Meaning a man like this man letting butterfly flapping his wing. They've down in a force. Man, it gonna cause the tree fall, letting five thousand miles away. Man, nobody see nobody else.
You see.
You don't need no Man, don't they like you? Follow another story and.
You got back. That's the way. Man, don't blackly not on the panel. Man, you don't don't matter. Man. Known.
History is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. History and identity are rough synonyms, and so it's no shock that in this era, when identity is under assault from all angles, well history is two. Now. There are a number of ways in which specific identities are under attack. The identity of Christian, the identity of European, the identity of white, the identity of male. All of these things
are being deliberately deconstructed, turned into dust. But we have to understand that this process has gone on for a long time, right well before the kind of most recent, most egregious examples. And I think it's important to well ponder why at least one example or one angle of this is capitalism in and of itself. It is difficult to sell to differentiated people, but if everyone's basically the same. If you are not a Christian, you were not a European,
you are not a man. You are simply a consumer, one of many fungible, unindividuated units. You can be moved from anywhere to anywhere to perform any task. You have been turned into a gear in the machine. And these gears, these fungible pieces, they don't have a hiss and have an identity. They don't have a story about why their ancestors, why their culture is different or unique. Now that's part of it, but we understand some of this is malice.
A large portion of this is deliberate desire to destroy the true, the good, and the beautiful. And when we are re examining certain bits of history, certain bits of our cultural narrative, there are certain pieces that are especially controversial. Obviously World War Two, the sort of founding religious narrative of the current instantiation of the World Empire, but also
the civil rights movement. There's been an interesting move, first on the radical fringes and now closer and closer to the center of the conservative movement to re examine MLK. That is effectively an argument over history. What is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves, where we rescued from hundreds of years of irredeemable darkness by this August and
wise civil rights leader and religious scholar. Or was this a con Was this a cultural revolution with a puppet head who lied and stole and horrid around at the head. That's the fight, And obviously some of it is scholarly, some of it is a description of what actually happened. But in a broader context, it is a claim about value,
a claim about faith. There are other examples the United States Civil War, which has been reinterpreted in the last several decades, but also American figures like Andrew Jackson, who in his time was a liberal has now looked back on as a vast murderer in the same line as Cortes. Another part of that is the Crusades. And today's episode
is the second in my series on the Crusades. The first one I and when I say I, I mean my guest, I don't know anything about the Crusades, at least not enough to put on an hour of content. Was on the first. This next one with guests who's I'm really excited for you guys to listen to. It's about the third and in that we see the men as they were, the history of honorable men fighting it
out for God, for country, and for glory. But that narrative has been twisted, and it's been twisted at least recently, in two ways. The first is the most obvious, the woke stuff. Right, you are the descendant of bloodthirsty murderers, men who killed women, children, non combatants for no reason at all after they had surrendered. You are the descendant of vile imperialists who journeyed across the world. Clearly, this is not honest. This is a lie. This is a
desire to justify current actions taken against you. Well, even if you didn't do anything, your ancestors did so it's fair karmic if you will, your dispossession. But on the other side, the narrative of the crusader of dais fault has been used since buy to be blunt American zionists. American zionists, if you will, put scare quotes around that to justify stupid foreign wars. You were not journeying halfway
around the world to fight for another nation. You are participating in this long civilizational duty to push back the hordes of Saracens or Hodgi's or Taliban and we need to continue the fight. The same language is used often in the UK right the counter Jihad of Tommy Robinson and others. And sure, I don't particularly like the Taliban. I do not like Muslim immigration into Europe. But the question, of course is why why are you bringing up that trope? Are you doing it to inspire the men of that
nation to clean house? Are you doing it to inspire men to take action? I was going to use another word there, but you too, is watching right? Or is it to motivate you to fight on someone else's behalf?
To fight on behalf of the Judeo Christian worldview. That's why I think that this series is important as a corrective, but also because the foundation of civilization is hero worship is looking at the men who came before you in your line, either literally or figuratively, and strive to imitate them.
Great men, men who did courageous things, who defied the odds, who threw themselves into the fray, trusted to their arms and to their God to save them, and they were rewarded for it with glory, with honor, and with victory. And this is a long, long tradition of hero worship. You have Julius Caesar weeping in front of a bust of Alexander, I will never be that great, Washington comparing
himself to Cincinnatis Lee comparing himself to Washington. All of these men looked to the great men of history and strove to imitate them. Even Christian, of course, or little Christ. Well, what is that? It is a life of imitation of the greatest man, the greatest hero, possibly the man who slew death. This is how humans conceptualize themselves. That story you tell about yourself, that story you tell about the men you strive to imitate. It's what we've always done.
It is how we, traditionally speaking, learned. Back when education meant to anything, we had a truly liberal education. A large part of it was copying the rhetoric, the speeches, memorizing them, delivering them of great men. You learned to be a good rhetorician by memorizing Cato, by understanding how he used his words. You learned to be a fighter by looking at the military successes of the greatest generals the world has ever seen. You learned to be a
saint by copying the lives of the saints. This is fundamental and this is why these men matter, both because they are ours, right, they created the world we lived in. There is a line connecting them to us, but also because if we are to be better, and unfortunately we must, well, this is how you do. Thomas Carlyle wrote a book about this, one of my favorites heroism. Well, shoot, I'll just look it up on Heroes, hero worship, and the
heroic and history. And in this book, which is where we get that phrase, the great Man Theory of History, he tracks seven of these great men, include such disparate figures as Cromwell, Mohammed, Martin Luther and others. And he isn't making a sectarian point that you should like Mohammed and therefore become a Muslim, or you should like Martin Lutheran become a Lutheran. But what he's saying is each of these men, at some in some way in their life had a supreme virtue, a virtue that ought to
be imitated. That by learning about them we can become like them, We can copy a little bit of their greatness. And in a time where greatness scenes very distant, when our heroes seem very dim, and there is a deliberate desire to recontextualize, to say Alexander was not a great man. He was simply a homosexual Nepo baby or Napoleon was simply a simp, right, a man controlled by women. A desire to focus on the nastiest, most irrelevant, the most kind of venial aspects of great men, to pull them
into the mud. Well, that ought to be fought against, because that sort of civilizational acid masquerades is honesty, masquerades as realism. But what it is is it's poison. It destroys that line, that history, that narrative we tell about ourselves. It turns it to dust all of a sudden. You were not a man in a line, You were not connected to a tradition, tradition that you owe certain piety to,
that you owe a certain respect to. Well, if they were all horrible, evil, racist philanderers, I owe them nothing. They're great victories. Well they're not really so great. It was simply trends and forces, simply the role of the die. Well, then I'm not inadequate. There's nothing wrong with me, because no one is really great. Fundamentally, it is equality, It is egalitarianism taken to its logical conclusion. It's that Harrish
and de bergeron right. The idea to run around with a hammer and smash the good looking so they don't offend the ugly, the idea to put the put the short unstilts and the tall and no shoots at all, so that everyone can be exactly the same. And it's no shock that the people most interested in this project are the most craven, the most uninteresting, the most villainous, to use that term in archaic sense. But the modern works just as well, because there is a sense of inferiority. Well,
why have I not accomplished what Alexander did? Why have I not accomplished what Richard the Lionheart did? Be something wrong with me? I can't be broken in some way, I can't bear any responsibility for the situation I find myself in. So they must be torn down. This sort of spite for beauty, the spite for the heroic, we see echoed again and again and again, and let's be honest,
another part of its civilizational sour grapes. You know, if your society never invented the wheel, didn't invent a written language, you could understand the impulse right, the desire to minimize the great men of history, and I think it's important to take that attack blunted right, to say no, these men were honorable, these men were great, They did amazing things,
They were heroes. We ought to emulate them, and also right to completely and totally demolish this sort of narrative of eternal synesism, that no man could have done something dangerous for a principle, no man could have done something dangerous, gone on an adventure for anything other than the most base reasons. And I think that's hard for us. It is we live in a time of merchants, right, a time where currency were tender, or wealth is seen as
the highest virtue. And to look back into a time we're sure men were greedy and were venial, men had
their passion, but there was sincere belief. There were men who knew they were going to their deaths and nonetheless conducted themselves bravely, because that stirs the spirit of any man worth is salt right to see someone willingly bearing great risk, not for their own benefit as mercenaries, but because they believed they owed something to their tradition, to their creator, to God itself, which was much higher, much more important than any kind of personal enrichment. And that's
why I think the Third Crusade is worth discussing. One because it is one of those narrative turning points, one of those cracks in the current facidy the current narrative, but also because it's a great opportunity to witness that sort of heroism I explained earlier. So without further ado, I think it's best to start this episode before I get into it. Of course, this episode is brought to you by my sponsors and cuns Fox and Sons. Excuse me.
