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31

Background / Re: Fortifications and Siege. (approx 10/12 parts eventualy )

« on: August 12, 2013, 05:44:48 PM »

Pt8

There is a good example of a traction-trebuchet at Caerphilly castle, which seems to approximate in size those illustrated in the Maciejowski Bible and the work of Peter of Eboli: it throws a 15kg ball about 120m. It would have taken a long time to demolish stonework and was probably at its most effective against the fighting top of a wall or tower, the merlons, walkways, machicolations and hoardings that were so much more vulnerable. This would have shortened its range to 50–60m, although mounting it on a tower or a mound, as Edward I did at Edinburgh, would increase this.  But machines were always very vulnerable to a sudden sally and had to be protected carefully: at the siege of Acre, Philip of France failed to do this and his artillery was burned. At the siege of Jacob’s Ford, Saladin sent his men to find vine poles to set around his siege engines.

Of course, the effectiveness of lever-artillery could be enhanced by continuous use and/or deployment of large numbers of machines. At Rouen in 1174, batteries of machines were kept going in eight-hour shifts. Uninterrupted action by massed forces of large machines would surely have smashed masonry in time, but the conditions in which large numbers of such machines could be gathered and operated were relatively rare, and before the end of the twelfth century there is little evidence of artillery smashing the main masses of castles and walled cities. Moreover, defenders could make very good use of traction-trebuchets which, if they were mounted on towers, could certainly out range attacking machines.

In sieges in the Holy Land, siege-towers were the most important engines of assault. At Jerusalem in 1099, the defenders mustered 14 missile-throwers and concentrated nine of them against the tower of the Count of Toulouse, which was severely damaged. At Tyre in 1124, an Armenian artillery expert was brought in to direct counter-fire at the defenders’ machines. At Milan in 1158, Barbarossa’s troops seized the Roman arch and mounted a traction-trebuchet on it, but the defenders replied with two machines of their own, firing from the walls, and put this out of action.

Accounts of late twelfth-century sieges do not suggest that siege-warfare had undergone any considerable change. On 26 July 1188, Saladin and his son al-Malik al Zahir besieged Saône. The Muslim army divided into two. Saladin attacked the east wall from across the great rock-cut ditch with four stone-throwers, causing damage at the northeast corner, where signs of repair are still evident. Al-Zahir’s forces established themselves by the northern wall of the castle-town, where they set up two siege engines, almost certainly at the spot where the walls follow the clifftop and leave a roughly triangular and relatively flat piece of land undefended. On 29 July, al-Zahir’s forces made a breach and followed it up with a sudden assault, surprising the defenders and pouring into the town and the main fortress. The garrison fled to the great towers and negotiated terms of surrender.

The impact on the walls of the battering by a relatively small number of engines working over only two days is interesting, but it must be remembered that there was no counter-fire from within the castle. The main cause of the fall of Saône was simply that its garrison was hopelessly outnumbered, cut off from all hope of aid, and subjected to a two-pronged attack by Saladin’s huge army, which divided their forces.

Again, at the siege of Acre we hear of severe damage being inflicted upon the walls of the city. Roger of Hovenden reports an unsuccessful attack made into a breach created by French engines, while Alberic Clement lost his life in another; although, interestingly, in this case only a part of the wall had fallen and the attackers had to carry in siege-ladders. Richard’s men broke down a tower, but the rock-thrower seems to have supplemented mining, and this reminds us that, at the siege of Château Gaillard, Philip Augustus used a large traction-trebuchet to demolish the inner gate only after it had been undermined.

The garrison of Acre were well supplied with engines of their own and destroyed the French traction-trebuchet, “Malvoisin”. Their chief weapon against assault seems to have been “Greek Fire”, brought to them by a Damascene coppersmith, which at least sometimes was projected by artillery. Descriptions of the damage inflicted suggest that it was largely on the walkways and that the walls were intact: a petraria built by the crusaders damaged part of a tower by shaking down two poles’ length of its wall. This probably means a part of the walkway wall rather than the main structure. Moreover, Acre was besieged for a very long time and attacked by many methods – including mining, which may well have done much of the damage.

32

Background / Re: Fortifications and Siege. (approx 10/12 parts eventualy )

« on: August 11, 2013, 04:14:52 PM »

Pt7

Artillery capable of battering fortifications and defenders into surrender, known in Roman times, continued to be used.

At the siege of Paris in 885– 6, mangana, catapulta and balistae are mentioned as hurling missiles. But these are only a few of the bewildering variety of words used by medieval writers to refer to siege engines. Unfortunately, their use is inconsistent and such descriptions as they give are confusing.

Orderic tells us that at Brévol in 1092 a great machine was rolled up to the wall, which suggests a tower or penthouse, but adds that it hurled stones: it is possible that this was some kind of platform that accommodated a stone-thrower. Otto of Freising refers to a mangonel as a kind of balista, although this was a quite different kind of machine. The word petraria, rendered as perrier in French, is often used but this merely means a stone-thrower. William of Tyre and Guillaume le Breton both clearly suggest that perriers were for heavy bombardment while mangana were lighter anti-personnel weapons, and the same notion about the latter is found in the Chanson de la Croisade Albigeoise.

Mangonella would seem to be only a diminutive of mangana; in Roman times this referred to a weapon that depended for power on torsion. The mangana was a machine with a single arm, whose bottom end was embedded in a massive horizontal winding of sinew: the arm was bent back against the torsion of the winding and, when released, flew forward against a robust frame, hurling a stone out of a cup or sling on its end. The crash of impact between arm and bar probably explains the nickname onager, “the mule”, for this machine. The missile was thus launched in an arc like the shell from a howitzer.

The Roman balista was a crossbow-like weapon, but the “bow” consisted of two arms, each mounted in a vertically wound gathering of sinews, which provided the tension when the string was drawn to fire a bolt or ball: its trajectory would have been flat. The term balista in medieval sources generally refers to crossbows. Clearly related was the arcu-balista or later springald, a flat-trajectory weapon rather like a giant crossbow, which was widely used in sieges.

The traction-trebuchet was the dominant form of artillery in our period. It was a device that originated in China and was transmitted to Europe by about the ninth century via the Arab world. It was essentially a beam pivoted between two high uprights: when the beam was pulled at one end by a team of men, the other flew up until a missile was released in an arcing trajectory either from a cup or, more effectively, from a sling. The pulling end of the beam was by far the shorter, in a ratio of perhaps 1: 5, and the efficiency of the engine was enormously enhanced by the use of a sling on the throwing end. This kind of lever artillery varied in size, which partly accounts for the inconsistency of the language used to describe it; broadly, it would seem that petraria and mangana indicate sizeable examples and mangonella and tormenta lesser ones.

There is no reason to believe that the principle of torsion was forgotten, but the impact of the throwing beam must have put enormous strain on the structure of the onager, which would have had to be very heavy to last any time, and of extraordinary size and weight to throw a large missile: lever-action machines were probably lighter and more durable. Moreover, the technology of lever-artillery could be easily assimilated by a society in which increasingly complex machinery, such as water mills with pivoting wheels and gears, was becoming common. At the siege of Jerusalem in 1099, both Albert of Aachen and Tudebode report that the crusaders used machines powerful enough to throw captured spies into the city; in the case cited by Tudebode, the machine had a sling, which, together with the presumed power, strongly suggests a traction-trebuchet and implies that they were not a novelty.

33

Background / Re: Fortifications and Siege. (approx 10/12 parts eventualy )

« on: August 10, 2013, 05:32:05 PM »

Pt6

An alternative approach was to build huge wooden towers to overawe the defences and enable others to attack them.

The Vikings attacked Paris with one in 885–6. At Verdun in 985, the siege-tower was dragged by ropes passed around stakes close to the city wall, so that the oxen were moving away from the enemy. In 1087, a Pisan and Genoese expedition employed similar towers to capture Pantelleria.

Such machines were not necessarily mobile. At the siege of Pont Audemar in 1123, Henry I built a tower, but it was only used to rain missiles into the castle, whose garrison had first to watch the burning of the town around them and the devastation of the countryside. At Coria in Spain in 1138, wooden towers acted as firing platforms, while at Bedford in 1224 the huge towers built for Henry III seem to have been used to mount various kinds of stone-throwers which deluged the walls with missiles.  At Ma’arra on the First Crusade, the tower built by Raymond of St Gilles was clearly mobile, but its purpose again was to act simply as a fire-base to cover mining and assaults by ladder, which eventually carried the day. This was probably the intended purpose of the towers in the siege of Jerusalem in July 1099, but that of Godfrey was fortuitously brought up close to the wall and a bridge was improvised to make entry.

