The Return of King Richard the Lionheart: Legends of the Third Crusade

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1:13In the autumn of 1192, Richard the Lionheart is leaving the Near East at the end of the Third Crusade. It was a massive expedition involving armies from both England and France. And despite huge amounts of taxation, marching for thousands of miles to reach the Near East and suffering from disease and battlefield casualties, they failed to take Jerusalem. In fact, they didn't even attack it. This was because the Templar Knights and the Hospitaller Knights, who were locals in the region, advised Richard that even

1:47if he succeeded in taking Jerusalem, he would never be able to hold it. Once the armies of the Third Crusade got into the city, they would consider their Crusader oaths fulfilled and happily turn around and return to their homes and lives back in Western Europe. This would leave the Templar Knights, the Hospitallers, and the other Knights of the Crusader kingdoms with the impossible task of holding Jerusalem against the armies of Saladin. Saladin was a Kurdish military commander who had risen rapidly to become

2:22the leader of a formidable coalition of armies. He was now the Sultan of Egypt and had united both Egypt and Syria under his command. And it was Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem back in 1187 that kicked off the Third Crusade to begin with. But now that the Third Crusade has come and is on its way out, Jerusalem remains in Saladin's hands. So, Richard the Lionheart and Saladin have made a peace treaty. They've decided that there will be no fighting between their forces for the next three years.

2:57And as a gesture of goodwill, Saladin invites the Crusaders into Jerusalem as his guests. Richard can't quite bring himself to accept this invitation. Going into a city that he was supposed to conquer as the guest of the other commander who still holds it was a bit too much for him personally. But others were not so standoffish. Bishop Hubert Walter of Salisbury, who was acting as the chaplain to the armies of the Third Crusade, accepted Saladin's offer. As did Ambois, the Norman minstrel who's been following Richard around and chronicling

3:34the doings of the Third Crusade. And these men sit at Saladin's table in Jerusalem as his guests, an important symbol of hospitality that marks them as guests under Saladin's protection. Both Richard and Saladin will become legends as generations after them retell their stories. And in this episode, we're going to look at how and why that happened and the fate of each of these remarkable men. You are listening to Villains and Virgins podcast, and this is the final episode in a series

4:08that we've been running on the Third Crusade. So if you'd like to get a lot more detail on the battles that happened as part of the Crusade, or the personalities of Richard and Saladin up to this point, you may want to check out some of the previous episodes. But if you just want to cut to the chase and find out how everything ended, stay with me because that's what we're doing today. While we're talking about Richard and Saladin and the incredible battles of the Crusades, it's

4:43one thing to be listening to the stories of the Crusades or reading books about them, but it's another thing to have a physical piece of that history in your home. But I've recently discovered it's possible to do exactly that because there's a store called Own a Piece of History UK on Etsy. They have coins from the Roman Empire, they have coins minted by Saladin, actual objects from hundreds of years ago, and they already come framed for display and labelled on your wall.

5:17So it makes a great gift for the history lover in your life, or maybe it's something that you yourself would like to have. If that's interesting to you, you can check out the link in the description for today's episode and use the special code VILLAINSANDVIRGINS to get an exclusive discount. I also want to say a very special word of thanks to the wonderful people who are supporting this podcast on Patreon. And as a Patreon supporter, you get access to monthly bonus episodes, you get access to live history

5:51conversations that I host every month, as well as ad-free access to regular podcast episodes. So if any of that sounds interesting to you, head on over to patreon.com slash Eva Schubert. So in the autumn of 1192, the men of the Third Crusade begin to head home. And they're not marching home as one massive army. These are groups of men who are travelling in smaller bands or units. It's a dispersal moment. Some will take ships, some will go over land and get on boats at

6:23a later point. So there's just this massive dispersion of people going in all directions. And Richard himself has to decide which road he's going to take home. But he has to be a little bit more careful. At this point in time, Richard the Lionheart, the King of England, has made a significant list of enemies. And so he has to be very careful that on his journey home, he doesn't fall into their hands. And so he turns to the Templars. The Knights Templar have been at his side throughout the Third Crusade.

6:59They are resident in the region, but they also have chapters and brotherhoods across Western Europe. And they have a reputation for being incorruptible. So Richard believes that these are people that he can trust to help him navigate dangers on the road home that he might not even be able to see. And people who will stick by him no matter what dangers that road may hold. So the Templars agree to escort Richard. And he's going to be travelling on a single ship with some Templar

7:31knights and a very small number of companions. Basically his personal chaplain, his personal clerk, and a loyal Norman knight by the name of Baldwin of Bethune. And this guy is actually a French knight. But he's been serving the Norman Plantagenet royal family. Henry II, Richard the Lionheart's older brother, and now Richard himself. So Baldwin of Bethune is someone who came on Crusade from home with Richard, and someone that he very likely grew up with. He also happens to be a very close friend of none other than William the Marshal.

8:06And those of you who've listened to this podcast over time know exactly who that is. But essentially, Baldwin of Bethune is a very serious knight. He's a serious fighter and someone who's intensely loyal to Richard's family. So Richard sets off for home, not with a fleet, but with a single boat. And he keeps the itinerary of his voyage secret. This is because he doesn't want to fall into the hands of any of the many enemies that he's made. And these are not the Muslims that he's been fighting in

8:40the Near East. So who are these enemies that Richard has been so busy accumulating? Well, first of all, some of them are residents of the Crusader states in the Near East. So in his time on the Third Crusade, Richard has been involved in adjudicating some disputes. A really important dispute over who was going to be the next king of the Crusader states. And the man who had been wearing the crown was called Guy de Luzignan. But he'd become very unpopular amongst the knights and nobles in the Crusader kingdoms.

9:15They thought that he was a failure. They preferred another candidate, a guy called Conrad of Montferrat. And basically, when Richard and the King of France first arrive on the Third Crusade, they're given the task of trying to sort out this very nasty quarrel over who has the right to be king. And in the end, they favor Guy. Guy de Luzignan. The guy the locals don't like. Richard is forced to reverse that decision and recognize that none other than Conrad

9:47is going to be the next king of the Crusader kingdoms. The only problem was that a few days after Conrad was selected, and everybody knew that Richard didn't favor Conrad. This wasn't his preferred candidate. Conrad is suddenly murdered. He's assassinated by a couple of men disguised as monks who stab him to death. And even worse, Richard's own nephew marries Conrad's widow seven days later, thus putting himself in position to be the next king of Jerusalem. So to many observers, this looked altogether a little bit too convenient

10:21for Richard the Lionheart. The guy you didn't like suddenly becomes king against your wishes and, whoops, he ends up dead and your nephew takes over? However, this sounds like a little bit more than a coincidence. That's what many of the people in the Crusader kingdoms thought, and word of that had traveled not just locally, but all the way back to Western Europe. These rumors are going to come back to haunt Richard, as we shall see. But he had other problems. There was a guy called Count Raymond of Toulouse, whose lands were in

10:58Toulouse in what is now Southern France, and they bordered the lands that Richard himself held in what is now Southern France, but part of it at the time belonged to Richard and his father. And so the rulers of Toulouse and the rulers of Poitou had been at each other's throats for years now. Just before Richard headed off on the Third Crusade in 1190, he'd inflicted some serious damage on Count Raymond of Toulouse and his land. And while Richard had been busy in the Near East on the Third Crusade, his deputy

11:35had gone on inflicting damage in Toulouse. So at this point, Count Raymond of Toulouse has a bone to pick with Richard and would very happily seek an opportunity to do him harm. So word has reached Richard that this same Count Raymond of Toulouse is actively patrolling the coastline of Southern France, right next to where Richard might land in his own territory of Poitou, for example, with the goal of capturing Richard and imprisoning him so that he could be handed over to the King of France, with whom Richard has

12:10other problems, as we're about to see. So there is a coalition of people very close to home, the King of France, the Count of Toulouse, who wish him harm. And Richard is very careful to avoid these people on his way home. So it's bad enough to have your next-door neighbor at home in Toulouse angry at you. And it's not good to be on the wrong side of the King of France either. But this isn't the full list of people that Richard has antagonized.

