Never let it be said I'm not a gimp who performs on demand.
Book Book Cheep Cheep requested this blog, so by golly here it is.
History is full of ins and outs, and all kinds of subtle little goings-on-behind-the-scenes. It's not true that it is written solely by the winners, because if the recent election here in Australia was anything to go by, it was the losers who recorded it in great detail, while the winners just gloated like cane toads in a rainstorm.
But complex as it all certainly was, I'm going to do my best to break down a pivotal point of history for you...
This one's all about the motherfucking Crusades, y'all!!!
The Crusades were important because previous to that point, Europe was eating itself in a culture of hostile land grabs and infighting, whereas after it found itself with a much larger worldview, some valuable trading deals, and The Renaissance.
Without The Renaissance, it would never have become acceptable to paint nude women (photographs having not yet been invented), and as we all know, pictures of naked women is what makes this planet that much better than Saturn.
So, what was the deal?
Let's break it down into a play-by-play, and get a view from the field.
England- having been united by William The Conquerer 30 years before, Old Blighty was full of knights with nothing to do but drink mead and kill each other.
Team Captain: Robert, Duke of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror
France- with a culture of dividing properties between sons for countless generations, brother was fighting brother over piddly scraps of land. They also drank wine, made cheese, and practiced their soixante-neuf technique. So it wasn't all bad.
Team Captain: Hugh the Great, Count of Vermandois, brother of the French King of Northern and Central France.
Italy- was all about God, and was stuck in the mother of all bitchfights with the Kings of Germany, over something called 'Investitures'. Investitures was basically a power struggle as to who was gonna run things downtown, the King, or the Pope. It's that simple.
Team Captain: Marcus Bohemond, Prince of Toranto, son of Robert Guiscard.
Who is Robert Guiscard? Who cares?!
Finally, we have the entire Byzantine empire, ruling from Constantinople.
Team Captain: Emperor Alexius Comnenus. He was a dickhead of epic proportions, and I'll eventually get around to telling you why.
So there's your 'Coalition of the Willing', right there.
The Manager for 'Team Crusades' was Pope Urban II.
On the other side of the field, we have The Turks. Now I could go on and on about Kilij Arslan I, or whoever, but at the end of the day, all you really need to know is "it was the Turks".
How it all went down...
The reason they are known as 'The Crusades', is because there were more than one.
In actuality, there were between 6 and 10, depending on who you ask about it.
My favourite Crusade is the first one, but I'll leave it til last, because it's the best.
All of the others I'll brush over in varying degrees of detail, because at the end of the day, you don't really care about peoples names, or specific places. What you care about, is that Team Crusades went on tour to The Holy Land/Levant/The Land Over the Ocean/the Latin Orient/the Land of Milk and Honey, or, to you and me- Israel (and parts of Lebanon/a small stretch of Syria/Southeastern Turkey)... and played a pretty rough game.
If you recall Alexius Comnenus (I called him "a dickhead" a minute ago, if that helps), was getting worried, as the Byzantine empire was being threatened in a big way, by the ever Westward-encroaching Turks.
The Turks were not Christians, and they didn't much like Christians.
They had a habit of ambushing them on their way to, and even in Jerusalem.
And Emperor Comnenus (or, "numb-nuts", as I call him), got himself into quite a lather about what to do.
In 1093, he wrote a letter to his friend Robert, the Count of Flanders, telling him about the atrocities committed by the Turks on the Christian pilgrims, and Robert passed this letter on to Pope Urban II.
I know this, I was there.
Urban was an opportunist (aren't they all?), and set upon the idea that if he could roust out the Barbarian Hordes from The Holy Land, he might just clear up a few of the problems he was experiencing closer to home (like invading Normans, for example).
He opened a meaningful dialogue with all concerned parties, basically saying something along the lines of "You will be filthy rich beyond your wildest dreams, if you go here *points to map*, and do this *throat slitting motion*. Help me Obi Wan, you're my only hope".
So, in 1096 CE (that's 'Common Era', for those of you who live in Australia and can't afford an education), he finalised the Merchandising Rights, and got Team Crusades on the road.
As I said, I'll get back to you on the first Crusade later, but rest assured it was hilarious.
Round 2, The Empire Strikes Back.
The army of the Crusades arrived in Constantinople in February/March 1097. This was numb-nuts' home ground, and he was more than a little worried that the army that had come to his aid, might get a little rowdy and just take over the place.
