CHAPTER 2
In 1077 Robert Curthose broke with his father, William the Conqueror, after a spectacular quarrel with his brothers William and Henry. He immediately tried to seize the castle of Rouen but was foiled by the vigilance of his father’s butler, Roger of Ivry. When Godfrey de Bouillon’s enemy Albert of Namur wanted to challenge his control of the family holding at Bouillon in 1082, he tried to build a castle at Mirwart in order to menace the lands which depended on the castle at Bouillon upon which were enfeoffed the knights who formed the core of Godfrey’s mouvance.1 In both cases the first step in the campaign was to secure a fortification. Here we come face to face with a most important facet of warfare in the eleventh century – the key importance of strongpoints. The castle at Rouen would have enabled Curthose to control his father’s capital, giving a certain reality to his earlier claim to hold the duchy in his own right, and it would have provided a rallying point at which to gather all the malcontents of the duchy who, in the event, proved ready enough to rally elsewhere. Albert would probably have built a wooden castle at Mirwart and from there would have ravaged the lands of Godfrey’s vassals around Bouillon in a campaign which could have shaken their loyalty by undermining their economic base and that of Godfrey himself. Both cases illustrate another facet of contemporary warfare – exploitation of the equivocal loyalties of the feudal world. When Prince Louis of France went to war with William II of England, his biographer, Suger, complained that whilst English prisoners were quickly ransomed, French ones, being poorer, had to swear to support the English king.2 War turned on the possession of fortifications, and most military activity was related to possession of them; it was a warfare of position. Fighting in the open field was not uncommon, but it was rarely sought and large-scale battle was especially rare. It was, after all, a very risky business. In 992, a century before the crusade, Conan of Brittany had defeated his enemy, Fulk of Anjou, at Conquereuil, but in the pursuit he paused to strip off his armour because of the heat of the day – alas he had chosen to do so close to the hiding place of some Angevins who promptly killed him and so reversed the apparent decision of battle. Godfrey was almost certainly present in support of Henry IV at the battle of Elster in 1085, when the forces of the anti-king Rudolf triumphed on the field only to see their victory nullified because Rudolf was killed.3 But it was not merely because it was chancy and uncertain that battle was avoided. All military activity depends on luck and phrases like the ‘fog of war’ or the ‘smoke of battle’ express the proverbial uncertainty which surrounds it in all ages. Nor was it merely that in battle the commander’s own life was at risk, though that might sometimes have been a factor. Far more important was that seizure or neutralisation of an enemy strongpoint, perhaps by subverting a leader’s vassals, offered the best and surest, in so far as anything in war could be sure, method of achieving the purpose of war – the destruction of the enemy, or more commonly, his enfeeblement to the point where he could no longer resist your will.
Our perspective upon war is, of course, affected by recent experience in which battle has been central in war. In two terrible world wars the commanders on either side strove to bring their enemies to battle, to smash their armies in the field, to bring them, even, to ‘unconditional surrender’. Such strategies were made possible by the advance of technology which by the late nineteenth century was capable of creating, feeding, supplying and controlling a nation in arms. Without the steam engine, without tinned food and all the related technology, there could have been no Verdun, no Somme, none of the astonishing allied victories of 1918 when the great German army, ‘the motor of the war’ was smashed.4 Without the internal combustion engine there could have been no Stalingrad, no Battle of Berlin, no D-Day 6 June 1944. Allied to this technological development was conceptual development. The nation state is the product of changing ideas interacting with technical possibilities. When advanced nations go to war they provide their own vocabulary of totality – ‘the Home Front’, ‘attrition’, ‘guerre de matériele’, unknown to earlier ages. ‘Total War’, in which all the efforts of an extensive and highly organised society are geared to total victory is the creation of modern industrial society and its apogee is battle: battle on land, on the sea, in the air, or in any combination of these. The aim is to smash the enemy. Of course the second half of the twentieth century has seen more limited wars, but the major conflicts, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, have involved the destruction and creation of whole societies. And looming over all has been the fear of the ultimate conflict between the Superpowers, in which not merely nations, but even mankind itself might be annihilated by weapons of mass-destruction. The First World War, the Second and the Cold War have accustomed all the generations of the twentieth century to see the purpose of war as violent and sudden destruction on a total scale in which battle is the necessary way by which our will can be imposed upon the enemy. It takes an enormous effort to look beyond those assumptions to a different kind of war in a different kind of society. Of course the historian’s problem always is to step out of his age and look with a clear mind at a different environment. But in the study of war this is peculiarly difficult, for the very image of war today is the image of battle. An entire experience of great complexity and length can be fused on our retinas by a single image – the Second World War by a Lancaster Bomber, for example. A military helicopter instantly recalls Vietnam for a whole generation which lived through it. Television and the media have created not merely pictures of particular moments of conflict, but symbols of combat which instantly spring to mind whenever war is discussed, clouding our minds by their sheer power. And our experience of war is reinforced to an astonishing degree by much modern writing about it. Military history has always been rather a special study in that many of its devotees hope to learn by it and implement its lessons in a direct way. Vegetius remains popular amongst military men not because of its historical value but because he provides practical advice which is still relevant.5 But the involvement of practitioners of war carries certain risks, most obviously that they will be thinking of their own world whose assumptions they will project upon the past. It is this which has particularly distorted the study of medieval military history.
Clausewitz’s Vom Kriege, which appeared shortly after his death in 1831 is not a study of medieval history, but no modern writer on war has had more widespread impact on thinkers.6 His dictum that war is ‘a continuation of political relations, a carrying out of the same by other means’ is now a cliché. His work appeared and made its greatest impact at the very time when modern scientific historical method was being developed, primarily in Germany. Hans Delbrück (1848–1929) belonged to a generation profoundly marked by such ideas and his monumental work, A history of the art of war within the framework of political history, the very title of which reflects Glausewitz’s most famous dictum, was extraordinarily influential. His approach to the subject was influenced by Clausewitz’s notion of the need to destroy the enemy’s forces in battle. The book tends to read as a series of battle descriptions, especially in Book II of the third volume which covers the period under consideration here.7 From Clausewitz has sprung a whole genre of writing on the theme of ‘great battles’ and it has coloured our view of war. In the English-speaking world this was greatly reinforced by Sir Charles Oman in his History of the art of war in the middle ages which analysed the subject in the light of the nineteenth-century theory of ‘decisive battle’. His account of war in the eleventh century turns on two battles, Hastings and Dyrrachium, in a chapter entitled ‘Last struggles of infantry’. In the true spirit of Clausewitz whose analysis of his experiences in the Napoleonic wars led him to emphasise mobility (‘It is better to act quickly and to err than to hesitate’; ‘A fundamental principle is never to remain completely passive’), Oman speaks disparagingly of the Anglo-Saxons, ‘The stationary tactic of the phalanx of axemen had failed’, and concludes that ‘The supremacy of the feudal horseman was finally established.’ Oman’s history of medieval warfare is truly battle history and his impact upon English-speaking writers has been enormous.8 This view of medieval warfare as dominated by battle has been reinforced by another trend in nineteenth-century historiography.
