting because I think there's almost like this catastrophic success in the first Crusade that makes it really difficult for people to let go of this idea of crusading later on. So I guess, all right, here we are, we're talking about the First Crusade. When does it really start?
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1095 is when we would date it from obviously the stuff that's been going on in the buildup up to that, that's led to that moment. But that is when Pope Urban I is like, right, I'm gonna make something now. We're not gonna call it Crusade. We know what we're gonna call it. Future historians will call it a Crusade. I'm gonna call it an organized effort to marshal European Christendom and send them to the Holy Land to fend off this threat that has appeared from Muslim forces in the near east who have taken Jerusalem, who are now knocking on the door of the Byzantine Empire. And we've got a specific sort of moment that helps kick this off is Emperor Alexios I in Constantinople is sitting there trying to fight off these forces, and he's thinking, how am I going to do this? And it suddenly occurs to him that, okay, we've got this east, west breach in Christendom, but actually they're more likely to be my friends than the Muslims who are now attacking me. So can I appeal to people who should be religious allies in the west to come and help me? And I think what Alexios wants is someone to help him bolster his borders and prevent all of the incursions that are coming around him. So his vision of what he's asking for, I think is very different from what Urb will end up conceiving and delivering.
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Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you look at the documents that we have from the Constantinople side of things, Alexios 100% was like, haha, I'm gonna go in, and I'm gonna get these rubes out in the west to support me, to get my land back. Because fundamentally, the way that Constantinople is looking at itself is it is a temporarily embarrassed Eastern Roman Empire. It's supposed to control Jerusalem, it's supposed to be controlling most of the Holy Land. And things have happened. Let's be so real. The Holy Land has been under Muslim control for quite some time. And I guess the state of play at the moment, we have several large Muslim policies. So over in Spain, you've got the Umayyad Caliphate. Great, fantastic. Wonderful to see it. You've got your Fatimids who are oftentimes around in Egypt, you have the Abbasids who are kind of around in the Arabian Peninsula, that sort of thing. And then you've got your new upstarts, you've got the Turks, the Seljuqs who have come in. But it allows him to ask for help. Because up until this point, actually, just because Byzantium isn't necessarily controlling the Middle east, it was still easy for you to go on pilgrimage. If you wanted to go to Jerusalem, that was absolutely fine. You weren't going to be stopped by the Muslims who were controlling it because they understand that this is a Holy land for a lot of people. And also they're very interested in letting Christians come in. So, you know, there wasn't necessarily a problem, but the Seljuks have really messed things up in the area and it's an active war zone now. Right. But Alexius is like, oh, guys. Oh, I'm just so sad about the Christianity. And unfortunately for him, this is a really good pitch, I think.
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But Urban can frame this very much more as this is about Jerusalem, this is about the holy sites that pilgrims should be able to go to, that they have been able to go to and that they're now having problems with. And that is like an existential problem for the Western Christian church and isn't quite what Alexios maybe had in mind.
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Well, and I mean, I think that the other thing that Alexios hasn't really reckoned with is the fact that he has stumbled over to ask the Church for help at a time when the Church has finally done it right. You know, the Church has been spending centuries going, guys, hi, I'm the Pope and I am the most important person in Christendom. It's me, it's the Bishop of Rome. So there has been this really long campaign on the part of the papacy to prove that they are important. And here's where we are in the 11th century, we're kind of in the beginning of the investiture contest, where we have the Pope trying to assert his dominance and control over the Holy Roman emperors. We now have this really well solidified Church. And in the medieval period, how do you prove that you have a unified government, that you are in control of things? You kind of exercise the ability to do warfare. Right. And so this is what Urban is testing out. Urban is saying, okay, well, are we a, well, conglomerated legal entity? And it turns out they are. So that means that they can. They can call for a holy war. But obviously, his ideas are going to be really different to that of Alexios, because, you know, Alexios over in Constantinople, he's the head of the Church. This is. Is one going to be like one of the real clashes that. That these two religious ideas are going to have. And of course it's going to go badly for him. But, you know, I think that both of them are trying to out scam the other a little bit.
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Yeah. And I think this is an interesting point where the. We see the Roman Church, you know, under Gregory vii, they've kind of sparked this investiture crisis, and they've been talking about the secular power of the Church, and they're much more interested in how the Church can get its fingers into the government of all kinds of places, which brings them into direct conflict with kings who don't want church fingers in their business. So this is Urban saying, do you know what? We could be almost like a superpower state.
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Absolutely. And I mean, that is the question, right, Whether or not he wakes up one morning and says, let's prove that we are a superpower. That's very difficult to ascertain. But on the other hand, this is what political powers do at the time. So I guess you kind of can't have this conversation about Pope Urban without talking about the alleged speeches from November 1095. Now, I say alleged, right, because we've got two major places that these barnstorming speeches that Pope Urban gives come from. So we've got Fulcher of Chartres who says that, oh, he goes out and he gives this incredible speech in which he says that there is an urgent task which belongs to you and God. You must hasten to exterminate this vile race. Race, he means the Turks. And to aid the Christian inhabitants for all those going thither there for the remission of sins. Now, the problem with, like, you know, the wonderful speeches and this whole idea that everyone starts yelling Deus Volt is that all of this is written down a couple decades after it happens.
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The lovely benefit of hindsight.
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I know. And he's like, oh, I remember it like it was yesterday. It's like, thanks, thanks, vulture. But one way or another, they all agree that some kind of really incredible speech is given. And everyone says, oh, this is brilliant. Yeah, like, we're all gonna head out. That's it. We're gonna get together. And so much so that I think it's difficult to have this conversation without talking about how really ordinary people are quite moved by this. These speeches may or may not have been given by Urban, but we have ordinary preachers who take up this cause, who begin to go out and talk to ordinary people about this. And whether or not the speech is that good, it's difficult for us to say, but we definitely know the deal is good. Because Urban says that you get remission of sins if you die on crusade. If you have this guarantee that you are going to go to heaven, that is something that is really going to weigh on people's minds. You know, I think that it's really easy for us to sit here and talk about all the politics involved in this, but these are people who genuinely, genuinely believe that this is something that Dave's fault. Right. God wills.
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It is interesting that, as you say, we don't know that that's the exact text of the speeches that were given by Urban, But I think we probably have to allow that whatever he said was incredibly effective, that whoever heard it was deeply moved. I guess the question is, are they filled with religious zeal, or are they filled with the desire for the remission of sins? Yeah. You know, if I just do this free ticket to heaven. And I think we probably have to acknowledge that there must have been some fairly charismatic preachers around, because they're not just turning up and saying, you can go straight to heaven if you come. There is much more of a sense that they're inflaming people and. And that there must have been some degree of charisma and an ability to preach that. So we've maybe hit a point where we've just got really good, convincing speech makers and preachers in the pulpits around Europe who are convincing people that this should happen. But at the same time, we also have to acknowledge that they're playing on the. The real. The genuine religiosity that exists in Europe. It's a kind of perfect storm of. Of great speakers and a really receptive audience who want to hear what they're saying and want what they're offering as well.
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And I mean, I think also for ordinary people, let's remember that, what is it, about 70 of the European population are in serf right now. But, but you can leave with this because your landlord can't tell you, no, I'm sorry, you can't go on crusade. Right. So if you're really wanting to see the world, if you're really saying, yeah, I want to see Jerusalem, I want to do these things, this is a way that you can just move on out and no one can do anything about it because there is a religious mandate, right. So even the most ordinary farmer can pick up and move east. Which is again, maybe not what Alexios and Urban had in mind. But you know, that is the trouble with the message, with relying on charismatic preachers to move this idea around.
