The rise of the European sociomilitary system, as an aspect of the aristocratic reconstruction, began by 1050 to fuel a steady expansion of the frontiers of this civilization. Initially, in the absence of a strong central authority that could bestow riches and prestige on its followers, local lords who wanted to expand their resources were forced to turn to economic development. Many began to encourage the opening of new land for cultivation, the founding of new villages, and even the founding of towns with charters of liberty as potential market centers and tax revenue sources. While there was much land available on the internal frontiers of Europe—the tracts of wilderness between settlements in settled areas—abundant land beckoned even more invitingly on the external frontiers: the Baltic and Slavic lands to the east of Germany; the Muslim lands of the Iberian peninsula and Sicily; and the Celtic fringes of Europe: Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. The effect of the aristocratic reconstruction on this outward movement is still a matter of scholarly dispute, but it would seem that the need to find new lands for younger sons as primogeniture became more common probably played some role. What is more certain is that much of this expansion had the character of private enterprise at the level of local and regional lords. At least at first, kings played little role. The foundations for the expansion were laid in the century prior to 1050, when there arose both the social and economic conditions that would spur expansion and the military system that would spearhead it. The most prominent example of this expansionist movement was the Crusades (see Chapter 11), but, in important ways, the expansion of civilization begun in this age continued uninterrupted for nine centuries.
Figure 12.1 European Expansion, 900-1300
A combination of economic, military, and religious techniques and motives spread the core organizational features of western Europe.
The private castle, the heavily armed knight, and crossbow-bearing infantry drawn from the towns provided the military mechanisms that opened the way for expansion of western Europe’s frontiers (Figure 12.1). Naval forces and technology also played a significant role (see Chapter 15).
The role of the castle in expansion shows that its tactical defensive strength also gave it an offensive role strategically. As secure bases of operations, castles allowed the soldiers housed within them to dominate the surrounding countryside, as well as standing as visual symbols of that domination. Especially once they were rebuilt in stone or brick, castles were difficult for the less technologically advanced peoples of eastern Europe and the Celtic fringe to take; Muslim foes in Iberia and the Mediterranean had sophisticated siege weapons, but the sheer number of castles erected by private lords along frontiers created a serious obstacle.
Armored knights were the offensive strike force in the field. Mounted for strategic mobility as much as for tactical reasons, knights were formidable less as cavalry than as elite warriors who could fight on horse or foot. Their social and economic dominance allowed them to be armed and armored with expensive iron and to be warriors on a full-time basis as a basic element of their lifestyle. Weight of armor and level of training were often knights’ most significant advantages against external foes. Their social position also allowed them leadership over lower-status infantry forces, which provided the bulk of numbers in western European armies. For their part, the infantry not only had their own effective weapon system in the crossbow but drew on the demographic advantage that the intensive cereal farming of European culture provided over the less intensive pastoral and seminomadic agricultural economies of many neighboring cultures. Weight of numbers was particularly important in garrisoning numerous castles and besieging enemy forts.
Social cohesion under knightly leadership was supplemented by the cultural cohesion provided by Christianity, especially crusading ideology. Crusading fervor could be directed not just against pagans and Muslims but against nonstandard Christians, whose different social organization or lack of ties to the regular church structure centered on Rome put them on the wrong side of a cultural boundary. Social and cultural cohesion came together in the crusading orders that participated in frontier warfare in both eastern Europe and the Mediterranean. Orders such as the Teutonic Knights, who carved the state of Prussia from the pagan lands along the Baltic, were significant because their transregional organization allowed them to draw resources in wealth and manpower from more than just the local region. Their direct ties to the pope meant that crusades were often preached in support of critical campaigns, again drawing recruits from a broader demographic base.