The figure of Charles the Great loomed large in the writings of French and German nationalists of the nineteenth century who made strenuous effort to claim him as one of their own. Discovering an explanation for the rise of the Carolingian empire was, for them, a matter of deep concern. For Delbrück there was a military explanation. Faced with attack by Muslim cavalry from Spain, Charles Martel invented the knight, the heavily armoured cavalryman, for whose support he developed the fief, the foundation of feudalism. It was this unique weapon at its most effective in the massive cavalry charge with its enormous ‘shock effect’, which enabled the Carolingians to build their empire. This view was for long repeated by orthodox text-books and its tenacious hold on historian’s minds can be explained by its extraordinary scope as an explanation. The invention of heavy cavalry explained not only the rise of the knight and the growth of the Carolingian empire, but also the development of feudalism. The depth of explanation was even further improved by the suggestion that it was the invention and dissemination of the stirrup which gave the horseman stability and made possible the armoured knight. Thus technology served as a buttress to an already impressive and symmetrical structure.9 Unfortunately there is almost no evidence to sustain this theory. We know very little about the battle of Poitiers in 732 when Charles Martel defeated an Islamic army from Spain, and the whole argument that his immediate successors used a new kind of cavalry whose shock effect shattered their enemies is a nonsense.10 The truth of the matter would seem to be that no-one invented the mailed cavalryman, whom we later in English call the knight and in French chevalier. Rather, cavalry had always been an element in armies. The better off preferred to ride rather than walk, and tried to protect themselves with the most effective kinds of armour. By the early tenth century, when we first hear reports of heavily armoured men being used in the mass amongst both the east and west Franks, the stirrup and the high saddle, both of which were necessary to provide security for the horseman, seem to have evolved and spread, and chain-mail appears to have been improving. More decisively the pressure of external attack and internecine conflict within the Carolingian lands led the kings and princes to disseminate land to their followers as a means of providing themselves with well-armed men. Even so, the classic mass charge with couched lance generating shock at the point of impact was not yet any kind of norm, as a glance at the Bayeux tapestry will show.11 But the real trouble with the Oman/Delbrück theory was that in focussing upon the knight it provided us all not merely with an idea but also with an image of war as an affair of battle in the open field. If warfare in the eleventh century was an affair of knights, were these surely not romantic figures whose very function was the charge in open battle? This is, after all, the image provided by the Song of Roland and much later literature such as the Arthurian cycle, which in one way or another has filtered through into the consciousness of almost all who have dealings with the medieval world. The reality of eleventh-century warfare, to which the leaders and their followers on the First Crusade were accustomed, was altogether less glamorous. The knight as a soldier was adapted to his economic and social context, to the technical possibilities available and their limitations and to the ideas of that day of what war was about.
It is clear that by the end of the tenth century the great cleavage in West Frankish society was that between men who could arm themselves properly for war and those who could not, who formed the mass of the population. But this superior group was not homogenous and the term noble was quite distinct from that of knight. The knights were, in most of Europe, an inferior group often closer to the peasantry than to the aristocracy they served. In Spain, portions of land were created for the support of both cavalrymen (caballerías) and infantry (peonías) to defend the newly-won plains and caballeros villanos subsisted with caballeros hidalgos.12 In recent years the status of the Anglo-Norman knight has been highly controversial, but the balance of discussion suggests that there were enormous differences in wealth and status in a section of society largely removed from that nobility.13 In Southern Europe, knights remained associated with the peasantry from whom they seem to have emerged, while in the Germanic lands they arose from the ministeriales. Even in the north of France knights were a very mixed class. Only in the Mâconnais had their fusion with the nobility seriously begun by the time of the crusade. Duby found that most of the knights in one area of the Mâconnais were of noble descent, but he was surveying only endowed knights.14 William of Jumièges tells the tale of a smith of Beauvais who brought a small present for Duke William who responded munificently with money and two horses; a year later the smith returned offering his two sons in service, unmistakably military, to the Conqueror.15 Such men were in the service of the castellans, counts and princes who dominated contemporary society and what they offered was council and advice, as all followers ought, but above all military service. For this they might be rewarded with cash, with maintenance in a lordly household, or with land, or indeed with all three cither at once or at various times. They were soldiers as their title proclaimed, and primarily horsemen. In the south, terms such as caballarius remained important. But although they were a military class many of them were also involved in other matters – primarily farming. Thus they were not, in the simple sense, professional soldiers and any sizeable gathering would have had something of the character of a militia.
However, their military function was very demanding for the technology of the age demanded leadership by a military élite. In a relatively poor agricultural society only a few could afford to clothe themselves in iron, with the pointed helmet, the hauberk or chain mail shirt (with or without coif) and the heavy wooden kite-shaped shield which covered the horseman on his left side from thigh to shoulder. The weapons of attack remained largely what they had always been: the sword, the bow, the axe, the club in its various forms and the spear, though perhaps they were better made and more often of iron than ever before. To handle all these successfully, the soldier needed not merely muscles, but an athletic musculature. Only the well-to-do had both the leisure to train their sons from an early age and the wealth to equip them. In the Mâconnais in the eleventh century a horse cost between twenty and fifty sous, five times the price of an ox which was probably the most valuable possession of a peasant, while a hauberk cost 100 sous, the price of a good manse.16 Godfrey de Bouillon was only sixteen when his uncle Godfrey the Hunchback designated him as heir, but Lambert of Hersfeld describes him as being already active in military matters.17 Ordericus gives us an interesting insight into the risks of knightly status in his account of the seven sons of Giroie, one of the benefactors of his abbey of St Evroul. Arnold, the eldest, was in a ‘friendly wrestling match’, when he was thrown against the edge of a step, and with three ribs broken, died within three days. Hugh, the sixth son, was killed by a carelessly thrown lance while he, his brothers and friends were practising. Giroie, the youngest, died of madness returning from a raid, while Fulk, the third son, was killed fighting in the retinue of Gilbert of Brionne. The exercises for war, it seems, were as lethal as the thing itself.18 The use of weapons was itself demanding, but so was the learning of horsemanship. War-horses were specially bred and trained animals, but even so the rider must have had to master his beast ruthlessly to make it face the horrors of battle. The war for which these young men trained was primarily a war of close combat – the killing ground was literally the length of a man’s arm. The Frankish sword of this age was primarily a hacking weapon with a relatively blunt point. It tended to be about 76–83 centimetres long and to have a shallow valley running down its length. Such weapons were expensive and individually crafted, and in surviving cases balance remarkably well so their 1.5-kilogram weight could be easily swung.19 The spear might be thrown, as is seen in the Bayeux tapestry, but in the hands of both footmen and cavalry it was a weapon for the thrust. The knight’s hauberk probably could not turn a solid thrust from a spear or a cut of the sword which landed squarely, but it seems to have been worn over a padded garment and so may have been fairly effective against glancing blows which must have been common at close quarters in the flailing scrum of battle when the shield would be relied on for protection. Its split skirt fell over the thighs giving them some protection. The conical steel helmet looks a precarious affair, but it was probably provided with a lining for security. Commonly it had a nasal to protect the face, and sometimes a metal bar at the rear. Again it was probably little protection against a direct blow such as that which fell upon Robert Fitzhamon at the siege of Falaise in 1106 leaving him lingering as an idiot for a while before he died. But it was evidently well secured and especially when worn over the mail hood or coif could be effective against the glancing blow; such a combination saved Henry I from a heavy blow at Brémule in 1119.20 Medieval fighting must have looked like a cross between a primitive football mêlée, Afghan polo and a butcher’s yard, as men, mounted and on foot, hacked and jabbed at one another.21 The very close nature of the conflict explains much about the warrior ethic which underlies chivalry – the emphasis upon personal combat, personal bravery and comradeship. It was a very intimate affair. At the battle of Elster in 1080 where Godfrey de Bouillon probably fought, the soldiers of Henry IV jeered at the troops of the anti-king Rudolf who were unable to cross marshy land to attack.22 The young knight who could afford all the panoply of war was well equipped, well protected and mobile – but the limitations of his equipment are all too evident. He needed spare horses, for to ride his destrier all the time was an obvious folly. To feed and arm him he needed servants, squires as they would later be called, who would have to have horses to be mobile. His mobility was thus hampered by his supports. To ride alone was of course folly – knights worked with others in the business of war. In close woodland or broken ground his advantages of height and weight were largely nullified. A century after the First Crusade Gerald of Wales would comment: ‘When one is fighting only in the hills, woods or marshes … with a complicated armour and high curved saddles, it is difficult to dismount from a horse, even more difficult to mount and yet more difficult to get around on foot when necessary’.23 The Welsh about whom Gerald was talking were, of course, pre-eminent as archers who appear to have been an element in almost all forces at this time.