Coffee code Jay Burden. You get I know, fifteen percent, I think some percent off. I drink it every day. It's pretty good. The guy who runs it is a friend, so be sure to check that out. He's my code. Coffee's good. I try to Ethiopian. I highly recommend it. And also, as you guys know by now, it's what I do. You want to support me. It's like twenty some cents an hour less than that. Now that I'm doing these monologues, you should check it out. You don't
have to listen to annoying ads. You get the episodes early and so I appreciate it. Anyway, here's the show the first obviously, and I realize this is slightly out out of the scope of what specifically I told you to research, but if you could quickly, could you provide a kind of generalized context to the Third Crusade?
Right?
What happens before? How do we get to this conflict?
All right? So excuse me. So there's the Second Crusade, which I'm not an expert in and we don't have to go into, but it happened several decades prior to the Third Crusade. Essentially, after the First Crusade, most everybody goes home. A handful of people stay and they sort
of create the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Crusader States the Muslim world over the course of the decades, begins to sort of unify, take them as a serious threat, and starts to pressure them some more, eventually leading to the calling of the Second Crusade, which is, I would say, to sum it up, a relative failure. Everybody goes home.
From that, the kingdom sort of has increased. Infighting within the nobles of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Crusader States, and an priest unifying of the Muslim world, which eventually
unifies for the most part under Saladin. The way that that happens for the Kingdom of Jerusalem is that Baldwin fourth is made king, and after he's made king, they discover he has leprosy, which means that he can't marry, can't have a legitimate heir, and that he's His condition worsens pretty quickly, so he realizes he's going to die pretty soon. So he's trying to find essentially a successor
for himself. He's trying to abdicate. He invites Western lords to come over and visit the Kingdom of Jerusalem so he can offer them the kingdom. He would like to abdicate. He'd like to have an orderly succession. He's just not able to make it happen. Essentially before he dies. He of Lusignan, who is originally a knight from Poatu under
Henry the second Richual Lionhardt's father. He ends up getting exiled from Platu and making his way to Kingdom of Jerusalem, eventually coming the King of Jerusalem by marrying Baldwin's sister Sibyla. That's very contentious because he's very unpopular. It kind of seems like he's somewhat incompetent, although maybe we're in hindsight
we're giving we're a little hard on him. But essentially that leads to him and the nobles responding to the increased threat by Saladin, which culminates in the Battle of Hateen the destruction of the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. What happens then is Saladin starts quickly taking other castles in the area. So when Saladin had originally invaded, which led to the calling of the army under Ghee and
the rest of the nobles. Essentially the Crusader states had survived by having this network of castles, and they would They didn't really want to fight out in the open too much. They preferred to travel the castle kind of maintain their area by using the castles as these sort of fortifications that the Saracens couldn't They couldn't really breach them, and they couldn't meet them in open combat close up.
But the Saracen army was mounted archers or mounted light cavalry, which could skirmish very well, fight them from a distance, harass them for long periods of time, or if you caught them out in the open, you could kind of surround them, and you know, they could surround you and
keep you from supplies and things like that. So essentially you got into this sort of a rock paper scissors dynamic which the Crusaders could win in a close quarter fight, and they could win if they stayed in their castles, but they didn't want to get caught too far out in the open. And that's essentially what happened to the
Battle of Hateen. And so Saladin, over the course of fighting Baldwin and Ghee, sort of develops this strategic idea of how to essentially lure the Crusaders out into the open, which he does at a Hiteen and destroys the army. And now normally the Crusader states had an adequate defense because they had garrisons of men, but most everybody got called up into the army, and so when Saladin wins at the Battle of Hateen, most of the remaining castles
don't have much of a garrison. The problem with that is that if somebody shows up to besiege your castle, you're relying on having an adequate number of men to defend the castle, and you're also relying on what would happen in previous times is that if Saladin showed up to besiege one castle, the army would get called up from garrisons and the remaining castles that would come to the relief and so then you know, they would be trying to essentially catch Saladin's army or the besieging army
in between the relief army and the defenders of the castle, and you know, sandwich them and squash them. But that doesn't work if you're you know, the remaining castles have no garrisons, so a lot of the towns, a lot of the castles essentially surrendered pretty quickly, and Saladin, in order to take advantage of this, allowed them to surrender and basically shipped all of them off to the city of Tire, which is sort of in the very north
of the King of Jerusalem. So he's going through and essentially capturing all these castles and just shipping everybody off, you know, to make a quick deal. He's shipping everybody off to the city of Tire. Conrad of Montfarat shows up at the City of Tire kind of at the same time as Saladin has captured everything except for the city of Tire, and Conrad of Montfarat is not about to let him take the city of Tire and mounts
a very stout defense. So Saladin he ends up having some internal politics to go take care of, so he kind of just leaves the city of Tire for the time being. Gi of lusin On shows up again after being defeated, captured, imprisoned, and released to the city of Tire and you know, and says, hey, I'm the rifle King of Jerusalem when you let me in. But Conrad of Montferat is not having any of that either and
doesn't let him in. So Ghi of Lusignan takes his followers and decides that he really doesn't have many other options. He's just going to go besiege the city of Acre, and so he marches down the coast with I guess a few hundred people or maybe a thousand, something like this, and just starts besieging the city of Acre, which Saladin
sort of doesn't treat very seriously at the beginning. But this sort of beachhead in the city of Tire and then gee sort of beginning the siege of Acre is what begins the whole thing, and the Siege of Acre is one of the largest, most culturally diverse sieges in medieval history, ends up going on for I believe, almost about three years and attracts princess nobles from all over Western Europe and of course many throughout the Muslim world as well, and so that ends up developing into sort
of one of the key the starting point and one of the key features of the Third Crusade.
