The Crusades: Battle for the Holy Land

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Hier kijk je alles. Abonnementen verhuisd, inhoud conferenties bevatten, 18+. Algemene voorwaarden zijn van toepassing. Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit. The podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries. the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the Crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders, to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval. The year is 1187. The charred bones of countless crusaders litter the parched plains of Galilee An oblique crisis has enveloped the fragile Christian states of the Holy Land Jerusalem, the holy city, seized from the Saracens less than a century prior, is under siege Its city walls, draped with the banners of the cross are surrounded by the forces of the irrepressible and mighty Sultan Saladin The air is thick with the wistful peal of ancient church bells. Citizens scramble for refuge, and yet, for now, the city is not yet lost. An Englishwoman on pilgrimage finds herself trapped within the city through bad luck and poor timing. But she doesn't give up hope. Donning a borrowed coat of armour and a cooking pot for a helmet, she helps defend the city walls. Her name is Margaret of Beverley, and shunned both for fear and the punishingly narrow expectations imposed on medieval women, she fights like a warrior. She hurls rocks from a slingshot at Saladin's armies below. She ferries water along Jerusalem's narrow streets to support the defenders. Then a catapult missile plows into the ramparts and sends shards of masonry and shrapnel flying in all directions. Margaret is wounded. and when the city falls, she's taken captive and forced, like all the other prisoners, to buy her freedom. Left penniless and dressed in rags, she wanders a land in which Crusader authority has all but collapsed. Margaret's story is not the exception. It's the consequence of a near century of Crusader conquest. In the wake of the First Crusade and the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, Christian kingdoms were carved out in fervour and held through strife. But in 1187 they now stand exposed. The age of crusading has reached a reckoning. But how did it get here and what might follow? This is the story of the battle for the Holy Land. Welcome to Gone Medieval, I'm Matt Lewis. Over the next two weeks we're travelling across the length and breadth of medieval Christendom to tell the tumultuous story of the Crusades. For nearly 200 years, these so-called holy wars pitted Christian armies against the Muslim lords of Egypt and Syria for possession of the arid deserts and sacred shrines of the Holy Land. Sanctioned by the papacy and fought by Western knights in a perilously hostile and unfamiliar world, The Crusades changed the very fabric of the Middle Ages, a medieval epic written in blood. Earlier this week, Eleanor and I launched our special four-part series by exploring the deep roots of the Crusading movement and the actions of scheming popes and desperate emperors that brought it into being. If you haven't listened, do go back and dive in. Next week, we'll be turning to the 13th century, taking a look at the disasters and divisions which splintered Christendom before ending with a final collapse of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the wake of a Mongol and Mamluk storm. Today, though, we pick up in the aftermath of the First Crusade to chronicle the age of crusading in the 12th century. We'll follow the queens and kings who sought to build on the foundations laid by this first holy war and Muslim lords who organised rousing resistance against them. We'll explore how Western settlers fit into the complex cultural and religious blend of the Eastern Mediterranean and the gripping crises that placed everything they had built at risk. To help us chart nearly 90 years of crusading history, a period which takes in English kings, French queens, German emperors and a Muslim sultanate uniting Egypt and Syria for the first time in two centuries, I'm joined by Crusading Historian and Director for the Centre of Research into History, Heritage and Memory Studies at Nottingham Trent University, Dr Natasha Hodgson. Welcome Natasha, thank you very much for joining us. Hi Matt, how are you? I'm not too bad, thank you. How are you doing? Yeah, I'm good. I think we've got a lot to discuss today. Absolutely, we are in the very unfair world with this series of trying to get people to explain the intricacies of the Crusades very quickly. So we have got a lot of ground to cover. We left the Crusades flushed with success after the First Crusade, what the Christians from Europe would have felt like achieving their aims. After all of that success in 1099, how do they go about kind of maintaining or creating some control over the lands that they've conquered? Oh, this is an interesting one. I mean, the first thing we need to know about, you know, post-First Crusaders, that a lot of them actually just went home. They didn't want to stay and they decided that, you know, they were going to head back home. They'd had enough. They'd been out for a very long time, gone through some very tough sieges, and it was time for them to pack the bags and go home. So actually only a very few, like in the small numbers of hundreds, knights stayed in the Holy Land to sort of carve out some areas of land for themselves. But they do this around the four kind of areas that they establish. So first of all, of course, they had the county of Edessa and Principality of Antioch, which they set up during the First Crusade. And then, you know, with the capture of Jerusalem, they set up the Kingdom of Jerusalem. And then slightly later on, the County of Tripoli is the fourth, what we call, Crusader state. So they're very much taking the approach of creating, carving out new states and new structures of power. They're not looking to take over the existing Muslim structures that are already in the Middle East. They're looking to create something new that they can run for themselves. Yeah, I suppose. I mean, it's interesting to sort of think about how, you know, these different ones are principality, others are counties, and then you have the kingdom of Jerusalem. So how these different kind of entities form, they're all kind of in their own right. Certainly, there's a sense that some are establishing their own power bases. But clearly, the kingdom of Jerusalem is really important because this is governed by the holy city. It's also the seat of a patriarchate, which means it's really important for the church. And so, you know, the process of setting up the kingdom of Jerusalem is really significant. You can kind of imagine them setting up Edessa and thinking, I'm going to be the count of Edessa. And then someone comes along and says, well, I'll be the prince of Antioch then. And somebody else comes along and goes, I'll be the king of Jerusalem then. I didn't realise we were playing that game. And given that so many European Christian crusaders go home, do we see any kind of organised resistance from the people that they've defeated? Do they see an opportunity in this? Are they able to fight back at this point? At this point, I think it's in Jerusalem itself, the Holy City, there is a significant massacre of the inhabitants which takes place after the city is captured. And therefore, no, there isn't that kind of presence there. They've also taken a lot of slaves. So they've got people who are doing work for them. And their main kind of goals really are to secure the port areas, that sort of really important seacoast, where you can tax people coming in because they're bringing goods. You know, you can control the trade so that they're nice and lucrative. Once you've got some money, you can pay for supplies, you can pay for your troops, you can even hire mercenaries if you need to. And you've got a sort of consistent supply of people coming from the West, there is almost immediately a big kind of new boost of numbers, even though some of them go home, because they hear about the successful capture of Jerusalem and lots of people want to go and visit. So you then get the 1101 Crusade, which happens and the numbers of people that go on that are almost as big as that of the first crusade. And what influence do we start to see the Italian city-states have? Because they're