Archers formed a very important part of the ‘other ranks’ of an eleventh-century army. Our sources tend to focus on the armoured knights, whose clerical relatives were after all the authors of the history of the age. The Bayeux Tapestry, an invaluable source for the military history of the period, shows the battle as essentially one between heavily armoured men, on the Norman side mounted. It was almost certainly commissioned by Odo of Bayeux and such an expensive undertaking must have been directed to the influential – the upper class. Their taste in literature – Chanson de Roland – gives us some idea of how they liked to see themselves, and to some extent the tapestry is an epic strip cartoon.24 But the executors knew that archers played an important part, and they portrayed no fewer than twenty-nine. But of these only six are in the main strip. They appear to be better equipped than those in the lower margin, but this may be simply a function of scale; a lot of the marginal figures are mere sketches. Of the six major representations one is English, a pigmy beside the armoured men, whose small size probably is an indication of low social status. Only one Norman archer is shown mounted and it has been suggested that he had probably seized a horse for the pursuit.25 But one of the archers is well equipped with the same helmet and hauberk as the knights, and this introduces the possibility that he was of that status. The bow was the weapon of the poor man because it was cheap, a simple stave which at this time was probably not much shorter than the classic six-foot English longbow of the later middle ages.26 But we know that the Conqueror was a formidable bowman, as was Robert Curthose.27 These references may be to the bow’s use for hunting, but at the siege of Jerusalem Godfrey himself did not hesitate to seize a bow and use it accurately. In 1103 his brother, Baldwin king of Jerusalem, had a magister sagittariorum, one Reinoldus who is explicitly referred to as a miles Regis, and who was himself a notable archer.28 The knight was not yet a member of an exclusive social caste with characteristic weaponry. Wace speaks of the archers at the battle of Varaville in 1057, and later during the campaign of 1066, as specialists, but this may reflect the conditions of the time in which he was writing, a century later.29 The bow was a fearsome weapon, deadly even to the best equipped knights. Henry I was saved from an arrow strike by his mail, but perhaps his armour was of unusually high quality.30 In the Bayeux Tapestry we have ample testimony to its effectiveness – mailed bodies stuck with arrows. Interestingly, bodies with arrows in them occur in the margin only in those sections where the action in the main part shows arrows in shields, though there are no marginal bodies in the pasage where Harold falls. This appears to be an effort to convey the episodic use of archers between attacks by others.31 All these figures are armed with the simple stave-bow, perhaps a little shorter than the classic six-foot longbow. It is puzzling that the tapestry never depicts a crossbow, for both William of Poitiers and the Carmen de Hastingae proelio say they were used at Hastings. This mechanical bow with its short four-sided heavy-tipped quarrels must have been a very expensive weapon and seems to have been much less common than the ordinary stavebow.32 But contemporaries commented upon its effectiveness, notably Anna Comnena, who, however, was writing long after the First Crusade.33 Its mentioned frequently in the sources for the First Crusade. The crossbow had many distinguished victims. In 1106 at Candé Count Geoffrey of Anjou was killed by a crossbow, and in the same year Roger of Gloucester fell victim at the siege of Falaise while Theobald of Blois was wounded by one at Alençon in 1118. But Richard I of England who was struck by a bolt at Chalus in 1199 is the best known of all.34 Bows of all kinds could be used with considerable accuracy. At Bourgthéroulde in 1124 Henry I’s archers successfully executed orders to cut down horses rather than knights, and William Crispin’s charge at Brémule in 1119 seems to have been destroyed by archery which killed his horse and those of eighty-six others. Such events explain Ordericus’s comment ‘the unarmed horse was a surer target than the armoured knight’. They also explain the savagery with which victorious knights often treated defeated archers, massacring them indiscriminately.35 The church’s ban on the use of such weapons against Christians at the Second Lateran Council in 1139 is a testimony both to the effectiveness of archery, and the ineffectiveness of such ecclesiastical legislation. But the effectiveness of the archer was also circumscribed. In attack archers needed to be protected against sallies for they were lightly protected and vulnerable in the open. They were at their best in defence, and most particularly in defence of fortifications.
