The Mongols and the Fall of the Crusaders

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Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. That delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. To delve into rebellions, plots and murders, to find the stories big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval.

The year is 1260. It's the height of summer, and as the sun glares over the desert sands of Egypt, four envoys mounted on horseback bear down on the ancient and fabled city of Cairo. They've been sent to deliver a message to the new Mamluk Sultan Khatuz, a former slave soldier who's risen from bondage to seize the reins of power along the Nile. But the letter they bring is not filled with fair tidings, fawning, rhetoric.

or diplomatic niceties. Instead, it warns of a coming storm so bleak that all in its path tremble with fear. You cannot escape from the terror of our armies. Where can you flee? What road will you use to escape us? Our horses are swift, our arrows sharp, our swords like thunderbolts, our soldiers as Numerous as the sand. We will shatter your mosques and reveal the weakness of your God. And then we will kill your children. Only those who beg our protection will be safe.

Though this is the age of the Crusader, the storm doesn't rise from the coastal fortresses of the barbarian Christians, nor from the citadels of capricious Syrian sultans. It hails from the steppe, the vast grassland of the far north, home to countless nomadic horsemen. for these envoys on mongol. They foretell the onset of the water. of a Mongol tide and making good on threats of apocalypse and catastrophe.

Is their speciality. Before arriving on Egypt's doorstep, the Mongols have already crushed the last vestiges of Seljuk resistance in Anatolia, overrun the mountain fortresses. Of the Nizari assassins and ransacked Baghdad, the long-standing jewel of the Sunni Muslim world. For Kutuz, all portents point. to more of the same. The Mamluk Sultanate stands square in the sights of a twelve thousand strong legion of horsemen ready to strike at the first sign of resistance.

Yet in the summer of 1260, resistance is exactly the path Kutuz and the Mamluks choose. When the Mongol envoys present their demands of uncompromising imperium and unconditional surrender, Kutuz responds in a language In a language the Stepnomads no doubt understand. He orders the four ambassadors imprisoned, then publicly cut in half. Their severed heads are skewered on the ramparts as feed for carrion, a fate usually reserved for petty criminals.

It serves as a declaration that Kutuz will not be following the precedent set by his Near Eastern neighbours. Instead, he's ready to pick up his sword, face the Mongol wrath, and take his chances.

The showdown takes place near an oasis named Ainjalut and is more than just a battle. It's a defining struggle between two rising superpowers for control of the eastern Mediterranean. The Crusaders, watching from behind the walls of their shrinking coastal kingdoms, are little more than spectators. But they won't remain so for long. The victors, be it Mongol or Mamluk, will turn their focus onto them next, and the last embers of Latin Christendom in the Holy Land will be extinguished.

Welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. For the past two weeks we've journeyed across the vast expanse of the medieval world, tracing the turbulent saga of the Crusades. For almost two centuries, these so-called holy wars set Christendom's warriors against the Muslim powers of Egypt and Syria, each fighting for dominion over the scorching deserts and sacred sites of the Holy Land.

Endorsed by the papacy and waged by Western knights in unforgiving lands, the Crusades reshaped the course of the Middle Ages. This is an epic saga of faith, ambition and blood. In our last three episodes, we've charted more than 150 years of history, tracing the course of the Crusades from their explosive beginnings in the 11th century through to the legendary campaigns of the Sultan Saladin, Richard the Lionheart.

And Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Along the way, we've witnessed lurid and infamous episodes unfolding across medieval Christendom. and discovered that this is far more than a straightforward tale of clashing kings and civilizations. If you haven't listened, do go back and dive into those episodes. Today though, we come to the endgame. The fall of the Crusader State.

The Crusaders themselves have very little to do with it. The crisis that envelops the Holy Land from the year 1240 and which eventually culminates in the abandonment of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1291 is shaped not by popes or Western armies, but by those in In Cairo and on the steppe. The Mongols crash into the Near East. Jerusalem falls again in 1244, and the Crusaders are shocked into one last Hail Mary. the Seventh Crusade, led by French King Louis the Ninth.

Out of the chaos rises a new power, the Mamluks, who steadily dismantle the Crusader world until nothing remains. To help us navigate this final tumultuous chapter of crusading history, I'm joined by historian Nicholas Morton, author of The Mongol Storm: Making and Breaking Empires in the Near East.

And once we've traced the global story of the fall of the Crusade estates, stay with us because Eleanor is returning to help me reflect on the legacy of the Crusade and what this 200 year experiment ultimately left behind. Welcome back to Gun Medieval, Nick. It's great to have you with us again. It's great to be back on the show. Thanks so much, Matt.

Well w I think we thought at this point we know we're heading towards seventh Crusades, seventh in our numbered crusades, and we're gonna bring in the Mongols here. So we were thinking, who can we talk to about Mongols and Crusades? And it's it's of course it's Nick Morton. But I wondered if you could help us out just to give our audience a little bit of a recap. So we're we're about to hit the seventh crusade.

In broad terms, what's been going on in the Holy Land for the past kind of couple of hundred years? Okay, so a lot is the answer. Essentially you you're looking at an incredibly complex and fragmented landscape. You've got major empires and territories around. So going back to around the year one thousand, for example. You have the Byzantine Empire in the northwest, which controls much of what will be modern day Turkey, or Anatolia as it's known then, as well as the Aegean in Greece.

And then the remainder of much of the Middle East is made up with various different Arab or Kurdish leaders who are all under the authority of the Abbazid Caliphate. And then in Egypt you have a separate Shia Caliphate. In the following years then though, you've got a massive invasion out of the Central Asian steppe region.

This is the invasions of the Seljuk Turks and they conquer the entire region during the eleventh century, or with the greater part of it anyway. Soon after that you have the advent of the Crusades and the foundation of the Crusader State. in the coastal regions of the Near East. And then about a little over a hundred years after that, you have the advent of a new set of invaders with the rise of the Mongols.

So we're looking at a very complex region. It was already complex before all these various invasions, but it becomes even more so, not just because of the invaders themselves, but because of the various other peoples. They set in motion. And for me, that's what makes this period so incredibly fascinating. You've got all these different cultures.

Fighting wars, conducting trade, encountering each other for the first time, whether that's peoples whose history in the Middle East goes back for centuries, or who are relatively recent. 'Cause I think there is a danger, isn't there, of seeing this period of of that we call the crusading period and crusader states and we often frame it as very much Christianity against Islam.

But there's so much more going on. I think what your work is really great at highlighting is the fact that there are just Almost innumerable facets to this, different cultures, different civilizations, different groups, even within Christians and Muslims. And uh as well as those alongside them, there is so much more going on than just thinking about it in terms of Christians attacking Muslims in the Near East. Yeah.

The complexity of the landscape for me is what makes it so interesting. You've got the Byzantine attempt to try and restate their authority in Anatolia, you've got nomadic peoples struggling against agricultural peoples. You've got interfaith rivalries and rivalries within a faith, and there's many occasions when you've got Christians and Muslims on both sides of the battlefield.

Or where the battlefields involve neither Christians nor Muslims because ultimately you've got people like the Mongols. who in their early years, at least when they're first invading the Middle East, their beliefs for the most part centre on shamanistic um Central Asian practices. So yeah, it's a very complicated but fascinating area.

Yeah. Yeah. And as we head now into the twelve forties. I mean, we all ought to hide, hadn't we? Because the Mongols are coming. That's a pretty scary moment for anybody. If anyone told me the Mongols were coming, I would be out the door like a shot.

I wonder I mean, another unfair question for you here. I've given you two really unfair questions to start off with, summing up the crusading period quickly. Uh I wonder if you can kind of sum up for us who the Mongols are, where they come from, and how they become such significant players by the twelve forties. Okay. So as I've said, this does happen from time to time.

And it is a feature of Eurasian history that there is there are these sudden invasions out of the Central Asian steppe region. There can be centuries between them, but I think most people will have heard of, say, the Huns invading the Eastern Roman Empire, our later invasions, such as the Magyars, for example, or the Seljuk Turks have already mentioned, or indeed the Mongols.

But the Mongols themselves, or the Moal people, they began with in what would be sort of the northern parts of modern day Mongolia, very much on the borderlands where the the steppe sort of the wide grassland areas move into the coniferous forest belt of the far north. And in their origins they may not have been solely nomadic. Our researchers have suggested that may they may have actually have roots that go back to the communities who lived in the forest.

But they're in a highly complex and very hostile landscape. There's lots of different political factions and different peoples in Mongolia, as we'd call it today. They're all struggl struggling for ascendancy and Genghis Khan or Chingis Khan as he's more accurately known, he's born into a faction that suffered a great deal very recently, and he himself is imprisoned at an early point in his life. And But the story of the rise of the Mongol Empire really is very much tied to Chingis Khan's life.

