Lesson video

Hello, everyone, it's June 1098, and the First Crusade was on the verge of collapse.

The journey to the Holy Land had been tougher than anyone expected.

And the Christians of Europe had suffered.

Thousands had fled, abandoning the Crusade and heading home.

Thousands more had died.

What was left, was trapped inside the ancient walls of Antioch, surrounded by a Seljuq army and running out of food.

There seemed to be no hope left.

One night, a pilgrim called Peter Bartholomew claimed to have a vision.

He said he was visited by St.

Andrew and told where a sacred holy relic could be found.

A group of men gathered in the church to start digging and hope began to fade and then there it was.

The Holy Lance, the very weapon used against Jesus at the crucifixion.

Surely this was a message from God.

The Crusaders, with renewed energy and belief in their journey, stepped outside the walls of Antioch, and lined up against the Turks.

And the fate of the Crusade, hung in the balance.

Hi, everyone.

Welcome back to our work here on the Crusades.

This is lesson three in our unit, and my name is Mr. Wallace.

Now the story I just told you, we have to take with a little pinch of salt we don't know 100% everything that took place inside the walls of Antioch but many of the Christians who were there believed strongly and passionately in this vision, and that the Holy Lance had been discovered.

But there were some people at the time as well who thought that this was a story that wasn't really credible, that was actually stretching things a little bit too far.

Regardless the story of the First Crusade wouldn't be complete without understanding the difficulties that they went through the fact that they were so close to disaster and the hardship and at some point, the salvation that they they got, when all hope seemed lost, how they were able to overcome that.

The unlikely story of the First Crusade, doesn't just start in Europe and end in Jerusalem as if they're the only two points.

The journey of the First Crusade is fascinating and tells us a lot about the mindset of these Europeans and why they were going through all these difficult times.

Today, we're going to focus on that story.

How did they cross through Europe, parts of Asia and get to the Holy Land, and we'll finish with that Siege of Antioch, and what happened with the battle with the Seljuq Turks.

Now, before we start, you're going to need to make sure you've got a pen, something to write on so a book or some paper and as always, just make sure that if you can, that you've got a hassle free environment that you won't get interrupted and that we can work for a little while and get through this next lesson.

Now once you've got all of that stuff ready, we can start.

Ready to go? Perfect, let's go.

Okay, hi everyone, I'm up here now, Right, before we get into the the journey of the Crusade and before we get to Antioch, let's just have a quick reminder of what we know so far.

Okay, on the screen in front of you, you can see a flowchart of five steps that have taken us to this point.

What I would like you to do, and one of them has been given to you already, you can see number two just there.

The Seljuqs Keep Expanding.

What I would like you to do, is take the ones that are just below me, the Council of Clermont, the Battle of Manzikert, Alexius asks for help and the Crusades begin.

And I want you to put them in those places where they should go.

So we have the right sequence of events.

Okay, one's already been given for you.

And then we'll ask you to pause, you can see the pause sign over there.

After you pause the video.

Fill in that flowchart so you have the right sequence of events and in a moment, we'll just check to make sure that you understand how we got to the point that we're at today.

Okay, pause.

We're done? Hope so if you've unpaused I should hope that we're finished at this point.

So what is the right sequence of events? So we know that the Seljuqs expanding is number two.

So we need to think of these four which one of them was allowed the Seljuqs to keep expanding.

So what's our number one? How did they know given the opportunity to expand? Which means we know, we should know I hope, we think that came after the Battle of Manzikert.

Okay? So the Battle of Manzikert is where the Turks beat the Byzantine empire that allowed the Seljuq Turks to keep expanding and getting closer and closer to to Constantinople that resulted in Alexius, asking for help.

That resulted in the Council of Clermont which was what the last lesson was about, with the Pope promising various rewards to people to go on this Crusade the Crusade begins as a result of that Council.

So you've got here, the rough sequence of events that we know so far, okay? So this would spark, this would launch the First Crusade and have a look at this map here.

This will give you a bit of an idea about the total projects that was in front of them what was really about what was on the doorstep, what were they beginning to start? Okay? All across Europe, you had various groups of people that were desperate to be part of this Crusade.

