technology over muscle.
THE CRUSADES WERE a clash not only of religious ideologies (a writhing bag of snakes would have been easier to deal with) but also of tactical ideologies. Christian and Muslim warriors had been shaped by different traditions. The mounted knight sought to bring the matter to the point of decision by a trial of personal arms at close quarters, and his supporting troops—infantry and crossbowmen—were just that: a support that set up the possibility of the decisive charge. Islamic warriors, whose tactical antecedents were from Asiatic raiders, were rarely committed to an all-out charge unless, due to prior softening up by missile weapons, the enemy appeared to be terminally vulnerable. The horse bowmen, like those Parthians who had destroyed the Roman legions at Carrhae in 53 BCE, were still one of the most important elements of Saracen combat. The horse was, of course, one important element that Christian and Muslim shared, but it was used in strikingly different ways. To put it schematically, the Muslim warrior used his horse as a weapons platform, whereas the knight used it as a weapon; the one stood off and fired his arrows, the other sought to make physical contact. An effective cavalry charge relied on a collective and concentrated weight to destroy the enemy. It demanded cohesion and discipline. The problem, however, was that as it got under way, the vagaries of terrain and the individual horse and rider caused it to destabilize and disintegrate, and many knights were killed in the ensuing counterattack, unable to get back to the shelter of the infantry (a similar problem faced by tanks many centuries later).
In the early phases of the Crusades, the Christians’ reliance on heavy cavalry cost them dearly. Using tactics not unlike those of the nineteenth-century Plains Indians, Saracen horse bowmen swept around the invading armies, shooting down men and mounts, only to melt away when the Christian cavalry sallied out to engage. If, however, the Saracens, in their initial missile phase,managed to uncover a weak spot, in went the heavier lance-armed cavalry, to be followed by infantry support.
The
Itinerarium
, a chronicle of Richard Lionheart’s Third Crusade, describes the frustration of the Crusaders before the battle of Arsuf in 1191 as the Muslim horsemen, “keeping alongside our army as it advanced, struggled to inflict what it could upon us, firing darts and arrows which flew very thickly, like rain. Alas! Many horses fell dead transfixed with missiles, many were gravely wounded and died much later! You would have seen such a great downpour of darts and arrows that where the army passed through you could not have found a space of four foot of ground without shafts stuck in it.” 32 However, it says something about the relative lethality of the Asiatic bow compared with the longbow that many a Christian foot soldier managed to weather the storm. The Islamic chronicler Bahā-al-Din, Saladin’s secretary, describes the Christian foot, protected by their thick quilted jackets (
gambesons
) and mail shirts (
hauberks
): “I noted among them men who had from one to ten shafts sticking in their backs, yet trudged on at their ordinary pace and did not fall out of their ranks.… The Muslims sent in volleys of arrows from all sides, endeavoring to irritate the knights and to worry them into leaving their ramparts of infantry. But it was all in vain.” 33
On the other side, Crusader crossbowmen were effective and feared. Protected by pikemen from the predations of Muslim light cavalry, they inflicted significant casualties. Although it was contrary to Muslim law, captured crossbowmen stood a good chance of being massacred. 34 (Ironically, Richard himself would die from gangrene caused by a crossbow bolt wound in the shoulder at the siege of Châlus, a relatively insignificant little castle near Limoges, France, in 1199—and thus, “the Lion by the Ant was slain.”)
If the Muslims favored
THE CRUSADES WERE a clash not only of religious ideologies (a writhing bag of snakes would have been easier to deal with) but also of tactical ideologies. Christian and Muslim warriors had been shaped by different traditions. The mounted knight sought to bring the matter to the point of decision by a trial of personal arms at close quarters, and his supporting troops—infantry and crossbowmen—were just that: a support that set up the possibility of the decisive charge. Islamic warriors, whose tactical antecedents were from Asiatic raiders, were rarely committed to an all-out charge unless, due to prior softening up by missile weapons, the enemy appeared to be terminally vulnerable. The horse bowmen, like those Parthians who had destroyed the Roman legions at Carrhae in 53 BCE, were still one of the most important elements of Saracen combat. The horse was, of course, one important element that Christian and Muslim shared, but it was used in strikingly different ways. To put it schematically, the Muslim warrior used his horse as a weapons platform, whereas the knight used it as a weapon; the one stood off and fired his arrows, the other sought to make physical contact. An effective cavalry charge relied on a collective and concentrated weight to destroy the enemy. It demanded cohesion and discipline. The problem, however, was that as it got under way, the vagaries of terrain and the individual horse and rider caused it to destabilize and disintegrate, and many knights were killed in the ensuing counterattack, unable to get back to the shelter of the infantry (a similar problem faced by tanks many centuries later).
In the early phases of the Crusades, the Christians’ reliance on heavy cavalry cost them dearly. Using tactics not unlike those of the nineteenth-century Plains Indians, Saracen horse bowmen swept around the invading armies, shooting down men and mounts, only to melt away when the Christian cavalry sallied out to engage. If, however, the Saracens, in their initial missile phase,managed to uncover a weak spot, in went the heavier lance-armed cavalry, to be followed by infantry support.
The
Itinerarium
, a chronicle of Richard Lionheart’s Third Crusade, describes the frustration of the Crusaders before the battle of Arsuf in 1191 as the Muslim horsemen, “keeping alongside our army as it advanced, struggled to inflict what it could upon us, firing darts and arrows which flew very thickly, like rain. Alas! Many horses fell dead transfixed with missiles, many were gravely wounded and died much later! You would have seen such a great downpour of darts and arrows that where the army passed through you could not have found a space of four foot of ground without shafts stuck in it.” 32 However, it says something about the relative lethality of the Asiatic bow compared with the longbow that many a Christian foot soldier managed to weather the storm. The Islamic chronicler Bahā-al-Din, Saladin’s secretary, describes the Christian foot, protected by their thick quilted jackets (
gambesons
) and mail shirts (
hauberks
): “I noted among them men who had from one to ten shafts sticking in their backs, yet trudged on at their ordinary pace and did not fall out of their ranks.… The Muslims sent in volleys of arrows from all sides, endeavoring to irritate the knights and to worry them into leaving their ramparts of infantry. But it was all in vain.” 33
On the other side, Crusader crossbowmen were effective and feared. Protected by pikemen from the predations of Muslim light cavalry, they inflicted significant casualties. Although it was contrary to Muslim law, captured crossbowmen stood a good chance of being massacred. 34 (Ironically, Richard himself would die from gangrene caused by a crossbow bolt wound in the shoulder at the siege of Châlus, a relatively insignificant little castle near Limoges, France, in 1199—and thus, “the Lion by the Ant was slain.”)
If the Muslims favored
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