12:44He's managed to alienate none other than the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI. And that's a big deal, because the Holy Roman Empire is a very large amount of land. And if Richard doesn't want to go through France to get home, he's going to have to cross territory that's in the Holy Roman Empire, which at the time included all of what is now Germany, as well as significant parts of northern Italy and even France. So if you're going to go the overland route, you're going to be

13:18in the territory of Henry VI, the Holy Roman Emperor. So what was the beef that the Holy Roman Emperor had with Richard the Lionheart? Well, on his way to the Third Crusade, Richard stopped off in Sicily. And this was significant because his sister Joanna had recently been queen in that island. Her husband, the King of Sicily, had died, and in the interim, some other guy had seized the crown. So Richard comes in there with his army. He frees his sister Joanna and takes her away with him.

13:49But he makes a deal with the guy who's now seized the crown in Sicily. And he says, in exchange for handing over my sister and some money, I'll recognize your claim to the throne. Because this new guy was a cousin of the dead King of Sicily. The problem was that by recognizing the legitimacy of this newly crowned cousin, Richard was actually slighting someone else who was related to the former King of Sicily. Her name was Constance. She was the aunt of the dead King. And she just happened to be married to the Holy Roman Emperor.

14:24So essentially what's happening is by Richard recognizing the new guy in Sicily, he's excluding Constance and her husband, the Holy Roman Emperor, from ruling Sicily. And the Emperor is a little bit miffed about that. Now while the details of Richard's voyage and the different turns they took and the shipwrecks and the pirates and all of that could be an episode in and of itself, it seems that Richard decides that the safer route will be to go through some of the territory controlled by the Holy Roman Emperor, who, even though he doesn't

14:57like Richard, is not as angry with him as the Count of Toulouse and the King of France. So Richard is hoping that he can go over land and sort of not attract any notice and sort of sneak back home. That's the plan. Unfortunately, Richard doesn't get to pick where exactly he goes ashore because he and his men are shipwrecked near Trieste, which is in modern day northern Italy. So now he's in enemy territory, but not perhaps the spot where he would have chosen to make landfall.

15:29So when Richard goes ashore, he sends a messenger to the local overlord, a guy called Count Meinhardt of Gurs. So he's the regional nobleman. He's a vassal of the Holy Roman Emperor, but he holds the immediate parcel of land that Richard is now crossing. And Richard sends him a message invoking something called the Truce of God and asking for permission to safely pass across his territories. So what's the Truce of God? Well, the Truce of God and the Peace of God are part of a much larger movement that was going

16:02on in Western Europe at this time, in which the Church was trying to limit the amount of feudal violence, feuding, fighting, raiding, that was going on amongst the aristocracy. And a small subsection of this applied to the Crusades themselves. And basically, the Church said, if you have people that are going on crusade, there are certain protections that should apply to them. And so these covered things like the protection of their land and property while they were away, the protection of their persons while they were going to and from the Crusade, and so on.

16:36So you shouldn't be subject to theft and imprisonment while you're journeying to the Crusade or coming home from one, essentially. So everyone knows about this, and Richard is invoking these protections, and he's saying to the local lord, you know, in view of these regulations that we all have agreed to, I would like you to assure me that I can have safe passage. But he doesn't tell this guy who he is. Richard sends a messenger on behalf of himself as some sort of merchant who's returning from the Crusade.

17:07He doesn't reveal his true identity, because he knows he's in the Holy Roman Empire, and he doesn't really want to draw attention to who he is. But when he sends his messenger to Count Meinhard, he sends the messenger with a gift. And this gift is a very expensive ruby ring. Apparently, Richard purchased three of these while he was in the Near East. So he's handing one of them over to the messenger to take to Count Meinhard. And Count Meinhard is looking at this very expensive ruby ring, and he smells a lie.

17:42He says to himself, what kind of merchant hands out ruby rings as a casual gift? Richard has made the mistake of acting like a king while claiming to be a merchant. And so even though his name hasn't been spoken, Count Meinhard has a pretty good idea who's probably behind this. But he says to the messenger, okay, I am giving permission for your merchant, master, and your party to pass through my lands. You can do that safely. And having given his word, Count Meinhard makes no further moves to

18:15arrest or interfere with these returning crusaders. But he does send a message to his brother, who happens to hold the next parcel of land over, which the merchant and his friends are going to be crossing next. And he says, psst, you might want to keep an eye out for this merchant and his friends who are returning home from the crusade. So the nobleman in the next county is called Frederick. And he's now got the heads up that probably the king of England, who's a Norman, and his party are

18:49coming through his territories. And he decides that the best way to catch a Norman king is with a Norman knight. And fortunately, he has one on staff, a guy called Roger, which is a classic Norman name. And so he says to this Norman knight who's working for him, you are going to go to every inn and hostel and rooming house anywhere that travelers coming from afar might be resting for the knight, and your job is to find King Richard. So Roger, the Norman knight, does succeed in finding Richard and his party of Templars

19:25and Sir Baldwin and his chaplain and his clerk. And he basically confronts Richard and says, I know who you are. And Richard denies it, of course. But his Norman accent is very clear. He's speaking to someone who knows exactly who he is and where he's from. And very soon, it becomes clear that denial is futile. So Richard and the Templars are looking around, probably thinking, what do we do next? We can't just kill this knight. We're in a public place.

19:56That's only going to cause a much higher degree of negative attention. And so Richard ends up pleading with this knight for mercy. And he succeeds in getting it. Roger, the Norman knight, basically ends up sending word for fresh horses. And he puts Richard and his party on them and says, get out of here as fast as you can go. Roger cannot bring himself to be the knight who turns over his own king from back home in Normandy to the hands of this local nobleman, Frederick, that he's working for.

20:30So Richard and his men gallop off into the knight. Roger, the Norman, goes back to his boss, Frederick, and he says, I found some travelers. I found this merchant. Yes, there are some knights. They're led by this Baldwin of Bethune guy, but there's no King Richard. Frederick, however, was too shrewd. He had already suspected that Norman's sympathies might outweigh Roger's loyalty to himself as an employer. So he'd had Roger followed. And he already knew exactly who Roger had found and what Roger

21:01had done. So while Roger thought that he'd managed to get King Richard out of there, Frederick had already sent another party of men to ambush Richard and his men farther down the road. So Frederick's men are waiting down the road to ambush Richard and his companions. And this time, Sir Baldwin of Bethune deliberately poses as Richard himself. He draws attention and says, I am the king. This is an indignity. And so the guys all run after him. And this allows Richard to escape.

21:32And at this point, Richard knows he's on the run. He's actively being pursued. He's well aware that there are people who are after him personally. They know who he is and where he's going. And so he's actually ambushed a couple more times. And every time this happens, some Templars are captured and stay behind. And Richard and his retinue become even smaller as they continue to elude their pursuers. So finally, Richard makes it into a village near Vienna. And at this point, he's got a German teenager that he's hired as kind of a local guide and translator.

22:07And Richard's been riding hard. He's been riding through the night. He's been going for hours in the saddle. He's exhausted and he's got malaria, something he probably picked up on the crusade and the stress and the lack of sleep and the long hours of traveling have caused him to have an outbreak. So he's feverish. He needs to find a bed and lie down for a few days to recover his strength. So he sends this young German teenager into the market with some gold Byzants.

22:37And this is, of course, currency from the Near East. And the youth is charged with changing the Byzants into local money and then buying food and other provisions that Richard and his companions need. Now, the gold Byzants immediately attract attention. Everyone knows that these come from the East. So someone who's returning from crusade must be using them. And the young man gets a whole lot of pointed questions about who's your boss? Who sent you with this money? What's going on? So the young man is quite alarmed by the amount of

23:10attention he gets. He rushes back to Richard and he says, listen, I've changed the money, but people here are altogether too suspicious. You need to get on that horse and we need to ride to the next town because it's not safe. But Richard is just too sick. He's feverish. He has no energy. He's exhausted. And so he's going to be staying in his bed for a few more days. And he keeps sending this German teenager back to the market to buy luxury items. So again, this is Richard acting like a king while posing as somebody else.