And while most of the icons on the map are from France, Italy and Germany, you did have people joining the Crusade from wider than that There were a lot of people from the British Isles on the Crusade as well.

But it's fair to say that the main group were from France, what would be called at the time, the Franks.

Now, all over Europe, this enthusiasm for the Crusade developed and some people wanted to get going straightaway.

They were not particularly well prepared, and we'll get to them in a moment.

Others began to plan a little bit more sensibly thinking, well, we can't go right away.

We need horses and food and trained soldiers.

But the plans were afoot.

The idea was in their head.

It just needed to be put into action.

Now, to get to the Holy Land, they've got to go through the Byzantine Empire, who if you remember a Christian as well, so they are in theory on the same side, then you've got to go through the Seljuq Turks.

That's the people threatening the Byzantine Empire.

And the goal here is to get to Jerusalem, thus the Holy city which has been out of Christian hands, for 400 years or so, okay? We're looking at a journey here.

That's about 4000km, though it's fair to say that not everyone in Europe realised that when they joined, they didn't quite understand just how far the Holy Land was.

And that's going to take them about two to three years to get there, nowadays, it's just a flight back then.

Back then, most of these people are going to be walking.

Only the very rich would have been able to take their own their own horses, the Knights would have had them the Nobles, of course but a lot of soldiers were foot soldiers and they would have been on foot for 4000km.

This was no small undertaking, this was a big project.

Now to begin with, let me just move myself out of the way here.

There we go.

To begin with, it wasn't the organised knights and Nobles that got started, like I said, there was an enthusiasm rush to answer what the Pope had demanded, people stirred up to defend their God to defend their Church who wanted to go to the Holy Land straight away.

And there were preachers across Europe, encouraging them to do so.

One famous one, was an individual called Peter the Hermit.

Now he was a Christian type of monk, who had apparently in the past tried to go to the Holy Land, hadn't had a particularly good experience there was not particularly friendly with the Turks as a result.

You can see him in this picture with his hands up in the air preaching.

Just here.

But this painting, gives us some really other, some really interesting other insights into what people felt at this time of Crusade.

And what I want you to do is just pause it for a moment and have a really close look at this painting.

What else can you see happening? Now this was painted obviously much after, okay? but I want you to have a think, what does it show us about how people reacted to the Crusade? What was their response? Try and pick out a couple of examples that you could indicate on the picture, if you had to circle them.

You are going to write these down for example.

what can you see in this picture? To people responding to Peter the Hermit when he's saying we need to go on Crusade.

He's saying we need to go to the Holy Land.

How do people respond? Okay? Take a moment, pause the video and try and have a close look and make a couple of notes in your in your book or on your sheet of paper.

Let's go.

Okay, so let's have a think here.

What else can we see? Well, first of all, here is Pete the hermit, hands up in the air, praising, preaching, getting attention.

But there's a lot of other things in here which tell us how people reacted.

So for example, you can see this group of Swords here.

Instantly, there are soldiers pledging their sword pledging to go on this Crusade that they will fight for God.

You also have a woman holding up a child here.

The same thing is happening over here as well.

That these mothers were so filled with enthusiasm and belief in in hearing this this preacher, they wanted their children to hear as well.

To get them as close to the action as possible.

You also have people here hanging out of the balconies on this, what looks like quite wealthy building that people were gathering from all sorts of places.

You've got a person on a horse here leaning in to try and hear.

And you've also got a particular like this one down here, a woman arm outstretched.

Aren't you listening to this preacher, this guy, he's having none of it.

Look at his face, he's not particularly enthused.

I mean, well, we'll give that one a pass.

But almost everybody else here.

They're reaching in.

They're reaching out to the preacher, they're pledging their soul, they are desperate and enthusiastic to go.

And Peter the Hermit, gathered a group or he became the leader of the group because of his charisma and his personality and his, his preaching.

He became the leader of a group which became known as The People's Crusade, okay? This wasn't an official group.

It wasn't led by various nobles though it did have some nobles in it, but this was a little bit more unorganised.