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And it does create this argument that I think historians still have quite often about whether the Crusades is a top down thing or a bottom up thing. Now, definitely we've got Alexios asking for help and we've got Urban preaching the Crusade. But did they mean to mobilize quite so many amongst the peasant classes of Europe? I mean, definitely they want the earls and the dukes and the knights, they want to pile them over there. But it does become a bit more of a bottom up movement of people saying, we want to go on Crusade, we want to go and help, we want to go to Jerusalem. Like I say, we want to be free of this land that we've been tied to all of our lives and here's an opportunity to do it.
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Yeah, absolutely. Like the trouble is it's a real be careful what you wish for situation. And so here we go, we have got a bunch of people who have moved east. They are essentially attempting to face off against something, right. So all they kind of understand is there's Muslims over there, which is a really kind of funny way of looking at things. I think Alexius probably has much more of an understanding of what the political situation is on the ground because Alexis
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would probably say, I'm not worried about Muslims, I'm worried about Seljuk Turks.
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Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I think that Alexios, when he asks for help, what he's initially kind of asking for is can we retake Anatolia, please? Right. You know, I want to be able to get back across the Bosphorus Straits and get my lands back there. I think it's been so long at this point in time since Byzantium has really held Jerusalem or anything like that, that that doesn't really occur to Him. But one of the things that these people are really moved to do, what the message that Urban and the rest of them are really promulgating is this idea. Oh, well, no, we're not just going over there to help out Alexios. It'll be cute if we can do that, I'm sure. Yeah. It would be great if there Christians who have control of Anatolia again. But that's not the goal. The goal is to retake Jerusalem and establish a Christian kingdom back in Jerusalem, hopefully led by Latin Christians as well.
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Yeah. And you can't help wondering whether they're thinking if Alexios in Constantinople, in the Eastern Church is so weak that they're asking us for help, if we get them stuck in this Latin Christian sandwich, how long would it actually take us to squeeze them out?
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Yeah, I mean, I would tell you that I'm sure Pope Urban is very, very interested in this because the papacy is constantly attempting to assert dominance over Constantinople and, you know, make this argument that they are the people who are descended from Peter, they are the logical successors of the church and the people who should be leading it. Obviously Constantinople, a lot less interested in that. But I think also a part of this top down, this idealism is certainly also. We've already mentioned it briefly, the investiture controversy. Right. So we have got a new situation wherein the papacy is really saying we control all of the secular rulers as well. So obviously the number one example here is the Holy Roman Emperor and they really flex on this one very recently with our good friend Henry iv, who is meant to re cant for attempting to put his own bishops on the throne. There's the very famous walk to Canossa where he has to stand outside for four days in the snow waiting for the Pope to say, okay, you can go put your shoes on and you are no longer under interdict. Right. And this might seem kind of dull, I think, to people now, but fundamentally, up until this point, kings were appointing bishops. And so losing this ability to dictate who is going to be your bishop, who is going to be an archbishop, that is a real comedown for kings in general. So if you are also the Pope and you're looking over at Constantinople, who's asking for help and oh, there's another emperor over there. Right. This very much looks as though it is an opportunity to push this boat even further, to really use your power in order to possibly take over that particular secular crown as well. And I would be shocked if that wasn't somewhere in the back of Urban's mind.
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Yeah. But the other side of that is I think we see this increased idea of the Church believing, as we said before, that it can create itself as a secular power to oversee that. So for 30 years before the First Crusade is called, we've seen the papacy begin to weaponize its ability to approve of war. So the conquest of Sicily by the Normans Pope is a okay with that, gets a thumbs up from him. William the Conqueror is really keen to position his conquest in 1066 as having papal backing. And having been given a papal banner, it looks much more likely he gets that banner a lot later. But it's interesting that he wants to back date that, to say that his, his conquest of England is a papally sanctified and approved crusade against Harold, who is an oath breaker. And so the Papacy has been for 30 years making this move towards, you know, if you want to justify war against another Christian, which is a sin, only we can do that for you. There is this idea of just war that is beginning to emerge and the papacy I think, is maybe trying to flex some secular power by saying the only person who can say what is a just war is us.
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And I think this is an incredibly important point because part and parcel with that is this idea that there is a holy war, there is a just war. And so this doctrine of holy war is kind of a new thing, right? Previously up until this point, it was more like, well, there is war, yeah, but it's not very good, is it? Which is a pretty easy tact to take from a religious organization, right? Like, well, in an ideal world you wouldn't fight. Sometimes these things happen, you know, ask for forgiveness afterwards. But we do know that there are kind of nudges for this. So for example, you know, when we look at our good friend St. Augustine, he writes about whether or not you can have a just wars. He says, in the city of God, the wise man will wage just wars. It is the injustice of the opposing side that lays on the wise man. The necessity of waging wars. Really kind of common thing for a Roman Christian to be thinking, because there are all sorts of issues that he sees at the time with pagans, as he calls them, coming in and attacking Christians. So yeah, that makes sense. But what do you do in an 11th century context when, well, Europe is more or less Christianized? I mean there, there are, is the Baltic, etc. Where do you kind of point that what is a just war? And this is something that the papacy, now that it is this huge legal powerhouse, is really grappling with?
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Yeah, and we're also at a point as well. By this point, the, the Papacy has been kind of allowing the sainthood and the martyrdom of warrior kings who have died in battle. You think of St Oswald in Northumbria and people like that, you know, they've been keen to say that if you die fighting in a Christian cause, you can become a saint in that way. If it's a just war and you do it properly, you are guaranteeing your position in heaven at Jesus's right hand as one of his army of saints. And I wonder whether one of the other things that we ought to consider being at play in this period too is the climate. We're in the Medieval Warm period, things are going through expansion. The Roman Empire hits its peak during a warm period. It allows for crops to grow all over the place. People are really well fed, populations explode all over the place. So you've got a bunch of people with nowhere to go. So there are lots of second sons, third sons, fourth sons who aren't going to inherit anything from their father. There is increasing pressure of numbers on the same amount of territory. And all of a sudden you've got someone who says, but there's a bunch of territory over there that doesn't currently belong to Christians, that could belong to Christians.
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B
And I mean, that is a really important point. Right now we are seeing this primogeniture taking over as the main way that lands are divided previously in the early or medieval period. I mean, go ask Charlemagne what you do, and you just like, divide your lands. You divide your lands. Turns out that Charlemagne, if that works. So we've, we've gone beyond that and most people have sat down and they've decided that what you do is you just kind of hand everything to your firstborn son. But then, yeah, what happens with all the spares?
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Right?
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B
And also, I think, again, like, I know I keep bringing up the Normans, but there is an argument to be made that essentially the Crusades are just another Norman Conquest. Right? Because the Normans also are really of the opinion that the way that you handle land, the way that you get landed, you just go attack some people and then you give your boys, you know, the spoils. You know, the idea that there is this kind of feudalism, the top down pyramid that people are taught at school for ages, you know, that doesn't really exist, but Normans sort of do it. But then what happens when there aren't that many issues with succession and you have all these guys, right, point them somewhere else, send them over There is that cynical? Yes. But I don't think that we can count it out as one of the factors. One. Yeah.
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If we're not in this warm period where crops are plentiful and people are, are living fairly comfortably off the land, the peasantry aren't going to be thinking we're going to up and go to Jerusalem because they're going to be thinking, I've got to feed my family this year and make sure they can survive the winter. So all of those factors play into this willingness for people to move away from where they are and go into the complete unknown. They are banking on there being an opportunity there that they simply can't access at home anymore because of the way the climate has changed, the way politics is being done in Europe.
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B
All right, so here we go. We got a whole mess of circumstances. Mess.
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But perfect storm.
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B
It is exactly like the messiest perfect storm you've ever seen. Right. So we've got the Medieval Warm Period stuff, like the three field system. We simply love to see it. We have got too many Normans, too Normans, too furious.
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You believe there's too many Normans. I do such a thing as too many Normans.
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B
I do believe that we have the primacy of the Church finally coming into play. We have the Seljuk Turks showing up and taking away land.