The bow was very valuable but it was usually necessary to close with a determined enemy to destroy him. It is this which explains the dominant role of fortifications in war on the eve of the First Crusade, for the attacker was exposed to missiles on his approach and then had to fight at a disadvantage. In 892 a major Danish army landed in Kent and stormed a half-completed burh even though it was manned only by a few peasants.36 Clearly this burh was not very formidable – heaped earth, perhaps with a walkway and palisade, like so many of the similar structures which Alfred began to build across southern England. Yet the Danes thought it worthy of attack, for it could form a base for operations against them, inhibiting them from spreading across the countryside in raids searching for food. When we think of fortifications we think of walled cities or castles whose crumbling remains are such a feature of the European landscape. But fortifications were often much humbler things. A study of a small part of Normandy covering an area of 12 kilometres by twenty kilometres, has revealed three or four stone castles and no fewer than twenty-eight earthwork strongholds. This multiplicity of defences in the feudal age explains the wide vocabulary, so puzzling to historians, used to describe strongpoints.37 What is important to realise here is how difficult it was for troops to take even a modest fortification. Any castle could be blockaded, but this exposed the attackers to starvation especially if the garrison had had enough warning to devastate the countryside. On the other hand if it came to assault the attackers had other problems. The medieval soldier, even equipped with full armour, was not massively weighed down by it. The hauberk probably weighed about eleven kilograms and the sword about one and a half kilograms. If we add to that a few kilograms (say two) for the helmet, padded undergarment etc., weight was not excessive. But the shield must have been much heavier: it was made of wood and metal with leather straps and, with its long kite shape, was difficult to manipulate. No examples have survived, but a fair guess about weight would be fourteen kilograms. A total of twenty-seven to thirty-two kilograms for equipment would seem very modest, especially when we consider that a modern infantryman will carry into battle fifty-five to sixty-five kilograms including his rifle.38 However, negotiating any sharp slope in this rather clumsy clothing must have been a difficult business, especially in wet weather, so that even a modest earthwork, especially if crowned with a palisade and a level platform for the defenders, would find the attacker at a disadvantage. A ditch at the foot of the slope would enhance the defender’s position enormously. Of course those assaulting could throw missiles and deploy archers, but so could the defenders and they could hide behind their palisade while the attacker had to expose himself. All this may seem a little elementary, but this kind of reality does not often figure in books about war. A simple earthwork protected by a ditch is an insurmountable obstacle to a horseman, who must descend for an attack on foot in which he is at a disadvantage. Of course a strong and determined attacker could always take a minor fort, as the Danes proved in 892, but at what cost, and how often had it to be repeated? The burhs of Alfred were, for the most part, quite minor, but there were a lot of them and the same system may have been used by Henry the Fowler in Germany in the early tenth century.39 A precisely similar situation arose in Normandy out of quite different circumstances almost on the eve of the First Crusade. After the death of the Conqueror in 1087 William Rufus, king of England, disputed his brother Robert Curthose’s possession of Normandy in a war which exacerbated the already poor situation of the duchy caused by the weakness of Robert’s rule. In 1091 the two brothers reached an uneasy modus vivendi and set about restoring ducal rights in a Council at Caen which insisted that ‘No-one in Normandy may dig a ditch in open country unless from the bottom of this ditch the earth can be thrown out of it without the aid of a ladder, nor may he set up more than a palisade which must have neither redan nor rampart-walk’. Clearly it is the problem of the well-built earthwork circle which could be erected easily by anyone with access to labour which the two rulers had in mind. When the Conqueror landed at Hastings in 1066 almost his first act, as shown in the Bayeux tapestry, was to throw up an earthwork crowned by a wooden palisade. Such constructions needed no skilled architect, no masons, and evidently could be built quickly provided there was labour and a modicum of supervision available.40 A stone-built castle was much more formidable than such simple structures. In the document already quoted William and Robert went on to deal with these. ‘Nor may anyone build a fortification on a rock or on an island, nor raise a castle in Normandy, nor may anyone in Normandy refuse to deliver his castle to the lord of Normandy should he wish to take it into his own hands.’41
The first stone castles date from the later tenth century but, for long, wooden structures remained the norm, like that at Dinan portrayed in the Bayeux tapestry.42 He who controlled a castle controlled the land about it, and in the course of the tenth century in much of France and Lorraine many strongpoints, formerly in the hands of the public authority, the duke or count, were increasingly falling into the private hands of the Domini – Lords who used them for their own ends. Others were being built by these same people and it was the right of the public authority to control the process which Robert and William were reasserting in 1091. In a violent and competitive society the castle-holder could defy even a powerful overlord and could enjoy the profits of lordship over the countryside. For a castellan to lose his castle was a disaster. Robert Giroie was out raiding when Robert of Bellême appeared outside his castle of St Céneri panicking the troops within. Robert of Bellême then burned the castle causing Robert Giroie to despair, ‘So at one blow the noble knight was utterly disinherited and forced to live in exile in the houses of strangers’.43 Even a king had to worry about the power of the castle. Late in life Phillip I of France (1060–1108) confessed to his son that the struggle to grasp Montlhéry had made him old before his time, a consequence of the disloyalty of its holders.44 The castellan dominated the landscape and drew the middling groups into his mouvance, above all the knights who served him and provided castleguard. The community of the castle served to draw such men together in a common military discipline which would serve them well in the field. For it seems that the vassals grouped around their lord were a basic unit of war at this time. Ordericus comments on Gilbert of Auffay that he was ‘kinsman of the duke, fighting at his side surrounded by his companions in all the principal battles of the English war’.45 But the existence of castles conditioned war in a number of ways. The castle was the key to the land and warfare in the feudal age was largely about landholding. Since an attack upon a well-held strongpoint was hazardous, the constant experience of contemporary warfare, so often private quarrels over possession of lands and rights, was ravaging, perhaps accompanied by attacks on unsuspecting, unprepared or demoralised garrisons. On the death of the Conqueror in 1087 Robert of Bellême seized Alençon and other ducal castles and imposed himself upon his neighbours as well. In the conflicts which characterised Normandy during the feeble and disputed reign of Curthose the pursuit of private feuds was a norm manipulated by the competing brothers, William Rufus, Robert and Henry, in their struggle for the inheritance from their father. In November 1090 William of Evreux and Ralph of Conches fell to feuding and William Rufus supported Ralph, thereby weakening Robert Curthose as overlord. Although the duke of Normandy and the king of England became involved, this was essentially a private war caused by the quarrels of the two men’s wives.46 All over the face of France, except in places and at times when overlords were exceptionally strong, such squabbles were the small change of war and the common experience of those who participated in the First Crusade.
One such conflict pitted Ascelin Goël against William of Breteuil. It began, says Ordericus, when Ascelin’s brother William offended against a lady and was adjudged guilty by William as overlord. Ascelin took his vengeance in 1089 by betraying the important castle of Ivry, which he held for William, to Robert Curthose, who extracted a large sum for its return. Both families prepared for war, the Goëls in 1091 enlisting Richard of Montfort and some of the household troops of Phillip I of France, with whose aid they defeated William in a skirmish and captured him. This phase of the affair ended with a peace by which William of Breteuil restored the castellancy of Ivry to Ascelin, gave him his daughter in marriage and made various payments. The peace, says Ordericus, was a relief to all, but it was short lived. William of Breteuil seized the abbey of St Mary as a fortress against the Goëls, but was ejected when they attacked and burnt it. However, the considerable resources of the house of Breteuil were greatly increased ‘with the help of ransoms of captives and plunder taken from the country people’. Thus enriched, William persuaded Gurthose and Phillip I of France to help him, and in 1092 together they attacked Brévol castle. It was strong, but Robert of Bellême also joined them for he hated the Goëls. His expertise in siege equipment forced Ascelin to a peace which restored Ivry to the Breteuil. However, Robert of Bellême evidently was left out of the peace negotiations and as the siege force broke up he attacked and nearly captured, the castle at St Céneri held by another ally of Curthose, Robert Giroie. The Conqueror’s youngest son Henry who had taken Domfront from Robert of Bellême now decided to join the struggle against him, during which St Céneri fell to Bellême.47