23:45Because if he'd been content to eat peasant food, then this young man going into the market to buy what everyone else was eating probably wouldn't have attracted so much attention. But Richard had a list of items that he was used to eating. And these were luxury items. They were expensive. So again, every day that this young man goes into the market and he's buying the most expensive cuts of meat and things that nobody else can afford, the attention that he's getting is only increasing. In the end, the boy went out to the market one day and he was arrested

24:21by agents of Frederick. And these guys take him back to a dungeon somewhere. They torture him. They demand to know who he's actually working for. And in the end, they threaten to cut out his tongue if he refuses to tell them the truth. Meanwhile, Richard and his remaining companions begin to suspect that something is up because the hours go by and the boy does not return at the time he was expected. And very soon, the tavern and inn that they're staying in is surrounded by a crowd of angry people, including

24:54some soldiers. And so they realize they have trouble and there's no clear escape. Hastily, Richard jumps out of his bed. He doffs the merchant's garb that he's been wearing and he gets some ragged garment and goes down to the kitchen, attempting to pose as a lowly kitchen helper. And the story goes that as the soldiers burst into the tavern looking for him, he's found in the kitchen turning a spit on which meat is being roasted. Now, this apparently was not a convincing disguise. Perhaps Richard had never roasted meat for himself and so wasn't doing it very well.

25:29Or perhaps it was one of those ruby rings that was still on his hand, which was entirely out of place for a kitchen helper. But in any case, the gig was up. People recognized him. They knew they'd found the renegade King of England on his way home. And so it was that on December 21st, 1192, Richard becomes a prisoner and he's soon handed over to the highest ranking nobleman in the region. And this is Count Leopold of Austria. You might remember Count Leopold of Austria because this is not the first time we've met him in this series.

26:05In fact, he was present at the siege of Acre during the Third Crusade. And Count Leopold in particular remembered that siege very well. He'd been there leading a contingent of men from the Holy Roman Empire. And they had fought alongside King Richard and his troops and the King of France and his troops. And when Acre finally surrendered to the armies of the Third Crusade, Richard had put his banner on the walls of the city, the King of France put his banner on the walls of the city, and Count Leopold of

26:40Austria put his banner up there on the wall right next to the other two kings because he was representing his emperor and the army that had come from the Holy Roman Empire. But Richard allowed his men to throw Count Leopold's banner into the mud and trample it. And this was not just a grave insult to Count Leopold himself. It was a statement about how the spoils of the city were going to be divided. Those leaders who had banners on the walls were stating a claim to ownership of the spoils of the city.

27:15And so by throwing Leopold's banner into the mud, Richard was essentially saying, you don't have a claim. None of this belongs to you. Some of it belongs to me. Some of it belongs to the King of France. And we're going to share it out amongst our followers. The problem for Count Leopold and his men was that they had been in the Near East longer than Richard and Philip. They had already spent much of their money on the campaign so far, and they were relying on

27:47some returns from the Siege of Acre to resupply themselves in order to complete the crusade. At this point, when they realized they're not going to get any portion of the Siege of Acre, they are forced to return home humiliated. They've run out of money, and they've been excluded from the spoils of the city. And so while for Richard, Count Leopold was some minor player at Acre, some nobody whose banner he felt he could easily discard, for Count Leopold, it was a very bitter memory, one that was still quite fresh in his

28:21recollection. And so you can imagine how he felt about the opportunity to have none other than King Richard the Lionheart as his own personal prisoner. Soon enough, word of this very high-value captive that Count Leopold had gained traveled all the way up the chain of command to none other than the Holy Roman Emperor himself, Henry VI. He's Count Leopold's overlord. And the Holy Roman Emperor says to Leopold, okay, you need to hand over this prisoner. It's not appropriate for you to have a king in your custody.

28:54Hand him over to me. But in exchange, I'm going to give you a large chunk of the ransom payment that we're going to collect for Richard's release. And so the Holy Roman Emperor and Count Leopold do a deal, and Richard is transferred into the custody of the Holy Roman Emperor himself, who, remember, has his own grudges with Richard. Richard is the reason that he's been deprived of Sicily, so he's not a friendly player either. And at this point, the Holy Roman Emperor writes to the King of France on December 28th, 1192, and he

29:29says, quote, Inasmuch as Richard is now in our power and has always done his utmost to annoy and disturb you, we have thought it right to notify your Highness, for we know that these tidings will bring you the most abundant joy, unquote. So here we have two sovereigns, the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of France, celebrating together that they have the King of England in captivity. Richard wasn't really good at making friends, apparently. Meanwhile, back in England, what's going on?

30:02What are the people back in Richard's court doing, and when did they realize something was wrong? They knew when Richard had left Acre in the fall of 1192, and they expected that he would be celebrating Christmas back at home. But Christmas came and went, and then another couple of months came and went, and there was no word of Richard. So it became clear that something had gone very wrong. And at this point, Richard's younger brother, John, the same John that has become infamous through Robin Hood stories, the

30:38bad King John, later on, he's still a prince at this point, he spots an opportunity. And so Prince John begins going around to some of the nobles in Richard's lands in Normandy, in what is now modern France, and saying, Richard is dead, or as good as dead. You should swear allegiance to me. I am your new overlord. Now, the problem with these rumors about where was Richard, had he died in a shipwreck? Was he a prisoner somewhere? Where was he? This put the nobles in a really difficult position, because if Richard

31:15was dead, and they refused to swear loyalty to John, they were essentially angering the guy who was about to wear the crown. And that was a very dangerous thing to do. That could have serious financial or even personal consequences. But if they went along with what John was asking, and they swore loyalty to him, and then Richard returned, they would all look disloyal and even treacherous. So it was a really difficult situation to be put in, and it really caused a lot of anxiety.

31:49Meanwhile, the Queen of England is none other than Eleanor of Aquitaine, and she's the mother of both Richard and John. And this is kind of an interesting point, because technically speaking, Richard had a wife, Princess Berengaria. He'd married her at the beginning of the Crusade, and she was crowned Queen of England, but she wasn't even in England. Now, this is kind of an interesting point, because technically speaking, Richard was married, and his wife, Berengaria,

32:20was on paper the Queen of England. But in fact, Eleanor was the Queen of England. She inhabited this role fully, she signed herself with this role, and Berengaria wasn't even in England at this point. So Eleanor is the acting Queen, the Queen in fact, and the Queen that everyone recognizes. And so she's using every resource available to her to search for Richard. Where is he? What's happened to him? Her messengers finally catch up with him in March of 1193.

32:52So this is several months after that gleeful letter, just after Christmas, that the Holy Roman Emperor had written to the King of France. And Eleanor's messengers find out that Richard is being held in what is now Germany, in the Holy Roman Empire. And then word of the Emperor's letter to the King of France also reaches Eleanor. So her messengers catch up with Richard. So eventually, two English abbots that Eleanor has sent out, amongst many other

33:22people who are searching, catch up with Richard near the now German town of Würzburg. And he's being taken to see the Emperor. He's going to be given an audience. So Richard is on the move, but now at least they know where he is. So at the Holy Roman Emperor's Easter Court, Richard is given a formal audience. And in fact, he's almost put into the dock. Because essentially, the Emperor charges him in public with a long list of crimes. This isn't a private meeting. This is in front of all the barons and nobles of the

33:58Empire who are there to attend the Emperor's Easter Court. So it's a very public gathering. And the Emperor has Richard sitting there hearing all of these charges against him. And amongst the crimes of which he's accused is the murder of Conrad of Montferrat, the man who is supposed to become the next king of Jerusalem and the Crusader states. And you'll remember that Richard was widely suspected of this murder. It just seemed a little bit too convenient. And to make things even worse on the face of it, one

34:31of the men who had assassinated Conrad confessed under torture that Richard had hired them. So this made it look really very bad indeed. And to make things even more complicated, the Holy Roman Emperor isn't just mentioning Conrad of Montferrat as some noble over there in the Near East who died. And Richard, you're responsible and you shouldn't have done it. Conrad of Montferrat was directly related to the Holy Roman Emperor. Conrad's father and the Emperor's father were cousins. So this is an example of how amazingly interconnected noble families were

35:04across Western Europe at this point. So the Emperor has a personal grudge here in terms of Conrad. In addition to his grievances about Sicily, which he holds Richard responsible for thwarting him out of by basically going in and deciding on his own to recognize somebody else as the legitimate ruler of Sicily. And then there's another grievance. Richard, on his way to the Third Crusade, made a stop off in Cyprus. We didn't cover this in great detail because it's a whole chapter on its own.

