pt 11 (last part)
Western armies were occasional bodies, lacking a continuous existence which could nurture the special skills needed to build, operate and develop siege-equipment. Robert of Bellême and Gaston of Béarn were rare specialists at the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Even in the mid-twelfth century, Geoffrey of Anjou’s engineering skills were evidently unusual. It is not strange that one of the penthouses built by the First Crusade to attack Nicaea in 1097 collapsed, while their mangonels were ineffective. In 1174, a Scottish traction-trebuchet was deployed against Wark castle, but its first missile fell on the team operating it. Many may have known in principle how to build machinery, but doing it was a different matter.
However, military architecture was developing in the twelfth century and commanders needed weapons against it. It was a Genoese sailor, William Ricau, who built the siege machinery of the Provençals at Jerusalem in 1099. Guintelmus, a great engineer, was high in the councils of Milan during the conflict with Barbarossa. During the siege of Milan, Marchesius of Crema enjoyed rich rewards when he defected to Barbarossa. The rivalry of the Italian cities, their wealth and their commercial and maritime background, brought together all the skills needed for construction, but great kings were quick to follow suit. Henry II had engineers in his train, and specialized operators of siege-equipment.
In the thirteenth century, engineers could enjoy great importance and their deeds are chronicled in the records of the period. Elias of Oxford served Richard I, while John bestowed a knight’s fee upon Urricus. Masters Osbert and Bertram were prominent under Henry III. Edward I used a whole host of engineers and master-carpenters, supported by miners and others. Master Robert of Ulm supervised the mass of machinery deployed against Caerlaverock in 1300, and Master James of St George fulfilled the same role at Stirling in 1304. The engineer Jean de Mézos was raised to knighthood in 1254 by St Louis, while James I of Aragon employed the Italian engineer Nicoloso. Frederick II so valued his great Spanish engineer Calamandrinus that he kept him in shackles!
By the end of the twelfth century, such people had become so important that the writer Guiot de Provins was dismayed at the prospect of their dominating war. There was little risk of this, because they were rewarded much more modestly than the traditional military caste: in war, status and conformity to the canons of chivalrous behaviour counted for more.
It is an interesting reflection on the importance of status in war that the siege of Lisbon, although it was a major victory over Islam and saw the employment of siege-equipment on a large scale, never seems to have enjoyed great renown in northern Europe, almost certainly because no notable person was present.
In fact, armies usually deployed every possible technique and instrument of war when they really wanted to capture a city or castle. No single method of attack was outstandingly effective, so they all had to be tried. No machine in this period actually altered the balance of advantage between attack and defence. The best way to seize a fortification was to isolate it with overwhelming numbers which, self-evidently, could prevent any relief. This required good leadership, skill, determination, organization and plentiful supplies – difficult enough to achieve when armies were transient. It was pre-eminently kings who could achieve the conditions for success in siege warfare.
Strong centralized authority in England and France absorbed castles into the political system. They continued to have a military potential that could influence the political balance, and in times of weakness this could come to the fore. But their absorption into political systems reduced the need for sieges. In Germany after the death of Frederick II in 1250, political fragmentation mirrored that found in France at the beginning of our period, in a landscape dominated by castles; but large-scale siege employing complex machinery was rare, and the stalemate imposed by numerous cities and castles may even have increased the readiness to risk battle.
In Italy, siege was more common because the area was dominated by great cities. The crusader settlements in the Holy Land after the Third Crusade were anchored by a few cities and great castles, and they were gradually reduced by a series of epic sieges, culminating in that of Acre in 1291, by an Islamic world with a highly developed siege technique.
In all areas, fortifications continued to dominate the pattern of war. Successful siege could achieve all that victory in battle offered and perhaps more, but at the price of much the same risks. Both kinds of action required enormous political and financial investment which could easily be lost. Duke William of Normandy’s large force outside Gerberoi was taken by surprise by a sally and was scattered, as was Frederick II’s camp before Parma in 1247. Relief forces could appear: William the Conqueror could not prevent a relief entering Arques in 1054; the First Crusade had to fight off enemy armies during the sieges of Nicaea and Antioch; Philip Augustus was forced to abandon the siege of Verneuil in 1194, when Richard suddenly cut his communications; and Charles of Anjou failed before Messina in 1282, because an Aragonese army came to its relief.
Even when there were no such risks, the siege of a strong place was expensive: the siege of Bedford in 1224 was in part a political demonstration by the new king of his strength, but the employment of the latest in siege equipment and the concentration of large forces cost £1,311 18s. 2d. in wages alone, while the crushing of the Montforts in the siege of Kenilworth in 1266 required a huge effort and enormous expense.
Sieges were simply a very specialized form of battle. They did what battle in other societies was designed to do – to destroy the basic strength of the enemy and acquire it for your own use. Strong central authorities absorbed cities and castles and used them where appropriate for large-scale confrontations of their own. But where an attack on a fortification was necessary, it remained as hazardous and difficult as ever, because no development or set of developments in the course of this period altered the balance between defence and attack. In 1310, Frederick of Austria gathered an army of Rhinelanders and Swabians, and allied with the Archbishop of Salzburg to ravage Bavaria and seize Wels, before besieging the castle of Schaerding. They had a large army, against which Otto of Hungary and Duke Stephen of Bavaria could muster only hastily raised forces, but lack of food, bad weather and loss of horses forced the abandonment of the siege – the failings of armies remained much as before.