And they got so ahead of themselves and so caught up and carried away, they wanted to get going straight away.

Okay? Now, one of the main appeals and attractions to this was the way that Peter and the way that Pope Urban II had presented the Crusade.

They presented it like a pilgrimage.

Now, if you don't know what a pilgrimage is, don't worry.

We'll go through that now.

A pilgrimage is like a religious journey.

It's a place that you go to somewhere that's holy or sacred.

Where you can pray and feel closer to God.

So for Christians, you might want to go on a pilgrimage to Rome or to Jerusalem.

for Muslims, you might and all Muslim men go on a pilgrimage called the Hajj to Mecca at some point in their life.

A pilgrimage is a religious journey.

Okay? Many of these people felt a calling, that they could go on this pilgrimage and fight for God if necessary, but the pilgrimage is what kind of inspired them that was one reason that many of them wanted to take part in this.

And of course, the other reason, is called Salvation.

It's the the idea of being saved, that they can go to heaven.

Salvation means to go to heaven that your sins or your lack of sins or the fact that your sins are forgiven, means that you can go to heaven when you die.

And so these two key ideas, a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and salvation from your sins and that you can go to heaven.

Mean that, thousands upon thousands of people joined this Crusade.

Now you can see Peter the Hermit in this picture as well.

Hands up in the air, preaching, praising, hands in the air.

And you can also see similar things if you look here, you've got Knights pledging, they're sword, of desperate to fight for God.

And you've got this scuffle down at the bottom, people desperate to get closer to him.

Desperate to hear more.

Okay? Now this group, this ragtag group of knights, of Nobles, of peasants of all sorts of people got a little bit carried away and whipped up by some people.

They began attacking other groups, not just the people that they were supposed to be going for.

The aim was to go to the Holy Land to try and take on the enemies of the church to take on the people threatening the Byzantine Empire to maybe hopefully, take Jerusalem.

But they hadn't even left yet.

And in certain places, things began to get out of control.

They got a little bit carried away, they got a little bit whipped up into a frenzy.

And unfortunately, one particular group which got on the receiving end of this, were the Jewish communities in Germany, you can see here where it says there was a massacre of Jews.

Many Crusaders, many people on this people's Crusade had been whipped up, because Jews weren't Christians, and in their heads, when the Pope was preaching this Crusade and through the words of preachers, that basically been told of, anyone who is not Christian is an enemy of the church.

That makes them a valid target.

That's not what Alexias also wanted.

That's not what the Pope wanted.

That's not what any bishops wanted.

But some people got carried away and started attacking groups of Jews and many were killed in really quite tragic events.

It wasn't just because they were enemies of the church as well, many of them we're trying to take money from Jewish people to try and fund the Crusade.

And this is one of those really kind of dark moments in this this period of history.

And eventually the situation was calmed down and bishops were able to, to stop the killings and so on.

But before the Crusade had even left, it got off to a bad start.

They've been whipped up into a frenzy.

They've been attacking the wrong groups of people.

And now they're going to walk around 4000 miles, and hadn't really prepared properly for that journey.

The lack of preparation is really what's going to do for them in the end.

Now, here's roughly where they start off from in Germany.

And they start to go through Europe.

And by the time they get about here, this peoples Crusade has run out of food.

They, like I said earlier, were not really prepared for how long this was going to be.

And as they've run out of food, they begin to start attacking local communities for it.

Well what area of land is this in? First of all, this is still in Europe.

And secondly, it's land controlled by the Byzantine Empire.

These are Christians.

So a Christian Crusade, starts going through Christian land, attacking and stealing food from other Christians.

This is the second thing that kind of got wrong.

Started with the attacking the Jewish people in Germany.

Now they start stealing food from other Christians.

By the time they get to Constantinople, the Emperor is very happy to get rid of them, send them on their way.

Get them into Anatolia, and get them out of his, you know, not his problem.

This isn't what he asked for, this ragtag group, the People's Crusade that was poorly Led, poorly organised, and generally causing problems. He gets them through Constantinople into Anatolia, and the very first time they come across the Seljuq Turks, they are defeated.