35:35But basically, while he's in Cyprus, Richard has a quarrel with the guy who rules Cyprus, a guy called Isaac Comnenus. And Richard removes that guy from ruling Cyprus. He takes Isaac's young daughter as a hostage. And then he hands Cyprus over to Guy de Luzignan, the person who lost the crown in the Crusader States and says, oh, you can now rule this. So Richard is disposing of other people's lands and daughters as he sees fit. But Isaac Comnenus and his daughter are directly related to Count Leopold of Austria, who's a vassal of

36:10the Holy Roman Emperor and had handed Richard over to the Emperor. So a lot of people in the Easter court have a lot of bones to pick with Richard. So it seems that Richard has been very successful at accumulating a large store of grievances that people have against him. And after all of these accusations are read out, Richard is given a chance to speak for himself in this public gathering. And he does so, apparently with great charm and eloquence, because he manages to turn the tables.

36:42So the Holy Roman Emperor goes from giving him an angry, accusatory tone and looking at him as a criminal to eventually looking at the room and seeing how many of his nobles are looking sympathetically at Richard after hearing Richard's defense of his actions and his protestations in particular, that he had nothing to do with the murder of Conrad of Montferrat and that he could even summon witnesses from the assassins themselves in his defense. He was very adamant on this point. And it's entirely possible that Richard could have been telling the truth about

37:16this. It looked bad, his potential guilt in Conrad's murder, but he may not have been responsible. So Richard manages to persuade many people in the audience. And then he throws himself on the Emperor's mercy at the end of this. And even to the point of sort of prostrating himself at the Emperor's feet in this very dramatic gesture with tears in his eyes. And the Emperor apparently also has tears in his eyes and he raises Richard up in the presence of all the observers and he gives him the kiss of peace, which is a very important symbol

37:52in the Middle Ages. It's basically a way of saying, I am not your enemy. I no longer desire vengeance against you. You don't have to fear for your life from me. So when the Emperor gives this important kiss of peace to Richard in public, it's a sign that enmity between them is over. But business is still business. And Richard is still going to be a prisoner of the Emperor until a ransom amount is paid. And it's going to be a very large amount of money.

38:23So the Emperor fixes the ransom amount for Richard at 100,000 silver marks. This is a very large amount of money. But to give you a sense of what it meant in the context of the time, the King of England could expect roughly to make from England something like 35,000 silver marks a year. Now, that's just England. We're not talking about his other territories in what is now mainland France, like Normandy or Poitou. But England alone, roughly 35,000 marks a year. So if the ransom amount for Richard is 100, we're looking at basically three years of revenue out of England

39:00at the time that it's going to take to pay that money. It's not an insignificant sum. So word of this ransom demand is carried rapidly back to England. And Queen Eleanor is enormously relieved to hear that Richard is alive and well. So Eleanor springs into action to find ways to raise this ransom as quickly as she possibly can. And the Emperor has further said, you know, if you send most of the money, like 70,000 silver marks, and then some hostages along as a guarantee that you're going to pay the rest of the money, I'll release Richard

39:35as soon as I have 70,000 marks and some hostages. And then you have some more time to raise the remaining 30,000. And when you give me that money, you get your hostages back. So this was a fairly standard kind of deal in the Middle Ages. Money, hostages, installment payments, this sort of thing. So Eleanor is busy finding ways to raise money that is above and beyond, or in addition to the regular taxation system that's already in place. And she has to call up noble families and ask them to give up children as hostages.

40:10Now, some of these are young people in their teens, but some of them are still actually children, boys and girls. She needs to find 200 of them. And so the deal for a particular noble family is, well, if you give us one of your children to fill up the hostage roster, then your donation to the ransom sum in terms of coinage will be less. You know, you can make a deal. Send your son or daughter for an undesignated amount of time into the Holy Roman Empire and pay less money

40:43now and you'll get your kid back when the deal is done. But this raises some additional issues. It wasn't that noble families were unfamiliar with the idea of sending a child as a hostage and they were quite certain that they would get their children back. The problem was that the person in charge of transporting the hostages from England to the Holy Roman Empire was none other than William Longchamp, the hated Bishop of Ely. And this is a guy who had already attracted so much resentment that there'd been a popular uprising against him

41:17while Richard was away on the crusade. People basically revolted against his arrogance, against the high-handed way that he treated people. He was personally very unlikable to the point where they threw him into prison, which required this William Longchamp to escape from prison in a dress that looked like it was a prostitute's garment. Apparently it was a long green dress with a hood over the head and he sneaks out of this dungeon and tries to escape with some servants, only to be discovered when a curious fisherman sees what he thought was

41:51a prostitute and goes up and decides to go in for a friendly and very thorough groping, only to discover that this is not a prostitute but the Bishop himself. So it was a very embarrassing moment for William Longchamp, not one that generally increased his dignity or his popularity, and even worse, he was reported to be someone with a predilection for young men and even boys. And so noble families who already hated this guy were even more reluctant to send a boy or a young

42:23man to have an extended period of travel under the supervision of this particular individual. And so they were more willing to give Queen Eleanor a daughter than they were a son under these circumstances. So while there's difficulty with raising hostages and raising money, in general most people are happy to hear the news that Richard is alive and well and there's a road for him to come home, but there are two people who have very different feelings on this subject, and they are King Philip Augustus of France and John, Richard's younger

42:58brother, and neither of them are at all pleased to hear that Richard is going to be coming home. This is because they've made their own plans for a world in which Richard never comes back. So Philip is looking forward to retrieving lands that used to be part of France, but have been wrenched away from him by Richard's father, Henry, and by Richard's mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and these are lands that the kings of England and France have been fighting over for a number of years now.

43:31So while Richard's been away on crusade, Philip came back home early, and he already began to make progress on this plan to retrieve certain castles and certain disputed chunks of land. So he was looking forward to expanding that campaign, but Richard coming home is going to be a problem for that. And as for John, he was looking forward to being King of England, rather than just Prince John Lackland. And his older brother coming home to resume his duties as King is definitely a monkey wrench in that plan.

44:05King Philip of France prefers John to be King of England, because he thinks that John will be a malleable tool, someone who's going to cooperate with the Greater France Plan. So neither of these two guys are at all amused to hear that Richard is coming home, and this forces them to move quickly and redraw some of their own plans. So you can think of these guys scheming together in a room somewhere over wine, trying to figure out how

44:35they can delay or altogether prevent Richard returning home. The King of France and John of England get together and they decide that they could come up with some money, maybe 150,000 marks, so 50,000 marks over the current ransom amount, to buy Richard from the Holy Roman Emperor. And if they succeed in this, then Richard would be transferred from being a prisoner of the Holy Roman Emperor to a prisoner of the King of France. And once Richard is in a French dungeon, good luck, he's not coming out.

45:08So that's their first possible offer. Or they could pay the Holy Roman Emperor to keep Richard in custody for another year, because that would buy time for the King of France to consolidate and expand his hold on these important territories that he wants to regain. Or they propose they could offer the Holy Roman Emperor an amount of money for every additional month that he keeps Richard in captivity. So there are many versions, many offers, but all of them are designed to keep Richard away from England for

45:41as long as possible, or possibly forever. King Philip of France and John have to move quickly to offer these terms, because the Holy Roman Emperor is planning to release Richard on January 17th, 1194. Richard has been a prisoner for just about a year at this point. When the Holy Roman Emperor receives news of this additional offer from the King of France with help from John, he's tempted. There's now a bidding war for his prisoner.