This wasn't entirely out of the question.
So as each contingent arrived, he tried to make them pledge an oath of liege.
Some did, some didn't...I mean, he was a dickhead of epic proportions, so who'd want to?
In response to those who didn't, numb-nuts tried to starve them out, keeping them outside the city walls. The army did what any army would do, and enjoyed selectively pillaging until numb-nuts gave up and let them in. What a punisher.
Even more on him later...
So, we have a full army, all present and accounted for, in Constantinople (now Istanbul), and ready to whop some ass.
Game 1- Nicaea.
Result: Victory.
Score: Well, that's a tricky one.
Basically, the armies rolled into town, only to find that numb-nuts had struck again, and had negotiated a total surrender while they were on the march.
Needless to say, after hyping themselves up to kill-status, they felt a little cheated.
At this point they decided to split into 4 smaller armies.
These armies then went on to:
- Antioch
- Edessa
- Jerusalem
- Tripoli.
So let's break it down!!!
Antioch was rough. It was fortified by four hundred towers and sprawled over twenty-five miles.
In October 1097, the siege began, and lasted all through the winter.
It became obvious that taking Antioch by force was just not gonna happen, instead, they knew they needed inside help.
A suitable traitor was found, who let the Army in through a window of one of the towers. By the end of the evening of July 3, 1098, blood soaked the city streets, and every Turk was killed.
They got a bit carried away, and killed quite a few Christians as well, but that's war for ya.
Right here is where the problems start.
During the fighting, they had totally depleted Antiochs food supplies, and as if that wasn't bad enough, they realised they didn't have anywhere near enough men to guard the now taken city.
This was especially bad, as Kerbogha, the Atabeg of Mosul (whatever the hell that means) was camped outside the gates only 4 days after they had taken control.
Kerbogha took posession of Antioch.
Team Crusades were feeling pretty low about this downturn in their game, but luckily for them, a Pilgrim named Peter Bartholomew in France had a vision of St. Andrew appearing to him, telling him the location of a religious relic called 'the Holy Lance'.
Just like in the Lord of the Rings when Gandalph came back from Hell, everyone got well fired up again, and marched back to Antioch to take care of business once and for all.
Kerbogha's armies had been doing a bit of infighting on their own in the absence of Team Crusades, and in their weakened state they lost Antioch to the Crusaders.
This time they kept it, and defended it against the Selchukids, Tughtigi, Bursuk ibn Bursuk of Hamadan, Il-Ghazi ibn-Artuk of Mardi, and the hilariously named Lu-Lu.
That's Antioch.
Edessa, located in Armenia, in Celicia, was the most important of the Armenian cities on the Euphrates.
It's also incredibly boring, so watch me fly through this one...
Team Crusades won, but vicious infighting for control, peppered with the occasional attack from The Turks weakened the situation there, leaving the goalmouth wide open for Zengi the Arab to take it back for Team Muslim in December 1144. It was the first of the Crusader conquests to be permanently lost.
Bam!
The march from Antioch to Jerusalem passed without incident.
No-one wanted to mess with Team Crusades, they were on winning form.
On June 7, 1099, they set up camp outside the city gates of Jerusalem.
The Governor (Iftikhar ad Daulah) had ordered all Christians out of the city, and had poisoned all of the water outside of it.
The defenses were good, and it was looking like a tough match.
They spent their time building siege machines, and following a vision where Adhemar, theBishop of Le Puy, gave instructions to fast and walk in procession around the walls barefoot for nine days, at which time Jerusalem would fall.
This procession was led by...wait for it...the Holy Lance.
This boosted their spirits no end, and with that they started their siege.
By lunchtime they had taken the entire city, and by nightfall they had not only killed every Muslim in the city of Jerusalem, but every Jew as well.
Once they had finished their vicious, but Heavenly-sanctioned task, they proceeded to the Holy Sepulchre to give thanks. As if in response, God killed the Pope on July 29th.
Jerusalems history was thereafter typified by its rulers dying, dying at age 5, or dying from leprosy at not much older. I sense God was not impressed.
In October of 1187, Team Crusades were escorted off the field by Nur-ed-Din's successor, Saladin.
