Epic History TV
Published on 31 Mar 2017Part 2 of Epic History TV’s story of the First Crusade continues with the Siege of Antioch. The Crusaders endure immense hardships outside the city walls, but finally take Antioch thanks to a ruse by Bohemond of Taranto. Against the odds, and inspired by their recent discovery of a relic believed to be the ‘Holy Lance’, the Crusaders then defeat the Seljuk army of Kur Burgha. After disagreements within the Crusader camp, the army finally moves on to Jerusalem in the spring of 1099. During a full-scale assault of the city walls, Godfrey of Bouillon’s troops gain a foothold in the defences, and Crusader troops pour into the city. A bloodbath follows. Victory results in the creation of four Crusader states, but their existence is precarious, surrounded by hostile Muslim powers, who will one day return with a vengeance.
Produced in partnership with Osprey Publishing
https://ospreypublishing.com/Campaign: The First Crusade 1096–99
https://ospreypublishing.com/the-firs…Essential Histories: The Crusades
https://ospreypublishing.com/the-crus…The Armies of Islam 7th–11th Centuries
https://ospreypublishing.com/the-armi…Armies of the Crusades
https://ospreypublishing.com/armies-o…Music with thanks to Filmstro: https://www.filmstro.com/
Get 20% off an annual license! Use our exclusive coupon code: EPICHISTORYTV_ANNImage credits – via Flickr under Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 2.0
Sky – Anyul Rivas
Wooded Hills – Alexander Annenkov
Dramatic Fields – Antonio Caiazzo
Twin peaks of Mount Ararat – Adam JonesPlease help me make more videos at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/EpicHistoryTV
February 28, 2019
First Crusade Part 2 of 2
February 27, 2019
First Crusade Part 1 of 2
Epic History TV
Published on 13 Jan 2017The First Crusade was one of the most extraordinary, bloody and significant episodes in medieval history. It began with an appeal for aid from the Christian Byzantine Empire, threatened by the rising power of the Muslim Seljuk Turks. But when Pope Urban II preached a sermon at Clermont in 1095, the result was unlike anything ever seen before. The Pope offered spiritual salvation to those willing to go east to aid their fellow Christians in a holy war, and help liberate Jerusalem from Muslim rule. Knights and peasants alike signed up in their thousands, leading to the disastrous People’s, or Peasants’, Crusade, then to a much more organised and powerful Princes’ Crusade. Their forces gathered at Constantinople, where they made an uneasy alliance with Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus. Entering Anatolia, they helped to win back the city of Nicaea, then won a decisive but hard-fought victory at Dorlyaeum, before marching on the great city of Antioch…
Produced in partnership with Osprey Publishing
https://ospreypublishing.com/Campaign: The First Crusade 1096–99
https://ospreypublishing.com/the-firs…Essential Histories: The Crusades
https://ospreypublishing.com/the-crus…The Armies of Islam 7th–11th Centuries
https://ospreypublishing.com/the-armi…Armies of the Crusades
https://ospreypublishing.com/armies-o…Music with thanks to Filmstro: https://www.filmstro.com/
Get 20% off an annual license! Use our exclusive coupon code: EPICHISTORYTV_ANNImage credits – via Flickr under Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 2.0
Sky – Anyul Rivas
Wooded Hills – Alexander Annenkov
Dramatic Fields – Antonio Caiazzo
Twin peaks of Mount Ararat – Adam JonesPlease help me make more videos at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/EpicHistoryTV
August 3, 2018
QotD: The lost kingdom of Pontus
Pontus is that country, within modern Turkey, that follows the south-east Black Sea shore, and inland is enclosed as by an amphitheatre of mountains. It is the more interesting, archaeologically, for having been often by-passed, in the movements of conquering nomads and armies, from Hittites and Hurrians to Arabs and Turks. The Greeks took it, because they came by sea. They kept it, till late in the day; so that even after Constantinople fell to our short-sighted Franks (in 1204), the Empire of Trebizond immediately formed, and Byzantium persisted in Pontus, as in Crimea and elsewhere, until it could be restored at its centre.