So our First Crusade meets a pretty uncomfortable end from start to finish, it makes mistake after mistake.

It causes problems here, there and everywhere.

And by the time it gets there, it ends.

Now, it's fair to say, this is not the Crusade that the Pope had asked for or hoped for.

This is not the Crusade that the Emperor had asked for.

A much more well organised, sensible, prepared Crusade followed them.

Before we get into that, I want you to pause the video and just check how well you were listening to the story I just told you about the people's Crusade, okay? You've got here, eight different statements.

All I want is a true or false, okay? For each one of these give me a true or false.

And we'll check the answers in a moment, okay? Pause the video.

You can see the pause sign.

Pause the video, we'll check through the answer in a second.

Okay, let's go.

Okay, we're ready to go.

If you've unpaused, I'm going to assume you've done this and you're ready to move.

So let's have a look.

It's false.

The People's Crusade was not led by Peter the Monk.

Let's go through these, and in a moment, you're going to correct them.

So I won't say what it was just yet.

But you may have already done that when you're writing these down, and that's fine.

Two, the journey to the Holy Land was about 4000km.

That's true.

It's false that it took four to five years.

It's true that the Byzantine emperor was Alexius the first.

It's false that the people's Crusade was mainly peasants.

It's false that they attacked groups of Muslims inside Germany.

It's true that once they got to Anatolia they were quickly defeated.

And it's true that the target of the Crusade was Jerusalem.

So let's look at these four mistakes.

a, c, e and f.

Pause the video again.

And now I want you to write them out correctly.

So the people's Crusade was led by who? It took how long? Pause the video.

Quick second task, and we'll fix these mistakes.

Let's go.

Okay.

Again, if you've on paused I'm going to assume that we've got this task done.

So let's have a look through what they should be.

Let's just check that you know what you should know.

So the people's Crusade was led by Peter the Hermit, not Peter the monk.

Good, well done.

It took two to three years, not four to five.

Still a long time.

Two people Crusade included peasants along with some nobles.

So it wasn't, it used to be called for a long time it was known as the peasants Crusade.

But that wasn't really a fair way of talking about it.

There were some nobles in there as well.

And they attacked groups of Jews inside Germany, not groups of Muslims, okay? Now with all this in mind, this was the disastrous Crusade.

Let's face it, how did things actually work out? So here you have an image of one of the key Crusaders.

He is the individual in white in the middle surrounded by various banners and knights and soldiers, it makes him look like quite a saintly figure, quite a heroic sort of person, all the attention is put towards him.

His name is Raymond of Toulouse.

Toulouse is in France.

Now he is not the only noble he went, but he is one of the more important ones.

And we're going to focus on three in particular.

So also worth noting here, this guy to the left.

Okay, this is the Pope's representative.

So the Pope has called for this Crusade.

This is the person he's sent to to go along with it.

So effectively he is the person that has the most authority.

But in reality, each noble controlled their own army and they would make independent decisions.

Raymond of Toulouse was one of them.

Godfrey, I mean, my French accent is going to get excellent now Godfrey of Bouillon, Godfrey of Bouillon was the second and Bohemond of Taranto.

He's not French he is from Southern Italy.

So on this map, you can see roughly where they started from.

Godfrey of Bouillon, is from up here close to the Belgian border.

Raymond of Toulouse is from down here, close to the Spanish border, and Bohemond is from down here.

So they're all taking slightly different routes.

As you can see.

Godfrey follows this path down to Constantinople.

Raymond, follows this path.

And Bohemond goes over the sea through Greece.

And the aim is to meet in Constantinople, where they will then take the Crusade forward into Turkish land, and ideally, down into the Holy Land.

That's the plan.

Okay? Now, your task is to try and work out exactly how disastrous did this almost become.

And to do that, you're going to use my patented Disaster-o-meter, okay? This is a scientifically accurate way of proving how much of a disaster something almost was.

Now, across the bottom, you're going to have the five stages of this journey, the bit to Constantinople, into Anatolia, Turkey, the Siege of Antioch, in Antioch, and the holy Lance.