quite interested in that access to trade suddenly in that area, aren't you? So Genua in particular will be really dominant in that region with the trade. Are they out for their own interests or are they offering support to the Christians or are they able to do both because supporting the Christians actually benefits them financially? Yeah, I think this is something that goes across all of the Crusades is this idea, oh, did they go for God or gold? And the thing is that actually in the medieval period, there wasn't really a massive distinction between those two things. If you go and fight on behalf of God and you're successful, you will be rewarded with not only spiritual benefits, but also potentially material goods. So yeah, the Pisans, the Genoese and the Venetians are the three big players in the Mediterranean at this time. And they're all keen to get a slice of the action as the Crusader states are established. So the Genoese were important in helping bringing supplies for the first crusade. So even as early as that, they were kind of getting involved. And then gradually we see the Pisans and the Venetians kind of getting involved in that process too. As we move further into the 12th century, we begin to see them requesting almost their own areas of land inside the cities, their own quarters, which they can pretty much run as if they were the king themselves. They're taking kind of royal rights to produce, to get tax exemptions and all sorts of nice things in return for helping to capture some of these places. So the city of Tyre in particular, the Venetians did that. Seems like a bit of a Wild West going on and everybody has suddenly realised that there's land up for grabs, there's power up for grabs, there's money up for grabs and everybody's sort of piling in to piggyback off the success of the First Crusade. Yeah, in a sense. I mean, I think there's still clearly religious motivation for people going because a lot of the time the pilgrim traffic all arrives at Easter time. They can't really sail very easily across the Mediterranean in the winter. It's too dangerous. But everyone kind of arrives in time for Easter so they can kind of see the holy places at this special religious time. And sometimes they just stay for a sort of tour of duty. Like they visit the holy places, they do a bit of fighting and then return home. But then others do kind of try and stay, make that connection and actually kind of, yeah. So I think it really depends on like individual circumstances and reasons for going. And that boost in the pilgrim, I was going to say trade, pilgrim trade, is that fair? But that boost in pilgrimage numbers going to the Near East and heading for Jerusalem in the early 12th century kind of feeds into the creation, the emergence of the military orders that will become so associated with the Christian Crusades in the Middle East. Unfair question number 52 for today. Can you give us a kind of a brief overview of what we mean when we're talking about the military orders and how and why they emerge? What are they for? Sure. Okay. Well, if we're talking early 12th century, really there's only two big players in the Holy Land at this time. Later on, there's a big proliferation of them. But the main ones are the Knights of the Hospital of St John, which we later become known as the, we know them as the Hospitallers, and the Knights Templar. The Templars are kind of a slightly later foundation. The Knights of the Hospital actually come from the establishment of a hospital in Jerusalem in the late 11th century. So they actually predate the Crusades. And they start with this kind of caring role where they're looking after sick pilgrims who've finally made their way all the way to Jerusalem, usually with loads of illnesses and ailments and sore feet and anything else. And they look after them. That's their job. The Templars come out of a kind of later post-Crusade kind of period where in the early sort of 1119, 1120, we think, you know, they start, they have a presence. But it's not until Q of Pain goes back to the West in 1127 and asks the Pope to kind of establish them as a proper a military order that they become a thing, as it were. And what they are essentially is an order of monks who are allowed to fight, which is quite a kind of big turnaround theologically in some respects. You think, you know, surely monks are supposed to be peaceful and stay inside their and most of them are supposed to be peaceful and stay inside their monasteries. So these are essentially fighters who are knights already usually and are living according to a monastic rule. The Templars' purpose was to protect pilgrims travelling to and from the Holy Land, whereas the hospitalers started off with the hospital care and then gradually took on military roles as well. And really it's by kind of the mid-12th century that they become increasingly important because they start to be used for garrisoning castles and all that kind things. So they become really involved in the strategic defence. But the big problem is, the only people they're answerable to is the Pope. So when kings want them to do stuff, they can say, no, actually, don't really fancy doing that. Don't fancy that. We'll check with the boss. So they're really, really independent. And that has its pluses and minuses when it comes to kind of coordinating some kind of strategic defence of the Holy Land. They seem like an interesting response to maybe a lack of manpower. You've got people kind of multitasking they're performing a religious function and they're controlled by a religious rule but they're also able to fight and to to protect pilgrims yes but you know we will know that later during the crusading period they become a really strong powerful offensive force particularly the the templars so it's kind of is it a way of making up for a lack of manpower in the holy land to get people doing more than one role or is there some other reason that suddenly religious orders are fighting? I think that in part that, you know, you're right, that what they need is a permanent fighting presence. And what crusading doesn't offer as a practice is, you know, that kind of permanent fighting force. You've either got the settlers who are there and they have their own knights and each fief is supposed to deliver a certain number of knights to fight on the battlefield. But there's a lot of warfare going on. So a lot of people are dying in those wars. They're also dying a lot from disease and difference in diet and all of those kinds of things. So they need this, you know, an extra flow of kind of supporting fighting forces. And if people are coming on crusade and going home, that's not going to plug the gap. Whereas the military orders as a permanent fighting force can do that. And also they have lots and lots of supporters back in the West and lots of houses back in the West. So they can kind of collect money and financial support as well as then kind of sending people out to the Holy Land. And as these military orders are beginning to emerge, in 1119 we get an episode that's remembered as the field of blood. I wonder if you could just talk us through a little bit about what that is and what it means for the Crusader states. Well, I guess, you know, the early period of settlement is quite successful in many respects. I mean, not straight down the line. We have periods where all of the main rulers of the different principalities are taken into captivity or whatever at some points. It's not all a big story of success, but they do gradually expand and establish some stability. But in 1119, we have Ilghazi from Aleppo. He starts off as a ruler of Mardan and then he becomes Aleppo. As ruler of Aleppo, he comes in and essentially ambushes the army of the Prince of Antioch, Roger of Salerno, and really destroys their forces in that northern principality of Antioch and leaves a real power gap. And he himself, the Prince of Antioch is killed during the battle And then the crusaders really have to or the settlers really have to think about how they going to maintain the principality of Antioch And the King of Jerusalem has to bail them out It Baldwin II by that point who comes up and acts as regent to try and sort out and plug the gap. But yeah, it's a very serious defeat and probably one of their most serious defeats in that early 12th century period. Yeah. And I want to get to Baldwin II himself in a little moment too, but I wondered if you could also talk us through, so we mentioned that crusader states are established, we get two counties, a principality and a kingdom. How does the monarchy work in the kingdom of Jerusalem? Who are kind of the first kings? How are they appointed and what kind of power do they actually have? