The 1291 Siege of Acre (with Roger Crowley)

*This transcript is automatically generated and may contain errors* 

 

00:00:00 Elliot Gates 

What is up, guys? 

00:00:01 Elliot Gates 

Welcome back to Anthology of Heroes, the podcast sharing stories of heroism and defiance from across the ages. 

00:00:07 Elliot Gates 

Today we're going to mix things up a bit with the help of one of my favorite historians. 

00:00:13 Elliot Gates 

We've got some Crusader history for you. 

00:00:15 Elliot Gates 

Roger Crowley is a standout British historian and author. 

00:00:20 Elliot Gates 

1453 The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam in the West was really one of the books that got me into history. 

00:00:28 Elliot Gates 

Roger's use of real life quotes from contemporaries makes for an incredibly visceral reading experience, and helped me realize history doesn't need to be boring and dry. 

00:00:38 Elliot Gates 

It also got me hooked on Constantine the 11th, which sent me down one of my first history rabbit holes and I wasn't the only one, it seems because when Netflix put together their series autumn and rising. 

00:00:49 Elliot Gates 

About the rise of Sultan Mehmet, the second Roger was one of the experts. 

00:00:53 Elliot Gates 

The producers cut to him between the scenes for narratives. 

00:00:57 Elliot Gates 

But that's a story for. 

00:00:59 Elliot Gates 

Today, Roger is guiding us through the 1291 siege of ACA. 

00:01:04 Elliot Gates 

You may not have heard about this siege, but it's a pivotal moment in history because this little city today part of Israel, was the very last Crusader city standing. 

00:01:13 Elliot Gates 

A lot of people forget that even after Jerusalem was retaken by the Muslims, there were still a handful of little cities bustling with life. 

00:01:20 Elliot Gates 

A Christian needle in a Muslim haystack I visited AKA last year and it tweaked my memory of Roger's book, The Accursed Tower, the fall of Akka and the end of the Cruz. 

00:01:31 Elliot Gates 

Looking out at the harbour, I spotted a little bit of floating debris and speculated that that might be the remains of one of the famous crusade era towers that fell during the siege. 

00:01:41 Elliot Gates 

I shot an e-mail over to Roger, who confirmed that what I was looking at was in fact the remains of the tower of flies. 

00:01:48 Elliot Gates 

From there we got talking and. 

00:01:49 Elliot Gates 

Well, the rest is history. 

00:01:51 Elliot Gates 

If you've listened to our last interview with James Waterson, this story takes place not long. 

00:01:56 Elliot Gates 

After where we left off there. 

00:01:58 Elliot Gates 

Sultan Baybars, who James explained in detail, is a key character in this story. 

00:02:04 Elliot Gates 

You need to listen to that episode first, but if you're one of those people who like to start from the very beginning, go check that one out without further ado. 

00:02:12 Elliot Gates 

The man the legend, Mr. 

00:02:28 Elliot Gates 

Thanks very much for joining me on the Anthology of Heroes show. 

00:02:32 Elliot Gates 

How are you today? 

00:02:33 Roger Crowley 

Thanks very much, Elliot, and I'm delighted to be here talking to you. 

00:02:36 Roger Crowley 

And I'm fine. 

00:02:38 Elliot Gates 

Well, good to. 

00:02:38 Elliot Gates 

Hear all right, well, today we're going to be talking through your book, which details the the 1291 siege of Acre. 

00:02:44 Elliot Gates 

So I guess my first question would be what made you want to write a whole book on just this event? 

00:02:50 Roger Crowley 

I think because I'm interested in kind of. 

00:02:52 Roger Crowley 

Break point moments in history and and feed and the fall of Acre was sort of symbolic, really, I suppose. 

00:03:01 Roger Crowley 

Of the end of the Crusades, I mean, you know it. 

00:03:04 Roger Crowley 

It isn't the end of the Crusades, but it's it. 

00:03:06 Roger Crowley 

It is the moment that really showed that it was over, although people didn't fully take in immediately that it was over and that kind of last stand thing usually throws up sort of incredibly. 

00:03:21 Roger Crowley 

Dramatic narratives of, you know, attack and defence. 

00:03:25 Roger Crowley 

And and of two completely opposing ideologies and religions. 

00:03:31 Elliot Gates 

You give me a bit of a background on the. 

00:03:33 Elliot Gates 

Levant before the. 

00:03:34 Elliot Gates 

Siege kicked off. 

00:03:36 Elliot Gates 

Obviously, The Crusaders have been losing land for a while, but yeah, how do we get to this point? 

00:03:41 Roger Crowley 

I suppose we get to this point as a result. 

00:03:45 Roger Crowley 

Of events around 1260 in Cairo. 

00:03:52 Roger Crowley 

The Ayyubid dynasty, which has been the ruling dynasty in in Egypt and Syria and the Middle East, is faltering, and the Ayyubids depend upon slave army of what they call Mamluks captured people and what happened around 12. 

00:04:12 Roger Crowley 

60 is that? 

00:04:14 Roger Crowley 

The slaves become the masters of the coup and the Ayyubid laughed. 

00:04:19 Roger Crowley 

Ayyubid, felt and killed and. 

00:04:23 Roger Crowley 

These are Turkish speaking outsiders who become the Lords of Karah not terribly popular with the local Arabic people. 

00:04:35 Roger Crowley 

They're they're Turkish speakers. 

00:04:37 Roger Crowley 

They're great soldiers, they they're enslaved people from Central Asia. 

00:04:43 Roger Crowley 

They'd migrated West and were probably on the steps that are. 

00:04:48 Roger Crowley 

Or the OR the North Black Sea coast. And so these guys take over in, in 1260 at the same point of time we see the ******* starting to intrude across the Euphrates. 

00:05:03 Roger Crowley 

The destruction of Baghdad in in 1258 and the ******* are going to be an existential threat. 

00:05:09 Roger Crowley 

To the Islamic world on the coast we have. 

00:05:14 Roger Crowley 

The Crusader states who have lost Jerusalem, a whole dot of little kingdoms, but it's a very fragmented picture. 

00:05:22 Roger Crowley 

There are still little Ayyubid princelings in Damascus, and so on. 

00:05:26 Roger Crowley 

But the driver forward at this point are going to be the Mamluks. 

00:05:30 Roger Crowley 

And the man looks under under one man and the ordinary man. 

00:05:33 Elliot Gates 

And bath. But this wasn't a unified Kingdom, was it? It was a bunch of what, two 5-10 different state. 

00:05:40 Elliot Gates 

Let's just, with conflicting interests and conflicting diplomacy. 

00:05:43 Roger Crowley 

Yes, I mean we've got we've got contests between different different little. 

00:05:51 Roger Crowley 

Mini mini states if you like AKA Tripoli and further up the coast we've got a kind of rivalry between the the Templars and Hospitallers, who are the main military players in this, but we have different interests going on. 

00:06:06 Roger Crowley 

We have crusaders, we have people who want to trade with the Islamic. 

00:06:13 Roger Crowley 

We have Venetians and Genoese merchants in there who are, you know, both providing the ships that are bringing true crusaders there, but also providing war materials for the Islamic world. 