46:12And so even though there's an English delegation on the way with money to hand over so that they can receive Richard on the appointed date, the Emperor buys himself some time and he says, actually, we're not going to have this big meeting in January. We're going to push it back a little bit into February. He wants to give himself time to think about this offer and to negotiate. So finally, on February the 2nd, at the Council of Princes in Mainz, what is now Germany, the Holy Roman

46:48Emperor is there, Richard is there, and none other than Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine and a delegation from England is in attendance. And they're there because they've brought the first very hefty installment of the agreed ransom payment and the hostages, and they are prepared to hand over their part and to receive Richard to go home with them. And at this meeting, Richard and Eleanor get to hear about the counteroffer that's been made by the King of

47:19France, an offer that says, I will pay you 150,000 marks if you hand Richard over to me. And so the Holy Roman Emperor says, well, you know, I mean, this is a very significant amount of money. I have to think about this. In the end, after some additional bargaining, the Emperor agrees to release Richard to his English delegation and his mother within a few days, but with some slightly revised terms. England is going to have to match the bid of the King of France, which means instead of coming up

47:56with 100,000 marks, they now have to supply 150,000 marks as part of the deal to get their King back. And this is an incredible sum of money. Remember, if 100,000 marks was the revenues of England alone for three years, 150,000 marks is roughly the sum of not only the revenues from England, but also all of the revenues from the very wealthy lands that the Angevins hold in what is now France, in places like Normandy, Poitou, and

48:28Aquitaine. So all of those mainland revenues plus England for about three years is what's going to be required to come up with this significantly increased ransom amount. You can only imagine what Richard was feeling when he stood there and realized that the cost of his freedom had just increased so dramatically, and that he'd come perhaps within a hair's breadth of being handed over to one of his worst enemies, the King of France. But this was a heavy blow, most of all, to Queen Eleanor herself, who had undertaken enormous labours just to

49:06raise the 70,000 mark advance that she was now standing in the imperial court with, prepared to hand it over in exchange for her son, along with 200 hostages that she'd had to extract from 200 families as part of this ransom deal. Now to find that she had to find 50% more of the money that she'd already managed through great effort to raise must have been a crushing weight. And Eleanor knew something that Richard didn't. She knew that her own youngest son, John, was directly responsible for conspiring

49:41with King Philip of France to make this offer and to drive up the price that England and all the rest of their subjects on the continent were going to have to pay for him. To gather the money that had already been raised, Queen Eleanor had to institute really heavy taxes. All the nobles had to pay about 25% of their property towards Richard's release. And everybody else in the kingdom was taxed on a descending scale. Nobody was exempt. Even churches and monasteries were required to contribute.

50:15And there are reports that say that there were churches scraping off precious stones from their reliquary boxes to contribute them to the donation pile or handing over gold and silver ornaments that they had acquired over the years in order to make up the sum of the ransom money. Everybody had to contribute. And they had. So to be the person who had to go back and say, actually, we need to find even more money. And my own son is responsible in part for this must have been

50:50a heavy blow. In fact, it was during this period where Eleanor was gathering the initial ransom payment and all the hostages that she wrote a letter to the Pope in which she signed herself, Eleanor, by the wrath of God, Queen of England. Which gives you a fair idea of how she was finding the task, I think. And there was one final term to the new release agreement for Richard. Richard was going to have to hold his kingdom of England as a fief of the Holy Roman Emperor.

51:25So what this means was that in front of the assembly, Richard surrenders his kingdom, on paper, to the Holy Roman Emperor, acknowledges the Emperor as his overlord, and then receives England back under his own rule, except that Richard as the King of England is now underneath or a vassal of the Holy Roman Emperor. And this, in addition to being humiliating, is going to require a further fealty payment of about 5,000 marks a year. So it's a significantly tougher deal. But after agreeing to these terms, Eleanor hands over the money they've already

52:01raised and the hostages, with a solemn agreement to raise a significant amount more. But now, after these new terms have been agreed to, Richard is finally released to his mother, who is now 72 years old. And she wept in his arms. So Richard is released from custody in February, and he begins the slow-progress home with his mother and the English contingent, and finally arrives in March of 1194. He's been in captivity for a couple of years, but he's been away from his people for 4 years.

52:36He last saw them as he left shortly after being crowned to head off on the Third Crusade. So it's been a very long time that he's been away from home. The last time Richard's subjects had seen him, he'd just been crowned and he was involved in a furious fundraising campaign to raise money for the Third Crusade. Richard's arrival back home after the Crusade is part of his legend. And it's been retold a thousand times in the tales of Robin Hood, where we have the people of England

53:10who've endured his lengthy absence and who are now oppressed by rapacious officials, like the Sheriff of Nottingham, and bad Prince John, who are busy taking advantage of the absence of the King to do whatever they want. And so noblemen like Robin Hood are making a stand against these evil officials, and they're waiting for the arrival of good King Richard, who, when he comes home, will set all to rights. When Richard lands in Barfleur, in what is now mainland France, but what was then his own property, he was

53:45greeted by people singing and dancing and giving praise to God for his return. So there is historical evidence that people were anticipating his arrival and greeted him with joy. People greeted his return as an end to injustice, as an end to the abuse of officials who'd been acting wrongly in the name of their absent King. And so they're looking forward to better times ahead. They greet Richard's return as the end of a difficult period.

54:16The reality, however, was somewhat less than they had hoped. Everyone had been heavily taxed to bring Richard home. And you would think that now he was back, the extra heavy taxes would be over, right? Wrong. Remember that, first of all, the amount that still has to be paid to the Holy Roman Emperor is ongoing. So there is money that has to be extracted for that. But now that Richard is home, he goes immediately into a military campaign.

54:48And this requires more men and more money. Richard is eager to recover the lands that the King of France has been eating away at in his absence. And so he goes into a multi-year effort where he's building castles along the borders, where he's laying siege to castles that have been taken by King Philip. And all of this is very expensive. At this point, Richard enlists none other than Hugh Walter, the Bishop of Salisbury, the same guy who'd been acting as chaplain to the armies of the Third Crusade and had been next

55:26to Richard throughout that campaign. The same Hugh Walter who visited Jerusalem as a guest of Saladin, although Richard couldn't bring himself to go along. This same Hugh Walter now becomes Richard's chief justiciar, the guy in charge of organizing the bureaucracy and taxing Richard's subjects like they have never been taxed before. So we have pipe rolls. We have actual physical records of the taxes during this period. And the records from 1194 to 1199 show a kingdom that was taxed to the brink.

55:59This is the language that scholars use when they analyze these records. Hugh Walter found ways to extract revenue that had never been extracted before. And he boasts that he'd raised a sum of money that was hitherto unheard of. But for the everyday person living in England or in places like Normandy or Poitou, if they thought the financial load was going to get easier now that good King Richard was home, they were most definitely mistaken.

56:30Over the next five years, Richard makes incredible progress in reversing the incursions that King Philip of France has made into Normandy. Now, again, you might be saying, isn't Normandy in France? Yes, but Normandy gets its name from the Normans. And before Richard's father ever became King of England, he was Duke of Normandy. Normandy is home turf for Richard and his family. And while Normandy is now part of the nation of France, in the 1100s, it was just a duchy, one

57:03of many other duchies, some of which were owned by the King of France, and some of which, in this case, belonged to the King of England. So Richard is fighting for his family lands, lands that they have owned for far longer than England. And he's a relentless opponent, an excellent tactician. So he succeeds in driving Philip and his men out of these territories. And Richard wages this campaign, which ultimately ends in a very embarrassing defeat for King Philip of France.