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, we tend to think about kingship as being, you know, inherited to the eldest son and all the rest of it. And this is, you know, a clear tradition from the year dot. But actually, monarchies across medieval Europe are all quite different and have their own idiosyncrasies. This one, because it's captured by a collective of people, the city of Jerusalem, they start off by electing the king of Jerusalem. They even briefly discuss having a religious ruler instead of one of the knights. But they end up in the end choosing Godfrey of Bouillon, who was one of the key leaders of the First Crusade. And they select him partly because of stories about his bravery and things that he did on the crusade, but also partly because he seems to be one of the ones who's willing to stay. A lot of the others are returning home. It starts as elective, but Godfrey dies very quickly after having taken care of. And he decides that, he says, actually, I don't want to be called king. I don't deserve to be called king in the city where Christ was walked. So he seems to be quite humble. But the next one, Baldwin, his brother, who was the ruler of Edessa, decides to take over after his brother's death, and he becomes Baldwin I of Jerusalem. He is a really significant figure in establishing the successful capture of those port towns, Sidon, Caesarea, Acre, in that early kind of expansion period. He also works very closely with the church. He's very close to Arnulf of Shock, who later becomes Patriarch of Jerusalem, and together they kind of work to expand the Latin kingdom and organise some of the structures that stay in place for quite some time after that. And then he kind of makes alliances. He gets married to the daughter of an Armenian lord, who we know as Arda. They then get divorced in rather shady terms. And he marries another wife from the west Adelaide of Sicily, who brings lots of wealth and money to help him with his campaign. So that's essentially what they need is money to keep fighting during this really early period but he doesn't treat her terribly well and sends her back home after having spent all her money which isn't very polite he was sounding like a reasonable guy up until that point you know he's doing quite well and working with the church and all that sort of stuff but turns out he's a rotter yeah yeah well the guy who was in charge of the church was a bit of a rotter as well but therein lies another tale so yeah and then we have baldwin the second who kind of follows on that legacy. And interestingly, again, you know, the throne could have been elective at that point. It could have passed to Eustace, who was the third of these three brothers, Godfrey, Eustace, and Baldwin. Eustace was back in the West by this stage. But essentially, another cousin, Baldwin of Le Bork, nipped in at the 11th hour. And Eustace was still packing back in the West to come and take the crown of Jerusalem. He already said, no, I'm here, I'll do it. And he had like 18 years of experience ruling the county of Edessa. So he was well known by everyone, well recognised and seemed to be a good stable pair of hands. So he got the job. So it's still elective even by that point. And it's only really at the end of his reign that it begins to change. And almost a little bit of a meritocracy. It seems like both the Baldwins have come from experience in Edessa of ruling part of the Holy Land to step up. It's like a promotion to then become king of Jerusalem rather than someone who has zero experience. And they were all, you know, integrally involved in the First Crusade as well, which I think gave them a lot of power and kudos. You know, they weren't sort of later settlers coming out. I think had Eustace come out, he would have struggled in that role. And crisis hits when Baldwin II dies without a male heir. Can you just talk us through what happens then? Because he kind of, he has Melisande, a daughter, but he's looking to find her a husband and the relationship between Melisande and the husband that she gets seems a little bit tricky. Are we clear what Baldwin II intended to happen? Yeah, so it is clear he was quite happy to have his eldest daughter as his heir. I mean, he has four daughters, Melisande's the eldest, and he is mentioning her as heir in charters before his death. She's specifically described as his heir. And she's not alone in inheriting a ruling kind of area. In this time period, women do inherit property and they do inherit not always a kingdom, but they do inherit property if they're the eldest female heir. But it is expected or hopeful that they will have a husband or a partner who will then do the military service and engage with that side of things. So they really want a good partner for her and they choose Fulker von Joux, who most people might be familiar with because he's the grandfather of Henry II of England. But he gives up his patrimony in Aisur and comes out to marry Melisande. And William of Tyre tells us that even though the couple get together, they have a child, Baldwin III, in round 1130, as Baldwin II was nearing his death, he was a bit worried that Fulke was trying to edge Melisande out of power or maybe might think about just taking over in his own right. So he says that Baldwin made them inherit together jointly, husband, wife and child, which is quite an unusual constitutional situation to see in a medieval kingship. But it has kind of ramifications then for the reign of Melisande as well. Yeah, it's interesting how all of these things happen, because they've got this new kind of kingship to forge and create, and maybe they're still playing around with the best way to do it. And how much power do we actually see Melisande wielding during her reign? Because I guess, you know, listeners will be aware that we associate particularly traditional Western Europe with excluding women from any form of power during this period. And yet in the Latin East, you do seem to have several women who will rise to positions of quite significant power. So how powerful is melisande while she's queen of jerusalem um okay so so in terms of melisande herself she is really powerful um she clearly has the support of the nobility who who kind of know her know her family she's been there you know she's been established there for quite some time whereas fulk is kind of the newcomer with all his new guys that kind of get annoying you know he's putting all his friends in the top jobs that is annoying everyone so it's partly about her own power, but partly about her support network that makes her important. Baldwin was also very clever in that he married off her sisters to important positions in other crusader states. So we have Alice in Antioch and we have Hodiana later in Tripoli. She has these dynastic family connections to other people who can help her if needs be. But Falk does try to exclude her from power, we think because she's not in many of the early charters for their reign. And it's only after they have a big spat around 1134, which results in the revolt of Melisande's cousin, Hugh II of Jaffa, that means that the situation changes and Fulke apparently has to do, you know, has to say mega sorries for being such an idiot and accusing her of having an affair, which potentially he did. and at that point onwards she's back in the charters so her power's back and she's got authority in the kingdom so you can kind of see it in the historical record as well but she does a lot of things jointly with folk they build a lot of castles they patronize a lot of castles they undertake other kind of patronage work of the church so spending money is a big way of showing your power and authority and then he dies in 1143 and she then is a regent for her young son Baldwin III. But she's also in this odd position where she is the legitimate heir alongside her son. And that then leads to conflict a bit with Baldwin as he gets to his kind of what would be a normal age of maturity. But, you know, they too come to blows briefly, but then that's kind of sorted out and she kind of retires a bit