So you've done a masterful job of setting the stage right for the Third Crusade. So as far as I understand, and I'm not an expert in this, but we see just before the Third Crusade is launched a cessation of hostilities between England and France correct at least temporarily, and then both of those men, so I can see I've got that partially wrong. I'm curious what happens there, right, because we have the respective monarchs of two warring nations.
Well, so I wouldn't say that they were at war. There's a very complicated relationship between England and France at that time, and England should be really described more as the Antelin Empire because it began with Henry the Second, which is Richard Lionheart's father, and he ends up inheriting Normandy and Anjou and not Platsu. That's that's part of
his mother's Aquitaine. He marries Eleanor of Aquitaine, so he inherits Aquitaine, and he inherits England from his mother, so England and Normany from his mother Andrew from his father, and then he marries Eleanor and gets aquitained, so he actually control a huge area, actually way more than the King of France. So he's technically the King of England and a vassal of the King of France at the same time, which causes the King of France to I'm I'm a Plantagenet fan, if you will, a fan of
you know, Henry and Richards. So you know, you could take what I say on this with a grain of salt, but it triggers, in my opinion, some real insecurities in the King of France. Who is louis the always mix these guys up seventh Phillip the Second's father, I believe sixth or seventh, And basically it starts this. It's not really a war so much as they're sort of the King of France is always sort of trying to use his royal power to take an edge off of, you know,
the Plantagenet ruler. And at the same time, the Plantagenet ruler sort of can't. He can't handle he can't tolerate any sort of disrespect or lack of status in his own right. You know, he's a king in his own right. So they sort of have this bickering. I suppose maybe you could call it. It doesn't quite until the end of Richard's reign. It doesn't quite erupt into what I would say is like a full blown war, but there it's very contentious, I would say. So.
Also, we have the death of a pope, correct, we have Urban the third dies in late eleven eighty seven, and the new Pope, Gregory the eighth, as far as I understand, puts out a proclamation basically sort of beating the war drums. So I'm not at all to say I'm not an expert on medieval history as an understatement. Even that being said, I know less about twelfth century Catholic politics than I do about the Middle Ages writ large.
So if you could, could you explain what was the how did Rome view these the Crusades r What were they sort of striving to get out of them? Was it genuine piety and interest in reclaiming the Holy land? Or was there were there other reasons that this was sort of what you did at the time.
Well, there's a lot of theories, I suppose, and I think this is maybe a good time to mention that in talking about medieval history in particular, but I think probably any historical period, you kind of have to be able to hold these figures and their lives and motivations in a paradoxical state, because you can't say that they
were completely pious and only pious. But you also can't say that they were completely cynical or complete machiavelians, or they were only concerned with materialistic matters, or they were only you know, they were only ascetics who were concerned with spiritual matters. There's a huge variety of motivations and things that worked together. I mean, you'll hear, of course, a variety of theories from people who latch onto maybe
one thing or the other. One that I find I think particularly funny is where they say, well, there's just a surplus the young men, and they just needed they just need all these young violent guys to go somewhere instead of fighting each other. So they called a crusade, and that's a pretty big stretch in my opinion. I think they were pious. I think they were genuine, and I think that, you know, I think it's hard to
make a lot of materialistic arguments for the crusades. Maybe you can for the pope or for you know, Catholicism generally that hey, it's it's better for us to have our Christian you know, it's better to have our Christian leaders fighting the rulers of foreign religions rather than fight each other. I mean, you can, I think that's reasonable that I'm sure that that crossed somebody's mind at some point.
But for the rulers themselves, it's pretty hard to make a cynical or machiavellian a very practical argument, which this is something that comes up. You know. I'm sort of one of Richard the Lionheart's strongest soldiers on X and every time I post about them, you know, I get all kinds of people in the comments. All he cared about was adventure, All he cared about was conquest. All he wanted to do was fight, And are.
Those strikes against him. I mean, even if it's true, you know, that's hardly the mark of an uninteresting man.
But sorry, right, yeah, well, but they're trying to sort of they're trying to be reductive about how great of a ruler he was, or how great of a king he was, or something like that, that he only cared about fighting, or he only he just wanted to go
on adventures or these types of things. It's really hard, I think if you look at the history, I think it's really hard to make those kinds of arguments in a way that where you're not just being silly, because if Richard just cared about conquest, he would have just conquered France. It was right there, Like, there's kind of no reason to travel two thousand miles away to go conquer places that he I mean, you have to sort
of transport yourself back to medieval times. How's he going to hold England and the king of Jerusalem or the island of Cyprus at the same time. That's a logistical nightmare. It's takes eight weeks or something for a letter to get from one place to the other. How are you going to govern anything? And the king is expected to be where a conflict is happening in order to resolve
the conflicts. So he's if you were going to be conquering things two thousand miles away, what's the expectation that you're going to somehow go there when there's a problem and then come back here when there's a problem. And it's completely ridiculous. So, you know, there's a lot. All of this is to say that there's a variety of motives, and I think I think that generally they were very
pious and genuine believers. You know, at the Siege of Acre, Ambrose, who's one of the primary chroniclers who was there, he wrote that at the end of the Siege of Acre that five hundred prominent land owning nobles had died at the Siege of Acre. I mean, these are guys, these are five hundred of the richest men in Western Europe. You know, these guys didn't have and what they got for going on crusade was just dying in a foreign land,
probably unpleasantly of disease, most of them. So you know this, and after the first Crusade too, I mean people knew this. It's not like after the first Crusade, you know, I mean, before the first crusade, they had ideas of what was going to happen, and most of them in the charters that they left, they thought they were going to die, and that's what they wrote. It is like, you know, here's my will, here's what I want you to do when I die. I'm going to recapture Jerusalem, and you know,
probably I will die. They basically just wrote that, and many of them did. The fatality rate on the first crusade I think is estimated somewhere around fifty is, you know, half to two thirds probably died, and they knew that. I mean, it was an incredible as you know you discussed, there was lots of starvation, lots of them died, and most of them went back empty handed afterwards. So I don't think that any of them were under any illusions that this was like how you get rich, this is
how you're going to get more land. Like there's no real material for rulers in particular, there's no real material gain for going on crusade, So I think it's really hard to attribute materialistic motives to them. I will add.
I will add briefly, Uh, crusading was in a way after the first crusade somewhat expected of rulers that they because essentially, you know, the first Crusade, what they wrote after it happened was that that was essentially the third most the third most incredible event that had ever happened after the creation of the world and you know, the and and Jesus Christ himself, so so you know, and they viewed that they viewed like the king, the king being a Christian servant of God that he and and
you know, God blessing, uh, you know, the king as a Christian ruler, they viewed it as as somewhat of his obligation in order to go on crusade, Like you couldn't really be of France in particular, you couldn't really be a king of France, where France is essentially the pre eminent kingdom of Christendom and not go on crusade because crusade is viewed as God's will essentially, so you can't not participate in God's will and be a good
Christian king at the same time. So, you know, I'm not saying that they were completely devoid of you know, material concerns per se, but it's more they were sort of obligated as a responsibility, not as like, oh I'm going to get lander money. Well and two things.