Fully mobile siege-towers with drawbridges to launch an assault became a feature of important sieges, notably in the Holy Land where they were pre-eminent in the capture of the Muslim cities of the coast. Barbarossa used them in Lombardy, and Edward I attacked Bothwell castle in 1301 with a tower that had been transported in sections and was covered in hides against fire. In the West, towers continued to be important right down to the invention of cannons. At Lisbon, the Anglo-Norman force brought up a tower some 28m high and when this was destroyed, they deployed another one, 25m high, apparently built and commanded by a Pisan engineer; this proved to be the final straw for the garrison, which surrendered.

Such devices had very obvious limitations. The ground might be very unfavourable, as at ’Arqa on the First Crusade, where the city walls crowned a steep slope. In southern Italy, the relative isolation of inland places may have made it difficult to get siege-machinery to them. Even where the ground was generally suitable, it had to be smoothed and often ditches obstructed the route to the walls; at Jerusalem, the Count of Toulouse paid one penny for every three stones cast into the moat by the southern wall, while at Tortosa in 1148 a huge ditch 43m wide and 32m deep had to be filled.

The clumsiness and weight of the towers meant that they needed to be built as close as possible to the point of attack. At Jerusalem in 1099, the defenders of the northern wall built up the walls, set up catapults and prepared beams and padding to repel the expected attack. The crusaders changed their assault point, and this was probably the decisive factor in the siege: near Zion Gate the Count of Toulouse had no room for manoeuvre and his tower was ultimately incapacitated by catapult attack and fire. A similar fate befell Bohemond’s tower in the attack on Durazzo in 1108.

Fire was the great enemy; the successful machine at Lisbon was covered with wet hides, with the animal tails hanging down for maximum flow, while at Jerusalem Godfrey’s tower was soaked in vinegar against the defenders’ “Greek Fire”. During the siege of Tyre, the defenders built a war-crane on the city walls, which overtopped the crusader siegetowers and destroyed them by dropping incendiaries on to them.

Siege-towers were remarkable structures, but they were not a certain solution to the problem of attacking fortifications. Terrain was often a problem and countermeasures by the besieged could destroy them. Above all, they were costly and justified only for major objectives.

34

Background / Re: Fortifications and Siege. (approx 10/12 parts eventualy )

« on: August 09, 2013, 09:43:33 PM »

Pt5

Castles were built to attack towns or other castles. William of Normandy used four against Domfront in 1052 and built one for his successful siege of Arques in 1053–4. The army of the First Crusade constructed three at Antioch. In 1102, Raymond of Toulouse began the famous Mont Pèlerin on a ridge dominating the city of Tripoli, which only fell long after his death in 1109; thereafter, the increasingly elaborate castle served as a formidable redoubt of defence for the city. At Tyre in 1111, Baldwin I built a fortified camp for his besieging force. At Alençon in 1118, the citizens admitted Fulk of Anjou into the town and he constructed what the sources refer to as a “park”, an earthwork camp, as a base for his siege of the castle. Barbarossa built a camp for his siege of Manfred’s castle near Castelleone in 1186, and the place surrendered on terms. In 1247, Frederick II created the grandiosely named “city” of Victoria, but his army was surprised by the besieged Parmans and destroyed.

A camp provided shelter for the besiegers, protected them and their equipment from sallies, and provided a logistic base, as witness the huge booty of food seized by the Parmans at Victoria. At the same time, there was an obvious coercive purpose: Victoria was built only four bow shots away from Parma. However, fortified camps were not an invariable condition of success: the First Crusade built none during the siege of Jerusalem. By contrast, during the Third Crusade very elaborate fortifications ringed the crusader camp before Acre.  Sieges, especially of lesser castles, were often undertaken in a very casual way if no relief army was anticipated and the place was not strong, but bases were essential for operations against major fortifications.

There were a variety of stratagems for attacking fortifications. Wooden castles could be burned, although this was never as easy as we tend to think. An earthwork slope such as that of the motte made approach difficult – but not impossible, as the picture of Dinan in the Bayeux Tapestry shows. Setting fire against timber was by no means easy: Raymond of Aguilers spoke of mallets set with spikes being hurled at crusader machines during the final attack on Jerusalem in 1099, and another source tells us that a “newly invented” machine threw fire at the assault by the Count of Toulouse. The sources make fairly frequent reference to “Greek Fire” being used by the Muslims at the siege of Acre. The availability of naphtha and other oil derivatives in surface deposits probably explains why such fire-throwing was more common in the Middle East than in the West, where creating any form of “sticky fire” that could adhere to a wooden palisade and ignite it must have been difficult – and almost impossible in wet weather.

A frequent stratagem was to undermine or batter down a wall with a ram or picks under the cover of showers of missiles. The approach of the attackers could be protected by mantlets, large panels of woven light wood. Armoured roofs or penthouses could be constructed, most simply of heavy logs leant against the defending wall, to shelter men working below. Alternatively, the roof could be mounted on wheels: such structures might be called “cats” or “sows”. At Nicaea in 1097, most assaults were delivered by penthouses, some of which sheltered battering-rams. A battering-ram, used to break through the outer wall of Jerusalem in 1099, was then burned to make way for the siege-tower that was brought up behind it to dominate the main wall.

Battering-rams suspended in siege-towers were used at Tyre in 1111–12, but the defenders used grappling irons and ropes to foil them. At Acre during the Third Crusade, a great ram protected by a penthouse was deployed, but the Muslim garrison managed to burn it. Edward I used a ram at Stirling in 1304. Penthouses could be employed to cover troops approaching a wall and to provide fire-cover: at the first siege of Toulouse in 1211 “cats” of boiled leather supported the attackers. An enormous wooden penthouse, massively armed, led the final abortive attack in 1217, in the course of which Simon de Montfort was killed.

Deep mining was an alternative approach to undermining city or castle defences. Zengi seized Edessa in 1144 by undermining the walls using a system of natural tunnels. At Rochester in 1215, part of the curtain wall and then the southeast corner of the keep were undermined by a deep sap created by miners: in the case of the latter, the props in the sap were burned with the aid of the fat of 40 pigs. At Bedford, too, in 1224 the inner bailey and the keep were mined. In the Holy Land, both Crac des Chevaliers in 1271 and Marqab in 1285 fell to mining operations.

But the success of deep mining depended on soil conditions: at Dover the soft rock made for easy progress and reduced the need for careful propping, but the miners with Edward I in Scotland in 1300 were of little use in the siege of marshy Caerlaverock. At Acre during the Third Crusade, countermining blocked French attempts to bring down the walls. At Bungay castle in Suffolk, a mine and a countermine, dating from 1174, are intact. At Alessandria, Barbarossa’s “cat” covered the filling in of the ditch, supported a siege-tower and served to cover deep mining, but the defenders managed to collapse the tunnels.

Even when mining was successful, the results were not always decisive; at Nicaea the breach was made late in the day and filled in overnight, while at Dover and Acre defences were improvised after breaches were made. Mining was also relatively slow and demanded skilled labour, which might not be available.  Moreover, fortifications could incorporate design features to prevent it. Heavy batters in front of the wall could cause shallow mines to collapse before they reached anything vital, while cisterns could be sited across likely lines of sap, offering the possibility of flooding diggings. Overall, however, mining was the most consistently successful tactic used against fortifications.

35

Background / Re: Fortifications and Siege. (approx 10/12 parts eventualy )

« on: August 09, 2013, 06:40:15 PM »

Pt4

The defences of cities were often strengthened by the incorporation of a citadel. In Europe and the Middle East, castles often gave birth to towns, which nestled around them and were walled. At Ghent, the comital castle dominated the town. Montgomery was laid out as a town when the new castle was built there in the 1220s. Dryslwyn was a small castle-town of the later thirteenth century.

But as cities grew, citadels became quite distinct entities within the defence. In Laon a “new tower”, built by Heribert II in the 920s, held out after the city had fallen in 931 and 949, but fell to mining. During the siege of 985, the commercial quarter of Verdun seems to have served as an inner core for the defence. At Antioch, the citadel stood on the walls and at Jerusalem the famous Tower of David was on the west perimeter. In 1243, the citadel of Viterbo resisted when the city fell. An old Roman fort, the Château de Narbonne, was the citadel of Toulouse, but the demolitions of 1215–16 removed it from the circuit of the walls, and it served as headquarters of the Albigensian Crusade in the great siege of 1217–18. Thirteenth century Acre was defended by double walls with a deep ditch between, and a similar arrangement cut off the suburb of Montmusard from the port proper, where the Templar castle served as a citadel. Citadels on the perimeter sometimes strengthened the defences of a city, although Antioch was an exception. The citadel there was so remote that during the crusader siege it had no influence whatsoever. When the crusaders seized the city, the citadel on its remote mountain-peak held out against them and admitted the forces of Kerbogah when he besieged them in Antioch shortly after.

Citadels, like keeps in castles, must have given confidence to those of the defenders who might find an ultimate refuge in them. However, they often represented the menace of some outside ruling power and were intended to hold down the city rather than defend it, notably in early Norman England.