gracefully at the end of her career. But clearly he still listens to what she says. She's involved in various different councils and has quite a key role. So she is the kind of linchpin. She is the sort of steady person through the mid-12th century that keeps the Kingdom of Jerusalem afloat. I find it just so fascinating that kind of within half a, less than half a century of establishing the kingdom of Jerusalem, it's so radically different from the Western European kingdoms that these people have come from, that they're willing to have women in positions of power. And when you get men like Falk come over with their Western European attitudes, that already the institutions and the structures that are in Jerusalem are able to stand up against Falk and allow Melisand to assert her position. He's not able to just sweep her away in a way that he might have wanted to. Yeah, I mean, I guess so. But there are plenty of women who do get swept away in some of these, you know, wives that are unwanted sometimes. but having said that I would challenge a little bit that was the situation in Western Europe I think a lot of modern scholarship now on queenship and on and on kind of women in power more generally so looking at not just queens but countesses duchesses all of those different roles if you start to plot all of the women who actually have quite significant roles either as regents or inheriting land or all of those types of things it's not that exceptional there are quite a lot of women doing it. We just tend to think about it because people say, well, there were no real female ruling queens before Elizabeth I in England. Therefore, there were none. No women had any power across all of Europe. But in fact, that's not the case. But it's because the Chronicles don't talk about it so much, but the charters do. So when you look at the charters, you begin to see actually, oh, there are a lot of women who have a say over what happens to land, what happens to wealth, what happens to that sort of thing. And they do take on legal roles and they do direct military stuff as well. So yeah, I think it's not as unusual as you might think. I think that it being a crusader state and the fact that there is a high turnover of men because people are dying quite a lot, leaving widows, holding patrimonies and those sorts of things, but that's the same, I don't know, in other wars across Europe. So I don't think it's necessarily as different as we think it is. Yeah, interesting. And so just after Falk dies, kind of around 1144, we get the emergence of a man named Zengi, who will be the first kind of real threat to the Crusaders. Can you tell us a bit about how he emerges and the threat that he poses? Yeah, so I mean, Zengi is kind of a key early figure in this kind of, I guess, developing unity in northern Syria. And he's really, you know, kind of starts to put up a significant, he just is basically, you know, kind of a, he's a bit of a conqueror. He starts to build his own kind of base of power, which is expanding in northern Syria. He's trying to get towards Damascus, which is kind of the key threat area for the kingdom of Jerusalem. So he's already a big presence around the principality of Antioch, but his domain is sort of expanding further south and is causing concern for those. So the big things that he does really is to kind of unite. I mean, he starts off as kind of governor of Baghdad and then he becomes governor of Mosul and then Aleppo. And then he takes Hama. He marries the widow of Buri of Damascus, who is a woman called Zumerud, fantastically named Zumerud. She's like a terrifying person in herself. And he also, yeah, he has a reputation for being extremely terrifying, both amongst Christians and Muslim authors who write about him. He was kind of quite a brutal ruler. So when it comes to 1144, essentially, he starts expanding into Edessa, and he successfully manages to sack the city of Edessa. Jocelyn II is the ruler at the time, so he is kind of squeezed out. The Prince of Antioch doesn't come to help and gets a lot of criticism for that. And essentially he is extremely brutal to the Latins, but not necessarily to the other Syrian Christians who live in that city. Yeah, which is an interesting distinction, I guess. and is it mainly Zengi's sort of taking down of Edessa is is it the shock of that that ultimately leads to the second crusade because it's around about this time that we get the second crusade being called in Europe there's different kind of theories about that it certainly is a key impetus and the papacy is very concerned about you know the news of the the shock of of Edessa I mean they it's the city itself is taken I think on Christmas Eve 1144 and it takes a bit of time obviously for the news to get back to the West. And we think that Louis VII of France, who goes on the second crusade, was also thinking about going on a crusade around that stage. So there is that sort of crossover. You know, did he decide, is it his thing or is it because of events in the Holy Land? But I think ultimately, you know, we get another major expedition. Now the big change this time is having kings. So you've got Louis VII, you've got Conrad of Germany, and these are the two kind of key players that take part in the second crusade but we also have a bit of an expansion with the second crusade because they include not just crusades to the holy land but in iberia and in northern europe as well against pagans so so-called pagans so you have this kind of real expansion of of crusading activity during the second crusade so it says to me that it's not all about edessa and certainly when they get to the holy land they don't actually do anything about it does. Yeah. And was it considered a boon to have two kings going? What difference does that make? Because there is the recipe for disaster there in terms of who is the senior figure on the crusade. Yeah. Yes. But I guess that was also a problem with the first crusade because that was a conglomerate of various different knights and magnates, which perhaps potentially is even more confusing. So the good thing about kings is they got loads of money. So they can afford to, help people come. They can pay for troops. They can organise finance and go in style, as it were. But potentially also, there is that risk of conflict because of people's egos and the power of kings and who's going to take ultimate authority for what's going on. And the two do seem to work quite separately. One of the big issues with the Second Crusade, of course, is that the German crusaders go first and then they're followed by the French. And the French kind of, you know, complaining all the time that the Germans have stripped everything bare or that they haven't, you know, or there's been indiscipline and therefore they meet lots of hostility from people. So, yeah, there are all sorts of issues with having those two different groups on crusades. But I think it's not necessarily a new problem for crusades. Like there's always problems with who's going to pay for it and who's going to be in charge. And that, you know, whenever there's a major expedition, it's always an issue. After Civil War, Regicide and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned. But Britain would never be the same. