The straggling Crusaders were no better off than their commander. Richard’s dream of Jerusalem, the Holy City, although in plain view, would not be realized. The mosquito ordained that Jerusalem remain in Muslim hands. Instead, a treaty was struck between the Lionheart and Saladin, the two mutually respected de facto leaders of the Christian and Muslim worlds. Jerusalem would remain under Islamic rule but was deemed to be an “international” city open and welcoming to Christian and Jewish pilgrims and traders.* In 1291, when the Muslims retook Acre, the last vestige of the malaria-addled Crusader states, the first large-scale Christian attempt at colonization outside of Europe sank into the desert sands.
The Holy Land remained in Islamic hands until the First World War and British general Sir Edmund Allenby’s triumphant Christmas 1917 entrance into Jerusalem. Allenby of Armageddon, as he was nicknamed by his military and political superiors, was the thirty-fourth conqueror of Jerusalem and the first “Christian” (although he was an atheist) since the Crusades. The British Army medical services championed Allenby as “the first commander in that malarial region in which many armies have perished to understand the risk and to take measures accordingly.” Also in 1917, Arthur Balfour, the foreign secretary and former prime minister of the United Kingdom, announced in his now notorious Balfour Declaration that “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.” The Christian occupation of the Levant during the First World War, and the realization of Balfour’s utopian statement, once again thrust the Holy Land into an antagonistic atmosphere and created the current hostility and acrimony engulfing the Middle East.
Allenby accomplished in 1917 what Richard could not do in 1192—outmaneuvering the mosquito. Both malaria and his own hubris during his Third Crusade were Richard’s undoing. In October 1192, still throbbing with persistent malarial fevers, Richard quit the Levant for England. His journey was fraught with deceit and deception, and eventually led to his death. While Richard was crusading in the Holy Land, behind his back an aggrieved Philip of France and Richard’s brother John conspired against him.
Upon his return to France, Philip secretly aided Prince John’s revolt against his absent brother Richard. He also began a campaign to seize English kingdoms in France that had been transferred by the earlier marriage of Henry and Eleanor. Last, Philip denied Richard embarkation at French ports and forced him to take the dangerous overland route through central Europe, where he was captured shortly before Christmas by an awaiting Leopold. His ransom was set at an astonishing 100,000 pounds of silver. This amount, three times the annual tax revenue of the English Crown, was eventually raised by his mother, Eleanor. To muster this enormous bribe, Eleanor increased or demanded arbitrary taxes on property, livestock, and accumulated wealth, among other levies, from the peasantry, the barons, and the clergy. Upon receipt of this enormous cache, Richard was released. Philip sent an urgent message to John, proclaiming, “Look to yourself, the devil is loose.”
Upon his release and his homeward-bound route to England, Richard began his reconquest of English provinces in France, consuming additional resources and revenues. During the siege of an insignificant castle in Aquitaine in 1199, a defender caught the attention of the king. Richard was amused by a man standing on the castle wall, armed with a crossbow in one hand and, in true Monty Python fashion, in the other hand clutching a frying pan, which he had been using as a shield. Distracted, Richard was struck by an arrow and later died from his gangrenous wounds. John assumed the throne of England. Over the next decade, to fund his repeated and fruitless campaigns in France to reverse the whittling away of English lands, John secured revenue by every means available, including increased taxation, supplemental dues, inheritance and marriage fees, and outright extortion and bribery. Sadly, and as much as I love the cartoon fox, Robin Hood was not a real person.
Robin Hood is a fictional representation and a symbol of hope and change during this dark and somber period of poverty and oppression in England at the hands of King John. While it is suspected that the story of Robin Hood had a longer oral tradition, he is first recorded on paper in William Langland’s allegorical narrative poem Piers Plowman (c. 1370), which is considered, along with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, to be among the greatest works of early English literature. Written during this same period, Geoffrey Chaucer’s epic collection of twenty-four stories bound as The Canterbury Tales talks of “an ague that may be your bane,” confirming that malaria was entrenched in the low-lying Fenland marshes of eastern England and found its way into English literature long before Shakespeare mentions malaria in eight of his plays.
The early stories of Robin Hood bore a distant resemblance to those rendered by Sean Connery, Kevin Costner, Cary Elwes, and Russell Crowe. The complete package of characters and complementary plotlines was not cemented until the swashbuckling 1938 film The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. One of the first movies ever made in Technicolor, this version of the renegade, jovial inhabitants of Sherwood Forest pitted against the greedy tyrants from Nottingham became the iconic story that won the hearts of audiences (and storytelling parents) the world over. The modern legend was perfected, and has yet to be eclipsed, in the 1973 Disney animated classic in which John is mockingly represented by a cowardly, thumb-sucking lion.
King John’s resounding defeat by the French at Bouvines in 1214 ignited the confederation and revolt of his overburdened and discontented barons. At Runnymede on June 15, 1215, John was forced to concede to the demands of the rebellious barons and sign the Magna Carta Libertatum—“The Great Charter of Liberties.” The revolutionary document outlined the rights and personal liberties of all free Englishmen (an extremely small category). For our purposes, I will overlook the mythological modern representations of the Magna Carta and its mangling by hindsight histories except one. The now universal attachment of the catchall slogan “No one is above the law” to the Magna Carta is a misconception. Nowhere among the sixty-three clauses of this groundbreaking charter does the phrase exist. The modern interpretation and construction of this expression can be loosely cobbled together from two articles: “39. No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. 40. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.”