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We've got several decades of the Church trying to create this idea that it's a secular power that can raise armies and approve of wars and fights. It's been doing that for a while. This is kind of the culmination of, of all of that. We've got this investiture crisis that's been playing into. You know, who has real power? Is it secular kings? Is it the Pope in Rome? They both think they should have it. And here's a chance for the Papacy to really put itself at the forefront and say, we are the leading secular power in all of Europe as well. We are going to raise this huge army and we are going to oversee this move into the, the Holy Land. And so it's then the coming together of all of these very different, apparently disparate elements and factors create this moment in 1095 when Urban hears this cry from Alexios. He's almost ignoring what Alexios wants and thinking what the papacy wants and needs out of this. And I think he must have been. If he's looking at his desk and he's thinking, I can put that there, then I can put that there, that I can line up all of these things, all of these Factors that coincidence has put in front of me. I can leverage all of those if I play them my hand in the right order. Here, we're going to be. Be onto something. And this is. He would never have said, I'm gonna create the First Crusade. He wouldn't have called it a crusade. But all of those things are lining up, and he is creating the thing that we will call a crusade.
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B
Absolutely. I mean, I think that this is really, you know, an immovable object versus an irresistible force sort of thing. And what we kind of see is this real desire on the part of the papacy to envelop Christendom, to lead Christendom. And it is up against this very traditional way of looking at Constantinople about this idea of the old empire and what it can be. And I think. Think that neither of these men really understood what they were getting into. At the same time, I would argue, indeed, that if Alexios did know, he never would have done this in the first place. You know, there isn't a whole lot of gain from his standpoint. And it will mean that you just have these Latin Christendoms in your backyard over and over again.
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A
Yeah. The Byzantine side of it is really interesting. Cause we're fortunate enough to have kind of Anna Komnenos, who writes this account of her father's reign. So maybe the first female chronicler in Europe telling the story of what her dad was hoping for. And you get a real sense of horror from her when the Franks actually turn up. And it's like, whoa, this is. This is not what we ordered. This is the Temu Crusade. This is not the one we want.
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B
I mean, like, that's exactly it, though.
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C
Yeah.
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A
And part of the issue is we know from the appeals that Alexios sends that he is. He's really going in hard on the idea that. That the Seljuk Turks on his border are committing atrocities against Christians. This is Muslims committing horrible, horrible acts against Christians. Maybe without realizing that he's accidentally whipping up the wrong kind of fervor because he wants people to come. And as you've said, he wants people to come and restore his lands to him. But what he's actually done is set Western Europe on fire with this idea that Muslims are viciously assaulting Christians who can't defend themselves over there. Well, what's our duty then, as Christian knights? We have to go over there and defend them. And you can imagine Alexios seeing all of these people coming in going, oh, no, what have I done?
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Do you know what? It's more. It's more than he deserves. What could I say? This is fundamentally, be careful what you wish for. Here you go. There's that army that you wanted. And if you are going to make cynical moves like play on religious ideas, don't be surprised when you get religious. Religious zealots who show up as a result.
- [33:42]
A
And I guess one of the things we ought to talk about as well is how much are we. Are we overplaying the role of Urban in creating this? Because how much should we think about individuals? We've talked about the fact that an individual can have of any rank in society, can have a fairly complex reasoning behind the desire to go on crusade. And you could put people anywhere on a scale from a true religious zealot who really wants to go to the Holy Land and believes Jerusalem should be in Christian hands and that has to be delivered to, at the far end, your average Norman who is thinking, I want some land and some territory. Somewhere in the middle. There's people who think this is going to be a great adventure. Probably there's lots of people in the middle thinking, I can achieve two things at once here because I can save my soul and I can carve out a new patrimony that I'm never going to get at home. So it's easy to think, you know, Urban makes this very impressive speech that motivates everybody to go, and then this movement happens. The difficult thing is it's hard to pin down those individual reasons and motivations for going, because nobody is writing my diary of the Crusades and why I did it. But I think we have to allow that there is this whole sliding scale of individual motivations to go that are also piling into this big pot of bigger issues.
- [34:58]
B
And I do think that it is important to kind of note that there are all of these individuals. You know, every charismatic preacher, you know, you're Peter the Hermit who goes out there and says, oh, yeah, I think that we should really start moving peasants along. That's a problem for him. Every Norman with a grudge and a horse is going to be a problem. You're not able to control every single individual's relationship to the message that you've preached. Fundamentally, you can make the propaganda, you can make it go out into the world, you can preach particular things, but fundamentally, once it leaves your lips, it's out of control to the point that we don't even know what he actually said. Right. It is one of those kind of letting the genie out of the bottle sorts of things. You can inspire people all you want but how they are going to respond to that is ultimately personal. That is also, you know, one of the things that will sort of continue. What will, I suppose, inspire the crusading movement long term. This idea that there is this possibility you can kind of slip loose the bonds of your more traditional surf existence at any point in time. And sometimes that works out for the Church, other times less so, let's just put it that way.
- [36:14]
A
I mean, I feel like what we're getting to here is that 1095 looks on the surface like a flashpoint, a real moment that almost comes out of nowhere where there is this explosion of fervor that is harnessed and crafted into this crusade and directed at the Holy Land. But actually it has a much longer tale to it than all of this. This has been brewing for decades almost, and it's part of a. Almost part of a European navel gazing about who is really in charge and how things should operate in Europe. That grabs onto this thing from Alexios as a way for the Church to flex itself, flex its own muscle, position itself differently, so that it's not really a flash in the pan in 1095. And you think everybody, Western Europe suddenly rushes off filled with fervor. There is something much longer going on and much deeper too, about what the Latin Church is, what European power is, and what it might look like out in the rest of the world too.
- [37:21]
B
And certainly you combine this sort of, what does it all mean coming from the Church, coming from the most powerful people in Western Christendom, with the existential threat that Byzantium is feeling, and then with just, you know, some light chaos over in the Muslim world. It's. We. It's not going to be the first time we've got a bunch of nomads sweeping across the plains from Asia and making things a little bit uncomfortable in the nearer east, and that ends up creating what we now call the Crusades. The biggest question is what actually happens on that winter's night in Claremont? You know, how is it that this particular message gets spread out into the world? I mean, do the Crusaders go all the way to Constantinople and beyond and for what? You know, and are they going to end up taking the city that is the center of the world for medieval people? To find out more, I am going to be speaking with the amazing Dr. Tom Smith to dive head first into the rip roaring narrative of the First Crusade. Okay, Thomas, thank you so much for coming. You are the man, I think, to answer, you know, some of the more nitty gritty questions about The Crusades for us. So I'm going to start you off with kind of a broad one. I mean, what can we say really happens after the Council of Clermont? Because it seems like this message that people say, urbanist preaching, really galvanizes a lot of people.
- [39:05]
C
Well, thank you so much for having me on, Eleanor. It's a real pleasure. And that's a great question, I think, to start, because it gets to the heart of what the First Crusade is about, and it's not just about churchmen in Claremont preaching their reform messages. It's an idea, I think, which really sparked a fire across Western Europe in terms of participation. And I think the reason why the papal call to the First Crusade is so successful is because it taps into these undercurrents of popular devotion, of pilgrimage, of devotion to Jerusalem, which already exist. And so I think what happens very early on is the Pope preaches his message, expecting to recruit a few hundred knights to go over to the east and help the Byzantine Empire. And actually what happens is the idea grows legs and runs away by itself. And actually this idea of going to Jerusalem becomes incredibly popular. And I think that's why we see such large support for the First Crusade and why we end up with an army of somewhere between 60 and 100,000 participants, which is a huge army, and no one had ever seen anything quite like this before.
- [40:07]
B
Yeah, I mean, and also, if we're talking about an army of this size, this kind of first group of crusaders who's like, come on, guys, we're going east. This. This is not exactly who Urban was calling out to.