In the end it was the garrison, not the walls, that mattered. Surprise was by far the best means of seizing a fortified place, and dissension within a city or garrison could be fatal. In 1236, an allied army of the eastern Lombard cities of Vicenza, Trevio, Padua and Mantua was being held off by Ezzelino of Romano when Frederick II suddenly marched from Cremona and seized Vicenza. This was possible because of the absence of many Vicenzan soldiers, and because Ezzelino had already enlisted sympathizers within the city. In the wake of this blow most of eastern Lombardy, notably Padua and Trevio, fell to the imperial cause. At Moissac in August 1212, as we have noted, the citizens lacked the will to fight off the crusader siege although the garrison was willing. Parma defected from the cause of Frederick II in 1247 when Parman exiles made a sally into the city and gained the upper hand.

If surprise was impossible, a determined assault well pressed home was often enough, as at Tonbridge castle in 1088, which Wiliam Rufus’s troops seized by storm on the second day of the siege. The army of the First Crusade tried to rush the formidable defences of Jerusalem equipped only with a single siege-ladder in June 1099. According to the Gesta Stephani, in 1144 Stephen captured Winchcombe by ordering his troops to rush at it under “a cloud of arrows”. The castle was newly built on a high mound, which suggests that it was of wood, and it had only a small garrison. The assault failed, but the garrison quickly decided to surrender on terms.

The fall of Winchcombe nicely illustrates the combination of psychological and physical factors which was called for in siege warfare. Stephen’s assault was a clear show of determination and the garrison, feeling isolated and outnumbered, decided on the better part of valour. In 1144, Baldwin III was unable to take Li Vaux Moise but devastated the countryside, and so persuaded the inhabitants to turn against the Turkish garrison. Before he besieged Taillebourg, Richard’s opening gambit was also destruction of the countryside, provoking the garrison to an ill-considered sally which enabled him to capture the place.

Besiegers and besieged sometimes resorted to cruder methods to depress enemy morale. At Nicaea in 1097, and again at Antioch, the crusaders demoralized the garrisons by impaling the heads of their dead colleagues. Saladin did the same during his siege of Tiberias in 1187, while in 1153 the defenders of Ascalon hung the bodies of those killed in a failed assault over the battlements. During the siege of Milan, Adam de Palatio was hanged at the order of Frederick Barbarossa after a successful Milanese sally. When Barbarossa captured Corno Vecchio, all of the garrison had their right hands cut off. In 1224, Henry III swore that he would hang the garrison of Bedford if it failed to surrender, and duly did when the castle had to be stormed. Edward I reluctantly spared the gallant garrison of Stirling. But if terror failed, specialized techniques and tactics were needed.

36

Background / Re: Fortifications and Siege. (approx 10/12 parts eventualy )

« on: August 08, 2013, 10:55:38 PM »

pt3

Toulouse, in southern France, was another great city which demonstrated its resilience in the face of a determined attack. It defied the army of the Albigensian Crusade in 1211: Simon de Montfort was unable to surround the city, whose walls were three miles round, and he could not depend on reinforcements. But, decisively, the crusaders were starving outside the city while Toulouse was able to buy food through its other gates, so after two weeks the siege was raised. The crusader army went on to attack Moissac, but even this small walled town defied them for a month, and in the end fell because of dissension between the garrison of knights and German mercenaries and the citizens.

Through changing political conditions, the walls of Toulouse were almost destroyed in 1215–16, but in September 1217 Count Raymond of Toulouse regained the city and once again de Montfort and his crusading army laid siege in October 1217. The citizens were united in their defiance of the crusader army and they organized themselves efficiently – men, women and even children. They improvised fortifications with earthworks and timber, and, where these did not exist, poured down stones and other missiles from the roofs upon the attacking French, making the narrow streets impassable.

The citadel, the Château de Narbonne, was held by the French, but it was completely cut off from the city. Once the fury of their first attacks was spent, the French settled down for a long siege. Focaud of Berzy advised Simon: “We must work out how to maintain a long siege so as to destroy the town. Every day we must make raids across the whole country so as to deprive them of corn, grain, of trees too and vines, of salt, timber and other provisions. In this way we shall force them to surrender.”

By January 1218, reinforcements from France were starting to arrive, and more poured in in May and June, but although savage assaults were mounted from both sides of the city, supported by elaborate siege equipment, it was never wholly closed off, and this enabled the citizens to receive reinforcements. When Simon de Montfort was killed by a stone from a mangonel on 26 June 1217, the siege was abandoned. The city was besieged for a third time in 1228, but ultimately it surrendered to the overwhelming power of the French monarchy.

In fact, many sieges of cities were unsuccessful. Frederick II had huge resources, but at Brescia in 1238 his large army was poorly organized and unable to prevent effective sallies by the besieged. At Parma in 1247, his allies blocked the river to prevent food entering the city, which soon became desperate, but a sally caught his forces unprepared. In 1243, tiny Viterbo defected to his enemies at a time when he had dismissed his forces and defied the troops that he raised with Pisan loans. In 1241, the small city of Faenza eventually fell after a bitter six-month siege, which deflected his army from Bologna, its main goal. 

By contrast, as we have seen, Henry II and his son Richard had been able to reduce castles with relative ease. The castle was formidable against an enemy with limited wealth and where, as in thirteenth-century Germany, warfare was on a limited scale, but only an exceptionally strong castle could resist a monarch who could mobilize resources on Henry II’s scale.

In Spain, the Christian kingdoms exploited the strength of cities to defend their frontiers. As the kingdoms advanced into Islamic territory, they planted cities to secure their new frontiers. Citizens were recruited by the offer of land, on generous terms. Fired by a mixture of religious zeal, well founded fear and anxiety to defend what they held, the settlers made good garrisons quite ready to sally out to attack Muslim ravagers and to offer determined resistance in the face of greater attacks. Even when Alfonso VIII was defeated at Alarcos in 1195, the Muslims were unable to make much progress in reconquering the lands, because the cities stood against them, only three minor ones falling.

Attacks on cities were relatively uncommon in northern Europe before the major growth of cities in the thirteenth century. London was besieged by Cnut in 1016, but it offered no resistance to Duke William in 1066 and stood no siege in the civil wars under Stephen, King John and Henry III, although it played a role in all three upheavals.

In Germany, attacks on cities were very frequent, and were essentially “a by-product of the fractured political landscape into which Germany and its sub-regions developed by the thirteenth century”. The dissolution of the kingdom, especially after the death of Frederick II in 1250, produced a chaos of competing forces – many of them very small indeed – and free cities of one kind or another loomed large amongst them. These sieges almost always failed, in part because of the strength of town fortifications, but the major factor must surely have been the small size of the competing political units and their inability to sustain conflict over a long period of time.

Siege was a test of political will and resources on both sides. The defenders needed to provide food and to maintain hope of ultimate success: the task was very much the same on the attackers’ side, complicated by the need to provide shelter and an infrastructure of support. Strong fortifications were an important factor in this struggle of wills.

The fortifications of cities were not, in principle, very different from those of castles. Milan’s in 1158 incorporated a Roman arch which stood outside the main circuit, while Alessandria was a new city, whose fortifications at the time of Barbarossa’s unsuccessful siege of 1174–5 were probably earth and timber. At the time of the First Crusade vulnerable sections of the defences of Antioch and Jerusalem were reinforced by double walls, and the twelfth-century sources indicate that most of the important cities of the Palestinian littoral enjoyed this form of protection: these were almost certainly the inheritance of the Roman past.

The great walls of Constantinople were of course the example of systematic fortification. Such relatively sophisticated structures were rare in the West. Crema had a double wall at the time of its siege in 1159–60, while at Carcassonne in 1228–39 a strong concentric pattern was developed, and this was used in the new fortifications at Oxford shortly after. St Louis constructed Aigues Mortes as a modern fortification from which to launch his crusades. In the East, he recreated Caeserea with massive stone-lined ditches and a steeply raked talus on the wall side, on the model of Belvoir. Acre’s walls were rebuilt on much the same pattern in the thirteenth century; the city fell to al-Ashraf after a siege of only six weeks, but its garrison was not numerous and the enemy was overwhelming.

In North Wales, the walls of Conway and Caernarfon shared the modern sophistication of the castles that sheltered them. In these advanced fortifications, all of the devices found in the castle – machicolations, angled arrow-slits and sally-gates – were emulated. Such complex structures were probably as rare as concentric castles, although the strengthening of city defences with stone walls was a feature of the thirteenth century, and barbicans seem to have been a common addition at weak points. Determination compensated for lack of walls at Toulouse in 1217, and at Alessandria from 27 October 1174 to 12 April 1175, when the threat posed by the army of the Lombard League persuaded Barbarossa to raise the siege.