I've often wondered maybe it's because of the extreme uncertainty and suffering of his childhood. that really as soon as he's able to, he pushes and carries on pushing to expand and expand and expand. I wonder if there's a search for security somehow in that. But attacking neighboring peoples, he doesn't always win, but he wins enough. There's no stopping him. Until eventually, once you get to

The early thirteenth century he begins to try and expand outside Mongolia, having conquered all the various peoples within Mongolia. He wages war into northern China. in the twelve teams, I think it's twelve eighteen, he begins his advance or begins his approach. on the Middle East with an attack on what's called the Khwarasmian Empire, which controls much of well, it's Persia, then it would be m modern day Iran and many of the regions neighbouring the steppe.

From there the He also expands into Central Asia, what we would call today Russia, and ultimately into Eastern Europe, until of course eventually under his heirs, the Mongol Empire will stretch from the Pacific seaboard all the way across to the Euphrates River in the Middle East, or indeed to the borders of Poland and Hungary further north.

Yeah, fantastic. Thank you. You mentioned there the the Khurazmian Turks are the sort of almost a a a buffer, a a uh in a space in between the Mongols as they advance and the Crusader states and the the Near East.

What impact does the Kwasmian Turks being displaced by the Mongols have? Do they sort of assault the Near East? Do the people of the Near East realise that this might be a forerunner for something else, or do they just have to deal with the Turks that are in front of them at that point? Yes. So at this point the Crusader States are relatively weak compared to the neighbouring powers. They're clinging on to a very narrow strip of coastal territory.

They're trying to survive more through diplomacy for the most part, interspersed with moments of of aggression at times of major crusades. But the major the really big power on their borders is the Ayyubid Empire, and the Ayyubid Empire is basically the Empire ruled by Saladin's heirs. And they spend much of their time fighting amongst themselves. But there there is a common threat to all the empires of the Middle East, which is that the Mongols are advancing. And you're right.

One of the earliest signs of this advance was a kind of bow wave almost in military terms, is the tens of thousands of people displaced. by the Mongol advance, moving west, trying to get out of the way. Of course they are. As you said, if you heard the Mongols were coming, you'd be straight out of the door. I think we all would. And so they're moving west, trying to get out of the way. And many of them are just moving as family groups or as small communities. But the Quarasmians.

in the twelve thirties they move as a very, very large contingent, including around ten thousand warriors. So they're exceptionally powerful and ten thousand's probably a bit conservative. They go to the Seljuks in Anatolia, it's modern day Turkey initially, but they're forced to flee from there and they go south into what would be in modern day terms northern Syria. And they're desperate. They're looking for a new homeland.

And the Ayyubids, so Saladin's dynasty in Egypt, offers them a new homeland. But they're not offering it for free. In exchange, they want military assistance. And they want military assistance against a rival branch of the Ayyubid dynasty in Damascus. And as a result, the Khwarasmians moved south to join forces with the Egyptian Ayyubids and en route. They besiege and sack Jerusalem. This is 1244, and Jerusalem at this point is under Frankish or is within the Crusader state.

And After that the Khwarazmians move south and join forces with the Ayyubids. on the borders of Egypt, or I think it's just I think around round the reason round the region of Gaza at this point. Meanwhile, the rival Ayyubid faction in Damascus recognises the threat being posed by the Khwarazmians who have substantially enhanced the rival Egyptian Ayyubid faction, and so they make an alliance with the Crusade Estate.

specifically the kingdom of Jerusalem. And this goes back to what I was saying about the complexity of the landscape, because what we're looking at here is a Quarasmian plus Ayyubid alliance. fighting another Ayyubid faction allied with the Kingdom of Jerusalem. And the result of this is a very large battle at a place called Forbi. And the result is a catastrophic defeat.

for the Damascene Ayubids with their Frankish allies. And so for the Khorasmians and for the Egyptians, this is an enormous victory. After this, the Khorasmians are essentially given the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the southernmost and well, least small crusader state. That's around, and they just sort of settle the landscape. They don't bother conquering the towns or cities, they just move into the countryside around them. And that creates a crisis. And so messengers go back to Western Europe.

Meanwhile, the Ayyubid Egyptians attacked Damascus, which they managed to conquer for themselves. So this is a period. The Mongols haven't appeared yet. They're still some way off. But nonetheless, the events they've played a part in setting in motion are reshaping the region, and that's eliciting very loud cries for help from the Crusader States going back to Western Christendom.

So we're already in a state of of a bit of chaos and havoc being wreaked by the Mongols but before they've even arrived. So it's not even them doing it at this point, but they're causing what's going on. And as you mentioned, the the result of of all of this in the Near East is that in twelve forty five Pope Innocent the Seventh calls what we would now c know as the Seventh Crusade.

And the French King Louis the Ninth takes control, takes the lead in this. Can you tell us a little bit about who Louis the Ninth was and how he ends up being the leader of the Seventh Crusade? Why did he want to do this? So Louis personally is an exceptionally pious ruler, even by the standards of the day. and he's also reasonably competent, but he has been born and raised

on the stories of his ancestors, almost all of whom have been on crusade. Louis VIII went on crusade against the heretics in southern France. Philip II went on the third crusade, Louis the Seventh went on the second crusade. So he has this tradition, plus the fact that he is himself an exceptionally pious ruler. And of course Jerusalem has just been taken by the Qarasmians.

So there's a network of different factors. One possible explanation people have also given is that he became ill and he swore when he was ill that if he got better. then he would go on crusade. It's possible another factor in the mix. But it also helps that in this period France is getting a great deal more powerful. The wars with the Angevin Empire centred in the Kingdom of England.

which ruled much of western France in the twelfth century, most of those lands now have been reconquered by the kings of France. The kings of France have also extended their authority down much coming much closer to the south coast. And in fact Louis actually builds a port for his crusade at Aigue Mort in southern France. So France is a great deal more powerful. It's going to get a great deal more coherent

from a bureaucratic perspective, going forwards uh a little bit after this time. So France is going from strength to strength, so Louis's capacity to wage a crusade is also increasing. Having said that, Louis uh takes leadership of the crusade in part because he's a major crown head, but also because other people in Western Europe at this time are busy with other things.

So for example, Emperor Frederick II is busy fighting wars both in Germany and in northern Italy. The Kingdom of England is a bit of a mess at this time with various conflicts taking place. So really it's France that's gonna be able to do this because it's the it's the only one that's not entangled by other serious concerns or are able to disentangle themselves from serious concerns. You do get other crusaders from other areas.

You do get other monarchs who offer a degree of assistance in one form or another, but it's Louis who goes. There's lots of opportunity there in the sense that, as you mentioned, incredibly pious people will want to go on crusade and will view it as a a kind of a duty. But there's there was also we've seen there can be rivalry between crowned heads who head off on crusades. So friction between kings of France and Holy Roman Emperors and Kings of France and Kings of England.

There's not always uh room for more than one crowned head. So Louis is able to kind of be the main man here. Is it true that we see the Pope toying with the idea of trying to get the Mongols to become allies against the Ayyubids? The Pope wants to know more. And so in twelve forty five the Pope sends out a series of envoys. Some going via the Middle East, some through Eastern Europe to the Mongols.

Yes, the papacy is absolutely interested in what can be achieved with the Mongols, but at this point, simply knowing who they are, what they want, what they're trying to achieve, how strong are they, why are they able to conquer so much.

the these basic questions haven't yet been answered. So they're fact finding miss missions, as it were, but also trying to work out is there something that can be achieved with the Mongols or even could they be converted? Which would be another qu a big question. for churchmen at this time. So all those questions are in play. Louis is potentially interested, but he himself received a demand from the Mongols to submit to Mongol authority before this and

Only a few years before Louis sets out, the Mongols invade Poland and Hungary and cause enormous devastation to both countries. So Louis is not under any illusions about the threat the Mongols pose to Western Europe.

But Louis sets out on crusade with his fleet, and he arrives on Cyprus, and there are the beginnings of diplomacy with the Mongols. The Mongols send some Eastern Christians as their envoys. to Louis on Cyprus. It's quite an interesting dimension of Mongol diplomacy, actually. If they're approaching a Christian power, they will often send Christians as their envoys and they will embroider their demands or their sort of the opening offer with passages from the Bible.

in a similar vein, when they approach a Muslim power, they'll often try and embroider what their diplomacy and their diplomatic letters and things like that with passages from the Quran. So they're quite that that it's quite interesting to see how they carry that out. But in within the Mongols' correspondence to Louis. It's quite striking really.

In some ways you could read them as standard demands. The Mongols should rule the world. This is what they feel that they have been granted, and therefore uh everyone should submit to them. And yet there's somehow within it there is also a very strong hint. They might be open to an alliance at the same time. And so Louis sends out emissaries to the Mongols to try and continue those negotiations, but they never really come to anything. Not from Louis' perspective.

And I guess if if we've got Louis on Cyprus now, that's quite a good place for us to have him sat while we think about what his aims might be, because from there, you know, he could try and reinforce the Crusader states along the coast in the Levant. He could aim to reconquer Jerusalem. Or he could follow in the footsteps of the Fifth Crusade and target Egypt instead. What do we know about what he decides to do and where he goes next?

