The European
Middle Ages were filled with turmoil, rebellion, conflicts, natural disasters,
and famines, making it one of the worst times to be the head of a state. In this video,
we will highlight why 1224, in particular, was one of the most challenging years of that era.
If you could go into a time machine and go back to that specific date, you would quickly discover
that no matter which kingdom you choose, the possibilities of it collapsing were incredibly
high, regardless of your decisions. This is the world you will find yourself in the
Knights of Honor 2 - the sponsor of this video. This new game from THQ Nordic seeks to open up
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One key tool you’ll have is espionage. Send spies to reveal the locations of enemy armies,
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a preview on the difficulties of being a ruler in thai period, let’s carry on with the video.
What may sound like an incredibly bold claim, seems even less plausible once we take a look at
who the reigning monarchs of the major factions were at the time. Considering the time period,
the fact that so many of the reigns spanned over 3 decades would usually mean that those
states would be prosperous. The other issue is that if 1224 is a difficult year for everyone,
wouldn't that make it easy for an opportunistic kingdom to rise above the rest? These questions
are exactly what makes this period so fascinating and today we will go through each of these major
factions and examine the challenges they faced. It was only 10 years since the fall of the Angevin
Empire, 9 since the Magna Carta was signed and 8 years since the French prince entered London
to be proclaimed King of England, yet despite his 56-year-long reign Henry III did little to
improve the prosperity of his kingdom. He was only 9 years old when he was crowned king of England,
which meant the state was in the hands of a series of regents creating various factions
with their own interests. In 1224, during the regency, England lost Poitou, Saintonge,
Périgord, and Angoumois and there was nothing the young king could do to stop the French onslaught.
Henry didn’t have much power until 1234 and by then he had just as many rivals as he did allies.
Ultimately this would lead to the second Barons’ War led by Simon de Montfort in 1264. Henry did
his best to balance the numerous relationships with his vassals, knowing that at any point, a
sign of weakness could lead to Scotland, Gwynedd, Ireland, or France taking even more land from him.
Henry had a few successes, mainly due to his religious and diplomatic efforts,
but in between them he was defeated in Wales and France, enacted antisemitic laws, and bankrupted
the nation in his failed attempt to obtain Sicily, leading to a three-year-long civil war.
Despite his best efforts to bring prosperity to England, he failed, which only goes to show how
difficult it was to succeed when surrounded by so many internal and external problems.
As for the prince who briefly took London and half of England, in 1224 he was just starting
his reign as king of France as Louis VIII. On paper, this was a very powerful and rich state,
but in reality, the map we are often shown can be quite misleading. The French crown had very
little authority over the majority of its vassals, who collected their own taxes, went crusading,
and fought amongst each other. The most powerful of them was even at war with the crown for nearly
two decades at the time. The Albigensian or Cathar crusade was a campaign aimed at the complete
genocide of a large group of people, who believed in reincarnation and the equality of the sexes,
avoided meat, but most importantly denounced the authority of the Papacy. At the time Occitania
and the rest of France were as separate from each other politically, culturally, and linguistically
as France and Spain are today, which meant that this was also a war of conquest and as an
active participant, Louis VIII was dedicated to ending it. Unfortunately for him, his reign was
not nearly as long as Henry’s since he contracted dysentery and died while campaigning in the south.
This highlights another massive disadvantage for the rulers of the time. Successful campaigns had
to be led personally, in order to boost morale and prevent coups, as letting a
powerful vassal lead your army for you was often an easy way to lose your throne and head.
On the other side, many leaders of this time were captured and bankrupted their states,
due to how high the ransom was, lost their lives on the battlefield,
or died of dysentery like Louis VIII and his successor Louis IX.
The Kingdoms of Navarre and Aragon were deeply involved in French affairs as well
as the situation in Iberia, with one holding lands in Champagne, while the other held lands
in Occitania. Alongside them, there were the kingdoms of Leon and Galicia, Castille and Toledo,
Portugal, as well as the counties of Barcelona and Urgel ruled by the crown of Aragon.
Once again we see how decentralized Iberia was, despite their common cause against the
powerful Almohads, who they managed to defeat in the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212.
The immediate effects of that battle didn’t do much to turn the tide, but in 1224 caliph Yusuf II
was gored while playing with his pet cows, dying at the age of 20, with no heirs. This led to the
quick election of his elderly uncle Abd al-Wahid I, who took the title in Marakesh. By this point,
the caliphate had many factions and the governors of Al-Andalus were unhappy after being excluded
from the election, so they elected their own caliph in Seville and started moving troops
across the Gibraltar strait to contest the throne. Within a year, the sheik of the Hintata tribe Abu
Zakariya seized the royal palace and strangled the caliph. This was the first coup in the
history of the Almohads and the majority of the nobles were shocked at this precedent. Paranoia,
fear, and ambition gripped both sides of the caliphate as the Iberian kings readied themselves.