This convoluted affair, involving some of the greatest men of Normandy and even the king of France, was merely one of many such episodes in the years of Curthose which were unusual in a duchy hitherto strongly ruled. The war was fought for a limited objective – really it was about possession of Ivry. There was no wish to destroy the enemy à la Clausewitz, though poor Robert Giroie suffered badly enough, and so it was punctuated by peaces. There was one major skirmish and the fact that at the taking of St Mary’s abbey Ordericus mentions the death of a single knight suggests its trivial scale. It was not a war of sieges, although there was one major siege at Brévol, rather it was a war which turned on possession of strongpoints, a war of position. The most significant fact about it we learn only in passing as Ordericus comments on the sufferings of ‘the country people’, for in such a war the knights deliberately attacked and ravaged the lands of their enemies. In an age of poor logistics and major problems over the preservation of food, ravaging was a military necessity to keep an army in the field. This had always been true. Vegetius commented that ‘The main and principal point in war is to secure plenty of provisions and to destroy the enemy by famine’.48 William of Poitiers described the manner in which his hero, William the Conqueror, made war: ‘He sowed terror in the land by his frequent and lengthy invasions; he devastated vineyards, fields and estates; he seized neighbouring strongpoints and where advisable put garrisons in them; in short he incessantly inflicted innumerable calamities upon the land’.49 Ravaging was inevitable in a world where all activities were so directly linked to the peasant surplus. War, though restricted in its extent and usually in its ambitions, often involved destroying an opponent’s economic base and this meant appalling suffering for the people who lived on his land. The savagery of the crusade must be seen in this context. But of course it was also the consequence of castles. Assault was expensive and difficult. It took the combined efforts of the king of France, the duke of Normandy and the Breteuil family to take Brévol. Ravaging undermined the economic base and the morale of the enemy. When Bouchard of Montmorency defied a judgement by King Philip in favour of the abbey of St-Denis, Prince Louis initially ravaged his lands and strongpoints, and only later attacked his castle. In the end, losses forced Bouchard to come to a settlement.50 The same process, of course, shook the allegiance of one’s enemy’s vassals. In 1055 the Conqueror began the construction of a castle at Ambrières in the lordship of Geoffrey of Mayenne who recognised this as a prelude to the devastation of his lands and appealed to his overlord, the count of Anjou. When this latter was unable to prevent the construction, Geoffrey did homage to William.51
It was a much cheaper strategy, indeed one which paid for itself. It is worth noting too that important men, including even the king himself, were quite ready to profit from such affairs which enabled them to pay their retinues and give them an opportunity to plunder, for this remained an important attribute of leadership.52 In the affair of Brévol this was probably at least as important to Philip I as any notion of weakening the duke of Normandy. This kind of war, so common across the face of France, so brutal to the mass of the population, explains the anxiety of the church to divert or control the energies of the military caste. But, although there was little glory in it, warriors continued to practise what was ‘the normal business of war’, which, it should be remembered, in the context of a brutal age was not so very different from the coercive practices of civilian government. In 1051 Edward the Confessor ordered Godwin to harass Dover as a judicial punishment.53 In the early tenth century St Odo of Cluny had written his celebrated Life of St Gerald in which he praised Gerald for forbidding followers to take peasant goods casually – this was evidently common behaviour then and things had not much changed on the eve of the First Crusade when the first knightly act of Ralph, son of Albert of Cravent, was to despoil a monk.54 It is important to see the knight in this context – of a war of position where ravaging and skirmishes turned on possession of strongpoints. To attack them by siege was always possible, but could be expensive. Ravaging could undermine both the economic base of the castle and its psychological underpinning, the loyalty of the vassals who manned it, though it could be a protracted affair. Nor should the castle simply be seen as a passive defence point, for its building, as we can see by the example of Ambrières, could be an offensive act, a first stage in bringing fire and sword to an area with a view to its subjugation. It was a style of war which necessitated the mobility of the knight and at the same time demanded that he turn his hand to many tasks, especially when it came to a siege. Even Robert of Bellême turned out to have engineering skills. Nor is the knight the only figure in such skirmishes – footsoldiers figure, usually suffering heavier losses, and archers as well. It was a paradox, but a form of war which turned on possession of strongpoints also placed a heavy emphasis on mobility. And in the set pieces of this conflict, the sieges, the knightly cavalry had their role. After Robert Curthose had rebelled against his father, Duke William raised a great force and cornered the rebels at the castle of Gerberoi where they had received help from the king of France and his allies. After some skirmishing Robert suddenly led out his forces and defeated the royal army. William was engaged and wounded by his son and his horse was shot from under him. One source suggests that an Englishman, Toki son of Wigod, tried to bring him a fresh one but was shot by a crossbow, while another says that Curthose recognised his father’s voice and sent him away on his own horse.55 The incident nicely illustrates the value of cavalry even at a formal siege and explains why horsemen are so often seen besieging cities in manuscript illuminations. The garrison could use mobility to strike unexpectedly at their besiegers and the attackers needed to patrol and guard against this and be ready to take advantage of any weakness which might appear in the defence. At Gerberoi, Robert was cornered and probably desperate when he launched his charge which evidently involved horse and foot, but the royal army was caught in disarray and defeated. This was a very successful sally but a lesser objective such as the burning of siege equipment would equally make such mobility desirable.
This warfare of position with its concomitant of brutal ravaging was not confined to the Anglo-Norman world. About 1086 Godfrey’s possession of the castle of Bouillon was challenged by Albert of Namur, count of Verdun, who had earlier shown his hostility, as we have noted. He allied with Theoderic bishop of Verdun to besiege Bouillon. Godfrey was able to raise the siege after a costly battle outside and he countered by releasing one of his prisoners, Henry of Grandpré, on condition that he devastate the county of Verdun. The count and the bishop then attacked Stenay, where Godfrey erected a castle, with such persistence that despite much fighting Godfrey was forced to seek help from his elder brother, Eustace of Boulogne, who was accompanied by the younger, Baldwin. The affair was brought to an end by the arbitration of Henry of Liège which was probably a device to save the faces of the count and the bishop, for Godfrey seems to have lost no lands by the peace which followed. Shortly after, in 1087, Godfrey was invested by Henry IV with the duchy of Lower Lorraine.56 Raymond of St Gilles, who would later lead the largest army on the First Crusade, had to wage a struggle for at least thirteen years against Robert count of Auvergne to assert his claim to the Rouergue which by the time of his success in 1079 was a devastated zone.57 Even the Papal Legate on the crusade, Adhémar bishop of Le Puy, seems to have been a man of military experience. He was probably of the house of the counts of Valentinois and is spoken of as an exceptional horseman. His election in the late 1070s was imposed by Gregory VII’s legate, Hugh of Die, and bitterly contested by the important local house of Fay-Chapteuil, lords of Polignac, who were only defeated by a fine use of military force and diplomacy. He was not secure in his see until the mid–1080s when he may have gone on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.58
The Normans established themselves in South Italy in the early eleventh century by serving as mercenaries of the Byzantines and the Lombard princes. William of Apulia is frank about the methods which enabled them to dominate the area. They lived as brigands serving any who would pay them and preying on anyone, even admitting known criminals into their ranks. Malaterra tells us that Roger of Sicily told him to report his early life as a brigand.59 Robert Guiscard arrived in South Italy as an impoverished younger son whose older brother Drogo was already established in the area and who finally conferred on him the job of guarding the valley of Crati in Calabria close to Cosenza, from whence he later moved his position to San Marco. Here he lived as a brigand paying his men by ravishing the land and building up a reputation as a ruthless leader. The pattern of conquest is made clear by the story of Peter, the Byzantine governor of Bisignano. Guiscard had concluded a truce with him, presumably the fruit of extortion. He asked to meet Peter who came with an escort only to be ambushed and ransomed for 20,000 ounces of gold.60Devastation and brigandage were the foundations of the conquest of Calabria and, therefore, of the greatness of the house of Guiscard. His son, Bohemond, who would be one of the leading figures on the First Crusade, had a great military reputation and was adept in this kind of war. After the death of his father, Robert Guiscard, in 1085, and the subsequent collapse of their effort to conquer the Byzantine empire, Bohemond found himself landless, for the lands of his father had passed to his half-brother Roger Borsa. But Bohemond was able to enlist the help of his family’s rival, Jordan of Capua, and to attract young men into his service by his military reputation. He ravaged Otranto and Taranto which submitted to him by 1086, together with a number of lands and counties in Apulia; eventually he agreed to hold them of his brother. In 1087 he profited by an alliance with one of Roger’s rebellious vassals to gain a foothold in Calabria, from which he attacked and seized the important city of Cosenza which he later exchanged, with the weak duke Roger, for Bari. By the summer of 1089 this able soldier was confident enough to act as host at Bari to the visiting pope, Urban II.61 Southern Italy presented a different landscape from northern Europe, principally because it was dominated by cities, but the same techniques of ravaging and siege served the same purposes. It is worth noting how self-sustaining war could be. A successful captain could attract knights from far and wide, as Curthose did in Normandy, and Guiscard and Bohemond in the south. Even the king of France saw this as a means of offsetting the costs of his military entourage. The pattern of war imposed by the strength of fortresses and cities did not necessarily result in set-piece sieges; more often than not the technique of destroying food supplies and isolating strongpoints produced some kind of result. But, as we have noted, they were frequent enough and even at the level of localised war the need for the siege caused the development of poliorcetics.