The whole question of how to conquer Jerusalem is exceptionally complicated and it's a question lots of people at the time are writing about and thinking about. Because it's not simply as it's not as simple as land your army at the nearest point to Jerusalem, march to Jerusalem, besiege it, conquer Jerusalem, go home. No one or none of the sort of the the the really sort of key strategic thinkers are suggesting that as a line of approach.

And there's a very good reason for that, which is that the crew a a standard crusade like Louis's crusade, in fact Louis lingers longer than most, but most crusaders won't be prepared to be away from home for more than, say, three, four years. So if Louis took Jerusalem, fine. He might be able to take it, and then he'll go, and then it will disappear again because it will be conquered immediately afterwards.

Because the kingdom of Jerusalem, what's left of it, simply isn't strong enough to defend Jerusalem in the long term. And Louis knows this. In many ways when Frederick II Achieve control over Jerusalem via diplomacy, this is a case in point. As soon as the ten year truce with the Ayyubids expired. Jerusalem became imperiled and was ultimately lost entirely in twelve forty four, a mere what fifteen years after Frederick arranged for it to be included into the crusader state.

So there is a short termism that they're trying to avoid. Yes, they can probably get Jerusalem, but how do they keep it in the long term? And you've got various leaders grappling with that question, going all the way back to the Third Crusade. Richard the First had very similar conversations with sort of experts, did templars and hospitals who are experts in the whole business of campaigning in the Middle East.

So there's got to be a different way of doing it. And the solution a lot of people land on is Egypt. Now that might sound like a very strange thing to say. Egypt is a long way away from Jerusalem. How could that possibly be seen as a means to conquer Jerusalem? Well the answer to that is if you just sort of summon up a map of the Middle East. Egypt is the economic centre. It's way more valuable economically than any other area.

branches of the Silk Roads from Central Asia and China pass through Egypt. much of the spice root trade from Southeast Asia, India, crossing the Indian Ocean, then north across the Red Sea to eastern Egypt. All that traffic or a large chunk of it will then go to Egypt, where the goods will be transported to the major cities.

or taken by canal to Alexandria and Damietta on the north coast for transshipment into the Mediterranean trade. So Egypt is economically crucial. So the thinking goes like this. Many crusading strategists suggest conquering Egypt first. The idea being if Egypt can be conquered with all that revenue under their control and having denied that revenue to their opponent, they can then afford to finance an army big enough in the Middle East for the permanent reestablishment of control over Jerusalem.

And so this is the thinking. Conquer Egypt and then establish a position in Egypt and use those resources for permanent control over Jerusalem. And so that's what Louis's after, and that's why Louis's after that. Yeah, fascinating. And I guess there's a an extent to which politically as well, if the Ayyubids in Egypt are largely controlling

Muslim held Near East and if you disrupt that, then that's a way to disrupt that whole area before you go there, as well as then having all of their wealth and and economic power as well. And this sounds a lot like what we saw with the Fifth Crusade. Uh the idea is to target Egypt.

And from there to move towards Jerusalem. And we s we saw the Fifth Crusade have a bit of initial success that looked really, really promising. And then the kind of the wheels fell off. What happened to the Seventh Crusade? Uh well, from Louis's perspective, it stops if you're really promising and then the wheels fall off. Okay, so yeah, there are marked similarities to the Fifth Crusade. So what Louis does is he marshals his forces on Cyprus.

And then with his fleet he attacks the north coast of Egypt, again following the course of the Fifth Crusade by besieging Damietta, which is on the northeastern side of the Nile Delta. Now it took the Fifth Crusade, I forget exactly how long it was, but it was about a year to get into Damietta. But in Louis' case, this is very different. So Louis's fleet gathers off the coast, and then from amongst that fleet comes a line of longboats, bringing the first assault parties of Louis's crusade.

Now the Ayyubid army is waiting for them on the beach. lines of archers, lines of troops ready to receive the attack. And so you should imagine the sort of crossfire as crossbowmen from the approaching boats and archers from the beach begin to exchange barrages of arrows and crossbow bolts, trying to uh gain the upper hand.

And then the crusaders jump down from their boats and charge in towards the beach, and in the shallows they're met with the Ayyubid infantry, and there's a big clash in the shallow water. And it's a significant battle, but it does ultimately turn in Louise's favour. And so he gains the beach. Now, that wasn't again, this is very mu very similar to the Fifth Crusade. The Fifth Crusade didn't have too much trouble getting onto the beach. The next question is Damietta.

And Damietra is massively fortified. And the current Sultan of Egypt has specifically refortified and resourced and built up his orrents in Damieta so it can resist a very long siege. But here's the catch the garrison in Damietta, a Bedouin garrison, evacuates the city immediately after Louis takes the beach. And so Louis's forces just walk in. So this major frontier bulwark of the Ayyubid's defences simply collapses. So for the Ayyubid forces, this is terrifying.

And extremely concerning, they were counting on Damietta to hold the crusade for a long time or to hold them entirely. Because of course they know by now. The Ayyubids are fully aware that if we can hold the crusaders up. for a few years, they're not going to be around forever. They're not a permanent feature on the landscape. If we can just hold them off, then they'll go away. So for the Ayyubids, as for so many previous commanders,

Playing for time is crucial. You've got to hold the Crusaders off and they will go home. But now Damiet has fallen within a couple of days, and within that the crusaders have acquired a fully supplied base, all those munitions, and a huge part of food.

So things begin to look very worrying from an Ayyubid perspective. Now, meanwhile, the Crusaders advance up the Nile south, and of course they're heading ultimately towards Cairo. But Damietta is a little bit it's a bit a little bit like it's on an island, in that there's a main branch of the of the Nile that goes down to has which leaves Damietta to its east.

And there is another sh another smaller branch of the Dot Nile which forks a little bit further upstream and then passes down Damietta to the west. So to get to continue their journey towards Cairo, they have to cross that branch of the Nile. And so they reach the point where the Nile fall.

And they're looking for a way across. And I have to say, if a film producer wanted to create this, it would be an epic scene because you have the crusaders on one bank of the Nile being supplied by ships coming from Damietta. And they're trying to build an earthen causeway across this s smaller branch of the Nile. On the other side of the branch

The Ayubid army has set up a line of counterweight trebuchets hurling lumps of rock at this causeway, trying to prevent it being built. And meanwhile you have boats And crossbowmen and archers, all trying to hamper the other side. It's an incredible sort of cross river conflict. But it's not going anywhere for the Crusaders. The Ayyubids are doing quite a good job of holding the Crusaders at arm's length.

And their main army is just a a very short way further north, outside a town called Mansura. So for the Ayyubids, the goal is to keep the crusaders there. They can't cross the river. for the Crusaders, the goal is to find a way across. But the Ayyubids have another problem because of Bedouin. Goes to Louis and says that he knows a place a little bit further down this the this branch of the Nile where it can be forded. And so Louis's forces set out.

And they find that it can indeed be forded. And so the vanguard under Louis's brother. crosses the Nile, and Louis' instructions are that once Robert of Artois with the vanguard has crossed the Nile, he has to wait. And then the main army will come across and join him. But Robert of Ottawa has other ideas, not quite clear if it's Robert or the Templars who are with him who are pushing for this.

But Robert k sets off without waiting for the main army and leads his vanguard of around seven hundred heavy cavalry. in a massive cavalry charge directly into the Ayubid camp. This takes the Ayubids utterly by surprise. Robert of Artois's forces overrun the entire Ayubid army. And so the Ayyubid army, realizing the day is lost, begin to pour in huge numbers through the gates of the nearby town of Mansur, looking for the safety of that town and its walls.

So having routed the entire Ayubid army, and at the point of victory for the Crusaders and defeat for the Ayyubids, Robert of Artois reforms his cavalry And we're not sure who gave the advice, or whether it was him himself. But he decides that what he's going to do is charge directly into Mansurer with his heavy heavy cavalry. And he does that.

But heavy cavalry works well in open spaces, but in narrow roads and alleyways in a packed town filled with wagons and are you bid soldiers and escape the fighting, it doesn't perform so well. and only three of Robert of Artois forces ever got out of that town alive. Robert of Artois, according to one story, did fight his way out of the town, but was killed in the process of doing so.

But while all of this is taking place and all this big confrontation near Mansur is And again, those those and listeners who are familiar with the fifth cruise will recognise another parallel here, is that there's another dimension to the conflict which is beginning to emerge, which is that the Iubids have got ships onto the main branch of the Nile. And they're using those ships to cut the supply lines bringing ships down to the Crusader camp near Mansur.

And so the Crusaders begin to starve. They're not getting enough food and eventually they're getting nowhere against the Ayubid army, they're running out of food, and the decision is made to withdraw. So Louis's army begins to pull back, that withdraws as far as it can. By this point sickness is spreading rapidly in the crusading army, and eventually they become surrounded and are forced to surrender. and Louis himself is taken prisoner. So this is a massive defeat for the Seventh Crusade.

But as we shall see, this is also not necessarily good news for the IU bids.

And I guess we ought to bring in as well, the Ayyubids themselves are in a bit of a a mess in Egypt. They're facing their own problems. We've got the emergence of the Mamluks, and I guess we ought to talk a bit about who the Mamluks are and how they come to be real power players during this period as well.

