Osprey - General Military - Knight - The Warrior and ... - Brego-weard

hen in March of 1095 Pope Urban II
made a speech to an assembly of French
nobility and clergy at Clermont, in
which he explained that the Christians in the East,
both Catholic and Orthodox, were facing daily
attacks and depredations from the Muslim
population and lords, and offered those who would
unite against this common foe remission of their sins,
few could have expected the huge impact that his
words would have on both East and West.
The response was enormous. Apart from the
30,000 untrained and ill-prepared followers of Peter
the Hermit's Peasants' Crusade, who were the first to
arrive in the Holy Land and were quickly destroyed
by the Seljuk Turks, forces were gathered from the
lordships of northern France, Italy and Germany -
maybe 35,000, with some 5,000 knights.
But whilst the number of those who took up the
cross was a shock to all, not least the Byzantines
whom they were ostensibly there to support, they
were not wholly unknown to the peoples of the
eastern Mediterranean. Normans had entered
southern Italy as part of the armies of the northern
Lombards around 1000, and had fought for and
against the Byzantine emperor for almost a century.
In 1081 Normans under Robert Cuiscard had
defeated his forces at the battle of Dyrrachium, as
they carved out a kingdom in southern Italy and
the Balkans.
The knights by whom they were defeated at
Dyrrachium and who they saw cross their territory
on their way to Jerusalem left a lasting impression on
the Byzantines. 'A Frank on horseback is invincible,
and would even make a hole in the walls of
Babylon,' wrote Anna Comnena, the emperor's
daughter. His armour made him invincible and
his initial charge was unstoppable. But she and her
father were also aware of his weaknesses. It was
essential to target his horse with arrows, since
'directly he gets off his horse, anyone who likes can
make sport of him'. The knight was also rash in battle
and quick to pursue. After the initial charge knights
were disorganized and weak.
Their leaders were as fickle and impetuous as
their knights. Unlike the commanders of Byzantine
armies who were generals steeped in the traditions of
classical military learning, men like Godfrey de
Bouillon, Bohemond of Taranto and Raymond de
St Gilles - three of the key commanders - were war
leaders, as much the warrior as their men. Arrogant
and wilful, they were divided by personal
animosities and pride. 'So many and such great
disputes arose between the leaders of our army,'
writes the crusader Raymond of Aguilers, 'that almost
the whole army was divided.' With no clear secular
leader it was only the Pope's representative, Bishop
Adhemar, who held the forces together, and even he
was unable to stop some from setting off alone, such
as Baldwin of Boulogne, who went on to establish
the County of Edessa, or Stephen of Blois, who left
the crusade and returned home.
The victories of the First Crusade, with its capture
of Jerusalem, cannot, in fact, be put down to the
power and effectiveness of the heavy cavalry. Whilst
the knights' charges were important in their winning
of the battles of Dorylaeum and Ascalon, it was
the capture of Antioch and Jerusalem by siege that
secured the crusade's success. Victory came as a
result of the disunity of the Islamic world, divided on
ethnic and religious grounds between the Seljuk