57:36It takes place at a castle called Gisor. And apparently, Richard and his men pursue King Philip and his men so hard that there's a rush to get onto this stone bridge and into the safety of the castle itself. And so many French knights, including King Philip, are crowding onto this bridge that it collapses. Which means that you now have men and horses falling into the river in disarray. Some of them are pinned by their animals. King Philip himself has to be hauled out of the river by

58:10his legs. So it's an ignominious defeat. And for Richard, a resounding success. You can imagine that Richard himself took no small amount of personal satisfaction in this campaign. After all, he had more than a few grudges with Philip of France. He regarded Philip as having treacherously abandoned him on the Third Crusade, having broken the solemn vow that they made to go on crusade together and stay on crusade together until it was over so that neither king would have the opportunity to attack the other's lands. But Philip had broken this promise, had left Richard and gone back home

58:46early, and had used that opportunity to do exactly that, to attack Richard's lands. And surely Richard remembered with some bitterness Philip's attempt to keep him in prison permanently by buying him from the Holy Roman Emperor. So there was perhaps a little bit of extra vigour in Richard's pursuit of the King of France, and extra satisfaction at seeing him dragged out of a river by his feet. But in the end, after five years of campaigning, King Richard of England and King Philip of France make a

59:18truce in 1199. And for the people in Normandy, on both sides of the border, it must have been a welcome respite to years of destruction. Because when kings are busy fighting each other and laying siege to castles, what that means is also burning fields, ruining crops, laying waste to villages all around those castles. And what that translates to for everyday people who farm and fish and spin cloth is hell. So they will probably breathe a massive sigh of relief that these two warring sovereigns finally had a truce, and

59:50perhaps they would now have a chance to rebuild their lives and their vineyards and their fields. Richard didn't know it yet, but he would not long survive after this truce. And the circumstances of his end would match much of the way he had lived. What happened was there was a peasant in the province of Limousin, which is now in southwest France, but at the time was one of Richard's possessions there. And this peasant found a treasure buried in a field somewhere.

1:00:21So the peasant did what he thought he was obligated to do. He took it to the lord of his local castle and he handed it over. Richard got word of this, and he said to that lord, you better hand over this entire treasure to me. You don't get to keep any of it. It's just mine, because I'm the king and I'm your overlord, and I said so. And the lord of the castle said, no, how about not? Not handing it over, not giving you everything. So Richard shows up with a bunch of armed men, many of

1:00:56them mercenaries, and he decides that he's going to lay siege to this castle. He's just going to destroy and attack and invade. And it's a very small castle. It's manned by this one nobleman and a few of his sons and a few of their local guys. Some accounts say there were as few as 15 men trying to defend this little castle, and they weren't particularly well equipped. One of the crossbowmen on the walls had to use a large frying pan as a shield.

1:01:27Okay, so these guys do not have the best gear. There are not many of them. They're really not well set up for this. So Richard and his mercenaries are attacking these walls, and at a certain point, the lord of the castle sends a message. He realizes that they're going to lose. There's just too many attackers. So he sends Richard a message, and he says, hey, I'll surrender the castle, you can take it, on the agreement that me and my men can leave with our lives and just take our weapons with us.

1:02:01Just let us go. You can have the castle, you can have the treasure, you can have whatever. And Richard says, no, I'm going to take the castle, and I'm going to kill every last one of you. Now, let's pause to remember, what is the offense that these men have committed? The lord of the castle had his peasant hand over some treasure, and he didn't hand over everything to Richard when Richard asked for it. And for this, he's going to die.

1:02:32Richard could have had the treasure and said, fine, you and your guys just leave. No one else needs to die here. Just get out. But no, Richard has decided they're all going to pay for this insult to his authority with their lives. So Richard is standing around outside the castle, and he's looking for a weak point in the walls that would be the best place to send his men in for an assault. And at this moment, the young crossbowman, the one who's been using a frying pan as a shield, fires at

1:03:07Richard and hits him in the shoulder. And Richard shrugs off the wound. He says, yeah, no big deal. I've seen worse, whatever. Carry on with the assault. And so his men do, in fact, take the castle. They get inside, and they hang everyone. The lord of the castle, his sons, the other men who are defending the walls. Everyone except the young crossbowman who'd actually hit the king. Now, the king had his doctor, meanwhile, try to remove this crossbow bolt from his shoulder.

1:03:39But apparently it was quite deeply embedded and very difficult. So there was a lot of cutting and digging going on, trying to get this thing out. And the wound begins to fester. So it begins to get infected. It turns gangrenous. And Richard realizes that he's now got a fever. He's infected. And he's going to die. This wasn't very mysterious. Men of Richard's type, who had spent a lifetime in medieval battles, knew this pattern. They knew what it meant. They'd seen it many times before.

1:04:11And so Richard calls this young crossbowman to his bedside. And he says, somewhat cluelessly, What did I ever do to you that you've taken my life? So the young man, who's the sole survivor of the Castle Defenders, has to remind Richard of what the situation is. And he says, With your own hand, you killed my father and all my brothers. And now that I see you on your deathbed, I will gladly endure whatever torment you can devise for me.

1:04:41Understandable sentiments, given the circumstances. And it's kind of amazing to me that Richard needed a lesson on why this particular young man would perhaps be angry at him. But Richard, to his credit, says, I pardon you. And he says, You're not going to be punished. I want you released. I'm even going to give you a gift as a sign that I hold no ill will. Because Richard realizes that his days are numbered, and those numbers are in the single digits.

1:05:12So it's time to make his soul clean. And to try to atone for the many other killings that he's responsible for. So he calls a priest. He takes communion for the first time in seven years. He makes arrangements for his will. He writes to his mother and his brother. And he prepares to die. Eleven days after he was wounded, Richard the Lionheart is dead at the age of 41. But the young crossbowman who he had ordered released was not released by his men.

1:05:44And when you hear what happened to him, you will perhaps think that he should have kept his mouth shut and not so defiantly declared that he would happily endure whatever torment they might devise for him. Now, if you're listening to this podcast with young children, this is the point to press pause and come back later, because it's going to get very gory. In my opinion, flaying has to be right up there as one of the absolute worst ways to die. Right next to burning at the stake.

1:06:19Flaying is just another word for skinning a body. The difference is that while hunters routinely skin the carcasses of animals they've already killed, flaying, in this case, was performed on a living human being. The victim was normally tied to a post or stretched out, and then someone with a horrific skill set would proceed to peel their skin off them while they screamed and writhed in agony. And the objective here was to keep the victim alive for as long as possible, to maximize the amount of

1:06:54suffering that they would endure. Flaying goes back a very long time. Apparently, the ancient Assyrians were masters of this all the way back in the 9th century BCE. We even have stone tablets or carvings which boast of Assyrian kings who flayed their victims. Or, I should say, had their victims flayed, because it's highly unlikely that the king himself was doing the dirty work. Assyrian king Asherna Serpal II records in tablets his boast of how he had rebels flayed and their skins

1:07:28displayed on the walls of their conquered cities. Now, some scholars have argued that flaying was not done very often in the medieval period. It was sort of reserved for special circumstances. But apparently, some people in Richard's retinue thought that killing Richard merited special treatment. I can scarcely imagine the horror of this scene or the cruelty required to carry it out. Now, Richard himself was not responsible for this particular flaying. As I mentioned, he had pardoned this young man and ordered that he be released.

1:08:04But remember what Richard had done. He had basically asserted that the noblemen should hand over all of this found treasure to him. And when that was refused, had laid siege to the castle and executed the man, all of his sons, and anybody else who helped them. This young crossbowman, who suffered the hideous fate of flaying, would have simply been hung by Richard's order in any case, for nothing that you or I would consider a crime.

1:08:35If there was anything that this particular young man was guilty of, it was fighting alongside his family, fighting to protect his father and their land. So, this incident, which Richard was involved in, that ultimately led to his death, is consistent with a pattern of behavior we've seen throughout Richard's life. Which is basically, that if you're someone of a lower rank than him, you can be dealt with absolutely mercilessly. And we saw this with his confiscation of a peasant's hawk, with the way that he treated captives on the

1:09:12Third Crusade, with the way that he treated some of his own men in Southern Italy, by threatening to cut off their hands if they wouldn't fight as vigorously as he thought they should. And now, here he is treating, not enemies, but his own subjects, with the same level of casual contempt for their lives. But Richard hasn't become famous for this. Richard made his name on the Third Crusade, which ended in September of 1192. And only seven years after that, Richard himself was dead.