These concepts, regardless of their meaning in 1215, ushered in the age of modern democracy, common law, and the footing for the universal unalienable rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the protection of property. The Magna Carta was one of the most profound shifts in all the history of political and legal thought. Its influence echoes throughout the constitutions of modern democracies, including the Bill of Rights in the United States, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and internationally in the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If we climb the timeline and rabbit hole backward, the botched Third Crusade created the context and setting for the Magna Carta and its embryonic democratic platform.
While the Magna Carta might suffice as a consolation prize, the attempt of European Crusaders to claim the Holy Land was a resounding and unmitigated failure. The mosquito had ensnared Christianity in a crisis of faith. While she fostered the advancement of the healing foundations of Christianity during the Crisis of the Third Century, she also put a stark and abrupt finish to its commercial campaigns during the Crusades.
The Crusades were the first large-scale European attempts at permanent colonization and the projection of European power outside its continental borders. The mosquito helped ensure that these initial imperialist ventures ended in ruin. Alfred W. Crosby’s assertions about the deadly meddling of the mosquito du
ring the Crusades, in his work Ecological Imperialism, is worth repeating in full:
With few exceptions, Westerners throughout history who have gone to the eastern Mediterranean to fight wars have believed their chief problems to be military, logistical, and diplomatic, and possibly theological, but the truth is that their primary and immediate difficulties usually have been medical. Westerners often have died soon after arrival, and more often have failed to have children who have lived to maturity in the East. . . . When the Crusaders arrived in the Levant, they had to undergo what British settlers in the North American colonies centuries later would call “seasoning”; . . . They had to survive the infections, work out modi vivendi with the Eastern microlife and parasites. Then they could fight the Saracens. This period of seasoning stole time, strength, and efficiency and ended in death for tens of thousands. It is likely that the disease that affected the Crusaders the most was malaria, endemic in the Levant’s low, wet regions and along the coast, exactly where the bulk of the population of the Crusader states tended to concentrate. . . . The Levant and the Holy Land were and in some areas still are malarial. . . . Each new batch of Crusaders from France, Germany, and England must have been fuel shoveled into the furnace of the malarial East. The experience of Zionist immigrants to Palestine early in our own century may be pertinent: In 1921, 42 percent of them developed malaria in the first six months after their arrival, and 64.7 percent during the first year. . . . The Crusader states died like bowls of cut flowers.
In contrast to the Crusaders, the defending Muslims fought on their own turf. They had acquired immunity and were seasoned to local malaria strains. Many would have also possessed the previously mentioned genetic hereditary defenses of Duffy negativity, thalassemia, favism, and perhaps even sickle cell. Writing of his Muslim adversaries, Richard of Devizes, English monk and personal scribe to King Richard, recorded enviously during the Third Crusade that “the weather was natural to them; the place was their native country; their labour, health; their frugality, medicine.” While defenders generally have the advantage in war as they decide the where, what, and how of a battle, in this instance, resistance to malaria proved to be the most advantageous defensive perimeter for Islam. It was also a war-winning weapon.
Although the Crusades were a miserable economic capitalist venture, they did lend themselves to future successful imperial ventures, if not directly to the European Age of Discovery and the ensuing Columbian Exchange. As mentioned, the Crusades included both invade and, more importantly, trade. The cross-cultural exchange between Muslims and Christians reintroduced the writings of ancient Greece and Rome into the academic abyss of Europe. Muslim innovations covering all academic fields were transmitted to Europe on the backs and in the packs of returning Crusaders and traders. The Muslim Renaissance or Golden Age spanning the warring centuries of the Crusades restored enlightening ideas and cultural illumination to the dark, recessed corners of Europe.
The Crusades spurred the quick dissemination of the Muslim contributions to navigation techniques, including the modern magnetic compass, and ship design, such as the sternpost rudder and triangular lateen three-mast sails allowing ships to tack against the wind. In 1218, an astonished, giddy French bishop at Acre relayed a message back to France exulting that “an iron needle, after it has made contact with the magnet stone, always turns toward the North Star, which stands motionless while the rest revolve, being as it were the axis of the firmament. Is therefore a necessity for those travelling by sea.” The recipient of this letter must have thought the bishop had gone completely mad. This European enhancement of knowledge to climb out of the desolate caverns of the Dark Ages was afforded by a Muslim-anchored academic ladder. Aside from the gallant quests for the Holy Grail by Monty Python, Indiana Jones, and Robert Langdon, among countless other romantic “knightfall” bedtime stories, movies, and television shows, this exchange of knowledge is perhaps the real legacy of the Crusades.