At the siege of Brévol in Lent 1092 the allied forces of the duke of Normandy, the king of France and William of Breteuil needed the assistance of Robert of Bellême who was an expert in siege machinery. Ordericus’s description of the machines he built is not very clear. The mention of a machine which was rolled right up against the wall suggests an armoured roof or penthouse which would normally be used to protect troops undermining the wall. However, Ordericus says that it was used to ‘hurl great stones at the castle and its garrison’ which implies some sort of catapult. It is possible that more than one machine is being described, and certainly the assault was effective for the outer defenses of the castle, its wall and palissades, were driven in and many roofs collapsed on the defenders. It is notable that the local clergy were made to impress their flocks for the purposes of constructing these machines.62 But at the siege of Paris (885/6) the Danes had built a three tiered siege tower, the construction of which was halted by the killing of its builders in a raid. At the siege of Laon in 938 Louis IV employed a similar device and covered its forward movement by fire of archers. In 985 King Lothar assaulted Verdun with a siege-tower higher than the ramparts, which was propelled forward by ropes which were turned around stakes planted close to the walls and pulled by oxen out of arrow range. To counter this sophisticated device the garrison built a wooden tower at the point on the wall to which it was to be applied. In 988 Hugh Capet attacked Laon with a similar, through less elaborate, weapon.63 In 1087 the Pisans and Genoese mounted an expedition, which took upon itself much of the character of a crusade, against Mahdia under its Zirid ruler Tamin (1062–1108) who had encouraged attacks on Christian commerce. In the successful attack on the Islamic fortress of Pantelleria tall wooden towers were built lignis nimis altis facti sunt turrifices’ to dominate the walls.64 This kind of wheeled wooden tower seems to have been the most effective siege engine of the eleventh century. The vagueness of the sources sometimes makes it difficult to distinguish the siege tower proper from the mobile armoured roof or penthouse which could be wheeled up to the wall to provide shelter for attackers who could then ram or undermine it. Such engines were very important during the First Crusade.65 The siege tower was a complex machine which seems to have been difficult to build and deploy. Its purpose was to cover the mounting of ladders by fire-power, as well as to deliver troops onto the wall itself. Attackers brought ladders forward and sheltered themselves, and archers, behind mantlets of woven twigs or sheets of leather which provided cover and perhaps protection. But the other kind of machine found frequently in our sources, and mentioned at Brévol by Ordericus, were projectile throwers which are given various names: mangana, mangonella, petraria, ballista and all their variants. These are the names used in Roman texts and inherited by medieval writers. Unfortunately there is no uniformity of nomenclature between writers and as their descriptions are often very vague it is exceedingly difficult to understand quite what kind of machine is being referred to and how it worked. In the Roman world such weapons were driven by torsion, the effect of huge windings of hair and sinew. However, by the thirteenth century when our sources become much clearer and more precise this principle of propulsion had been completely superceded in favour of lever action often combined with counterbalances. For the period in question here there is much doubt. The ballista was a Roman weapon in which the two arms forming the bow were pulled back against torsion coils. In medieval usage it often means simply a crossbow, and sometimes this is made very clear by a reference like arcu baleari.66 But in the context of siege it can mean a machine which was a very large crossbow mounted on a frame used as a flat-trajectory, anti-personnel weapon. In his account of the siege of Paris, Abbo tells us that on one occasion a single ballista bolt killed two skilled workman, while on another Abbot Ebles of St-Germain killed seven Danes with a single shot, causing him to jest that his victims should be sent, like skewered meat, to the kitchen!67 But the other weapons, which we can generically call catapults, were very different. They seem to have thrown stones and other heavy objects, occasionally even bodies or heads, at the walls and defenders. A tentative conclusion based on a survey of our sources suggests that petraria and mangana refer to heavy weapons, while mangonella means lighter machines capable of throwing a projectile of only some five kilograms. In all cases the effective range was very limited – 50 to 75 metres being a maximum. The likelihood is that by the time of the First Crusade torsion had almost totally disappeared in favour of lever action. Certainly the huge windings of rope and sinew used by the Romans are no longer in evidence.68 The construction of such weapons was a difficult business. Ordericus regarded Robert of Bellême as unusual, and the reference by Abbo to very skilled men building the Danish machines used against Paris makes the same point. The siege of Pantellaria was conducted by sailors whose engineering skills were those needed to build machines. But the decision to use siege machinery of any complexity did not simply depend on finding skilled artisans. The commander had to have knowledge of the possibilities and to appreciate what was needed. The raw material, especially tall trees, had to be available. Above all, people had to be organised for the business of siege. This was not simply a matter of ordering soldiers about. Trenches and palisades as well as machines had to be made, and food had to be brought up. At Brévol, Ordericus mentions the impressing and organising of the local populace, and we can see the same phenomenon on the Bayeux tapestry as the Normans built their castle at Hastings.69These were the skills of a commander, a vital part of the business of war. The larger the scale of action the more important such skills became. The common experience of those who went on the First Crusade was of a kind of war which turned on possession of strongpoints, which might be assaulted by siege or undermined by ravaging. At all times the castle and the walled city were dominating factors but there was a high premium on mobility and flexibility. The needs of siege also imposed a premium on capacity for organisation and the need to combine all the various arts of war. We have seen these factors at work in smallscale conflict, but it was not so very different in the major military undertakings of the age. However, this distinction is made purely for analysis. Louis VI’s biographer catalogues some major expeditions, but for the most part shows him besieging the castles of robber barons. In this he enjoyed the support of the future crusader, Stephen of Blois, who seems to have worked closely with the French monarchy in the years before the First Crusade. At some stage between 1081 and 1084 Stephen killed the notorious robber baron Count Bouchard of Corbeil, with a blow from his lance.70 Out of this grinding process emerged royal strength and prestige as exemplified by Louis’s appeal to the chivalry of France when Henry V invaded in 1124.71
1 OV, 2. 359; C. W. David, Robert Curthose, Duke of Normany (Cambridge Mass., 1920), pp. 17–22; F. Barlow, William Rufus (London, 1983), pp. 33–34; J. C. Andressohn, The Ancestry and Life of Godfrey de Bouillon (Bloomington, 1947), p. 38; H. E. Mayer, Mélanges, pp. 24–5.