00:06:28 Roger Crowley 

So we've got a whole hodgepodge of things going on on that coastal strip. 

00:06:33 Roger Crowley 

Which is what they control. 

00:06:35 Roger Crowley 

They've lost Jerusalem. 

00:06:36 Roger Crowley 

They basically control. 

00:06:37 Roger Crowley 

A coastal strip very long coastal strip. 

00:06:40 Elliot Gates 

So is that why, for example, obviously The Crusaders kind of started to Peter out some time ago? 

00:06:44 Elliot Gates 

I'm I'm there were still some obviously, but they're not The Big Bang ones like the 1st and the 2nd. 

00:06:49 Elliot Gates 

What are we up to like the 7th, the 8th or the 9th by now or something? 

00:06:52 Roger Crowley 

Yeah, crusades are the Crusades are starting to falter for all sorts of reasons, which are really to. 

00:06:58 Roger Crowley 

Do with people who've got other priorities with starting to see it's a long, slow decline of not faith. 

00:07:06 Roger Crowley 

But in in, in the idea of a unified Christendom, we're starting to see we've we've got where they're dependent upon the Venetians and the general eaves really to transport troops to. 

00:07:18 Roger Crowley 

To the Holy Land and and really we're starting to see the slow emergence of not of a unified christened Christendom, but of Nation states, France, England and all sorts of other options are open to people. 

00:07:33 Roger Crowley 

You can go crusading against the. 

00:07:37 Roger Crowley 

Muslims in Spain, you can do your crusading bit and get your your sins wiped out for crusading in the forests of Prussia and Lithuania against the sort of heathen people so so the, the, the, the whole climate is starting to change, really. 

00:07:56 Roger Crowley 

There's no longer. 

00:07:57 Roger Crowley 

Kind of unified will there are these little kind of like one off where? 

00:08:01 Roger Crowley 

You get sort of what you might call military tourism, where some, you know, like Edward, the Prince who comes Edward. 

00:08:07 Roger Crowley 

The first sets off and takes some, you know 1000 men to to ACA and does a little bit of, you know, racing around and upsetting the natives, really. And then goes home again and so. 

00:08:21 Roger Crowley 

You're you're not. 

00:08:22 Roger Crowley 

You no longer have strategic. 

00:08:24 Roger Crowley 

Management of this from any central point. 

00:08:27 Elliot Gates 

So there's a lot more tactical. 

00:08:29 Elliot Gates 

It's not like it's seasonal, almost isn't it? 

00:08:31 Elliot Gates 

You come in, you get your your ticket to heaven and then you head back home to. 

00:08:34 Roger Crowley 

You you go back home again. 

00:08:36 Roger Crowley 

You've got your, your, your, your badge. 

00:08:38 Roger Crowley 

And and and this is infuriating for the people on the ground with all you've done is is, you know, irritate some, you know, peasantry who might have been reasonably well disposed towards their Christian states. 

00:08:38 Elliot Gates 

1.  

00:08:52 Roger Crowley 

You know anybody. 

00:08:53 Roger Crowley 

Who looks like a Muslim? 

00:08:54 Roger Crowley 

Fair game, you know, might just be somebody hoeing a field. 

00:08:58 Roger Crowley 

And you've thought of a few people could go home and and. 

00:09:00 Roger Crowley 

And really you're you're losing hearts and minds every time you. 

00:09:05 Elliot Gates 

1.  

00:09:05 Elliot Gates 

So when did Jerusalem fall, by the way? 

00:09:07 Elliot Gates 

How long ago did did was it retaken? 

00:09:10 Roger Crowley 

Well, a common factor. The 1180s. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They still maintain the fiction of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and which was really the little coastal strip of which AKA was the center. And and it was the Bishop of Jerusalem was. 

00:09:15 Elliot Gates 

1.  

00:09:16 Elliot Gates 

So sometime by now, OK. 

00:09:31 Roger Crowley 

Located in ACA, so they had this kind. 

00:09:35 Roger Crowley 

Thing going on at the same time, there was still some access for pilgrims to go to Jerusalem, and ACA was one of the landing points for that. 

00:09:46 Roger Crowley 

And you know, they they were could be escorted by by Islamic, you know. 

00:09:53 Roger Crowley 

Odds at various points, depending on how how hot or cold the temperature was at a certain point. 

00:10:01 Elliot Gates 

Brave new world, right? 

00:10:02 Elliot Gates 

So is AKA very much the new capital, then that's the biggest city in all the Levant, is it? 

00:10:08 Roger Crowley 

Yes, it is effectively. I mean it's a population of about 40,000 people, many of whom are deeply settled there. 

00:10:16 Roger Crowley 

These are, you know, some some of these people have been there since the first crusades. 

00:10:20 Roger Crowley 

I mean, their families have been. 

00:10:22 Roger Crowley 

They're effectively are abides in many ways. 

00:10:24 Roger Crowley 

They speak Arabic, they they are Christians, but they were they're very well integrated into the Islamic trading world of of, of the Middle East with the Mascus and and goods coming from further on. 

00:10:37 Roger Crowley 

And they actually use the gold currency or. 

00:10:41 Roger Crowley 

Of the Middle East. 

00:10:43 Roger Crowley 

Really irritates the Pope, so people arriving. 

00:10:49 Roger Crowley 

A guy called Jack Vitry comes to be the Bishop of Akka in about 1216 and he's horrified. You know, all these people are are dressed like Arabs, you know, we're in the Middle East east, mate. We're not in France or something. Expect to find a completely European and it's just not. 

00:11:06 Roger Crowley 

Like that and it and being a port town, it's a complete melting pot of of peoples. 

00:11:12 Roger Crowley 

You've got the Venetians, the Januaries and the peas ANS trading in there. 

00:11:17 Roger Crowley 

You've got all kinds of strands of Christianity. 

00:11:19 Roger Crowley 

You've got actually got Muslim merchants coming to trade, and you've also got all the things that horrified him about. 

00:11:26 Roger Crowley 

Man of sin, you know, this is a port town. 

00:11:28 Roger Crowley 

It's got sailors in it. 

00:11:29 Roger Crowley 

It's got all kinds of things. 

00:11:31 Roger Crowley 

It's got it's loggerheads with each other. You know, there was a point in the 1260s when the. 

00:11:37 Roger Crowley 

Venetian and the generates compound which are next to each other hold a have a very vicious war with their bombarding each other over over over walls with with catapults, so it's pretty dysfunctional in terms of its management, although normally the King of Jerusalem. 

00:11:58 Roger Crowley 

Is the king of this the king is actually in Cyprus, so there is no overall strategic management of this place. 

00:12:07 Roger Crowley 

It's in the hands of various groups who you hope will cooperate and the the leaders in this really. 

00:12:14 Roger Crowley 

They are the military order, the particularly the Templars and the hospital of, but also the Teutonic Knights, and there is a small English group as well. 

00:12:22 Roger Crowley 

These are really the military sort of movers and shakers, but it it's it's dysfunctional in terms of of a working Cooper cooperating. 

