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.