37

Background / Re: Fortifications and Siege. (approx 10/12 parts eventualy )

« on: August 07, 2013, 09:58:33 PM »

pt2

To attack a large city was an enormous undertaking, involving strong and able command, special equipment and personnel, persistence and, above all, organization to sustain forces. These qualities were not commonly combined in medieval armies, although they were demonstrated by the First Crusade at Antioch, to a remarkable degree.

Baldwin I of Jerusalem maintained the siege of Tyre from November 1111 to April 1112 using earthwork fortifications to protect his army from relief forces, and constructing formidable siege-towers. In the end, he failed because the citizens put up a stubborn and intelligent defence, could count on supply by sea and knew that a relief army was imminent. In 1124, the same disciplined effort – this time supported by a Venetian fleet – was successful. The siege of Ascalon, from 1153 to 1154, was a triumph of organization and determination over adversity. The siege of Lisbon in 1147–8 enjoyed remarkable success, but there was tension between the Portugese, the Anglo-Normans, the Germans and the Flemings over booty. During the Third Crusade, the siege of Acre, sustained for two years from August 1189, was badly hampered by friction between various groups, notably those of Richard I and Philip Augustus.

Frederick Barbarossa’s enormous exertions against Milan illustrate the problems of siege very well. Barbarossa wanted to reassert imperial authority in the old Lombard Kingdom, but Milan was deeply opposed. After the failure of his early efforts to come to terms, Barbarossa besieged Milan with a great army in 1158, but he was never able to isolate the city, and many of his nobles tired of the bitter conflict, forcing him to come to terms at Roncaglia in September 1158. This settlement broke down, chiefly because Barbarossa needed the support of the imperialist cities; amongst them was Cremona, which wanted to weaken Milan by destroying Crema and the fortifications of Piacenza.

The siege of Crema, from 2 July 1159 until 27 January 1160, was an immense effort by Barbarossa. Although relatively small, the city was well fortified and required an all-out effort, with the use of complex siege machinery. After its fall, Frederick’s army melted away, leaving the initiative to Milan, which tried to seize imperial Lodi and to cut Frederick’s communications by isolating Como: armed confrontations resulted, with a pitched battle at Carcano on 9 August 1160 in which Barbarossa was defeated. Only in May 1161 was Milan besieged, and by late August the bitter fighting prompted some of the German nobles to seek a settlement with Milan; Rainald of Dassel prevented this by ambushing their envoys. It was not until March 1162 that Milan capitulated.

The attack on Milan strained even Barbarossa’s resources. To sustain a war with so radical an objective – the destruction of an enemy city – was a major achievement in a world in which military activity was normally fitful. But a military solution in the Lombard plain was impossible, for the cities were too numerous and their political connections were too ramified, and Barbarossa failed to create a political solution after the fall of Milan. When Verona rebelled in 1164, much of eastern Lombardy followed – the emperor found himself with few Germans and “the Lombards were reluctant to come to his assistance”.

38

Background / Fortifications and Siege. (11 pts)

« on: August 07, 2013, 05:34:20 PM »

This thread will be concentrating on a chapter taken from the book "WESTERN WARFARE IN THE AGE OF THE CRUSADES 1000 - 1300" by John France.


Pt1

Fortifications and siege

Castles were never the only fortifications in medieval Europe. By the end of the period there were cities everywhere, and most had stone fortifications. Large cities were more common in southern France, Spain, Italy and the Holy Land than in northern Europe.

In Italy, Florence, Milan, Venice and Genoa, and in Spain Cordoba and Granada, all had populations of 50,000-100,000, but in northern Europe only Paris was of this magnitude, although Ghent and Bruges may have approached 50,000. Cities of 25,000–50,000 included Padua, Bologna, Verona, Pavia, Lucca, Rome, Naples and Palermo in Italy, Barcelona and Valencia in Spain, Toulouse in Provence and only Bordeaux, Lyons, Rouen, London and Cologne further north. In the 10,000–25,000 range, Italy had Cremona, Mantua, Modena, Parma, Pavia, Rimini, Forli, Faenza, Ravenna, Cesena, Orvieto, Perugia, Sienna, Pistoia and Pisa, and Spain had Zaragossa, while northern Europe could count Abbeville, Amiens, Arras, Lille, Ypres, Douai, Valenciennes, Mons, Louvain, Liège, Beauvais, Chartres, Troyes, Metz and Dijon. For the rest, the cities we hear of probably numbered between 2,000 and 10,000.

Because many towns grew up around castles, the distinction between a small town and a castle was not at all clear-cut and, indeed, in the Holy Land and elsewhere we know of towns founded in castles, while Latin terminology often uses confusingly overlapping words which further obscures the distinction. The basic strength of the fortified city, as of the castle, rested in its garrison and political connections, whether as part of a state, such as Ghent and Bruges within Flanders, or Paris within the Capetian monarchy, or as a city–state with alliances of its own. In this sense, the strategic problem for the attacker was the same – to isolate the target from a friendly field-army or the support of a network of castles.

It was simply more difficult for a besieger to mount a successful assault on a city or to cut it off beyond all hope of relief, both because of its size and because of the problem of sustaining a large army over a period of time. All besiegers faced certain common problems.

Any city or castle could obviously be blockaded, and so would eventually fall from starvation if relief did not arrive. But the besieger himself was just as likely to suffer from supply problems as the besieged, and was more exposed to weather and disease. In 1184, hunger forced the retreat of an allied attack on the county of Hainaut, while in 1198 the Piacenzans could not assault Borgo San Donnino because of drought, followed by bad winter weather.

The presence of a relief army imposed terrible risks on an attacker. At the siege of Acre, the crusaders dug earthworks that had to be manned when they attacked the city, lest they be taken in the rear by Saladin’s army; Philip Augustus did the same against an English relief force at Château Gaillard. Richard I argued against an attack on Jerusalem in 1192 because Saladin’s army could cut his communications with the coast. In 1199, the Piacenzans and Milanese were forced to withdraw from the siege of Castelnuovo Bocca d’Adda by the Cremonans, whose relief force established itself nearby in a fortified camp, and in 1237 the Milanese and their allies prevented Frederick II from besieging Brescia by establishing a similar camp 25km to the south, on the Lusignolo.

The problems of a major siege were aggravated by the loose and composite nature of medieval armies. Lack of discipline and a less than alert guard probably explains how Mathilda escaped from Oxford in 1142. At Ascalon in 1153, the Templars forced a breach in the walls, but refused to allow others to exploit it, with disastrous results. In 1238, Frederick II was anxious to follow up his great victory at Cortenova in the previous year, but he was unable to gather a sizeable army until July, and then it was with a very motley force that he attacked Brescia – Germans, Cremonans, Apulians, Saracens, Tuscans, English, French, Spanish, Provençals and even Greeks are mentioned, each with their own leaders.

The siege seems to have been decided upon at a very late stage, for it was only after the arrival of the young King Henry in June that the army gathered. By that time, the four months’ supply of rations that Frederick had commanded the Cremonans to take with them must have been running low. Although the only serious relief effort was an attack by the Piacenzans on Cremona, the siege, begun on 11 July, seems to have been conducted in a dilatory way which failed to prevent Brescian sallies, one of which, in August, captured Frederick’s engineer, Calamandrinus, who was persuaded to work for the city. It was not until September that great siege towers were built and serious assaults made, but by then it was too late and inclement weather forced the imperial army to return to Cremona.

In February 1248, Frederick II’s army was encamped in his siege-city of Victoria outside Parma when the besieged noted his absence – he had gone hunting. A minor skirmish of a few knights on both sides led to a determined sally by the Parmans, which panicked the imperial army before Frederick could impose order – the result was a major defeat for the imperialists. Edward I’s siege of Caerlaverock in 1300 began with futile assaults by notables intent on displaying their bravery; these were soon replaced by a systematic siege.

The factor that distinguished siege warfare against important cities was their enormous potential for resistance. Street-fighting was just as costly in the Middle Ages as at Stalingrad. When the crusader army reached Toulouse in 1217, the city was virtually unfortified, but the crusaders were unable to enter because the citizens barricaded the streets and showered the attackers with missiles from the rooftops. At Mansourah, over 300 mounted knights were lost when they charged into the town and were overwhelmed by blocks of wood thrown down from the houses.

When the First Crusade attacked Antioch in October 1097, their army of about 50,000 faced a garrison of no more than 5,000 Turks, who had limited support from the population, many of whom were Christians. But the walls were 10km round and enclosed an area nearly 3km long and 2km wide. On the west they abutted the river Orontes, while to the east they rose abruptly up the mountainside to 500m; the more vulnerable north side was reinforced by barbicans. This strong city wall dated from Justinian’s time and it was defended by a hierarchy of great and lesser towers. The crusaders were not even able to blockade all of the main gates until April 1098, after seven months of siege. The risk that they ran was dispersal of forces, which might open them to defeat in detail by a determined sally, precisely the fate of Kerbogah’s army on 28 June 1098, after his siege of the crusaders who had obtained entry to Antioch by betrayal.