00:12:37 Elliot Gates 

I wanted to touch on so that that person that you just spoke about before, I think I got this quote from your book. 

00:12:42 Elliot Gates 

So when I entered this horrible city and had it found it full of countless disgraceful acts and evil deeds, I was very confused in my mind that. 

00:12:49 Elliot Gates 

Was him. Was it entering? 

00:12:50 Roger Crowley 

Poor old Jack. 

00:12:51 Roger Crowley 

Yeah, he was very confused. 

00:12:52 Roger Crowley 

I mean, actually, yeah, it wasn't. 

00:12:54 Roger Crowley 

He was turning out for at all. 

00:12:56 Roger Crowley 

Really, I mean, apart from anything else, he needed an interpreter to speak to. 

00:13:02 Roger Crowley 

Quite a lot. 

00:13:02 Roger Crowley 

Of the Christians there because they were Arabic speakers, really. 

00:13:06 Roger Crowley 

It's the Middle East and it's got a very, very deep. 

00:13:08 Roger Crowley 

It's a very ancient city. 

00:13:09 Roger Crowley 

As mentioned in the Bible, Egyptian hieroglyphics in the Chronicles of the Assyrians, Alexander the Great path through their Cleopatra owned it for a bit, you know, it's got a very deep history, very ancient history of of the trading center. 

00:13:25 Elliot Gates 

And with if we're talking about AKA, we can't not talk about some of the tower names, which is obviously where your book got one of them. 

00:13:30 Elliot Gates 

So we've we've got some really great ones. 

00:13:31 Elliot Gates 

We've got the accursed tower, of course, the tower of blood and the Tower of. 

00:13:36 Elliot Gates 

So we also got the gate of evil step. 

00:13:39 Elliot Gates 

1.  

00:13:41 Roger Crowley 

Well, it it. 

00:13:41 Roger Crowley 

It's funny actually. 

00:13:42 Roger Crowley 

Of course the answer is that we don't know the answer to most of those questions. 

00:13:47 Roger Crowley 

The accursed tower probably came from, but there's a back story that's very important to the what? What's going to happen to ACCA in the 13th century, which is exactly 100 years. 

00:14:01 Roger Crowley 

For the sea that we're going to be talking about, there was a massive siege of of AKA, which Saladine had captured. 

00:14:12 Roger Crowley 

Richard the Lionheart, Richard the first turns up and besieges it. And this is a massive siege. It goes on for 600 days and and the the critical point on the walls that that, that, that where they were finding the going really difficult. I think that that's what they call the accursed. 

00:14:31 Roger Crowley 

Power and the end of that story is that in the end there is a negotiated surrender by the by the Garrison. 

00:14:41 Roger Crowley 

It's very controversial, but according to Richard Saladin. 

00:14:48 Roger Crowley 

Went back on part of the deal and the Richard then marches for Gareth and out onto the plane and massacre of 1000 men. 

00:14:58 Roger Crowley 

And he had remembered this. This becomes, you know, A cause really for Islam, and it's going to be remembered exactly 100 years later the. 

00:15:08 Roger Crowley 

The 1291 Siege of the city. 

00:15:10 Elliot Gates 

Umm, what I'm sensing is there was a bit of a build up towards this. 

00:15:14 Elliot Gates 

Everyone kind of knew it was coming. 

00:15:15 Elliot Gates 

Babers, in a way, set the scene and put on a lot of the groundwork. 

00:15:19 Elliot Gates 

Is it fair to say that prior to babas, the Muslim world around the the Levant? 

00:15:24 Elliot Gates 

Was a bit disorganized and fragmented as well, or was. 

00:15:28 Elliot Gates 

That really unified. 

00:15:29 Roger Crowley 

It was a complete basket case of little Prince things. 

00:15:32 Roger Crowley 

You know, the Prince of Damascus, Cairo. 

00:15:34 Roger Crowley 

And you know all feuding with each other, sometimes cooperating with the Christians, actually. Umm, they both comes along. And these, as I said, these people are outsiders. The coup that takes place in 1260 is very unpopular with the local people in Cairo. 

00:15:48 Roger Crowley 

But he these are first generation converts to. 

00:15:52 Roger Crowley 

Tom, he's a very fervent, funny Muslim. 

00:15:57 Roger Crowley 

He's probably not a great Arabic speaker. 

00:15:59 Roger Crowley 

Actually, he's Turkish, Turkish speaker, but he establishes all an Orthodox presence by doing really quite good deeds. 

00:16:09 Roger Crowley 

Really tax breaks in the city. 

00:16:12 Roger Crowley 

Charitable works rebuilding mosques in both Cairo and in Damascus, reestablishing a a caliphate. The sort of Symphony put up job, both because the real colour had been killed in the Baghdad collapse of 1250. 

00:16:28 Roger Crowley 

Right. 

00:16:28 Roger Crowley 

And he so he establishes A legitimacy, really. 

00:16:32 Roger Crowley 

But what's really going to establish the legitimacy of of the Mamluks in the Islamic world and the advance of of the ******* into Syria, they take Damascus, they've sacked Antioch. 

00:16:48 Roger Crowley 

This is an existential crisis for the Islamic world, and they they're to send a message to Cara saying we're coming for you next. 

00:16:56 Roger Crowley 

You know, open your gates at that moment that they get a slightly lucky break for for one of two reasons, or possibly two reasons at the same time. 

00:17:04 Roger Crowley 

The weakness of the ****** system is that every time the Khan of Khan dies in back in Mongolia, all the leading can't have to gallop back for the succession process and so. 

00:17:17 Roger Crowley 

Hulagu I think he he's called that the the leading Khan of the ****** group there leave. 

00:17:23 Roger Crowley 

They also withdraw their horses over the new freight is and the original case would say that actually. 

00:17:29 Roger Crowley 

They're operating at the at the limits of the ecological ecological limits of what the ******* could do because they have a vast number of. 

00:17:36 Roger Crowley 

Horses and the grasslands of of Syria and the further South you go, the harder it is for them. 

00:17:43 Roger Crowley 

But they leave a holding force of about 12,000 men. They they go out to take him on. 

00:17:48 Roger Crowley 

With the help of some Egyptian troops and they win and the and the Battle of Ayn Jalut, which means the the spring of Goliath, the. 

00:17:59 Roger Crowley 

Sort of kind of like. 

00:18:00 Roger Crowley 

A really good name for this and well 58 and this is this wins the ******, the mammoth enormous legitimacy within the Islamic world. 

00:18:09 Roger Crowley 

It's, you know, really is a badge for them. 

00:18:11 Roger Crowley 

Babas Baybars killed his rival mum leader on the way back to Kara and takes over. 

00:18:19 Roger Crowley 

But this is a. 

00:18:20 Roger Crowley 

A defining moment, you know that suddenly they are much more popular with the with the the Arab speaking, Islamic world, and this is the launchpad really for day bars to really take over, organize unity. 

00:18:38 Roger Crowley 

By and start to build strong army and then eventually take on the Christians. 

00:18:44 Elliot Gates 

So this was. 

00:18:45 Elliot Gates 

This must have been one of the first major losses for the *******, right starting to break that aura of invincibility. 

