The Crusades and the Near East

by Kostick, Conor

  This was an era of profound changes in the political formations of the region as well as in the ideas that were circulating in both societies. A growing cry for jihad to counter the Christian armies by the Islamic clergy was a factor in the emergence of Muslim princes capable of ruling much larger territories than their predecessors. In the West, crusading led – among other developments and not in a linear fashion – to a growth in the alienation of the Latin world from the Byzantine Empire; a furtherance of the concept of national identity; and an increase in the circulation of polemical texts belittling Islam. More positively, although less definitively, the period in which Christian states existed in the Near East was one where a sharing of knowledge could take place, to the mutual advantage of practitioners in fields such as medicine and architecture.

  It was an era of both conflict and cohabitation.

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  I N T R O D U C T I O N

  Byzantine Lands

  Lands ruled from Aleppo

  Fatimid Caliphate

  Lands ruled from Damascus

  Seljuk Empire

  Lands without stable rule due to

  warfare between rival Seljuk emirs

  Turks of Asia Minor

  Lands without stable rule due to

  warfare between Fatimids and Seljuks

  Armenians

  Map 1.1 The political boundaries of the Eastern Mediterranean c.1090, shortly before the arrival of the First Crusade

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  C O N O R K O S T I C K

  Principality of Armenian

  Kingdom of Jerusalem

  Cilicia (1198–1375)

  (1099–1187)

  County of Edessa

  County of Tripoli

  (1098–1144)

  (1109–1289)

  Principality of Antioch

  Byzantine Empire

  (1098–1268)

  Map 1.2 The political boundaries of Christian territories in the era of the crusades 8

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  WA R F A R E I N T H E

  M E D I T E R R A N E A N R E G I O N I N

  T H E A G E O F T H E C R U S A D E S ,

  1 0 9 5 – 1 2 9 1

  A clash of contrasts

  John France

  Crusading warfare in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was marked by a fascinating clash between the Turks, who employed a highly mobile and fluid fighting pattern, and westerners, whose methods revolved around a relatively slow-moving style based on mass and solid formation.

  Medieval warfare in Western Europe in the age of the crusades is often symbolised by the castle and the knight, and this does express a certain reality. The economy of the west was overwhelmingly based on land, which does not produce much liquidity – cash. This meant that the medieval state could not easily collect taxes to pay for bureaucrats and standing armies. The soldiers had to have their own resources, land, to enable them to equip themselves and their followers.1 As medieval society was not an equal but a deeply unequal society, great men with great estates played the leading role in politics and warfare, and they were very difficult to control. They enjoyed de facto governmental power because kings without articulated administrations had to delegate power. In turn, great men could not be everywhere, and they had to delegate to others. In effect, society was dominated by the patronage-spheres of great men, their mouvances, within which those wealthy enough to serve as fully equipped soldiers were especially privileged and enjoyed a position of negotiation with, rather than full subordination to, their masters.2 Moreover, it is not sufficiently appreciated that their estates were not great blocks, but packets scattered across the countryside interpenetrating with the lands of others. An English example is Aubrey II de Vere (1108–41), who inherited the lands acquired by his father in the Norman Conquest in Essex, Suffolk, Cambridge, Huntingdon and Middlesex. His son, Aubrey III, was made Earl of Oxford, and in celebration he built the magnificent Hedingham Castle on the Suffolk–Essex border, where the family estates were densely concentrated.3

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  J O H N F R A N C E

  The dispersal of properties inevitably created property disputes, adding to the political and personal tensions among relatively small groups of great families who dominated the countryside in the various ‘states’ of medieval Europe. Moreover, families had to commute between their possessions because they needed to collect and eat up the right and dues they collected from the peasants which were largely paid in kind. This created the need for comfortable houses which, in a dangerous society, had to be protected. From this situation was born the castle, which is essentially a fortified private house. But the castle needed a garrison. This was provided by the armed men whom we call knights. In the age of the First Crusade their social status was enormously variable. Some, especially those who could claim some family relationship with the great lord, were granted landholdings in return for service in administering and protecting the lord’s land. Others were simply paid as ‘table knights’ who earned bread and board by protecting their master, but could be paid off at his pleasure. Since resources were short, lords employed relatively few knights, but they were superbly equipped and provided with the leisure to train for war. In effect, they and their masters formed a military elite who could fight on foot or, for preference, on horseback. European agri-culture was dominated by the production of grain so there were few open plains capable of raising grass-fed light horses cheaply. In any case, this small minority needed armour and fine weapons if it were to dominate the masses, so heavy grain-fed horses were essential to carry such weight. Warhorses could be produced only by selective breeding and they then had to be trained for combat. They were, therefore, very expensive and knights preserved them by riding lesser animals until they were needed for combat. Even then, heavily burdened by man, weapons and armour, warhorses were capable of only short bursts of fast movement, after which they were exhausted. But the momentum of their charge was terrifying. As a Greek princess, Anna Comnena, remarked: ‘A mounted Kelt [Frank] is irresistible: he would bore his way through the walls of Babylon; but when he dismounts he becomes anyone’s plaything.’4

