The Crusades: Part 4 – Salah ad Din: Part 2

[Music] Um, this is actually part three of my series on the Crusades. If you haven't watched parts one through three, you will be a little bit sorry. This is part four of my series on the Cru—no, no, it is part three. I can't even remember. One, two, three—it's part four. This is part four of my series on the Crusades. I have it labeled two different ways because—so is part three—and Saladin is such an amazing leader that I actually also call that talk Saladin Part One. So this is Saladin Part Two.

If you haven't watched the other—se—the other episodes in the series, you will be a little lost because I don't want to restart, but I will do a little bit just to sort of reset the stage, and you know, I guess you can always go back and and watch one of the earlier parts to make it make more sense. Um, so let me let me set the stage. So 1095, Alexius Comnenus, the Roman Emperor, goes to Rome and asks the Pope for help because he's getting hammered, uh, fighting the Seljuk Empire. The Seljuk Empire, um, has been slowly advancing in Anatolia, taking away land from the Romans. The Pope decides that he does want to get involved, and the timing is actually amazing because in 1058 we had, uh, the the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church excommunicate each other. So it's called the Great Schism; that was 1058. So 1095, right after the Great Schism, all of a sudden the Orthodox Eastern Christianity is asking for help from Western Catholic Christianity, and the Catholic Church agrees. The Pope calls for the Crusades.

Having said that, nothing happens the next year. In 1096, a hermit gets up in front of everybody in France and goes, "We really ought to do what the Pope asked for. Let's do a crusade." And a Crusader Army forms and begins marching to go capture Jerusalem and take it from the the the Seljuk Empire. Now, the Seljuk Empire had actually recently captured Jerusalem themselves, so this is a take-back, but not not for Christianity; the Seljuks had captured it from another group of Muslims. So this is not exactly "we're taking it back for us," but you have to remember that at one point the Roman Empire owned Palestine, and when they did, the Roman Empire, which by then was Christian, did own Jerusalem. So in a way, centuries earlier there was a a Christian rule over Jerusalem. So in the mind of the Crusaders, they're taking it back for that purpose. So they go, and when they go, they initiate the Crusades in Jerus—in in Germany. Uh, most of the Crusaders in the original Crusade are German and French. They initiate the crusade in Germany by going up and down the Rhine River, massacring Jews. They kill about 9,000 Jewish Germans and rape thousands of Jewish women, and then they go on the Crusades. I guess they wanted Jesus's blessing or something, and the the rest is sort of history.

The First Crusade captures Jerusalem, um, in 1099. They rule Jerusalem until the end—until right before the Third Crusade starts. The reason they lose Jerusalem is because they make a series of bad errors; they keep attacking the Muslims under the rule of a guy named Saladin. In 1187, Saladin has had enough; he he causes the Crusaders to fight a battle called the Battle of Hattin, and he defeats the Crusader Army. He then goes to Jerusalem, and he forces the Crusaders to surrender in 1187. So the Crusaders ruled Jerusalem for about 88 years. They ended up with four states: there was the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli or Trabus, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. So in 1187, the County of Edessa has already been conquered by—um, it was actually conquered by two rulers before Saladin—Zengi had had done it, and and then Nur ad-Din takes control of it, solidifies it, and finishes it off. So at that point there's they're down to three Crusader states. There's still three Crusader States in 1187; it's just the Kingdom of Jerusalem has lost its capital, which is always bad for a state, and lost a huge chunk of territory.

So Saladin decides to try to finish off the Kingdom of Jerusalem, so he begins conquering more territory, not just Jerusalem itself; he begins in the surrounding cities, and they're going one after the other. He gets to the coast, and he starts capturing coastal cities. He then puts the city of Tyre, or Sur in Arabic, under siege. Um, he has a problem. So, uh, 2,035—5 years ago—that's what's in my head, but it's probably wrong; double check me—Alexander the Great captured the city of Tyre. The the city of Tyre was an island off the coast of Lebanon that belonged to the Persian Empire. Well, Alexander had some ships, but he didn't have enough ships to take an island, and the Persians had more ships, so they could react quickly if he tried to go by sea. The city itself was completely walled off, so it's an island but with walls, so even if he had the ships, that that still didn't mean he could get into the city. So he made it not an island anymore, and he just began dumping rock into the Mediterranean Sea until they made a causeway that reached the island, and that causeway never went away. So by the time Saladin gets there, it's not an island anymore; it's a peninsula, and it's still to this day a peninsula. Uh, the causeway is just expanded to the point where it is now a city; it's part of the city; it's not even like a bridge anymore; it's just this massive chunk of land that's human-made that just connects this one-time island back to the mainland. When Saladin gets there, though, it was a lot narrower than it is today, so there's only one way to approach by land. So the only option he has to capture the city is to attack it by sea, well, with the support of a sea attack, but he has a problem; it's a big problem, and the big problem that Saladin has is in part because of his own policies.

So when Saladin captures a Crusader city, including Jerusalem, his what he would do with the prisoners was free them. Well, they would then go somewhere; Tyre is where they usually went. So by the time he gets to this city to take it, there's 40,000 Crusaders there. He only has an army of 20,000 men. Usually when defenders are in a city, they're outnumbered by the larger Army outside; it's reversed; the Army inside is twice the size of the army outside. That's never good for the attacker; you don't want to be in that situation. And then he needs naval superiority; he has 10 ships, 10 Egyptian ships available for that; the Crusaders have 17, so he's even outnumbered in terms of naval support. The Crusaders launch a surprise raid on the 10 Egyptian ships, set five of them on fire. He's now got five; at that point he has zero because the five can't stay; 17 to 5, that's not going to work. So the five flee, and so now he doesn't have naval support. It's winter by the time he set siege to the city; it's the winter of 1187, and he's trying to make the calculus like, "How do I pull this off? I don't have the troops." His generals come to him, and they go, "We don't want to do this; we're done; we're tired; we've been fighting for months," you know, cuz they had just finished the Siege of Jerusalem a few months earlier; they just done the Battle of Hattin a few months before that, right? This is—they've been at it for a long time; it's winter; it's cold; armies are hard to maintain in the field. He's trying to convince his generals they need to stay; they say, "No, we're done." He goes, "All right, fine." He disbands half the army, takes the remaining half of the army, and then goes up and down the coast capturing cities. By the time he's done capturing ci—cities, sometime around 1189, he's captured all of them except four. Well, it's a little bit more than four; four major cities he didn't capture: Tyre, he never got it; he didn't capture Tripoli, so the County of Tripoli is still intact; and he didn't take Antioch or the surrounding territory around Antioch or Antioch's port city, because Antioch is inland; Seleucia is the port city; he didn't capture that either. So the Crusaders still have three port cities and then Antioch; that's it; that's what their state has been reduced to.

So Saladin in 1189 is thinking, "I've basically won," right, because the Crusader states are now reduced to basically three city-states, but the Pope announces a Third Crusade. So now he's got armies coming from Europe to reinforce the Crusader states to prevent them from finally collapsing, and they have the explicit goal of retaking Jerusalem. Then something goes sideways. So when he captured Jerusalem, he captured Guy—actually, he captured Guy at the Battle of Hattin before he captured Jerusalem. Guy was the king of the the Kingdom of Jerusalem; he's not a smart guy; he's b—basically a big bully. Um, he was married by Sibylla, the uh, the real heir to the throne, um, for political reasons, not because she loved him or anything silly like that, and in the end I think she regretted it because he's such an idiot. Anyway, Saladin has custody of him, and he's been holding on to him for about two years. He had agreed to free him; he just hadn't gotten around to it cuz he was finishing up the Crusades. So he goes to Guy and he says, "Look, I will make you a deal. Now, I think one of the reasons why he wants to do this is the guy who's running—se—the guy who's running Tyre is actually competent; his name is Conrad de Montferrat. He is a solid leader; he knows politics; he knows economics; he knows military strategy; he's dangerous. And I think what Saladin is thinking is, 'If I release the king of Jerusalem, he will automatically be over Conrad, and it'll bring the quality of leadership down a notch.'" So he goes to Guy; he says, "I will make you a deal: no more fighting; we're going to make peace; like it is; you get to keep Tyre; everything is going to be great; and I'll release you." And Guy goes, "Yeah, of course; this is a great deal." So he releases him. Guy gets to Tyre; he immediately forms up an army and begins marching south, breaks the treaty instantaneously, and puts the city of Acre under siege. So Saladin made an error in releasing Guy, probably, maybe. So now he has to go mobilize an army to go stop the siege of Ty—I'm sorry, of Acre, uh, Akka in Arabic, and he and he goes and he arrives. So the city itself is in a position that's a little awkward; it's a peninsula that juts into the Mediterranean, and so when he arrives the Crusader Army is in between him in the city, and he can't get to it because he can't get through the Crusader Army. As time goes by, more and more Crusaders show up, so even though Saladin is asking for more and more of his supporters to show up, he's not keeping up, and he's going to get into another one of these outnumbered matches. There's about 5,000 defenders inside the city of Acre by the time the siege ends. Saladin had about 40,000 men outside, so he had about 45,000 men; he had about 50—50 ships; the Crusaders had about a little over 100 ships. So again, they've got this 2:1 ratio at sea; he's not used—Saladin isn't used to this; he's used to outnumbering them at sea, so this is alarming. And then the Crusaders had about 60,000 men, so he's got 40,000 outside the city against 60,000, so he's outmatched again, and he can't break the siege. The Crusaders keep attacking it over and over and over again. Conrad de Montferrat shows up; he's building siege equipment, and he's trying to break into the city. And then what would happen is every time the Crusaders would break a section of wall, Saladin would attack; that would force the Crusader Army to turn around and face him, and then that would give the defenders a chance to repair the wall, and that's how he's keeping the city alive. As as the Crusaders start to establish naval superiority, though, now he's having a problem because he can't deliver food. At one point, because he's he's captured Beirut, right, he captured almost the entire coast, a group of Beities get inside this big ship; they sew crosses onto the sails; they go and they buy pigs from the Christian population living in Lebanon; they load up the ship with pigs; they put them on the on the decks so that everybody can see the pigs; and they dress like Crusaders; they shave their beards; and they get on the ship filled with supplies, and they take off towards Acre. And as they're approaching the city, a Crusader ship pulls out and blocks their way and says, "It looks like you're going to Acre," and they go, "Yeah, of course we're going to Acre," and the Crusaders go, "We haven't captured it yet," and they go, "Oh, we didn't know; we thought you had captured it." They're like, "No, okay, we'll just go." They anchor over here by the camp, but there's a ship behind us; they probably don't know; you should go tell them. And the Crusaders go, "Oh, okay." So they sail over to the ship that was behind them that was kind of heading in the direction of Acre to tell them. In the meantime, the Beities drop their sails and go full speed as fast as they can for Acre; they get past the blockade; they get into the city; and they deliver their supplies. That's kind of a one-off thing, right? The next time a ship shows up with a bunch of pigs on the deck, they're going to be like, "I'm not sure we believe that you're really us." So this is not a sustainable thing going forward. Well, at least by like the fourth time, because my experience with the human population is that most of us are actually really stupid, so you might get away with it a few times, but you're not going to get away with it a lot. At some point somebody will go, "I don't know; I see a pattern; we stop the ship; they tell us they're us; and then they take off for the city." I don't also—what do they do with all the pigs once they got up there? Not awkward.