00:18:50 Roger Crowley 

Yes, it did. 

00:18:52 Roger Crowley 

I think it broke the aura of invincibility, really, and and rather than people just trembling and opening their gates or whatever it it it was a break moment. 

00:19:02 Roger Crowley 

I mean, it wasn't a big battle. 

00:19:03 Roger Crowley 

They weren't taking on a vast ****** horde, but it, but it put fight into the Islamic war. 

00:19:12 Elliot Gates 

OK, so was the intention made clear that, you know, with the ******* kind of dealt with what's coming next for ACA or was it a bit of a surprise? 

00:19:20 Roger Crowley 

Actually, Babad spent several years building up his army, recruiting a a, A a much larger number of mamluks they had. 

00:19:30 Roger Crowley 

They had a great training ground in the Kara Military Training ground, developing the logistical infrastructure for. 

00:19:40 Roger Crowley 

What's a head? 

00:19:41 Roger Crowley 

What is a head really is taking fortified cities, and this requires A wholly different approach to open field warfare. 

00:19:50 Roger Crowley 

You know you need, you need supplies, you need equipment, you need catapults, you need minors. 

00:19:57 Roger Crowley 

And what babels. 

00:19:59 Roger Crowley 

Yards over a period of time is not. 

00:20:01 Roger Crowley 

Scout the forts, the the chain of thoughts. 

00:20:04 Roger Crowley 

They're not kind of like a magino line where whichever, all kind of connected, they're all independently managed and he wiped out. 

00:20:07 

Right. 

00:20:12 Roger Crowley 

We can isolate these one at a time and take them out. 

00:20:15 Roger Crowley 

And so he starts to take out these these these blocks around up the coast. 

00:20:21 Roger Crowley 

At the same time, he tries to take coastal ports because. 

00:20:24 Roger Crowley 

If if you can deprive The Crusaders of landing places for replenishment from the West, you've done it. 

00:20:33 Roger Crowley 

He takes an Antioch very quickly and in a huge massacre, and slowly he's moving in towards ACA. 

00:20:42 Roger Crowley 

He managed warfare. 

00:20:45 Roger Crowley 

In an extraordinary way, I mean he he campaigned continuously for 17. 

00:20:50 Roger Crowley 

Campaigns of misinformation he would pitch up in front of the walls of a city and just frighten people and go away again. 

00:20:58 Roger Crowley 

He'd make a truce with somebody and then break it. 

00:21:02 Roger Crowley 

He was he. 

00:21:03 Roger Crowley 

He had a long term strategy, but he died before. 

00:21:07 Roger Crowley 

Before we get to he, he takes. 

00:21:09 Roger Crowley 

Fact, and the Chevalier, possibly by forging a document for the hospital of impaired. 

00:21:16 Roger Crowley 

From a notionally from the master of the order, who's somewhere else saying it's hopeless? 

00:21:21 Roger Crowley 

We can't send your reinforcement. 

00:21:23 Roger Crowley 

You you better. 

00:21:25 Roger Crowley 

You better surrender now and and this massive and you know incredibly, you know, apparently amazing for which would have been taking a long time to take just gives in. 

00:21:35 Roger Crowley 

Then they never have very many. 

00:21:36 Roger Crowley 

Men in the. 

00:21:37 Roger Crowley 

Month at the same time, every time they do this, they take agricultural land, roundabout. 

00:21:44 Roger Crowley 

And so you're slowly destroying the hinterland of the the ports of places like Accra and Tripoli and so on, where they were getting feudal revenues from the local peasantry and also they were getting supplies and food so. 

00:21:57 Roger Crowley 

And slowly, slowly, you're. 

00:21:59 Roger Crowley 

You're boxing these people in into isolated spots. 

00:22:02 Roger Crowley 

Cut off 1. 

00:22:03 Elliot Gates 

Another suppose with like the the noose tightening round them did what? 

00:22:07 Elliot Gates 

What did Europe do? 

00:22:08 Elliot Gates 

Obviously we've got these Italian trading companies and we've got the the Templars, which I guess were based. 

00:22:15 Elliot Gates 

So the Templars and the hospitals, which I suppose were based on the Levant rather than back in Europe now, right? 

00:22:21 Roger Crowley 

What did Europe do? 

00:22:23 Roger Crowley 

Well, not a great deal. 

00:22:24 Roger Crowley 

I mean, you know, as I was saying, you get this sort. 

00:22:26 Roger Crowley 

Of military tourism. 

00:22:27 Roger Crowley 

Edward Prince Edward, who was going to Edward the 1st, come from, you know, does a bit. 

00:22:32 Roger Crowley 

People came and went home. 

00:22:34 Roger Crowley 

There were there. 

00:22:35 Roger Crowley 

Were noises, you know back home from the papacy about the importance of supporting the Crusades, but not very much happens. 

00:22:44 Roger Crowley 

Quite honestly, you know, it's getting harder to recruit, organize, crusading ventures. 

00:22:51 Roger Crowley 

But the reason that I've started to outline. 

00:22:55 Elliot Gates 

When they do. 

00:22:56 Elliot Gates 

Get to the walls. 

00:22:57 Elliot Gates 

What I read about is just. 

00:22:59 Elliot Gates 

Well, before we get to the trebuchets, the strength of both the forces. 

00:23:03 Elliot Gates 

Can you tell me what the disparity was? 

00:23:05 Elliot Gates 

Obviously, the defenders were a bit of a disadvantage. 

00:23:08 Roger Crowley 

But yeah, the defenders probably about 14 population City, probably about 40,000, about 14,000 fighting men about. 

00:23:18 Roger Crowley 

13,000 infantry and about seven or eight 800 mounted cavalry who would have been armoured Knights. 

00:23:27 Roger Crowley 

It's always difficult to quantify the size of an Islamic army. People come up with all sorts of numbers, you know, 100,000 what? 

00:23:37 Roger Crowley 

What happened was you got a core army, which might have been about 40,000. Then you get a lot of people who join up in the spirit. There's a very strong. 

00:23:47 Roger Crowley 

The hard thing going on here, preaching in the in the moth of Damascus, you know, the memory of the the, the the first mass. 

00:23:58 Roger Crowley 

So you get this very strong religious fervor to join the the thing. 

00:24:03 Roger Crowley 

So you get, you know, massive large groups of hangers on. 

00:24:06 Roger Crowley 

Really, you also get huge numbers of horses and wagons and so on. 

00:24:12 Roger Crowley 

So it's quite difficult to come up with numbers, but I would think they probably could muster. 

00:24:17 Roger Crowley 

Army Army of not whom are professional soldiers are probably 60 or 70,000 for a short term campaign. 

00:24:24 

Right. 

00:24:26 Elliot Gates 

Inside ACA, did it have one overall commander? 

00:24:29 Elliot Gates 

Or was it just scattered? 

00:24:31 Roger Crowley 

No, it didn't. 

00:24:32 Roger Crowley 

And and of course that was part of the problem. 

00:24:34 Roger Crowley 

They did allocate various sections of the walls to different groups. 