But the western European advance should not be seen as irresistible in purely military terms. Military success was ultimately secured by colonization, not conquest, and life along the frontiers was characterized by much give-and-take technologically and culturally. The spread of western European systems of law and urban organization were crucial mechanisms in expansion and were closely tied to military organization and effort. New castles were often closely associated with new towns; castles both protected and controlled urban populations, while the economy of a town, especially if it had a successful market, helped support the lord of the castle. Security helped attract new settlers, as did the legal privileges offered to peasants and townsmen alike as lords sought to populate their new lands with productive workers. The legal codes granted to new settlements or extended to older ones in frontier areas often regulated the military responsibilities and militia duties of the townsmen. The various legal codes of the Spanish marcher communities are probably the best-known and most militarily intensive examples. Militia arrangements were not just defensive but could encompass offensive action as well: Spanish urban militias could profit from aggressive cattle-raiding expeditions, for example. Such connections between legal codes and military service also extended the notion that legal rights and responsibilities were closely tied to the right to bear arms. Much of the success of western European expansion in the Middle Ages can be traced to the linkage on the frontiers between demographic and economic growth on one hand, and military aggression on the other.
Another reason for this success was the adaptability that Europeans showed to local conditions. Here the regional and semiprivate nature of much frontier expansion undoubtedly fostered the ability to respond to a wide range of challenges: There was no central imperial authority imposing doctrine or stifling initiatives. Adaptation was necessary in part because of terrain and climate. For example, heavily wooded or mountainous frontier regions such as Wales were unsuited to the charge of heavy cavalry. There, lighter, more mobile troops—cavalry and infantry—were more valuable, and English forces learned Welsh methods of raid and ambush to complement their castle building; knights were important as leaders rather than as heavy cavalry. Eventually, the Welsh longbow became an important part of the English tactical arsenal. In contrast, Spain was suited to cavalry action, but the hot climate meant that Spanish knights wore lighter armor and rode lighter horses than their northern counterparts. There were, however, cultural limits to such adaptability, as the refusal of western European forces to adopt massed horse-archery in the Holy Land or elsewhere shows. And in the end, Wales was conquered not by Welsh methods but by the massive application of demographic and economic force by Edward I, cemented by his construction of a network of formidable castles.
Adaptation went both ways as well. At times, peoples threatened by European expansion responded by adopting European methods of social and military organization. Creating a force of armored cavalry depended on creating a nobility who could provide such forces (or, as in the case of Scotland, importing a new nobility, at least in part). Rulers in loosely organized tribal areas were often eager to follow this path as a means of increasing their power within their society, and the more stratified hierarchies that emerged did allow some areas to defend themselves more effectively. However, this came with the cost of a decline in freedoms and standards of living for much of the population. Western Europe’s sociomilitary structure was thus still readily exportable, and the civilization spread by assimilation as well as conquest and colonization. This too proved a two-way process, as western Europeans absorbed elements of pagan and, most important, Arab culture even as they settled pagan and Arab lands.
Given the political fragmentation of western European civilization, the still rudimentary powers of even its most powerful kings, and the semiprivate nature of frontier warfare, much of the success of western European expansionism resulted from the fact that the cultures and polities it faced on its frontiers were usually at least as fragmented, if not more so, and often less technologically advanced. The major western European kingdoms did not face a strong, sophisticated, expansionist foe until late in the fifteenth century, at which point the Ottomans proved more than a match for European armies for several centuries. And there was one major piece of luck in this freedom from significant outside threat: western Europe avoided the Mongols.
Mongol armies, having subjugated Russia, advanced into eastern Europe in 1241, smashing Polish and Hungarian armies in the course of their campaigns. Mongol Tumens then approached Vienna and Venice (see Chapter 13). Western Europe was in a panic, and rightly so. Despite papal attempts to mount a unified response to the threat, European disunity and ignorance of their foes contrasted sharply with the Mongols’ unity of command, clarity of purpose, and sophisticated intelligence. Their operational mobility and remarkable siege capabilities almost guaranteed success in campaigns farther west. Logistical difficulties might have slowed or limited their progress somewhat—western Europe was unsuited by climate and geography to support vast cavalry armies (the horsed aristocratic elites of medieval Europe were a minority in their own armies and tiny in absolute terms). Mongol difficulties in Syria illustrate the possibility, but much of southern China was equally unsuitable, yet it fell under Mongol rule for nearly a century. The fate of Baghdad, sacked so brutally by the Mongols in 1258 that it did not recover fully for centuries, shows the potential for damage that western Europe faced.
But in 1241, the hordes turned back to elect a new Great Khan, and they never returned. As a result, western European political, economic, and cultural development was allowed to continue uninterrupted. This continuity enabled the civilization to weather a century of internal crises from 1350 to 1450 and then to resume the steady external expansion that had characterized it since 1050.