David Warren, “A wonderworker”, Essays in Idleness, 2016-11-17.
June 4, 2018
The History of Non-Euclidian Geometry – The Great Quest – Extra History – #2
Extra Credits
Published on 2 Jun 2018For hundreds of years, Euclid’s geometry disappeared with the fall of the Roman Empire. But in Constantinople, Islamic mathematicians, including Al-Khwarizmi (who gave us the word “algebra”) worked long and hard on proving the Fifth Postulate.
May 24, 2018
Medieval tank – The 13th Century Knight I IT’S HISTORY
IT’S HISTORY
Published on 23 May 2018This time we will take you back to middle ages. It’s 13th century – what did medieval armor look like?
February 22, 2018
Curse of the FRIDAY THE 13TH I IT’S HISTORY
IT’S HISTORY
Published on 21 Feb 2018On today’s episode we are going to talk about the end of the Templar Order and the famous curse of Jacques de Molay.
February 3, 2018
Saladin – the Sword of Islam – IT’S HISTORY
IT’S HISTORY
Published on 2 Feb 2018Saladin was the famous Muslim leader during the time of the Crusades.
November 6, 2017
Chainmail – some points about
Lindybeige
Published on 16 May 2009In which I ramble for a bit making a series of near-random points about chainmail, or mail, or whatever you prefer to call it.
There is much on mail on my website. Please check there first before writing to me asking questions on this topic.
October 25, 2017
Crusader helmets
Lindybeige
Published on 4 Sep 2014Here I show you three common styles of crusader helmet, and I comment upon them.
Thanks to Dr David Tetard for the loan of his helmets. These particular ones were bought here:
www.getdressedforbattle.co.uk
http://www.kovexars.cz/index.php (HL 007 and 103)Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.
August 19, 2017
Baldwin IV – The Leper King of Jerusalem – IT’S HISTORY
Published on 27 Jul 2017
On today’s episode on It’s History we take a brief look at Baldwin IV – the 12th century ruler of Jerusalem bound with an incurable disease. Suffering from leprosy Baldwin was known to charge into battle with his right hand paralyzed and yet managed to achieve victory. Learn more about this truly astounding figure!
October 9, 2016
QotD: What triggered the First Crusade?
Question: You write that, “There was no rational explanation or single event that triggered this sudden desire to possess Jerusalem. Various Muslim factions had held it for over four hundred years.” So how and why did what later became known as the First Crusade get started?
Answer: From a Western perspective, there was a growing interest in the Holy Land. Pilgrimage to Jerusalem had increased throughout the 11th century. There was more of a focused interest on the historical life of Christ, and as a result on historical Jerusalem, than there had been earlier in the Middle Ages.
From the Eastern perspective, starting in the mid-11th century there was an incursion of, as we like to say in the historical game, “barbarians from the East,” in this case the Seljuk Turks. Their advent — their takeover of Baghdad, their embrace of Sunni Islam — destabilized the region in a way that hadn’t happened in about 150 years.
Mixed into this was the emperor of Byzantium, Alexius Comnenus, who clearly felt endangered on all fronts, [including] from the Turks. He decided that the best way to deal with that was to write to the West and to request mercenaries to help him. He framed his request in semi-religious terms, but what he was really after were hardened professional mercenaries.
Meanwhile, in the West, pilgrims were coming back with horror stories of what they’d encountered in Jerusalem. There was a sense that the city of Christ was in danger and was being polluted by these barbarians whom they barely understood. When the request for mercenaries came from the emperor, which was subsequently given a stamp of approval by the pope, it transformed into a massive military movement fought in the name of holy war.
Virginia Postrel talking to Jay Rubenstein, “Why the Crusades Still Matter”, Bloomberg View, 2015-02-10.
September 11, 2016
Sean Gabb – THE IMPORTANCE OF BYZANTIUM FOR THE WEST
Published on 8 Sep 2016
Professor Sean Gabb, lecturer, political activist and the author of nine historical novels about early years of the Byzantium Empire.