00:24:40 Roger Crowley 

The hospital of we're in one area. 

00:24:42 Roger Crowley 

The Templars in in two different areas. 

00:24:45 Roger Crowley 

The English Knights fought in another area. 

00:24:49 Roger Crowley 

Troops belonging to the King of Cyprus with somewhere else. 

00:24:53 Roger Crowley 

But coordination wasn't terribly good because. 

00:24:57 Roger Crowley 

You know it. 

00:24:57 Roger Crowley 

It it, there's there's no command or control of the whole thing. 

00:25:03 Elliot Gates 

OK, so we get to go to my favorite bit now, so the trebuchets, so these were meant to be quite legendary, right? 

00:25:08 Elliot Gates 

Both in the names and the size and the the number of them, right? 

00:25:13 Roger Crowley 

Yeah, we don't know exactly how many they had, but somewhere between 72 and 92 and the. 

00:25:21 Roger Crowley 

These are this is. 

00:25:23 Roger Crowley 

Incredible piece piece of of a large trebuchet. 

00:25:27 Roger Crowley 

Incredible piece of of practical engineering. 

00:25:30 Roger Crowley 

Effectively, the word for the trebuchets had to be hauled from the Lebanon. 

00:25:35 Roger Crowley 

Through mountain passes in the middle of winter, and they would then be erected the various different there were the big monster machines at which they probably had about four or five, which all had names like the the victorious and the furious, and so on. 

00:25:52 Roger Crowley 

These would have been counterweight trebuchet. 

00:25:55 Roger Crowley 

Where you have a a huge bag of stones at one end and. 

00:26:00 Roger Crowley 

A large ball on the other and you thought it tugged on a rope to release the the weight and and it would fire the ball. 

00:26:10 Roger Crowley 

The largest of these things were probably about sort of two feet across and weighed. You know, I don't know what 300 pounds. You've of course you've. 

00:26:20 Roger Crowley 

You've not only got to your wreck these things, this takes time. 

00:26:23 Roger Crowley 

You've also got to have the ammunition for them that they were incredibly skillful. 

00:26:27 Roger Crowley 

They knew a lot. 

00:26:28 Roger Crowley 

What you need to do if you need to hit the. 

00:26:31 Roger Crowley 

Wall with something harder than the wall itself and the limestone of ACA, was of a certain type, but they mind and had Masons at a site about 12 miles away where the geology was slightly different then they had to be. 

00:26:51 Roger Crowley 

Transported to the siege site. 

00:26:55 Roger Crowley 

So this is the, you know, the logistical side of this and to keep these things firing for long periods, it's phenomenal. 

00:27:01 Roger Crowley 

Actually, they only had, you know, perhaps about five of these very, very large ones and they had medium size ones and then they had a. 

00:27:08 Roger Crowley 

All kind of anti personnel ones, which are kind of almost like slingshots and and they did different jobs. 

00:27:15 Roger Crowley 

Really when you see the kind of, you know movie thing where they smashed the walls down and actually even these large balls couldn't really do that. 

00:27:24 Roger Crowley 

They have a slight psychological element, but what they were really. 

00:27:28 Roger Crowley 

Constructed to to do was to destroy the top of the battlements, IE any protection for defending men. 

00:27:35 Elliot Gates 

Right. 

00:27:37 Roger Crowley 

Then the smaller anti personal anti personnel ones were designed to keep people ducking. 

00:27:43 Roger Crowley 

You know, so that what this is a combination of of really two elements. 

00:27:50 Roger Crowley 

One is artillery bombardment and the other is mining. 

00:27:55 Roger Crowley 

You've got to get close to the walls. 

00:27:57 Roger Crowley 

So what you do is you you try and put up a vast salvo of of ammunition to keep people. 

00:28:03 Roger Crowley 

Ducking down behind the walls, you advance closer and closer with screens, and sometimes they put up like great big leather screens like sales to try and. 

00:28:14 Roger Crowley 

You know to stop weapons coming in until you've got close enough to the Moat. At that point you need miners. The mammals come to the siege with 1000 miners from Aleppo. Very skilled job. 

00:28:34 Roger Crowley 

Very narrow tunnels. 

00:28:37 Roger Crowley 

There are kind of three sort of specialist rolls out that are guys who dig the tunnels that are guys who move the spoil. 

00:28:45 Roger Crowley 

And there are guys who prop the tunnels as they go along. 

00:28:47 Roger Crowley 

You need wood to prop the tunnels. 

00:28:50 Roger Crowley 

So you know this is these are huge ergonomic activities requiring lots of men, lots of organizations on the aim is is not to get into the city, but you get to a point when you're under under a tower, you enlarge it the air into it and sort of more room and then you get specialist. 

00:29:10 Roger Crowley 

Knives come in with with wood set fire to it and then hopefully collapse the tower so the and the third part of this really is that when you've degraded. 

00:29:21 Roger Crowley 

One way or another. 

00:29:22 Roger Crowley 

Enough war, then. 

00:29:25 Roger Crowley 

Then you have the all out of thought. 

00:29:27 Roger Crowley 

The Islamic armies never went in for starvation. 

00:29:32 Roger Crowley 

Figures they went for. 

00:29:33 Roger Crowley 

The knockout blow. 

00:29:35 Roger Crowley 

That you can keep an army and the people together for about six weeks. 

00:29:40 Roger Crowley 

After that, people drift away. 

00:29:43 Roger Crowley 

Also, the logistics of managing food hygiene. 

00:29:48 Roger Crowley 

And to prevent illness and so on, the longer you're there, the more likely are your people are going to get sick. 

00:29:55 Roger Crowley 

So that was the pattern really degrade the walls, undermine them, and then and then you put people in and you're not and you're quite prepared to to lose quite a lot of people in the final attack and very often. 

00:30:09 Roger Crowley 

What would happen if the? 

00:30:11 Roger Crowley 

I think there's some evidence that at this stage they did have some Christians that they captured who they promised to, you know, all sort of things too. 

00:30:18 Roger Crowley 

But they had to go into the front wave and probably be killed and then there. 

00:30:21 Roger Crowley 

Would be probably a sort of rabble of people fired up by jihad, who would also prepared to martyr themselves in the front line. 

00:30:30 Roger Crowley 

And you're more experienced. Troops would follow up behind, and that would be the kind of three-part strategy for the for an Islamic siege and and the acre siege is is. 

00:30:41 Roger Crowley 

Quite typical of. 

00:30:44 Elliot Gates 

Right. 

00:30:44 Elliot Gates 

Right. 

00:30:44 Elliot Gates 

So you've got all these kind of different groups working in tandem, almost like a a modern army where you've got, you know, the drones and the strike force on the ground and stuff like that. 

00:30:53 Elliot Gates 

Can you tell me a bit about the man who was kind of cause Baybars is now dead and gone and we were with someone called. 

00:30:58 Elliot Gates 

Let me get this right, Al Ashraf. 

00:31:00 Elliot Gates 

Khalil, is that right? 

00:31:01 Roger Crowley 

Yeah, that's the guy. 

00:31:04 Roger Crowley 

Babe was successful with the guy called Callahan and Callahan was. 