Similarly, in Italy, Barbarossa’s first siege of Milan in 1158 was dogged by many sallies because his army was stretched out around the walls. By contrast with the garrison of Antioch, the Milanese enjoyed the support of the city population, whose limitations as soldiers counted for less behind city walls. Internal lines enabled defenders to launch effective sallies: it was probably for this reason that on the eve of the crusader attack in 1099, Jerusalem was reinforced with 400 horsemen. Medieval pictures almost always show knights in besieging armies; their mobility was necessary to defend against such sudden attacks. It is worth noting that the destruction of Frederick II’s siege-city of Victoria began with a small cavalry skirmish.
   

39

Background / Re: The Italian Job

« on: July 27, 2013, 07:12:45 PM »

PT 4 (The last part)


THE SFORZAS OF MILAN

With the death of Hawkwood the time of the foreign Condottieri in Italian service began to fade, and from this time on the most prominent names in the annals of Italian wars were no longer English or German but Italian. The pattern of employment also changed, producing in one outstanding case, that of Francesco Sforza, an example of a man who started off as a mercenary captain and became a lord in his own right.

Francesco Sforza was the son of a certain Muzio Attendolo (1368-1424), a rough and illiterate soldier who earned himself the nickname of 'Sforza' ('the Force') through his prowess as a mercenary captain. On the death of his father Francesco inherited his command and his long tradition of service to the Visconti dukes of Milan.

Sforza was one of two condottieri whom Visconti employed. The other was a certain Piccinino, and an understandable rivalry grew up between them, a jealousy probably fostered by Visconti, who saw it as a way of keeping them from revolting against him. Piccinino had overall command of the Visconti forces, while to Sforza had long been promised the hand of Visconti's daughter.

In the early 1430s Sforza was sent south with an open brief to take the sides of the hill towns against the new and unpopular pope. So successful was he in this that Visconti became alarmed by the following and the lands that his employee was amassing and, in breach of his contract, was also retaining for himself. Meanwhile Piccinino had been sent elsewhere on a similar expedition and had obediently handed over all his conquests to Visconti.

As his relations with Visconti deteriorated and the prospects of marrying his daughter receded, the opportunistic Sforza, a condottiere if ever there was one, threw in his lot with Milan's great rival, Venice. A full-scale war with Milan erupted in 1438, but Sforza kept prudently in the shadows, allowing the famous condottieri Gattemalata and Colleoni to take the lead in Venice's battles against his old colleague and rival Piccinino. He finally took the field against Piccinino at the Battle of Anghiari in 1440, the bloody encounter later to be dismissed by Machiavelli as having only one casualty.

The greatest casualty at Anghiari, however, was Piccinino's reputation. Defeated by Sforza, he asked Visconti to retire him, at which the duke realized that the time was ripe to negotiate. The terms were quite straightforward. If Francesco Sforza would arrange a peace between Venice and Milan then he would receive the long-promised Visconti daughter and a large dowry. Victory was indeed sweet. Francesco's marriage to Bianca Visconti proved to be both happy and highly profitable. Bianca was also a redoubtable woman in her own right. On one occasion when Francesco was off campaigning some rebels seized one of his castles. Not wishing to have her husband distracted from his contractual duties Bianca led an army herself and recaptured the fortress.

The summer of 1447 found the Venetian army dangerously close to Milan. Sick and near to death, the old Visconti duke summoned Sforza's army to his aid, and while on the march Sforza received further news that the duke had died. Through his marriage and his unquestioned military skills Francesco Sforza had every chance of succeeding to the dukedom, but the citizens of Milan had other ideas. Suddenly they had the opportunity to throw off the old regime of dukes and their hired condottieri, and unilaterally declared the birth of the 'Golden Ambrosian Republic'.

But even a republic needed an army, and being stuck fast in the Italian mercenary tradition, Milan chose Francesco Sforza to be its captain general! Realizing the amazing opportunity he had been given, Sforza persuaded Milan to recruit the great condottieri Colleoni as well, and began a series of campaigns on the republic's behalf that promised nothing but personal success for the Sforza fortunes.

By 1448 Milan was running short of money, so Colleoni changed sides and went back to Venice. Sforza stayed on, thus demonstrating his great personal loyalty to the Milanese. A few months later his army was surprised early one morning by the Venetians at Caravaggio between Brescia and Milan. Keeping totally calm, Sforza sent a cavalry detachment round to the enemy rear while he held on against the frontal assault. The result was one of the most convincing condottieri victories of all time. Thousands ofVenetian prisoners were taken, and so devastating was the defeat that Venice was forced to sue for peace.

Negotiations, however, were conducted with Francesco Sforza himself, and not with the leaders of the Golden Ambrosian Republic, and a deal was struck whereby Sforza would receive Venetian support for his eventual takeover of Milan in return for a pledge on certain disputed territories. It was the sort of private arrangement that only a condottiere could make, and, like many a condottieri arrangement, it was as easily broken, because when Sforza did not deliver within almost a year Venice struck its own peace deal with Milan, leaving Francesco Sforza completely isolated.

Swift action was needed, so Sforza rapidly laid siege to Milan, and as the citizens grew hungry for bread, pro-Sforza sympathizers in the city stirred up a popular feeling for an honourable surrender. In February 1450, therefore, Francesco Sforza rode in triumph through Milan's open gates.

Thus did the son of an illiterate soldier rise to become one of the princes of the Renaissance through the greatest example of personal gain from mercenary service. Yet it was not to the glory of the Sforzas that Machiavelli and his contemporaries were to look when they searched their souls for the reasons for Italy's collapse in 1494. To them it was the earlier condottieri such as Hawkwood who had planted the seeds of Italy's humiliation through a form of warfare that men like Sforza had done nothing to control, and which was to leave such a bitter legacy behind it.

40

Background / Re: The Italian Job

« on: July 26, 2013, 07:40:45 PM »

Pt 3

THE WHITE COMPANY

In 1361 a new force appeared on the Italian scene in the persons of the famous White Company, so-called because they kept their armour so brightly burnished. They were also known as the 'Inglesi', because they were mostly men who had taken part in the Hundred Years' War, but they were not all Englishmen, and their first leader was in fact a German. Nevertheless it was under an Englishman, Sir John Hawkwood, that the company achieved its greatest renown.

The knights of the White Company preferred to fight on foot in units of three: two men at arms and a page who kept their horses in readiness. One very 'English' characteristic about them was the use of the longbow, but they were also equipped with siege weapons, and provided a well-disciplined and ready-made army for anyone who wished to employ them. So formidable was their reputation that on one occasion when they were late turning up to fight for Pisa against Florence, the Pisans dressed their own men up to look like the White Company, and the Florentines withdrew.

Sir John Hawkwood was born in about 1320, and is described by Froissart as being 'a poor knight having gained nothing but his spurs'. He is believed to have fought at Crecy, but it was as a condottiere in Italy that he achieved renown, serving several masters, but each in turn, because treachery during a campaign was not acceptable to the condottieri code, even if extortion may have been.

In 1368, for example, he defended Borgoforte, a castle that commanded a vital river crossing of the Po, against the German emperor Charles IV  The action included flooding the emperor's camp by breaking an embankment holding back the fierce winter river. In this Hawkwood was providing a service to the whole of Italy, but it was Bernabo Visconti, Duke of Milan, who had employed him on loan from Pisa and, being the paymaster, Visconti's own reputation was enhanced as much as that of the Englishman who did the actual fighting.

In such ways did Sir John Hawkwood and his White Company provide a high quality service for their Italian employers. There were many grumbles, because being a soldier of fortune meant having to make a fortune out of being a soldier. To put it bluntly, mercenaries murdered for money, and any mercy that a condottiere might display through declining to slit the throat of a captive had more to do with the greater value of the man ransomed than with Christian charity. Looting, too, could be regarded as an economic necessity, either to provide goods for one's employer from which he could cover the agreed fee, or to make up any shortfall should payment be delayed. In this the Church was Hawkwood's worst employer, and on one occasion the pope, who no doubt felt personally safe from the White Company, simply terminated Hawkwood's contract while it was still in financial arrears.

It was about this time that St Catherine of Siena addressed a letter to Hawkwood beseeching him to give up the life of a condottiere and lead a crusade. In a very perceptive sentence she urged that Sir John, 'from being the servant and soldier of the Devil, should become a manly and true knight'. This belief, that a mercenary was not a 'true knight' and indeed an inferior being, summed up the feelings that many people already had about these companies upon whom too many people were coming to rely too much.

