Assassins and Templars

The heart of the Assassin’s Creed franchise is the deadly rivalry between the brotherhoods of Assassins and Templars. These were real groups in history, whose power and influence in their lifetimes matched the longevity of their reputations. But how much of what we know of the two organisations is myth, and what is reality? To help separate fact from fiction, Matt Lewis is joined by Dr Steve Tibble, author of Assassins and Templars: A Battle in Myth and Blood. Echoes of History is a Ubisoft podcast, brought to you by History Hit. Listen to it here https://podfollow.com/echoes-of-history/view. Hosted by: Matt Lewis Edited by: Michael McDaid Produced by: Robin McConnell Senior Producer: Anne-Marie Luff Production Manager: Beth Donaldson Executive Producers: Etienne Bouvier, Julien Fabre, Steve Lanham, Jen Bennett Music by Elitsa Alexandrova Tell us your favourite Assassin's Creed game or podcast episode at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Matt Lewis?

  From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Yarnagger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:42Speaker 01

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• 1:18Matt Lewis?

  Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots, and murders to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval.

• 2:03Matt Lewis?

  Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval, I'm Matt Lewis. We've got a Christmas treat for you and I'm taking a sneaky opportunity to plug the other podcast I host for History Hit, Echoes of History. It's actually fitting to be sneaking this in because the episode you're about to hear is all about the Templars and the Assassins and the interplay between two of the most mythologised groups of the medieval period. The episode is a great chat that I had with my friend and friend of Gone Medieval, Steve Tybalt. His book Assassins and Templars: A Battle in Myth and Blood is an absolutely fascinating forensic examination of both groups, the similarities they shared, the differences that separated them and the interactions between them.

• 2:47Matt Lewis?

  It's a great book if you want a good read over the Christmas break or at any other time. Echoes of History is a podcast History Hit produces in partnership with Ubisoft. It looks at the real history behind the Assassin's Creed video games. So whether you want some general history from ancient Egypt to Victorian London via Greece, the Vikings and Renaissance Italy, or you want to supplement the experience of the games with some more background, then Echoes of History has you covered. Find it and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and I hope I'll see you over there amongst the echoes of history. Anyway, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and the happiest of New Years. Here's some blood, murder, intrigue and high politics to get you through Christmas dinner.

• 3:39Matt Lewis?

  Welcome to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. I'm Matt Lewis. We're currently in the Third Crusade, the setting for the first Assassin's Creed game in which players step into the shoes of Master Assassin Altair Ibn Lahad as he fights the Templars in the Holy Land. In this sequence of episodes, we'll be looking into the core aspects of this fascinating period. We'll immerse ourselves in the siege of Acha and the technology of crusader castles. We'll examine the political context of the time by learning about the remarkable Queens of Jerusalem. We'll uncover the secretive actions of the real Assassins and Knights Templar during the Crusades.

• 4:20Matt Lewis?

  And at the end of this sequence of episodes, we'll interview one of the people behind the Assassin's Creed to shed light on how Ubisoft turned history into a video game. Today, we're looking at the truth behind the mythology at the heart of Assassin's Creed. Were the infamous Templars and notorious Assassins really bitter enemies? And what were they up to during the Third Crusade? Your lips are as dry as the hot air around you. The desperate licks of your tongue can't moisten them enough to stop the chapping. Despite the Mediterranean breeze that blows over the battlements of Acre, you feel like a blanched bone in the desert.

• 5:04Matt Lewis?

  The armour doesn't help. If you only had to wear the linen sercoat with its distinctive red cross on your chest, venturing into the summer heat of the Holy Land might not be so bad. But underneath the white tunic, your chainmail hobart puts weight onto the quilted gambeson underneath. And the steel helmet, replete with itchy noseguard and chainmail avant-garde, sits atop your hood in such a way as to seal your body like a blacksmith's furnace. It feels like every bead of sweat is trapped. You think the moisture from your pores is not cooling you, but boiling you alive. Standing under the stark midday sun, if you'd known it would be this arid, you wouldn't

• 5:48Matt Lewis?

  have accepted the mission. That being said, you're grateful that the rules of the Templar Order forbid long hair. Short locks are more practical when wearing helmets, but they also trap less heat. That said, all the other Templar rules are the reason you feel like a frog in the pot. You shake your head to clear your mind, like a swimmer emerging from the water. You must stay vigilant. There are enemies everywhere, both without and within the city walls.

• 6:19Matt Lewis?

  A commotion in the street below draws your attention. You look down from the rampart and see the crowd in the street hurrying to make way. A group of knights, all bearing the red cross on their chest, rides through. At their centre is a man of very noble bearing. The insignia on his tunic reveals him to be Richard the Lionheart. This is what you've been waiting for. You've heard that Richard is in danger. There is a killer in his midst. Your mission is to eliminate the traitor. You know the traitor's name, but in a crowd of uniformed Templars, he blends in too well. You must do the same, subtly approach Richard, expose the killer and deal with him.

• 7:04Matt Lewis?

  You call down to the knights as they pass by. They halt and greet you as fellow Templars should. You descend to them much less gracefully than you would have liked to, thanks to this armour and address, Richard. You tell him that Robert de Sable, the Grand Master of the Templars, must be executed for treachery. Richard is bemused by this announcement. Another knight removes his helmet and steps forward. It is Robert, and he does not hide his outrage. He challenges you to a duel. You accept. As Robert draws his sword, you prepare to fight. Wielding weapons is cumbersome in this European armour, and the hidden blade on your wrist is obstructed too.

• 7:46Matt Lewis?

  For the sake of infiltration, you have sacrificed mobility and put yourself at a disadvantage in combat. But then, the life of an assassin is never easy.

• 7:59Matt Lewis?

  To help me separate fact from fiction, I'm joined by Dr Steve Tybalt, author of Assassins and Templars: A Battle in Myth and Blood. Welcome to Echoes of History, Steve. It's great to have you with us.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Well, thank you, Matt. Lovely to see you again.

• 8:13Matt Lewis?

  I can't wait to dive into this one. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It's brilliant. Everyone should read it if you want to know about Assassins and Templars. Which is exactly where we're at. We really want to know about Assassins and Templars. So you are the right man in the right place at the right time. The very first Assassin's Creed game is set during the Third Crusade in the Holy Land. It introduces us to the conflict that is central to the games between the Assassins and the Templars. This is probably a simple yes or no question. In 1191, in the Third Crusade, are there assassins and Templars?