- [40:21]
C
Right, right, precisely. And I think what's really important is understanding that pilgrimage origin of the First Crusade, because pilgrimage had been open to all, so men, women and children, of course, as well, who go on the First Crusade. And I think that's one of the reasons why we see such a wide range of different strata of society taking part in the First Crusade, because they're used to this normal participation in pilgrimage being open to everyone on. And so if the papacy tries to reduce who is going to simply male arms bearers, I think they're not going to have very much success. And I think that that longer tradition of pilgrimage is what explains why we end up with men, women and children going on the Crusade. And I think what's really fascinating is actually the lives of these people, which are not recorded as much in the source material. And I think that we see women and children on most Crusades, and they appear in the sources occasionally, but I think we have this really interesting shadow crusade that's going on of these people who are not often recorded by the male clerical authors who are interested in the deeds of other dudes. And so they're not writing about these people, which is a shame because there are all these stories which have been lost to history. But I think if we start to think about them, I think that opens up some really interesting possibilities about what the crusade experience looks like for people other than just the marshal male elite at the top of society.
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- [44:41]
B
Yeah, I think that's a really good point because there is this sort of tendency to, I don't know, be a little bit flippant about the people who initially respond to the call for Crusade. But I think that that, to an extent, is a way of cutting short our own understanding about what this means to people. Because the reason the Crusades called in the first place is that, you know, everyone in the Middle Ages really aspires to going to Jerusalem someday. And of course, you're going to respond to a direct call out to do that. And it's difficult to tell a peasant woman, no, sorry, like, joking. Well, speaking of, you know, the touch paper and, and the popular movement that that comes about as a result of it, we gotta talk about him. Can you tell us a little bit about Peter the Hermit and how he assembled what we sometimes now refer to as the People's Crusade?
- [45:38]
C
I think Peter the Hermit and the People's Crusade is a really fascinating aspect of the First Crusade. And so I think what happens is when the Crusade message starts to spread very rapidly, it picks up currency with outside of the Church. So it's not just official papally appointed preachers and the church hierarchy who are preaching the Crusade and signing people with the cross. You're also getting lots of people doing that outside the confines of the church hierarchy. And I think what we're seeing is people promoting a crusading message that is not necessarily the same one as what the papacy is promoting. And you're getting lots of people going on this expedition who are determined to do it in their own way. And I think, again, that goes back to this idea of pilgrimage and those pilgrimage origins of the First Crusade, where pilgrimage was open to all and you could kind of do it your own way, really. So what happens is Peter the Hermit is a very influential and charismatic unofficial preacher of the Crusade who takes his message around Europe and is very successful at recruiting lots of people to join him. And so what they do then is they leave too early for a start. So they're not following this papal timeline. So the papacy sends out a letter apparently throughout the west, where it says the official departure date for the First Crusade is the 15th of August, 1096. Now, this is a specific date with a specific reason. This is because the harvest will have come in, that they'll have access to resources as they make their way across Europe towards the Holy Land. But the armies of the People's Crusade don't wait for this departure date. And there's a sense that, although not completely disorganized, they are not as well planned out and prepared as the Prince's Crusade. And so they leave earlier on and commit absolutely horrific atrocities in the Rhineland, where they massacred Jewish populations, because they have this corrupt version of the papal Crusade message. And they think, well, why do we march all the way to the Holy Land to target the enemies of Christ when, as they would see it, enemies of Christ, that is, the Jews are living among the Christians in Western Europe at the time. And so to them, it makes sense in a perverse logic that they should target what they see as enemies of Christ in Europe before they go. And this leads to really horrific persecution of Jewish populations, especially along the Rhineland. So we're thinking about extortion of money, we're thinking about forced conversions, we're thinking about massacres of the Jewish population. And this is strictly forbidden by the Church. This is in no way very licit activity and is strictly forbidden by the bishops in the region. But the People's Crusade is quite a big force, and really the church hierarchy struggles to control it at all or have any kind of influence over it. So the things, the terrible things they do and the sticky end that they come to when they're defeated in Asia Minor and their force is wiped out very soon on arrival in the near east, is the reason why chroniclers at the time and scholars since have wanted to separate this from the rest of the Crusade, to say that this is something different. The reason why they did these terrible things, the reason why this part of the Crusade did not succeed, it did not have God's grace and favor, was because it was not part of the same expedition.
- [48:51]
B
I Suppose, speaking of that, of course, there's sort of like the OG commentator at the time, which is Anna Komnena. And can you tell us a little bit about what Anna has to say about the Crusaders who show up over in Constantinople at the behest of Alexios?
- [49:11]
C
Well, in short, she's not impressed at all. I think there's a mismatch of expectations here. So I think Alexios and the rest of the Greek court, including Anna Komnena, were expecting that a small force of European knights, mercenaries, would arrive to help them fight the Seljuk Turks as they'd had before. There's quite a long history of European knights traveling to the east, east to fight and help Byzantium. So that's what they're expecting, a small force of a few hundred knights. What turns up at Constantinople, however, is this tide of humanity which they had not been expecting at all. And the first ones they see are the People's Crusade, who obviously don't make the best impression at all because this isn't the elite, although there are some knights among them. This is a different type of composition of the army and it's. It's less well structured, and it, I think, poses a threat and a cause of concern to the Byzantines. So Anna Komnena is the daughter of Alexios Komnenos, so she's a Byzantine princess, the daughter of the emperor, and she's also a great historian. So she leaves us an incredibly detailed and valued source about the First Crusade and the era that this takes place in. And she's writing this really to promote her father. So it's called the Alexiad, it's promoting the deeds of her father, Alexios Komnenos. And what's really valuable about this source is firstly, that it's written by a woman. So we get a female perspective, which is incredibly rare actually, in this time period, and especially rare in the context of crusading sources, which, as I mentioned, are mostly clerical men writing about the deeds of other men. They're kind of interested in that, really only. So it's really interesting to have a different perspective, both Byzantine and female. What's really interesting is we get a very different picture of the Crusade. So Anna sees the Crusaders as barbarians. She thinks that this is a. The great unwashed basically have turned up on their doorstep and they don't have any manners and they don't understand the Byzantine civilization. And what happens to them is Alexios basically gives them supplies and then ships them them over the Bosphorus as quickly as possible into Asia Minor to get rid of this problem and move them on. And he does that very successfully because they arrive in Asia Minor and they're wiped out pretty much upon arrival. So that's the end of the People's Crusade. But obviously what's quite interesting is actually some of them do join up with the Prince's Crusade and do actually take part in that. So some of the People's Crusade does continue.
- [51:41]
B
All right, well, speaking of the Prince's Crusade, can you tell us more about this? You know, these are sort of like the more formal armies, I suppose we would say, who sort of come in the wake of the People's Crusade. When did they set off? Are they adhering to the actual papal timeline?
- [51:58]
C
So these are the guys who do play by the papacy's rules. So the papacy likes these guys. So, firstly, in terms of recruitment, we're looking at the first person who actually takes the cross is Adhemar, Bishop of Le Puy. And this is an ecclesiastical figure, very high ranking in the Church, very closely connected to Pope Urban ii. And he actually becomes the papal legate on the Crusade, which means that he is the papal representative and he plays a really important role for the majority of the Crusade. Because what we're going to see is that actually the leaders come from all different parts of Western Europe and that Adhemar is a really crucial figure because he unites them and gives them spiritual leadership, basically. But the rest of the army of the Crusade, the leaders, there are no kings on this Crusade. Everyone is a sort of count level. So we're looking at the next rung down the hierarchy of Western European society. So the first magnate who takes the cross is Raymond, Count of Toulouse, who does so in concert with Adhemar. And this is probably with the agreement of the papacy that actually stage manage this. So that when they say, who wants to take the cross? Actually, these two guys put their hand up and they say, yeah, I do. And so they go off and get things going. So they're the first two. But then you've got some really key nobility from Northern Europe. You've got Count Robert II of Flanders, Count Robert of Normandy. Annoyingly, they all have very similar names, which kind of makes it difficult. But that's the medieval way.