  These men were highly effective soldiers, well used to small-scale warfare in which they sallied out of their lands to ravage the territory of their neighbours in pursuit of the disputes which divided great aristocrats or the petty quarrels which they picked. When some greater quarrel arose, the lord could augment numbers by bringing together several of the scattered groups of soldiers who served him. Further reinforcement could be found by hiring mercenary knights who would be paid off as soon as the military situation allowed. However, substantial actions demanded larger forces, not least because enemy fortresses, usually of earth and timber, would have to be attacked and new castles created. This demanded large forces of infantry. Sergeants were very petty landholders who could equip themselves reasonably well for war and perhaps even come mounted, but most footsoldiers seem to have been recruited from the more adventurous but barely trained peasantry. Their equipment would usually be very limited: a spear or bow and arrows, a padded jacket and perhaps a metal or leather helmet would be the norm.

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  W A R F A R E I N T H E M E D I T E R R A N E A N

  They were not just needed for what might be called ‘military labouring’, because the broken and seamed countryside of the west, deeply imprinted by arable farming with its many barriers, sometimes favoured footsoldiers. At Hastings in 1066 the English formed up on foot at the top of a hill, annulling much of the advantage of the Norman horsemen in height, reach and weight. In addition, bad weather could hinder horses. The infantry could also be strengthened by employing professionals, mercenary foot, usually drawn from areas of frequent warfare like Flanders and Spain, some of whom might bring the accurate and hard-hitting crossbow to war. Infantry are clearly inferior man for man to cavalry, but their advantage lies in the fact that they are cheaper and so can be hired in mass. But to be effective, above all to manoeuvre, mass needs to be trained, and me
dieval armies had very short lives, simply because of cost. Hence, in general, infantry were at a great qualitative disadvantage. This lack of training was compounded when a king or very important lord called together a very large army. It was usual to divide such a force between milites et pedites, knights and foot, but locally raised footmen were not used to working with those from other localities, and an army would only rarely be kept in being for sufficient time to enable them to train together. This problem also affected cavalry, who would be trained well as individuals but would be used to working only in small groups with their immediate neighbours and, occasionally, with more distant groups from within their own lord’s retinue. Such kin and neighbour groups were the effective components of the cavalry and fought together under a banner in a unit of variable size called the conroi in the twelfth century. A great royal army was a gathering of retinues of the great, and each retinue was in turn made up of these local groups.

  Medieval armies, in short, lacked cohesion. William the Conqueror’s army of 1066 was therefore unusual: because it was delayed by unfavourable winds, it had the opportunity to exercise together at Dives for a month.5

  This, in part, explains why commanders were relatively reluctant to commit to battle. This was always, at best, a chancy affair, ‘where fortune tends to have more influence than bravery’.6 At Conquereuil, on 27 June 992, Duke Conan of Brittany lured Fulk Nerra of Anjou’s army into charging into a concealed trench.

  Conan then pursued the Angevins, but paused to strip off his armour in the heat of the day, and was killed by some enemies hidden in nearby bushes! 7 But the incoherence of medieval armies amplified the dangers. Great lords might desert their commander or untrained soldiers could panic and flee. Knights made a cult of bravery, but the minor skirmishes, which were the staple of the medieval war of raiding, promoted a highly individualistic ethos of war which, in the absence of any real command structure, could result in actions quite contrary to a commander’s intentions. Sensible commanders, therefore, approached battle with caution and always had a real sense of its dangers. At Gisors in 1198, Richard I of England (1189–99) routed the forces of Phillip II of France (1180–1223), but in a letter to England Richard admitted that the whole affair had been highly dangerous: ‘In doing this we risked not only our own life but the kingdom itself, against the advice of all our counselors.’8

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  J O H N F R A N C E

  For much the same reasons even sustained sieges against alerted fortresses were not common. They demanded a very high degree of organisation and sustained effort which was very expensive. Most obviously, besiegers had to provide their own shelter and food. And sieges were also open to chance. In 1078 Robert Curthose rebelled against his father, William the Conqueror, who gathered a strong army and besieged his troublesome son in the castle of Gerberoi. But Robert made a sudden sally, unhorsed his father and put the besiegers to flight.9

  As a result, armies, even large armies, preferred ravaging the land to undermine the economic base of the enemy, deprive his army of food and provide it for your own. A poet here portrays Philip, Count of Flanders, in 1173 advising how to attack an enemy: ‘Lay waste the land; let it all be consumed in fire and flames. Let him not leave them, outside their castles, in wood or meadow as much as will furnish them a meal on the morrow.’10

  Destruction of this kind was the staple of war in medieval Europe. It had enormous advantages. In the main it involved bullying peasants, which might not be glamorous, but was certainly safer than fighting well-armed enemies. It offered a solution to an attacking army’s worst problem – logistics – because they could consume and carry off as well as destroy. It also drew a defender’s forces, precipitating skirmishes in which knights could demonstrate their bravery, while informing the commanders on both sides of their enemy’s strengths and dispositions.