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Yes, there are. They both exist. They love and hate and interact. Yeah, there's a surprising amount of historical synchronicity in the game. I mean, I wrote the book before I really realised what I was writing. I was writing it because they're so fun. You know, I was writing a book about criminals, which surfaced some of the murders of the assassins. And I'd written a book about Templars, so I knew all the material and then I just put them together. And what I didn't realise was just how it was going to turn up, which is basically the backstory for Assassin's Creed, you know, the original version, which is in fact what strangely what it's turned out to be.

• 9:20Matt Lewis?

  Fortuitously for us, because we get to pick our way through it with you now. While we're still on kind of broad strokes, most people probably think about Templars as Christian European knights in shining armour with the Red Cross emblazoned on their chest. And most people probably think of assassins being depicted as kind of ninjas, really, you know, stealthy, sneak attack murderers. Are those broad strokes vaguely true, or is that being way too oversimplistic?

• 9:47Speaker 02

  Well, the funny thing is there is truth in both, actually. It's, you know, you don't, it's not often you get a caricature that's completely untrue. I would say they're both caricatures. So the Templars were all on a good day or a bad day, depending on how you look at it. They were all of the things that you've mentioned. They were ferocious warriors. They were elite. They were in the Holy Land to defend the, you know, Christendom, the eastern frontiers. But equally, there was another much bigger side to them, really. Most Templar armies probably had most of their personnel taken from the Arab communities or Armenian communities or Syrian. You know, these are not, you know, and these would primarily be Christians, Christian Arabs, who were the majority of the population in the Holy Land then.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  So it's a caricature to portray them as these kind of white European conquerors. And similarly, a lot of the guys who stayed in Europe rather than going to the Middle East were lawyers, investment bankers, diplomats. They were doing all the super high-powered professional services things as well as being killers. And they were great at both. And I think that's where their enduring legacy is. Very similar with the assassins, because they were ninja-esque kind of characters who you really didn't want to meet on a dark night. I mean, if you bump into a couple of them, it was very bad news. But on the other hand, they weren't drug crazed nutcases just killing for the fun of it.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  There's a wonderful fragment of a letter from Sinan, the old man of the mountain, who was the guy who was in charge during the Third Crusade, where he wrote, "We are oppressed, not oppressors." And it's such a weird thing to see. It's basically, it's almost whiny. He's going, he's saying, "Well, we're the victims here, lads." But the thing is, it's actually true. They were a religious minority that were being oppressed. They were subject to lots of massacres from their Sunni neighbours. They were an offshoot of Shiism. So I think with both of them, there's a large element of truth in the sense of, from a PR perspective, that would be the headline of the press release, Templars,

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Elite Killers, Assassins, Ninjas, Don't Get on the Wrong Side of Us. So the press release headlines broadly have something of accuracy. But when you look down into it, it's very different, much more complex.

• 12:12Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, important to get beyond the clickbait headlines.

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:15Matt Lewis?

  Also, in broad terms, again, talking about both groups, the Templars and the Assassins, in the game, both have a very strict, firm set of rules that they operate by, hence the Assassin's Creed, which drives their actions.

• 12:31Matt Lewis?

  Is there something almost cultish about both the Templars and the Assassins that they both share this kind of drive, this kind of tight set of rules that they operate by?

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Yes, very much so. Yeah, and that is part of their mystique. And it's one of the reasons why they're so looming, so large in modern mysteries and conspiracies and so on. The Assassins were, for much of their history, particularly nowadays, quite a, you know, a conservative, devout group of Muslims on the Shiite side of Islam. But at the time, they were also quite wacky. You know, they were happy to have, talk about other sects. There was a point in the 1160s where they underwent something called the resurrection, where they actually decided that they weren't going to adhere to Sharia law anymore. So they started eating pork, they started pulling

• 13:23Speaker 02

  down mosques, where if you refused to do that, you'd be killed. So they're quite a wacky bunch, and they were in quite deep conversation with the Crusaders, which may or may not have been about involving even a conversion to some form of Christianity. And I think there's an element of wishful thinking from the Crusaders' part, but they were very, very open-minded. They were into a lot of platonic, platonistic concepts at a time when people on both sides, Christian and Muslim, tended to be quite buttoned down and increasingly kind of strict in adherence. The Assassins were slightly, they were the kind of intellectually wacky arm of Islam, which is one reason why

• 14:06Speaker 02

  they were so popular with their Sunni enemies, who, you know, killed them whenever they could on many occasions. And it's the same with the Templars. You know, they're, on the one hand, they're the ultra sensible guys, you know, professional services, good lawyers if you're if you're doing a transaction. Nice people to keep the crown jewels with, you know, they're just very professional. But on the other hand, they have this cult of martyrdom. And it's the only way that they can really express their devotion to Christianity is by looking at this kind of Orwellian view of the world, whereas, you know, you pursue love through death, you pursue peace through war, and so on. And so you find the Templars are actually quite at an extreme end of Christianity as well. They-

• 14:50Speaker 02

  You know, whereas most Christians would focus on love, salvation, resurrection, you know, those tolerances, well, in theory, anyway, those kind of issues, they're much more kind of positive things. Whereas for the Templars, when you look at Templar churches and Templar worship, it's much more about death. You know, you go in a Templar church and there's a lot of crucifixes there. It's about the death of Christ and the sacrifice he made to protect his people. Whereas, you know, the the normal Christian church would look at Easter and bunnies and, you know, all the good things like that. The Templars did have a bit of a death cult. And that's one

• 15:29Speaker 02

  of the reasons why the assassins and Templars both loathed but understood each other so well, because they were both running this kind of death cult with a fabulous PR machine that made people worry about them, because they were both tiny, you know, tiny numbers of Templars put the fear of God into people. Tiny numbers of assassins, especially the fidais, their kind of hit squads. We're talking very small numbers of guys here, but they're feared across the world way out of proportion to anything that they can really do. And they do that through through operating this great PR machine founded on a death cult. It is fabulous. You can see why they reverberate. They're classic James Bond, you know, bad is on one level.

• 16:14Matt Lewis?