1:09:47But what he didn't yet know, was that he would become a legend, largely due to his role in that particular expedition. That's what he's remembered for. So let's take a look now at his legacy, at the legend that's been built around his name. If there's anyone who could properly be described as lionized, it is Richard I of England. After all, he got the epithet, the Lionheart, which somebody attached to him during the Third Crusade.

1:10:18And this was most definitely the best nickname that anyone in the Middle Ages ever got. It was much better than Ethelred the Unready, or Charles the Fat, or Ralph Asshead, or William the Bad. These are all real nicknames that were attached to real people. And Richard got a far better deal. After all, the simple word Lionheart attached to his name already tells us what we should think about him. It suggests automatically that Richard was a hero, and he had the courage of

1:10:53a lion. Now, there's a fair amount of evidence to support the claim that Richard had courage. After all, we have many eyewitness accounts of him during the Third Crusade leading his own men in the charge. So putting his own body on the line and happily accepting all the risks and hazards of combat personally. So Richard was not a man to hang back and send other people into the fray alone. We have to give him credit for this. And he was also an excellent military tactician.

1:11:28He was very successful at laying siege and conquering castles that were considered to be unassailable. He was really good at medieval warfare. And if we consider that the profession of medieval kings was warfare, then Richard was very good at that. But does it make him a hero? When we use the word hero, there's always an element of personal risk, harm, or danger involved for some larger good. So we can consider successful kings and military leaders who've won many battles as being mighty or successful.

1:12:04But if they're fighting simply to increase their own lands or their own fame and glory, they may be very successful. They may be very famous, but they're not necessarily heroic. Hero status requires undertaking personal risk in the cause of something bigger than your own gain or glory. Now, Richard and his contemporaries would have said, well, the Third Crusade was the larger cause, and we were fighting for the defense of Jerusalem and the holy places. But this is a little bit deceptive.

1:12:38The rhetoric around the Third Crusade was that Jerusalem needed to be liberated from Muslim control. But there was access for Christian pilgrims in and out of Jerusalem, even while it was under the control of Saladin. It wasn't as though Christian pilgrims couldn't go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or pray or visit those places. They absolutely could. So it wasn't as though these pilgrimage sites in Jerusalem, which had been the focus

1:13:08of Christian piety and aspiration for centuries, were suddenly inaccessible because Saladin had taken over running the place. So to move past the rhetoric, the Third Crusade was really about controlling the city of Jerusalem, which happened to be the chosen capital of the Crusader states, bits of land in the Near East that previous Crusaders had carved out and decided that they were going to rule themselves. Now, what if, in the service of that goal, you decide to massacre 2,700 unarmed prisoners?

1:13:42Does that make you a hero? Can you be a hero and do things like that? And when people comment on Richard the Lionheart's slaughter of prisoners at Acre, and it wasn't the only slaughter, but it was perhaps the single largest one, they always come out with things like, well, Saladin killed prisoners too. Except that when people talk about Saladin killing prisoners, they use it as an argument that proves his inherent savagery. It's evidence that Saladin was a butcher and an evil man and a villain who needed to be destroyed.

1:14:20But somehow, when Richard the King of England does exactly the same thing, and on an even larger scale, people want to reach for reasons to justify that and say somehow it was perhaps regrettable, but had to be done, and it wasn't really so bad. It certainly wasn't evidence that Richard was some kind of evil villain. Now, in addition to having the title of Lionheart attached to his name in perpetuity, Richard got some more help

1:14:51in building his legend. And that came from his mother, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. So she very actively contributed to the after-death profile that Richard would have, and it began with what she did with his body. When Richard died, Queen Eleanor presided over a bizarre medieval burial custom that resembles things the ancient Egyptians did. So she had Richard's heart removed from his body and embalmed with fragrant herbs, daisy, and frankincense. And that heart was sent to be buried somewhere else, in a cathedral somewhere else in what is now France,

1:15:28but was English property at the time. His entrails were buried where he died, and his body was sent to another abbey. Now, this seems very strange to us. Why would you cut up a body and send bits of it here and there? Well, it fits into a larger context. Remember that in the late 1100s, which is when Richard dies, there's already a very active culture of saints' relics. So you could go into a church anywhere in Western Europe and perhaps find the finger of an apostle or

1:16:04the rib of some saint or a veil or garment that might belong to a holy person. And so these objects and even body parts that were scattered across churches were objects of veneration and they were things that drew visitors or pilgrims. People who wanted to be close to people who wanted to be close to some physical remnant of an important person. By the time Richard dies, this is the Third Crusade. And the Crusades are these extended military expeditions where you have members of noble families who are dying thousands of

1:16:41kilometers away from home. And so this creates burial problems. It was often extremely difficult or impossible to transport the entire body the months that it would take to get home and be buried. But you could transport a small portion of that body if it was properly preserved. And so the idea of burying pieces of a body in important places was already there. And it was consistent with the saint's relic tradition that pre-existed.

1:17:11And it had been reinforced by the logistical difficulties of transporting the remains of noble crusaders back home when they died abroad. And while this may sound very bizarre to us, this same kind of piecemeal burial was already practiced by other members of Richard's family, including his older brother Henry, who would have been king if not for his untimely death as a young man while he was in rebellion against his father. And when young Henry had died, he had had his eyes, brains, and entrails, or intestines, buried in one place

1:17:49and the rest of his body sent to another. When Eleanor is taking pieces of her son's body and sharing them out to be buried in different places, she's essentially sharing the opportunity to recognize and respect his remains. Now, Richard is remembered as a king of England. And some people call him England's bravest and most glorious king. Certainly the only one ever to go on a crusade. While king of England was Richard's official title, he spent a grand total of six months out of his ten-year

1:18:24reign in England. He viewed England as his domain and a place to be taxed, but when he wasn't on crusade or in prison somewhere, he vastly preferred to spend his time in his possessions in what is now mainland France. Then there's the finances of Richard's legacy. He was a very costly king for England to have. Not only did he extract money to fund the Third Crusade, He then had to raise more money for a

1:18:55ransom, and then an even larger ransom, and then when he came home, instituted a tax regime the like of which had never before been seen. It could be argued that Richard's domains were so extensively taxed that there was very little buffer left over in the coffers to fund any mistakes that John might make when he took over as king of England. John is blamed, usually, for the dissolution of the Angevin Empire or the combined lands in

1:19:26England and what is now France that had been held by Richard and their father, Henry II. But John's ability to maneuver was definitely impacted by the massive amount of taxation and extraction that had already gone on under Richard. But let's turn our attention now to the other legend from the Third Crusade. And that was Saladin himself. Now, despite taking Jerusalem in 1187 and managing to hold it despite the best efforts of King Richard and the Third Crusade, Saladin himself would not survive very long after the Third Crusade was over.

1:20:03In fact, he died in March of 1193, only five months after he'd made a peace treaty with Richard. And Saladin dies of illness. He dies of natural causes. But posthumously, he's had a career every bit as remarkable and legendary, and perhaps even more so, than the one that has accrued around Richard. Saladin became an inspiration in the 20th century to pan-Arab nationalists, people who wanted Arabs to unite and resist the colonial incursions of Western countries like Britain.

1:20:35And so people like Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser view Saladin as an inspiration, as well as Syria's Hafez al-Assad, and even Saddam Hussein in Iraq wants to invoke Saladin's legacy. Saladin has appeared on postage stamps in Egypt, Syria, Qatar, and Iraq. There's a statue of Saladin that was unveiled in Damascus, the place where he grew up, in 1993, and it was unveiled by the president of Syria at the time, Hafez al-Assad. Now, during his lifetime, Saladin had portrayed himself as a champion of Islam.

1:21:09This was a title that he very consciously cultivated because it was a way of sort of asserting legitimacy for his military projects and his ambitions of building his own kingdom and domain. But as history went on, this title began to acquire far more legitimacy in the eyes of people who came later than it had for Saladin's contemporaries. Many of the people who knew Saladin knew that he was using this title for political purposes, and they didn't all recognize it or agree with it.