Hawkwood was equally dependant on receiving a succession of contracts, and in 1375 had little choice but to accept a new contract from the pope when the alternative was unemployment. The job given to the White Company was to invade Tuscany, and in May 1375 Hawkwood set out in that direction with an army that included the latest versions of bombards for demolishing Florence's walls. He was not surprised when Florentine envoys met him at the borders of their territory. While not wishing to persuade him to change sides, they assured him, what would be a reasonable sum for them to pay him to cross Florence off the list of cities to be captured? Sir John named his price, and when the Florentines had picked themselves up off the floor they negotiated an indemnity for their city for five years at the price Hawkwood demanded.

News of the deal quickly spread, and before long Hawkwood had negotiated similar non-aggression pacts with Siena, Arezzo, Pisa and Lucca. It was the most profitable and least warlike campaign that bold Sir John had ever engaged in, and confirmed a true side for the caricature of 'mock battles' that Machiavelli was later to paint, except that these were not mock battles, but rather no battles at all. Not surprisingly, the pope soon got to hear that the bombards remained unfired and that the walls of Tuscany were still upright, and quite understandably withheld Hawkwood's pay, a situation that lasted until the noble Sir John kidnapped a cardinal and held him to ransom.

Yet within a year of this romping farcical tale of 'mercenary as mobster', the story of Sir John Hawkwood took a sickening turn. A certain Cardinal Robert of Geneva had occupied the town of Cesena with his own mercenary troops, who were mainly Bretons. They began looting the town as mercenaries regularly did, at which point the citizens put up a fierce resistance. Being unable to defeat them, the cardinal tricked the people into surrendering their weapons in return for a guarantee of safety. But the affair was not to end there, because Cardinal Robert wanted revenge, and knew that his small force were insufficient to provide it.

Sir John Hawkwood's White Company were not far away, and as they were in the employ of the Church, they could be required to 'administer justice', as the cardinal put it. After initially protesting that he could persuade the citizens to lay down their arms by peaceful negotiation, Hawkwood succumbed to the cardinal's evident intentions, and joined the Bretons in a brutal and thorough massacre. The piazzas of Cesena were heaped with bodies, and the moats were full of dead people who had drowned rather then face the swords waiting for them at the gates.

Well might later chroniclers record that Hawkwood 'let many escape' and historians argue that he was only obeying orders. Where was the negotiator, the profit-hungry but shrewd mobster who had brought off  half-a-dozen Tuscan cities? Where indeed was the chivalrous knight, the bold tactician of Borgoforte? Sir John Hawkwood now stood exposed as the servant and soldier of the Devil, just as St Catherine of Siena had anathematized him. Here was the essential weakness of the whole condottieri system. No contract could ever give an employer total control over a mercenary band. There was always this huge grey area of unpredictability which went far beyond the simple fighting of battles, and could manifest itself either as farce or as tragedy, as rape or racketeering.


The year 1385 was to find Sir John fighting much more honourably for Padua against Verona, and pulling off a stunning victory at the Battle of Castagnaro, where he abandoned the siege of Verona in a false retreat and lured the Veronese army to its destruction beside the River Adige. With the Battle of Castagnaro the reputation of Hawkwood as a commander and a military hero were dramatically enhanced. More campaigns followed, and on his death in 1394 a personal request from King Richard II, no less, was received asking that the body of 'the late brave soldier' be brought back to England for honoured burial. No absentee mercenary could have asked for more.


In part 4, "THE SFORZAS OF MILAN"

41

Background / Re: The Italian Job

« on: July 25, 2013, 07:24:11 PM »

PT 2

THE FIRST CONDOTTIERI

The condottieri had their origins in thirteenth-century Italy, when a handful of mercenaries were employed by the Lombard and the Tuscan Leagues to counter the aggression of the German emperors. These mercenaries, who were primarily foreigners (although to a Florentine the term applied equally well to an inhabitant of Genoa) were hired as individuals, not as companies.

As external threats diminished so the hostility between neighbouring cities increased, and political factions within a city made it more difficult to recruit militiamen from among the citizens. In addition, an exile from one city might well be tempted to enrol as a mercenary in a neighbouring place to fight against the men who had expelled him.

The increased sophistication of weaponry such as the crossbow also led to the emergence of men who could offer skills in these specialities surpassing any that could be expected from part-time militia soldiers, and it was only natural that such skills would be offered at a price. One other factor that encouraged the recruitment of mercenaries was the mistrust that existed between certain rulers and their subjects. The classic example is the d'Este family of Ferrara. Having seen his unpopular tax collector torn in pieces by the mob and fed to the dogs, the ruler of the family built a castle next to his palace in 1385 as a defence against his own subjects. It was therefore clear that to raise an army from them when an enemy threatened was not likely to yield much enthusiasm.

Yet at no time were the condottieri and their men more dangerous than when they had just finished fighting a battle. For them to accept their pay and then go home proved to be an exceptional occurrence, and a more likely scenario was for them to stay on and seek employment with someone else, possibly even the lord against whom they had just fought. Alternatively, they preferred to engage in little private wars of their own where payment was obtained in the form of loot, often by robbing the very lord who had recently employed them.

In 1329, for example, 800 German cavalrymen deserted the imperial army of Louis of Bavaria at Pisa and made a spontaneous attack on nearby Lucca. The assault failed, largely because the mercenaries lacked siege equipment, but they looted the suburbs thoroughly and then took to winter quarters. Much alarmed, the emperor sent an envoy to negotiate with them, but he promptly joined the mercenary band and became their leader. The company returned to Lucca the following spring to make a surprise attack. This was completely successful, and to add to the huge amount of loot they turned in an extra profit by selling the entire city of Lucca to the Genoese for 30,000 florins! The company then decided to quit while it was still winning, so they divided up their spoils and disbanded, leaving an alarming precedent behind them.

Paradoxically, such activities by these apparently uncontrolled bands served to endear them to potential employers, and their contracts increased in number.

A Swabian knight called Werner von Urslingen provides an excellent example. He and his men were first employed in Italy by the della Scala family of Verona. When the renowned Cangrande della Scala died in 1329 Werner continued to serve his nephew Mastino II, who then disgusted his mercenary troops by making a humiliating peace settlement with his enemies. Having no need of mercenaries now, Werner and his men were paid off, but instead of disbanding and returning home they immediately offered their services to Pisa, which was then under threat from Florence. This provided another three years' work, at the end of which Werner forced Pisa to give his men redundancy money.

But still they did not disband, and the year 1342 was to see this newly named 'Great Company' of 3,000 men roaming all over central Italy, fighting campaigns for anyone who would employ them and blackmailing any who would not. Only the Bolognese resisted them sufficiently to order a truce over their territories, a peaceful passage that was instantly abandoned once another area was entered, and in the end the Great Company was literally paid by the Lombard cities to go home. Five years later, however, Werner was back, and this time he was in the pay of the Hungarians, who had hired his company to help them invade Italy!

Coming in Pt 3, “THE WHITE COMPANY”

42

Background / The Italian Job

« on: July 23, 2013, 05:47:07 PM »

PT 1

This thread concentrate's on a chapter taken from the same book as my last one, and while this will also be rather long it'll certainly not be as long as that was.    (Now if I decide get around to posting "Fortifications and Siege", that will be "long"  ) 

THE ITALIAN JOB

War has always provided opportunities for adventurers and mercenaries, as the story of the Najera campaign and the Lithuanian crusades illustrates so well, and the early decades of the Hundred Years' War saw many other examples of men fighting in armies for the personal gain that could come either from loot or from an agreed fee. In many cases, however, mercenary companies or individual 'soldiers of fortune' are indistinguishable from the rest of an army in the overall operations of siege and battle, and it is only during times of truce that real mercenary activity can be identified.

The Peace of Bretigny in 1360 provided just such an opportunity. Large bodies of troops were suddenly disbanded, and instead of returning home, sold their skills to the highest bidder, and even, when no bidder was available, started wars of their own. It is with a sense of shame that one records the name of Sir Hugh Calveley and Sir Robert Knowles as leaders of these despicable bands.

Profit had once been made from the capture and ransom of the rich. Now it was to be scraped from the bottom of war's empty barrel. A stable government, such as that exercised by the Black Prince in Aquitaine, could close its borders to them, but this only put the pressure on to neighbours in turn. As a result the so-called 'Free Companies' flourished where the populace was weakest to withstand them, and where relatively unspoiled lands promised rich pickings. All that was necessary was for them to take a few castles and hold the populace to ransom.

Local defence against them was almost non-existent, although the towns built as fortified bastides fared better than others. As for getting rid of these brigands there seemed little alternative to paying them to go away and attack someone else - a scarcely satisfactory arrangement, unless the alternative place were a distant country. As Lithuania, which provided working holidays for the nobility, was hardly a convenient dumping ground for unwanted plunderers,' a much more promising location was to be found in Italy.