Um, so this is the situation, and it just got dramatically worse. The Crusaders have left Europe, and they're on their way. It's 1189; there are three big armies coming. One is a bunch of Germans. So there are accounts from the time period that say it was like 100,000, 200,000 Germans. I don't see how there's any possibility that's true. Um, it's probably 15,000 Germans; that's a more reasonable number. So I'm just going to go go with 15; I wasn't there; I I didn't count them; this is just my guess; maybe it was 20,000. There's no way it was 100; that's too much. That German Army is led by Frederick Barbarossa. Barbarossa means Redbeard. He had—he actually—this will be his Second Crusade; he actually came on the fir—on the Second Crusade; now he's going to come on the Third. This time he's 66, and this time he's a king; he's the Holy Roman Emperor; he is a super powerful individual. This Crusade is a little bit different than previous Crusades, and in part for one reason: it was very well organized. Frederick Barbarossa knows what he's doing; he's a brilliant logistician; he's a he's he's great at leadership; he he sets things up, and he does something really strange. So I told you in the First Crusade there was a massacre of the Jewish population living in the Rhine; there was also pogroms in the Second Crusade to initiate it. In the Third Crusade, there's a pogrom against the Jewish population in England, but Frederick Barbarossa goes to the Jewish population and taxes them and then declares that they're underneath Imperial protection. Uh, there is an attempt to attack a German—a Jewish German community in Mainz. When the attack starts to unfold, uh, the Emperor, the Holy Roman Emperor, has a decree shouted in the city saying, "If you maim a Jew, I will maim you; if you kill a Jew, I will kill you." And the attack continues, and Imperial troops show up and break the attack up, and Frederick Barbarossa doesn't allow the kind of pogrom that the previous Crusades had initiated at the start. So there's a new new guy in town, and he has a different approach. He doesn't go with his army, in part cuz he's 66; he goes by boat, and then he meets his army in Constantinople, and then they cross together, and they begin the conquest of what is today Turkey. And as they're conquering, every time the Turks put up an army, he just bats it away. These Germans are really good soldiers; I guess that's not a weird sentence to say—and they're just taking out Turkish Army after Turkish Army. They capture Konya, the capital, uh, for the Sultanate of Rum, which was the name of the Turkish state in the area. It's just a disaster.

In the meantime, the Armenians had a little kingdom called, uh, Little Armenia. The king, his name is Leo, sends word to Saladin. So it's time to check in a little bit on this. So the Armenians are Christian; they're they're Eastern Orthodox; they're native, and they don't see eye to eye with the Crusaders who are Catholic, but also because they've experienced a lot of abuse at the hands of the Catholics. So Leo peels off some of the men that he had at Acre and sends them north to go help the Armenians fight the Germans when they arrive. And then Saladin gets a break. So the German Army has gotten into Armenia; it reaches a river; they need to cross the river; and there's probably like five accounts of what happens next. I'll just tell you like two and a half of those. So one account is that Frederick Barbarossa is riding his horse across the river over a shallow spot, over a ford, and he falls into the river, and even though it's shallow, because he's in full armor and he's 66, he can't get up, and he drowns. Then some people suggest he may have even had a heart attack, and that made it worse. Another story is that Frederick Barbarossa tells everybody, "I'm going to swim the river." He takes off his armor, puts it on a horse, and tries to swim the river; has a heart attack and drowns in the river. The third story is he decides, "Man, I really stink; I've been riding this horse, and I've been in this armor for days." He takes off his armor; he goes into the river to bathe; has a heart attack and drowns. I'm not sure which story is right, but I'm going to go with he had a heart attack and drowned; like I feel like that's the important detail that everybody seems to aim for. He's out of the picture; that German Army implodes; it's a catastrophe. Thousands of Germans go, "You know what? If I'm not fighting for Frederick Barbarossa, I'm not fighting," and they turn around and they just march back to Germany in a mo—in an instant. Half the German Army is gone; just disintegrates. Leopold, uh, he's an Austrian Monarch; decides he's the king of Austria; he decides, "I'm going to take over; I'm the next in line," and so he takes over the remnant of the German Army. By the time they get to Tyre, there are about 5,000 men. So about two-thirds of the German Army just disappears; some of it turned around right then and there; the rest of it is just sort of sloughing off; a lot of them are turning around, but by—some of them are dying; by the time they get there, about 5,000 arrive. That's a huge break for Saladin for two reasons: he got rid of the competent leader, and two-thirds of the army without a sword—luck.

The other two armies coming are coming from France. So this is a little weird. There's Philip Augustus; Philip Augustus is the king of France; he owns about a quarter of France. There's another king coming; his name is Richard the Lionheart. So when I say Richard the Lionheart, you go, "Oh, the king of England," the English king. Richard isn't English; he he is the king of England, but he's not English; in fact—

He didn't even speak English. He spoke French, Oxitan, and Latin, like he spoke two different French languages—French in Oxitan. He didn't even bother learning English. He was born and spent part of his childhood in England. Once he was a king, maybe he spent six months in England at some point. When you put all his travels together, his court was an Anju in France, so he was ethnically more French than anything else. The second thing that he was was Norman, which are French-speaking Vikings, and he was—he looked like a Norman. He had red hair, he's big build; he looked like a Viking. So, even though he was mostly French, he had a bunch of Viking DNA. Like, apparently that was the thing that came through his dad, Henry II, who was more Viking than his son, uh, um, but still a French/Norman mix. His dad created a really crazy little empire. Henry II conquered half of France, and he owned a little piece of Ireland and a big chunk of Wales and all of England, basically.

In other words, when Richard goes, he's not really the king of England so much as he is the ethnically French ruler of a little empire that owns half of France—more than the king of France owns—and England. So one of the solutions to this is to call it, uh, the Angine Empire. I don't know what to do with it—Anglo-French Empire or whatever. Strangely enough, that'll go away; it doesn't last very long, but it'll come back in the Hundred Years War when Henry V actually ends up reconquering France. Uh, he conquers even more than Henry II did, and he puts—put it back together. So there's actually two times in history when France and England were basically merged together, but the first time it was only half of France, and that's what this is.

So when Richard and Phillip are talking about going on this Crusade, they have a problem; it's a big political problem. If one goes and the other stays behind, the guy who stays behind will attack the holdings of the guy who left. So either they both have to go, or neither can go. So they actually have to sit down and negotiate. Also, to make things weird, Phillip's dad's first wife is Richard's mom, Eleanor of Aquitaine. So they're—they're not brothers, but they're cousins—not first cousins; they're like second or third cousins. They're not brothers, but they do have this weird familial connection. Uh, Eleanor of Aquitaine divorced his dad—sorry, and had the marriage annulled because they were cousins, and she got the marriage accepted by the Pope and then ended up hating his guts and then went back and said, "I want the marriage annulled," and he—and she just drove everybody nuts until she got the annulment and then went and married Henry II. So that's that story. It's a good story, though. Oh, Eleanor of Aquitaine, uh, led an army in the Second Crusade, just for the record. She was a commander in her own right.

So, so they've got this history. Like Richard's like, "I want to go, like my mom did," you know what I mean? So he goes to Philip; they work out a deal. They're both going to go—not together; they go separately—but by ship instead of by land. On the way, Richard picks up his fiancée. He's—there's been an arrangement for him to marry a princess, so he picks her up. He goes to Sicily where his sister has married the king of Si—but I don't—I don't think it was Tancred. Anyway, I'm drawing a blank. Uh, I think her husband died, so I think she's a widow, but I—we should double check that later. Anyway, he goes to Sicily and picks up his sister, who happens to be, by the way, his favorite sister, and he's heading off, and—and they're in separate ships for some reason, and they get separated at some point. The sister and his bride-to-be—they may have gotten married in Sicily, so it might be his wife—end up in Cyprus under the control of the ruler of Cyprus, and Richard's like, "What the heck?" So he decides this is a perfect opportunity for me to do a little conquering—a little off-to-the-side conquering. He invades Cyprus and conquers it with his army, takes it over, and then goes to Tyre, and then when he gets there, he realizes, "Oh, the action's in Acre," I can't wait, and he goes. But because he does a little sideshow on Cyprus, um, Philip has already arrived. Philip starts making trebuchets, and he's set up the trebuchets, and he's hammering Acre's walls with these trebuchets. They're basically mass drivers, right? Um, you get this giant rock in this arm, and you swing the thing, so it comes flying over; it's amazing. Uh, I know that we're working on mass driver technology. What we'll do is we'll go grab an object—probably from the asteroid belt or something, you know, something that's mostly nickel and iron, something exciting—and we'll just put it in orbit around the Earth. And then when it's time to use this, what we'll do is we'll put it on a platform that gets it spinning, and then once we have it at the right speed, you stop the spin, and that's the vector the rock will travel, and hopefully you've aimed it correctly, and you could take out a whole city. Just—I mean, there'll be radiation; it's not like it's not clean; you're still going to get a lot of nasty from it, but it'll be a lot less than a nuke. So it'll—it'll be—you'll—it'll—there'll be a crater, like there's nothing left, like a nuke. You'll get a crater, but there'll be the little core in the middle that's left; that'll be creepy to see. This will just—it'll be like, you know, dinosaur-ending event. Isn't that cool? We've—we're—our idea is to take the trebuchet into outer space. So cool. How can we kill whole cities without nuking them? Like somebody sat down one day was like, "You know, I just feel like the nuke is so old and antiquated; we should do something new and exciting." Mass drivers and rail guns. Anyway, it's good that we're spending our time figuring that out instead of how to end global warming, for example. You know, why would we waste our time on that? That makes no sense. Anyway, so Philip's hammering the walls of Acre. Richard shows up; he joins the siege.