  I was struck reading the book by how much both parties seem to have this sense of they were very willing to die. They didn't necessarily want to die. And I think one of the things that comes out is probably people think assassins and they think, you know, kamikaze missions willing to, you know, almost keen to die on a mission. Templars fighting battles desperately trying to survive and win. It's almost the opposite way around to some extent, isn't it? Because the Templars believe that they will do their best service if they get killed in a battle, almost like that old Viking thing of going to Valhalla. And the assassins, you know, you're very careful to point out the assassins very often had escape plans, ways to get away because they didn't necessarily want to die. They're willing to but don't want to. So it's almost like the reverse of what people might think the two mindsets were.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're absolutely right. That is an irony. I think in reality, they were probably fairly close to each other, but but you're absolutely right. The The key words you used were, at one point you said keen and at the other point you said willing. And I think it is very much that both pastors are willing to die. They are committed to the cause, they're prepared to fight, be brave, do their duty. There is a kind of a warrior cult thing there, but they're not keen on it. And particularly for a Christian and a devout Catholic, like all the Templars were, suicide is anathema. So there's a very fine boundary they have to watch out for. They have to try and emulate Christ in terms of sacrifice for their communities.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  And an assassin would say very much the same. You know, they're prepared to make personal sacrifice to protect their communities. But they're not looking for it. You know, death is a corollary of their chosen profession. It's not something that they're eager for. And it does lead on to this whole thing about drugs and, you know, it's an assassin called, an assassin because of hashish and so on. And it's, to me, we can talk about it more later if you want, but it's a bit of an insult. And it's a deliberate insult by their enemies. Because if you're an assassin with a very carefully crafted hit in mind, you know, these are brave men attacking people who've got massive security networks around them.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  They have to be totally on the ball. The last thing you want is to be, you know, have some kind of narcotic surging through your body. You know, so you sit down and think, oh, it'd be great to have a Mars bar or whatever. You actually really want to get in there and do the job and it's a very difficult job.

• 18:43Matt Lewis?

  Quite the idea of getting munchies halfway through a big, well organised hit. And it's striking, I guess, just on a pragmatic level, these are both, as you said, very small groups. You can't have that sense that we're all going to go out and get killed because then the orders, whichever order we're talking about, ceases to exist. You know, the Fidesz can't just recklessly throw away their lives because they're so small in number and so highly trained. And the same is pretty true of the Templars too. So in order to preserve what they're trying to achieve, they can't have that kind of wanton disregard for their own lives.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely right. I mean, the Templars surged into Ascalon was the very important city that the Crusaders were after and they they managed to break in but then failed their comrades failed to follow and they were wiped down and it almost it certainly decimated the order in the Middle East and they lost fifty three men, you know, around fifty men. You think, wow, that's not harsh. That's kind of like, that's less than a company in modern parlance. And the same with the assassins. When they go in mob handed, you're talking about thirteen people. I think thirteen was the biggest I've seen fielded. And that was that was against Saladin. That was somebody they really, really wanted to take out. But normally, the normal assassin squad is three or four. And they

• 19:58Speaker 02

  try and get away because, as you quite rightly pointed out, you know, there is a very finite number of Fidays, the, you know, the assassin killers, that they ordered to call on. It's a, you know, the the sect doesn't have an infinite supply of these guys who are super skilled and super committed. So you you really want to treat them well. And and it's interesting, actually, almost from a European perspective, they in Alamoths, the the assassin's headquarters in in Persia, they used to keep a roll call. It was very much like the kind of, you know, an English village, you know, where you have the war memorial and the monuments. And they kept monuments to named individuals who died on certain hits. It was important that they

• 20:39Speaker 02

  were remembered, you know, lest lest we forget, applied just as much to the assassins as it did to First World War. These were not crazed idiots. These were people fighting for their communities.

• 20:50Matt Lewis?

  I want to go back to talk a little bit about the the origins of the two groups. And I guess, you know, we're in Assassin's Creed world where the assassins are actually the good guys. So let's start with the assassins. How does the order that we would call assassins today come about? Where does it originate from?

• 21:07Speaker 02

  In the same ways Christianity has split over the years into a multitude of different different groups. So Islam split and, you know, the primary split was Sunni and Shiite. And one Fragment of of Shiism was Ishmael, which became the Fatimid Empire in Egypt and so on, just bordering on to the Holy Land. Then, then of course, like all, you know, human structures, they decided to split as well, particularly radical human structures. So in around about 1194, the the vizier of Egypt, he's kind of like the chief exec, who actually does most of the operating. He's either this, yeah, he's the chief operating officer. The caliph, the the religious leader of the Fatimid died and the vizier decided

• 21:51Speaker 02

  that he would want somebody very, very pliant and pliable to take over rather than the chosen successor, which was a guy called Nizar. And Nizar went into revolt, his followers went with him, they got beaten and Nizar was killed, he was executed. So you think, okay, well, that's that's the end of the story. That's a fairly predictable story. But but they were very radical, very committed people, even in those days. And Nizar and his followers went off to Persia, they escaped to Persia, where there were other Ishmaelers. And those other Ishmaelers led by a leader called Hassan, Hassan the first, as he became, on their side. So they went over and they became Nizari Ishmaelers as opposed to the Fatimid Ishmaelers.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  And then over time, they sent missionaries out into Syria, primarily because they didn't like the Turks. And the Turks are usually Sunni, so they were fighting against the Turks in Persia, but they sent out missionaries to try and establish a foothold in Syria as well. And that's where we get to the point in the Satins Creed eventually, you know, 100 years on, you've got this set of assassin castles, or really, we should be calling them Nizari Ishmaelers, but, you know, it's a bit of a mouthful, you know, stick with the Satins. So they have a huge range of castles, they've got their own little principality there. And they're they're fighting to convert, but they're also barking to survive. They've been through an awful lot of, you know, pogroms and massacres and so on.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  They're they're the kind of least popular kid in the class and they've been given a good kicking many times. And they respond by developing the Fidais, you know, which is which is their way of saying, we haven't got a big army, you've got a huge army, you can give us a kicking on one level, but we can come in, we can kill you, we can kill your wife, we can kill your children. And, you know, so there is this kind of It's the classic guerrilla thing almost where there's an asymmetry of assets and an asymmetry of of application of violence. So Saladin's got his army of 30,000, they can ride in, destroy an assad and fill it. But the assassins have got a phidias army of 20, and they can get to him and they can, you know, they can, they can recredibly pose a

• 24:02Speaker 02

  real threat, his life and his family, all of which are hugely important.

• 24:06Matt Lewis?