On that point, it can't be overstated how expensive crusading was. I mean, the King of England had to institute a special tax, right the salad and tithe and tax collecting was very difficult in the medieval world and it wasn't something that is done as easily or conveniently as we imagine it now. And to bolster that, travel was extraordinarily expensive and dangerous. This wasn't simply you mentioned, you know,
eight weeks to send a letter. Well, okay, now you have to collect people, collect money, collect resources, and go halfway across the world, you know, across multiple jurisdictions, which, okay, this is maybe not exactly the correct term. This is a difficult undertaking. And once you've left the whole time, you are not I mean, you're still in charge of your country, but you're not there. You do not know
what's happening. You're in a very precarious position. Even if everything goes exactly according to plant and to look you know, menorvenal. We understand this. People have passions, they're ambitious. But the idea that this was like it was a good decision on the balance sheet. You know that it was a way to balance accounts. It's simply it's simply not true. So returning to the narrative, right, we have the kingdoms of Plantagen Empire, the French sort of putting their differences aside.
But along the way right in response to the new pope, we have all sorts of other, say, factions that makes it sound like a video game, but other nations right coming to join. So other than England and France, well, who heeds the call of Rome.
Well, the big one was Frederick Barbarossa is the Holy Roman Emperor, and he had actually been on the Second Crusade with his father, and you know it meant poorly for them, but he had a lot of experience because of that, traveling across land, through Eastern Europe, through Anatolia and fighting against the Saracens. So although I guess from our perspective now, when we look back, it's really the Third Crusaders really framed as a big conflict between Richard
and Saladin. Before it happened, I think they expected it to be a big conflict between Frederick Barbarossa and Saladin. I think he was supposed to be sort of the big boss leading the crusade. Unfortunately he dies on the way. He drowns in a river as far as we know, and his son sort of tries to lead the rest of the army there, some of them get there, and then his son dies eventually at the siege of Acre.
Leopold of Austria is sort of the pre eminent German, if you will, Holy Roman Empire, the leader of the of the he's the Duke of Austria. He sort of becomes the pre eminent leader of that faction I guess for Couldham factions. And then you know, then you have the remaining knights and nobles of the Crusader states I guess, who are kind of led by Conrad of Montferrat and Raymond of Tripoli in Jerusalem, although I guess they're not
in Jerusalem. They're entire and those are really sort of the main players from the European angle.
One other thing, and I realized we're sort of breaking the direct flow of the narrative. But walking through this, I remember, uh, it's sort of this this aside where if I'm if I'm correct, on the way, you know, down into the Mediterranean. Uh doesn't the English force stop stop off in Portugal. It's sort of a little side quest to help out during the reconquista. At the Siege of I can't say Portuguese words. I can barely speak English. As you probably figured out, the Siege of Oh, well whatever,
that's the Second Crusade. I think that you're thinking of, Oh, excuse me, my mistake.
Uh.
So point is we're seeing these these forces drawn together right slowly, and where do they land?
Right?
Where does this formally start, at least as a war in the Holy Land.
Well, once Gee has his foothold, it's a siege of Acre, and Saladin kind of leaves him alone until it's a little bit too late. He's kind of too dug in. And so the Siege of Acre ends up becoming the rally point for all the forces of Christendom to meet at. And so so that's where everyone just starts heading. And I believe in the first year, I believe Duke Leopold is one of the first ones to arrive, Henry of Champagne. He's a very important lord in France. He also arrives
with a large force. James, I'm in a butcher of this Davinces he's also very big lord. He also arrives pretty early, and so basically that becomes the rally point and you end up with a double walled in siege because the Crusader camp is there besieging them. Saladin, once he realizes that it's very serious, he starts rallying his
army to come to relief. And so the Crusaders wall in in front of the castle and then they wall in behind for Saladin's army, basically with a beachhead for everybody to land and for ships and supplies to go out. So they're sitting there in front of the city with essentially his beachhead and a big double wall coming behind them into a siege that lasts for three years. Basically that's where everybody lands at.
So we've spoken about this a little bit and I realized this is very much. I mean, there's hours that could be done on this in its own right. But how does that siege develop? You mentioned the kind of you know, the double envelopment, but how does it shake out?
Right?
What happens here? How are these five hundred land owning men killed. You mentioned disease, of course, but if you could walk us through it.
Yeah, disease is a big one, and I will say for anybody who's interested in it. John D. Hostler has written a book, The Siege of Acre, which is widely considered, I think, the most comprehensive look at the siege that's been written today. And he did one of the more recent podcasts that I put out with on Richard The Lionheart, and so if you want an in depth look, that would be where you can go. But essentially it's pretty interesting because a siege, when you're sieging a castle, most
of the time nothing is happening. You're kind of waiting for somebody, you know, for an opportunity to attack. You're waiting for the next supplies, waiting for the defenders to get hungry, or waiting for some plot to happen that's maybe gonna somebody's gonna be able to open a door or something like that. For most people at a siege, most of the time nothing is happening. You're kind of
just sitting there in the dirt waiting. And so it's interesting because there's long periods of boredom, it seems, where
people are criticized for sitting around doing nothing. And then there's also periods where after a long period of boredom, they do some outlandish attack that you know, a lot of people get killed something, you know, it's it just kind of goes sideways, doesn't really work, and then they kind of go back to like, well that didn't work, and we're just kind of hearing the walls again, and you know, we're going to wait for an opportunity, and
Saladin's kind of waiting for an opportunity, and the people inside the city are waiting for food or they're waiting for an opportunity, and so it's it seems like, you know, I mean it went on for almost three years. It's a lot of sitting around and looking at each other, basically
waiting for an opportunity. So you get really interesting stories about what they were doing when they were bored or these particular contests, you know, like an archer on the wall and an archer down you know in the siege camp, you know, shooting at each other in these different exchanges. Eventually,
eventually Philip King of France shows up. And one of my favorite anecdotes of Philip is that he shows up and I believe he shows up in April, the year that the siege ends, and you know, everyone's just kind of sitting around. They're all kind of just looking at each other. A bunch of naval gazing and Philip shows up. They blow the trumpets. He gets off the boats and they're like, you know, thank you, Philip. You know, we're so glad that you're here. And he goes, what are
you guys doing? Like what's going on here? Like nobody's fighting and nobody's shooting anything. And he basically just gets off the boat and he's like, what's going on here? Like what's everybody doing? And so he starts whipping everybody into shape, you know, getting the siege. He's like, you know, get the catapults going again. He has his own catapults. He's like, you know, build our own you know, build our own siege equipment and all this stuff. Get the
miners going. He's he's kind of chopping everybody back into shape. Richard had his own problem landing in the island of Cyprus, so he was late and he didn't get there for a month later, basically until I believe the end of May or beginning of June. And then Richard arrives and they both got sick. Philip and Richard both ended up getting sick, but basically they were able to stave off a naval blockade. They had a naval blockade, essentially was
able to stave off reinforcements. The arrival of Philip and Richard reinvigorate, reinvigorated everybody, and I mean Richard in particular was becoming a real expert in siege craft. And although as John D. Hostler said that Philip should get more credit than Richard, which I'll bow to his expertise, and you know, I think that's fair for whipping everybody into shape and getting things done. Richard was sick for quite
a bit of it. But eventually just the city seems to have you know, they they couldn't really get in touch with Saladin, and they were just they just ran out of supplies, and they negotiated for terms of surrender that Saladin was unable to agree to because he, you know, he was sort of out of touch with everybody at
the time. That basically the city felt like they just couldn't hang on any longer and had to come to terms in order to save their own lives, and so they negotiated terms of surrender, which became a contentious point later when Saladin failed essentially to meet the terms of
surrender and Richard executed the prisoners. This is another thing that people will say, you know, like Richard was a monster, he massacred the prisoners or whatever, But it was it was pretty standard when when you win a siege, the prisoner's lives are forfeit unless you make a deal. And if you make a deal and then the deal hasn't
come through, then the prisoner's lives are forfeit again. So this was not anything extraordinary or you know, out of the ordinary per se, and and everybody kind of looked at it that way at the time. I think.