Richard was obsessed with Saladin. He really, really badly wants to meet him. In fact, he wants to meet him so badly that movies that portray this will make up fictional events where the two men meet. So there are some myths that are—that float around about Saladin; they're just—out of movies—like they were just—the myths were made up in the last hundred years, there, and I—I'll talk about them a little bit just because it's kind of funny. So, so Richard puts out a communique saying, "I really want to meet; let's talk." Saladin goes, "I will not meet you until we have a deal. When we have the deal, I'll meet you to sign the deal, and then we'll break bread together, and that's the end of the conflict." Richard goes, "No, let's get together to talk about the deal." Salah's like, "Want nothing to do with that," which is Salah's pattern. He did this when he had a conflict with Nuredin; he just simply would avoid him at all costs. He's doing this now with Richard. So Saladin ends up sending his brother, Al-Adel, to go do the negotiating on his behalf. So they—Al-Adel is supposed to show up and talk to Philip and Richard. An epidemic breaks out, so the sieging army, all of a sudden, is struck by this illness, and they're trying to navigate out of this. One of the people who get sick is Sibylla, the wife of Guy, the queen of the kingdom of Jerusalem. She dies. Uh, I want to say it was July of 1190. Sibylla dies. So if you've seen the movie *Kingdom of Heaven*, it's the character that Eva Green plays. She dies of this epidemic, and I think it killed like two of her daughters; it's devastating. Philip and Richard get sick; they're like on their deathbed. They both survive. That's one of the fictional stories. Uh, one of the fictional stories is that Saladin—it's—I don't know the name of the movie, but in one of the movies, Saladin disguises himself as a regular physician, gets through, goes to the Crusaders, and says, "I'm here to offer my services," that you know—he's not—he's pretending to be a Muslim physician. In the movie, the Crusaders let him in; he treats Richard and cures him and then sneaks back into—to his lines and takes command of his army. That didn't happen, but it's fun to watch it in a movie. Uh, so that's one of the myths that never took place. Um, so they cancel the meeting. At that point, Richard's like, "Let's just—let's just take Acre, and then we'll talk to the Muslims; like we'll just go ahead and get this thing going." So the siege continues on, and it goes—it starts the second year, so that's a long siege, and the city is just running out of food. It's slowly breaking; the people inside start sending communiques to Saladin. They're like, "We're down to 2,700 defenders; we're out of food; there's no way we're going to make it much longer; you need to make a deal if you're going to save us." And they start this communicating back and forth, telling Saladin they're going to surrender. Saladin doesn't know what to do; he keeps trying to do these attacks to relieve the city. They—the attacks can't break through because he's outnumbered, and the Crusaders are just holding their position, knowing that eventually they'll win. Um, finally, the city says it's going to surrender, so Salah goes, "Look, they want to surrender; here are their terms." He's not meeting them in person, but like Al-Adel is doing it, and Richard says, "No, we don't take the terms."

So you got to remember at this point there's kind of an interesting situation because Guy is the king on paper, but he's not in reality anymore because now that Sibylla is dead, he's lost his claim to the throne. So Sibylla's daughter, Isabella I, is now effectively the monarch for the kingdom of Jerusalem, but Conrad of Montferrat, the guy that I told you was this solid leader for Tyre, he wants to be the next king, so he's trying to position himself to take over. Richard hates his guts, so Richard's trying to block this from happening, and so Richard is getting heavily involved in Crusader politics, and he's—he's—he's working against Conrad. And then in the meantime, there's—they—they've just gotten over this epidemic; the siege is winding down; Richard has somehow found himself in a position where he's making the major decisions; he's—he's—he's succeeded in the politics game. So at that point, uh, he rejects the first surrender terms; the—the city comes back with a second round, and he goes, "Okay, I accept." So they've accepted the surrender terms; they take the 2,700 men who were defending the city as hostages, and they take the 300 wives that those men had as hostages, and there's like a hundred or so children, and they keep them, and they begin the process of negotiating what to do with them. They raise the flags for the—for—for the Crusader states. So Richard's uh, red and yellow lion flag goes up; Philip's blue flag with the yellow fleur-de-lis goes up; the Austrian flag goes up; the kingdom of Jerusalem's flag—it was white with a gold cross on it—it goes up. All these flags go up. Richard walks over to the Austrian flag, tears it down, throws it in Leopold's face, and goes, "We are not equals; I'm your superior; you don't get your flag put up." And Leopold's like, "All right, cool," and he leaves, and he goes back to Austria. He's, "I'm out of here; I don't need you; I don't need this Crusade; I'm done." At that point, Philip goes, "Oh, by the way, cousin, I'm also leaving," and he leaves.

Now there's two stories—I think there's one that probably three-quarters of historians think is right, and there's one that one-quarter thinks is right. I want to tell both just because I—I kind of like the one that people don't like as much more, so why not? We don't really know the—I think the general consensus is that Philip of Flanders dies, and he didn't have an heir. Flanders was a vassal state to the—the kingdom of France. France needed to be in control of it. Philip was worried that if he wasn't back in France determining who the next guy was, he'd lose control of it, so he needs to get back in time to solve this. By the way, the second story doesn't contradict the first story; it could be that they're both true. The second story is what happens in the negotiating with Salah. So this part does happen; there's no doubt about it. The question is only does it affect Philip leaving? In other words, did Philip leave before this part happens or after this part happens? So the general consensus—he left before, so this didn't affect him. Saladin and—and Richard are negotiating back and forth on how to do a prisoner swap, and Saladin is supposed to pay some money for—for the prisoners as well. Saladin does the initial prisoner swap with money, and Richard goes, "No, that's not what we agreed to," and he rejects it. So they enter into a new round of negotiating, and then Richard goes, "You're wasting my time; screw you." He has the 2,700 defenders—from the Muslim defenders from Acre—tied together with their 300 wives and 100 or so children, just has them all tied together in one giant human mass, and then he orders his soldiers to walk up to them and start cutting their heads off, and he massacres them. And of course, when Saladin and the Muslim army see this, they begin weeping. Uh, Saladin was notorious for crying; the dude would drop—he would cry at the drop of a hat; he had emotions; he didn't have any fear in showing them; and once he'd start crying, it would cause the whole army to cry, because they're like, "Dude, our Sultan is crying," and they're crying watching this massacre take place. The second explanation for Philip leaving was when he saw the massacre take place, he began puking; he—and he became sick, and like emotionally sick, and then he says something to the effect, "I came here to do Jesus's will; clearly Jesus's will wasn't murdering prisoners—murdering children and women; I can't be a part of this," and he takes off. Uh, if that's true, it meant that he had a little humanity, which is weird—which is maybe the reason I like the story. Wouldn't that be cool if somebody had some humanity somewhere? These stories are just—just a—just a smidgen. Anyway, at that point, Saladin isn't actually—a really interesting situation; there is effectively just two leaders of the Crusades left: Conrad, who's competent, and Richard, who isn't quite as smart as Conrad, but he's definitely competent enough that he's pulling off victories. Richard—one of the reasons why Richard murdered the prisoners was he didn't want to spend any more time negotiating because he wants to rebuild the Crusader state; he wants to get Jerusalem, but he thinks the only way to get Jerusalem might be to take Egypt. The conventional wisdom and the—the Crusader army at that time was as long as Saladin owned Egypt, there was no path to taking Jerusalem and keeping it. So even if Richard could run and grab it, he won't have the ability to hold on to it. So Richard is trying to figure out how he can get Egypt. Well, one way to get Egypt is to literally march there, so he starts going down the coast. The Egyptian navy takes a beating, and as a result, Richard doesn't have to worry about a naval attack on the coast, so he's just going down on the coast, capturing city after city—the same cities that Saladin had just captured in 1187 and 1188—Richard has taken them back. He gets to Jaffa. Actually, before he got to Jaffa, uh, Saladin did try to fight him. Uh, they fight the Battle of Arsuf. Uh, Saladin had probably about 25,000 men; Richard had about half that size, and Salah attacks, and Richard beats him—outnumbered two to one. Richard does something that most Crusader armies couldn't do, which was beat uh, Saladin—right mad. Obviously, Saladin got defeated there; it's not the first time he's beaten; it just—it's rare, and Richard walks away. It's not a catastrophic defeat for Saladin, but it was bad. Uh, I think he lost about 7,000 men, and Richard lost about 700 men, so it was a—it was a pretty solid rout. Saladin has to pull back to lick his wounds. Richard goes to Jaffa, and he captures it. At that point, what he wants to do is continue south down the Palestine coast until he can get to Ascalon. That was considered to be the gateway to Egypt, so if you could own Ascalon, you're on—on the path to taking Egypt. So he goes, and he puts the city under siege. Saladin forms an army and comes to try to relieve the siege; he won't—he'll fail to do that again. Saladin will—I'm sorry—Richard will capture Ascalon. Richard begins then building—rebuilding the fort, and he's building it to be bigger and stronger so that it'll be really hard for Saladin to take it back because he's got this eye on—I'm going to attack Egypt. He's building this thing, and he starts negotiating with Saladin again, but through his brother, Al-Adel, and Richard comes up with a really interesting idea. Richard says to Al-Adel, "I know how to end the Crusades right here, right now," and by this time they have a relationship, right, because they've been talking back and forth for—for, you know, like two—almost two years now—a year and a half. Richard goes, "I know how to end this," and Al-Adel goes, "Okay, I'm—I'm all ears; we'd love for this to be replaced by peace; this sucks; we're done fighting you." Richard goes, "My sister's with me; she's—she's like my favorite sister; she's great; any guy would be lucky to be married to her. What if you married her?" And Al-Adel goes, "Wait, what?" He goes, "Yeah, I have an idea. You marry my sister, and you become the king of Jerusalem—for the kingdom of Jerusalem. So it'll have a Muslim ruler but a Christian queen, and then we walk away; you—you take control of all of Palestine; Salah's your brother, so you'll never go to war against each other; you'll be at peace, and that's it; we're done; we don't need to fight anymore." And Al-Adel goes, "Yeah, that's a great idea; I'm on board." So he goes and he tells his brother; he goes, "I think Richard just solved this; we're done." And Saladin's immediate thought is, "This is a trick; there is no way he's serious about this." So Saladin hesitates a little bit, but he keeps talking it through with his brother because it's really obvious his brother wants Salah to say yes, and then Saladin starts to think, "Okay, that might be the trick. If I say no, it puts a wedge between me and my brother; maybe that's what he's about." And so Saladin goes, "Yeah, tell—tell Richard I'm on board. You marry his sister; we'll create this Muslim-Christian kingdom of Jerusalem." So Al-Adel goes to Richard and goes, "Yes, we're on board." So I suspect Saladin was right, and here's why: because Richard had never cleared it with his sister or with the Catholic church. If he was serious, he should have cleared it with his sister and the Catholic church first to make sure they would agree. Because then if you make the offer and then Saladin agrees, you're now in this awkward position of, "Oh, let me go make sure I can even do this." So he goes to the clergy—the Catholic clergy—and he tells them his plan, and they're like, "No, there is no circumstance under which we're letting a Christian princess marry a Muslim man." He goes and he tells his sister; she goes, "Go to hell; I want nothing to do with this stupid plan of yours." She gets on a ship, and she leaves for Europe. And so Saladin, uh, was right; this was—this was totally a ruse to split him against Al-Adel. At that point, Richard goes, "You know what? You're such a competent ruler; why don't you become Sultan? I will back you if you lead a rebellion against your brother." And Al-Adel was like, "Uh, no, not interested; we're good, thanks." As time is going by, Richard begins to try to figure out how to either invade Egypt or capture Jerusalem, and he can't figure it out. He makes a maneuver; Salah counters it. He tries to set something up; Salah counters that; he just—everything he does, Saladin manages to counter it. And then a power struggle takes place. Conrad of Montferrat decides he's going to make his move to be the king to replace Guy, and you know, Guy is just sitting there twiddling his thumbs with all 75 of his IQ points, and Conrad just completely outmaneuvers him every step of the way, and he's positioned himself…

