52 – Side Story – Samaritans, innocent people born in sin
『(…) The Third Great Crusade ended with the victory of the Empire-Southern Kingdom Alliance. However, the reason why there was a lot of talk for a while was not because of the debate about whether the Great Crusade was really a victory or a defeat.
It was a dispute over the definition and nature of holy war, whether it should be seen as self-defense against the invaders, whether it should be seen as a tragedy that repaid the massacre with massacre, or whether it was just something that happened that had to happen someday.
First of all, the Great Crusade was controversial from the beginning. According to the history, ‘the event was triggered by an armed conflict between the Magdeburg Guard and the guards of the Western Pagan Peddlers.’ However, it is only half the truth.
In reality, it started with a drunken fistfight at a bar while both parties were unarmed and off duty. Although the Vatican neither confirms nor denies it, it is true that a gang fight in a bar was the trigger, as a result of cross-checking the Magdeburg Guard’s punishment log and the historical records of Western pagans.
So, is the Third Great Crusade merely an ‘incident that escalated from a fist fight to a great crusade’? Not like that. Simply that short sentence crushes and distorts the huge historical truth to the point of excessiveness.
Until the Fifth Great Crusade, so many people had never died on any battlefield. When comparing the previous and subsequent Great Crusades, the rate of injuries was the lowest, but the rate of deaths was excessively high. It is also important to note that the civilian death rate was higher than in any other war.
There was no mercy for the wounded or acceptance of prisoners. There was only massacre, execution, and secret burial. There was no distinction between civilians and soldiers, and no distinction between children and the elderly.
It was a fanatical clash of two worlds.
Why was this trend so strong during the Third Great Crusade?
The empire’s strategists note that the southern part, which was the main stage of the Great Crusade, was a plain. Because it was flat ground, great slalom was more important than maneuver warfare, and because the distance between the front lines was long, safe evacuation of the wounded was difficult.
One of the reasons is that the siege and defense focused on cities and fortresses rather than fighting in the field.
Cities and fortresses can prepare for supply, defense, offensive, and rest more safely than on flat land. It is argued that because it was a siege-oriented battlefield, the duration of the war was prolonged and collateral civilian casualties were amplified.
Ironically, the fact that the walls of other southern cities except Magdeburg were not very high acted as a negative factor.
A well-built castle can withstand enemy attacks for two or three years as long as food and morale are maintained. However, southern cities and fortresses had a stronger character as trading centers. Even though basic security guarding is possible, it is close to an open structure, so it is easy to attack and occupy the castle, but difficult to defend it.
Accordingly, strategists conclude that it would be more accurate to view the siege in the south as a ‘high ground war’. The theory is that because it was a wilderness area with nowhere to hide, people crowded into narrow, safe areas, and because of that, there were many casualties.
However, this too is incomplete.
Let’s take a look at the records. At the beginning of the war, it was no different from an ordinary war. This means that no more pursuit was necessary, and humane treatment of the wounded and exchange of prisoners occurred frequently.
Moreover, the longer the war goes on, the weaker the initial momentum is for both the attacking and defending sides. Willpower decreases and fatigue increases. This is especially true in battlefields where the front line had a strong tendency to harden, such as during the Third Great Crusade.
Just looking at the records of requests from the Imperial Army, in the early days of the war, there were many inquiries about the difficulties in managing prisoners, their reception and treatment, and guidelines for dealing with civilians.
But the Third Great Crusade was exactly the opposite. This was true in the early days, but after the middle of the war, principles such as accepting prisoners, exchanging the wounded, and protecting civilians disappeared.
Rather, there were a series of complaints and appeals from Magdeburg officials and residents. The content includes an appeal to stop mobilizing civilians to bury corpses and a report that the corpses arbitrarily thrown into the river are infesting with flies and spreading water-borne diseases.
This is also the reason why the fall of ‘Fortress Masada’ had an important meaning in the Third Great Crusade. This is the very battle that created the idiom ‘the trumpet of Jericho.’
At the beginning of the war, the western pagans reached the gates of Magdeburg. Magdeburg, which was the southernmost fortress city of the empire at the time, functioned as an anvil to block attacks by pagans.
The Knights of the Holy Grail and the Knights of Mercy, dispatched from the Southern Kingdom, became the ‘Hammer’ and succeeded in attacking the rear of the heretics and suppressing their offensive.
There is no doubt that the massive siege and annihilation line centered on the Magdeburg Fields would have been completed if it had not been for the courageous leadership of Shajar al-Dur, a former slave commander nicknamed the ‘Sword Dancer.’
Shahjar al-Dur retreated in an orderly manner during the day, and at night he gnawed away at the forces of the Empire-Confederate forces with a detachment of well-trained horse archers. It was a typical delay tactic.
The reason such a one-sided attack was possible was because there was a significant difference in the ‘words’ of the knights.
