Reynald de Chatillon

Entry #25 in project #EuropeanBios is Reynald de Châtillon. He was a knight in the 12th century who rose to become Prince of Antioch and a real piece of shit. He was a product of his time, but there's no denying he was a vicious murderer, part of a broader campaign of violence.

Reynald is the second of four participants in the Crusades in this project, the first being Eleanor of Aquitaine, who we covered yesterday. I didn't really know much about the crusades before reading these bios, so I'm going to dig into them a little.

Europe in the 12th century had spent several centuries in nearly continuous internal warfare but was finally beginning to settle down and achieve (relatively speaking!) stable borders. An accidental side-effect of this was the Europe had a surplus of knights.

Knights were real people but in the context of military history it can be helpful to think of them as a piece of very expensive military equipment. It took enormous amounts of money and people working to support knights, and Europe's kingdoms had built up stockpiles over years.

Knights were often of noble birth, but usually a second or third son, not in line to inherit anything under the rules of primogeniture, and therefore surplus to requirements. Turning them into killing machines was thus a convenient outlet for them.

Knights were trained from birth, indoctrinated from birth in violence. Reynald's biographer likens them to the child soldiers of Africa, brainwashed to kill, though of course nowhere near as cruelly, and with a thin veneer of religious respectability for their aggression.

Thus the crusades presented a convenient outlet for this expensive pile of surplus military equipment to be put to profitable use, with the emphasis on profit: the crusades were an attempt by Europe to raid, plunder and colonize the middle east.

They were given a thin religious veneer but even at the time, knights and other participants in the crusades were openly encouraged with the chance to gain enormous wealth through plundering and conquest. They could live like kings in the cities they occupied.

The result of this is that the inhabitants of the middle east were rightly pissed at this naked attempt to steal their countries. They were so pissed off about it some of them are *still* pissed off about it, nearly a thousand years later, and honestly it's hard to blame them.

For knights, in addition to getting rich, the crusades were a get-out-of-sin-free card. The prospects of getting rich, being absolved of one's sins and coming back to Europe in glory were strong enticements. Reynald was one of these. His life before the crusades is unknown.

He first comes to the attention of history by marrying Constance of Antioch. She had inherited Antioch from her father. Her needs were practical: she needed someone strong and passably noble to help retain her throne. Reynald fit the bill and had distinguished himself in battle.

Antioch, founded by Alexander the Great, was one of several city-states in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) that the early crusades had conquered and colonized. For Reynald, becoming Prince of Antioch was a gigantic social step up, a realization of all the crusades had promised.

He kicked of his reign by brutally torturing the local bishop in an attempt to extort him for money. He beat him bloody and left him to bake in the desert sun after rubbing honey into his wounds so he was also stung by bees and wasps. Reynald was a merciless sadist.

As Prince of Antioch he led raids to plunder nearby muslim settlements as part of the broader money-grab that was the crusades. On one of these raids he was ambushed, captured, and then thrown into prison in Aleppo. He was kept for 15 years, during which time his wife died.

Since his wife had been his claim to his throne, having entered prison as a 36 year old prince, he thus emerged as a 51 year old former soldier with no power, no money and a burning hatred of his former captors. It's likely that this helped accentuate his later cruelty.

The crusades had not been going well for the european invaders while he was in prison, primarily because of Saladin (who we'll be covering in a later bio). Reynald fought a number of battles against Saladin, who was steadily conquering towns and encircling the Europeans.

In one of these battles, Reynald violated a truce, invaded the holiest of muslim lands and threatened Mecca itself. Saladin never forgave him, and even though the west has mostly forgotten him, this transgression is still a source of anger for fanatical muslim extremists today.

When I say they're pissed today: in 2010, bombs disguised as printer cartridges were sent via FedEx and UPS to Chicago, set to explode in mid-air over Chicago. They were intercepted before they went off. One of the packages was addressed to Reynald.

Eventually Reynald was defeated, captured and personally executed by Saladin after he refused to convert to Islam. By a total coincidence, the date of his death is today: the 4th of July 1187, exactly 883 years ago.

There's really not a lot to recommend Reynald. He was a vicious sadist, a treaty violator, and a violent mass murderer in the unnecessary, bloody, greedy colonial war of conquest that was the crusades, a historical disaster whose effects are still being felt today. Fuck that guy.