2 Suger of St-Denis, Vita Ludovici grossi Regis, ed. H. Waquet (Paris, 1929), pp. 8–11.
3 Glaber, pp. 56–61; H. Delbrück, History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages in the Framework of Political History, tr. J. Renfroe (Berlin, 1923, London, 1982), 3. 140–1; H. Glaesener, ‘Godefroi de Bouillon et la bataille de l’Elster’, Revue des Études Historiques, 105 (1938), 253–64.
4 The phrase is that of J. Terraine, The White Heat: the Mew Warfare 1914–18 (London, 1982) PP. 44, 91, 279.
5 Flavius Vegetius Renatus, De Re Militari ed. C. Lang (Leipzig, 1885). His was the most popular treatise on war in the Middle Ages and it remains in use to this day. There is an English translation by T. R. Phillips, Roots of Strategy (London, 1943), pp. 35–94 based on Clarke’s of 1767. On indications of its popularity in the Middle Ages see C. R. Schrader, ‘A handlist of extant manuscripts containing the De Re Militari of Flavius Vegetius Renatus’, Scriptorium, 33 (1979), 280–305 and B. S. Bachrach, ‘The practical use of Vegetius’s De Re Militari during the early Middle Ages’, The Historian, 21–7 (1985), 239–55.
6 K. P. G. von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege (Berlin, 1832–4), vols 1–3 of his collected writings. English tr. J. J. Graham, 3 vols (London, 1873), revised F. N. Maude, 3 vols (London, 1908).
7 See above n. 3.
8 C. Oman, History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages, 2 vols (London, 1924), 252, 1. 149–68, 165, 167.
9 Delbrück, History of the Art of War 3. 13–92; L. White, Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford, 1962), but see the review by R. H. Hilton and P. H. Sawyer, ‘Technical determinism: the stirrup and the plough’, Past and Present 24 (1963), 90–100.
10 B. S. Bachrach, ‘Charles Martel, shock combat, the stirrup and feudalism’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 7 (1970), 45–75 and ‘Was the Marchfield part of the Frankish constitution?’ Medieval Studies, 36 (1974), 178–86.
11 J. France, ‘La guerre dans la France féodale à la fin du IX et au X siècles’, Revue Belge d’Histoire Militaire, 23 (1979), 177–98 and see the discussion below p. 73–4.
12 E. Lourie, ‘A society organised for war medieval Spain’, Past and Present, 35 (1966), 55–6, 60; J. Power, ‘Origins and development of municipal military service in the Genoese and Castillian reconquest’, Traditio, 26 (1970), 91–112.
13 For the controversy on the status of the Norman knight compare S. Harvey, ‘The knight and the knight’s fee in England’, Past and Present, 49 (1970), 3–43, with R. A. Brown, ‘The status of the Norman knight’, in Gillingham and Holt, eds., War and Government, pp. 18–32. See also J. Gillingham, ‘The introduction of knight service into England’, Battle, 4 (1981), 53–64 and the survey of literature by T. Hunt, ‘Emergence of the knight in England’, in W. H. Jackson, Knighthood in Medieval Literature (Woodbridge, 1981).
14 Duby, Mâconnaise, pp. 411–26; for a survey of recent work on the status of the knight in eleventh century Europe see J. P. Poly and P. Bournazel, The Feudal Transformation, 800–1200, tr. G. Higgitt (New York, 1991), pp. 98–102, and pp. 102–107 for a tentative explanation of the precocity of the Mâconnaise. From a rather different point of view Murray, Reason and Society, pp. 90–4, points to the division at this time between noble and knight.
15 William of Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. J. Marx (Paris, 1914), pp. 106–8, quoted by R. H. G. Davis, ‘The Warhorses of the Normans’, Battle, 10 (1987), 67; Fiori, L’essor de la chevalerie, p. 119–41.
16 On weaponry in general see C. Blair, European Arms and Armour (London, 1958); Duby, Mâconnaise, p. 239.
17 Lambert of Hersfeld, ed. E. Holder-Egger (Hamburg, 1981), MGH SS 3. 136.
18 OV, 2. 23–31.
19 In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem the Franciscans hold the ‘Sword of Godfrey de Bouillon’; its blade is approximately eighty-eight centimetres long and about four centimetres wide at the hilt which is very fine. There is no channel down the middle, only a markedly raised ridge. I was unable to handle it so the measurements taken through glass are approximate.
20 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. T. D. Hardy, 2 vols. (London, 1840) (hereafter cited as GR) 2. 479; OV, 6. 238–9.
21 On arms and armour in the late eleventh century see I. Pierce, ‘Arms, armour and warfare’ 237–58; ‘The knight, his arms and armour’ pp. 152–64. On the special significance of the sword R. E. Oakeshott, The Sword in the Age of Chivalry (London, 1981). For a revealing discussion of the wounds inflicted by medieval weapons B. Thordeman, Armour from the Battle of Wisby 1361(Uppsala, 1939).
22 Delbrück, History of the Art of War 3. 136–9.
23 Gerald of Wales, Opera, ed. J. S. Brewer and J. Dimock, 8 vols. (London, 1867–91), 6. 395–7.
24 France, ‘La guerre dans la France féodale’, 195–8.
25 J. Bradbury, The Medieval Archer, (Woodbridge, 1985), pp. 17–38.
26 ibid, pp. 36–7.
27 GR, 2. 335; OV, 2. 357.
28 Bradbury, Medieval Archer, p. 25; AA, 475, 602.
29 Wace’s Roman de Rou et des Ducs de Normandie, ed. H. Andresen, 2 vols. (Bonn, 1877–79), 3. 5, 206–208, 3. 7, 685–96, 3. 488–98 (hereafter cited as Wace).
30 GR, 2. 477.
31 The Bayeux Tapestry, ed. D. M. Wilson (London, 1985) [hereafter cited as BT], Pls. 62, 63, 70, 71.
32 For the crossbow at Hastings see WP, p. 184, Carmen de Haslingae proelio, ed. C. Morton and H. Munz (Oxford, 1972), Appendix C, pp. 112–15; Bradbury, Medieval Archer, pp. 26–7, 8–11. For its history R. Payne-Gallwey, The Crossbow, (London, 1903).
33 Alexiad, pp. 316–17; J. France, ‘Anna Comnena’; ‘Loud, ‘Anna Komnena’ and her sources for the Normans of South Italy’, in G. Loud and I. N. Wood, eds., Church and Chronicle in the Middle Ages: Essays presented to J. Taylor (London, 1991), pp. 41–57.
34 AA, pp. 324, 411; OV 6. 76; Bradbury, Medieval Archer, pp. 45, 3; GR, 2. 475.
35 Strickland, Conduct and Perception of War, pp. 95–7, 140.
36 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. D. Whitelock (London, 1961) [hereafter cited as ASC], p. 892.
37 M. Fixot, Les Fortifications de Terre el les Origines Féodales dans le Cinglais (Caen, 1968), cited in P. Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, tr. M. Jones (London, 1984), p. 46; J. F. Verbruggen, ‘Note sur le sens des mots Castrum, castellum et quelques autres expressions qui désignent des fortifications’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 27 (1950), 147–55.