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, we're transported back to the age of restoration royalty, from Charles II to Queen Anne and the birth of the Empire. Join me on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. and i guess they also as you mentioned they highlight one of the the persistent problems of simply getting to the holy land because neither army have a particularly safe or comfortable or easy journey there. They're being harassed almost as soon as they cross into Asia. Yeah, straight away the Germans have some really serious setbacks against the forces of the Sultanate of Rum Conrad himself has to turn back and kind of stay in Byzantium for a while and is looked after by the Byzantine Emperor When the French troops go travel down they end up being caught out at the Battle of Mount Kadmos They kind of get strung out over the mountains and they're easy pickings for the Turkish forces. They're slowed down by their baggage train and this leads to a very serious defeat. They lose a lot of their supplies and also their troops. Interestingly, this is when the military orders come to the fore because Louis has to hand over the army, the discipline in the army to the Templars because it's become so indisciplined to get them safely. What's left to Antioch, he has to hand them over to the Templars. And then they arrive in Antioch and this is, of course, where the situation with Eleanor of Aquitaine, his wife, flares up. Yeah, I was going to mention that we shouldn't go too much further without giving a massive shout out to Eleanor of Aquitaine, a big fan of hers. and obviously she will get mired in an awful lot of controversy around this so the idea that she had an affair with her uncle Raymond a later you know much later invention the idea that she was going to run off with Saladin and all kinds of things swirl around her but how significant is Eleanor's presence on the ground during the crusade is it kind of is it blown up because of the later stories that get attached to or is it significant that she's there? I think it's you It's always significant when a queen goes on crusade in some form or other. The problem that we have is that possibly because of her divorce from Louis later on, she does obviously get quite a bit of negative press, but she seems to have been partly removed from one of the main sources that we have for the French part of the crusade. But what we know about her, she does have lords with her who are from the region of Aquitaine, that you know her duchy so she is kind of in a sense there on as a feudal lord we also have we know that she wrote letters to the empress of constantinople so she was doing a bit of diplomacy they were exchanging letters and talking to each other as they went through byzantium and then we have this situation where she gets to antioch and essentially her uncle raymond is prince of Antioch at this time. He marries the daughter of Alice, Constance, and he wants Louis to help him fight in northern Syria. He wants help and support in order to kind of pursue his aims in northern Syria against Aleppo, you know, and that's his goal. The natural way to achieve that is to sweet talk his wife and kind of say, can you put in a good word for me with Louis and do this? But clearly there are rumours that they get too close or that, you know, something else is going on or Louis just doesn't want to do it. And it seems that Eleanor gets annoyed with the fact that Louis doesn't want to help her uncle. And she says, well, actually, I'll stay. You go on to Jerusalem, I'll stay with my people and I'll help my uncle. He won't have any of that. So he takes her with him by force. And I think this is what causes then the kind of big dispute between them. Yeah. And I always think that one of the interesting things that's going on just beneath the surface there is that clearly Raymond of Antioch has his own preoccupations and his own motives for what he's trying to convince Louis to do. But Louis is willfully ignoring the advice of a man who is on the ground about where they should go, where they should attack, where they should target, how they should behave in the Holy Land. And he's almost, you know, he's saying, no, no, I'm going to ignore all of this advice that is born of experience. And I'm going to do what I think is right. And almost you get a sense that Eleanor is saying that is absolutely mad. Why are you going to ignore all of this advice and expect me to abandon my uncle as well when he says he needs help you know and all of that is what gets turned into this idea that she must have been having an affair because how else could Raymond have got into her head if he wasn't getting into her bed kind of thing but they nevertheless they decide to ignore Raymond and they head off to lay siege to Damascus which kind of doesn't go very well well no I mean it's a complete waste of time to be honest they're only there for a few days they fight for a bit they have really tough like uh three three days fighting through orchards where people are you you know, like snipers with arrows all around the trees, really tough fighting, managed to make some headway. And then for some unknown reason, they decide to move camp to the other side of the city and then realise there's no water and they can't support the troops. They have loads of water and fruit in the orchards, but they go around to the wrong side of the city and then it's game over. And after three days, they have to give up because the only way to overcome it would be to go back through the orchards again. and they've got a worry that Nouradin is coming. So they really can't, you know, they can't stay and they decide to withdraw. So it really comes to nothing. But that decision is a very poor one, to go to Damascus generally. I love the idea that when they get back home, you know, Louis has to go to Eleanor and Eleanor's like, so how did it go? How did ignoring Uncle Raymond go? Did you get what you wanted? Did you? Might it have been an idea to listen to Uncle Raymond? Well, there's a bit of marriage counselling that goes on on the way back home because they have to stop off at Rome. And Eugenius III, the Pope, knows that they're having these marital problems. And he says, you have to stay in my, you can stay in my bed in order to make up. And they do later on have a daughter. So clearly it works for a little while. But after that, it's like, okay, that's enough now. Game over. Yeah. And that's when she decides to get divorced. And the second crusade is, ultimately it's a failure. I mean, Louis and Eleanor get to Jerusalem. they spend some time in Jerusalem which you know must have been an incredible thing for them to witness and to be there for Easter and things is there a cause of the failure of the second crusade do we do we have a sense of why it fails so badly oh it's a difficult one so they I mean they had the choice so they have this council at Parmarea Louis there Eleanor's there Conrad's there Melisande the queen Melisande is there with her son who's still a minor sort of at this stage and they have to decide, are they going to go for Ascalon, are they going to go for Damascus? Ascalon, they need to capture, but it's going to be difficult because it's the kind of port that the Fatimid Egyptians are holding at that time. Damascus, they are worried that Nuredin might take it, so they're keen to go there, but they have a truce with Damascus, so it's not in the interest of the Kingdom of Jerusalem to break a truce that they've organised with Damascus, So it doesn't leave them in good stead with the Damascenes after that. But it's not the only thing that goes wrong. You know, there's all of the logistical problems that happened on the way. There's the battles that they face as they come through Asia Minor against the Seljuks of Rome. There's this failure to kind of pick up on the opportunity to do something in Antioch. And they've also completely forgotten about Edessa. It's like, what about Edessa then? I think when they get to Northern Syria, they realise that it's just not feasible to save at that stage. But still, this was not the package holiday that we signed up for. But having said that, if you look at some other areas in the Second Crusade that could be called successes, you've got an Anglo-Norman fleet, which successfully helps capture Lisbon in Portugal. You've got the Genoese successfully capturing Armeria and Tortosa in Spain. so there are some small successes but not the main one to the holy land is a washout yeah yeah not where the kings are which is where they would have liked it um and you mentioned nor al-din emerging there so he's zengi's son and he will ultimately take control of and and leverage the the wealth and the power of egypt so does the the muslim threat becoming slightly more unified but also shifting its base to Egypt. Does that change the dynamic in the Near East? Absolutely, yeah. As Syria becomes more and more consolidated under one ruler, that is when, you know, they can begin to look towards Egypt and think about how to capture Egypt. So, and if you can imagine kind of the way that the Eastern Mediterranean seaboard looks, basically, you know, you've got this thin strip of Latin states along the coast, and then you've got Syria on one side of that and then you've got Egypt on the other side. And if those two are united, it's a really dangerous position for those Latin states to be in because they're in between a nutcracker basically. It's as if they won't last. So you have kind of Nureddin then building his power. One