Now, the Ayyubids, just like so many dynasties across the Middle East, they are accustomed to deploying Mamluk forces. Now, Mamluk forces are basically people who have been purchased by a ruler or a ruling elite as enslaved people and then converted to Islam and trained as elite warriors. Now lots of dynasties do this across the Middle East. It's standard practice, but the Ayyubids have particularly done it.

And one of the reasons for this is that as the Mongols advanced acros across what today would be Russia and Eastern Europe, far to the north, They seized tens of thousands of people who they then sold into the Mediterranean trade as enslaved people via ports in the Crimea. Now all of that meant that enslaved people could be purchased at a very low price, and so the IU bids buy them in large numbers.

And so the man regiments get bigger and bigger. But there's a problem which I'm guessing that many people would be picking up on now, which is that there's only a limit how large you can make these forces before they start to realise that they've got serious leverage on their own account. But the Sultan's got another problem, which is that he's seriously ill. And he's I think by this point he's it's becoming clear that this is an illness from which

He's not going to recover. And that raises a crisis of leadership because his son and heir, Turan Shah, who's in northern Syria He and his father don't get on. And so it's not as simple as the Sultan just calling for his son and heir to come and take over. He doesn't call for him. And the Sultan dies. So suddenly Ayu but Egypt is leaderless. So what happens next? And this is one of the most remarkable aspects.

of the history of this particular crusade, which is that it's his wife, Shaja Aldur, who steps in and says, Oh yeah, my husband's alive. He's just in his bed. He's a bit ill, but he's issued these orders. And so she begins to hand out orders. She's working with some of the senior army commanders who are who know what's going on, but they keep the sultan's death a secret and she begins to issue orders in his name. And what she's trying to do is to hold things together.

Because she knows that as soon as news gets out that the Sultan is dead, that there will be chaos unless an there is an air in place. And so she sends out envoys pretty quickly to get Turan Shah south into Egypt to come and take charge of the situation. Yeah, but uh because it it's around about now that a figure emerges Baybars, who will be a really key figure in the Mamluk faction. So who who is Babars? What do we know about him? How does he become quite so important?

Yeah. Bybaz began his career as rather as I said, really, as an enslaved person taken captive on the its thoughts on the near the shores of the Black Sea. sold into slavery.

He was sort of passed from one ruler to another for a while and ended up in service to the Ayyubids like so many people. So Salt and Biobas will rise to become a major power, but at this point The former Ayyubid Sultan's heir, Turan Shah, arrives, takes power for himself, and it seems as though things will continue much as they ever had. The Ayyubids are victorious. The Crusaders are defeated and surrendered.

Louis is a prisoner of the Ayyubids. Everything's going the Ayubids' way. But the new Sultan alienates the Mamlet. And the Mamluks feel as if they haven't received their due from the victory. And so now, legend reports it was Byboss. But the Mamluks ultimately seize Turan Shah and then murder him on the banks of the Nile. Now immediately after that

There is the question of who's going to rule next. And essentially this is the this is the process by which the Mamluks rise to power. And through a series of different rulers, they assert themselves as rulers of Egypt. In the early days they normally set up a an Ayyubid puppet, so someone they can claim is the Ayyubid Sultan, but in fact they're running Egypt themselves. But after a few years they simply just assert themselves as Egypt's rulers independent.

So the Seventh Crusade is a catastrophe for the Crusaders. It is also a catastrophe for the Ayyubids. It is also the rise of a new empire that will survive until the early sixteenth century when it's conquered by the Ottomans, which is the rise of the Mamluk Empire.

And one of the most crucial things we see during this early Mamluk period is kind of in around twelve sixty. We see them come into conflict with the Mongols and this seems to be A fairly seismic clash that could well have determined the direction, the rulership of this whole region for years to come, because suddenly the unstoppable Mongols find someone who stops them.

Yes. So of course, all these events with Louis's crusade are not taking place in a vacuum. Events are changing in the wider world, not least the fact that Louis sent emissaries himself. to go and negotiate with the Mongols, that doesn't we come to anything? The Mongols are moving forwards and huge numbers of displaced people are moving in front of them. So There is a new great Khan called Monka.

And Monka sends his brother, Hooligu, to the Middle East with the goal of I suspect that the real goal was to conquer everything that's left, anything that's still independent. And there's not much. The Abazid Caliphate in Baghdad, which is basically Baghdad and a few surrounding towns, is still independent. The Krute estates are independent and the Mamluks are independent. So Houdigo sets off and in twelve fifty six.

He enters the Middle East, and soon after this, he advances on Baghdad. Now, Baghdad is one of the largest cities in the world at this time. And the Mongols surround the city, they lay siege. And then ultimately they conquer the city with enormous loss of life, an enormous massacre of the population, which of course For the inhabitants and in specifically for Sunni Islam and for the Abazid Caliphate, this is an enormous

Tragedy, this is a a major disaster, not to mention the the casualties will have been in something in the region of six figures. So we're talking about a very, very significant and bloody event. After this the Mongols then head north into Syria, and they conquer the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, which is an Ayyubid city. And then immediately after that the Ayyubids in Damascus evacuate Damascus because they can see this isn't going to work.

and ultimately a Mongol flying column picks up the Ayyubid Sultan in Damascus. Of course the Ayyubids in Syria they're still s they survive the seventh cruise. It's only Egypt that's conquered by the Mamluk. But the Mongols conquer what's left of them in twelve sixteen. So the only independent powers now are the Crusader States and the Mamluks in Egypt. And the Crusader States are very much veering towards allying with them or submitting to the Mongols.

Erbjuder vid datorer och programvara till alla företag. Du kan hoppa ner. ご視聴ありがとうございました Vi på Dansk bank vet att relationen med tonåringar kan kosta på. Bian, vad är det för resor du har lagt in i kalenden? Det är ju bara som är grejer i grabna i sommar, tänkte du att det. Ja, och vem ska betala för det? Nej, jag plucker ju. Dags att sätta lite rimliga förväntningar. Vi hjälper er med en plan för hela familjens ekonomi. Välkommen till Dansk bank, en lite rakare bank.

Namnet säger allt. Storspelare. För oss handlar det inte om de små ögonblicken. Större drömmar, större spänning, en större. hos storspelare. För dig över 18 år, stödlinjen.se The principal Crusader states are in such a a poor situation now that they must have been looking at the Mongols and thinking, We can't resist these guys if they come, but maybe we could just point them at the Mamluks instead?

Absolutely. The m the m the Mongols are unstoppable. Hulagu's army has been estimated at the lower end estimates, put it at about a hundred thousand troops. On a good day. The Crusader States, the Kingdom of Jerusalem can manage about 10,000. So there is going to be no stopping the Mongols by the Crusader States and the Principality of Antioch.

submits early to the Mongols. Kingdom of Jerusalem opens negotiations with the Mongols, doesn't quite submit, but it's does sort of sound out what can be achieved there. And then the Mamluks do something rather unexpected. And that is that More or less anyone anywhere in Eurasia under threat of invasion by the Mongols, if they've decided to fight and not to submit.

What they will do generally is to prepare their defences and wait to be attacked. But the Mamluks don't do that. They march out beyond Egypt and assertively seek combat with the Mongols. Which is an incredibly gutsy thing to do.

And they know by this stage that there's no alternative for them because they made it very clear what they're going to do, because a short while before this, the Mongols sent envoys to the Mamluks, and the Mamluks killed all but one of the envoys and shaved the beard from the third. There is no other way this is going to resolve now except on the battlefield. So the Mamluks march out with an army of around twelve thousand against a Mongol force of a hundred thousand seeking battle.

And that we have reports of Mamluk commanders saying, Why are we doing this? This isn't going to work. But no, the Mamluk Sultan who at this point is called Chituz, he's determined he's going to do this. And the Mamluks reach out to the Kingdom of Jerusalem and say, Do you want to fight with us? That's again another example that the battle lines are rather more complicated in the Middle East than they're often presented. And the Kingdom of Jerusalem hedges its bet.

It doesn't want to fight the Mongols, so it doesn't want to fight with a Mamluk. But it provides food and sells horses to the Mamluks, I presume so that in the unlikely event of a Mamluk victory, it can present itself as as having been supportive. At the same time, in the case of the Mongol victory, it can say, Well, we didn't help them. So there's a degree of sort of diplomacy going on there. But events work out very well for the Mamluks because the great Khan Hulagu's brother Monka died.

And so Hulagu unexpectedly withdraws with the greater part of his army eastwards because he wants to be involved in the political fallout from the Great Khan's death. And he only leaves the garrison. in Syria to hold the territory. They've never been attacked. No one attacks the Mongols. The Mongols are attacking everyone. They are not attacked themselves. Except they are, because the Mamluks are on the advance. And the Mamluks meet this garrison at a battle called Einjalut.

which is a surprise victory for the Mamluk. And immediately after that the Mamluks take Damascus and Aleppo, who are more than happy to hand themselves over to the Mamluks because they've been under Mongol rule and so the Mamluks look like saviours to them. Suddenly the Mongols have been defeated, but it's just a garrison. The main field army hasn't been defeated. And of course, as soon as Hugu learns what's happened, he swears he's going to have his revenge as soon as he possibly can.