Horses in the western desert grow up in a harsh climate. As a result, their lung capacity and muscle mass were superior to those of the horses of the Empire and the Southern Kingdom, and they were able to perform well even the harsh tasks that would make an ordinary horse’s heart explode.
Thus, Shahzar al-Dur succeeded in retreating his main army to the fortress of Masada, called the Iron Shield. Unlike other places, Masada Fortress was a well-built, front-line fortress, and it withstood seven offensives.
Although it is now in decline, the equipment, supplies, and troops coming from Emmaus, which boasted more wealth than Magdeburg in its heyday, could not be ignored. All the warriors from the western desert were flocking to the southern kingdom.
It was a difficult problem for an empire that had barely managed to sort out its chaotic internal secret struggle.
Until the Third Crusade, the national power of the Western Pagans was perceived to be superior to that of the Empire. This is because, compared to the West, which enjoyed political and religious stability through unity through Stone Buddhism, the empire was eradicating the remnants of the ‘Tree of Life Faith’, an indigenous religion bordering on superstition.
Some claim that ‘the belief in the Tree of Life has long since disappeared, and in fact, Emperor Alexios I brought charges of Tree of Life heresy to slander the nobles who openly confronted him.’
However, they intentionally exclude the fact that the Tree of Life faith was widely spread among the general public even before the Empire and that many of the current noble families are religious leaders or warrior commanders of the Tree of Life faith.
By doing so, I am trying to tarnish the achievements of my great and wise father, Emperor Alexios I, but the behavior of some professors who overturn their beliefs through secret dealings with nobles is not moral from an ethical standpoint. I would like to point out here that this should be pointed out in person as well.
Let’s take back the reins of the horse that has gone astray. While the Allied forces, encountering strong resistance at the Masada fortress, were taking a break, an envoy arrived from the west. It was a letter from the religious leader, the Caliph.
Excluding long and complicated diplomatic rhetoric, the details are as follows.
The Caliph announced his intention to cede the western pagan territory, from eastern Masada to Magdeburg, to the empire. Instead, it requested that the Empire and the Southern Kingdom pay a reasonable amount of money for the resettlement of the Western Kingdom residents living in that land.
It can be seen as selling land for money, but the Caliph’s strategy was clever. He knew that the problem of the Empire and the Southern Kingdoms was not financial but political chaos. He realized that there was a willingness and ability to pay to reduce political chaos.
Also, he knew that what the Pope really wanted was to guarantee the security of the southern kingdom’s borders. Before the current borders were drawn, the Southern Kingdom was in contact with a significant portion of western pagan territory, which posed a potential source of instability for the merchants of the Southern Kingdom.
However, if the eastern part of Masada is allocated, the southern kingdom will lose contact with the western pagan territory.
My father, Emperor Alexios I, who stood up and defended the empire when necessary, but loved peace and stability more than anyone else, judged it to be an urgent priority to restore the empire, which was in chaos due to the armed uprising of the nobles and the revival of the Tree of Life paganism. He did it.
Thanks to this, the front line entered a state of ceasefire, and discussions seemed to be progressing well. But the situation changed rapidly. The Masada fortress collapsed overnight. This is a rare incident in which the walls of the castle collapsed when Jericho, the famous commander of the Knights of the Holy Grail, blew a trumpet and appealed to God.
It is certain that Commander Jericho blew the trumpet. But it was a signal to the Corps of Engineers, not a miracle from God. Of course, I agree that the operation was successful because of God’s help, but I want to remind myself that God does not automatically grant miracles when people do nothing.
The Southern Kingdom and the Pope’s army were secretly digging tunnels under the Masada fortress even while truce negotiations were in progress. It was such a secret invasion that even the imperial army did not know about this fact.
Western pagans living in vast deserts and flatlands lacked knowledge of siege warfare, and as a result, they took advantage of the fact that they were vulnerable to tunnel detection technology.
The Southern Kingdom Engineers dug a tunnel under the Masada fortress and then built wooden supports. When Commander Jericho blew the trumpet, the engineers poured oil on the rotting animal carcass, set it on fire, and quickly evacuated.
The tunnel exploded, the supports collapsed, and the castle walls collapsed. A separate unit of the Knights of Mercy and the Knights of the Holy Grail entered the collapsed castle wall. They cut down everyone in sight.
The same was true for soldiers and civilians, adults and children, men and women. The slogan ‘God wanted it, Deus vult.’ Was engraved in everyone’s mind like a curse.
Only one person. Shazar al-Durman survived. She did not run away and resisted to the end, and then she was captured alive.
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But that actually caused even greater anger. The knights stripped her of all her clothes. They were tightly bound under the blood-soaked banners of the Knights of Mercy and the Knights of the Holy Grail. He decapitated one of her men, poured her blood over her body, and then built a pyramid in front of her with her severed heads.
It meant surrender. Still, she did not surrender.
The knights, who defined Shazhar al-Dur as a witch who abandoned her human heart, set out to ‘correct’ her. It was so harsh that even the Pope criticized the ‘correction’ for going too far.