38 The estimates of the weight of eleventh-century armour are by Pierce, Battle, 240, 253–7. My information about the modern infantry comes from the army depot in Pembroke, for which I offer thanks.
39 On Alfred’s establishment of a network of burhs see H. R. Loyn, Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1962), pp. 132–6; K. Leyser, ‘Henry I and the beginnings of the Saxon Empire’, English Historical Review, 83 (1968), 1–32, but see the caveats of T. Reuter, Germany in the Early Middle Ages 800–1056 (London, 1991), pp. 142–4.
40 F. Barlow, William Rufus, pp. 286–7. BT, PI. 51; M. W. Thompson, The Rise of the Castle (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 48–62, emphasises the care needed to build a good motte but many were only used for a short time and they could be erected quickly.
41 C. H. Haskins, Norman Institutions (Cambridge Mass., 1925), p. 282 cited and tr. Contamine, War, p. 46.
42 On castles and their evolution see J. F. Fino, Forlesses de la France médiévale (Paris, 1977); G. Fournier, Le Château dans la France médiévale (Paris, 1978); BT, Pl. 23.
43 OV, 3. 294–5; M. Chibnall, ‘Castles in Ordericus Vitalis’, in C. Harper-Bill, C. J. Holdsworth and J. Nelson, eds., Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. Allen-Brown (Woodbridge, 1989), 43–56.
44 Suger, pp. 36–9.
45 Duby, Mâconnaise, pp. 161–71; OV, 3. 255.
46 OV, 4. 272.
47 OV, 4. 287–96.
48 Vegetius, Roots of Strategy, p. 67.
49 Quoted and tr. by J. Gillingham, ‘William the Bastard at War’, in C. Harper-Bill, C. J. Holdsworth and J. Nelson, eds., Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. Allen-Brown (Woodbridge, 1989), p. 148.
50 Suger, pp. 16–17.
51 The story is told by William of Poitiers and derived here from Gillingham, ‘William the Bastard at War’, in Harper-Bill, Holdsworth and Nelson, Allen Brown p. 151.
52 On this theme see T. Reuter, ‘Plunder and tribute’, 75–94.
53 J. Gillingham, ‘Richard I and the science of war’, in Gillingham and Holt, War and Government, pp. 84–5. See the comments of Strickland, Conduct and Perception of War, pp. 238, 344–5 on even the ecclesiastical acceptance of ravaging.
54 Odo of Cluny, Life of St Gerald of Aurillac, tr. G. Sitwell (New York, 1958), pp. 115–123; OV, 3. 243.
55 ASC ‘D’ p. 159; Florence of Worcester, Chronicon, ed. B. Thorpe, 2 vols. (London, 1848–49) [hereafter cited as Florence], 2. 13. Ordericus does not mention the king’s defeat, simply saying the siege lasted for three weeks.
56 Andressohn, Godfrey de Bouillon, pp. 39–41 and see above p. 26; Mayer, Mélanges, pp. 25–30.
57 J. H. Hill and L. L. Hill, Raymond IV of St Gilles 1041 (or 1042)–1105 (Syracuse, 1962), pp. 8–9.
58 Chronicon monasterii sancti Petri Aniciensis ed. G. V. I. Chevalier in Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Saint-Chaffre du Monastier (Paris, 1884), pp. 161–2; Adhémar-Laubaume, Adhémar de Monteil, pp. 13–17; Bréhier, Adhémar de Monteil, p. 13. Heraclius viscount of Polignac was Adhémar’s standard bearer at the battle against Kerbogah; one of his nephews was killed and another wounded during the passage across the Balkans: RA, pp. 38, 82.
59 William of Apulia, La Geste de Robert Guiscard, ed. M. Matthieu (Palermo, 1961), p. 109; Geoffrey Malaterra, De rebus gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae comitis, ed. E. Pontieri in L. A. Muratori, Rerum italicarum scriptores, 5 (1) (Bologna, 1928), 25.
60 F. Chalandon, Domination normande, 1. 118–121; Amato di Monte Cassino, ed. Bartholomaeis, p. 14. On the origins of the Norman incursion into this area see J. France, ‘The occasion of the coming of the Normans to Southern Italy’, Journal of Medieval History, 17 (1991), 185–205.
61 R. B. Yewdale, Bohemond I, Prince of Antioch (Princeton, 1924, Amsterdam, 1970), pp. 26–31.
62 OV, 4. 288–89.
63 Abbo, Siège de Paris par les Normands, ed. and tr. H. Waquet (Paris, 1942), pp. 33, 42; Richer de Rheims, Histoire de France, ed. and tr. R. Latouche, 2 vols. (Paris, 1930), 1. 142; 2. 178.
64 H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘The Mahdia Campaign of 1087’, English Historical Review, 92 (1977), 1–29 gives the full text of the Carmen de victoria Pisanorum. This expedition is also discussed by R. Rogers, Latin Siege Warfare in the Twelfth Century, unpublished D. Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1984, pp. 347–72. On the Norman expeditions see D. Abulafia, ‘The Norman kingdom of Africa and the Norman expeditions to Majorca and the Moslem Mediterranean’, Battle, 7 (1984), 26–49.
65 See below, pp. 163–5; it is also possible that the machines used by Louis IV against Laon in 938 was of this type.
66 AA. 324. For an illustration of the Roman weapon see O. F. G. Hogg, Clubs to Canon (London, 1968) p. 81.
67 Abbo, 32–33, 22–25. It is, however, a sign of the confusion on this subject that J. F. Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus (Leiden, 1976), p. 637, equates Manganellus with ballista.
68 I have relied heavily on Rogers, Latin Siege Warfare, for his enlightening discussion of this subject, pp. 5–49. However, I have gone further in dismissing torsion instruments by the time of the First Crusade. this is simply a matter of judgment, but it seems to me that given their relative complexity they would have vanished generations before the sources (in the thirteenth century) make this clear; see also E. W. Marsden, Greek and Roman Artillery, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1969–71); R. Schneider, Die Artillerie des Mittelalters (Berlin, 1910); K. Huuri, ‘Zur Geschichte des Mittelalterichen Geschutzwesens aus Orientalischen Quellen’, Studia Orientalia, 9 (1941); J. F. Fino, ‘Machines de jet médiévales’, Gladius, 11 (1972), 25–43. For the later period D. Hill, ‘Trebuchets’, Viator, 4 (1973), 106–16. C. Marshall, Warfare in the Latin East 1198–1291, (London, 1992), p. 113 briefly asserts the conventional view in a crusader context.
69 OV, 4. 288–9; BT, Pl. 49–50.
70 Suger, p. 150–1; Stephen is more properly called Stephen Henry and he succeeded his father Theobald I (1037–1089/90) count of Blois and Champagne in the Blois portion of his inheritance: M. Bur, La Formation du Comté de Champagne v.950–v. 1150 (Nancy, 1977), p. 230.
71 Suger, 219–31. On Louis’s struggle with the robber barons and its importance see R. Fawtier, Capetian Kings of France tr. L. Butler and R. J. Adam (London, 1960), pp. 19–22; Dunbabin, Origins, p. 296.