CONDOTTIERI WARFARE

Service in Italian wars was not a new phenomenon, and in fact the curse of 'the mercenary was to afflict the peninsula for a further century and a half. When the French king Charles VIII invaded Italy in 1494 and captured Naples within six months, his rapid success was blamed on the predilection of the Italians for employing mercenaries. According to influential commentators such as Machiavelli, the Italian states were crushed so easily because for centuries they had hired others to fight on their behalf rather than relying on their own militias. To name names, Italy owed its latest disaster to the long and disreputable history of the condottieri.

The condottieri were the captains who represented the supply side of the mercenary equation. They owed their title and their continued livelihood to the granting of a condotta or contract between an employer, usually a prince, a baron or a city, and the captain who would supply soldiers to fight on the commissioner's behalf. Machiavelli's sense of outrage was given additional colouring from a long humanist tradition that cherished the notion of free citizens rallying to the flag to defend their homes, and despised and vilified the very notion of the mercenary. He was not alone. Another Florentine politician wrote of a contemporary condottieri captain that 'in general all men of his occupation disgust me, because they are our natural enemies, and despoil all of us, and their only thought is to keep the upper hand and to drain our wealth'.

These were perceptive comments, because, although mercenaries clearly had their uses, they were a highly volatile and extremely dangerous commodity. Stories abounded of mercenaries coming to a halt within sight of an advancing enemy and refusing to engage in battle until they were paid in advance, and of condottieri captains changing sides so frequently that even their own men were unsure whom they were expected to fight. In 1441 the condottiere Piccinino insisted on a guarantee that he would be given the fief of Piacenza before he would agree to attack the Venetian army, which provoked an explosive outburst from the man who had hired him to do just that.

Most employers of condottieri no doubt appreciated that any contract to provide such an unpredictable service as mercenary warfare, where the signatory faced his own possible extinction, was naturally prone to ambiguity and wide open to exploitation. But to Machiavelli condottieri warfare was an inferior product compared to the heroic deeds that could be expected from a national militia. Indeed, he claimed, the wars waged by condottieri had not been real wars at all, but bloodless mock battles contested by rival mercenaries who were concerned only to give the show of conflict for the benefit of their respective paymasters, who could then each be threatened with real force if the cash was not forthcoming. 'Wars were commenced without fear,' he wrote in a famous passage, 'continued without danger and concluded without loss.'

In fact Machiavelli was sorely mistaken about the true nature of condottieri warfare. At the Battle of Anghiari in 1440, according to Machiavelli, 'one man was killed, and he fell off his horse and was trampled to death', but according to reliable eyewitnesses the list of dead topped 900. At Molinella in 1467, where 'some horses were wounded and some prisoners taken but no death occurred', the actual losses were 600. The one justification for Machiavelli's exaggerated comments may lie in the fact that in these battles, as in similar encounters throughout contemporary Europe, the bulk of the casualties tended to be lower-class troops who were both more numerous and less well protected than their betters, and out of 170 named condottieri captains only a dozen actually died fighting, and some of these deaths may have been as a result of assassinations carried out under the convenient cloak of anonymity that a battle provided.

In part 2 "THE FIRST CONDOTTIERI

43

Background / Re: The Ill-made Knight

« on: July 13, 2013, 07:32:04 PM »

Pt 8 (The last part)

THE REVIVAL OF FRANCE (pt 2)

One by one the great English knights were coming to the end of their careers. Late in 1368 Sir John Chandos, gallantly defending Aquitaine, attempted an ambush of a party of French soldiers. The morning was cold, and the ground was frozen solid. Since losing an eye in a hunting accident five years previously Chandos had never worn a visor. Descending from his horse to assist a fallen esquire who was being attacked by a group of Frenchmen, his foot caught in the long white armour robe that he was wearing against the cold. When he slipped on the icy ground he was recognized and swiftly seized. The point of a spear was thrust into the open helmet, ending the life of the architect of Poitiers and Auray.

The Prince of Wales, whose life was also rapidly slipping to an end, completed a ruthless career by an act of strange brutality. In Gascony defections were occurring right, left and centre, but when the supposedly loyal Limoges rebelled it was too much to bear. That the gates of the city had been opened to the French forces by the Bishop of Limoges, the godfather of the prince's son Richard, added insult to injury. The Black Prince, a sick man, overreacted totally. He supervised a fierce siege from the litter in which he was forced to be carried, and when the town fell allowed a brutal sack and massacre.

Historians have argued long about the rights and wrongs of the prince's action. It has even been pointed out that the sack of Limoges was fully within the rules of war as they were accepted at the time. So it may have been. The important point about Limoges is that the prince's action was totally unnecessary. It could never have achieved anything. If it were meant to terrorize other towns into confirming English rule, the Black Prince showed a deplorable lack of appreciation of the psychology of a populace who know they are winning. The following year he returned to England for the last time. In a brutal age he had controlled his savagery with wisdom and good sense, until this final, pointless massacre.

In 1372 the Earl of Pembroke, newly named Lieutenant of Aquitaine, sailed for the troubled province with an urgently needed relieving army. As his ships approached La Rochelle they were attacked by a dozen Castilian galleys. The battle lasted two days, and resulted in the total destruction of the English ships and the capture of the earl. With the lines of communication cut on the direct sea route, the Gascon strongholds began to topple before the combined efforts of the Duke of Anjou, du Guesclin, and de Clisson. Poitiers (August 1372) and La Rochelle (September 1372) opened their gates to the French without resistance.

In a battle at Soubise in that same August, the English suffered a further blow in the capture of Jean de Grailly, the Captal de Buch. For the first time in the Hundred Years' War, military sense took precedence over the profit motive, and ransom was refused. This new policy of Charles V was highly unpopular among the French knights, and particularly so with the esquire who had actually captured him, but the decision was a sign of the times, and the unfortunate Captal remained in captivity in Paris until his death in 1376.

Ironically, du Guesclin's native Brittany remained the one place in the west where an English army could land relatively safely and where a raiding party could seek sanctuary. The continued existence of English garrisons in the duchy resulted almost entirely from the duke's less than total loyalty to the pledge he had made to Charles V.  In 1372 he finally threw off his mask, repudiated his homage to the French king, and fled to England from where, in 1373, a 4,OOO-strong English army came to Saint-Malo, though the duke was not with them. A rapid advance by du Guesclin from Rennes forced them to re-embark and sail round the peninsula to Brest, where they provided a welcome supplement to the garrison.

Du Guesclin, however, had demonstrated to Edward III that the north coast of Brittany could not be relied upon as a staging post for Aquitaine. He reinforced the point by taking Becherel, which still dominated the peninsula, and in spite of attacks had resisted him since 1363. As a further gesture he used Saint-Malo as a base for a raid on Jersey. While Olivier de Clisson laid siege to Brest, du Guesclin hurried back to Paris in August 1373. John of Gaunt had landed at Calais, and was leading the largest and most destructive chevauchee that France had seen for many years. Gaunt appears initially to have had no great aim apart from the usual one of causing havoc, but it soon became evident that he planned to march right across France to relieve Gascony. He actually reached his target, and the arrival of his bedraggled army, depleted and harassed by du Guesclin, must have put heart into the defenders of Bordeaux.

But the state of Gaunt's troops, weakened and weary of the war, only showed in microcosm the general feeling on both sides. Charles V had restarted the war and was winning, but he feared that he had not the resources to finish it. In January 1374 du Guesclin concluded a local peace with John of Gaunt, which eventually spread to a general truce. In 1376 the Black Prince died, followed within a year by his father, the mighty King Edward III. On every hand men were tired of war. For Charles V there remained a little local difficulty concerning the Duke of Brittany. In December 1378 the duke was accused of treachery and Brittany was annexed to the French Crown. Even though du Guesclin and de Clisson supported the king, the act proved to be an immense miscalculation. The population rose as one in support of the de Montfort duke, giving du Guesclin the unsavoury task of going to war against his own countrymen.

The Constable demonstrated an acute political skill which he had never before had the opportunity to employ. In a rare example of a negotiated settlement, du Guesclin managed to persuade an English army to return home without a fight. The commander, incidentally, was none other than Sir Hugh Calveley. What conversation, what reminiscences, must have been exchanged by these two men - now the elder statesmen of their respective armies?

Following this temporary solution du Guesclin settled in Brittany, perhaps hoping for a well-earned retirement. He was, after all, nearly sixty years old, and had been fighting throughout his entire life, but a final call came from his king. The people of Languedoc had rebelled against the Duke of Anjou and threatened the newly found stability of the area. It was to be du Guesclin's last campaign.