I often wonder what would happen if the Mongols didn't have this situation where they withdraw everything and go back to the centre when there's a succession going on,'cause it kind of brings to a halt everything that they've managed to achieve. Up until then. And it it's a it's feels like a slightly bizarre situation. But obviously the the Mamluks here have absolutely exploited the fortune that they found in front of them.

And they've managed to beat the Mongols, which even if it's just a garrison, people don't do. Presumably, this is a big propaganda victory for the Mamluks too. Are they then able to to assert themselves more widely in the region, what does this mean for the Crusader states now?

So the main thing that helps the Mamluks is that in the years after Injolit, although the Mongols have sworn revenge immediately, the Mongol Empire is in the process of breaking up. into different sections ruled by different branches of the imperial family. And in the Middle East, Hulagu's territories that become known as the Ilkhanate.

They are also claimed by a rival branch of the family, which is becomes known as the carnage of the Golden Horde, further north in sort of Russia, Eastern Europe, that sort of region. and they go to war. And it's a disastrous war fought across the Caucasus Mountains, which involves massive casualties for both sides. And that gives the Mamluks about twenty years.

with which to rebuild to build themselves up, expand their trade, expand their army, and fortify the Euphrates River. They even send out teams of burners to burn grassland. to prevent the Mongol armies from grazing their horses there. But that twenty year period gives the Mamluks time to ready their defenses.

So when the Mongols do ultimately re invade in twelve eighty one, no one's ready for a Mongol invasion, but they're as ready as they can be, and that means that there's another big battle fought for it. And uh one historian says that the Mongol battle line was twenty six kilometres wide. This is vast scale war making. But the Mamluks defeat them again, and in many ways this is a more significant battle than Aim Jalut, because they're meeting the Mongols at full strength.

And despite the disparity in numbers, the Mamluks defeat them, the Mongols are put to flight again. And The Mongols won't return in force to that theatre of war for another eighteen years. And it's a crucial point that in those gaps, so between Einjolut and Homs, twenty one years, Homs and the Mongols returned in twelve ninety nine, eighteen years. The Mamluks spend those intervening years taking apart the Crusader State.

And this doesn't take place in some kind of epic showdown or massive battle. There's hardly any battles at all. Because the Crusader States realise that they are vastly outnumbered by the Mamlet. And so town by town, city by city, stronghold by stronghold, the Mamluks take the Crusader States apart in a series of campaigns that ultimately sees the collapse of the mainland Crusader States in twelve ninety one.

And it's interesting, isn't it, that after almost two hundred years of the Crusader states being there and of Christians having a presence in the Near East and these fluctuating periods of conflict in Crusades, that it's not some seismic battle that ends it all. It's a slow dismantling of what the Christians had and them being forced out. Uh and we don't see again, we don't see at this point a big crusading zeal in Europe, do we? Have the European Christians simply lost.

their interest? Do they not believe it's winnable anymore? Do they not see the the urgency that was there two hundred years earlier to go and reclaim Jerusalem? Yeah, so th there's a number of factors. There are a lot of calls for a major cruise, say, particularly in the twelve seventies, under the pontificate of Gregory the Tenth. But it doesn't really happen. Gregory the tenth dies at a crucial moment which causes those plans to collapse.

There's also a lot of other wars going on in Western Europe. People are preoccupied with other major conflicts, as a conflict over Sicily. England's fighting various civil wars. There's wars elsewhere. It's just it it's just not a propitious environment in which to create a new crusade. And indeed there'll be no big crusade really to the Middle East. despite major calls for crusades, the next really big army to set off for the Middle East is over a hundred years later in thirteen ninety six.

So it n no, it never really happens. And it's that ongoing infighting and the internal sort of disputes of Western Christendom's leaders that play a major part in that.

Yeah. I just find it so fascinating that it all begins in this big explosion of the first crusade. And in the end, two hundred years later, it's effectively really just a petering out. It kind of just I don't know. Crumbles is picked apart by the the mamluks, but crumbles and goes away

And there simply isn't any more crusader states and no more Christian crusading in the Holy Land really. It's a weird kind of f from all of that early activity and what the Christians must have believed was a promise that they were gonna hold the Holy Land for Christianity, they've just sort of given up two hundred years later and they realise they either can't do it or there just isn't the will to do it at all.

Well the world's very much changing. There's there's no shortage of armchair strategists. In fact there's a real sort of there's a whole genre of texts that are created after twelve ninety one where people write, if we raised an army here and we marched it there and they did this Then it could be the Crusader States could be reconstructed. There's lots of that kind of thinking. But no, there's no major crusade. And of course.

In the fourteenth century, there are other things that will make it even more difficult, things like the Great Famine early on, later on the Black Death, among other things. Not to mention the ongoing persistent churn of conflicts. The hundred years' war kicks off between England and France and it becomes adverse weather for crusading in that area.

There's quite a lot of enthusiasm for it, but it never really takes off after that. No major crusade reaches the actual Holy Land region again. So thank you very much, Nick. Uh and if people want to find out more, where can they find some of your work? Okay, yeah, so I've written a book about this whole era of history called The Mongol Storm, which is basically a history of the Middle East. in the thirteenth century told from about ten different cultural perspectives.

Uh if you're interested, I've also just finished another book which is coming out in June called The Crusader Storm. Which does a similar job for the 12th century. So it's a history of the Crusades in the Middle East in the 12th century, again told from around 10 different cultural perspectives, trying to give a rounded view to events.

and trying to show how the crusades fitted uh in and amongst everything else that's going on in this era. Brilliant. Well that's something to look forward to. Mongol Storm was absolutely incredible. So I'm very much looking forward to the Crusader Storm to accompany it.

Now listeners, don't go away. This episode isn't quite finished. We've charted the steady decline of the Crusader states in the face of terrifying Mongol incursions and a rampant Mamluk Empire. But crusading didn't stop there in twelve ninety one with the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Its effects were felt all across the medieval world and beyond for centuries to come, whilst its legacies remain contested to this very day.

So to end this epic series, explore what we've learned and unpack what the Crusades left behind, I'm delighted to be joined by Elena. Hi Elena. Hello Matt. Thanks for having me. You are always welcome. So I guess if we're gonna think about the legacies of Crusade. What we can see there is that all winds right down in about twelve ninety one.

I think i would that be fair, do you think? I think so I mean we've bro we've got kind of the eight numbered crusades. We need to throw in the all the other bits and pieces that are going on in the mix with all of that. But kind of by twelve ninety one there isn't an army that that physically goes. But that's different to the desire of particularly the papacy. We see them continue to preach crusades.

For centuries after twelve ninety one, you know, for for the whole of the fourteenth century, they would love a crusade to head to the Holy Land again. But it just becomes more and more difficult to make that happen for a number of reasons. I you can't help wondering, in amongst the many, many reasons, is the fact that it

Patently doesn't work. Yeah, I mean this is the thing is like there's a real like fool me twice, shame on you, sort of a thing happening. Fool me eight times. It fooled me eight times. Wow, I really should have learned something by now. And and this is the thing is people do. Right? People do. And eventually you are going to figure out that it doesn't seem like God is as committed to this as I am, you know, in my heart. And also, you know, really what's in it?

for the kings in question, because we've already seen how difficult it is to hold any land over there. So it's just going to be a time suck, a money suck, especially by the time you get to the 14th century, like, babes, I can't even feed my own people. How am I ever going to get over to the Holy Land? Then you have the Black Death. And how are you ever going to come up with enough people to move over there? It's like we are barely keeping the farms going right now.

So there are going to be a lot of social pressures on this concept as well. But you know, as you say, yeah, it turns out these guys are kind of smart. We thought when we talked about the causes of the Crusades, a bit about the climatic factors that are going on, the medieval warm period. We get to the end of the thirteenth century.

Also ending and we're moving towards the little ice age. So we've got the 14th century of catastrophes that you talked about, the Great Famine, the Black Death, but also there isn't that sense of comfort and abundance in Europe that there once was, which helped to feed the Crusade. So for the crusading movement, some of its some of its fodder has gone. The things that it's been living off for a couple of centuries are starting to vanish.

And I think one of the big things that's starting to vanish as well at this point in time are these specific crusading orders. I think this is an important point to get at because trouble with You know, attempting to maintain the Holy Land is wow, these guys got real rich, huh? And uh that is something that kings take note of and they exploit, right? Like this is one of the big things, like.

