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Military History of the Crusades

The purpose of this research is to examine the military history of the Crusades. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context of Middle Ages military convention at the time of the Crusades, and then to discuss how the Crusades were initially fought militarily, how military strategy and practice changed over the course of the many crusades and why, and the influences on military practice that occurred because of the encounter between Islamic military and wider culture on one hand, and European warfare and weaponry on the other.

By the time of the Middle Ages, the principal military fact about Europe appears to have been that indigenous European forces deriving from the Imperial Roman infantry had for various reasons been overwhelmed by the barbarian innovation and advantage of armed cavalry. This innovation was gradually adopted in Europe, according to Oman (1953), as one answer to the fact that, in the fall of the Empire, the greatest weakness of the until-then strong Roman army turned out to be the absence of significant numbers of native Romans in the force, and the concomitant presence of multiethnic personnel, who had no particular loyalty to Rome as such, comprising the "Roman" ranks. The transition from infantry to cavalry as the basic military unit in medieval Europe also marked the transition from the decline-of-Rome Dark Ages to the medieval period proper. As Oman puts it, "It would seem that the empire--having finally abandoned the offensive in war and having resolved to confine itself to the protection of its own provinces--found that there was an increasing need for troops who could transfer themselves with rapidity from one menaced point on the frontier to another" (Oman, p. 3, 1953).

One important characteristic of European crusader military forces appears to have been its mercenary character, which is to say a parallel situation with respect to the decline of Rome. To understand why this was im...

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Military History of the Crusades. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 19:07, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1705047.html