So after the siege is concluded, as far as I understand, there's some some minor kind of inland skirmishes in Galilee, But the next major objective is Jafa one. Why does Jaffa matter? Why is that an important point to control? And then what does that struggle look like?
Well, so I think I think the real point of contention was Ascalon, which asked the And the reason Ascalon is so important is which is a little south of Jaffa, is because Ascalon is essentially the fork in the road between Egypt and Syria and Jerusalem. It's sort of the where where all those roads meet. And so that's a very important city for Saladin because he's controlling Egypt and Syria and Jerusalem, and so he wants to sort of
maintain his most express lines of travel and communication. And it's an important point for the Crusaders because they obviously want to break that up. So, but Jaffa's on the way, it's on the way down the coast, and you know, the crusade from the crusader's point of view is an incredible logistical challenge. The first crusade worked because, you know, aside from sort of just saying that God wills it and he gave them victory, but it worked because logistically,
the Muslim forces were not united in their defense. They weren't prepared for a defense, and so therefore they were really unable. You know, the Crusaders were sort of able to just be audacious and just keep going and hit them with something that they had never seen before and were unprepared for and had no response for. Things were very different this time. Saladin was waiting for them. He had an army, and he was prepared to defend what
he had. So he learned pretty quickly, I think at the Siege of Acre at the end of it, and certainly at the Battle of Arsouf, which is the first major battle down the coast, that he, excuse me, was not going to be able to fight them directly, very effectively, man for man in close quarters fighting. The Frankish knights for the most part, were much superior, I mean just in terms of equipment, much superior, better equipped for that type of fighting. So he's found on that a little bit.
I mean, obviously you have the you know, the material advantage of metallurgy, your arm or whatever, but like, what what made that the group of fighting men so effective in comparison?
Yeah, I mean is there equipment for one? I mean, they were more heavily armored. So Ambrose, for example, writes about how it Arsaf. I believe it was that originally they tried, the Saracens tried to fight with their swords, but they were basically just unable to do anything against
European chain mail and helmets and stuff like that. So they basically switched to clubs and maces and things like that to try to bash the crusaders because you know they're fighting, you know their their their weapons just weren't as effective. It's the same thing for the arrows. They were more of a lighter cavalry, so their arrows didn't
pierce the European armor as much. Ambrose talks about how Richard, for example, when he comes out from this one charge, he's just got arrows sticking out of him and he looks like a hedgehog. So they just in terms of equipment, you know, they didn't. And in terms of fighting styles, you know, the fighting style of the Muslim army is more of a hit and run, a little bit more of like raiding, catching people by surprise. They weren't really geared up. And it's the same thing with the castles.
You know, they weren't really geared up to fight a heavily armed opponent. They weren't really geared up to besiege a supremely fortified location. Their style was more and I'm not saying that they were nomadic, but it's a little bit more of as you would think of like a nomadic fighting style was sort of raiding, hit and run, catching people by surprise, a little bit more of that type of a fighting style, if you will, were as opposed to the European fighting style is very like fortified,
very heavy, everyone's heavily armored. You're looking to get into close quarters fighting that sort of thing. You know. Of course they had they had archers and crossbowmen and stuff like that as well, but you know, like the Europeans didn't have mounted archers for example. Uh So it was it was just stylistically, it's just a very different, uh sort of way that they thought about war and the way that they generally wage war. So it's a very interesting conflict in styles.
Well, and I think that's what that's what is sort of romantic about this, you know, is that you have that that sort of mismatch, you know, you have that you know, the heavily armored you know, Frankish knight against a force that he is on one level sort of unprepared for. Right, it's not exactly what he's been training for, but it's the it's the sort of you know, styles make fights of history, right where it is more interesting
because of how different they are. One thing I'm sort of curious to get your opinion on is what was the what was the leadership and culture like in each one of these armies, and I realized this isn't I've interrupted the broader narrative. But I do want to get to this because obviously the night is both a military and a social construct, right, it is two things at once. So was the Muslim force roughly analogous in that way? Or was it organized differently?
I'm not an expert on the Muslim end of things, although from what I can tell it seems fairly similar. They had a variety of emirs or princes or these kind of other nobles who controlled territory and acted as as administrators, and also were expected to bring fighting men and do the fighting themselves, lead armies essentially, So I think in terms I think generally, as far as I could tell, I'd say it's fairly similar.
So back to the narrative, right, building towards the Battle of Arsouf, How does this start, right? What are the terms of engagement? Initially?
So, well, after the siege of Acre, Philip goes home, and so he leaves, and so you have essentially several contingents of crusaders left. Interestingly, most of the local nobles stay home. They Conrad of Montferat is kind of the main guy for them, and he and he was kind of aligned with Philip, and he's let's say, cautious of Richard, wary of Richard, so he basically just stays entire for most of the time, and a lot of the other
local nobles and knights sort of stay with him. Richard does have local contingents of hospitallers and templars who are with him. He's got the French contingent under the Duke of Burgundy and Henry of Champagne, who are also kind of under him. He gets along with Henry of Champagne very well, he does not get along with the Duke of Burgundy so well, and then he has his own forces.
The Germans also go home immediately afterwards, so Leopold takes you know, his contingent for the Holy Roman Empire and they go home as well. So this is how it ends up being basically Richard leading this coalition of the local whatever local knights have kind of cobbled together, the hospitallers, the templars, and then Henry of Champagne with sort of his guys, and the Duke of Burgundy his guys, and then Richard with his sort of mixed. You know, he
controls obviously. You know, he's got knights from Anjou and Patu, and then he's got Englishman with him and some Normans as well. And so Richard just starts marching down the coast. Saladin's army is shadowing him as he goes. They realize the logistical challenge now is that Saladin has an army in the field and Jerusalem is I forget the exact distance,
something like twenty miles or forty miles inland. And so the problem is is that if you're going to go besiege a city that's let's say twenty miles into the desert, you have to have a way to get water, and you need some sort of supply line because you're in a foreign country to you know you're going to be able to forage. There's not so much to forage there, there's some, but they need fresh water is the biggest concern.
And that was what really led to the disaster the Battle of fighteen is that they camped at a spot they ended up they ended up sort of being forced to camp at a spot where there wasn't any water. So everybody woke up the next morning in the heat, extremely thirsty. So they were aware of these extreme logistical concerns, and so the problem that they had was that they didn't have enough. I mean, I ask, I'm getting ahead
of myself here. So they're marching down the coast, and so Richard's got his sort of coalition forces marching on the coast. Salad In is shadowing him, and Richard knows that he needs to essentially march down the coast and take cities as he to get as close as possible to Jerusalem, so he has the shortest supply line possible
between the coast, essentially because they control the Mediterranean. Long story short, Saladin's navy made a run to relieve the city of Acre, got trapped inside and then got captured by the Crusaders when they captured the city, So Saladin has basically no naval control anyway, So he needs to go down the coast and take as many cities as possible so he can basically get down to around Jaffa.