1:21:44But later generations have been able to look back on him with rose-tinted glasses and say, ah, yes, he really was someone who united Egypt and Syria. He really was a champion of religion and ought to be viewed through primarily a religious lens. Now, these 20th century people who've wanted to use Saladin as an image of pan-Arab nationalism have frequently downplayed the fact that he was not an Arab, but actually occurred. And it's evidence of the fact that everyone wants a piece of Saladin's legend and his legacy.

1:22:21He's a compelling symbol that people have used for very many different goals. Now, it's perhaps not surprising that Saladin would become something of a cultural hero in the Near East during his lifetime and even generations later. It's far more surprising that writers from the enemy side, the crusaders who were fighting Saladin, people who are from France or England or the Holy Roman Empire, should end up writing so admiringly about

1:22:52Saladin, and not just during his lifetime, but for many centuries thereafter. As the Third Crusade begins to recede into history, and the next generation of poets and bards in Western Europe are writing about it, in the 1200s, in the 1300s, they're retelling the story of Richard and Saladin. And Saladin is cast as this model of chivalric virtue, as a noble foe, as someone who was very much

1:23:22like Richard in all the ways that mattered. And what are the chivalric virtues exactly? Well, there are military prowess, so being a good fighter, largesse, or generosity, courtesy, which is treating other people with respect and kindness, and loyalty. And so Saladin is portrayed by these Western writers in the 1200s and 1300s as possessing all of these qualities. And Saladin continues to fascinate even people who aren't writing about the Crusades.

1:23:53Dante, for example, the Italian writer in the 1300s, who's writing about heaven, hell, and purgatory, ends up depicting Saladin in the first circle of hell, a place called Limbo, where nothing terrible really happens. According to Dante, Saladin's eternal fate is similar to those of other noble pagans like Virgil and Cicero. Basically, he gets to sit there and not see the face of God. But he doesn't suffer the torments that Dante depicts happening to other Muslims, one of whom is, for example, sawn

1:24:30in half continuously, again and again, for all eternity. So Saladin gets a pretty decent treatment from Dante. Even more generously, there is another Italian writer named Boccaccio, who writes a very famous collection of stories in the 1300s called The Decameron. Saladin shows up in The Decameron on a number of occasions. And there's a story, which is of course fictional, that involves Saladin surreptitiously visiting Italy in disguise.

1:25:00So nobody knows who he is. He's just a stranger from a foreign land. And apparently, he's generously hosted by an Italian nobleman named Torello. And later, this same nobleman goes on crusade, where he meets Saladin as himself. Saladin, the Muslim military commander, who recognizes Torello, remembers Torello's generosity and hospitality, and treats him extremely well, thus demonstrating the virtues of courtly love, courtesy, and so on. So while this is doubtless a fiction, Boccaccio is not pretending

1:25:34to write history. He's writing entertaining tales. He's enlisting Saladin as a character. And he's using him to spin this delightful story of disguise and generosity and of kindness between a Christian Italian and a Muslim Kurd. Now, the problem with people telling these romantic stories about Saladin, embodying all of these much-admired chivalric virtues, was the fact that it was difficult to account for someone who was not a Christian having all

1:26:06of the virtues that Christian Europe so intensely admired. And so some medieval authors in the 1300s and 1400s tried to square this circle or this apparent tension by inventing some secret conversion story for Saladin or some Christian mother or grandmother that he had. Some way of trying to explain how Saladin is really one of us and that's why he has these virtues that we so admire. For example, a 13th century Cistercian monk who writes a history

1:26:40called Estoire d'Outre-mer or Histories of Outre-mer, the Crusader States, depicts Saladin on his deathbed listening to religious debates from Christians, Muslims, and Jews. And in this monk's account, Saladin finally leaves the largest part of what remains of his possessions to the Christians. And so this gesture is supposed to indicate that somehow Saladin felt more drawn toward the Christians than the others. Now, I hasten to add that these accounts, which purport to show that Saladin had some

1:27:14secret Christian sympathy or some unknown Christian conversion, are pure fiction. They reflect only the fact that for many medieval Christians, only a crypto-Christian could possibly possess these virtues of honor, nobility, bravery, and generosity that they so admired. And so these fictions reflect an intellectual tension that was experienced by the authors and not the reality of Saladin himself. Now, this admiration of Saladin, which was going on in the

1:27:441200s, 1300s, and 1400s, continues for many centuries later. And one of the most incredible stories about this comes from 1898. So this is where German Emperor Wilhelm II actually visits Saladin's burial place in Damascus in Syria. And he's visiting Saladin's tomb with his wife. He's a guest of the Ottoman Sultan, Abdulhamid, who at that point controls Syria. And so the emperor and his wife are given a dinner.

1:28:14They visit the tomb. And the emperor himself makes a speech. And he says he was, quote, very happy to find himself in the place where lived one of the most chivalrous sovereigns of all time, the great Sultan Saladin, a fearless knight beyond reproach, who often had to teach his enemies true chivalry, unquote. The Kaiser further went on to place flowers on Saladin's tomb. And then he commissioned a new tomb for Saladin, a new coffin made out of marble.

1:28:49So on this new marble tomb, he placed a laurel wreath carved out of wood. And on that laurel wreath, he had the imperial insignia displayed, the German iron cross, and the Prussian eagle. By the way, this very same wooden wreath was stolen off the tomb by none other than Lawrence of Arabia at the end of World War I, and he took it back with him to England. So everyone wanted a piece of Saladin, including the Germans and apparently Lawrence of Arabia.

1:29:25Now, Saladin's generosity wasn't just an embellishment cooked up by medieval Christian writers trying to fit him into the chivalric mode. It's well attested by his own functionaries and employees who said that when he died, there was very little left in the coffers. He was extremely good at handing it out during his lifetime. No less a figure than Voltaire, a towering intellectual of the French Enlightenment writing in the 1700s, related what he

1:29:57had heard about Saladin's legacy and how he died. Specifically, about the instructions Saladin had left for the distribution of what little money remained to the communities of Jews, Christians, and Muslims who lived in the vicinity in the Near East. It is said that in his will, he's talking about Saladin, he left alms to be distributed equally to the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian poor, wishing to make clear by that provision that all men are brothers and that

1:30:31to help them, one must not seek to know what they believe, but rather, what they suffer. Few of our Christian princes have had that magnanimity, and few of the chroniclers with which Europe is overburdened have known how to do him justice. Unquote. Now, some people have argued that Voltaire may have had his own reasons for praising a non-Christian like Saladin. Voltaire, after all, was a notorious atheist in a time when that was hardly

1:31:04a common designation. And he had an axe to grind with the institutions of the church, which in the 1700s were quite oppressive. So it's possible that Voltaire is using Saladin as an external lens, as a non-Christian, to shine a light on the misdeeds and the oppression that had been perpetrated by the institutional church in France. But I think Voltaire's quote stands on its own merits, and even if the sentiment is his, that our shared

1:31:37suffering is what is most important and far outweighs the differences in what we may individually believe. But even if Voltaire had his own reasons for talking about Saladin, it doesn't mean that he was necessarily inventing the material. We have the words of one of Saladin's own scholars and close friends, someone who worked with him for years, and he was a scholar from Mosul in Iraq, and his name was Baha Ad-Din Ibn Shaddad.

1:32:09When Saladin died, Ibn Shaddad wrote this, quote, I have heard people say that they would like to ransom those dear to them with their own lives. But this had only been said figuratively in my hearing, except on the day of Saladin's death. For I know that had our sacrifice been accepted, I and others would have given our lives for him. I hope you've enjoyed this fifth and final episode in this lengthy series on the Third Crusade. And there has been so much material and so many stories that I've had to make some really hard decisions about what to leave out.

And even with all that, these episodes have gotten just bigger and bigger as the series has progressed. But I'm looking forward to sharing a lot of those outtakes or the little gems that I couldn't even find a place for in the series on Patreon. So if you'd like even more on these characters and these events, head on over to patreon.com slash Eva Schubert. Thank you so much for being here and I'll see you in the next episode and the next series. big monthly car insurance bills are hard on your budget, but not with Hugo.

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