This cultural trade, and the global village at large, would be substantially broadened by another contender in the game of thrones during the crusading aftershocks of the thirteenth century. While Europe was climbing out of the Dark Ages with a boost from Muslim knowledge, a deadly threat was amassing, not only on the approaches to the Levant but on Europe’s own eastern doorstep. Adroit horsemen from the steppes of Asia would unite east and west for the first time, spark the most lethal epidemic in human history, and threaten the very existence of Europe. With his mounted Mongol hordes, the brilliant, cunning strategist and warrior Genghis Khan would sweep west to the gates of Europe and secure the largest continuous land empire, and one of the largest empires, in history.
CHAPTER 6
Mosquito Hordes: Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire
The inhospitable, remote high steppes and grassland of the austere and windswept northern Asian plateau were occupied by warring tribal clans and duplicitous factions. Alliances were capricious, changing course as swiftly as the whims of the blustery winds. Temujin was born into this unforgiving region in 1162 and reared in a clan-based society that revolved around tribal raids, plundering, revenge, corruption, and, of course, horses. After his father’s capture by rival clans, Temujin and his family were reduced to dire poverty, scavenging for wild fruits and grasses, feeding on the carcasses of dead animals, and hunting small marmots and rodents. Then, with the death of his father, his clan had lost prestige and clout in the larger alliances and political arenas of Mongol tribal power. In this moment of desolation and despair, Temujin could not know that from these scraping, humble origins he would secure fame and fortune and a new name that would strike fear into the hearts of his enemies during his campaigns for world domination.
Vying to restore his family’s honor, Temujin, now fifteen years old, was captured during a raid by his father’s former allies. He successfully escaped from enslavement, and vowed revenge on his opponents, now a long list consisting of both traditional enemies and previous partners. Although Temujin was loath to share authority, he recognized that ultimate power and prestige, as he had been instructed by his mother as a boy, rested on numerous strong and stable alliances.
In his quest to unite the warring factions, Temujin broke from Mongol tradition. Rather than killing or enslaving those he conquered, he promised them protection and the spoils of war from future conquests. Appointments to senior military and political positions were based on merit, loyalty, and acumen rather than clan affiliations or nepotism. These social ingenuities strengthened the cohesion of his confederacy, inspired loyalty from those he conquered, and augmented his military might as he continued to incorporate Mongol clans into his increasingly powerful alliance. As a result, by 1206, Temujin had united the warring tribes of the Asian steppes under his rule and created a formidable, cohesive military and political force that would eventually annex one of the largest empires in history. He ultimately brought Alexander’s mosquito-deterred dream—the bridging of the “ends of the earth” from Asia to Europe—into reality. The mosquito, however, haunted his own visions of grandeur and glory just as she had haunted Alexander 1,500 years earlier.
By this time, his Mongol subjects had given Temujin a new name—Genghis Khan, or the “Universal Ruler.” After completing his coalition of the competing and combative Mongol tribes, Genghis (or Chingiz) and his skillful mounted archers initiated a flurry of quick-striking outward military campaigns to secure living space . . . and then some.
Mongol expansion under Genghis Khan was in part the result of the mini ice age. This mercury-dipping climate change drastically reduced grasslands that sustained their horses and their mounted nomadic way of life. For the Mongols, it became expand or expire. The astonishing speed of the Mongol advance was due to Genghis Khan’s military abilities and that of his generals, an impressively cohesive military command and control structure, wide-swath flanking techniques, specialized compound bows, and, most of all, their unparalleled skill and dexterity as horsemen. By 1220, t
he Mongol Empire stretched from the Pacific coasts of Korea and China, south to the Yangtze River and the Himalayan Mountains, reaching the Euphrates River in the west. The Mongols were true masters of what the Nazis later called Blitzkrieg or “lightning war.” They encircled their hapless enemies with breathtaking, unrivaled speed and ferocity.
In 1220, Genghis divided his army into two prongs, and accomplished what Alexander could not—the binding together of the two halves of the known world. For the first time, the east officially met the west, albeit in cruel and hostile circumstances. Genghis led the main army back east through Afghanistan and northern India toward Mongolia. A second army of roughly 30,000 horsemen punched north through the Caucasus and into Russia, sacking the Italian trading port of Kaffa (Feodosia) on the Crimean Peninsula of the Ukraine. Throughout European Russia and the Baltic states, the Mongols routed the Rus, the Kievans, and the Bulgars. Local populations were ravaged, murdered, or sold into slavery and little quarter was given to opposing soldiers. When the dust settled and the Mongol hoofbeats drummed in the distance, upwards of 80% of the local populations had been killed or enslaved. The Mongols probed Poland and Hungary to gather intelligence before quickly retreating east in the summer of 1223 to join Genghis’s Mongolia-bound column.
Why the Mongols decided to forsake Europe is subject to debate. It is widely held that the final strokes of this campaign were intended to be nothing more than reconnaissance missions for a future full-scale invasion of Europe. Historians have also suggested that the decision to postpone an invasion was based on the weakening of the Mongol army from malaria contracted in the Caucasus and along the river systems of the Black Sea, magnified by nearly twenty years of perpetual warfare. It is known that Genghis himself was suffering from habitual bouts of malaria at this time. The most generally accepted theory is that his death at sixty-five years old was the result of stubborn, festering wounds caused by the severe weakening of his immune system at the hands of chronic malarial infection.
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