  I, I think it's, it's really interesting in the book how, how you point out that these, both these small groups, the assassins and the templars are really, they're operating as force multipliers. You know, like you say, it's 30,000 versus 20, but somehow the assassins find a way to make that 20 work better than 30,000 in some cases. You know, they're, they're really working on what they do have and making the absolute most of it.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're absolutely right. And the templars is an entirely parallel strategy for very similar reasons. And you find the templars at Ma'jizah, which is the big battle, Saladin's first significant battle against the crusaders in the early 1170s. The, the templars take the centre stage of the Christian army. They're fast, you know, the Christians massively outnumbered, but the, the templar squadron is the tip of the spear and they target Saladin. You know, they can see his flags, they can see where the bodyguards are, and they just go for it. And the numbers are extraordinary. So his army, which included most of the Egyptian army at that point, ran to about 20,000, we think. The, the templar

• 25:09Speaker 02

  squadron was 80, 84 guys, 84. And, but they're bonkers. So they've, they're, they're like a missile. You know, you can, you can have, you can have an army of 10,000, but if a missile is aiming at the centre of that army and that general, they, it can, it might still get through. And the templars almost did. One of their guys got to within a couple of metres of Saladin, they killed one of his relatives, they punched their way through, and the whole army of 20,000 guys broke. Saladin was nearly killed, he managed to run away using a, a sporting, a racing camel. And most of his men were, were wiped out over the next 10 days when the army disintegrated. So it's, it's like with the assassins, it's a, it's a force multiplier and it's focused towards the production of your community.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  So the Christian community in, in the Middle East, obviously is substantial in the Holy Land, but it's part on the, on the fringes of big Islamic empire. So they're hugely outnumbered. The assassins, similarly, they're a kind of Ishmael-y radical group. A lot of the Sunnis think they're heretics. So they're really aching to give them a good kicking as well. And the only way these guys can protect themselves is by projecting force in a pinpoint fashion, you know. So Saladin's got the shotgun of a huge army, but they've got the sniper rifle of a really well-aimed dagger in the back of the neck.

• 26:30Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, that's a perfect analogy, I think. I was desperately trying to think of a way to explain it, and I was thinking of them being something like the equivalent of a longbow when the English medieval army goes over to the continent and people simply don't know how to deal with that weapon. It's a kind of a strange little thing that you think shouldn't make any impact, but it changes everything. It's that kind of effect, isn't it?

• 26:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the Aesim again, isn't it?

• 26:53Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. Do you have a preferred explanation for how we arrive at the term assassins for the Nisari Ishmaelis?

• 27:01Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. I mean, I think it is drugs. That's a simple answer, you know. Kids don't do them, but assassins, that's what they're named after. They are Hashashin. But that's sort of just the beginning. They're called assassins by their enemies because these guys were so committed to the cause that their enemies could only explain it by saying they're absolutely nutters and they've been tricked and that they've been given drugs and they act blah, blah, blah. So it's a very insulting term and it's an insulting way of explaining the dedication of the fidais. And actually, for the reasons we were talking about earlier,

• 27:44Speaker 02

  I don't believe it's true. I mean, the last thing you want, have something, you know, relaxing just before you go onto your massive hit. I mean, the other thing, bizarrely, I think, is that... That the assassins weren't totally unhappy. I mean, the phrase itself doesn't necessarily mean you're a mad junkie. When the Sunnis use it, it's more used in the sense of junkie lowlife. You know, so you might call somebody a junkie lowlife. Doesn't necessarily mean that you think that they are literally, you know, heroin addict. It can just mean that they're, you know, scum of the earth, which, which was, they were often called by the Sunnis as well. So I think there's an element of a, it's a social element to it. And then they, they were looked down on as being socially from the lower orders, whether that was true

• 28:29Speaker 02

  or not. And from the assassin's point of view, in funny sort of way, they, I think they might have welcomed it. You know, there is, it's part of the multiply, you know, assassins and Templars were both secretly happy, I think. Sometimes not so secretly, that people thought they were not as, because that is the fear factor. When you've got those eighty four Templars or the thirteen Fidias coming at you, it's, it's an oh my God moment. It's not just, you know, it's not thirteen ordinary guys. These are people that really make your blood run cold.

• 29:00Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, it's funny how it's a derogatory name given to them by their enemies. And yet it actually reinforces precisely what they're trying to do because it, it puts this air of mystery around them that they, they can't be doing the things that they're doing as humans. They must be somehow enhanced because what they're doing is so beyond what they should be able to achieve. And that weirdly plays into exactly what the assassins want you to believe.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. On a, on a sensible day, they would have said, well, this is a travesty. But actually, in terms of the, the overall PR strategy, it's, you know, it's bang on the money. Yeah, that's exactly, you want your enemies to think that you're crazed and fearless and that you're going to hunt them down to the, you know, across, across years, across space, across time. Yeah. And they did.

• 29:47Matt Lewis?

  So in the game, we play as a fictitious assassin named Al Tahir. Given the secretive nature of what they did, do we have a good idea? I mean, you mentioned that some assassins' names were memorialised. You've mentioned Sinan, the old man of the mountain. Are there some key people who we do know the names of that are closely involved in the assassins, particularly around the time of the Third Crusade?

• 30:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, less so in terms of the Fidias. I'm not aware of a lot of bats having survived. I mean, but the problem with the assassins and the Templars is that most of their records have gone. You know, and a lot of the contemporary stuff, we're really struggling with. For the Templars' archives were all lost. The assassins were eventually destroyed by the Mongols in Iran. They weren't going to be looking after the archives. You know, they were going to be lighting fires. But we do know, you know, we do know from chronicles, sometimes written by their enemies, you know, that they did memorialise people. I think it's, and their leaders, we often have the names for. So Sinan is a real person, really wacky guy. I mean, he is very, actually very open minded.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  He's quite a Renaissance man by some of our standards because he was, he was the one who was negotiating with the Christians, with the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, to go into a full-scale alliance. And that was going to be intellectual as well as political. Now, it never happened because the Templars butted in and killed all of the assassin diplomats who were doing that. I mean, they, they did hate each other's guts. But Sinan was, was a very real character. He was a superb leader. He built lots of castles. He had a really good strategy, you know, he kept his people safe and strong. But he was also very open minded, you know, as we were saying earlier, you know,

• 31:33Speaker 02

  although in the 12th century Catholics and Muslims were fairly, you know, fairly buttoned down in terms of what their religious belief was. The assassins were not more kind of, you know, faults on both sides. They were quite, strangely, quite tolerant and certainly quite intellectually inquisitive, which, which can be very appealing.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasia pro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.