So after that was discovered, so think of this is the time axis, this is going through time.

Okay, as the journey moves along, Up the side, you've got how disastrous it got.

So if this is plotted like a graph, which is what I want you to do, if your cross, if your mark is up here, then that's complete disaster.

Everything has gone terribly wrong, Something terrible has happened.

If it's down here, everything's fine.

Not disastrous at all.

So I want you to plot how disastrous this journey becomes.

And as you do so explain why you put it where it is.

Now, you're not going to have to do it all on your own.

Because this is not an easiest, not the easiest task in the world, is you're perfectly capable of doing it.

You've all done things like this before, I'm sure.

But I'm going to give you a little bit of a head start.

Okay? Three of them, one, two, and three, I've already plotted for you.

And number one, I've already explained for you, so you get a sense of what you need to do.

Okay? So number one, I've put quite low on the disastrous scale.

And the reason why, you can see here, just move myself away.

This is not very disastrous.

You'll read about this more in the task in a minute.

This is not very disastrous.

The armies led by the nobles made it to Constantinople without much trouble because they were better prepared.

When they got there, they swore oath to Alexius apart from Raymond of Toulouse, who promised friendship.

So far, the journey has gone fairly well.

So I've put it down low on the disastrous scale, and I've explained why it's quite low.

Now, the next two, I've also plotted for you, but I've not explained why.

So your task is going to be to explain why these two are where they are.

And then, you're going to need to plot four and five on your own and explain them.

So the more you go along the Disaster-o-meter, the more you're going to have to do, okay? And by the end, you'll have a really good sense, a really good idea of why this Crusade almost ran into a complete disaster and eventually, how they were able to pick themselves out with it, okay? So as you can see here, this will be on your task in the moment as well.

Read the worksheet, and explain why two and three, Anatolia and the Siege of Antioch have been placed where they are, and then you place four and five and explain why.

When you've done that, come back, we'll look through two, three four and five, just to make sure we've got the right idea of exactly what happened.

Okay? So, at this point, I would like you to pause the video, move forward in the lesson, read through worksheet, draw your Disaster-o-meter in your book, or on your piece of paper, plot your graph.

And for each step of it, make sure that you explain yourself and you write, why you've put it, where you've put it as well.

Okay, pause the video, I'm going to disappear from the screen now.

Pause the video and when we come back, we'll start going through all the answers.

Okay, see if you've got the right idea, which I'm sure you have.

All right, great.

Pause here, move on.

Okay, if you're back, I assume you've paused I'm assuming you've gone through forward in the lesson.

And you're ready to see exactly where I've plotted it and the explanations I've given, and you can compare them to your own.

So let's have a look.

This is what the the Disaster-o-meter look like to begin with, okay? We have Constantinople.

I've already read through this one.

We already know why this one is not too disastrous.

But what happened when we got to Anatolia? This has gone a little bit further up, hasn't it? This is medium.

So why is that there? Well, this is what I wrote.

Now, you may have done it differently, you may have done it in bullet points, you may have written it in your own phrasing, that's absolutely fine.

But if you've got some of the same ideas that I've written here, that's great.

And what would be really good is if we're making sure we're writing these in full sentences or paragraphs, so we're really expressing ourselves accurately and in detail.

"So this is not yet disastrous, but problems are increasing.

The journey across Anatolia is difficult and the Crusaders begin to run low on food.

They are also attacked by Seljuq soldiers a lot.

The trip was tough enough that many soldiers died or abandoned, which shows it was much more difficult than they expected." So it's not a complete disaster, but it's not like things are going to plan.

It's tougher.

It's longer than they realised and a lot of these soldiers, some of these soldiers decide that this is too much.

They have to go back to Europe and they aren't going to see this Crusade through.

So it's not a disaster, but it's certainly not going to, you know, 100% to plan either.

Now, by the time we get to three, we're quite high up on the disaster metre now.

It's not all the way at the top, but we're getting close.

So why? Again, this may be done differently in your own words, but the general gist of it is this.