of the things that he does do successfully is his authority over Damascus. He's the one that achieves what his father couldn't do and brings Damascus into the fold as well and is kind of increasingly expanding. He does seem to have been prepared to ally with the Christians sometimes though, which is quite interesting. So he does make alliances both with the Byzantine emperor and with Baldwin III in Jerusalem. But then after 1163, he seems to have had a bit of a kind of personal conversion moment and become a bit more religiously inclined, starts making more use of the idea of jihad in kind of getting involved in warfare. And he goes on the Hajj as well. He does the pilgrimage to Mecca. And all of this is bad news for the Crusaders and the Crusader states that the Muslim world, they'd essentially been so successful because the Muslim world are so fractured when they arrive there. But the fact that they're coming together now must have felt like it was a growing threat. And Nur al-Din will die in 1174, but he'll be succeeded. Saladin will steal power, I guess, in Egypt a little bit. People will know the name of Saladin being associated with this period of crusading. We see Saladin really jumping on that idea of jihad and ramping up the idea of holy war. Do we have a sense of to what extent that is genuine religious zeal and how much of it is the ways in which he's come to power? it suits him to focus attention outside and on the threat of the Crusader states and point people at them rather than worrying too much about his legitimacy. So having solidified his power in northern Syria and around Damascus and things like that, how does Nur ad-Din manage to take Egypt? Well, I mean, there's this whole period really in the 1160s when it's a bit of a race between Nur ad-Din and the forces of the Kingdom of Jerusalem under then King Amalric as to who's going to get Egypt. They really want Egypt. There's lots of natural resources there. There's the River Nile coming up with all of the sort of agricultural produce coming all the way up through Africa. You've got sort of slave trade. You've got good tax collection, really good tax system. So it's good to make money. And what gets Nuridin in there is that the rulers at this stage are really very weak in terms of the Fatima Caliphate. And that's kind of infighting between the viziers who are kind of basically in control. So in 1163, Nerojan actually gets invited by one of the viziers, Shoah, in order to help support him against his enemies in Egypt. And obviously once invited in, you know, that you're never going to get rid of him. So he keeps sending troops to aid things. And then Amalric, the king of Jerusalem, he tries to invade Egypt like five times. So there's constant kind of battles and strategic warfare going on there throughout the 1160s. But really, it's by 1169 that the general Shirkoo takes, Nur ad-Din's general Shirkoo takes charge of Egypt. And then when he dies, it's Saladin, his nephew, who takes over. Yeah, and Saladin is a name that will be familiar, I think, to anyone who knows anything about this period of crusading. And Saladin will kind of really lean into that idea of jihad and of moving against the Christian crusader states. Do we have a sense of how much of that on Saladin's part is religious zeal? Has he simply spotted a weakness in the Christian crusader states that he could exploit? Or is this partly because of the ways in which he's come to power in Egypt? It suits him to focus attention outward on somebody else and unite people against a common foe. I think in a sense it's the last thing that you mentioned there is the key, because we have to remember that there are two caliphates at this time. There's the Sunni caliphate and the Shi'i caliphate, and the Fatimid Caliphate is the Sheen one. So the first thing that Saladin wants to do in Egypt to assert his own authority is to make sure that people are following Sunni Islam. So this is part of the reason why he gets involved in that process. There's a political element to it for him, which has got nothing to do with the Crusaders. It's actually to do with establishing himself in Egypt. But the benefit of that for him is also that those policies that he puts in place then do have this additional end of unifying both the Syrian and Egyptian Muslims under this banner of Sunni Islam. And so it helps to establish his authority there. But there are lots of Coptic Christians in Egypt and there's lots of different groups. I think we often forget that this isn't just a Christianity versus Islam. There are so many different sects and there's Eastern Christians, there's Jewish people, well, there's all of these different groups that are involved. And largely, they are able to exist within the Islamic world as long as they pay taxes. They might not get to positions of power and authority, but they still form a part of some administration and have particular roles. And that Saladin seems to stick to. I think that he does get canny about using kind of religious calls for getting military support to fight against the Crusaders. and positioning himself as the champion of Sunni Islam only helps with that. But it's not necessarily something that he's doing specifically to oppose the Crusaders. It has lots of benefits for him too. After civil war, regicide and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned. But Britain would never be the same. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, we're transported back to the age of restoration royalty from Charles II to Queen Anne and the birth of the empire. Join me on not just the Tudors from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. And around this time, as Saladin is consolidating his power, Jerusalem is facing a new crisis in that there's Baldwin IV there who develops leprosy. And this leads to kind of a dynastic crisis, which sees the emergence of another powerful woman, Sybil of Jerusalem. So how bad is this situation for the kingdom of Jerusalem? And how significant is Sybil during all of this? I mean, it's an interesting one. Yes. So Baldwin IV, bless him, suffers this awful and terrible disease. which is discovered really in his early teen years. And it is going to be quite, you know, it's a debilitating disease. It means that he needs regents. He needs people to rule in his power. Not all the time. And I would like in his defence, so he was a very active king when he could be. And he, you know, shows bravery on the battlefield. He has a big successful defeat of Saladin at the Battle of Mongisard in 1177. So he's not just an ailing kinglet. But there is this issue that he won't be able to have heirs, he won't be able to have children, so who's going to come next? And there are two options. There's his full-blood sister, Sibylla, who's the daughter of Agnes of Courtenay, alongside Baldwin, and then his half-sister, Isabella, who's the daughter of Maria Comnena, and that's Malric's second wife. And it's clearly Sibylla is the preferred heir. She had had a son, Baldwin V, but he dies, sadly, shortly after he's crowned. So after Baldwin the Fourth, I was Baldwin the Fifth and he's just a child at the time. So at that stage, really, it's Sibylla who needs to take the throne. Isabella is a potential option, but her husband doesn't fancy throwing his hat in the ring and says no thanks. And the big stumbling block is Sibylla's husband, Guy of Lusignan, who gets quite a rough ride in a lot of the chronicles because he's the king who presides over the Battle of Hattin. But it's said that they tried to kind of divorce Guy and Sibylla before she took the throne, but then she took Guy back as her husband and said she wanted him. So he can't have been completely horrendous. It's about as much of a glowing endorsement as he's going to get anywhere, I think, isn't it? He can't have been all that bad. And we mentioned the Battle of Hattin there, which is, you know, that's a crushing blow for the Christians and for the kingdom of Jerusalem and hot on its heels, the city of Jerusalem falls. So how does this affect the region and how should we compare Saladin's capture of Jerusalem to the First Crusade's capture of it in 1099, which was a horrifically bloody affair? Yeah So the Battle of Hattin really is the big significant one because that is where most of the nobility the Latin army the big problem with that is that Guy stripped all the garrisons bare and