To take over, and the way he's going to pull it off is by marrying Isabella I first. So Isabella the First, who who is effectively the heir now for Sibyl, in part because her other daughters are dead, um, was Sibyl's half-sister. Um, so Baldwin the Fourth was her half-brother, who became the king of Jerusalem before Sibyl did. He's the guy that's melting because he had leprosy. He married Sibyl off when she was eight to, uh, uh, Humphrey I, Fourth. Humphrey the I Fourth. And um, if you watch the previous lecture, there's a scene where there're a Kak, not K Chevalier—that's a different fortress—Kak, and I have to clarify because CA chevalier's old name actually was Kak. Why recycle names? Pick new names so you don't confuse people. Anyway, KCK is in Jordan. Krak des Chevaliers is in Syria. Um, at KCK, Guy Lu's friend, R.D., who was a complete sociopath—like he was clearly a homicidal maniac, like this guy could not wait to kill people—he is at his at his castle hosting the marriage of Isabella the First when she's eight, while Saladin has brought an army up to capture Kak, to capture Raynald of Chatillon, to punish him because he's been doing these crazy raids and just murdering random civilians.

And so her stepfather, his name is Balan of Ibelin. So if you watch Kingdom of Heaven, it's Orlando Bloom. But if you watch my previous episode, I I break down the or the actual story because the Kingdom of Heaven movie really completely derailed the Balan of Ibelin story; they completely fictionalized what happened. Anyway, Balan of Ibelin comes out and tells Saladin, "Hey, uh, we're having a wedding right now. You're firing boulders into the fortress to try to weaken it; can you not shoot at this part of KCK because that's that's where the bride and the groom are? We're worried they're going to get hit." And Saladin's like, "Really? Okay, fine." And so they actually reposition the artillery and focus on other parts of the fortress. So the wedding is going on while rocks are smashing against the fortress. That girl is the heir to the throne. Conrad marries her; he outmaneuvers everybody and becomes her second husband. Uh, if I if I remember correctly, Humphrey also died in that epidemic in 1190, so it took out a bunch of Crusaders. Anyway, she's now married; Conrad is now king, and then he dies like literally days later—uh, I don't know, seven days later, something silly like that. He just dies. Isn't that sad? Sad. The way I remember it was he was defenestrated, but I might be mixing him up with somebody else. Uh, defenestration is the Latin term for window—you know, pushed out a window. Isn't it cool that there's a there's a term for this? Defenestration. It happened so often we had to come up with a term for that kind of a death. What happened to him? Defenestration. Yeah, sounds terrible. You should have seen the body. Odds were it wasn't an accident, just so we're clear. Everybody blames Richard the Lionheart; he's the obvious person for this. Uh, Richard goes, "What, me? I'm not a ruthless, cruel bastard; I wouldn't have done that to Conrad. That's awful." By the way, Conrad was Leopold's cousin, so Leopold now hates Richard times two: "You killed my cousin and you ripped down my flag; I really hate you." Anyway, so Conrad is dead.

Um, Richard goes and grabs one of his nephews, his name is H—the, uh, Champagne, you know, as in bubbly wine—Champagne, uh, uh, Henry II, and he goes to Isabella and goes, "Handsome enough for you?" And she agrees, and she marries him, and that's her third husband, and that guy now becomes the new king of the kingdom of Jerusalem. For the record, he's also the nephew of Philip, the king of France. So, um, Philip, of course, is also pleased with the choice. At that point, Richard has to start making hard decisions. He hasn't been able to figure out how to make a move on Jerusalem; he hasn't been able to figure out how to make a move on Egypt; and word has gotten back to him that his brother John is going to try and take his throne. So when when Richard left, he he left his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and his brother John in charge to run run the his country while he was murdering people, and now he's just discovered his brother is in the process of trying to outmaneuver him to take over. So, uh, Richard in 1192 goes to Saladin and says, "Let's talk; let's make a deal." Well, not directly to Saladin; he won't meet with them. He goes to Al-Adil to make the deal. Al-Adil and him began negotiating, and Richard goes, "Just let let us keep all the coastal cities." And Al-Adil goes, "Except for Escalon, we'll agree; we'll let you keep everything from Jaffa to Tripoli; it's yours." And Richard's like, "No, no, no, I really want Escalon." And Al-Adil goes, "Yeah, everybody knows why though; it's cuz at some point down the road you're hoping that the Crusaders capture Egypt; this is your ticket to doing that. We can't agree to that; there's no way we make a deal with you and you retain Escalon." And so in the end, Richard goes, "Really? This this makes me sad. Fine." He gives up Escalon; he keeps everything from Jaffa to Tripoli; and uh, all Christian leaders will be allowed to go to Jerusalem whenever they want to. That's the deal. That was actually the deal in 1187 when Saladin captured Jerusalem. So they've literally gained nothing; they've just fought ruthlessly for five years, and they're right back to where they were, except Saladin did capture a bunch of those coastal cities; the Crusaders have gotten them back, so I guess the Crusaders are slightly better off.