It's one thing if you are Richard the First and you can say, Well, how do you maintain things like that when there's like the Templars going, Hello, we're the Templars? G and everyone can say, Oh well, I'm just giving money to the Templars right now. Like why would I why would I give it to the king? Right? But then also that introduces I think King's Eyeing people like the Templars up when you have these incredibly wealthy groups of individuals who

again, aren't even really able to do their jobs. Right? They've been spectacularly successful. They've created what we would probably call today a multinational company. You know, they're almost like a medieval Amazon. They are everywhere and they will deliver to your door if you give them money for it. They are creating banking systems across Western Europe. They are controlling money and the movement of funds. They are in the ear of monarchs and nobles across Europe, in a way that

the Templar Order was never designed to be. And as you say, people are looking at them. Anyway, I think people like Philip the Fourth in France, he wants their money. And and and this is the thing, right? They've been pushed out of the Holy Land. Here they are like in in Cyprus. Here they are kind of like a falling back into Tripoli further and further again. And Is it true that they aren't really doing the thing that they want? Yes.

But it's also true that then if you are Philip and you start eyeing them up and you take everything away from them, then you're not going to be able to count on their largesse. on their supply lines later on if you decide to go over to the Holy Land.

Yeah, and I think Their kind of failure and their fall is in pretty stark contrast to the way that the hospital has managed to come out of the the crusading era because they don't necessarily go down that route of becoming this banking group. They're not this multinational corporation that are in European countries getting involved in politics and stuff there. They manage to position themselves much more as

Almost a frontier of of Christendom. And that seems to serve them, that they're saying we will hold this line. And I think that that is really canny, right? Because if what we're saying is, yeah, sorry, lads, looks like the Holy Land's a bit of a non starter, what you can do is at least say, Well, we are the line, right? We are the wall that is holding back. the theoretical hordes of Gog and Magog, right? Where the Templars are falling back to to Cyprus.

The hospitals are falling back to Rhodes until they get pushed out of there by the Ottomans in the sixteenth century, and then they'll fall back to Malta. And you know, they'll be on Malta till Napoleon gets rid of them at the the end of the eighteenth century, which is God bless'cause a weird flex from Napoleon. What you why why are you feeling the need to demolish the hospitals? Bokföringen försvinner inte. Men huvudverken gör det. Lundify ger dig mer lugn. Utan krångel. Testa lugund i färg.

En ny serie på Sky Showtime. Let him try to find a new beginning. Nästa kapitel i Casey Duttens berättelse. Casey, det är med Marshals. Från medskaparen av Yellowstone. I know that sometimes good men have to do bad things. Martials. A Yellowstone story. Strima nu på. How up with sky show time. But they seem to manage to do what the Templars are.

Couldn't do. Whether the Templars have got overconfident, forgotten what they're about, I don't know. But like I say, I I think the hospitals do this really interesting thing of of saying we will maintain this front line and just leave us alone. Yeah, but I mean speaking of this front line that they are maintaining

Big part of what they're arguing they're maintaining is a line against our good friends the Ottomans. And it is true that at this point in time, you know, we've had the Seljuk Turks before. This is like

Too Turk, too furious, we got Ottomans now, and uh they will go on to be like the major power in Asia Minor for quite some time. And it's quite striking how close that mirrors the events leading up to the first crusade in that you've got this sudden Turk threat on the the edges of Christendom that forces them to become mobilised.

appealing from Byzantium anymore, but it's that same sort of notion a and uh you know at the end of the the fourteenth century, a hundred years after we've said we think crusading has really ended. There is What fifteen thousand men?

who march out to try and f fight against the Ottomans, they don't do a very good job of it. Does not go well. And yet for some reason that's not it's not called a crusade. It's not numbered as a crusade. We don't think of it as a as a continuation of the crusading period. I don't know whether At this point are we much more openly acknowledging that this is far more to do with land and territory than it is to do with religion?

I think that is a big part of it, right? Because it's not as though we aren't going to see a bunch of crusades happening at the same time. that are m largely European, you know, because Listen, go ask the Teutonic Knights what they're doing up in the Baltic right now, and they'll say, Oh, that's a crusade. And you can still see, I think, the Roman church in its arrogance and its conviction that of its own superiority and correctness.

You know, when Tamilane emerges to try and rebuild the Mongol Empire, he stops the Ottomans in their tracks and it looks for a little while like the Mongols are back in a Chinggis Khan kind of way. Oh yeah. And what does Rome do? A preacher crusade against Tamileth. Which good luck. I mean, like, I swear to God, like yeah, hearing this all the stories about like the piles of skulls as thrones, and they're like

Yeah guys, I think that uh we really stand a chance. Uh it should be absolutely fine. Yeah. But and you do still see crusading rhetoric. You know, carrying on into the the early modern period. Because the the Ottomans are now on the borders of the Habsburgs lands. But again,

Crusading rhetoric is used. People are willing to pull it out of the drawer when they want money because you crusade a big crusading tax. Give us loads of money and we'll go and fight the Ottomans who are about to breach our borders and and head into your lands. But it never ever works still, does it? And and again, are we stuck with this idea that this is no longer about this isn't Rome, this isn't Western Christendoms over in France worried about what's happening thousands of miles away.

We're seeing Habsburgs being concerned that their Ottoman neighbours might be about to take their land. And and everybody is thinking I know what you're doing. Well and of course they do, right when you're saying you said it yourself. Like these French people aren't like oh what's going on thousands of miles away.

French people are like, ha ha, stick it to the Habsburgs. I mean Francis the First of France is one of the first to be like, nah, I'm I'm in it with them, right? Which would be unthinkable. Let's say you if you went back a few hundred years and you explained that France would side with the Ottoman Turks. against the rest of Western Christendom and Eastern Christendom.

People would be utterly bemused. I would France have even existed? Would they have allowed France as a a country to exist if it had been doing that? It's a it's a bizarre situation that completely undermines the idea that any of this is crusading because you've got The most Christian king. So we've been talking about Western Christian efforts to retake the Near East, the Holy Land, the Eastern Mediterranean.

Crusading elsewhere, the idea of fighting people whose religious beliefs aren't the same as yours in principle, does continue in other places. Yeah, I mean I think probably first off the top of our heads we could talk about what's going on on the Iberian Peninsula, for example. And granted, you know, we've done innumerable episodes about uh what is going on, you know, with El Seed and situations like this.

It's not clear cut. It's not like, oh, it's Christians versus Muslims. It's Muslims versus Christian. Who knows who's controlling Astorias at any given moment? Who's controlling Granada? Who's to say, right? But we do eventually have the situation by the time we get to the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, where fundamentally The last Muslim kingdoms are destroyed. Was there a bunch of back and forth? Yes.

And now we often call this the Reconquista. I don't like to call it the Reconquista because Franco came up with that, and I don't like fascists. But fundamentally, this is kind of a situation wherein Christians did eventually say, look. I don't need to go all the way. Like you know, it's it's that old joke. Uh, you know, we've we've got Muslims at home. You know, like we're not going all the way to the Middle East in order to fight them. We can do it right here, you know.

And this does culminate in a pretty big success on Ferdinand and Isabella's part. Uh do I think that they were bad people? Yes. Uh, do I like the Spanish Inquisition? No. But it is like one of those big that's an early modern success story, baby. Like, you know, you create a huge kingdom out of what had been ten medieval kingdoms before. Um and you say, and now also because we control it, we can also enforce what the religion is. Imagine telling

A medieval person. Oh, yeah, yeah. There's only one uh one state on the Iberian Peninsula, and also they control what the religion is. You know, people would be shocked by that in the medieval period, the idea that such a huge amount of land could be under

control of one dynasty and that you could actually get rid of all of the Jewish and Muslim people. It it just wouldn't commute. Yeah. Uh and the the Iberian Peninsula is something that, you know, the Umayyads arrive in the south of Iberia in the the eighth century. pretty successful there for a couple of centuries till they begin to fall apart. And again, it it's kind of this fracturing of the internal

Muslim world that begins to allow the Christians back in. And so it also overlaps the end of what we've defined as a crusading period in the terms of the Near East by a couple of centuries. And I think it is interesting that we see popes being aware of that and quite often trying to stop.

Everybody going to the Holy Land because there is also a fight to be had over here. So popes are willing to say, if you can't go to the Holy Land, here's you know a shortcut alternative. You know, you c you can use Santiago de Compostela as Jerusalem kind of thing. Because I think they're conscious that if you evacuate every night from Western Christendom and off the Iberian Peninsula.

There is another frontier there that they're having to deal with. And it it's significant, I think, that begins a couple of centuries before the Crusading era and it lasts a couple of centuries longer than the Crusading era. It's it's a much more long term effort and maybe more of an existential threat because this is on what is considered European territory than the Crusades, which almost makes it odd that popes are willing to look east rather than focusing all of their efforts here afoot.

In crusading terms, it's it's a success story. As a as if from a Christian point of view, Iberia is a success story in the way that the Near East never ever is.

And in some ways the success there kind of spawns this early modern continuation of crusading ideals when we get to the age of exploration because you think of people like Columbus and Cortez going out there. Part of what they're obsessed with doing is Christianising everybody that they meet. Yeah, absolutely. And that is specifically something that they are charged with doing.