Indeed this was arguably the most important moment in the history of the Reconquista.
Six years later, the king of Leon and Galicia would die and his lands would
be inherited by his son Ferdinand III, who ruled the kingdoms of Castille and Toledo,
similarly how Isabella and Ferdinand of Aragon would unite their two dynasties centuries later.
James of Aragon would conquer Mallorca and Valencia, while Ferdinand took Córdoba, Murcia,
Jaén, Alicante and finally Seville by 1248. Accomplishing that took an immense amount of
careful planning and shrewd diplomacy. Even with the civil war ongoing, which was joined by another
Almohad pretender in 1228, each of the Christian kings was careful not to over-expand and waited to
resolve their significant domestic issues. By this point the so called taifas had a rich history of
local autonomy and would be incredibly difficult to maintain, even if they managed to conquer them.
Overextension could have angered the local nobles, clergy, expose the monarch to illness or create
disputes between them. As an example of how things can go wrong, even when your opponent is at their
lowest, we only need to look at Portugal. Sancho II did manage to capture Algarve and Alentejo,
but fell short on his administrative duties. His merchants often quarreled with the clergy
and his nobles conspired against him and after the bishop of Porto complained about him to the Pope,
Innocent IV declared him a heretic, before the nobility replaced him with his brother Alfonso.
The Papal State didn’t always yield that much power, but by the late 12th century,
it had positioned itself to be the most dominant spiritual and secular force in Europe. Pope
Honorious III initially accepted his post with reluctance, but by 1224 he was involved in nearly
every part of Christendom, even convincing Henry III to accept him as his feudal lord.
He approved the Dominican and Franciscan orders,
crowned the first king of Serbia and prepared the fifth crusade. To say that the relationship
between the pope and Holy Roman emperor were on thin ice would be a massive understatement,
since the two posts were at war with each other during the reign of Frederick Barbarosa, however
the rift between Honorius and Frederick II was on an even bigger scale. Every problem a ruler could
have was multiplied by the hundreds of cultural, political, and geographic lines within the Empire.
To simplify things there were two camps, one loyal to Frederick and one opposing him.
Those camps were evident in Germany, Italy, and the Holy Land. His ancestral home in Swabia was
separated from his base in Sicily by both the Alps and numerous Italian cities, loyal to the Papacy.
The majority of the electors were against him and many families wanted to see him deposed, Denmark
held a significant portion of the north, Lorraine was in constant disputes and Bohemia had so much
power that he was forced to recognize Ottokar I as king in his own right. The impossible task of
ruling numerous bishoprics, counties, duchies, was made even harder by his excommunication,
which Frederick counted by relying on many Muslim soldiers, he even settled 20 000 Sicilian Muslims
in Lucera, alongside many Greeks and Jews where they built a thriving cosmopolitan town.
In 1224 he founded the oldest European state university in Naples to counter
the papal-controlled universities of Bologna and Paris. His policies centralized southern
Italy and allowed Palermo to rival Venice, Paris, and Seville in both its influence and population.
Frederick was one of the greatest diplomats, administrators, and military commanders of his
era, and even he failed to overcome the challenges before him. After his death,
the empire entered a period known as the great interregnum lasting over a century, while his
dynasty would collapse in half that time. The Scandinavian rulers also had numerous
challenges to tackle. The early reign of Valdemar II of Denmark was marked by significant successes
as he interfered in both the Holy Roman Empire and Norway, capturing valuable territories from
one and placing his pretender on the throne of the other. But these ventures earned him
an anathema from the Pope and the anger of his peasants who started a rebellion by the mid-1210s.
His fortunes turned in 1219 when he assisted the Livonian crusaders at the battle of Lyndanisse,
but in 1223 he and his oldest son were abducted by count Henry of Schwerin, while hunting.
Truly a bad place, from which to rule a kingdom that just overexpanded in every direction.
Eric XI of Sweden was luckily not imprisoned in 1224, however, he was just 8 years old,
with his kingdom ruled by a regency, which of course later rose up against him.
In what is becoming a very obvious theme by now, King Haakon Haakonsson IV was also
fighting a civil war at the time, one that raged since 1130 and ended with him. In all fairness,
this is probably the most successful ruler of this era, since under his long reign, Norway entered
its golden age. His 300-ship fleet dominated the North sea, he built important diplomatic and trade
relations, and took over the western shores of Scotland, as well as Iceland and Greenland.