- [53:26]
B
There were only three names between any group of Normans. It's true.
- [53:31]
C
This is true. You've got Godfrey of Bouillon as well. Baldwin of Boulogne, his brother, Bermond of Taranto from Southern Italy, and Tancred as well. His Nephew, also from southern Italy. And then you've also got some other key leading figures. You've got Stephen of Blois, also from northern France, and Hugh of Vermandois, who is the brother of King Philip I of France. So what you've got here is a composite host of Crusade leaders who are very much at the top rung of society, just below the kings, obviously. But what's interesting about them is they all have their own particular agendas and priorities and they're going to work together surprisingly effectively. But often they come in conflict with each other. They are rivals as well. And they're not just on the Crusade for religious devotion alone. That is probably the main driving factor, the reason why this is a success. The appeal of Jerusalem is such that that's what motivates people to give up their, their homes, their families. They're probably never going to return. Most of the normal crusaders don't return. I think the death rate is incredibly high. You probably lose somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of the army die on the First Crusade. And so this is a major commitment. So you're not just doing this to get money or land, but some of these figures are out there for those purposes and they'll come into conflict with one another over the course of the Crusade.
- [54:51]
B
Well, speaking of that, I mean, we've got, yes, some people from very high echelons of society, but they're coming from really different places. Do they all head over together or do they sort of like head off in different ways to arrive?
- [55:06]
C
This is a really interesting question. So they all leave roughly around the time of the Papacy's deadline of August 1096. That's pretty successful. And what they seem to do is actually team up with each other. So some of them get in touch with each other. They're in are also really strong, close knit kinship networks at play here. Most of these people are related to each other in some way or another. And so actually it makes sense for them to travel together. And so some of the make their own way. The Southern Italians make their own way. And then they plan to converge on Constantinople, which is modern Istanbul. That is the main area where they all come together and they meet quite successfully. Their path to the east is not easy and resources are still hard to come by. And there are some conflicts and problems along the way, but actually it passes remarkably smoothly. So they're pretty well organized and they do make it to Constantinople in one piece. So they've done a pretty good job actually. And they're logistically, they've done a pretty. Pretty decent stab at this.
- [56:03]
B
Okay, what happens when they get to Constantinople? Like, are we feeling any better about this particular group of Crusaders? How's Anna K. Feel about it?
- [56:14]
C
So I think mixed feelings again here. I think, again, some of the Crusade leaders she finds. Okay. Others she finds are uncivilized, and she has a big problem with them, I think, also because they have this mismatch of expectations. So I think, firstly, the Byzantines aren't expecting so many people to arrive, and secondly, they're quite worried, actually, that maybe they might try and conquer the city of Constantinople, which is what the Fourth Crusade ends up doing at the beginning of the 1200s. So when the Crusaders arrive at Constantinople, this city is something like they've never seen before. This is a glittering city of wonders, and you have these huge churches and huge Byzantine walls. It's quite incredible. They've never seen anything like this before. It's home to so many famous relics, and it's such a wealthy city. I think it's. It's quite incredible for them to see the city. And so they're bowled over by that. They also don't understand the Byzantine culture and politics really at all. It's quite complex and it's quite different from what. What they're used to. And so there are some. There are elements there and opportunities for misunderstanding of how culturally, of how they get on with one another. But the crux of the issue is about their political alliance with Alexios Komnenos. So it will be remembered that he has called on the Pope. He's called upon the Pope to send warriors out to the east to help him defend his empire against the incursions of the Seljuk Turks, who have been. Been invading his territory in Asia Minor for about the last 25 years. And they've been doing it very successfully. The Byzantines are very much on the back foot, and that's why they need Western military support. So what they want to do, what Alexios wants to do, is to get the Crusaders to swear an oath of allegiance to him that all the Byzantine territory that they reconquer, they will hand it over to Alexios.
- [58:07]
B
Well, yeah, no, look, personally, I wouldn't invite a bunch of Normans into my backyard, but perhaps that's hindsight. Right, But I mean, so like, say we're here, it's. It's May 1097, and the Crusaders are setting out and they are going to advance into the lands that are being held by the Seljuk Turks. And they they get a couple quick victories, right? It's like Nicaea and then Doral really, really quickly. Can you tell us a little bit about how those battles played out?
- [58:41]
C
Yeah. So, I mean, the big success of the First Crusade is actually that the difficulty level, the difficulty spike comes quite gradually. So the key thing is that they managed to win these early victories and they managed to start to work together. I think one way of thinking about them is that they've never fought together before. These are armies which are used to fighting, doing their own thing, and so it's hard for them to work together. And the challenges that they face in Asia Minor, these first, first battles and sieges actually give them a chance to learn how to work together. And we see that happening during the battles. So the first challenge they face is the siege of Nicaea between May and June 1097. So this is a former Byzantine city, it's very close to Constantinople, and Alexios wants it back. And he sent a Greek general, Tatikios, with the Crusaders, to help them and assist them. And they work really well in besieging this city. It doesn't last very long. We're looking at a siege of about a month here, here. Now the Crusaders surround the city and they begin oppressing it really aggressively. So they're trying to storm the walls, they're using siege engines, they're trying to break the city quickly, but they can't because it's on a lake. So the problem is they've managed to surround the land walls and gates, but the Seljuk Turks are able to reinforce this from the water. Now, the crucial aspect here is the Byzantine support. So the, the Franks and the Byzantines are actually working really well in concert with one another at this stage, contrary to what will later be written about them. And so I think we want to have one eye on that, that actually this alliance is working really well in its early stages. So the Byzantines send ships to the lake and basically this allows them then to blockade the city properly. And the Seljuk Turkish rulers of Nicaea, can see there's no way they're getting out of this. And the Greeks offer them a deal. The Byzantines offer them a them to negotiate. And they say, if you surrender the city to us, then we'll prevent a sack and you'll get to walk out of here with your lives. And this is how the city falls. And so the Crusaders and the Greeks have actually captured their first city. And they've done it very swiftly and they've done it very Effectively, but perhaps the Crusaders are actually disappointed that they haven't been able to plunder the city. So it's very expensive going on Crusade scholars think that it probably costs about four times someone's annual income basically to be able to go on this. This is hugely expensive. And so you're looking to be able to recoup your cost, the money you've spent on traveling there, on food, in terms of plundering then cities. So they're a bit frustrated, I think, maybe some of the Crusaders, that they haven't been able to recoup some of their losses by sacking the city, but they've won this good prize and actually they've started to learn how to fight with one another, and that's actually probably more important. The next challenge they face is the Battle of Dorylau on the 1st of July 1097. So they're marching their way from Nicaea, they're marching east through Asia Minor, getting towards the Holy Land. Now what happens here is we see some of the downsides of this conglomerate leadership council that the princes have. So they're still not working entirely as a complete unit. They're actually, actually a little bit separated from each other in how they're marching across this territory. And this could be their undoing. So on 1 July 1097, Kilij Arslan, who is the main Seljuk Turkish leader in the region, attacks the Crusader vanguard, which is being led by Beaumont of Taranto. So he realizes the vanguard, the first part of the army, is separated from the main force. And he sees this as a good chance to break the army down, take out the vanguard first, and then he can turn to the rest of the army and finish them off half. And so Beaumont, his forces get bogged down, but that actually helps them in a way because the Turkish tactics are to use light horse archers and they harass the Crusader forces, they pepper them with arrows, they just keep loosing arrows one after another, riding around them and never engaging them, trying to keep out of distance. Because the Crusaders big weapon is the massed Frankish cavalry charge. So they, at this stage, most of them have still got their own horses. They've got stronger, bigger horses than the horses that are being ridden by the Seljuk Turks. And so their big tactic, their battle winning tactic, is to try and get your enemy into one place, get them to stay still and then charge them en masse, thunder at them and hit them with your lances and hopefully break the army there. This is an incredibly powerful military technique. Which is unbelievably successful if you can get your target to stay still and hit it. Now, of course, the big problem here is we're seeing two military systems, two ways of making war that are completely incompatible with one another. And they meet here in an open battle for the first time at Dorelaim. And at the start, it looks like the Turkish method of using light horse archers. Moving quickly, being mobile and not staying in the same place for too long looks like it's going to win. But when the Beaumont's vanguard manages to bed down and keep being attacked, basically it gives chance for the rest of the Crusader forces who are behind them to catch up. And then they manage to hit them with their charge and they manage to win a resounding victory just because they get that luck. They manage to get Kilij Arsen's forces to stay in one place and then they manage to hit them successfully. So those are the two great challenges first, and actually this is where the Crusaders start to work together really well with one another. So the experience they gain from these victories is really crucial.