So we have to remember that, you know, this kind of push out um west, out across the oceans, the push down into um Africa, the beginnings of this push for the wholesale chattel slavery of Africans. It is all driven by this idea of Christianizing. They don't say that there are no worlds left to conquer. They just say, oh well we did it here. Where are we going to go to next? how far do I need to go in a boat in order to continue doing

A version of holy war, a version of violence against people in order to Christianize them. And the papacy is very clear in the early modern period about all of this. These are things that are. completely acceptable under the doctrines of holy war. And that is something that I think

medieval Christians would recognize a little bit more, even if they would be kind of confused by the idea of this being a crusade, I think. Yeah. And you do see Columbus in particular, you know, some of the letters that he's writing, he's talking about all of the wealth that I'm finding, plow that into an effort to go back and take Jerusalem. So that dream still hasn't gone. And s to some extent you wonder whether that's again, flush with success on the Iberian Peninsula. They're believing

we could spearhead a new crusade. So the idea of taking back Jerusalem for Christianity hasn't gone away. And Columbus is perhaps envisaging these explorations to the New World and the gold and the silver that he's finding and everything else. specifically as a way to get Jerusalem back. It's still that is still a dream, even if it's never leads to a numbered crusade that will actually assault Jerusalem. And certainly it is going to be

At the very least a romantic gesture, I think, across the period. But I mean Can we talk a little bit about the Baltic Crusades? Oh, how can we not talk about the Baltic Crusades? I love a little bit. So the the Teutonic Knights, again, much as we talked about the hospitalers, they

far outlive the crusading period in the way that the Templars don't manage to do. And that seems to be largely because they extricate themselves from the Holy Land completely, where the hospitals are saying we will be the frontier of Christendom in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Teutonic Knights seem much happier to say, and we'll be the frontier up in the far northeast,'cause there's some pagans still here, and we can

keep them at bay and also, you know, we'll we'll push in and we'll Christianize them and by the way we might create a Teutonic state and get a kingdom out of all of this as well. But but we're gonna Christianize them Yeah, this so this is an interesting one because if we say But the Knights Templar.

are essentially a corporation. Wow, the Teutonic Knights. Like they are doing it big, you know, down to the fact that all of their castles look the same and are made out of bricks. Like they have franchises. Right. This is like the McDonalds of the crusading order, you know. You you see one, you know what it looks like. Yep, those are Teutonic Knights. And they are inching their way up into the Baltic States and

Listen, there is a lot of money to be made up there. Really, really good fur trappings. And yeah, to be fair, if like what holy war is for is Christianizing people, but these are not even people of the book. These are not even Abrahamic people. They're out here worshiping fire. Uh here worshiping a snake, I don't know, which uh to be fair I think is insanely cool. Uh and I think that there should be more fire worship. It's a shame that they actually got their weight, but

They're they're making some good points, right? This it really does count as a group of people who are honest to God pagan. And you can see in the early thirteenth century that popes are backing and sanctioning what is going on up there and they're encouraging people to go against the the pagan barbarians in the Baltic.

As the crusading effort in the Near East is faltering and becoming really problematic, because they're clearly recognizing that what the Teutonic Knights are giving us up there is a bit of a success story in amongst the mess that's happening in the Near East. And you get the Baltic Crusades and around the Teutonic Knights become a bit of a magnet for people who don't make it to the Holy Land. So y Henry Bolingbrook, the future Henry the Fourth of England, goes and cuts his teeth.

Fighting with the Teutonic Knights. You know, he goes on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but he's not there in a military capacity. He does his fighting and he earns a reputation for himself up in the Baltics with the Teutonic Knights. And so presumably he's bringing back to England stories of this frontier, but the glorious work that is being done there that that only fuels this idea that it needs to continue.

Fundamentally, like what if you're just not a hot weather person? Right? Like what if you what if you want to uh go on a holy war? It's a lot nearer by. You don't have to go and be getting sunstroke all the time. That is A frontier that exists that you can go involve yourself with. And ultimately the the Teutonic Knight.

kind of by the sixteenth century, almost become a victim of their own success in that they have Christianized all the pagans that are left there and are just running a kingdom now and they look an awful lot like a secular power and other secular powers around them are thinking, hang on.

That line could be mine. Wait a minute. How'd you do this? Where did you come from? And I mean, and that they will be a victim of their own success in that way, you know, where it's like, yeah, well what what is the point of you? Right. It's the same thing that happens to the Knights Templar. If when you run out of pagans, when eventually we do have this decline in, you know, the Baltic states of the old pagan religions, and suddenly you've just got all of these brick castles around.

Well what's the point of that, you know? And I think as the medieval period goes on as well, one of the

Maybe the most insidious developments and the one that Urban might actually frown on the most is this idea of of having crusades against other Christians within Europe. So we have Arguably one of our worst popes. is fronting this up and that is um Innocent the Third. And now the listen medieval historians, we go back and forth on this'cause on the one hand

Innocent III, he is responsible for this huge transformation of the church into a legal structure, but what does he do in order to celebrate? He goes and points that legal structure at the wrong kind of Christians, which is in this case are the good men and women of Languedoc, right? They use, the church uses the term Cathar, and in particular Bernard of Clairvaux, who goes out there to do some like inquisition work.

calls them the Cathars. They never call themselves that. They're just like, I don't know, I'm just a cool guy. Right? And what ends up happening is that they just find a bunch of people who are kind of like chilling out in the south of France and they've just got, you know, their own ideas about How things look. And that can mean, yes, that they

perhaps believe in a dualistic idea of the universe. So there's this idea that uh the physical world is uh created by Satan, God's only created the spiritual. There are no doubt some people who believe in that at the time. There are also people like Beatrice of Plansol, who appears to have wanted to shag.

A bit and so starts calling herself a heretic because that's what all the guys who are hitting on her say that she should do if she wants to do that, right? So it's a real mixed bag of people and the church goes in and absolutely massacres. We had a really interesting episode of Gone Medieval probably a couple of years ago now. We talked to Mark Gregory Pegg about the idea that that cathars didn't even exist, that there weren't

these heretics that were lurking in the caves of the Lan Doc uh and h holding themselves up in fortresses, that this was never really a religious crusade. What this was a land grab because the area that that used to be Aquitaine round the Long Dock was still kind of Considered itself far too independent was still

bucking against the control from Paris that the French kings wanted. The Pope is so in the pocket of the French kings by this point, French popes and French kings thinking we want to unify France. What's the best way to reduce these people and force them to behave? We call them heretics and we call a crusade against them. But maybe there was never any religious justification to that what this was was a political manoeuvre to solidify the state of France.

And you know, indeed, if you look at who's leading it, right? Because here we've got Simon de Montfort, right? And he is casting his eyes around and he is noticing Raymond of Toulouse's territory. And uh it's looking pretty good. It's looking pretty good. Let's be so honest and for real about that. And he is like Toulouse has always been a tricky one, hasn't it?'Cause it controls those access over the Alps to Italy. Really important trade routes.

And access to the coast. All these kinds of things that are politically important but actually have nothing to do with religion. Exactly. And you know Who doesn't want to control that? Oh come on, south of France, right? Like I'm I'm trying to take it over right now. That that's absolutely fine, right? And he's got this in because we're already saying, oh gosh, wow, it really looks like these guys are the spawn of the devil. So, you know, off he pops, and he essentially just annexed.

This entire territory. By twelve fifteen, he's got the crown of Toulouse, essentially. And it's like, what are you talking about? Like this is an incredible amount of territory to suddenly take over about a four year period. And it's massively wealthy. You know, things just grow.

Down in the south of France. Like, you know, your your peasants are living real good and nice, to the point that you can terrorize a bunch of'em, massacre them all, and there's still going to be enough people to bring the harvest in. And essentially that's what the Simon is able to do here. Because Simon is swearing Fealty to the king of France for this territory that he's now taken, and the French king is thinking, right, job done, that's under my control. And they've kind of

boxed it up and put a bow on it and called it a crusade. It's an interesting legacy that that people are still processing things in terms of crusading that we can position this as a way to do it or I need to emulate these things and if there isn't a crusade in town, I'm gonna have to find something and call it a crusade or try and make it a crusade. Oh yeah. And listen

There's gonna be a few of those, right? So for example, the papacy is constantly doing it against uh m our homeboy, Frederick II. And all of his, you know, descendants as well. And there are good reasons for this. I mean, they are controlling a lot of territory around the Papal States. The Papal States don't love being sandwiched between the Holy Roman Empire and some more Holy Roman Empire. That's usually not something that they have to deal with.

And so basically anytime one of Frederick the Seventh's grandsons gets a little out of control, they're like, Oh, that's crazy. Guess what? it's a crusade. Especially after the success with the Albigension Crusade, you know? Yeah. And and we talked a bit when we thought about the causes of the Crusade, about this idea of the church wanting to

reposition itself a and refocus its secular authority. And you can almost still see that happening. They're still in this dispute with the Holy Roman Emperors about who is the real secular power. A and that fight is still going on and the church is still willing to frame that as a crusade, even though you're now talking about the Holy Roman Emperor, you know, the Christian Emperor of the former Roman Empire.