• 32:47Speaker 03

  After civil war, regicide, and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned. But Britain would never be the same. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, we're transported back to the age of Restoration royalty, from Charles II to Queen Anne and the Birth of the Empire. Join me on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 33:32Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, it's an interesting dichotomy, isn't it? Because you tend to think of them as almost like fundamentalists, like this really hardcore group who you kind of assume probably are driven by their religious beliefs to a fundamental level. And actually, they're some of the most liberal Muslims in Near East at the time. As you say, willing to talk to Christians, willing to countenance, conversion to Christian, willing to, you know, deal in Christian religious doctrine and things like that. Perhaps, again, the opposite of what we might have thought the assassins were about.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're a really interesting group, and they're always surprising. And I have to say, it's not definite that they were proposing becoming Christian. I think the Christians were perhaps fooling themselves, but they were certainly prepared to set off on the journey of a rapprochement with the Crusaders in a way that was intellectual as well as military. They were people who were defending their communities, but... They they were also, yeah, they were they were out there as well. I have to say, it's like with any human groups, they also change over time. So Sinan and his and his mates back in back in Persia, Hassan II, were the ones who helped push the idea of the resurrection. So they they were both comfortable with leaving Sharia law and, you know, as part of this

• 34:48Speaker 02

  broader view of the intellectual landscape, certainly compared to some other parts of Islam. But then other points in Isari Shmeili history, they were they were very, very orthodox. So it goes up and down. But yeah, always rising.

• 35:05Matt Lewis?

  And so in the game, we get to visit, for example, Masiaf Castle as as a base of the Assassins. Is Masiaf Castle real? What do we know about the castle?

• 35:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. It's, I think the Assassins cricket over in 1140, so they've been in command for 50 years. Sinan wasn't wasn't around at the time, but when he came to power in 1162, he he strengthened it all. He strengthened the whole network and put in communication systems, you know, things like pigeons, carrier pigeons going around, very, very good command and control. Yeah, and it's a very impressive place. I mean, particularly at the time. It sort of raises one of the other big issues that no one ever talks about, and it's and it's kind of like Tolkien and his elves, you know, which is, you know, what do woodland creatures live on? What's the what's the economics of being a woodland creature? And I I'm always fascinated about the Assassins in that way as well. They live up in the mountains.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  They're they build these huge castles and loads of them, you know, anywhere up to, you know, people talk about 70, 80, you know, I mean, some big, some small. And we know the costs that the Crusaders had to build the castle. I mean, how on earth does it become feasible to do that? And and I think part of it, and this applies to Sinan and all the others, is it does explain why this very secretive, semi-isolated group were

• 36:27Speaker 02

  Very often prepared to hire out their services. So they'd often be killing people at the behest of one of their Sunni enemies bizarrely. But I think they were just strapped for cash the whole time. And interestingly, when the Mongols conquered them and looted everything, they made the point of saying, "These guys don't have any decent treasures. We're not even going to send it back home to the Khan, you know, because he's not going to be impressed." So I think they, you know, they were fierce, fierce as mountain lions, but, you know, porous church mice as well. And yeah, no, and Sinan was a great guy. He was really, really tough and did look after his people very well.

• 37:03Matt Lewis?

  I suppose in Assassin's Creed terms, we ought to get on to the bad guys. Big boo for the Templars. What can you, can you tell us briefly how the Templars come into being? How long have they been around by the Third Crusade?

• 37:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the Templars come into being around about 1119, 1120. Interestingly, the timeline, but I think people assume Templars and the Assassins are both very ancient secretive orders, you know, going back to the pharaohs or whatever. And, and of course, it's not true. The Templars were quite, quite a new body in the 1190s. And so too were the Assassins in Syria. I mean, they'd only been, both of them were coming into the area about the same time, early, early 12th century. And, and as we've discussed, you know, the Nisari Ishmaelis didn't exist before 1194, so when, when Nizal was executed. Yeah, they, they both have, again, this strangely parallel timeline.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  The Assassins have been around in Syria since, but early 1100s. They've struggled to create a kind of safe place. They've tried to inveigle their way into some of the big urban centres, like Damascus or Aleppo. And it always works for a short while and then people don't like having this, these heretics around. So they massacre them and they're forced into the mountains and. With people like Sinan in charge, they really make the best of rubbish political hand. You know, they end up with the rubbish, least economically viable parts of the Middle East. And the reason that they can get in there is because not many other people want to be there. And then when they're there, they manage to turn it into a really viable

• 38:41Speaker 02

  kind of military network. And that's a safe place for them to then develop a strategy and push back out against our enemies in the rest of the world.

• 38:50Matt Lewis?

  We've dealt with where the name for assassins come from. Where does the name for the Templars come from?

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, again, it's a, we know it, but it's not true. There's some say they were, their early headquarters were at the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, which, which the assassins thought was the Temple of Solomon. The Crusaders were wrong, though. It is, I think it's pretty much what we'd call the Al-Aqsa Mosque now, which actually postates that significantly. But it's a catchy name, you know, it's sort of like, and it's sort of to your point about the assassins as well. They both ended up with catchy names because this cult of death rests to a large part on them having a larger than life image. And I think they're both,

• 39:35Speaker 02

  you know, I think a branding agency, you know, in the 21st century would tell you you could do a lot worse than assassins and templars. They're powerful brands that actually say what the promise is. It's a promise of death.

• 39:49Matt Lewis?

  Well, I mean, here we are more than 800 years later, still talking about the brand recognition of the assassins and the Templars. You know, somebody should have got a decent paycheck for that bit of work.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 39:58Matt Lewis?

  And you, we've talked a bit about how the assassins became this kind of force multiplier. How, what makes the Templars able to do that too? Because again, we're talking about normally fairly small groups of knights. What distinguishes them from all of the other European knights that are arriving in the Holy Land around this time?

• 40:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a very good point. I think discipline is the key thing and commitment, which, which again, is what you find with the assassins. These are, these are guys who give themselves up totally to the objectives of their sect or order. So in the same way as the assassins are, you know, totally enthralled or totally obedient to the, the old man of the mountain, you find the Templars the same. They've got a very, very tight rule book, you know, called the Rule of the Templar. They're sort of, they take monastic vows of a certain kind. They are totally devoted.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  And because they're in the Middle East and they're in the saddle the whole time, they are superb soldiers. And they they're used to maneuvering together. They know exactly what to do under all the different circumstances. And warfare in the East is very different. Whereas if you look at the European knights that come over on crusade, you know, they're much less well trained. Because mostly they're doing a bit of carousing at home, you know, they don't they don't get to fight in really vicious warfare very often. They don't get to maneuver because they're all spread out around different countries. And they don't know how to deal with these, you know, Turkish cavalry. They don't have to deal with artillery when they're in Europe. So the Templars are, they look very similar on one level. You know, you think, oh, cavalry charge, medieval knights charging, da, da, da, they must be the same.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  But in fact, the Templars were so much better at it because they were disciplined. They pushed it through, you know, and they knew where to hit. Like at Moher Jizzar, you identify, that's how you get a much more mobile enemy to succumb. You you point at the one point of vulnerability where they're a fixed item. You know, where the baggage train is, where the general is, where the flags are. And you you try and cut it off at the neck, you know. And yeah, I think I think it's a hard one to pin down because they don't really have a technological edge. But they do have discipline and an ideological edge. You know, it's again, back to your point about, you know, keen or willing. You know, they're not they're not keen to die, but they're certainly willing to do it.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  And they they know in themselves, they have this belief that it's effectively being on the fast track to to heaven. If you do that, you know, it's not something you you seek because that would be suicide. But it's something that you you embrace. If in doing so, you you can fight for your community.