Richard the Lion-Hearted arranged a treaty with Saladin during the Third Crusade, that would allow Christians visiting rights to Jerusalem, but Frederick II (King of Sicily and Apulia) decided that wasn't enough during the Sixth Crusade, and negotiated a treaty with Sultan al-Kamil, who was nervous that his Arab neighbours might move in.
The upshot of this was posession of the ball was returned to Team Crusades for a period of 5 years, until an Arab uprising on July 4th, 1244, by the Khwarismiams, (mercenary horsemen from Hauran, led by Sultan as-Salih), took the city again for Team Muslim.
Except for a six month period in 1300, it would be almost 675 years before a Christian Army would enter the city again, under General Sir Edmund Allenby, in 1917.
End game- Tripoli.
Tripoli was the last city of conquest, taking almost six years of siege before it was finally brought under the Crusader banner.
Raymond of Toulouse was notoriously bad at making up his mind. he took one city (Hisn al-Akrad), then abandoned it for another (Homs), then went back and took the first again. He also conquered Tortosa.
But he realy wanted Tripoli, like baaaaaaad.
Unfortunately for him, he died, and there ends his story.
After a 4 year blockade, led by William Jordan, Tripoli surrendered in July 1109.
As was their custom, The Crusaders engaged in even more infighting, and Saladin (who as you recall handed Team Crusades their collective ass at Jerusalem) for some reason only known to him, let them keep Tripoli, under strict oath they would not bear arms against him.
Sounds like a nice guy to me.
Now if you think that was the end of the story, you're dead wrong.
But seeing as I'm blatantly disinterested in delving any deeper into the psychotic bloodbath that was The Crusades, you're going to have to make a special trip to the library.
That is, after this...
I promised you I'd tell you about the First Crusade, and here I go.
Episode One - A New Hope.
The First Crusade was also known as 'The People's Crusade'.
It was called this because it had no real relation to the Crusades I just told you about, and didn't boast any knights, or general fighting men.
This jaunt was run by a radical monk named Peter the Hermit, in 1095.
After hearing the preaching of Pope Urban II, Peter the Hermit decided to take the ball and run with it.
He preached the Crusades to the poor peasant fanatics, and collected a small army to pilgrimage to the Holy Lands...ahead of the main army.
Now let's be clear about one thing.
Peter and his merry men were total psychopaths, who basically plundered their way from Europe all the way to Anatolia.
Before they had even left Europe, they had cut a fair amount of weight out of the Jewish population, so you can only imagine what they were like once they hit the hot zone.
Once in Anatolia, Peter's followers felt it was time to start Crusading in earnest, torturing, pillaging and massacring indiscriminately. However, as it turned out, most of their victims were Byzantine Christians who lived in and around Nicaea.
How cool is that!?
They found themselves a nice castle, called Xerigordon, and set up shop there.
But Kilij Arslan I (of the Seljuk Turks), didn't share their passion for staying, and lay seige to their fortress for 8 days.
But here comes the good part...
After cutting off their water supply (this is The Middle East, remember), the pilgrims gave up without further fighting.
After a total surrender, they left the city.
But Arslan, being the coolest guy around, ambushed them at the gates and left not one of them living.
After that Han was encased by Jabba the Hutt in a solid block of carbonite, Luke lost his lightsabre arm to his father Darth Vader, and one of the Tuscan raiders, after commandeering a spice freighter from Tattoine, stole the Holy Lance and bought his way out of a life debt he had stumbled into with a gungan called 'CGI Friday', eventually buying a moisture farm and settling down to live out the rest of his days hunting Jawas and taking pot shots at the pod racers.
There ended, the People's Crusade.
I hope that has cleared up a bit of the mystery surrounding the Crusades.
There seems to be some kind of conception nowadays that, because knights were involved, it was some kind of noble and magical thing to be a part of (Holy Lance's notwithstanding).
The truth was it was equal to the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust for cruelty and general bloodthirtyness, and even more sweaty, dusty, and hot.
I think there are some amazing parallels to be drawn between the Crusades and the current Iraq situation (as nodded to by my 'Coalition of the Willing' quip).
I wish it wasn't 8 am and I hadn't stayed up all night to bring you the last two posts, then I might have had the energy to clearly map out the parallels.
But it is, and I don't, "...so it's is goodnight from me, and it's goodnight from him".
Goodnight.
This is knifey, from 'the internet'.
That is very, very good.
What else have you got in the way of history? I'm after a crash course in the crusades.
Props.