We can have a crusade against him now because he's and it's almost like it's it's become an overused tool for popes to say I don't like you, crusade. Like grow up, bro. Like that is that is not that is not a reason to call a crusade. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Like you're just throwing that term around now. It's just like you can't just because you wanna do it, you can't just say that it's a crusade, right?

And I I think another aspect of maybe the legacies of the crusade that we should think about is the formation of some of the institutions and the structures that will become Western states that are recognizable to us today. You know, you think of Richard the Lionheart famously didn't care about England, just used it to raise money.

But there's a reason that he's able to do that, because the structures are being created to allow something like the salad in tithe to be put in place. He has the administration that can go out and collect a tenth of what everybody has. And that's important because he needs it for the Crusades. Louis the Ninth, when he Oof. Doesn't do very well. Um but he he understands his failure in terms of his own sin and the sin of his kingdom. So he comes home with this reforming zeal

to to redesign and restructure France to drive out corruption and to create this much more centralized state. So almost the legacy of the Crusades is the institutionalization, the increased centralization of authority in States that will become what we recognize in Europe today England, France, Germany. For me, Venice is like one of the real legacies of the crusade and the fact that they are able

to get enough money and power together that they have their own empire, right? And that is pretty much down to the Crusades and the fact that everyone is specifically going through Venice. They're looking to Venice to build ships for them. They are looking to Venice to provide instruments of credit, which is one of the only ways kind of around the idea that you shouldn't be charging interest. There Venice is like, Oh, but what oh, but I'm just a little guy.

With a ship and the church is like, Oh yeah, what's it for? Oh, it's for the Crusades. Okay, yeah, fine. Fine. I guess that you are allowed to charge interest. And so this really is going to set them up as an incredible power Into, well into the early modern period. And, you know, also I would argue to a certain extent that is. the model that the Templars are using.

A bit is this Venetian thing, like how are you getting to and from places? You're going to need a banking system that is going to lend you credit. You are going to need to think about how your travel plans work. So I think certainly the the Templars are a really important part of the Crusades. I don't necessarily mean as crusaders, but I mean as an institution within Europe. And I guess one of the other places we need to think about the legacy of the Crusades is

what was Byzantium. Mhm. The First Crusade is kicked off in no small part because the Byzantine Empire calls for help from other Western Christians And they very cynically never deliver that. They go off and do something very different. We've seen the Fourth Crusade, sack Constantinople. And ultimately I I won does the crusading period weaken the Byzantine Empire? By failing to support it, does it weaken it sufficiently that the Ottomans are then able to take it?

I would say yes. Thank you. Uh thanks for going to my TED talk. Uh yeah, I I mean I do I think that you're you're really on to something here. Because ultimately, what is Byzantium for? if it isn't actually, you know, one of the big hallmarks of Christendom, if it isn't this important outpost of Romanness and Christianity. If not even other Christians respect that, then that takes away a lot of the shine and it

lessens their ability to argue for themselves, I think, as a polity. Yeah. And because they're concerned about fighting on their eastern front and initially the Seljuk Turks, but then they will also face threats from a more cohesive Muslim presence in the Near East, and then the Mongols will arrive as well.

But they don't only have to worry about that on their eastern front, because not only are they not getting the support they really want from Western Christendom, but Western Christendom is actually eyeing them. You know, who who breaches the walls of Constantinople that are unbreachable? It's Western Christians. It is not an a Muslim army.

that gets through those walls, it's Latin Christians. But I think that one of the big things that does happen with Latin Christians, if what we're thinking about is the legacy of Crusades, is they do become a bit more aware. Of what is going on, certainly in in Central Asia. You know, suddenly Mongols are not just

like a theoretical something that is happening out near India, right? And uh granted that's because uh some of them show up in Hungary, etcetera. Uh but, you know, also the it's the this idea that there can be these diplomacies there is this idea of, oh, there are knock on effects when Mongols move around, then other people move around. Oh, what's a momluke? You know, these become

things that people are really aware of in Europe. And so you do get an interesting interplay of cultural exchange as a result of that. Yeah. And I think cultural exchange is one of the things that is quite tricky for us to pin down in terms of is this a legacy of crusading or is this something that would have happened anyway as people come into contact with each other more increasingly. Because what we do see initially after the first contact of crusading armies in the Holy Land is this.

what Christians will call the rediscovery of things that Muslims knew were never lost. uh and this this ancient Roman and Greek philosophy and learning that begins to plow back into Europe and is being translated into Latin. And this idea of a a renaissance period in Europe then being fuelled by the crusading. And I guess it's hard it definitely has an impact, but is that just because of crusading or would that have happened anyway as

trade happened and as people just lived next to each other for long enough. Maybe it happens faster. Maybe the crusades cause it to happen in a in a smash rather than a smooth process. But there is nevertheless this big cultural exchange that goes on during this period. And and I guess before we finish, you know, do we want to think about the modern legacies of crusading as it exists in the the world today, which

Let's be frank, can be a tricky conversation to have, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have it. Yeah, like I do I wanna think about it? No. Am I forced to every day? Yes. Because I think you know, especially in kind of like the nineteenth century, um and the early twentieth century in particular, there comes about this really kind of silly and simplistic way of talking about the Crusades, which is there's the whole clash of civilizations thing.

You know, th this idea that, oh, the Muslims and Christians have always been at war with each other. Look at the Crusades and it's like, baby, what do you mean by Christian? What do you mean by Muslim? What does any of this mean? Right? It's and that is extrapolated from especially when we see things like, you know, um the friction between, for example. Yeah, again the Ottoman Turks and and and us in World War One, you know, whatever has happened more recently um in, you know, the Muslim world.

you know, with like the rise of Wahhabism and these ideals of uh, you know, more pointed cultural friction, I suppose. But you really can't look. at the medieval crusades in any honesty and and think that that is true. Like

Honestly. No, I I think this revival that happens in the nineteenth century, it's no coincidence that it happens around the same time as imperialism. And we've talked a lot about how crusading can be repurposed for political and territorial gain. And I think that's what's happening In the nineteenth century people are positioning things as crusades that aren't

And I think it's interesting that that right up to the modern day, you think there's examples all the way through the twentieth century of things that are framed as a crusade, was the Second World War a crusade against Nazism. It becomes A word that is used to describe any struggle against something that you consider to be bad. You know, we governments have a crusade to build housing. Is that a crusade?

Listen, I think that I'm gonna steal your point because I've heard you say this and I think it's such a good one. You know, when you use the word crusade, it is essentially interchangeable with the word jihad. And uh would you go around throwing that around in the same way?

Just a question. I mean a j a jihad has several meanings as well that that crusade simply doesn't. It can be about the internal struggle for a Muslim to be a better Muslim, as well as the external one, and that external one can be divided into to a a political approach and a military approach. But we tend to think of the word jihad meaning the Islamic military efforts against other religions.

And it's almost like we use crusading to be a good thing, but we never use the word jihad to mean a good thing. And I think I think a lot of particularly Western Christian people associate jihad with being a bad thing. Listen, ask any of the Christians who are living in Antioch during the siege how they feel about crusaders is all I would say, you know.

Well, I think this has been a fairly fascinating exploration of some of the legacies of Crusade, which are I mean, that they're immediate, but they're also persistent. They exist into today, don't they? We've seen so many different ways in which crusading and the crusading attitudes have shaped. huge parts of the world right up until today. Absolutely. I don't think that there is any way to understand our world without understanding.

the Crusades as a whole. It's just that there's so much to see there. I don't know if we'll ever really get to the bottom of it, which is why we can continue having fun conversations like this.

Wow, we made it. Our odyssey through the history of the Crusades has come to an end. From the fields of Claremont in ten ninety-five to the ruins of Acre in twelve ninety-one, we've traced nearly two centuries of faith, ambition, slaughter, and catastrophe. We've seen how a movement born of pilgrimage, piety, and papal reform exploded into the First Crusade. How fragile Crusader kingdoms were carved out and contested by kings, queens, and sultans.

How crusading unraveled before the walls of Constantinople, and how, in the end, forces far beyond Western Europe swept the Crusader states from the Eastern Mediterranean altogether. If there's one thing this journey has shown us, it's that the Crusades were never simply a clash of civilizations, pitting Muslims against Christians. They were a tangled web of politics, a diplomatic chess game, a commercial opportunity, and a medical.

Thank you so much for listening and joining us on this ride. And thanks to Dr. Nicholas Morton again for joining me earlier in this episode. If you want to find out more, then do go and pre-order his new book, The Crusader Storm, a global history of the wars for the Middle East. And if this series has wetted your appetite, you can dive back into our back catalogue where we've explored everything from the Albigensian Crusade to the campaigns of the Teutonic Knights and the Rise of Saladin.

There are new instalments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back and join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval.

You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Head over to historyhit.com forward slash subscribe right now. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt. And we've just gone medieval with history here. Amazon's print deal Med grymma erbjudanden så Johan kan passa på att fynda. Göm från alla sina vårdssysslor. Det er en verd! Dags å finne elektronik, outdoor hand...

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