The problems have gotten worse, by the time the Crusaders begin attacking Antioch.

They are stuck for 10 months attacking the city, which was high on a hill and well defended.

Food had almost completely run out, and many soldiers were starving, as were their horses.

So things are getting worse.

They're stuck outside a city for 10 months.

Food is running low horses are dying soldiers are starving.

They're not inside the city yet.

All sorts of problems are are facing them.

Okay, so we're really, we're high up on the Disaster-o-meter.

At this point, things could really, you know, go one way or the other, things aren't looking too sharp.

Now in Antioch, this is where these last two are, well, I said you should plot yourselves.

Now for me, I plot this even higher than the last one.

You can see that I plot even higher.

This is when they were at their absolute worst, okay? And this is why.

Even though the Crusaders had got inside Antioch, things were close to disaster.

They had been trapped inside the city by a Seljuq army outside and they couldn't get inside the citadel.

They were outnumbered and losing hope.

So they're trapped inside a city.

Outnumbered running out of resources, running out of food and water.

Horses are still dying, all sorts of problems are facing them, they are at their lowest point.

Okay, so this is where I plotted the absolute highest.

I could understand though, why you might have plotted it a bit lower, because you might argue, well, at least they got inside, but I'm going a little bit higher because they're trapped.

Lastly, the Holy Lance, and I've plotted this way down below, problems are beginning to get solved.

And here's why.

The Crusaders were encouraged by the discovery of the Holy Lance.

This was a relic, and it made them think that they still they had the support of God still.

They defeated the Seljuqs and took full control of the city.

Excuse me, which became a Crusader state.

So here they were given a new lease of life, this discovery, this apparent discovery of a relic, a sacred relic in credibly important religious item, from the crucifixion of Jesus, made them think that God wants them to continue.

God is behind them.

And it gave them this new confidence and they took on the Seljuqs and won and took control of Antioch completely.

And this became a Crusader state.

This means that it's it's a little piece of land, a state, run by the Crusaders, just like Christians in charge, just like back in Europe.

So this is what the Disaster-o-meter looks like for the journey of the First Crusade.

They've not even made it to Jerusalem yet.

Okay? The target of the Crusade is the Holy city, and they've almost run into complete disaster before they even get there.

So just how dangerous and difficult this must have been.

And just how brave and courageous some of these soldiers must have been.

They went through all sorts of problems to get to that to their goal, to get to Jerusalem.

And as we've seen, have gone through some pretty terrible things.

Now, this picture shows us a little bit let's bring myself back here.

Okay, here we go.

This picture shows us the breaking in of, breaking the walls of Antioch.

According to the story, one of those three nobles, Bohemond of Taranto bribed a tower guard, and he was able to secretly sneak into the city at night and unlock the gates from the inside.

So after 10 months of surrounding the city, it was a little bit of a sneaky plan, but they finally got in.

And once they were in there, that's where we get to the story from the start of the lesson, about the Holy lance.

Okay? And how they were at their lowest point and all of a sudden, they believe that God had given them a new lease of life because of the discovery of this relic.

Now, at this point, we're almost at Jerusalem, but they've got about another 300 or 400 miles to go, okay? They've gone for over two and a half thousand nearly 3000km so far, but they've got a little bit more to go and next lesson, we'll look at that.

Before we get to that, let's remove myself again.

Before we get to that, just to check what you know, two brief more talks I want to go through, okay? First of all, I've written a summary here of what happened on the journey, but it has some deliberate mistakes.

All I want you to do is pause the video, read through and make sure, write down what the mistakes are, What are the words that are wrong, and then correct them.

Okay? So if you find an error, write it down and write down what the right version should be.

Pause the video here and go through.

Okay, that's perfect.

Well done.

Right.

Let's go through this.

Where are the mistakes? Well, here, the First Crusade was on course to be a success after the capture of Constantinople.

We know that's not right.

They haven't captured Constantinople at all.

The Crusaders were able to climb over the gates.

Again, not true, we just went through that after a guard was bribed by Raymond of Toulouse.

Wrong noble we know that well done.