• 42:31Matt Lewis?

  There's almost like a chicken and egg question to be had here about is are the best knights with all of the the best tactical nous seeking out the Templars? Or is there something about the way the Templars train their brothers that turn them into these elite fighting knights with with better discipline and better understanding of battle tactics than anybody else? So are the Templars drawing the best to them or are the Templars forging the best out of what they get?

• 42:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you're right. First time chicken and egg, you know, so. I think the Templars have a mechanism for turning strong, brave, committed people into this kind of superhuman military machine. They've got a welcome pack in the form of the, you know, the rule of the Templars where people absorb that and they're they're turned out like a regiment in a way that most medieval troops really aren't. So there is, they do have the kind of secret ingredient to to turn a good warrior into a great one. But equally, I think once that image process is underway, and if you're a really enthusiastic top end sort of guy looking to do your bit,

• 43:41Speaker 02

  then naturally you're going to choose Templars. So I think that it encouraged people, people who wanted that kind of lifestyle, who wanted that elite status, you know, so it might not be a monetary elite status, but it was, it's like being James Bond or whatever, you know, there's a James Bond element to this, you know. Women want him and men want to be him, you know, and so you get the men who want to be him joining up. So you get the best quality recruits joining the organisation that can do the most with those great qualities. And it's a, yeah, it's a very, very good thing.

• 44:13Matt Lewis?

  I quite like the idea that the rule, you know, it's like being handed your onboarding manual on your first day in a job, but this one says, you know, welcome to a guaranteed path to heaven through death on the battlefield. You're like, hang on, what? That's page one.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  No, you're absolutely right. I mean, interestingly, you know, so we're talking about PR departments, but we're also talking about HR departments. And I think that's one of the big things that the Templars did in the Third Crusade. It's very difficult to prove because unlike modern, you know, HR departments, we don't have an email trail. But we do know that normally crusading armies in the early days go out to the Middle East and they are shocked because warfare out there is so different. It's like the Wild West, you know, you're surrounded by light cavalry archers, you're stunned, you're outnumbered. It's a shocking, debilitating form of warfare for somebody who's used to facing a few peasants and, you know, just generally riding around

• 45:05Speaker 02

  saying we need a change of management. But when Richard and his army arrives in the Latin East, you find them doing extraordinary things. So they're forming a kind of, they do a fighting march down the coast of Palestine, which is incredibly complex and Difficult formation. It's the kind of thing that the Templars knew all about, but but those English guys didn't, you know, and and yet they hit the ground running. And then similarly, they get down to Jaffa for a battle a few months later. And there are almost no knights, but the the but the infantry they've got, whether whether English or Italian rowers, whatever, they're forming very, you know, almost like they've got salvo volley fire, you know, and you have tiny groups where you get two

• 45:50Speaker 02

  guys in the front with the crossbows, two guys behind with shield and spears. You you get very sophisticated tactical answers to a problem that they couldn't possibly have solved if they hadn't been taught, if somebody hadn't told them in advance, this is what we've got to do. You couldn't you couldn't explain it. And I think Richard, you know, he was clearly a ferocious leader in his own right, but I think he was he was man enough to talk to people who knew better than him. And I think, you know, the Templars and the Hospitallers were there in his court every day, and they were they were imparting their knowledge. So the the welcome back started in London rather than rather than when you hit the coast of Paris by.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from Ted's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasia pro dot com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.

• 47:19Speaker 03

  After civil war, regicide and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned, but Britain would never be the same. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and this month on Not Just the Tudors, we're transported back to the age of Restoration royalty, from Charles II to Queen Anne and the birth of the Empire. Join me on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 48:02Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, it's interesting. We think of Richard as this great general leader, warrior, fierce individual. But like you say, that is only a result of his preparation that was done in advance of being willing to say, I'm going somewhere I don't know, to fight enemies I don't understand. Here are the Templars, you can explain all of this to me. I'm going to make good use of that so that, like you say, I can arrive and hit the deck running. And that is a big portion of the reason for his success.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, very much so. Yeah, you know, you're doing it. It's again, apropos your earlier point, really, you're dealing with very good material. So, you know, as in why do who joins the Templars, you know, the he's superb military material. But he's man enough to know the things to want to know the things he doesn't know.

• 48:50Matt Lewis?

  And I guess the Templars are good enough as well to be to be that force multiplier again, to say, if we get into the ear of the King of England, we can, you know, improve this entire army so that this small handful of Templar knights are making thousands and thousands of Christian soldiers more effective in the Holy Land.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  You're 100% right. And you see this probably even more distinctively in the Second Crusade, where you get, you know, the French army wanders over. They've got a tiny Templar contingent. But but the French army is so ill-disciplined, you know, in fairness to them, they're behaving just like European armies normally do. They weren't any better or worse, but they were just rubbish when it came to fighting their way against Turkish cavalry in the middle of nowhere. So after they've been cut up quite a lot, this tiny Templar contingent were told to take over. And this was hugely embarrassing for the king, but Louis was, you know, he was man enough to do it. And everybody in the army, thankfully, had to take an oath, probably became a Templar associate. You know, so they were all subject

• 49:51Speaker 02

  to Templar discipline. So again, to your point, the Templars may only have been a hundred or two guys, but they transformed the whole army and they did manage to get quite a lot of it through to the to the Middle East.

• 50:03Matt Lewis?

  And I guess we've kind of talked a little bit as we've been going about the interplay between the assassins and the Templars, which is at the absolute core of the Assassin's Creed franchise of games. And Assassin's Creed paints them as kind of mortal enemies. One of the things that I really took away from your book is just how similar in so many ways the assassins and the Templars were. And yet, do they end up being the mortal enemies that we're given in Assassin's Creed? Do assassins and Templars hate each other? Do they not really encounter each other? How do they deal with each other in the Holy Land in the Third Crusade?

• 50:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a very good point. And it is surprising that I think if you're talking about assassins and crusaders, there's a surprisingly good relationship by and large. Wouldn't wouldn't protect you. If you annoyed the assassins, they'd still murder you, you know, they'd

• 50:52Matt Lewis?

  But also, I guess if they're for hire and they want money and crusaders have got money, nah.