Um, at that point, a bunch of the Crusader leaders do go to Jerusalem to pray. Uh, Richard refuses. He goes, "I will not go unless I'm the conqueror." And that was his chance to finally meet Saladin, but he refuses to go cuz Saladin said, "Now that we've made the deal, come to Jerusalem, pray in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; I will meet you there, and we will eat together; we will drink together; we will be friends." And Richard goes, "Go to hell; I came here to be a conqueror; you're not giving me that opportunity; I hate you." And so he gets on a ship and he sets sail for France. He gets in trouble; he ends up separating from his for his army with four people. I I forget why; they get they get caught by a storm; their ship wrecks; he's literally marching through Europe on foot through Austrian-controlled territory. The Austrians figure out who he is; Leopold arrests him, puts him in a dungeon in Vienna, and goes, "Remember when he tore down my flag and then killed my cousin? Maybe that wasn't a good idea." And Richard's like, "I'm sorry," standing there by himself, going, "This really is bad, isn't it?" At that point, Leopold was like, "I'm going to hand you over to the Holy Roman Emperor; we're going to demand 150,000 marks for your return to England." It's about 100,000 pounds of silver, 100,000 pounds Sterling. And Richard's like, "Whoa, that's three times my kingdom's GDP, annual GDP; that's three years worth of GDP." And they're like, "Yep, hand it over." So Eleanor goes out of her way to start collecting the money; she taxes the hell out of the French and English nobility; she's like, it's like a quarter of their wealth just taken from them instantaneously to try to get this 100,000 pounds of silver. In the meantime, Philip and John also work on their own funds; they come up with 80,000 to try to convince the Germans to keep Richard, and the Germans are like, "100,000, 80,000? We'll take the 100." And so Eleanor gets her son released; he then makes his way back to France to his his holdings in France; he forms up an army, and he goes to war against his brother and Philip. He manages to beat the crap out of John; he successfully invades England; he's got John cornered, and John surrenders, and he goes, "I forgive you; you're my brother," and they hug and they kiss and they're back to normal. I think that's from his childhood, and the reason I'm saying that is because whenever Eleanor would have an argument with Henry the Second, she'd field an army, and then Henry would be like, "What are you doing? You're my wife." And she's like, "Fight me!" And so he'd have to field an army, and they'd be out in the battlefield slugging it out, and then the brothers would take sides, and Richard really liked his mom, so he's frequently on his mom's side, and John would frequently be on his dad's side. It was a mess. So I just think he was like, "This is just normal; this is what families do; we go to war against each other." And so he forgives John; he's re-coronated; he becomes king a second time; it's to wash away the the hostage period; and he's not done with Philip; he's furious at Philip, so he actually takes an army and starts going to war with Philip. One of the reasons he does this is because Philip had actually taken a lot of the territory in France, but the other reason was he felt betrayed because Philip had tried to pay 80,000 so that John could stay king. And he's fighting, and in 1199 they've been fighting for years now in France—uh, basically five years because he gets released from captivity in 1194—a kid with a crossbow walks up and shoots Richard the Lionheart in the shoulder; he gets gangrene, and it kills him. Before he dies, he asks that the kid be brought to him, so they bring the kid; he's like a ten-year-old boy or something. And so the the saying is the lion was killed by the ant, right? This little punk with a crossbow zaps this guy, this warrior from hell. Shoot, he brings the kid over, and the kid's assuming he's going to say, "I'm going to have you executed," and Richard goes, "I forgive you; I pardon you; you will not be executed for this crime; I want you to live, even though I'm going to die." No wow, this bloodthirsty savage in his last moments decides to do mercy. He dies. One of uh, Richard's men grabs the kid, puts the kid on a platform, takes his skin off using a sharp blade, and then hangs him really naked because he doesn't have any skin on him. That's that's how that forgiveness ended. Oops. Anyway, that's the end of Richard. One of the reasons why I wanted to make sure to finish Richard's story a little bit is there's so many myths surrounding Richard, uh, including that he died in France sieging a castle; all the movies have him die a different way; sometimes he shows up and he saves Robin Hood and Mary, and you know what I mean? Like there's all these weird other stories, and I just I wanted to finally have a a little bit more accurate of a story. And also it's worth pointing out that because of what happened, John does end up as king because Richard didn't have any legitimate heirs. He did have one acknowledged bastard child, but European law didn't allow bastards to inherit, so the child can't become king. So John does become king, and John is incompetent; he's not a good leader; he goes to war with France; the king of France—it's not Philip; it's Philip's son—invades England and defeats John; it's the last time an army invaded England and actually beat the English in England. Um, he invades England and he he defeats John, and then the next year, um, John—he's still king; he doesn't he's not he's not his throne hasn't been taken away—but the French holdings are basically gone; the English lose almost everything; they had a little bit left of Aquitaine, but they lost almost everything else. Um, the next year, 1215, the nobles rise up against John; they fight the Battle of Runnymede; John is forced to surrender to the nobles; he did a lot of surrendering, poor guy; and he's forced to sign the Magna Carta. So like this is really an incredibly important moment in in a way when you think about it. Had Richard not gone on the Crusades, maybe he would have never been in the position where he was so weak, and maybe he could have had time to I don't know, have sex with his wife to make an heir, and that might have prevented John from becoming king, and there might have never been a Magna Carta, right? Like so all those little things stacked together kind of set England into this path. Um, also it's a warning about having dumb leaders, but we will never pay attention to those warnings. So that's the end of Richard.

So timing is everything. Saladin actually manages to get a deal with Richard in 1192, and peace is restored. Saladin dies two years later at age 55; he died pretty young. Saladin knew that there was a political problem with the Muslim world, and that political problem—the leader, amazing leader, one after the other—Zengi, Nur ad-Din, Saladin—three in a row dies; civil war every time. And so Saladin had spent all this time trying to get it so that all the amirs had sworn allegiance to his oldest son, Al-Afdal, and he tried to make it so that he would die, Al-Afdal took over, end of story, we're good to go. Saladin dies; Al-Afdal takes over, and his brother goes into a state of rebellion; it fails; civil war every time. In this civil war, um, the brother actually is proving to be a little bit better of a leader, and so he's even though he's not the official sultan, he's managing to grab a lot of territory. Um, his name is Al-Aziz. Al-Aziz and Al-Afdal are tearing apart Saladin's sultanate right because they're in this murder fest, brother versus brother. For the record, Saladin had 17 sons and one daughter. Like, at that point, how would you know their names? Like there's no way you would know their birthdays. You'd be like, "Um, can you remind me again what's your name? Uh, that guy was busy; hold on; I have to stop fighting right now cuz one of my 17, 18 kids is acting up." Like, how did how did it go? So the two the the only sons who are in position to start civil war are the three oldest; the rest are too young, so that's thankful because you can see how that could have gone sideways really fast. So Al-Adil decides, "I'll just negotiate out a peace deal; I'm their uncle; I'll be neutral, and I'll start working on them just like I did with Richard." He's the perfect guy to do it because he has all this experience dealing with the Crusaders, and so he does; he starts working on a deal, and he tries to convince Al-Aziz to take a secondary role. But as time is going by, he decides Al-Aziz is the guy who should be sultan, that Al-Afdal is terrible. Al-Afdal actually was Al-Afdal, uh, was a heavy drinker; he spent most of his time sleeping with his concubines and being drunk; he really just wasn't the guy that you wanted to be in charge. Um, you know, Zengi had been a really big drinker, but he was also a good killer, and he was great in combat; some judgment errors like that caused him to die, uh, but other than that he was a really solid—other than being an alcoholic, he was a really solid leader. The alcoholism killed Zengi. Um, it's I've said it before in a previous, but it's worth saying it again. So Zengi is drunk out of his mind; he passes out; he wakes up in the middle of his uh, hangover drunk, and he sees his slave drinking wine out of his goblet, his slave who is an enslaved Crusader, and Zengi goes, "Really? You're just drinking out of my wine goblet? I'm going to take care of you in the morning," rolls over and goes back to sleep. The slave's like, "I don't think that's how this is going to work," pulls out a dagger and cuts his throat. And you know, I kind of feel like Zengi had that coming at that point. Like, how did you not know you were going to die in that moment when you threatened to kill your slave who was a Crusader? That's that's why you shouldn't be an alcoholic; it it clouds your wisdom. Anyway, so that's in in many ways Al-Adil was probably thinking, "Oh God, we've got another one of these guys; he's in he's going to be incompetent, and he's going to get us into all sorts of trouble." So Al-Adil decides he's got to back Al-Aziz and knock out Al-Afdal, and so he starts working on it; he changes sides; he actually captures Damascus and takes it away from uh, Al-Afdal, and he's basically pushing for Al-Aziz to take over. Al-Aziz basically does. In 1198, in 1199, Al-Aziz dies, and at that point the third brother, Al-Zahir, decides he's going to jump into the conflict against his older brother, and when he does, at that point, uh, Al-Adil goes, "Maybe I need to just be sultan and get this over with. I was trying to make it so that my brother's sons would be the next sultan, but this isn't working." So he makes a play for power; he beats the crap out of his two nephews; he goes to Al-Zahir and he says, "I'll make you a deal; you can marry my daughter, and I'll give you a chunk of land to rule over, and you're done." And Al-Zahir goes, "Yeah, that's good; I'm I'm going with that," and that's how he's taken out. So at that point he still has to deal with—actually, I think he actually dealt with Al-Afdal first—but anyway, he goes to Al-Afdal and offers him two cities to rule. Al-Afdal goes, "Fine; I'm tired." At that point, Al-Afdal had been fighting for about seven years to become the next sultan, and he's just been failing the whole time, so he he takes the two cities; he kept; he goes and takes physical control of one of them; turns around and tries to take physical control of the other and fails and just settles for the one city and dies in a drunken stupor. Eventually, Al-Adil then ends up as the sultan; he he effectively takes over in the year 1200, but he officially becomes sultan in 1218 when the civil war is officially over. He will rule for 18 years. It turns out that was not not the worst possible outcome. Al-Adil was competent; he wasn't just competent; he was gifted. In fact, he was as good a leader as Saladin in every regard except maybe militarily. Um, Saladin was probably the better military leader, but when it came to diplomacy, definitely superior to his brother; when it came to running the economy, superior. And one of the things that Al-Adil tried to do was create longstanding institutions that could survive him, and so he began really working the economy. He thought if he could build Egypt and Syria and Palestine's economy, it would help prevent any future uh, civil wars; it would help also prevent another Crusader invasion. And one of the ways that we can test whether he was successful or not is Egypt had a catastrophic low flood event that lasted three years; there wasn't enough water, and what that meant was that the crops were going to come in really small, and and Egypt was literally facing starvation. He actually mobilized the army and sent it to different parts of his territory, like in Syria, and made them do extra farming to produce extra food to compensate, and Egypt ends up not going into famine, and as a result he stabilizes Egypt's economy. So he was competent, but he also solved problems, and then he decided, and this may have been his most brilliant decision, that one of his goals had to be to prevent another Crusade. He went, "What's better than war? Trade. Why don't we trade each other's stuff and make a bunch of money and become filthy freaking rich? Why are we killing each other?" So he began working on European leaders and saying, "Look, I'll make you guys trade deals." He talks a group of Italian merchants into moving permanently to Egypt and setting up businesses; he starts negotiating with the Most Serene Republic of Venice to come up with a good longstanding deal, and he makes one. The Venetians in 1202 sign a treaty with him that will establish a trade network from Venice to Alexandria, and the Venetians are going to make crazy money off of this, and he's going to make crazy money off of this. He makes deals with the Crusader states to trade, and they sign on, and now he's integrating the Crusader states into their into the local economy. He makes deals with Sicily, so the kingdom of Sicily at this point is ruled by a German family called the Hohenstaufen. They are so connected to the royal family, the royal families of Italy and Germany, that eventually their leader, the king of Sicily, Frederick the Second, will become the Holy Roman Emperor and will take the title King of the Germans and King of the Italians. So you rule basically everything from the the border between Germany and Denmark to the southern tip of Sicily. The Germans had inherited Sicily from the Normans; the Normans had conquered it from the Arabs. So this is a multiethnic...

