I wouldn't advise the XIII century. Or most of the XX. Or the 5th BC. Or ...
As a matter of fact, you probably just have "better" news of the world, not objectively worse conditions. There was a post about that recently ...
http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/014312...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades
C13 is 1200-1299
(I may have been echoing an old SF story where a XXX century displaced person was telling a friend about his punishment for trying a ruthless power grab, which was being dumped in Warsaw in September 1939. However, he had bounced back, remaking a good life. But the "friend" was an agent who then proceeded to continue the punishment by dumping him in Baghdad before Genghis hit it ...).
Anyways, pick a century, any century ...