  There were battles, but a soldier as famous as Henry II of England (1154–89) could have a distinguished military career without ever fighting in one. At Bouvines in 1214 the victory of Philip II of France decided the fate of the French kingdom, the English realm and the German Empire, even though there were less than 20,000 troops on the field. In the thirteenth century armies became more professional and better organised, but at Tagliacozzo on 23 August 1268 the forces of Conradin defeated those of Charles of Anjou only to throw away their victory by scattering to plunder the enemy dead, enabling the Angevins to rally and crush them. Battles were fought at very close quarters, and indeed at Bouvines, Eustache of Malenghin was grasped from behind by a French knight who tore off his helmet while another stuck a dagger in his heart. In 1265 at the Battle of Benevento, Charles of Anjou’s army was almost defeated by a group of German cavalry heavily armed and fighting in very close order, but Charles made his French knights close right up with the enemy, even thrusting with daggers.

  Overall, westerners had a slow-moving style of war which turned on siege and its attendant destruction. When battle had to be fought it was a matter of a very direct confrontation in which the key arm was the heavy cavalry which fought in close order. While archery was used, it was rarely decisive, and victory went to the side which fought the most ferociously in the dreadful hacking-match of battle.11

  The First Crusade was an assembly of armies, each of which gathered around one of the major leaders, such as the Count of Toulouse or Bohemond of Otranto. But there were groups among them who owed little to the great leaders, like Gaston of Béan, who seems to have drifted out of the mouvance of Raymond 12

  W A R F A R E I N T H E M E D I T E R R A N E A N

  of Toulouse and become associated with the Count’s great enemy, Tancred.12

  This loose structure was always characteristic of crusading armies. In the case of the First Crusade they survived the initial contact with the enemy in Anatolia largely by luck and sheer numbers, and the experience welded them into an experienced and coherent fighting force. But the forces of the Second Crusade were defeated in Asia Minor largely because they lacked discipline. The presence of the charismatic Richard of England and the long struggle to capture Acre from 1189 to 1191 made the army of the Third Crusade formidable. By contrast, the Fifth Crusade (1217–21) lacked an overall leader, and the contingents which fought on it came and went, apparently taking the view that one year’s service was enough for anybody. The French crusade of Louis IX of France (1226–70) was a different case, in that it enjoyed a unified command. But at the Battle of Mansourah, Louis’ brother, Robert of Artois, charged rashly into the town after a local success, and he and his forces were cut off and annihilated. In many ways this exemplified the problems of command and discipline in medieval armies, and it certainly compromised Louis’ chances of a decisive success.13

  The Middle East about 1100 was a radically different kind of society. It was also ultimately agricultural, but trade was far more important, a cash economy existed and it was ruled by great courts with elaborate bureaucracies set in important trading cities. At the head of society was the Caliph, but political power rested with the Sultan of Baghdad, who ruled through a bureaucracy organised around ministries ( diwan) and delegated authority to governors and office-holders.

  No authority could afford huge standing forces, but all these personages had substantial personal followings ( askars) which they augmented at need by other forces – paid or conscripted for a short period.

  The Middle East has a radically different landscape from Europe. It is an area of open plains, which make for easy raising of small horses, and there is open space in which they can move, unlike the seamed and closed countryside of Europe.

  Even now this is classic tank country in which mobility is vital. In medieval conditions this meant the dominance of cavalry, and the best troops among them were alien to the Middle East. Since the ninth century the Caliphs had regularly employed elite units of Turks, a steppe people whose special expertise was as horse-archers. As the Baghdad Caliphate declined, these expert troops became highly influential at the Baghdad court a
nd became diffused across the whole area, finding employment in the askars of governors and even in the rival Fatimid Caliphate of Cairo. In 1055 Turks, led by the Seljuk family, invaded the Caliphate and seized power there in alliance with countrymen already in Baghdad. (Indeed, from this time until 1919, Turks would rule the Middle East.) The Seljuk sultans recreated the old empire of Baghdad, and in the process drove the Fatimids back into Egypt, seizing Jerusalem in 1073. Turks were an alien minority and it is a sign of this that they built citadels in the great cities of the Muslim world, notably at Damascus. The purpose of these mighty structures was to shelter the new and alien rulers and overawe the mass of the population.14 Turkish horse-archers, always recruited directly from the steppe, were never great in number but 13

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  increasingly formed the cutting edge of armies. They were backed up by hordes of native light horse, especially Bedouin, some of whom were also archers, though most wielded lances and swords. Less often, these were backed up by heavy cavalry of Persian origin, called Agulani by the Franks: ‘The Agulani numbered 3000; they fear neither spears nor arrows nor any other weapon, for they and their horses are covered all over with plates of iron.’15

  One result of the crusader wars seems to have been an increase in this heavy element in the Islamic forces. Horse-archers and other light cavalry had strings of spare mounts and this gave a capacity for rapid movement and, on the battlefield, swift manoeuvre to Middle Eastern armies. In the end, unless their enemies were terrorised by the rain of arrows from fast-moving horsemen who sought to surround and harass, they would have to fight at close quarters, but fire and movement enabled them to unsettle their enemies and break up their formations.