Once inside, they slaughtered the inhabitants, but we're trapped by a Seljuq army.

However, after the discovery of the Holy Grail, not by Holy Grail, holy something, that they were given confidence that God was behind them.

And they defeated the Seljuq army and took control of the city.

The city remained under control of the Byzantine Empire, and they moved on to Jerusalem.

Well, we know those are mistakes, but what are the actual answers? Here we go.

So it's the city of Antioch that was captured.

They climbed up the tower, not over the gates, the gates were open from the inside remember, after Bohemond Taranto, not Raymond of Toulouse bribed a guard.

It was the Holy Lance that was discovered, not the Holy Grail.

And it wasn't given over to the Byzantine empire that stayed under the control of Bohemond.

Now if you've got all of those mistakes, that's perfect.

And if you corrected all of them, that's even better.

Give yourself a pat on the back.

That's brilliant.

So again, these last couple of lessons a lot to take in.

And you're doing amazingly well to keep up with it.

This is the last day.

We've had three lessons now.

And the question that we're building towards is this.

Why did Europeans join the Crusades? What made Europeans go through everything we've talked through today? Okay, why are they so desperate to go across Europe to go on a journey that they might never even return from? There's thousands of miles away, that is dangerous that's going into the heart of territory that their enemy controls.

Why do that? I want you to pause and I want you to try and write down as many ideas as you can, okay? What reasons did, for what reasons did Europeans join the Crusades? This is the last thing you want to do just to check that we're all on the same page, pause this here.

complete the task, and we'll finish off and see if your ideas are the same as mine.

Okay, are we ready to go? Well, first of all, I thought to protect and defend Christians.

That was the first reason, remember? the emperor of the Byzantine Empire asked for protection, To protect and defend Christians as a good reason.

To take Jerusalem, of course, that's what Urban wanted to do.

So the chance of taking Jerusalem as it was a really, really important one for many of these people.

To go on a pilgrimage.

We talked about that earlier on.

A pilgrimage to a holy place where you can feel closer to God, and the idea of salvation and going to heaven.

Now, all of these are religious reasons, different pieces of evidence to say that religion was a key reason why Europeans joined the Crusades.

But I think you can also argue that maybe some people also joined the Crusades, not just for religious reasons.

But for reasons more linked to power, or prestige, you know, the idea of being honourable and well known and, and seen as a very prestigious person, okay? There's a couple of examples of that.

First of all the Pope and the church, he wanted to increase the power of the church.

He wanted to increase his reach to have more Catholic Christians, that he could kind of influence, so the power of the Church is one way that this was about power.

And the nobles themselves.

I mean, they took control of Antioch but didn't hand it back to the Byzantine Empire.

Bohemond of Taranto took control of that state.

And it's that for his own power, because he wants to be seen as prestigious, taking control of such a major place.

Maybe, but I think this is worth recognising whilst religion is obviously a key, extremely important reason why people went on the Crusade.

It's not the only reason and these last couple about power and prestige, they're going to come up more over the next two or three lessons as well.

Okay? Now, you have done once again, amazing work.

This is a complicated tricky, you know, this is a complex topic.

And everything we've gone through today is building on that knowledge and by now, if you've done all three lessons with us, you will have some really fantastic understanding of the difficulties of the First Crusade of why Europeans went on them.

What happened to Antioch? What happened to Peter the Hermit and the People's Crusade and so on.

I would like to see your work again, especially if you've done a fully completed Disaster-o-meter, I want to know what that looks like.

I want to see how you played yours and why you explained it that way.

So if you want to, if you'd like to, please ask your parent, or carer, to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, tagging @Oak National and #Learn with oak.

I've had a really good time today.

I hope you have learned something.

I hope you're enjoying these lessons as we go through the Crusades, we're almost at Jerusalem, okay? They've gone through thousands of kilometres and the holy city is within their grasp.

They've got to do a little bit more to get to it.

And next lesson, we'll go through exactly what happened when they reached Jerusalem and whether or not they were successful, okay? Have a great rest of the day.

And I look forward to seeing you in our next lesson, bye.