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- [65:20]
B
And you know, I would expect a little bit better from Kilajarlan, but you know, let's be honest, there is kind of a fractur in terms of how the Seljuks are, are approaching this. You know, the, the first bunch of crusaders they come up against are the People's Crusades and they just knock them right off, you know, don't even need to worry about that. They all die. And this is like a united Christian thing, right? Like it's all of these Christians all at once. In the Middle east, people really are not like, you know, there's no such thing as a united Muslim thing. You know, they don't even know anything about anything, right? Like they're busy fighting each other, looking over there, taking over new land. And here's some Christians. And so me it sort of seems like the Christians get kind of lucky because there isn't a unilateral response here.
- [66:16]
C
Precisely. And I think we can't understand the success of the First Crusade without understanding what's going on in the Muslim world. I think that's absolutely crucial. And the Crusaders here, the reason why, I mean, the First Crusade is such a ridiculous thing. It should never have succeeded. There's no way. This is crazy. Like, I think when they march out from. From Western Europe, I think everyone thought, well, these guys are never going to come back. We're not seeing them again. But if we go back to the Muslim world, the Crusaders have this Goldilocks set of conditions. And one of the key things is that the Muslim world is massively disunited when the first Crusader arrives in the Near East. So in the early 1090s, most of the main leaders in this Near Eastern Muslim world world all managed to die at about the same time. So chroniclers say at the time, Muslim chroniclers say at the time, this is the year of death, basically, of all the great leaders of the Muslim world. And so you've got this huge amount of turbulence and change as then. There are power vacuums in the near east at the time and many different people trying to fill it. You've also got a lack of experience, and there's a lot of uncertainty there. And so the Crusaders are arriving at just the right time when actually the world is in no way united, and they're just not prepared to be able to face the Crusader threat. And I think there's a number of things going on here. There's, firstly, we've got big splits in the Muslim world anyway. So you've got the Sunni Seljuk Turks in the north, you've got the Shia Fatimid Egyptians in the south. And so they're kind of fighting each other anyway. And there's lots of fighting going on between local Muslim warlords in the region. So basically, the Crusaders are arriving in an active war zone. And so for the Muslim powers, what they see is this is just another bunch of foreigners who are here to fight. So this is nothing. This is business as usual in the Near east around the 1090s. That's fine. They don't realize that the first Crusaders are obviously there with the aim of capturing Jerusalem, with the idea of essentially settling and colonizing this land, at least colonization in the sense of spiritual colonization and really taking over this region. They're here to stay. That's what they want to do. The Muslim powers don't realize that at the time, this only becomes clear later on. They're too busy fighting one another. And the other point to make is that actually this brings us to question this, this myth that the Crusades is a clash of civilizations. So I think one of the big misconceptions about the Crusade the scholars are still battling against is this idea that the Crusades are Christianity versus Islam. It's just not the case. They're not fighting each other because they don't like the other side's religion. They're fighting each other because they want control of this territory. They don't care who the other side is. And actually the Crusaders often ally themselves with Muslim powers along the way. And the Muslim powers are very happy to ally themselves with the Crusaders because it meets their aims in terms of expanding their own warlord territories in the Near East. So I think, you know, that's a big thing that we can, we can start to question as well, is this clash of civilizations model just doesn't stand out up to scrutiny. And that's one big misconception that we can blow out of the water right now with the First Crusade.
- [69:21]
B
All right, well, you know, as, as they get a little bit further on, right, they get past Dorl and suddenly the journeys get in a little more difficult. Right. Like what starts happening around there environmentally and, and how, how's the army dealing with this change?
- [69:40]
C
Yeah, So I think it's interesting. They're not used to fighting in this type of territory. Of course, it's the, the landscape is changing and so getting dustier and drier and hotter as they're moving on. But. And they're running out of food as well. So I mean, the big test of the Crusade and really, probably the most important siege really is actually Antioch, which they come to. October 1097, they arrive at Antioch. And Antioch is this huge city. The walls are massive. This is the best defended, best fortified city that they are going to come across on the Crusade. And I think actually the way that the narratives of the First Crusade are written is building up towards this climax at Jerusalem that's the culmination of the Crusade. But actually the real military test and the test of devotion, the test of longevity and really suffering of the Crusaders is Antioch. So they arrive here and this siege goes on until June 1098. So you're looking at about a nine month siege, which is incredibly grueling. And the key part of this is during the Syrian winter winter. And we have letters from participants like Stephen Abois and some of Rivmont that are written around this time. And they talk about the Syrian winter actually being really cold. And they're like, it's not hot. Like, people think it's freezing cold and it's raining all the time, and it's horrible, and there's no food. They're reduced to eating thistles and bits of old leather shoe and anything they can to survive, basically, in this really quite hostile territory. And all this while they're trying to besiege this huge city of Antioch, which has a lot of importance to them. It's a huge strategic base. They can't bypass Antioch. But also it has religious connections as well. So not the same as Jerusalem, but it does have importance for them. And they find this really important crusading relic there, their religious relic in the cathedral there, which plays a key role. So the siege of Antioch is the big test of the Crusade. It's where a lot of people actually decide to desert the Crusades. So the Crusade chroniclers call them rope danglers, because they basically just escape from Antioch and they run back to the West. One of the key leaders of the Crusade, Stephen of Bois, he's one of my favorite leaders, he writes these letters saying how great he's doing to his wife and saying how much, you know, how he's just as good as her father, who is William the Conqueror. And he's trying to big himself up. And then a few months later, he abandons the Crusade and returns to the West.
- [72:06]
B
But, like, this siege goes on for bloody ever, you know, like enough time that you can abandon it, and then here come, you know, emissaries from the Fatimid Caliphate. Right?
- [72:16]
C
Yeah. So this is really interesting. So the history of the Crusade is not just one of total warfare all the time. Actually, there's negotiation going on. And so I mentioned that the Crusaders strike up these alliances with Muslim powers, and the Fatimid Egyptians send them envoys and they try and negotiate. Basically, the ironic thing about the First Crusade is that when the First Crusade is called, a big deal is made about the fact that Jerusalem is under the control of the Seljuk Turks. And so the Crusade is recruited to go out there and take Jerusalem back from the Seljuk Turks. But while the Crusaders are underway, in 1098, actually the Fatimid Egyptians conquer Jerusalem from the Selvage Turks. And so by the time the Crusaders get there, it's like a completely different enemy that they set out to face, but they don't care. Basically, the Fatimid Egyptians then are writing to the Crusaders, sending Envoys saying, can we make some sort of deal here? And the Crusaders refuse completely. There's no way they're going to not take out Jerusalem. That's the whole reason they're out there. But they try and strike a deal, and I think that's got to be a place in that wider context of negotiation. And again, again, that it's not just Christians versus Muslims in the near east at this time.
- [73:27]
B
All right, well, I mean, let's all be real. Eventually these Crusaders, they get inside Antioch. Can you tell us a little bit about how they take the city?