Jaffa is a good entry point into Jerusalem or ascalon to be able to have the shortest route into being able to besiege Jerusalem on the way, Saladin decides that these forests outside of Arsouf are the best place to attack, so he lines up his army in the forest, and as Richard is marching through it's the crusading army. Saladin comes out of the forest and tries to pin them
up against the coast and crush the army. So we've mentioned several times the Holy Orders, right, these sort of warrior monks, obviously highly mythologized, and the hospitallers at least become very relevant in the battle we are about to describe.
So just some context on what are these institutions, right, what was their purpose? What did they look like, because it's sort of like many things about this period in history, the popular conception is inaccurate. I'll put it that way.
Yeah, well, they start, as you know, the knights of the Temple. They start as essentially protectors of pilgrims, because a pilgrimage, you know, through those hostile territories was very dangerous. So they initially started as this sort of a maybe you could think of it as like a church security service walking people to their cars in a dangerous neighborhood.
That's maybe sort of how they start. And as they kind of get going, they get more recruits they get, they become much more powerful, they become formalized by the Post as a holy order, and you end up with prominent noblemen leaving them things upon their death to where they start acquiring a lot more wealth for the Order generally. Now, to be in the Order is basically a vow of poverty. You're going from you know, let's say you're a knight in Europe and then you're going to go be a templar.
You have to renounce. You know, you're renouncing all of your family inheritance. You know, you're renouncing essentially all of your worldly goods. And you know you can you can take sort of your war equipment and you know, maybe some clothes with you and that sort of thing, but you're not going to get any more money or property or anything like that. You're basically renouncing all of that to join the Order. And when you do that, you know,
the Order has its own resources. They outfit people, and maybe about ten percent of the Order was knights. The rest of the Order was sort of I guess supporting brothers, which would be you know, either foot soldiers or logistical guys or you know, priests and uh, you know cooks, guys that sort of run the kitchens and there in their facilities and things like this. And basically for the for the knights and the warriors, you know, for the
foot soldiers and things like that. Their whole thing was just, uh, you know, they went to mass, they trained to fight, and then they escorted pilgrims around and just tried to make the parking lot safe for people who are coming to on pilgrimage. They have very strict rules of engagement where they're not allowed to retreat from fights and things like that. So if they have to be very judicious in a way of which conflicts that they engage in, because if they are engaged in a conflict, they are
not allowed to retreat. The Nights Templar specifically, and then then the nice hospital ers they started in a similar way. They're the Knights of the Hospital. So their thing is they're more of a They begin to sort of treat the people who get injured in the parking lot on their way into the into the church. Uh. And you know that sort of develops in a very similar way. They sort of start receiving some inheritance from other people
that have died. The Order grows, and you know they're basically training to fight and go to mass and help medically help people who get injured in the parking lot.
So the battle of our Souf, the hospitaer's in particular play a role right in this engagement. So what happens, right, because this is another decisive battle, and yeah, if he could walk us through it, I'd appreciate it.
Yeah, So Richard's got his forces marching along the coast, Saladin's forces come out of the woods. Richard's plan and I guess I'm going to relate this as Ambrose ptells it. That's the one I'm most familiar with, although you know that's only part of the story perhaps, and maybe Ambrose's
view of the story. You know, Richard's plan was to let the Saracen army sort of tire itself out so he could get to a point where they could actually then charge Saladin's army and be able to catch them and you know, have a decisive encounter where they destroy them.
But the army is under a lot of pressure because Saladin's forces outnumber them, maybe two to one, and there's of course all kinds of archers and light cavalry that are, you know, throwing particular implements at them, and you know, the strategy of the Saracens is to ride down, you know, try to bait people out. And for the European Knights, they view it somewhat as a matter of pride of being able to engage an enemy when challenged, if you will.
And medieval armies are a little different than how we might think of as a modern army. And this is kind of relevant to this story in particular because it's not like a professionalized army where you have the general and then he's got his colonels and then they have their whatever division commanders and things like that, and so the general says, hey, you know, you move over here, and you go over here, and we're going to do this, and then everybody just says yes, sir, and then that's
sort of the plan that they do. They are all sort of nobles who, in particular you can think of, you know, the contingents of Richard's army who are not directly his vassals, so you know, like the Duke of Burgundy and all of the frenchmen, or you know, Henry of Champagne and his Frenchmen or the templars and the hospitals.
Although these guys sort of nominally follow Richard and you know, agree to take orders from him if you will it, you know, they they are sort of in their own domain when you know, like the Duke of Burgundy he can sort of do whatever he wants, or you know, the leader of the hospitallers can do whatever he wants. And so Richard's got everybody organized and he's telling them like, hey, we're going to wait until everybody can charge at the same time, I'm going to give the signal and that
sort of thing. But everybody's kind of got their own thing going on. Who's not his direct vassal. Eventually, you know, Richard's kind of riding up and down the lines, just making sure that everybody's cool. Just tell them, hey, you know, relax, we're going to charge eventually. Now. The Saracens have had a particular success because the army is on the march, so it's you know, when an army of these sizes are on the march, it's stretched out for several miles.
The Saracens have had success in the past of sort of detaching the rear from the rest of the army and then encircling that and defeating it. So they have particular pressure attacking the rear and trying to separate that from the rest of the army because the army is marching. Richard's aware of this, He's not gonna let this happen. But the hospitallers on this particular day. Richard did a good job of rotating his army out on particular days, and on this particular day, the templars were in the
vanguard and the hospitallers were in the back. So the hospitalers were under particularly heavy pressure, having things thrown at them, shot at them, arrows, lots of charges, and Richard just kept telling them like, hey, you have to just relax, you know, you gotta just take it. We're going to all do it at the same time. We got to all do it at the same time or it doesn't work.
And he's kind of right on that. But eventually a knight who's back there with the hospitalers, I believe Baldwin of CAREW and a member of the hospitalers whose name escapes me. They the two of them just eventually designed they've had enough and they start charging and so then everybody near them who is also you know, like you know, it's like an immediate thing, right, Like a couple guys are just like I've had enough, you know, and he
just rides forward. And then his buddy next to him is like, I've had enough too, and that looks better than standing here and you know, having another several hours of arrow shot at me or whatever. And so basically the back, the back part of the army starts charging. Richard sees this happening and blows the signal and the whole army charges. Saladin's army is caught completely by surprise.
A lot of them at this point, because this has been going on for several hours, a lot of them had even started to dismount to kind of up close to try to get close shots, you know, get better shots, you know, and just you know, why ride back and you know, bait them out. You could just dismount it, like guys started just dismounting, you know. So these guys
are all just dismounted. Their horses are tired, and so a lot of these guys just got ridden over and killed immediately as the whole basically, the whole Crusader army loads into Saladin's army. Richard. Basically, after about a mile of this charge, Richard sort of rallies, everybody brings them back. There's a little bit of a Saladin's army sort of regroups and comes back. There's a little bit more of a skirmish, but Saladin gets his army off the field.
They took pretty heavy casualties, pretty demoralized, and the Crusaders they took some casualties, notably James Dovin says, who was one of the first and powerful nobles to arrive at the Siege of Acre, is killed at the Battle of Arsif, But it's generally a victory for the Crusaders. Saladin's armies pretty beaten up, and Saladin kind of used this as sort of the moment where he's like, you know, I don't really want to have another decisive battle.