• 50:56Speaker 02

  Exactly. What you know, what's a girl to do? You got a girl's got to make a living. So, um, yeah, definitely. But but there's no intrinsic animosity between the crusaders and the assassins, partly and it which sounds weird, but it's logical. You know, the crusaders don't take much interest in Muslim into fighting on a religious basis. They don't care if you're Sunni or Shiite or whatever. For them, it's, you know, there are other bigger issues around, you know, politics and military things. Whereas for a lot of their Muslim neighbours, they really hated the assassins because they were, you know, these crazy murdering heretics as they were caricatured. So there is that whole underlying lack of animosity with the Crusaders.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  Funny enough, the Templars and the Hospitallists to a lesser extent are the exception to that. They really, really did hate each other. And I think it's partly, I propose your first point, which is that they're so similar. You know, love and hate being, you know, in some ways, you know, adjoining rather than oppositional emotions. There is that, there's an intensity about their relationship that's very unusual. And you also find that through an accident of geography, you know, I was saying earlier that the assassins go to Syria. They take up these great mountains and develop them into a fortress network. Those mountains are on the edge of the Crusader state called the County of Tripoli or Principality of Antioch, but mainly Tripoli.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  And because the Counts of Tripoli can't control those boundaries anymore, they tend to give it to people who've got enough commitment to do it. And that's by and large the Hospitallists and the Templars. So you get this very prosaic sort of landlord tenant relationship as well. So the Hospitallists and the Templars, basically they extort money from the assassins. Huge, by assassin terms, huge amounts of money. And it's, they're able to do that because they're so similar. Because if the Count of Tripoli told the assassins that they needed to pay him, you know, 50 grand a year. They'd say, well, that's an interesting thought, but we know where your wife goes to get her haircut.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  You know, that kind of thing. Whereas with the Templars, there's no vulnerability. They don't have individuals within the order who aren't replaceable. If you kill the master, you know, he'll be replaced by a temporary replacement or a permanent one, you know, by the following day. If you kill, you know, they don't have, they don't have families, they're not married. They're sort of, they're not vulnerable. To the promise of death that's offered by the assassins. So every, every other political unit in the Middle East is scared of them because they're basically family businesses. But the Templars and the Hospitallers are corporations. And, and, and again, that sort of works with the assassins as well. You know, it doesn't matter how many Fidesz you kill, it doesn't matter. They don't, they've already made that choice. You know, they're

• 53:52Speaker 02

  not scared of dying in the same way as a good Templar knight isn't. So, yeah, there is that love hate thing. And you find that the thing between the Templars and the assassins does rumble on down through the years, even in the 1240s and so on. They, they, the Templars insert themselves into Christian diplomacy with the assassins to make sure, sure that they, they give them a good kicking whenever they can. There, there is something visceral about it. And I think it's because they know each other too well.

• 54:21Matt Lewis?

  And I guess for both those organisations, if, if they're quite similar, they understand just how dangerous the other ones are. Because, you know, the Templars understand what they do with such relatively small resources, at least in terms of numbers, if not money later on. They know what they can do and they can see that the assassins can do the same thing. So they understand perhaps better than other parties in the region on either side, just how dangerous those groups could be and why you shouldn't trust them and why you should try and deal with them.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's, it is a weird love, hate, respect, knowledge kind of thing, all going on at the same time.

• 54:56Matt Lewis?

  I was struck again from the book, I'm glad you drew that point out a little bit earlier. The difference between the idea that so much in the, the medieval world is a family business, and yet organisations like the assassins and the Templars are much more like a corporation. So that there isn't that ability to understand that the, the person at the top is absolutely critical in their own body. You know, if their heir is a child, they are incredibly fragile because their dynasty will, will fall if they're not very, very careful. You simply don't have that issue with organisations like the Templars and the assassins. Like you say, you know, you, you cut one head off and another one is growing back by the next morning. And that's difficult for, for other people to comprehend who are used to this idea that your son is your heir and, and the next generation

• 55:41Matt Lewis?

  relies entirely on him. The next generation could be the guy stood next to the guy you just killed who's better than him.

• 55:46Speaker 02

  No, you're absolutely right. I mean, that is, you know, it's interesting. We're, we're sitting here talking about these two tiny corporations. Eight hundred years after the event, we're not talking about the family dynasty of the Council Tripoli to any large extent. You know, they're invisible now. They die when their DNA dies, and it's literal DNA, it's not corporate DNA. And you find organisations like the Papacy, you know, are the same in a way, and the Templars are the militant arm of the Papacy. They're a corporation that supports to a corporate head office. So one pope dies, which they do frequently because they're quite old, and then another one gets chosen. You can't take out the Papacy. I mean, that's one of the extraordinary things about it.

• 56:29Matt Lewis?

  How would you kind of sum up the impact of the Templars and the Assassins to fairly small, I mean, I guess relatively not massively long-lived organisations in a region that's at conflict at war? Is it easy to overstate their impact? Or are they actually, do they have a huge legacy in the region and in this period?

• 56:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, that's a really good point. I think it does kind of speak for itself. The fact that we are having this conversation shows that they had a huge impact. And with both of them, they've got a huge impact on the internet, through the gaming industry, through publishing and what have you. And it would be nice to think, oh, it's an accident, but clearly it isn't. That doesn't happen by accident. They did have a clarity of purpose, which is very impressive, and that's resonated down through the ages. I think they were both helped by quite specific things as well. And the fact that all the Templar records were destroyed means that they're now famous because we can impose our own, like on Tabula Rasa,

• 57:33Speaker 02

  so we can impose our own stories, our own conspiracies, however fantastical, we can put them onto the Templars, and they're fine. They can't answer back, and we haven't got the records. So the Hospitlers now...

• 57:47Speaker 02

  Fairly amiable, you know, handing out oranges at football matches, you know, the, you know, St John's ambulance and so on, you know, they've, they've morphed into a, a sort of more benign, but, but low profile kind of non-conspiratorial group. Whereas the Templars, who were not that different really, have, have become these kind of macro, you know, Marvel type figures. And I think that's true to the, the Assassins as well. They, they didn't get wiped out like the Templars, but they did get effectively neutered as a, as a political, you know, military force by Baras and, and the Mamluks. And if that hadn't happened, the Mongols would have seen them off anyway. So both groups were coming to an end. They both had a beginning and an end

• 58:28Speaker 02

  from a kind of macro political sense, but they, they both had this kind of PR resonance that, that lives on longer than that. And I think also, I think there is a thing, I know it, I can see it in myself, because I'm, you know, fairly boring person. I, you know, open my laptop, I think I've done something really clever, you know, whereas these guys are so resourceful and they achieve so much with so little, that you can't, even though you might not agree with everything they're doing, or their objectives even, you kind of think, you end up rooting for them just because they're, they're noters, you know, and, and it's sort of quite good to see what the human spirit can achieve when it focuses itself, for good or bad, on, on things with clarity.