- [73:35]
C
Yeah. So this is. Well, it's probably quite funny, you know, from a Crusader perspective and not very funny from an Antiochian perspective. So the Crusaders really struggled to get into the city, and the siege is just wearing and is really on the verge of breaking the army. And then Beaumont, who's quite a wily commander of the Crusaders, he manages to strike up a relationship with an Armenian Christian convert in Antioch called Firouz, and he commands one of the towers. And he basically makes a deal with Firouz, who's really annoyed because he doesn't like his Turkish overlords and commanders who have been bossing him around too much. And also there's a rumor that his Turkish commander had an affair with his wife. So basically, Firouz is really angry and he's happy to make a deal with Bermond. And the idea is that, yeah, it's a kind of quid pro quo that he's going to get something out of this and get rich and he will let the Crusaders into the city. And he dangles, on an assigned night, he dangles down a rope or a rope ladder for the Crusaders to climb up. And what Beaumont does is he goes back to the other leaders and he says to them, kind of tricks them, basically, and says, can we all agree it's very difficult to capture Antioch? And they say, yes, we all agree. And he says, well, can we also agree that if one of us could engineer a way to get the city, that that person would then have a claim to the city? And they all say, yes, we all agree. He says, that's funny, because I've actually got a way into the city. And then they must all go down at this stage, shucks Bermond, and basically he then reveals his hand that he's struck up this relationship with Firuzen, has a way into the city. City. And so during the night time, on the assigned night, Firouz lets down a rope, or rope ladder, a crack team of the Crusade forces climb up, get into the city, they take out the guards in the tower and the battlements, then open one of the gates. And during the night, then the Crusaders flood. And, you know, we imagine here burning torches, burning houses, Frankish war cries being shouted, cries of people being slaughtered. It's a really brutal scene. When the Crusaders get into Antioch, they begin a pretty horrific mass slaughter of the population, including Firouz's own brother is actually killed by the Crusaders, So it doesn't all end well for him. And then the Crusaders have managed to capture the city after this, but they haven't captured the citadel. So the citadel is what we might think of as this big sort of tower, basically palace tower, in the middle of the city, and it's on a higher point, and the Crusaders are standing stuck. They haven't got complete control over the city. And it's just at this time that Kerbogha of Mosul arrives with a relief army. And so the Crusaders are inside the walls, but now, perversely, they're now being besieged by their enemy from outside. So their position has switched, and they now know what it's like to be besieged inside Antioch. So they try and work out what to do at this stage. And this is when a figure called Peter Bartholomew comes to the fore. And this is a really controversial episode. And he meets a kind of fiery end which isn't very good, but he basically has a vision, and he thinks that if he goes to the cathedral in Antioch, that he knows he will find the Holy Lance, this relic of the spear that pierced Christ's side at the crucifixion. And so he's digging and digging, and then, fortunately, they do actually find this. His vision comes true. He pulls out a lump of rusty metal out of the ground and proclaims this to be the very Lance of Longinus that pierced Christ's side from the crucifixion. And a lot of the army perceive this to be a miracle and a sign of God's favor with them, that he's entrusted this amazing relic to them and allowed them to find it. Now, the previous traditional scholarly interpretation of what happens next is that the discovery of the lance then inspires the Crusade army, which was was so bedraggled after this long siege. And they decide then to suddenly march out and they face Kaboga. And when they get outside of its walls, they just charge at Kaboga, inspired by divine favor, and they smash his army, and he flees. And they've managed to get rid of this threat. And then the citadel surrenders and they've taken Antioch properly. It's a huge pride and this huge success and the. And they've succeeded in this great test of their devotion. Because, remember, this is a pilgrimage and you have to suffer on a pilgrimage. That's the whole point. You have to prove your humility before God. And no one has done this more than the Crusaders. No one has suffered more than them in the nine months of this siege. That's the traditional narrative. But actually, recent reinterpretations of this have shown that, firstly, not everyone believes in the Holy Lance in the first place. And secondly, there's actually a pretty big gap between the time they find the Holy Lance and when they go out to face Kerboga. So we're talking about weeks here. So it's not that they suddenly find this and then they run out the next day inspired by this discovery to take out Kaboga. Actually, I think the Holy Lance plays a role in this and it does lift spirits among those who believe in it, and it probably does consolidate the power of certain of the leaders, but really it's desperation that forces them out. And I think that that sheer force of that desperation is what breaks Kerboga's army. I think it surprises them when they march out and they just get hit head on by this Frankish charge. And that's how they capture Antioch. And what happens to Peter Bartholomew afterwards is people don't believe that the Holy Lance is actually what it is. And he says, I will prove it to you. And they agree then that he's going to march across some burning olives, olive branches, and the temperature is really high, the flames are really high. And he walks through this to prove that the Holy Lance is real. And basically, unfortunately, he expires as a result of this. But some people try and claim that actually that he survived for a while. And so he was right that it was true.
- [79:33]
B
Yeah, it's great. It's like he just gets really badly burnt and everyone says, no, look, he died of something else. Unrelated. It's. It's one of my favorite stupid deaths of the Middle Ages. It's gotta be up there, right?
- [79:46]
C
Pure coincidence. Yeah.
- [79:47]
B
Can we just take a brief side quest, though? Because before we get to Antioch, we've also got, you know, Odessa.
- [79:56]
C
Oh, yeah, let's talk about this.
- [79:57]
B
Can you tell us a little bit about what makes these guys just kind of go off on the side quest to Odessa?
- [80:03]
C
Yeah, they're side questing hard, some of these guys, and they want. Some of them really want territory. And you can see that, that. So I think people like Tancred Baldwin of Bologne, they're very much vying for power at this stage over. They've got an eye on conquest. And Baldwin realizes that Edessa is looking pretty weak and that he stands a good chance there of getting some territory. So he goes over to Edessa. This is to the northeast of Antioch and this is the first Crusader state that's actually founded in 1098 is Odessa is not Jerusalem as one might might think. And so he goes over to Odessa and the guy ruling is called Thoros. And he's having a lot of problems holding on to power. He's got a pretty weak grip on the situation and he could really do with some backing from Baldwin. And so to cut a long story short, he adopts Baldwin as his son and they go through this very strange ritual where they both wear a shirt. So they're both bare breasted and they get inside a big shirt. And I don't know know, I don't know what happens then really, but then I guess there's skin contact under the shed. And this is the, this is the ritual which is I think appears very strange to the Crusader's eyes, but this is a sign of their closeness and that he's been adopted as his son. But then basically this turns out to be a really bad deal for Thoros because he is toppled and Baldwin takes power and establishes the first Crusader state. And actually this could be seen as this side quest where actually it's a diversion from the Crusade. But actually in this weird twist of fate, we talked about these Goldilocks conditions that the Crusaders have and they are in some ways very fortunate. It's not pure luck. They obviously are great at fighting and they're very devout and they are really good at enduring suffering. That's the one thing the first Crusaders are really good at. On the Top Trumps car that would be like 100 points probably as enduring suffering. Suffering. But really what happens here is when he establishes this state, when Khaboga of Mosul is actually on his way to take out the Crusaders at Antioch and to relieve Antioch, he stops on the way and decides to try and have a crack at Baldwin in Edessa. And what this does actually delays his army. And so this saves the army of the Crusade because if he hadn't have stopped at Edessa, he would have arrived while the first Crusade force was stuck outside the wall walls. And that is the most dangerous position for a medieval army to be in, to be sandwiched between the walls and a relief army. That is a terrible position to be in. You get squashed. And they were in such a poor state anyway, they would have probably got wiped out there. So the fact that Baldwin goes on his side quest, takes control of Odessa and slows down Koborga of Mosul when he's on his way to relieve Odessa basically saves the Crusade.
- [82:45]
B
Okay, so here we are, we've conquered Odessa, we've conquered Antioch, and we're on our way to Jerusalem. How much resistance do these guys face on their march down there?
