My gut impulse is that they might have been great.

No, after 700 years of Islamic invasion, it took hundreds of years to free Spain. They took millions of slaves. No, it was a response to Islamic invasion.

And until the British got involved, 120-something years ago doing this, the Muslims were not expanding anymore because we kicked their ass in a 300-year war called the Crusades after 700 years of them attacking us. And they got their asses handed to them. And their imams admit we beat their asses. We killed millions of them. They started it. We did. We kicked their ass.

The Crusades were a response to 700 years of attacks.

Crusades were a response for those don't know to 700 years of Islamic invasion, the capture of much of Eastern Europe, the capture, you know, the takeover of the Byzantine Empire, the takeover of Spain itself, and hundreds of years to recapture those areas. So the Crusades was a defensive response.

And so starting about 1200, when they've driven all the way into Western Europe and are taking over and have captured all these countries and grabbed Sicily, you know, the Italians were blonde hair, blue eye, but now, you know, they got dark hair and everything because they get captured all the way up to almost the Muslims almost take Rome. And the Pope finally gets scared and says, okay, we need all the Catholics in Scotland, Ireland, England, and in the Netherlands and in France. We need you to get together and launch a desperate counter-strike. So for 500 years, they strike back. And the media tells you that was an offense. So that was a defense.

There weren't millions. It's not estimated that millions died in individual crusades. And in fact, there's no real historical consensus for the death toll. Generally speaking, the accepted range among scholars is somewhere between one and three million for the entire span of the crusades, which I should remind you lasted from 1095 to 1291. That's 196 years. And because it's something that happened over such a long period of time, so long ago, and such a wide area, most serious scholars don't even think it's worthwhile to try and nail down precise numbers. It would just be impossible. With that being said, there's no way Alex's numbers are even close to accurate, leaving aside the fact that the 3 million figure includes combatants from both sides, not just Alex's beloved Christian Crusaders.

You know, when I was in college, they taught that we invaded in the Crusades, and Hollywood movies show that. Ridley Scott, you know, makes these movies. No, they invaded us for 300 years before we turned the tide when they almost took Germany and Poland and then had to do La Reconquista in Spain, everywhere. We didn't invade the Muslims. And so that's just the reality.