Pro, uh, project. When Frederick II takes over, he has Jewish and Arab, uh, bureaus in his government. When they minted coins, they minted one side in Latin, the other side in Arabic. He knew six different languages; one of the languages he knew was Arabic. He starts actually producing texts where he goes and learns a subject matter, reading Arabic language texts and then rewrites it in Latin. He became an expert in falconry. He was, in and of his own right, an intellect raised in this mixed Italian, Greek, Arab, Norman, German culture of Sicily. And so there's this really strange effect that all of these interactions are having, that the trait is having; it's actually slowly bringing the Mediterranean together, and Al-Adel is right there at the center of all of this, making it work. But, cuz you know, there's a “but” coming—that didn't mean that all Europeans were on board. There will be multiple raids; there's more than one occasion where a Crusader army will attack. It's not a full-fledged Crusade; it's not an official Crusade sent by the Pope. And every time, Al-Adel just easily knocks it aside like it's—it—it turns into a bunch of nothing. But there's another “but”—the other “but” is the Venetians.

So, full disclosure: I'm part Venetian, and my ancestors left Treviso, but they were originally from Venice, so I have like a little sentimental attachment to Venice. I just wanted to get that out there, uh, just so that you know my bias is going to come through right now. So the Venetians are backstabbing little bastards. At the same time they're signing the deal with Al-Adel—literally 1212, same year—they're also signing a deal with the Crusaders to bring another Crusader army against Al-Adel’s sultanate. Isn't that amazing? No. Anyway, I think it's beautiful. So the Doge, the Duke of Venice, his name is Enrico Dandolo. And Enrico Dandolo is 95 years old. He can't get on a horse anymore; his servants have to put him on the horse. He's just too rickety, and he's completely blind. I don't mean partially blind; he can't see anything. He's the guy who's going to lead the Fourth Crusade. Isn't that cool? A blind 95-year-old Doge! It feels shockingly similar to American politics. Anyway, there's not—it's not—it doesn't work. Enrico Dandolo had a three-digit IQ anyway, so my—my analogy immediately fell apart. It's very disappointing. We'll work on it. Anyway, so Venice is going to lead this Crusade with this 95-year-old at the front. But the Venetians are so amazing—see, I told you my bias is coming through—they figured out a way to have their cake and eat it too. They're not going to break the treaty with Al-Adel. That's what's cool about this.

So the first thing they do is Enrico Dandolo goes to the Crusaders—so it's this big German and French army that need to load up on the ships—and he goes, "You have the money," cuz they're supposed to pay them. This isn't involuntary; it's Venice. Nothing is voluntary with the Venetians. It's not good—going to happen. And they're like, "No, we don't have the money." And, by the way, the Pope has agreed to this; this is an official Crusade. It's the Fourth Crusade; it's an official Fourth Crusade. So Dandolo goes, "Okay, if you don't have the money, then you have to do me a favor, and then I'll take you, and then you'll pay me later." And the Crusaders are like, "Okay, what's the—the favor?" He goes, "Zadar. There's a town that's driving the most Serene Republic of Venice—and we're not as serene as we like to be—they're competing with us, and it's pissing us off. We're going to go put that down first." And the Crusaders go, "Uh, I don't think we can do that." And then Enrico Dandolo goes, "Oh, yeah, we can. It's not that big of a town." And they go, "No, no, no, it's not that—they're Catholic, and they're ruled by Hungary. Zadar belongs to the kingdom of Hungary. The king of Hungary is not only Catholic—Hungary is not only Catholic—but they're like good friends with the Pope. We're a Crusader army in the service of the Pope; we can't attack the Pope's allies." And Dandolo goes, "Yes, you can, if you want to go to Jerusalem. We're putting down Zadar." And the Crusaders go, "Okay," I guess. They invade; they capture the city; they sack the place. It's a—it's a disaster for Zadar; like they just—they don't completely delete it, but they essentially delete it, and they plunder the thing. The Pope finds out; he excommunicates Enrico Dandolo, and he interdicts the Crusade. It's the—the equivalent of being excommunicated—the Crusade, the holy Crusade, got interdicted. So all the Crusaders are like, "Oh, what does that mean? Like, if we die, do we go to hell? What does this mean? We're here to fight for Jesus." And Dandolo is like, "Do you want to go to Jerusalem or not?" They're like, "All right, fine," and they get back on the ships and they start sailing down the Adriatic. They're coming around the Peloponnese, where Sparta was, in its infinite glory, by the way. The Spartans are bloated; they're not nearly as cool as you would think they are. Anyway, whatever—different story, long time ago. Uh, they come around the Peloponnese, and they should head east at that point, and Dandolo goes, "I have a suggestion"—by the way, it's not like he just came up with it; it was his plan from the beginning—"What if we go to Constantinople first?" And the Crusaders are like, "Why would we do that? We should go straight to like Syria or Lebanon or Palestine or something." He's like, "I really want to go to Constantinople first." The fleet's mine; I'm ordering it to go to Constantinople. As they're heading to Constantinople, Dandolo is—he needs to get them on board, so he tells the Crusaders, "Okay, so what I want to do is I want to overthrow the Roman Emperor and replace him with a puppet Emperor." And the Crusaders are like, "Why would we do this?" He goes, "Well, think about it. The Roman Empire—it's still a lot smaller than it used to be, but it's still very rich. If we had a puppet on the throne, it could help us out a lot." And the Crusaders go, "Yeah, I guess that makes sense." They show up; the Emperor runs; he flees the city because he knows what's coming; he doesn't want to die. And they immediately prop up uh, puppets, and they just kind of hang out, start taxing the living hell out of the Romans. And the Romans are getting crushed underneath the heavy weight of these heavy taxes, trying to figure out what they're supposed to do in the circumstance. And after about two years of occupying Constantinople, Dandolo goes, "You know, it'd be better than a puppet—we just take over." And the Crusaders go, "Why would we do that?" "Think about it. We would just plunder the Roman Empire; it'd be ours, and we could take all that wealth, and we could use it to send your army to Jerusalem." And he talks the Crusaders into attacking the Roman Empire that they're already inside of; they're already in Constantinople; they have a puppet Emperor. They do it; they're like, "Yeah, this sounds like a good idea; let's do it." They—they sack Constantinople; they go on a rampage; they're murdering people; they're raping people; they're stealing wealth; they're finding gold. It is a nightmare. Romans are jumping off the walls trying to escape every direction they can, in part because they're shocked. They didn't—they knew that this was a screwed-up situation, but it just didn't occur to them it was going to turn into a massacre. And they're like, "Run!" in every different direction. And the Crusaders—the Fourth Crusade—successfully destroys the Roman Empire. They stay; they never go to Jerusalem; they never leave the Roman Empire; they don't invade Syria. They—they—they realize, "Why would we go to Jerusalem when we can just carve out land here and have our own little fiefdoms?" And they begin ruling the Roman Empire. To differentiate it from everything else, uh, a lot of scholars will call it the Latin Roman Empire. I—I don't know; it feels redundant, um. So the Romans who have fled go to Nicaea, and they set up the Roman Empire in Nicaea, and they make its temporary capital Trezon, which is in the Northeast. It was a Northeastern territory; it breaks away and creates itself as its own little state with the goal of eventually reestablishing the Roman Empire. But when you think about it, this is an extraordinary moment because the Holy Roman Empire—Napoleon said it best—it's neither Holy, Roman, nor an Empire. It was the German Confederacy, claimed to be the Roman Empire, hence its bizarre name: the Holy Roman Empire. The Crusader state—the Fourth Crusade—the state it makes Constantinople as its capital, claims to be the Roman Empire, and then the guys in Nicaea claimed to be the Roman Empire. There were three Roman Empires at the same time! It must have been so confusing. "I'm going to the Roman Empire—which one? Which one? The holy one? No, not that one. The real one or the fake one? Which one do you think is fake? Which one do you think is real?" Anyway, what a mess! Isn't that cool? They will rule Rome for 57 years. Finally, in 1261, the thing implodes. The guys in Nicaea and Trezon managed to reassert themselves; they take over Constantinople again, and they switch the official religion back to being Orthodox, dumping the Catholic Church. And that's the end of the Fourth Crusade, which never actually got to the Middle East, but it is my favorite Crusade for sure. And part—so don't get me wrong, the Venetians were totally involved in the First and Second Crusades as well, so it's not like my people missed out on those, but they were late to the First Crusade, which makes me bitter. The Genoese were doing it in the beginning, but we eventually figured out how to knock them out and take over their slot. So, yeah, you know, but I feel like Enrico Dandolo brought it to a whole new level. I think he—he died at age 98. That must have been so disappointing, like, you know, he's at the prime of his life, can't see Constantinople, even though he's there. And uh, that's to warn me I should start winding up. All right, so one more Crusade, cuz you can't get enough of them.