They calmly did what man cannot do to man, but what can be done in the name of God.
No woman in the world could have suffered worse insults than that. No human being in the world could have been trampled so cruelly. It was an insult to existence.
The news also reached the West. The Caliph was furious. After that, a slaughter took place. He washed away blood with blood and avenged his enemies. Now it was meaningless to know who was more at fault.
The knights tied Shajar al-Dur’s naked body to her cross and stuffed a cloth into her mouth to prevent her from harming herself. And he proudly placed it on the carriage so that it could be seen from afar.
The heretics of the West rushed in solely to save her, and the Knights were able to easily defeat them.
The pagans also did the same thing. Those who survived were stripped naked, hung upside down on poles, and continued to be paraded. The cruelty continued to increase, and the madness grew with no end in sight.
The Knights did not win unilaterally. Even if it was the land of the Knights the night before, it would be taken over again by the pagans the next day. However, the war gradually became more favorable to the Allies. Emmaus’ supplies began to run out.
To reach Emmaus from the Western Kingdom, one had to pass through a wide and hot desert, but the Empire and Southern Kingdom were able to easily supply troops and supplies through green fields and villages.
At last Emmaus fell into his hands. The Caliphate completely abandoned the eastern desert region. The Allies also did not want to invade across the western desert, so they stopped advancing west.
However, the Masada tragedy was not repeated. This is because the Caliph and Emperor Alexios I made a secret pact.
While the berserkers were rejoicing over the victory of the Third Great Crusade, the Imperial Knights and White Blood Knights arrested all war criminals. It was the moment when the White Blood Knights, a scourge of the empire, stepped into the flow of history.
The arrest was ruthless, quick, and based on clear evidence.
The battle with the corrupted members of the Holy Grail Knights in the process is still said to be a shame for the Holy Grail Knights and a source of pride for the White Blood Knights. Just three members of the White Blood Knights slaughtered thirty-six members of the Holy Grail Knights.
‘There is no Holy Grail, they are not knights, they are not even a group, they are a bunch of demons who are crazy with lust and play with their waists.’ This teasing remains an indelible stigma on the Knights of the Holy Grail to this day.
That is how the White Blood Knights rescued Shazar. She was still alive and conscious enough to testify about the war crimes committed by the Pope’s Templars, and she was also close to giving birth.
Following accusations, testimony, deepening war fatigue, and worsening public opinion, the Pope and the Southern Kingdom completely gave up their territorial claims. Many members of the Knights of the Holy Grail and the Knights of Mercy received harsh beatings and confiscation of property from the imperial army and were driven out of the country’s borders.
The emperor himself handed over excessive commander-level personnel to the caliph as a ‘gift and symbol of friendship’, so the knights did not offer much resistance.
Instead, the Pope requested that Magdeburg be designated as a holy site and the right to freely use the trade route. The emperor accepted it.
The southern part of the country, once the center of trade, had become so devastated that it was difficult to know where to begin, and becoming a trade center again was difficult even with the national power of the empire at the time.
Even now, the border area from the west of Magdeburg to the desert forms an ambiguous cultural area that is neither an empire nor a western kingdom. The volunteer troops who participated in the holy war settled down as residents and achieved a strange fusion with the indigenous people.
It was around this time that mixed blood between people from the Empire and Southern Kingdom and western strangers increased rapidly.
The children were not welcomed either in the empire or in the West. The children were called Samaritan, meaning Samaritan, which refers to the capital of an old kingdom that was forgotten and abandoned even in the western kingdom. Therefore, being a Samaritan would be no different from being an ‘outcast.’
Shahahahazar al-Dur was upright even in the imperial palace. He did not surrender until the end and continued his speech relatively coherently. In her arms, her newborn baby was suckling. Like her other children, he too was a ‘Samarian’.
The emperor did not point out her rudeness. They pitied her, praised her high courage, and regarded her as an honored guest from a foreign country rather than an enemy general. Her emperor promised her a high position and her good doctor. To the emperor, she was still the chieftain of the West.
But she politely refused all of them. She instead asked to settle in Emmaus with the Samaritans. The emperor listened to it, dispatched imperial teachers directly, and prohibited any discrimination against Samaritans.
Shazzar al-Dur remained silent all his life, and the Samaritans came to regard Emmaus as his home. Although they grew up without parents, they grew up safely in the arms of the empire and grew in number.
Similarly, the emperor decided the nature of the Third Crusade as follows.
‘Active defense.’
Thanks to its excellent expression, the Third Crusade was defined as an active ‘defensive war’ between the Empire and the Pope that drove out the nuisance of the West. This meant attacking the enemy’s beachhead and blocking the temptation to attack.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the emperor’s mercy would later be rewarded in another form.
Because Lady Arianne of ‘Humility’, one of the seven heroes who defeated the Demon King, was one of the Samaritans.
– From ‘Samaritans, innocent people born in sin’, by Anna Commodus. Capital Academy Press.』