the whole army of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was on the field So when they failed and they were surrounded by a larger number of troops, most of them were taken into captivity. But Saladin deliberately killed all the military orders. So it's not like there was no bloodbath at all. He kind of singled them out and thought, they're the worst. I'm going to get rid of them all. But Guy has very much put all of his eggs in one basket with this battle. He's got everybody down there. So this is make or break. And so that is why Saladin is able to sweep across and basically besiege one city or fortified town or castle after the other, and they end up capitulating. Jerusalem is a 15-day siege. We have the fantastic story of Margaret of Beverley, who walks, she's from Yorkshire, who arrives in the city just in time for the siege to start. She fights on the walls of the city with a cooking pot on her head. But it only lasts for 15 days, after which it's given over by a negotiated truce. And that means if you're wealthy enough, you can pay a ransom to escape. But a lot of people aren't wealthy enough and get taken into slavery. So it's a bit less bloody than the 1099 capture and a bit more organised. Saladin does then burn the laws of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. So he kind of makes a statement about, you know, what he wants to happen. And yeah, he installs the minbar that Nur ad-Din had built to put in the city of Jerusalem to kind of show his power and authority. But yeah, it seems to have been a more civilised affair. And getting on to what are we on about? Unfair question number 422 for today. because we're now going to try and power our way through what becomes known as the Third Crusade. Presumably, unlike Odessa, the fall of Jerusalem is a genuine existential crisis for the Catholic Church in Europe. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, it's so immediately we get the bull for the papal bull for the Third Crusade since our Auditor Tremendi. And this is kind of circulated widely. People do take it very seriously. And one of the things that they're most upset about is the loss of the piece of the true cross that was found by the Crusaders after the siege of Jerusalem initially. It's captured at the Battle of Hattin. And it's mentioned in lots and lots of the literature. So that's clearly another kind of sign of divine disfavour, which is a horrendous shock to people. Gradually, they start to build up the impetus to do this and the key players are involved. So you've got the King of France, who at the time is Philip II. You've got the King of England, who when the initial news come out is Henry II, but he then dies. Richard the Lionheart takes his place. And Frederick Barbarossa in Germany, who had taken part actually in the Second Crusade already. So he was a seasoned and experienced crusader and also the Holy Roman Emperor. So you have three very powerful monarchs taking part in this expedition. Yeah. And I mean, the Second Crusade, we'd said it was positive that we've got two crowned heads involved in that well now we're ramping it up to three promising to be even better um except that you know to what extent is personal our personal relationships at play here because philip and richard in particular aren't good friends they seem quite competitive to me so again is having that um that many cooks gonna spoil the broth i think yes partly but i also think it depends kind of people went into this crusade with a lot of different agendas uh i i think and we have the issue that frederick barbarossa goes but he dies on the way he cleverly decides to swim across a river in his elder years and yeah not not the best way so he he dies and because of his death a lot of the troops who were going to come on that crusade then go back to germany for the new election of the the new king so really it's more about that relationship between Richard and Philip and Richard really does almost everything he possibly can to annoy Philip on this crusade I really do think he's just um and they have had a reasonably good relationship in the past they had allied with each other in the past against Richard's father so you know they clearly did have sometimes a friendly relationship but Richard was betrothed to Philip's sister, Alice. And he used the crusade, I think, as an excuse to get out of that marriage because Philip couldn't attack him while they were on crusade and brought his new bride along, Berengaria, and married her. He also managed to capture Cyprus and didn't want to share any of the loot with Philip. So he kind of broke a lot of promises, was doing what he wanted to do. and uh and i think he was kind of doing it deliberately and i guess then philip's nose is rubbed even further in the dirt when philip gets there first they're laying siege to acre and and it's kind of long prolonged hard difficult siege and kind of richard turns up and it's almost like the next day they win the siege and richard's like well obviously that's because i'm here now yeah well but to be fair he also turns up with a massive stack of cash that he got from cyprus and was literally throwing money at people saying, I'll give you this much money if you get over the walls first. So, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, Philip, it added insult to injury, I think. And Philip decided not long after to go home, whether, you know, specifically to go back and attack Richard while he was away or whether he was genuinely ill, as some sources say, is open to question. But, yeah, he thoroughly got annoyed. And I think probably rightly so with the way Richard behaved. I think it's really just to get across that there is, you know, Guy is still there, but there is also Comrade of Montferrat who's cropping up. And it's kind of just, you know, to what extent are the Crusaders pulling themselves apart here? Because there seems to be a real lack of unity. And, you know, Philip and Richard are playing out their own rivalry through these two kind of candidates to rule Jerusalem. And, you know, are the Crusaders sort of setting themselves on fire here? There is a history of kings of Jerusalem reaching out to the rulers in the West to help them make decisions about things like succession and other stuff. They want to get the powerful kings on side to help secure succession and that sort of thing. So it's not exceptional that they get involved in the politics that are going on there. Clearly, Guy of Lusignan is struggling, although he's the one who starts off the Siege of Acre. He could have just disappeared, but he goes to Tyre and Conrad of Monfrat is holding Tyre against Saladin and says, I'm not giving this to you. I've earned it with my hard work. And so this is why then Guy decides, OK, well, I'll go and lay siege to Acre instead. but by this stage Sybil has died, his wife, who is the kind of key link to the throne of Jerusalem so it makes it much more difficult and also there's that whole legacy of Hattin makes it much more difficult for him to hold the position so it makes sense really to kind of buy him off with Cyprus and then to put Conrad in place but then of course Conrad is murdered by assassins very soon after his elevation to the kingship of Jerusalem through marriage to Isabella, the new heir. And some people suggested, is Richard behind this or not? Did he want to get rid of him? And then it's a cousin of Richard's, Hugh of Champagne, who then marries Isabella. Poor Isabella. She has about four husbands and he becomes king of Jerusalem. And the stated aim of the Third Crusade is to recapture Jerusalem after it fell to Saladin. How close do they get to that? Was it ever a realistic aim for them to have? Well, again, you know, the most important thing they have to do first is get the ports back. You know, they have to kind of expand the areas they're holding on to. So Conrad managed to hold on to Tyre. They have the Siege of Acre and they managed to get Acre back. And then it's Jaffa. There's this big kind of battle at Arsuf, where Richard shows off how brave he is. Because then you can always get support in. You know, you can send ships and get more and more people to come in. The problem with Jerusalem is it's inland and it has very little strategic importance. Its importance is mainly religious. So it's important culturally and to people's mindsets. But actually, in terms of a trade centre