00:31:09 Roger Crowley 

Planning with sage. 

00:31:10 Roger Crowley 

But he died and then they called his son. 

00:31:13 Roger Crowley 

He was the second son and not quite so popular, I think, as the as the first son, he had enemies for Mama. 

00:31:23 Roger Crowley 

Mama gonna see there a basket of snakes there with sub tribal groups and so on. 

00:31:28 Roger Crowley 

Even better integrated, he was a fluent Arabic speaker and but he needs to win to maintain the the loyalty of quite a devious bunch of other manlet Lords. 

00:31:42 Roger Crowley 

So failure is not a. 

00:31:44 Roger Crowley 

Option really, you know probably gonna be killed by somebody else if you don't. 

00:31:49 Roger Crowley 

And obviously the great kudos will come if you take this city. 

00:31:53 Roger Crowley 

So he's the guy who's planning and he's probably a good military strategist, I think. 

00:31:58 Elliot Gates 

So this is your legitimacy, almost is built upon this, this, this siege being successful in a way. 

00:32:04 Roger Crowley 

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. 

00:32:06 Elliot Gates 

So while you've got obviously these scattered Christian forces under attack, are there any kind of? 

00:32:12 Elliot Gates 

You know, overall heroes, I think I read about someone, Gen. 

00:32:15 Elliot Gates 

de de Villiers was a bit of a rallying point. 

00:32:19 Roger Crowley 

John Devillier, who was the grandmaster of the Hospital of and Geomedia, Bonjour, who was the Grandmaster of the Templars, and also I called Matthew de Clermont. 

00:32:33 Roger Crowley 

These people stand out. 

00:32:34 Roger Crowley 

Because the sources are not good for what's happening within the city, particularly towards the end, you know, because a lot of people died and it could be that these people were picked out because, you know, they were the masters of those orders. 

00:32:50 Roger Crowley 

Another man who was very important actually was the Patriarch of the City of Mankato. 

00:32:55 Roger Crowley 

Nicola Hannah. Pez. 

00:32:57 Roger Crowley 

Who was who really rallied people to this? 

00:33:00 Roger Crowley 

This is a Christian cause. 

00:33:01 Roger Crowley 

You know who would bring people to church before the final attacks and so on and and tell them that they're dying for God. 

00:33:10 Roger Crowley 

And he put a lot of a lot of courage, I think, and spiritual can do. 

00:33:16 Roger Crowley 

Like and spiritual can do, is really a concept, but into into the whole thing. 

00:33:23 Roger Crowley 

So he was very important in in raising morale and keeping morale up. 

00:33:27 Roger Crowley 

So I mean the, you know, the, the the undoubtedly the leaders. 

00:33:31 Roger Crowley 

Are the grandmasters grandmasters fought and died? 

00:33:37 Roger Crowley 

Villia was wounded and and escaped, and Bojo was killed or died of his wound and Mattia to clamour, bought until his horse was shot from under him and he was shot also. 

00:33:51 Elliot Gates 

The the impression I got, especially around the death of Villiers and maybe I'm reading too much into this from reading your book, it seemed like that was kind of a bit like the final straw where, you know the the defence was kind of starting to. 

00:34:02 Roger Crowley 

Waver, I think, I think iconic figures are very important. 

00:34:05 Roger Crowley 

I think both Villiers, who was wounded. 

00:34:07 Roger Crowley 

And Bossier, who was badly wounded and said, you know, I can't fight on and was taken back into the into the Temple of Cathay, he died these undoubtedly, you know, iconic figures critical really to the morale of the truth really leading from the front and I think. 

00:34:27 Roger Crowley 

That you know, if your if your head guy gets gets killed or or or severely wounded then these blows are taken very very seriously and I think it definitely affected the morale of the of the men. 

00:34:41 Roger Crowley 

I mean, they did pretty well on the 16th, the final stage on the 18th. 

00:34:45 Roger Crowley 

On the 16th, they repulsed a major attack and this actually was a moment of crisis for Khalil, because if he doesn't do it, he's in serious trouble and they regroup for a day and and on the 18th they came again. 

00:35:02 Roger Crowley 

Were exactly almost exactly 100 years after the capture of Acre by the Christians, you know. And there's a symmetry here. And they were really fired up for this final. 

00:35:12 Roger Crowley 

Thing and Ottoman armies, when they when they make this final tax, I said, you know, they send the cannon fodder in first you advance on a vast wall of noise. 

00:35:22 Roger Crowley 

You know the the Ottoman army also had these huge military bands with camel drummers and trumpets and so on to inspire them in massive. 

00:35:33 Roger Crowley 

Wall have found drillings when the accursed tower fell, which is at a very critical point in the walls. 

00:35:41 Roger Crowley 

Then you know they at that point they degraded enough of the wall that they could get in between the inner and outer walls, and then. 

00:35:49 Roger Crowley 

And then start to open gates and then and then the street to street fighting. 

00:35:53 Roger Crowley 

And once they got into the city. 

00:35:58 Roger Crowley 

I think you've been to ACA. 

00:35:59 Roger Crowley 

Haven't you I? 

00:36:00 Roger Crowley 

Yeah, the very, very narrow streets there. 

00:36:02 Roger Crowley 

But you had the citizens with sort of raining rocks down on them, but they were very disciplined. 

00:36:09 Roger Crowley 

In the way that they advance, you know bit by bit, forcing their way, forcing people back. 

00:36:14 Roger Crowley 

They also had a quite a large number of incendiary weapons, you know, sort of like hand grenades of of Greek fire that they could throw at people and stories of people just going out like a sort of human Wick, you know, in the from being hit by these things. 

00:36:34 Roger Crowley 

So yeah, and and then and then the defense collapsed, and then it from Africa, people run to the to the harbour, the weather have been very stormy and it's been difficult quite a number of people had left, actually, were quite well before the final. 

00:36:50 Roger Crowley 

Back, but there aren't many galleys there, and there's this guy who gets command of a of a galley called Roger. 

00:36:58 Roger Crowley 

The floor, who will only take wealthy people with their treasures on on, onto the ships, you know, so the the, the wealthier tend to get away as the as is the way in these things. 

00:37:10 Roger Crowley 

In their helicopters or whatever. 

00:37:14 Roger Crowley 

The rank and file are left to be killed or enslaved or raped, or, you know, whatever. 

00:37:20 Roger Crowley 

And and and. 

00:37:22 Roger Crowley 

Yeah, and it's pretty ghastly. 

00:37:24 Elliot Gates 

I guess the kind of standard for a SAC is, what, three days or so of of sacking that occurs afterwards. 

00:37:30 Elliot Gates 

That was that. 

00:37:31 Elliot Gates 

Was there anything like that? 

00:37:32 Elliot Gates 

Was it more brutal? 

00:37:33 Roger Crowley 

I think what happened was that initially the thought of. 

00:37:37 Roger Crowley 

People, after a little while, what happens is you stop sorting people you and you capture them because they're they're valuable. 

00:37:43 Roger Crowley 

They can be slaves, you know, and you might have killed, you know, monks and nuns in churches and so on. 