Basically, it's part of why I love pre modern warfare is that you really can have that knife edge moment where it sort of all comes down to one charge. And then we invented like gay stuff like the radio and unpowder, and it's like, oh, you can't do that anymore, and like, look, that's that's not I'm not a military man or historian very clearly, but there is just something,
there's something really awesome about that. So, as far as I understand it, the march up because they have, you know, they've won this battle and they now have a relatively unimpeded path towards Jerusalem. But as we know, ultimately they never take it right. They're not successful. So seemingly right at this moment, seems like the way is paved, the door is open, and you can read accounts about the mood in Jerusalem at this time it was not particularly good. So well, why wasn't it successful?
Right?
Why after this great, you know, heroic charge, did the crusaders not effectively waltz into the city of Jerusalem.
Yeah, So, after Philip leaves the crusade, he goes home and he starts working with Richard's brother John to try to undermine the Angevin m hire, to basically undermine Richard's rule at home. It's not very successful, I would say, you know, they do cause some troubles. But Richard, as he's continuing in this campaign, he's starting to get letters from home where people are showing up saying you know, hey, you know they kicked out the Chancellor John controls these castles.
He's saying that he's the king now, like they're saying you're dead or whatever. And so he's basically getting disturbing letters from home as he in sort of an increasing frequency as he as the campaign continues, basically saying like, hey, if you don't come home now, you may not have quite so many lands by the time you get home, if you have any. At the same time, they don't
really have the manpower. You know, this was supposed to be originally a crusade of three kings, Frederick Barbarossa, Philip Augustus and Richard Lionheart, and now it's just Richard, and it's I still am not really clear on how many of the French forces still remained. Richard himself only brought if I recall, about nine thousand men. Some of the French forces remained, he wasn't getting support from the locals, and basically all of Frederick Barbarossa's forces had died or
gone back home. So he's you know, I think it's fair to say he's well below fifty percent of the anticipated forces. The problem that he has, in my view, is that he's sort of run into like a logistical Chinese finger trap that you know, you sort of need something to change in order for and it seems like he was pretty aware of this. You need a certain amount of men in order to be able to secure a twenty mile supply line between the coast and Jerusalem.
You also need a certain amount of men to be able to correctly besiege the city of Jerusalem, like to be able to properly surround it and you know, force their surrender or take it. So you need and you need water to be able to supply all of those men with. And you know, at the same time, you also need enough men to be able to you need enough men to be able to fend off because Saladin still has an army in the fields. You need enough
men to defend against the relief army. Essentially. Now, in hindsight, if Richard had attacked immediately, which in my opinion, would have been very reckless, and he thought it was very reckless, so I think that's fair. You know, he might have caught Saladin with his army inside the city, surprised them
had been able to do it. It's possible. But if you look at it logistically and It's kind of said about Richard that he was reckless with his own life but very careful with the lives of his men, which I think is to his credit. It seems like a logistical impossibility with the number of men that he has. The other problems is that he's getting these letters from
home saying you need to come home immediately. He's also not getting a huge amount of help from the local contingent because they're all sitting entire with Conrad of Montferat, and then his own contingents are bickering between the hospitalers and the Templars and the French forces with the Duke of Burgney in particular, the hospitaal ers and the Templars wanted him to actually just march to Egypt and just
go break up Saladin's power base there. The French forces basically said like, hey, we're only going to march to Jerusalem, you know, and just only take Jerusalem. So now he's got a conflict between his you know what even remains of his own coalition forces, so he's got to try
to navigate this, you know. And then of course he's got Saladin, who's a very crafty guy, and you know, capable commander, although Saladin has his own challenges and problems with sort of maintaining his own forces because you know, he has to sort of manage all of these other nobles, you know, that are under him and sort of these different continents of Egyptians and Syrians and other Saracens. But you know, for Richard, he's got all of these like
internal problems. He's got logistical issues, he has a shortage of manpower, and he's getting letters about how things are going poorly back home and he needs to come home immediately. He's sort of in this thing where he needs something to break one way or the other, and Saladin is now basically refusing to fight him. You know, the army's
just sort of continually shadowing him. They don't have you know, the Saracens are the ones that are mounted, so he's not going to catch them and be able to force a confrontation. Saladin sort of has to you know, be baited or decide to just fight, so he's not really going to be able to force a decisive engagement. He's not going to be able to get more men anytime soon where he can have adequate supply lines and resources.
And enough men to do the thing, and the situation at home isn't going to fix itself without him being there for to allow him to have more time. So he sort of is in this, you know, this sort of Bermuda triangle of escalating problems that he sort of can't get anything to move on to where eventually he just says, you know, like hey, I'll stay here for one more year, but then I'm I'm going to go
home next spring. Basically I'm gonna I'm gonna leave and you know, in the in the spring or whatever it is, around Easter, and you know, that's basically sort of that's almost what happens.
So there's one more, I guess, major battle in this crusade, which is I guess you could say that the second I won't number the siege of Jaffa, where Saladin comes back for vengeance. And this is sort of an interesting event in its own right right how it shakes out with the relationship between Saladin and his men. So if you could just briefly run through that battle and then where that leaves us, right the negotiations at the end.
I'll be as brief as possible, But this is probably one of the most extraordinary conflicts in all of history. So to my best. So Richard, as I.
Mentioned Michael, I've really given you a very difficult task, right, the entire Third Crusade in one podcast.
Look trying to the point.
The point is you people listening to this, this is a primer. You're listening to a man who's done a ton of work on this. So if you want more, don't ask me. You're listening to the guy now. But sorry, back to you.
Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, So I mean, like I said, Richard says, he's going to go home. So basically, you know, saladin armies are not like they are today. Like you think of an army and you think of an army camp. Armies were much more porous back then, meaning that like civilians are kind of coming in and out, you know, like there's sort of an inflow of goods and things that are happening. So Saladin, you know, and and they you know, Richard has intelligence roughly into sort of what
Saladin's doing and that sort of thing. He's got people that you know, local you know, Christians that he's got working for him that are sort of infiltrating Saladin's forces and given him a little bit of intelligence and stuff. But he doesn't have the advantage of that like Saladin does because Saladin is on his home turf. So Saladin has, I think, a lot more, He has a lot more intelligence on what's happening with Richard's army than Richard does
on Saladin. So basically, you know, as I mentioned, Richard just says like, hey, I'll stay and then I got to go home. He basically stays. He sort of you know, marches up towards Jerusalem a couple of times, can't make it happen. He goes all the way back to Acre, which is up the coast. So they had taken cities all the way down to Ascalon and darrehim and then he goes all the way back up the coast to Acre,
and he's going to leave. As soon as he does this, Saladin says, all right, let's put our foot on the gas. Let's not give him, you know, any chance to fortify anything. Let's just go start taking cities. And so they immediately go and besiege the city of Jaffa Richard. Richard's army leaves and the next day, as Richard is preparing to leave with a small force behind them. He gets a messenger saying Saladin is besieging Jaffa and if you don't come save the city of Jaffa, then Saladin's going to
take it. And according to Ambrose, Richard says, I will certainly go, And so instead of going home, he gets on his boat and sails south to go relieve the city of Jaffa. Henry of Champagne agrees to come with him, and so he leaves by land and they're going to meet up at Jaffa. Unfortunately for Richard, or I guess maybe fortunately I don't know, there's no wind for a few days, so he basically sits in the Mediterranean for the wind to pick up so he can sail down
the coast. Eventually, when they get there, so Saladin had besieged the city, the city realized like, you know, hey, we can maybe hold out for a few days to see if they sail back down the coast, but otherwise
we're screwed and we got a surrender. So they're negotiating surrender terms as Richard's boat shows up with you know, like his initial boats, with all of his troops off right off of the coast of the city, and they show up and Saladin's banners are hanging from all the walls because they're literally negotiating the terms of surrender and like processing the payment of the ransom for the guys
in the citadel. According to the Muslim sources, a singing priest from the top of the citadel jumps out at one of the windows and lands in the sand and then runs out into the beach and swims out to Richard's boat because they're all they're all sitting out there and they're all going, okay, Well, his banners areund the city,
so it looks like this is over. And this priest jumps off of the thing and swims out to his boat and says, they're negotiating the terms of surrender now if you like, if you don't get in there right now, they're going to take the city. And so I'm ashamed to not remember the quote exactly, but Richard says, according to Ambrose, something to the effect of God, if God has brought us here to die, you know, let no man be a coward, and they basically just row right in.
