Can you do a brief summary ?
My attention span reading history stuff is very very limited.
It was during the First Crusade at the Siege of Antioch.
The First Crusade isn't really something to do justice in a post like this, but basically it was a complete disaster from start to finish yet still managed to be the only Crusade that achieved much. The Roman Empire had split into two with the Eastern Roman Empire becoming the Byzantine Empire which started getting conquered by the Seljuk Turks.
For some reason that nobody really knows, the Pope at the time called a Crusade to take back Jerusalem from the Muslims and called on all of the noblemen of Europe to assemble armies and get over there quicktime. Even though the Holy Land had been held by various Muslim Governments for 400 years at this point without protest and Christian pilgrimages were uninterrupted, but we digress. The best way to get there for most people was to assemble an army then march through Hungary and meet at Constantinople/modern day Istanbul where the Byzantines would join them to march across Anatolia (the Eastern landmass that stretches from Istanbul into the Middle East), then down into the Middle East.
Antioch was a well defended city fort that is near the coast so was a very important stop off on the road to Jerusalem for hungry Crusaders. And at this point the Crusade has already pretty much fallen apart. There was lots of in-fighting about who was in charge of what between the Lords of Europe, there was a "People's Crusade" that was a bunch of commoners led by a monk who then decided to stick in Europe slaughtering Jews then invaded Hungary because they were, ironically, starving, there were tensions between the Crusading Lords and the Byzantines about what territory would go to who and where and there were constant supply problems as Genoa couldn't get its shit together early on to supply across the Med and the Byzantines were trying to be arseholes to some of the Lords.
Anyway, so Antioch is this well defended fort. The Crusaders all decided that the best way would be to blockade the populace out like the Byzantines did years before by staying miles away from the city but cutting supply lines. Except one Lord who decided to siege the walls because he thought it would be the heroic thing to do and needed to prove himself in battle to impress his Dad. So he Leroy Jenkins'ed it which means everybody else had to follow up with a really badly planned siege attack.
This lasted nine months. Obviously inside the walled city life continued but outside the 40,000 strong army was starving to death. They foraged around the area as much as possible but when winter came they were fucked. Despite this, they managed to constantly beat back reinforcements coming from other Muslim nations to keep the siege alive but the causalities were heavy. They started eating their horses which was never a particularly smart move when sat outside a city in the middle of a desert in the Middle East against some of the best horse archers on the planet. The Turks had a Scorched Earth policy when retreating so they destroyed the wells, cattle and burnt crops knowing they'd get rid of the Crusaders that way. So the Crusading Lords were tired, starving and in-fighting. Some of them left to go home and took their part of the army with them.
Of course good old Blighty came to their rescue and brought a load of supplies, fresh men and siege weapons over so they could have a proper go at the walls. There were rumours of another large force coming towards Antioch and the Europeans decided that they'd attack the walls before they got here this time. Mainly because they had no chance against a properly forced Army. They eventually captured the city but had a major problem in that they'd bled the area dry so it was essentially indefensible. Especially with the on marching force about to come at them. Some of the Crusaders, well some of the French ones anyway, started an argument about who actually owned Antioch now and in a fit of historical Frenchness decided to leave the Crusaders to their fate and go home. At this point the Crusading Armies had no food, no water, their supplies were draining, half of them had buggered off and they had to defend this shithole in the middle of nowhere against one of the largest forces assembled at that time. Oh and also at that point there were numerous Earthquakes, a meteor hit next to the city and the sky changed colours (probably some light tricks with clouds). Now if you're the type of guy who marches several thousand miles across the world to fight a religious war with nothing but your own religious devotion and a keen sense of hunger to keep you going, then you're almost always the superstitious type who believe that God throwing rocks at you and shaking the ground probably meant something bad. So add shit scared of righteous damnation from their God to the above list.
The Turkish forces attacked and did so in great number. For four straight days the heavily outnumbered and beleaguered soldiers were fighting on the walls of Antioch, many of them without any form of relief. Morale plummeted and the battle seemed all but lost with the Turks making breakthroughs by the hour.
Now "fortunately" a local preacher who was based in Antioch just so "happened" to "find" an "ancient Christian relic" known as the Holy Lance. This was supposedly the Lance that was stabbed into the side of Christ's body as he was on the crucifix. As you may tell from the amount of quotation marks, this was regarded as bullshit mainly because the Holy Lance was already on display in Rome and among the Crusading Lords happened to be a Papal representative who had literally seen this on display there lots of times. So it would be odd to find it buried beneath a Muslim city. But news spread of the Holy Lance through the Crusader Army and as they were starving and hallucinating a shit-ton themselves then they wrapped themselves up in the delirium and the Lance became the real Lance rather than just a bit of wood someone had found. So what did the Crusader Lords do with this? Of course they determined it was DEFINITELY the Holy Lance and it was a sign that God would trust them again if they went on a religious fast. Which meant that the armies no longer thought of themselves as starving but instead they were fasting, it turned their negative morale into a positive attribute.
With the type of determined inspiration that can only be produced by righteous men, the Crusader armies gathered together into six groups representing their six remaining Lords. The screams of "Deus Vult" were heard as they charged into the vastly superior Turkish force, a force who saw them coming and lit a wall of fire to stop the assault. Soldiers and scribes from this moment say that they hesitated until they saw the ghost of Saint George carrying the red cross on the white banner riding alongside them, riding through the fire and straight into the Turkish lines. The Crusaders followed and ran through a wall of fire into the besieging overwhelming force who were sat fresh, waiting for them. Despite their tired and starving bodies, that inspiration made them fight like they'd never fought before and the Turkish centre line eventually broke under the carnage - the line was directly facing the Lord carrying the Holy Lance and the line that St George had rode into. As their lines broke, the Turkish armies started to disintegrate and flee in an unorganised mess leaving just the Crusaders standing tall having held Antioch.
Now there's a lot of probable misinformation in that as well as some omissions and a lot of completely out of context stuff (especially towards the end) but that's the basic story that was passed down through English tradition. We're so separated to these events now by almost a millennium that this type of religious fervour seems almost admirable at times, though every news report of ISIS reveals that to be the lie that it is. It's a nice story either way.