00:37:52 Roger Crowley 

But at that point, you start. 

00:37:54 Roger Crowley 

You're after the stuff, really. 

00:37:57 Roger Crowley 

You know, there's. 

00:37:58 Roger Crowley 

There's no real armed opposition, you know, apart from the retreat into the Templar of Castle on the on the seashore. 

00:38:06 Elliot Gates 

What was the reaction from the rest? 

00:38:08 Elliot Gates 

Of the Christian. 

00:38:08 Roger Crowley 

World there's a huge amount of blame culture really flung at, particularly actually at the military order for not having. 

00:38:16 Roger Crowley 

You know, you know we support you. 

00:38:19 Roger Crowley 

You're incredibly wealthy. 

00:38:21 Roger Crowley 

You should have, you know, done it. 

00:38:22 Roger Crowley 

Really a lot of hand wringing, a lot of plans for further crusades. 

00:38:28 Roger Crowley 

But as I said earlier that the appetite for crusading is dying for all sorts of reasons. 

00:38:34 Roger Crowley 

You know, they'll plan for hatch. 

00:38:36 Roger Crowley 

Money is raves and then disappears into the people's pockets. 

00:38:40 Roger Crowley 

It it kind of lingers on a a sort of motif throughout the 14th century. 

00:38:45 Roger Crowley 

Of course other things happened in Europe in the 14th century. 

00:38:49 Roger Crowley 

The Black Death hits Europe in 1340s and it's, you know, kind of rather distracts people and all sorts of other things. And there was sort of existential fear, really, I think. 

00:39:00 Roger Crowley 

As there was with the former Constantinople, that and the Antichrist is coming really. 

00:39:05 Roger Crowley 

And soul searching about, you know, sin and you know why? 

00:39:09 Roger Crowley 

Why did God allow this to happen and so on, but it's starting to taper away. 

00:39:13 Roger Crowley 

You know, the whole Crusader thing very slowly over a long period of time. 

00:39:19 Elliot Gates 

Umm, I did read that there was a little holdout. 

00:39:22 Elliot Gates 

I think it's in Ruad or ruad or something like that. 

00:39:25 Elliot Gates 

That fell about 10 years later. 

00:39:27 Elliot Gates 

That was just a little town, and that was the very last one, right? 

00:39:28 Roger Crowley 

Yes, yes, I think that was a little offshore island. 

00:39:33 Roger Crowley 

I think that held out for a little while. 

00:39:37 Roger Crowley 

There was a little bit of crusading went on in. 

00:39:40 Roger Crowley 

What they call Silithus and Armenia, which is not Armenia at all, it's the South Coast of Turkey. 

00:39:46 Roger Crowley 

And and goes on afterwards. 

00:39:50 Roger Crowley 

But yeah, little area of little pockets. 

00:39:54 Roger Crowley 

The fall back to Cyprus, you know, was really the point. 

00:39:59 Roger Crowley 

The position from which people dreamt of, of new crusades. 

00:40:04 Roger Crowley 

But of course what happens is. 

00:40:06 Roger Crowley 

The Templars are demolished really hard to crusading thing. 

00:40:12 Roger Crowley 

In France, the Templars really based in France, they're massively. 

00:40:16 Roger Crowley 

Wealthy to the grab of their land and persecution and the torture and the execution of a lot of Templars, really, they unfortunately, their raise on debts really was to be crusaders and they they didn't have a foothold left from which to operate. 

00:40:34 Roger Crowley 

Then people looked for them with greedy eyes and and the. 

00:40:38 Roger Crowley 

And the dismantling of the Templars is a horrible story of of of the King of France grabbing their stuff, torturing them into saying they were in league with the devil, and so on. 

00:40:49 Roger Crowley 

The hospitals were a bit smarter. 

00:40:51 Roger Crowley 

They went and took over the Christian island of of of. 

00:40:56 Roger Crowley 

You know, and held out there and then retreated when that fell and the Ottomans to Malta. 

00:41:02 Roger Crowley 

And so they really kept themselves going in a kind of increasingly decadent way until Napoleon comes and then takes them out and mortar and the end of the 18th century, you know, so the end of those of those crusading orders. 

00:41:16 Roger Crowley 

Really, it's all gone, and the Venetians and the genuine are not going to. 

00:41:19 Roger Crowley 

Lend ships to. 

00:41:21 Roger Crowley 

To transport crusaders anymore. 

00:41:23 Roger Crowley 

Thank you very much. 

00:41:23 Roger Crowley 

They're far too busy trading for spices with the mammoth in Alexandria and Cairo. 

00:41:29 Roger Crowley 

For which they get a lot of black marks from the paper. 

00:41:32 Roger Crowley 

But you know that was what they were. 

00:41:37 Roger Crowley 

So it's a slowly dying thing. 

00:41:39 Roger Crowley 

It's a slowly dying thing. 

00:41:41 Elliot Gates 

I mean, I suppose with no real. 

00:41:45 Elliot Gates 

Where would you even drop them? 

00:41:46 Elliot Gates 

Off if, if you were gonna start a new crusade. 

00:41:48 Elliot Gates 

You don't have ACA as. 

00:41:49 Elliot Gates 

A as a foothold anymore. 

00:41:51 Elliot Gates 

There's no Antioch. 

00:41:52 Elliot Gates 

There's no Alexandria. 

00:41:54 Elliot Gates 

Nothing like that now. 

00:41:55 Roger Crowley 

No, there isn't, and I think they work quite hard to destroy the ports. 

00:42:00 Roger Crowley 

I think they dumped a lot of rocks. 

00:42:02 Roger Crowley 

In in in the harbour of. 

00:42:06 Roger Crowley 

And and you know and everywhere they went, they tried to destroy port infrastructure so that, you know, there were no foothold for them to land. 

00:42:16 Roger Crowley 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

00:42:18 Roger Crowley 

And you've you've. 

00:42:19 Elliot Gates 

Visited yourself, obviously, as I pointed out to you when we first chatted, all I could see was I I can't believe I picked it, to be honest. 

00:42:25 Elliot Gates 

The tower of flies or or, you know, a couple of rocks of it left in the coast, but is there much else? 

00:42:30 Elliot Gates 

There's there's obviously the Templar fortress still. 

00:42:33 Elliot Gates 

Is there any other sites that really? 

00:42:34 Elliot Gates 

Took your you know your right. 

00:42:36 Roger Crowley 

Well, the the hospital, the hospital is H. 

00:42:40 Elliot Gates 

Must be what I meant. 

00:42:42 Roger Crowley 

If if, you know if a great thing straordinario underground tunnel that connected the Templars castle, which had disappeared under the water with the port. 

00:42:54 Roger Crowley 

Apart from that it's fragments. 

00:42:56 Roger Crowley 

You know, it's fragments of bits of Venetian Genoese. 

00:43:01 Roger Crowley 

Stuff it's, you know, it's a it's a fascinating collection of bits, really. 

00:43:08 Roger Crowley 

I mean, the most disappointing thing is they're fantastic walls around the city, but they were built in the late 18th century, and the archaeologists have been trying to reconstruct. 

