Michael S Fulton
Siege Warfare During the Crusades
(Pen & Sword, 2019), 344 pp. $42.95/£30.00
There have been a number of well-respected studies of warfare during the crusades but none in English that cover the siege over the whole two centuries: R C Smail’s classic account, Crusading warfare 1097-1193, from 1954 (republished twenty years later) ends with the Third Crusade, while Christopher Marshall’s Warfare in the Latin East (1992) took the story from then to the fall of Acre (1291). Randall Rogers’ Latin siege warfare in the twelfth century (1992) remains valuable. Michael Fulton’s new work takes account of more recent archaeology and strives to give equal emphasis to the Arabic accounts (in translation), accompanied by due caution in interpreting all of the medieval evidence: he highlights where what happened has been described quite differently by the chroniclers.
The book’s price reflects that the publisher has aimed it at a more popular than academic market, and the downside includes the absence of references, frustrating for anyone wishing to go back to the original evidence. Fulton attempts to compensate by citing his sources in the text and providing both a substantial bibliography, and a list of the key sources for each siege in an appendix, alongside a chronological list of more than 300 sieges, numerous tables, a glossary, and a list of all local rulers. The illustrations are another strength: many excellent plans, including some showing the topography, essential to grasping how some sieges unfolded – although much remains educated guesswork -, and many good photographs, most by the author himself, where, again, he successfully illustrates relevant topography, such as at Montfort and Subayba.
After an initial chapter where Fulton recognises that conflict within the Muslim and Christian-ruled states was sometimes as significant as that between the two faiths (particularly in the first century), he moves on to consider strategic questions, the war aims of leaders, how they arose from the geo-political situation and what they meant for strategic choices. He asks why fortresses were built where they were, the many roles they played – as centres of administration, for defence of geographical areas, as refuges, and as statements of power: a role assigned in particular to the great citadels erected and often enlarged by Muslim rulers in the cities. The third chapter considers ‘Strategy of attack: overcoming the obstacle of relief’, which does as the title suggests. Fulton also explores where what might appear a successful defence was actually because the attacker was carrying out a raid, not an attack on a city: the critical role of raiding and plundering in all medieval warfare is given its proper due.
An undoubted strength of the book is the treatment in chapter four of the means of attack, to be expected of the author of the best account of medieval siege artillery of this period (Artillery in the age of the crusades, Brill, 2018). The preference showed by commanders for different types of technology is examined and coherent explanations offered. The Franks used siege towers (especially in the First Crusade) because their men were fewer but better armoured, making this form of attack a better risk, whereas the more lightly protected but more numerous soldiers on the other side opted for other forms of attack. The shortage of timber was also significant, of course. A table shows the result of Fulton’s analysis of siege towers (149-50). Battering rams are studied and the simple ladder used for assaulting walls is restored to its rightful place as the most frequent means of storming defences, while treatment of different types of artillery is judicious and measured. The predominance of the manually-operated stone thrower throughout the period, with proper consideration of what it could, and could not, achieve, is demonstrated, while the appearance of the counterweight trebuchet at the end of the twelfth century and its evolution over the next hundred years are sensibly apprised. Fulton’s previous book challenged the proposition that such weapons were wall-breakers, and certainly the evidence that their destructive power was primarily effective against thinner-walled interior structures and the parapets on tops of walls remains the most convincing explanation of their role – archaeological studies of castles where there is also documentary evidence suggest this. The psychological as well as physical impact of artillery on defenders remains a subject awaiting proper exploration. But the immense efforts expended by rulers, particularly Mamluk sultans, to construct and transport monster weapons, suggests they attached a great importance to them.
Fulton recognises that a large number of sieges were decided by miners, on both sides, and the role of these humble workers in achieving what their noble commanders could not is treated alongside an analysis of the means of resistance – chiefly the counter-mine.
Due prominence is given to many other aspects of the siege. Superior naval power enjoyed by the crusaders proved essential, initially in securing the success of the invaders then by consolidating their control of the coasts, enabling secure bases for future expeditions and explaining why Muslim conquerors resorted to destroying rather than occupying such defences. That ships provided timbers (for example, for the siege towers that caused the fall of Jerusalem in 1099) is well known, but Fulton offers other examples too. Attention is given to other means of capture (surprise, treachery, bribery…) and to what happened to defenders and inhabitants afterwards, ranging from mass execution to free departure with one’s goods. He addresses the evidence for numbers of defenders and attackers, the role of traitors and spies, questions of provisions that applied equally to besiegers as besieged, weather conditions … in short, most aspects of the realities of medieval warfare feature here.
The fifth chapter analyses the elements of defensive works: towers, castles, citadels and city walls. It rightly argues (against the older tradition of western students) that neither side possessed a superior tradition. While explaining the broader concepts behind choices made by builders of fortifications, Fulton also looks at every part of a fortification from the ditch to the parapets, explores the evolution of the elements and particularities of design mostly not reflected in European examples (such as bent entrances). In this, he relies a lot on modern studies as well as his own visits, and some of his photographs provide excellent confirmation of the points he makes – the provision and siting of postern gates, for example, is not something often given such prominence. His conclusion, that advances in design travelled in both directions, is now commonly accepted.
It may be important to spell out such arguments that are no longer disputed among scholars for a more general audience. There are also some strange interpretations: Fulton confuses concentricity with merely having outer walls (232, 263). Château Gaillard is not normally described as concentric. Nor is the popular myth (too often repeated by local guides at castle sites) that spiral staircases were designed to create advantage for right-handed defenders challenged (268) by pointing to the widespread existence of counter-clockwise stairs.
Fulton ends with a brief account of the 1291 capture of Acre, which is too a convenient summary of many of the arguments of the book. It provides a conclusion, although there is much to be learnt from subsequent campaigns (for example, continued Mongol interventions) in the region which are not covered. Of course, the crusades did not end in 1291, and even a brief look at the mass of proposals on how to ‘recover the Holy Land’ penned for western rulers in the following decades could cast fascinating light on how contemporaries understood the strategic issues, in particular how to take and hold fortifications.
This book is a valuable addition to the literature and should be welcomed by students at all levels; there is plentiful original material and analysis – for example, reinterpretation of the castle of ‘Ajlun (53-4) and the recently excavated Jacob’s Ford (78-9), and debts to scholars such as Denys Pringle are duly acknowledged, and the scope of the work provides a convenient single volume study of an era that continues to be fascinating to a wider public. Recommended.
Dr Peter Purton, FSA
Independent scholar.
[email protected]