So this one was not an official Crusade, and it actually wasn't one; it was actually two Crusades. So I should tell you the wrong story first. It's called the Children's Crusade. It takes place in 1212. So at one point, I encountered some literature that said it never took place. This is false; this is made up. Please stop saying this happened; that's not true. It is true; it did happen. It maybe didn't happen the way the traditional narrative goes. So, for the record, there really was a Children's Crusade; there were actually two. So I'll tell you what the probably false narrative was. So a shepherd boy in Germany or France convinces a bunch of children to do a Crusade. The thinking is that if children show up in Jerusalem, that the Muslims won't be able to kill children; it's just too horrific, and so they'll surrender and hand Jerusalem back over to Christian rule, and they'll be so moved by the children, they—they'll probably just convert to Christianity in the process. So that's—that was the—that was the story. And a bunch of children—thousands of them—mostly from Germany, but also from France, cross the Alps, go to Venice. When they arrive in Venice, they tell the Venetians their plan. The Venetians go, "You want us to take you to Palestine?" And they're like—the children are like, "Yeah." And the Venetians go, "We'll do it for free. Get on board, little children." And the kids get on the ships, and the Venetians sail to Tunis, not Palestine, and sell them into slavery. Now I'm just going to go ahead and admit it: I do actually kind of hope that is what happened, because as a Venetian, that would be a moment of pride for me, that they figured out how to make use of those children. Just saying. But we have two slightly better narratives that are probably more accurate. One of them is that there's a German shepherd—again, what's with these shepherds anyway?—he talks a bunch of German kids into doing this, but some adults go along too. They go, and they work their way to the other side of Italy—not Venice, but Genoa. So the—that's sad to me, because as a Venetian, I don't like the Genoese. So they get to Genoa, and they're here—they weren't going to ask for ship's passage; that's ridiculous. Of course, the Genoese aren't going to take them for free. What the boy had told them was the sea would open up in front of them, just like for Moses, and they would be able to walk to Jerusalem through the Mediterranean. So they get there, and they're waiting for the sea to open up. Nothing happens. Is that strange? And so they start praying over and over and over and over again, day after day after day. They're praying; the sea doesn't open up. Some of the children go, "I think we were hoodwinked," and they start heading home. But think of the walk they've got—that's a long walk! I got to go through Northern Italy, over—over the Alps, through Austria, back into Germany—like, you know, a lot of the kids didn't make it back. Eventually, this boy realizes it's not going the way he thought, and he decides he's going to walk down the Italian Peninsula. He's trying to figure out a way to go. A group—a group of Genoese sailors go, "Look, we get that you've been hoodwinked, but we feel bad for you. You want to go on the Crusade anyway? We'll take you for free." And some of the kids do get on the ship; they're never heard from again. So maybe the Genoese sold them into slavery; it's not clear, um. So maybe a little part of the story did turn out good, but I don't know, um. Then at some point, the parents track down the kid—oh, no, they don't track down the kid; they track down the kid's father, figure out who he is, and they execute him because they're so pissed that their children have been lost to this folly. So that's one of the stories that almost certainly did happen. The other story that almost certainly did happen was a French shepherd—so keep your children away from people with sheep; just—it is not something you want your children to be around—he gets an even bigger group—like, I think the numbers are like 10, 20,000 people—he marches south, and at some point he gets into trouble with clergy, cuz the Catholic Church is against this. They're like, "No, stop! Go back! Go back!" And he's like, "No, Jesus told me to do this. Jesus talks to me; I hear him in my head. I am taking these kids to Palestine." It's the same year; makes you wonder—was he a copycat? Anyway, uh, they get—they get to the coastline; there's a—there's actually a little bit of a fight in France between—between them and some of the nobility, and eventually the kids break up and—and just go home. And that's it. You can see why I like the first story the best, but uh, we don't always get our way. Sometimes we have to yield to something that's more factual. It's always really disappointing, but that's probably for the best, um. The Crusader state limps along. So there—there are no more Crusades that go to the Middle East; the third one was the last one that made it, um. There are more Crusades, as in Pope-sanctioned Crusades, but they're like the Albigensian Crusade and the Crusade that takes place in the Baltic states, and there's some Crusades that take place in Spain. Having said that, though, the Crusader state actually manages to hang out. So one of the really weird side effects of Conrad of Montferrat becoming the king of Jerusalem, and then uh, Richard zapping him—Richard turns to Guy de Lusignan and goes, "You're not king anymore." And Guy's like, "I know." And Richard goes, "Well, I have to leave; somebody has to rule Cyprus in my place. You want to be the king of Cyprus?" And Guy goes, "For real?" And he goes and becomes the king of Cyprus. He rules Cyprus for two years, dies, but his heirs take over, and they end up ruling Cyprus for centuries. The Lusignan dynasty ends up this permanent, like, leadership group for Cyprus, uh, really until the Ottoman Empire takes it over. So, so in a really strange way, Guy kind of makes it through. In 12—they—actually even before we get to that—in 1218, Al-Adel gets a surprise that he's completely unprepared for: the Crusaders actually invade Egypt. They invade Damietta. When they do, Al-Adel actually brings an army up, and he parks it to fight them. But the Damietta harbor was set up in this really cool way: it had a fortress, and on one side is the Nile. It was the access point to the better part—the better branch of the Nile—for trade purposes; it was bigger and had a bigger draft, so bigger ships could go through it, but it also made the city vulnerable on that side. So what they did—the defenders of the city did—was there was an island really close to the shore; they built a city—citadel—on the other—other side of the—they built a citadel on that island, and then they put a massive chain that they—they—they anchored in the city wall and then the—the for the Citadel on the island, so that no ships could get past, so that nobody could do a naval invasion on the vulnerable side. So the Crusaders are stuck because they can't get past this thing. Days turn into weeks, turn into months. The Crusaders come up with a genius idea: to build two towers on ships—two ships—they put the two ships together, and they put towers on them, and they go, and they—they do a siege on the Citadel. They capture the Citadel, break the chain. While they're doing this, Al-Adel is trying to figure out how he can come to the aid of the city; uh, he—he keeps trying to negotiate with the Crusaders to talk them out of this; he keeps telling them, "Trade is better than killing; please let's switch back to that." And every time he does this, the Crusaders go, "Oh, we think you're weak." So most of the Crusaders actually wanted to make a deal by this point, but the guy in charge doesn't; he believes that the only way to fulfill Jesus's will is to just murderize the Muslim population in Egypt, so he keeps refusing to make a deal. So while Al-Adel is trying to negotiate a deal, the Crusader army captures Damietta and then begins marching towards Cairo. There is nothing Al-Adel can do; he's not in position to do anything about it; he's starting to really panic, and then the floods come—the annual floods—and the Crusader army doesn't seem to notice that the—the Nile is rising—rising—rising—and they just keep marching. And Al-Adel is like, "All right, I'll just wait." And eventually, the land floods out, and the Crusaders are bogged down in mud, stuck, and they—there's nothing they can do; they can't turn around; they can't go forward. Al-Adel comes and says, "Hey, you want to talk now?" Here's the tragedy of all of this: when this was happening in 1218, Al-Adel in the beginning was like, "I'll just give you Jerusalem if you'll pull out of Egypt. You want Jerusalem; you can have it." Now it turns out that the leader of Jerusalem might not have been totally on board with this, so he might have been pulling a Richard. But this is how desperate he was. When he goes to the Crusaders now that they're stuck in the flood, incapable of doing anything, he goes, "All right, let's talk." And they're like, "All right, let's talk." And they go, "Is Jerusalem still on the table?" And he goes, "No, no. You leaving alive is all that's on the table. Do you want to leave alive?" And they're like, "Yeah." He goes, "Okay, cool. Go." And he helps them leave, and that's how that ends. And then he dies—like right after he resolves this, he dies. So then there's a whole new round of struggle to create a new Crusade. The Pope finds his new Crusader; the guy's name is Frederick II. The Pope goes to him and says, "Frederick, you're going to go take Jerusalem." Frederick goes, "I—I'm swearing my oath," and it was like uh, 1221, I think, is the first time, and the days turn into weeks, turn into months, turn into years, and his army isn't moving. In fact, in 1218, there were hints that he would be the one who would take over if Jerusalem was handed over to the Crusaders, and—and the Pope excommunicates him. It's like, "Dude, go!" And Frederick's like, "Yeah, I'm just not interested." Eventually, what'll happen is there's another Crusader army that does land in Palestine with the goal of capturing Jerusalem again. The leadership at this point—it's Al-Adel's son, and I'm having an old-person brain moment; I can't remember…

His name? I'm going to not think about it because it'll probably come to me if I stop thinking about it. Um, he goes, "I'm still thinking about it, and it messes me up." He goes, and he starts negotiating with this new Crusader Force. He's like, "Look, what do we need to do?" And he ends up going, "You know what? I'm giving you Jerusalem. You want Jerusalem this bad, you can have it."

So by this point, Frederick is actually now on ship heading to Palestine. He, he, he lands; they sit down and negotiate; they make him the king of Jerusalem. He gets back on the ship without going to Jerusalem and heads back to Sicily. And that's how Frederick II became the king of Jerusalem, on paper only, satisfying absolutely everybody and nobody at the same time. It was a genius moment, and that ended that event. So that's why it's not classified as a crusade, because the Pope was unsatisfied with the result.

I have a sneaky suspicion that Frederick II just didn't feel like killing people was a good way forward, and he was satisfied owning Germany, Sicily, and Italy. And he's like, "Why would I go any further?" And I also have this sneaky suspicion he wanted to spend his time reading books, and he didn't really like Popes. And so he just sort of made a fun little deal that made him the symbolic ruler of Jerusalem.

And then a disaster happens. So, long story short, the Muslim rulers of Afghanistan upset the Mongols. So the Mongols decide to teach the Afghan rulers a lesson. They invade Afghanistan, conquer it, grab the king of Afghanistan, the, the ruler, and they take him into a bathroom, and they bathe him. And then they take all of his body hair off, so he's completely hairless except for his head. And then they put perfume all over him, and they stick him in a wedding gown, and they put him next to a Mongol General, and they do a wedding ceremony. He takes the girl role; he's the bride. And then there's the honeymoon.