• 59:12Matt Lewis?

  And I realise that we, we've talked a bit about Sinan, the old man of the mountain kind of leader of the Assassins during the Third Crusade. We've not really talked about who was in charge of the, the Templars. And, and you know, he's a figure who appears in the game, players will, will duel with Robert de Sablé. So is, is he really the leader of the Templars? Does he die during the Third Crusade?

• 59:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, that is all true. Yeah, absolutely. Sadly, we know more about him before he became a Templar, but he, he was a real character. And again, we, we haven't got a lot of flesh to put on the bones, but. When you look at his career, it's obvious that the guy had huge charisma and talent. You know, he's a, he's a really butch diplomat. He's, you know, he's able to mediate between kings, between, you know, different armies. And he's doing really well there. He's a military man. So before he becomes a Templar, he's one of Richard the Lionheart's admirals. Being an admiral was very largely a kind of more like a land-based military role in those days, of course.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  And then because Richard is leading, you know, most of the Third Crusade, the, the Templars, quite rightly, think, I know what. We'll, we'll take one of Richard's key, key allies and make him the master of the, of the entire order. And it's fabulous. You can, it's an area where you can see Templar diplomacy working really well. And I think it also plays into our conversation about, you know, the HR arm of the Templars. You know, you, you basically take the guy who's closest to Richard and you make him the Templar. You impart all the Templar knowledge and in this, and that's not arcane knowledge. It's knowledge of how to deal with Turkish cavalry, you know, those kinds of knowledge. And then you inject that into the whole of the crusade.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  So it's a very, it's a very clever, very simple, but clever.

• 1:00:56Matt Lewis?

  It's that corporate thinking again, isn't it? Of, of headhunting someone who can bring the connections that can improve your business no end.

• 1:01:03Speaker 02

  Absolutely. It's, you know, you go, you go to your executive search people, you say, I want, you know, the, the best CEO for the corporation at this time. He doesn't need to be there forever, you know, but he is there at the right time, at the right place. And he's bussed in to make sure that Richard feels comfortable, knowing that the Templars are, you know, they're, they're close. They're really close allies and they can really help. And they recognize in Richard, somebody who can make a crusade happen. And they're the ones who can make it better. So it is, it's a wonderfully symbiotic thing. And Robert Sablais died quite, quite early on. I mean, I, I do love Assassin's Creed, what I've seen of it, but I love it from the same sense that I love Kingdom of Heaven. You know, it's, it's not historically accurate, but it pretends to be, you know?

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  If, if you were judging it as a lecture series, you'd say, well, it's not accurate. But if you judge it. As a game that gives you a kind of intimate sense of time and place is superb. So you can, you can see how it works really well. I think that the, the danger with academics is that you're inclined to judge everything from your own perspective, rather than the perspective of the media you're working with. So Kingdom of Heaven, sumptuous, you know, just looks beautiful. And it's, you know, some of the history is a bit crazy, but it, it, it sucks you into that world. And I think that's where Assassin's Creed is great as well. It, it introduces that part of history to a lot of people who wouldn't have ever had any reason to know anything about it at all.

• 1:02:29Matt Lewis?

  I mean, this has been absolutely fascinating, Stephen. I fear I could do this all day quite happily and never get bored of talking to you about these things. But obviously if people want to know more, they can definitely go and get your book and, and immerse themselves in the world of the assassins and the templars. But before we finish, I like to give guests the opportunity to step into the Assassin's Creed animus and be transported in full safety. You will be returned back to 2025, back to a moment. So is there a moment in assassin or templar history, a battle or, or a, an encounter that you wish that you could see, that you would love to witness?

• 1:03:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, there, actually, yeah, it's a very good question. There is, there's just one, there is one particular assassin hit that doesn't work. And I like it because it kind of doesn't work. And that's the first significant attack on Saladin. So they're almost there, 13 guys go in, they get to his tent, they're just outside the tent. And then somebody says, hold on, you look familiar. What are you doing here? You know, and it's like, simple question, what are you doing here? But there's no simple answer other than, oh, we've come to kill Saladin. And then all hell breaks loose and it's, and, and they carve their way through a lot of bodyguards and so on. And that to me is, it's a failure, but it's the assassins sort of at their best. You know, they managed to get so close.

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  And then there's another story I love as well. If I can have two, another little one, there's, there's a classic one that shows how the assassins are human as well. There's an attack on a castle, a Muslim castle in Shazar, which is the lovely sort of fortified town and castle. And a hundred assassins kind of blag their way in, start carving their way through the garrison and everything. And they then get beaten by. A bunch of middle aged ladies who are left behind, all the garrison have gone off carousing, you know, they're off, off at a party. So the whole place is empty and these middle aged women and, and slaves jam all the doors, they hand out the, the armour amongst

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  themselves, they get ready to kill themselves if, if they get, you know, if they get attacked. Um, they are, you know, they, they stand by the balconies, you know, with their swords. So it's either death, death one way or the other, you know, you kill the enemy or suicide. And the assassins are rubbish. They, they, they mess up the whole thing and the men come back and wipe them out to a single man. But I, I go on about it a lot in the book because I just think it's lovely. That's an, it's a personal antidote to the kind of ninja-esque aspects of it. They were, they were superb at what they did, but none of us is, you know, perfect.

• 1:05:06Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, definitely. We should put them up on a pedestal, but then give that pedestal a wobble every once in a while, just to remind them.

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  Very nice, eh?

• 1:05:12Matt Lewis?

  This has been absolutely fascinating, Steve. Thank you so much for joining us here on Echoes of History. It's been a real pleasure to talk to you.

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  Well, thank you, Matt. You're great as ever.

• 1:05:23Matt Lewis?

  I hope you enjoyed this visit to Echoes of History. Download a growing back catalogue and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from. Thanks to Steve Tibble too. You can find his book Assassins and Templars: A Battle in Myth and Blood in all good bookshops now. You can also find Steve's previous visits to Gone Medieval in our back catalogue. He's talked to us about the Templars in Britain and about crusader criminals, two episodes well worth digging out. There are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get

• 1:06:03Matt Lewis?

  your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week at historyhit.com/subscribe. Merry Christmas and a happy new year. Anyway, I'd better let you go and get back to mince pies, sherry and whatever great history books you've had for Christmas. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hit.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

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