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The First Crusade (1): Leaders and Knights© Michael Evans
OK, now I’ve got last week’s rant out of my system, it’s back to the history of the crusades...
We have seen how the first wave of the crusade, chaotic and at best semi-official, came spectacularly a cropper. However, if the Turks were expecting all the crusaders to be an incompetent rabble like the ‘People’s Crusade’, they were to be sadly mistaken. Other armies were on their way east, led by powerful nobles, with a core of hardened men bred and trained for the military life.
Social and technological changes in eleventh-century western Europe had created a class of upper-class mounted warriors who I will, for the sake of convenience, call knights. (Historians disagree on whether this term can be used meaningfully in the eleventh century, but that’s an argument for another day). They were men who had the wealth and time to train for warfare, and had developed the ability (aided by the introduction of stirrups into western Europe) to fight effectively on horse-back. With stirrups and sturdy saddles, which helped prevent them falling off their mounts (an inconvenience, to say the least, in the heat of battle), they developed a new and devastating military tactic, that of charging the enemy en masse with lances couched (held in the crook of the arm). Mounted knights were a kind of human battering-ram that was hard to withstand. This can be seen in the Bayeux tapestry, where William of Normandy’s mounted knights overcome Harold’s men, who fight dismounted with huge battle-axes. Hastings was about more than simply the victory of Normans over Saxons; it represents the triumph of the new form of warfare over the old.
This is a long-winded way of saying the crusaders knew how to look after themselves on the battlefield. The Turks had no idea what was about to hit them.
Who led this fighting force? No kings took part, which seems surprising until we remember that royal authority was very weak at this time. Besides, the German Emperor and the King of France had both fallen out with the Pope. So the leaders were drawn from the leading aristocrats of the French-speaking world. Raymond, count of Toulouse, who was probably Pope Urban’s intended leader, ruled much of southern France, and had experience fighting the Muslims in Spain. Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of Lower Lorraine (very roughly equivalent to today’s Low Countries), was another powerful ruler, who later generations would revere as the true hero of the crusade. The leading nobles of northern France were there, in the likes of Robert of Normandy, Baldwin of Flanders, Stephen of Blois, and Baldwin of Boulogne. Finally, from the Norman-ruled lands of southern Italy came Bohemund of Taranto, and his nephew Tancred, of whom we will hear much more. These were noble and powerful men, but many of them were also head-strong and egotistical. Trying to hold this bunch together in the common cause of the Holy Cross was Adhemar of Le Puy, the Pope’s legate (representative) Go To Page: 1 2
The copyright of the article The First Crusade (1): Leaders and Knights in The Crusades is owned by Michael Evans. Permission to republish The First Crusade (1): Leaders and Knights in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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