Bidding farewell to Brittany at the cathedral of Dol de Bretagne, where he reviewed his troops, he drove the brigands from Auvergne, and laid siege to a fortress called Chateauneuf de Randon. Here he was taken suddenly ill, and rapidly slowed down from the furious pace at which he had habitually lived his life. Forced to command the siege from his bed, he died there on 13 July 1380. The captain of the besieged castle, moved by the unexpectedness with which he had become part of a moment of history, brought the keys of the castle and laid them on du Guesclin's body. So died the great, tough little Breton. His life was unique in its military style, breaking all the social conventions of the day.

Unlike Jeanne d'Arc, Bertrand du Guesclin gave out no prophecies and suffered no martyr's death. But as she was to do half a century later, he seized the moment when France could reassert herself after black despair. He rejoiced, quite naturally, in the honours and titles heaped upon him: Count of Longueville, Duke of Molina, Earl of Trastamare, Constable of France, but always retained that common touch which enabled him to understand the mind of the ordinary soldier he had once been, whether to lead him or to oppose him. Had his patient strategy been heeded by those who came after him, Henry V's army would never have reached Agincourt in one piece, and the Hundred Years' War would have been known by another name.

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44

Background / Re: The Ill-made Knight

« on: July 11, 2013, 10:31:44 PM »

Pt 7

THE REVIVAL OF FRANCE  (pt 1)

Najera had been a Spanish disaster, not a French one, and with du Guesclin safely home Charles V had the opportunity to take the offensive against England for the first time since Poitiers. Everything was pointing in the right direction. The English knights had always seen their king as a military leader, and throughout his long and brilliant career Edward III had exploited this feeling. But the king was now a sick man, more inclined to take pleasure in his mistress than to lead an army to battle, or even grapple with the minutiae of preparation. His noble heir, who had served him so well, never quite recovered from a severe bout of dysentery contracted in Spain, and languished in Bordeaux.

By contrast Charles V was the epitome of energy. In 1367 he ordered an enquiry into the number of archers that every town could provide. Regular training was ordered, and in 1368 public sports were forbidden so as to encourage the artisans to practice archery. For France it was a revolution in military thinking. The previous depredations of the Companies also made him look at the state of the nation's castles. Financial help was made available to provide them with troops and artillery, and undertake repairs.

His first moves were political, with a little dabbling in the affairs of the duchy of Aquitaine, which was in complete contravention of the Treaty of Bretigny. When the English response came it served only to demonstrate what Charles had suspected and hoped for - that the ailing Edward III was no longer capable of original military thought. Once again it was the same pattern of chevauchee raiding. In 1368 John of Gaunt marched from Calais to Harfleur and back without achieving anything. The following year Sir Robert Knowles landed at Calais and marched straight on the lIe de France, burning the Parisian countryside and defying the king in his own capital. It was a daring raid, made more remarkable in that it was led by a knight who was a mere commoner instead of a noble, an almost unique event.

The French king's riposte to a commoner's incursion was to set his own great commoner against him, and du Guesclin was raised to the highest military office that France could bestow - that of Constable, giving him full command of the entire French military effort. It was the summit of du Guesclin's achievements. Perhaps moved by the promotion of his fellow Breton, Olivier de Clisson, who had fought du Guesclin at Auray and Najera, and then sworn loyalty to the French king, joined du Guesclin in a military alliance of tremendous potential.

Charles V knew what his father and grandfather had suffered at the hands of the English chevauchees, but he also knew how du Guesclin had countered them. Twenty years of experience were now brought to bear against the latest chevauchee and the English garrisons. To complement these operations Charles V entrusted the more aristocratic and conventional Duke of Anjou with the task of taking the war to the English in Gascony, which he proceeded to do with a subtle combination of siege-work and political persuasion.

Meanwhile du Guesclin and de Clisson harried Knowles's columns remorselessly, picking off stragglers, launching night attacks, and reducing the hard commander to a state of indecision. Knowles began to retreat towards Brittany, where he hoped to find some refuge among the remaining garrisons with local, pro-English, support. But 'the Butcher' had sealed his fate. On 4 December 1370, de Clisson and du Guesclin fell upon Knowles's rearguard at Pontvallain, near Le Mans, and annihilated it.

The victory, the nearest thing to a pitched battle the French had dared attempt, became the first French success against an entirely English army since Poitiers. Knowles's remnant struggled home to tell the tale. That is what comes, said his aristocratic superiors, of entrusting the command of an English expeditionary force to a mere commoner. But their criticism was misdirected. Knowles's failure came about because of lack of discipline in an army accustomed to brave adventuring. Frustrated by delay and French attack, his army had fragmented, the rearguard choosing to go its own way, and paying the price. Nonetheless, Knowles had to suffer considerable mortification before he was readmitted to the king's pleasure.

45

Background / Re: The Ill-made Knight

« on: July 08, 2013, 03:40:06 PM »

Pt 6

THE BATTLE OF NAJERA

The next we hear of du Guesclin is of him fighting in Spain as a mercenary against Pedro the Cruel, King of Aragon. Among his motley band were Sir Hugh Calveley and Matthew Gournay. Calveley's presence is particularly ironic. He and du Guesclin had fought each other for the past twelve years since the affair at Montmuran, and in that time each had separately captured the other and held him to ransom! But the whole situation was bizarre. The presence of the mercenary companies disguised the fact that it was an official French campaign, and anyone who asked awkward questions was told they were going on a crusade against the Moors of Granada.

The initial campaign proved an easy one. Pedro the Cruel fled and Henry of Trastamare was crowned King of Castile in Burgos Cathedral, but when Pedro returned to the fray he was accompanied not only by mercenaries, but by the mighty Black Prince. Approximately half his expeditionary force were English troops and soldiers from the Gascony garrisons. The rest were made up from English 'Free Companies' (the mercenaries who are described in detail in Chapter 6), Pedro the Cruel's own soldiers, and an international band recruited by Sir Robert Knowles. In all, the force totalled about 10,000 men.

They began to cross the Pyrenees in mid-February 1367, ascending the Pass of Roncesvalles through deep snow. The Marshal d'Audrehem supported du Guesclin's suggestion that their best tactics would be to avoid a pitched battle at all costs and bottle up the English in the northern mountains, but Henry ofTrastamare wanted to fight for his throne. When the Black Prince eventually came down from the mountains to the easier terrain, Henry followed a parallel course, and established himself between the Black Prince and Burgos at a little hamlet called Najera, the River Najarilla separating him from the prince's force.

On Friday, 2 April 1367, the English scouts reported to the Black Prince the astonishing news that Henry had abandoned his position behind the Najarilla and had advanced down the road towards them. His former position would have caused delay to the English advance but, as subsequent events were to show, time was no friend of Henry's either. Morale among his troops was low, and defections had already occurred. In spite of the warnings of du Guesclin and d'Audrehem, he had made a fighting decision.

The English army was largely as it had been since leaving Gascony. Sir John Chandos and John of Gaunt led the reconstituted vanguard, with the main body under the command of the Black Prince. The right wing was largely Gascon, the left a mixture of other Gascons and Free Companies, under the Captal de Buch. The vanguard of the opposing army was largely composed of French troops under du Guesclin and d'Audrehem, and elite Castilian knights. They were supported by archers, and some of the dart-throwers, slingers and lancers who made up the Castilian levies. Mindful of the terrible lesson of Crecy and Poitiers, du Guesclin had insisted that the armour worn by the light jinetes be augmented. The proud Spanish knights of the elite companies, however, would not hear of dismounting from their splendid chargers. Chivalry demanded a mounted presence.

Henry's army had taken up position behind a small river called the Yalde, now swollen by the spring rains and capable of providing as effective a barrier as the Najarilla to their rear. To the north of their position was a high flat ridge. Abandoning the main road, the prince led his army over this ridge in the dark to appear due north of the enemy on their left flank. Du Guesclin calmly redressed his troops to meet the unexpected strategy from a direction where the River Yalde was less of a defence. Unfortunately, many of his companions did not share his calm manner. A detachment of jinetes deserted immediately, to be followed by some of the Castilian levies.

Needing a swift move, du Guesclin led the van in a charge against their English counterparts. The jinetes were moved up in support from the left, but the English arrows bit deeply and they fell back in confusion. Within a short while du Guesclin's men-at-arms were surrounded. Henry of Trastamare tried several times to get his main body up in support, but the withering fire of the archers kept him back. With the rout of du Guesclin's division almost complete, the English army turned its attention to the now unsupported main body of Castilian knights. The chroniclers of Najera are unanimous on two points - its utter confusion, and the totality of the Black Prince's third spectacular victory.

Du Guesclin, captured for the fourth time in his career, was finally ransomed the following January. He is said to have taunted the Black Prince that he would never dare set him free, and fixed his own price for ransom so as to increase his own importance. In shameless good humour he added that every peasant woman in France would contribute towards the sum. The King of France paid the price. Du Guesclin was literally worth a fortune.

In part 7, "THE REVIVAL OF FRANCE"