The First Crusade: Monty Python and the Holy Grail With More Dehydration
Or: How Thousands of Irritated Europeans Somehow Walked to Jerusalem
I blame Terry Jones.
Again.
Like many people of my age and questionable judgment, I grew up on Monty Python.
Some people learned history from textbooks.
I apparently learned it from men arguing in mud while coconuts pretended to be horses.
Then Terry Jones—yes, the Monty Python Terry Jones—made documentaries about the Crusades.
And suddenly I found myself fascinated.
Because the more I learned about the First Crusade, the more I became convinced that medieval history occasionally resembles Monty Python and the Holy Grail accidentally wandering into reality.
Picture the scene.
Europe has too many knights enthusiastically killing one another.
Pope Urban II eventually says:
“Could you gentlemen stop stabbing each other and go to Jerusalem instead?”
Shockingly, they agree.
Now here is where things become gloriously absurd.
Thousands of Europeans decide to march to Jerusalem.
Not fly.
Not sail directly.
Walk.
Across half the known world.
This sounds ambitious enough until one remembers that medieval logistics often consisted of:
“We’ll figure it out.”
The Crusaders arrive in Constantinople and immediately alarm the Byzantine Empire.
The Byzantines expected professional military assistance.
Perhaps disciplined soldiers.
Instead, they got what can only be described as:
France with weapons.
Thousands of loud, armored Western Europeans arrive asking questions, eating food, and appearing deeply suspicious of civilization.
The Byzantines, standing inside one of the richest cities on earth, probably looked at them and thought:
“Good Lord.”
Fortunately for Byzantium, the Crusaders soon moved east.
Unfortunately for the Crusaders, east turned out to be Anatolia.
Now if you have ever seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, every ten minutes something absurd blocks the road.
The Knights Who Say Ni.
The Three-Headed Knight.
Tim the Enchanter.
The Killer Rabbit.
Frankly, Anatolia feels suspiciously similar.
Except instead of Tim the Enchanter:
Heat.
Instead of the Knights Who Say Ni:
Starvation.
Instead of the Three-Headed Knight:
Disease, exhaustion, and arguments.
And the Killer Rabbit?
The Turks.
Now before anyone emails me angrily, yes, I know medieval Turkish horse archers were not rabbits.
But from the Crusader perspective, the effect was similar.
The Crusaders wanted dramatic battles.
The Turks preferred something closer to:
“No. We shall simply make your lives miserable from a safe distance.”
Arrow attacks.
Harassment.
Ambushes.
Disappearing before retaliation.
Imagine thousands of armored Europeans sweating through unfamiliar landscapes asking:
“Whose ridiculous idea was Jerusalem?”
Meanwhile someone quietly answers:
“The Pope.”
The march was brutal.
People died.
Horses died.
Food vanished.
Armor became mobile ovens.
Friends disappeared.
And somehow, through sheer stubbornness, religious zeal, and what I can only assume was collective refusal to admit defeat, they kept going.
Years later, they finally reached Jerusalem.
Now imagine the emotional condition of the average Crusader.
Hungry.
Exhausted.
Sunburned.
Traumatized.
Sleep deprived.
Furious.
Convinced God Himself had sent them there.
Terry Jones once interviewed a Catholic priest in Jerusalem who wonderfully summarized the local reaction.
The Muslims, Christians, and Jews of Jerusalem apparently could not quite understand why these Frankish and Norman newcomers seemed so incredibly angry.
Honestly, one can understand the confusion.
The people inside Jerusalem are probably thinking:
“What exactly did we do?”
The Crusaders, after years of suffering, are thinking:
“EVERYTHING!”
What followed was tragic.
When Jerusalem fell in 1099, the Crusaders committed massacres against Muslims and Jews that horrified even some contemporaries.
No amount of humor changes that reality.
But history becomes more understandable—not more excusable, but more understandable—when we remember that exhausted, traumatized people carrying absolute certainty are often dangerous people.
Human beings under enough pressure become strange versions of themselves.
Still, I cannot entirely escape the Monty Python version of events.
Somewhere, I imagine an exhausted Crusader stumbling through Anatolia saying:
“Are we there yet?”
Guide:
“No.”
Knight:
“Then what exactly was the point of Constantinople?”