Military History of the Crusades

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 w

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of battle, particularly in siege warfare: "(T]o insist that the frontal cavalry charge was the sole tactical expedient of feudal generals is to ignore the evidence that can be found about literally scores of engagements." On the other hand, Beeler also says that orders of battle were difficult for crusaders, particularly in campaigns in Latin Syria, Christian Spain, and Lombardy, owing to the lack of good military training typical of crusading forces (Beeler, 1971, p. 251). Siege warfare appears to have been a major component of military engagement during the crusades, and that means that fortress fortifications were also important. This became evident when crusaders or Moslems tried to besiege fortress towns, which may have had rudimentary fortifications but "offered space, material and moral resources favourable for prolonged resistance and while a conqueror might easily ignore an inaccessible castle, it was absolutely vital to control such centres of economic, administrative and human resources (of) towns" (Contamine 1980, p. 101). Contamine explains the development of machine-based attack strategies geared toward breaking down defenses at besieged towns and protecting the attacking forces. His description of such machin
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Approximate Word count = 2717
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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