He jumps off of the boat into the into the surf with no leg armor on, and you know, a crossbow and a sword, and they just work their way up to the city. Saladin's forces are taken essentially completely by surprise, because you know, one minute, they're kind of like, well, you know, these guys are just sitting there whatever, and they just basically sail right up and drop off and are just running up the coast. Richard himself personally is like at the front. He's the first person off the boat.
He runs up there. They go through an entrance through the at the bottom of the castle that leads up, i believe, into the the templars headquarters in the castle,
and so they work their way in there. They're you know, killing people as they go, pushing them out of the city and so and then you know, when the people in the citadel hear this, then you know, they're all sort of standing there waiting for their paperwork to be processed essentially, and they you know, they hear that something's going on, and so then they just grab their weapons and start fighting and you know, fighting their way to
Richard basically, and they push Saladin's forces out of the city, and so Saladin has to camp outside the city. Richard Henry comes down and joins them. But as this was just you know, I mean, Richard wasn't there with his army. Really he's there. He's got about two thousand Genoese crossbowmen and they have about I believe five hundred infantry, and Ambrose says that they have somewhere between nine and seventeen horses.
And actually the Muslim sources also mentioned this as well, which is notable, and he mentions this, like on the part of the account when he's talking about the initial invasion, they only have nine and nine to seventeen horses something like that, because there's going to be a decisive cavalry
charge later, which sounds insane. And so anyway, a few days later, you know, basically Richard Kamps's army there, they're rebuilding everything, and Saladin he's got about ten thousand men, Richard's got about twenty five hundred, and so Saladin, you know, he didn't want to engage Richard, but now he realizes, hey, we're out. We've got these guys out numbered four or five to one. We've got him pinned on this city. He can't even be inside the city because Saladin ruined
the walls and the siege really quick. You know, they blasted up the walls and they you know, so they can't they can't even hide in the city. He's like, you know, this is kind of my is my chance to get him. And so basically on I believe it was like Saturday landed and so on Wednesday morning, Saladin's
gonna basically assault, try to do a sneak attack. And according to Ambrose, some guy is out there going to the bathroom and he hears the rattling, you know, the rattling of the army coming and they're actually arguing, you know, like because Saladin told him like, hey, be as quiet as you can get up there, and you know, charge King Richard's tent. We're going to capture him and all
this stuff. And the guy, here's the rattling, and he here's the two guys arguing, like the two emirs arguing about who's going to actually capture Richard, and you know, he's out there, like going to the bathroom or whatever. And so he runs back into the camp and tells everybody, you know, like, eh, Seriousin's they're coming. And so they all just leap up and they put on their armor
and they get out there. Richard basically puts them in like a little turtle formation out in front of the city with spearman and then the crossbow teams, and the crossbow teams have you know, the pavise shields with you know, the loader and all these so they can have a guy shooting and a guy loading and a guy holding the shield and then they have spearman. So they're in this sort of turtle wall outside the city. And basically there's just hours and hours now of Saladin's army, his
mounted archers coming up. They're shooting, they're trying to charge, they're trying to lure them out. Richard's making sure that everybody's you know, stand where they are. Eventually they kind of break into the back into the city. And actually right before that, like some of the guys had kind of get just decided like, hey, we're just gonna go kind of wait on the boats and you know see
how this goes. So Richard, according to Ambrose, with two nights, rides back into the city, pushes them out of the city, then rides to the boats and tells everybody like, hey, leave five guys on the boats and everybody's coming with me right now. And brings all those guys from the
boats back to the fight. And then you know, this is, you know whatever, seven eight, nine hours of this this onslaught, you know, on this sort of wall of shields and spears and crossbows, until eventually, you know, I don't know what it is. Maybe Richard just has the sort of sixth sense and he can just tell that like, now's the time for the decisive cavalry charge, and so he
orders a charge of I guess, twelve nights. You know, it's kind of unclear exactly how many, but Ambrose says there's only nine to seventeen horses, and he mentions by name the guys who have the horses, who are allowed to ride on the horses, I guess. And so they
charge across the field, twelve of them. And according to the Muslim sources, Richard rode the length of Saladin's army, yelling for challengers, and nobody would fight him, and so then Saladin's army basically just you know, retreated into the into the woods further out from the city. So Richard is, you know, he's he's unable to defeat Saladin, essentially, but he demoralized his army so badly that they just retreat.
Richard is physically ill from the exertion of according to Ambrose, you know, basically chopping people in half all day, and and Saladin his army is basically like completely demoralized, and he realizes that like they're going to break up and
he needs to come to the negotiating table. So originally Richard was going to leave with no negotiating no truce, no no, no, nothing, basically, you know, just the cities that he had captured, sort of left behind for Henry of Champaign, who's going to be the King of Jerusalem. But after this battle, he's able to bring Saladin to the negotiating table and negotiate a three year truce and then finally leave on his way home.
You know, after that that was masterfully done, kind of tying it in a bow. And like I said earlier, this is we're moving at like one hundred miles an hour here, right, really kind of skimming the tops of the waves. But it really is, in my mind, some of the most just fun and fascinating bits of Western history. And I did a sort of primer at the start of this Manture series on the Crusades. I basically said that, you know, it's like Vaudreaude's comments about the Gulf War,
like the Crusades never happened. And of course I don't mean they literally never happened, but to say, the common mental image of what those were is so completely divorced from reality. You know, it's sort of a punch and Judy show, not an actual contest between men. And so, Michael, thank you so much. This was, like I said, very very well done, and I appreciate your time and expertise.
If people are interested in learning more both about the medieval world and about the Third Crusade, well where can they do so? Well?
You can find me on substack, at Memory Medieval, on x at Memory Medieval, those are the two main places that I post, and on substack you can find that medieval publication Feigned Flight Magazine under my profile as well. If you'd like to read some longer form essays of medieval history.
Well, again, thank you very much. Everyone should check that out. Everyone at home, keep your head up. Well, I can't last forever. Good night,