That being said, as the long history of Norway shows us, Haakon IV was an incredibly
talented man and in 1224 his fate was in the balance, there were many others in his shoes,
who didn’t come close to his successes. Stability was obviously a huge issue, especially
if you have four sons like Boleslav III of Poland did. So before he died, he came up with a system
intended to prevent fratricidal wars. The country was divided into five provinces: Silesia, Greater
Poland, Masovia, Sandomierz and Kraków. Each son would receive a province, while Krakow was
reserved to the person they elected to be worthy of the crown. This may sound like a bad idea,
but it was actually a horrible one, that resulted in two centuries of infighting between the Piast
rulers. Leszek I had four separate reigns, but in 1224 he had enough influence to invade Ruthenia
with the help of Hungary. Just three years later, though, he would be brutally murdered during a
council meeting in the Gasawa massacre. Poland was so divided that even as the Mongols trampled over
the country and killed their king at the battle of Legnica, they continued their infighting.
Andrew II was one of the most influential kings not just of Hungary, but the Middle Ages.
He dramatically reformed his state based on Franco-German laws. Simply put, he took a
very centralized kingdom and started handing out lands to vassals. He handed out lavish gifts and
privileges in an attempt to inspire loyalty to the numerous new positions. Contrary to popular belief
his motivation behind these actions was not to see how fast he could end his dynasty, but actually,
so he could have more time to deal with other matters, particularly campaigning. However,
he soon realized that most of the work was carried out by the minor and middle nobility who were now
severely neglected. In 1213, his wife Gertrude of Merania and her courtiers were assassinated by a
group of conspirators because of her obvious favoritism of Germans. Due to the handed-out
privileges, Andrew could take action against only one of the many nobles involved in the act.
Hungary was in a desperate state, but in 1217 the king decided to answer the call to crusade.
Andrew had hoped to become the next emperor of the Latin Empire, so he threw everything he had
into this campaign. One of the largest crusader armies ever assembled was loaded up on the biggest
crusader armada provided by Venice in return for Zadar. The idea was to attack the Holy land from
both Syria and Egypt, but most importantly not attack Constantinople. The plan worked,
but then Andrew decided to withdraw and the entire campaign fell apart, ending in total disaster.
On his way back he offered the hand of his daughter to both the ruler of Nicea and Bulgaria.
Upon his return to Hungary, he discovered that the crusade had bankrupted the realm and there
was now a plot to overthrow him. This complete mismanagement led to the Golden Bull of 1222,
a more radical version of the Magna Carta, which Andrew was forced to sign. In it,
the nobles and clergy were given numerous rights. They could no longer be arbitrarily arrested, put
on trial without approval, taxed, were no longer obliged to answer the call to aggressive wars,
foreigners could receive titles only with the approval of the royal council, and finally:
If any of the clauses were to be broken, they had the right to rebel. In short, the crown
of Hungary lost all of its allies, had powerful factions who hated it and the treasury was empty.
That may sound horrible, but at least Hungary was still intact, which can’t be said about the
Eastern Roman Empire. On paper the Byzantine successor states still held a significant
portion of the former Empire. But in reality, this was the region that can be best described
as a game of thrones. Steppe riders versus heavy mounted knights, a red wedding, brutal massacres,
forced conversions, prolonged sieges, child kings, and mad kings, this period had it all.
Every faction in this power struggle had both allied and been at war with every other faction in
the two decades since the sack of Constantinople. Bulgaria, Epirus, Nicea, Trebizond, and the Latins
were all claimants to the imperial throne and the balance constantly shifted. What made this region
even more volatile was the constant assistance and interference of outside forces like the
Cumans and French reinforcements. 1224 is a great starting point since each of the factions starts
off relatively equal to the rest, but within the next 6 years we see a burst of Epirote successes
and then after one decisive engagement at the battle of Klokotnitsa in 1230 Bulgaria turns
the tables and doubles its territory. Tsar Ivan Asen II re-converts to Orthodox Christianity
and nearly takes Constantinople, only to be succeeded by his infant son, plunging his
state into a crisis it never recovers from. That is how easily fortunes could turn in this period.
Overall there was not a single region that was stable at this time, Europe was a house built
on sand ready to fall. In fact, if you were an outside force that wanted to conquer this vast
continent, this is the period you would be the most successful in. And in 1241 an unprepared,
fractured, feuding and exhausted Europe was trampled by the hooves of the Mongol
Horde who decimated Rus, Poland, Hungary, and the Balkans in what was essentially a bonus
quest. So the question is, do you have what it takes to be a successful ruler in this period
in Knights of Honor 2? Which kingdom are you going to pick? Tell us in the comment section.
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