- [82:57]
C
What's really interesting is that they pick up pace from this point. So they're clearly bypassing a lot of territory to get to Jerusalem. That is their, the main goal. And so they're not stopping along the way. They stop at a place called Marat al Numan on the way notoriously, and they besiege a couple of these smaller places and at Marat Al Numa and they actually run out of food to the extent that they commit acts of cannibalism to survive, which is one of the most notorious episodes of the First Crusade. And I think it shows how desperate they are at this stage. But after this, they move very quickly down towards Jerusalem. The end goal is in sight. And this is a very finely tuned and honed military force. By this stage, most people have died. So you've got really just like the really hardcore fighters. Left is a veteran force, they know how to work together. Everything's becoming slicker and smoother. By the time they arrive at Jerusalem, we're probably looking at about a force of somewhere around 20,000 strong. So if the initial force that left the west is somewhere between 60 and 100,000, you've lost a huge proportion of the army. And really what we've got now is a really well oiled military machine with a clear purpose. And that is to take Japanese with.
- [84:10]
B
When we get to Jerusalem and what do we got to do? We got to besiege it. And here siege engines come into play. No?
- [84:20]
C
Yes. The most important thing now is access to wood. So basically there's not a lot of wood in the Holy Land and you need wood to make siege engines. And so that really determines the outcome of the First Crusade. When they arrive before the walls of Jerusalem, them, they, they try of course, their initial tactic. Your, your first tactic is always to try a head on assault and just try and catch them by surprise. But that doesn't work. So they realize we need to build some siege engines. And we're thinking here about big towers. On some sort of. They roll them basically towards the walls. And the idea is that the tower is higher than the walls, so that you can shoot arrows down from them, but also you can then lower beams, some sort of ramp essentially, onto the walls and then you can storm the walls. That's probably the most effective means, means for the Crusaders to get into Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a well defended city. It's got a good network of walls, but it's nowhere near the same level as Antioch. Now, the problem is, how are they going to get in? Well, they don't have wood to build siege engines, and in the end they miraculously discover some wood. There's a story that one of the Crusaders is suffering from probably dysentery and is looking for a quiet place to relieve himself in a cave. And as he's doing so, he stumbles across this huge, huge cache of wood which they can use to build siege engines. So that's one interpretation of how it comes about. But also they dismantle ships that they have and they use some of their local alliances to get some wood and they build then siege engines which they roll towards the city walls. They attack the city from the north and the south simultaneously. And on the 15th of July, 1099, they are successful in making it over the wall. So it's the. The siege tower of Godfrey bouillon on the north side of the city, and they roll it up to the walls, they drop these beams or this ramp onto the walls and you get two knights from Godfrey's region who make it over the walls first. And they get inside, they manage to slaughter some of the defenders, open a gate, and the Crusaders have broken into the Holy City.
- [86:21]
B
And I mean, speaking of slaughter, we've got one on our hands now, right? I mean, it's pretty notorious. What is significant about this as a reaction to entering Jerusalem?
- [86:38]
C
So I think for us, it seems highly problematic, the slaughter that happens when the Crusaders enter Jerusalem. But I think at the time it was probably seen as less problematic because this is the standard rules of war, according to common understandings. So when a city is taken by siege, if it's not surrendered, it is accepted that the lives of the inhabitants will not be spared. So this is what everyone's expecting. The defenders have resisted, and so therefore they know that their lives will not necessarily be spared. The Crusaders do begin to massacre the population when they enter the city. But what's really interesting about this is in recent years, scholars have begun to reappraise this and there is a massacre is terrible. But Actually, probably they don't kill absolutely everybody within the city, as had been previously thought. But there's no denying, though, that the slaughter is on a large scale and is absolutely horrific. And I think what seems really incongruous for modern audiences, that once the Crusaders have taken the city and killed the defenders, they then go dripping in gore to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to pray to God, to thank him for. For allowing them to succeed. And I think for us, this seems so strange, incongruous and really problematic. But I think for them, actually, the violence, the bloodshed and the religious devotion are actually two sides of the same coin.
- [88:03]
B
All right, So, I mean, just wrapping up here, we are tripping gore in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher as God intended it. Question mark. What would you say the main consequences of the First Crusade are? I mean, like, who took charge in these Crusader states?
- [88:22]
C
They've now secured Jerusalem, they've secured the success of the First Crusade, at least those cities that they've captured. And what you've got here are the nuclei of the Crusader states. This is the Crusader states in embryonic form. They're really a string of cities. You've got Odessa, you've got Antioch, you've got Jerusalem, you've got some other places along the way, like Jaffa, offer. But this is in no way is this a coherent set of political states. The Crusader states do not exist at this time. But what happens is there's some conflict over who should run Jerusalem. And there's a question mark of whether they should be called king in the city that Christ reigned in. And in the end, Godfrey of Buion wins the contest. Godfrey takes over. He takes on the title of Advocatus, which means Defender of the Holy Sepulcher. And it's a Christian religious title, really, to denote his position. So he doesn't call himself king, but his successor, who is Baldwin of Boulogne, who comes and Godfrey dies really quickly, you know, less than a year later. And Baldwin comes down and becomes the first king of Jerusalem, comes down from Odessa, takes over the throne, and then what they start to do is they start to. To establish these viable political states. So they start to capture the territory around Jerusalem and those other cities, and they start with the coastal strategy, so the lifelines back to the west of the sea lanes across the Mediterranean. It's really crucial they have access to those and they control those for reinforcements, for communications, for money, for soldiers, all this kind of stuff. And so they have to control those and they take out in a systematic way. The cities along along the eastern Mediterranean seaboard. And once they've done that, they then start to penetrate into the hinterland of Palestine and Syria and pursue the hinterland strategy, which is less successful. But by the 1120s, they've established really viable political states. Four crusader states of Jerusalem, Antioch, Edessa and Tripoli. And they're really viable political units in the region. And you've got then a strip of territory which runs along the coast coast, contiguous set of territories. And they're a new force to be reckoned with and a really disruptive force in the Near East. And I think that what happens is as the Muslim powers of the region begin to realize what is going on, they start to rally behind the idea of jihad and the idea of maybe not fighting each other as much and fighting the Franks to try and push them back into the sea. But that's a very long process.
- [90:52]
B
Well, Tom, that was brilliant.
- [90:54]
A
Brilliant.
- [90:54]
B
You're brilliant. Thank you so much for coming to talk to us today. I really appreciate it.
- [90:59]
C
Oh, it's been such a pleasure. It's been so fun. Thank you for having me on, Eleanor.
- [91:04]
B
So, with the First Crusade concluding in shameful and indiscriminate slaughter, what have we learned? That the crusading movement was the culmination of several distinct but intertwined forces, forces that bubbled up throughout Western Christendom in the 11th century. And that these were molded into the First Crusade by Pope Urban II and Byzantine Emperor Alexios I. That the Crusaders who set out for Jerusalem were an amorphous and ragtag bunch, were very difficult to control, and made decisions for their own ends and interests. And that the story of how the First Crusade unfolded had as much to do with the fateful choices of Seljuk Adabegs and Fatimid caliphs, as it did with the Crusaders themselves. If you want to find out what happened next, then join Matt on Friday for episode two of our series on the history of the Crusades. He'll be talking to Natasha Hodgson about how the Crusaders consolidated their rule over the territory they seized after 1099, trading with, fighting against, and learning from their new Islamic neighbors. They'll also be exploring the stories of the Second and Third Crusades and how the lords of the Muslim Mediterranean sought to push back this new threat from the barbarian fringes of their structured Islamic world. My thanks again to the wonderful Dr. Tom Smith for joining me on Gone Medieval. And thanks to you for listening. If you loved what Tom had to say, then you might want to listen back to his previous appearance on Gone Medieval about rewriting the history of the First Crusade. You can also check out his book on the same topic, Rewriting the First Epistolatory Culture in the Middle Ages. Remember, you can also enjoy unlimited access to award winning original TV documentaries, including my recent film the Trial of Joan of Arc. By signing up@historyhit.com subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify where you can leave us comments and suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time,
- [93:43]
A
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