00:43:18 Roger Crowley 

Find out what the walls are like, but they've all gone. 

00:43:20 Roger Crowley 

You know that. 

00:43:21 Roger Crowley 

I think all the same that we've taken away. 

00:43:23 Roger Crowley 

Use for building other stuff, all rebuilding the new walls so it it's kind of a bit frustrating, but it's it is. 

00:43:31 Roger Crowley 

It is fascinating. 

00:43:33 Roger Crowley 

Little honeycomb, really. 

00:43:35 Roger Crowley 

Of, of of of very. 

00:43:38 Roger Crowley 

I think you get a feeling of what it would have been like of the place because I think. 

00:43:42 Roger Crowley 

A lot of the a lot of the streets were really were the footprint of the streets of the Old Town. 

00:43:47 Roger Crowley 

It has maintained some of the feeling of what this town that he would have been like in in in in Crusader age. 

00:43:55 Elliot Gates 

In terms of an open-ended question for you, what, what, what do you think would have happened if they had have held out? 

00:44:01 Elliot Gates 

If the if the siege had have failed, what what's your prediction for the Levant and? 

00:44:06 Elliot Gates 

The Crusader states. 

00:44:07 Roger Crowley 

Well, I think. 

00:44:10 Roger Crowley 

I think caller would have lost his head, actually did lose his head about three years later. 

00:44:14 Elliot Gates 

Didn't even help. 

00:44:16 Roger Crowley 

Yeah, I didn't. 

00:44:17 Roger Crowley 

I they were holding on by their fingernails. 

00:44:20 Roger Crowley 

And I think that that another powerful Baybars like figure would have emerged. 

00:44:27 Roger Crowley 

ACA was all there was really. 

00:44:29 Roger Crowley 

Tripoli had gone. 

00:44:31 Roger Crowley 

Antioch had gone. 

00:44:33 Roger Crowley 

Various other handy little ports. 

00:44:35 Roger Crowley 

The place called Arsuf had gone. 

00:44:38 Roger Crowley 

That I think they couldn't, you know, they couldn't have held out for very long. 

00:44:41 Roger Crowley 

Quite long now, you know, I think it wasn't. 

00:44:44 Roger Crowley 

You know, it wasn't. 

00:44:45 Roger Crowley 

It wasn't viable, really. 

00:44:47 Elliot Gates 

I guess if you were going to kind of war game up a scenario, could you ever see The Crusaders that the states reconquering Jerusalem, reconquering Antioch and getting the coastline back? 

00:44:59 Roger Crowley 

No, no, no. 

00:45:00 Roger Crowley 

I think I think that day had gone the appetite for crusading was was fading away. 

00:45:00 Elliot Gates 

No matter what. 

00:45:05 Elliot Gates 

Just wasn't there. 

00:45:06 Roger Crowley 

Just wasn't there anymore. 

00:45:08 Roger Crowley 

So yeah, so I think, you know, I think you know what's the last stand, you know, what's that kind of, you know, heroic moment when they go down, you know, they get more, let's go down to the the last the certain amount of survivor guilt you know rather like. 

00:45:22 Roger Crowley 

Surviving the Titanic. 

00:45:24 Roger Crowley 

You know, John, the year survived. 

00:45:28 Roger Crowley 

How dare you come back out of this alive kind of thing? 

00:45:31 Elliot Gates 

I guess if your orders. 

00:45:31 Roger Crowley 

You could have gone down with this ship. 

00:45:32 Elliot Gates 

Purpose, you know. Yeah, yeah. 

00:45:33 Roger Crowley 

You know them down with this ship and and of course. 

00:45:37 Roger Crowley 

Most of the people did survive were were actually were wealthier and I I don't think you know. 

00:45:41 Roger Crowley 

Billions have carried off by, you know, by his men and probably didn't have much choice and you know, odd little stories really, you know, sort of about I can't remember how long it was, you know, like 40 years later somebody came across some woodcutters. 

00:45:56 Roger Crowley 

Sort of by the Sea of Galilee, who were Templars, heard, survived, had kind of islamicized from Arabic speak. 

00:46:08 Roger Crowley 

King was like finding a sort of a lost extinct species and and had married local women and they were taken back as kind of specimens to the papal court. 

00:46:25 Roger Crowley 

Avignon, you know, and would probably, you know, like. 

00:46:28 Roger Crowley 

Some we found this. 

00:46:29 Roger Crowley 

Extraordinary kind of, you know, loss, loss, species, you know, like a a small dinosaur and a giraffic park or something. 

00:46:40 Roger Crowley 

Yeah, and they're probably completely freaked out. 

00:46:42 Roger Crowley 

So you you you glimpse is extraordinary little human tales of people who survive. 

00:46:50 Roger Crowley 

Strange little stories of survival and. 

00:46:53 Roger Crowley 

What grieved me about this story was that that I wanted the sources to be. 

00:46:59 Roger Crowley 

I wanted more. 

00:47:00 Roger Crowley 

I like I like. 

00:47:01 Roger Crowley 

I went in for Karen and I had to, really. 

00:47:04 Roger Crowley 

I had to really graft for them. 

00:47:06 Roger Crowley 

You know, there were some I had to translate how two whole works in Latin and Latin to kind of get little bits of stuff out of. 

00:47:14 Roger Crowley 

Really, I'm not enough people. 

00:47:17 Roger Crowley 

Survived to tell the tale really. 

00:47:19 Roger Crowley 

Well, possibly we're too traumatized to tell the tale. 

00:47:22 Elliot Gates 

You never, maybe 10 years from now, the Vatican will open up their archives and we'll get all the rest of it stuffed away down there somewhere. 

00:47:30 Roger Crowley 

We look forward to it. 

00:47:32 Elliot Gates 

1.  

00:47:33 Elliot Gates 

Well, look, thanks very much for talking to you about that, Roger. 

00:47:36 Elliot Gates 

That was really fascinating. 

00:47:37 Elliot Gates 

I'm really glad we could elaborate on what was in the book. 

00:47:39 Elliot Gates 

Really appreciate your time. 

00:47:40 Elliot Gates 

I'm just coming. 

00:47:41 Roger Crowley 

On and and chatting with me, thank you very much for and it made me reread. 

00:47:44 Roger Crowley 

My book and I really enjoyed my book. 

00:47:45 Elliot Gates 

Ohh that's good. 

00:47:46 Elliot Gates 

It's been about 10 years since I looked through it so. 

00:47:49 Roger Crowley 

I wrote that book today. 

00:47:51 Roger Crowley 

Yeah, yeah, I've forgotten all the all the, all the. 

00:47:51 Elliot Gates 

I forgot about that one. 

00:47:54 Elliot Gates 

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00:48:11 Elliot Gates 

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00:48:12 Elliot Gates 

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00:48:15 Elliot Gates 

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00:48:18 Elliot Gates 

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00:48:22 Elliot Gates 

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00:48:29 Elliot Gates 

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00:48:35 Elliot Gates 

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00:48:42 Elliot Gates 

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00:48:49 Elliot Gates 

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00:48:50 Elliot Gates 

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