The reason the Mongols did this was, they, first of all, part of their religion was they were animists. They believed that it was, it was sacrilege to kill Royals. So this is actually—let me rephrase that—they believed it was sacrilege to spill Royal Blood on the ground. It's a very important differentiation that they will make later. Um, so this is a way to not spill his blood on the ground, but better yet, it was a way to subjugate the Afghans, because now that their King has become somebody's bride, he's in this submissive role to a general; he'll have no authority. And that's how the Mongols subdued Afghanistan. If only the US military had known this little trick. Um, just next time. Next time. Also, just as a general rule, don't go to places that only the Mongols have ever successfully conquered. You know what I mean? Like, there are some rules, or that a place that's nickname is "Graveyard of Empires," just leave that. Don't check that box off; like that's not on your bucket list. Walk away.

Anyway, the Mongols are like, "You know what? We're here; why don't we just keep going?" Haven't you ever wanted to see Persia? And they invade, and they just start massacring. It's a catastrophe. They're killing village after town after city, and they just, just keep going, and they just keep going, and they get to Baghdad. At the time, it was the largest city on the planet; it had a million people; it was the center of art, philosophy, and science. The House of Wisdom was the heart of the world's intellectual achievements. They had—the Arabs had—by that point, streets lit up at night, fast-food industry, they had figured out coffee, they understood modern medicine, they invented modern agriculture, they knew that all objects in the universe exerted gravity, that light had a finite speed, it traveled in waves—in so many really weird ways, they had already figured out all the things that we just figured out the last century. So we had to figure them out again. The Arabs had already stated Newton's first law of motion; they already had invented the scientific method 600 years before Francis Bacon invents the scientific method. Al-Haytham had already invented the scientific method. So Francis Bacon didn't invent the scientific method. It turns out Kepler's first law of planetary motion was already stated. They had invented the lens; they had a convenience industry where you could just have your laundry taken to a laundromat and washed and brought home. People would—you would give them a list, and they'd go buy groceries for you and bring it to your house. Is that crazy?

Anyway, that Mongol Army shows up outside of Baghdad in 1258. They tell the people, "Surrender right now; we will spare everybody." 200,000 people flee, so there's 800,000 people who stay. The reason they stayed was they believed the city could not be captured. It had two walls, two sets of walls around it. The interior walls were ribbed with the exterior walls by sets of walls. The exterior-most walls were low; the interior walls were higher; and then the interior-most walls were the highest. That way, if an enemy ever captured a section of exterior wall, you could cut it off with the interior cross-section walls. And even if the enemy captured those, the interior walls were still higher, so you could shoot arrows down on the enemy below you. And the thinking was it was an unthinkable—I mean, uncapturable city. I almost said uncapturable ship. Don't get on those. Uh-oh, and don't stay in uncapturable cities, 'cause the Mongols take it. And when they do, they kill everyone. They massacre the whole city. They take the House of Wisdom and they dump it into the river; they just destroy all the books. And then they continue on their rampage, and they begin trying to conquer the rest of the Middle East.

They will capture Damascus next. Damascus had developed a level of glasswork artistry that we don't have today. They were producing a type of steel; they would buy steel ingots from India; they would produce a type of steel that was even stronger than the stuff they were buying in from India, called Damascene steel. They were—themselves—Damascus was on the edge of new technologies, and the defenders knew not to stay; the people knew not to stay; they abandoned the city. The Mongols went on a rampage and smashed all of the glass and shattered it into the streets. And so, with the night-lit lamps, the streets twinkled shockingly and eerily, like in the 1930s in Germany, because history really does repeat itself.

And then the Mongol Army turned south, because they were thinking, "We're going to go take Egypt." They get to Palestine in 1260. By this point, the Ayyubids have been overthrown, and they've been replaced by the Mamluks. Mamluk means "owned" at some point. The army, which was largely made up of armed slaves, asked itself a really strange question: "Wait a minute, I'm a slave; I have weapons; almost nobody else has weapons; why am I a slave again?" And they rose up and took Egypt over. They were like, "Uh, no, I'm not doing this anymore." So they're ruling Egypt; it's their responsibility to stop the Mongol Army. At this point, the Mongol Army had never, ever been defeated on land. They had conquered China and everything between Palestine and China, and nobody had ever beaten them in a land battle. So the Mamluks show up in Palestine to defend it at a place called Ain Jalut. Ain Jalut means "the spring" or "the well of Goliath." And that's how the Mamluk Army feels; they're David fighting the Mongols Goliath. So it was the perfect spot to do this.

The Arabs get into ranks; they're outnumbered. The Mongols had silk armor, which was—which is really better than metal armor when an arrow hit the silk, because it's very hard to cut the silk; it would bunch up in front of the arrow, so it'll still stick in your, in your flesh, but because the silk is bunching up, it'll stop the arrow. And then what you do is you just grab a fistful of silk, you twist, and you pull the arrow out, and the injury is minor. So like, the Mongols even had this fantastic silk technology that they were deploying on the battlefield. The Mamluks—now, they're probably not going to win—except for one little twist. Turns out they had just invented the cannon. And so, when the battle's about to start, the Mamluks dropped ranks, so there were holes in their ranks, because they had the cannons behind them, and they were going to fire them. But before they even get to that moment, they see dust off in the distance coming from their left flank. So the Mamluks send riders out, and they see it's the, it's the remnants of the Crusaders. And the Mamluks write out—they send riders to go confront them. They're like, "Dude, we really don't want to fight you right now; the Mongols are about to kill us; please let us die in peace; why do you have to get involved?" And the Crusaders are like, "No, no, no, no, we're, we're here to fight for you. At first, we liked the Mongols; we thought an enemy of an enemy is a friend, but we figured out that when they're finished with you, they're just going to wipe us out, so we might as well die by your side." And the Arabs go, "Couldn't you have brought more men?" Then at Ain Jalut, the Crusaders are like, you know, 6% of the army, but it was probably a morale boost to see them there on the left flank, ready to die with everybody else.

When the battle starts, they make the holes; they fire the cannons, and it's like bowling. The Mongols had never seen anything like it; nobody had. The Mongol Army is torn to shreds; the Mamluks charge and massacre them; the Mongols withdraw off of the battlefield, stunned, shocked, and they go, "You know what? Screw Africa; let's go conquer something we can handle." And they invade and conquer Russia. You know how there are these things: "We can't conquer Russia, Afghanistan." Yeah, it's not every—nobody can conquer those places; just most people can't. That's just to clarify.

Anyway, at that point, the Mongols stay in the area; they're not gone, gone, but obviously it's changed the politics, 'cause the Crusader state is still there, too. Antioch—I'm sorry, Tripoli. Tripoli, Antioch gets absorbed; it's gone now. Um, it falls into civil war, and they keep—they spend most of their time fighting each other, and they finally just disappear. Tripoli and Jerusalem are the last Crusader states. Jerusalem basically owns one city; ironically enough, it's Acre. They've lost just about everything else, and Tripoli basically just owns Tripoli. By this point, they've turned into two city-states. Um, Tripoli had decided to side with the Mongols, so in 1289, the Mamluks take them out; they just go conquer them. That's the end of that Crusader state. So there's one Crusader state left; it's the kingdom of Jerusalem, which owns one city. In 1291, the Mamluks show up; they put the city under siege, and they conquer it.

Now there's a church—St. Andrews, I think it is. I, I wish I had thought to look it up. I'm pretty sure it's St. Andrews. The Mamluks go to the church and they take the frame—the door frame—out of this church, not the door, the stone door frame out of the church. They go back to Cairo; they go to al-Nasir Muhammad Mosque. So if you ever end up in Cairo and you end up in Khan el-Khalili, go to al-Nasir Muhammad Mosque. The plum mosque. When you do, there's two doors to enter the mosque, by the way. The mosque was built with pyramid granite, so uh, you're actually—when you go, when you go into this mosque, you will be inside a structure that used to be the, the outer shell of the pyramids in Giza, which both breaks my heart and makes it really amazing at the same time. When you're looking at the two doors, look at them carefully. The one on the right is a Muslim-style door to enter that mosque; the one on the left is clearly a church doorway. It's the Acre church. The Mamluks went to commemorate the end of the Crusades and stuck the doorway way into their mosque. And so there's a church doorway and a Muslim mosque doorway to go into this mosque. That cool? You won't remember this, will you? Email me; I'll, I'll remind you. You got to go to that mosque and just take it—I don't know—just look at it, take a picture or something. It's a piece of 1291 history.

Anyway, that's how the Crusades end. And that's the end of the Crusades. Well, kind of. There—the Crusader organization ended up in Rhodes, and eventually the Turks conquered Rhodes, so they moved to Malta. They still exist; they actually have observer status in the United Nations. They're called The Sovereign Military Order of Malta. They are not Malta. Malta is a state that has actual voting rights inside the UN. This is the, the Crusaders, The Sovereign Military Order of Malta; it's nothing to do with the state of Malta; it's a different thing. So the Crusades are done, just only they're not, obviously.

Um, one little twist: When the Europeans conquered the Arab world in the end of World War I, when they invaded and conquered Syria and Palestine and Iraq, a French General went to Saladin's tomb in Syria, walked up to it, and the French General kicked the tomb and said, "Saladin, we're back." So clearly, at least in the minds of that French General, the European occupation of the Middle East post-World War I was in fact another Crusade. And of course, that was the dream the English had was they would own Jerusalem, and they successfully did for a while again, I mean, 'cause the English never had it the first time, but the Crusaders did. That would be the first time the English got it. Like, Richard never set foot in Jerusalem.

All right, so that's it. That's the end of the Crusades that are still not ended, which is weird. Let it go; it's over. But that's—we're not good at that as a species, right? Bitter, vengeful, petty, hold on to really ridiculous things. You know what's better than war? Trade. A.D. was right, just so we're clear. Let's make everybody rich. Why you got to kill each other for what you—you can't—what are you going to gain of it? I don't understand. Anyway, thanks for being here, and I'll see you again sometime. Like, some of you tomorrow. [Applause] [Music]