QotD: The fractious coalition that fought the First Crusade
Q: One of the striking aspects of your accounts is how fractious and fragmented the Crusaders were. They come from different places, they’re following different people, and they have somewhat different motives. The divisions reminded me of the various jihadi groups vying to be top dog today. Do we remember the Crusades as more unified than they actually were? Do these divisions tell us anything about the situation today among the other would-be holy warriors?
A: Particularly with the First Crusade, we do tend to remember it as a more unified movement than it was. We assume that when the pope preached his voice rang out with greater authority than it did, and that it would have been better remembered and better understood than in fact I think it was. We don’t have any record of what the pope said at Clermont except for one sentence [about penance]. All the other stuff is people making it up later.
A goodly number of Crusaders from the north had actually fought wars against the popes. They’re not necessarily on the papal side. A lot of people, particularly from the north were inspired by Peter the Hermit, not by the pope — a very different message. When the Crusaders marched through Byzantium, there was extreme mistrust between a lot of the armies, particularly the ones that got there first, and the Greeks whom they were allegedly on Crusade in part to defend. There was this sense that [the Byzantines] aren’t real Christians, that there’s just something wrong about them. There was no leader of the Crusade once it started marching. There was a council of leaders.
That probably parallels a lot of what’s going on with ISIS and al-Qaeda and the way these groups tend to metastasize. It also points out how powerful and uniting the notion of religious warfare can be — that you can have these different groups suddenly coalescing around this idea and against all odds succeeding. The most mind-boggling aspect of the First Crusade is that it succeeded. There’s no reason that this should have worked, that these armies should have survived and gotten to Jerusalem. They somehow did. They held together. This ethos of holy war, which is a fairly terrifying one, can be powerful and effective at holding groups together.
Virginia Postrel talking to Jay Rubenstein, “Why the Crusades Still Matter”, Bloomberg View, 2015-02-10.
July 30, 2016
QotD: What were the long-term effects of the First Crusade?
Q: What were the long-term effects of the First Crusade?
A: The most immediate long-term effect was that French states were established in the Middle East. People usually think of the Crusades as failures because they did [ultimately] fail, but in fact there were French-speaking states, Christian Catholic states created in the Middle East that lasted for about 200 years. We tend to forget that the West included the Middle East for this stretch of medieval history. If you live in the Middle East it’s more obvious because there are Crusader monuments and medieval-style architectural details everywhere. The entry to Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, for example, could be the entry to any ornate 12th-century church in Europe, the styling is so close.
Another impact of it, which I’m beginning to think has been more enduring than is often recognized, is that on the Islamic side, the notion of jihad was dying out [before the Crusade]. Holy war was something that had happened in the past, and there had been this steady state reached in the Middle East. I’m not sure that the Turks saw what they were doing when they were engaging the Byzantines as engaging in jihad. After the First Crusade, within 10 years of it, you get Islamic voices like Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami, in the last document in my source reader, saying we need to revive jihad. He says: The Franks have been waging jihad against us; now we have to get the jihad going back up again.
It also seems to me that the new model of jihad borrowed from what the Crusaders brought. You get the idea of martyrdom — the idea that if you died you would go straight to heaven. You get mythical holy figures appearing in battles that Muslims were fighting against Christians. You get a more poisonous relationship between religion and warfare than existed before.
Virginia Postrel talking to Jay Rubenstein, “Why the Crusades Still Matter”, Bloomberg View, 2015-02-10.
October 28, 2015
Europe: The First Crusade – Lies – Extra History
Published on 19 Sep 2015
Time to look back on the First Crusade and talk about errors and stories that didn’t make the final cut! The religious nature of the First Crusade meant that many of the primary sources for it (certainly on the Christian side) had a vested interest in reinforcing the idea that the crusaders had the blessing of God. Untangling the truth from their stories reminds us that there is no such thing as “the real story” when it comes to history: our modern perspective cannot help but shape the way we see these events also, and even to the extent that we try to set aside our bias, the conflicting accounts mean we still have to conjecture about what’s most correct. This episode also features answers to questions posed by our supporters on Patreon!