or anything else, it's not that viable. And it's difficult to keep supply lines open. So they do try. They try twice to get to Jerusalem, but they just can't. They can't make it because the supply lines get sort of stretched out and it doesn't happen. So in the end, they have to solve it by a treaty and they decide to negotiate with Saladin. So they have the Treaty of Jaffa in 1192. And there's a really interesting dynamic between Richard and Saladin, I think, isn't there? They kind of seem to respect each other, almost like each other. But maybe that's also a recognition that neither were going to be able to defeat the other as well. Richard is wildly successful as a commander and a general in the Holy Land without doing anything as spectacular as recapturing Jerusalem. But Saladin is also consolidating his power. So it's kind of the unstoppable force meets the immovable object. And as you say, is the Treaty of Jaffa just a result of that stalemate? It is partly. I think, you know, Saladin's kind of overreached himself and is at a stage where he needs to kind of consolidate and can't continue with this level of campaigning. And Richard is, you know, he's cautious enough that he can hold on to what he's gained. But he also knows that Philip is threatening his lands back at home. He needs to get back to make sure that those are protected. So he can't stay. So in that situation, the only thing you can do really is to make a truce. And then once Richard does leave for home and find that Philip has been thoroughly harassing all of his lands, how does the dust settle in the Holy Land? Because again, we've mentioned Sibylla's sister, Isabella, has risen to prominence again. So there is another powerful woman in Jerusalem. How can we leave it in the wake of the Third Crusade? What the Third Crusade achieves really is a continuation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Although the city of Jerusalem is no longer in Crusader hands, the kingdom is now based at Acre and that's kind of the royal area. Isabella and her husband, Henry of Champagne, they continue ruling. I think it's till 1197. Henry has a weird death. and then she gets married to Guy of Lusine-the-Anse brother, Amory but again she goes on to have female children so there's a continuation of this kind of female heirs to the throne of Jerusalem but I think this is not necessarily a problem or an issue they are kind of inheriting the throne there's a tradition of inheriting the throne and it also means that they can encourage new crusaders to come out from the West to marry, bringing troops, bringing support, bringing finance. And that, so it can be actually a positive in this kind of frontier situation. And if we've left Saladin having overstretched himself, does the Treaty of Jaffa, by him, time what happens to Saladin and his dynasty, his empire? Well, sadly, Saladin dies not too long afterwards. He dies in 1194, I think. So, And this kind of unity that he's forged between Syria and Egypt is quite fragile. And pretty soon it kind of breaks up again into two separate entities as his heirs kind of are fighting over who's going to take charge of various bits. So in a way, that gives the new kingdom of Acre a bit of a breather in order to establish itself and recover from some of the really devastating defeats that Saladin inflicted. I can't help wondering whether Richard ended up wishing he hadn't gone home. I mean, given that everything that happens on the way and what happens to him when he gets home, if he'd stayed in the Holy Land for a little bit longer, Saladin would have been gone and he would have been able to exploit maybe some of those breaches that were appearing in the Muslim unity that Saladin had forged. So maybe he'd have been better if he'd stayed there a little bit longer. Potentially, yeah. There is that possibility. He'd had a big boost of cash and various different things from the conquest that he'd had, but he also kind of needed to quit while he was ahead because that would have disappeared very quickly, I think, had they stayed longer. Always key to that forging of a myth and a legend, isn't it? To quit at the peak of your powers and get out while you're winning. Is it fair to say that the story so far, up to the end of the Third Crusade of military activity in the Near East during this period seems to be a story of initial Muslim disunity and then growing Muslim unity, tying in with Christian fracturing. And then all that seems to be swinging backwards and forwards a little bit to determine who is ever kind of on the up. Yeah, I think obviously kind of this is a time and just a period generally where land equals power in a sense. It's an agrarian society. The more lands you have, the more troops you can call on. I mean, cash is also good. But if you can look at the Byzantine Empire and mercenaries and sort of say, well, how successful are they? I think it is partly about the amount of one ruler can control a large area of land. They've got a lot of resources to call on. They can be quite successful. What's interesting with the Crusades, of course, is that they aren't all just one ruler's initiative. They really are a mixture of peoples from different places, with different agendas. And that kind of makes it difficult then for them to have a clear objective sometimes because people go with different objectives in mind. I think for the settlers, their objectives are reasonably straightforward. But because they're broken into these four different pieces, they also have their own personal objectives. And we do see conflict in the settler states as well as they're kind of establishing themselves and allying with one another against each other. I think if unity can be forged, it can be a very powerful tool. But there are a lot of ambitious people vying for power and a lot of different interest groups. So it very much depends on the individual power and the person in power, their relationships with people as to how successful they are. And once that person goes, like when Saladin dies, it's hard for a successor to repeat that process unless they're equally skilled. Well, thank you very much, Natasha, for this. I mean, I joked about how many unreasonable questions I've asked you, but you've... It's a bit of a whistle-stop time. Well, you've taken us through two crusades and everything before, in between, and after. So thank you very, very much for handling that with such incredible ability. You've swept us through all of those complex events and made it really kind of understandable for us. So if you need to go and have a lie down in a quiet room with a glass of something strong, I think you've probably earned it. But thank you very, very much for joining us and explaining all of that to us, Natasha. You're very welcome. It's been a pleasure. Well, that was such a fun and interesting conversation and we covered so much. It's probably worth recapping a little bit. With the age of crusader kings and queens rising and faltering across the 12th century, the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 wasn't the end of the story, but the beginning of a fragile and experimental new political world. The Crusader states survived not simply through force of arms, but through negotiation, diplomacy and uneasy coexistence with their Islamic neighbours. And the struggle for the Holy Land was shaped as much by figures like Zengi and Saladin as by the ambitious Baldwin, Melisande and Richard the Lionheart. If you want to discover what happened when that delicate balance began to fracture, then join Eleanor next week for episode three in our series on the Crusades. She'll be exploring the disastrous course of the Fourth and Fifth Crusades, the sack of Constantinople, and the extraordinary career of the excommunicate crusader Emperor Frederick II. Moments when crusading turned in on itself, and the movement began to splinter under the weight of its own contradictions. I hope you've enjoyed this episode, and a huge thanks to Dr Natasha Hodgson for joining us. If you want to hear more from her, go and listen to our fantastic episode with Eleanor on Women Crusaders in our back catalogue. There are new instalments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please do 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 historyhits.com forward slash subscribe right now. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hits. Thank you.