Crusading Warfare 1097-1193 2ed (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: New Series, Series Number 3)

Review first posted on Amazon.co.uk on 18 January 2012This book was first published in 1956. More than five decades latter, it is still the reference on crusading warfare during the first century or so of Outremer. I bought this book over nine years ago and I still regularly dip into it every time I need to check something on crusader warfare. I've also read it at least three times from cover to cover. Some reviewers (on Amazom.com) have complained that this is a scholarly book, not "popular history", or have presented it as being only a good tool for research.Well, let's make no mistake, it certainly IS a scholarly book and always was intended to be so. However, this should by no means imply that ONLY scholars can read it or use it as a research tool. In fact, it is MUCH more than simply a tool (or rather a starting point) for research because Smail was among the first (and, in many cases, the very first) to lay down some essential truths about the States of Outremer. Here are some of the main ones:- One is that the Crusader States were, and had to be, since their very foundation, organized for war. One of the implications was that feudal society, when compared to what was taking place in Europe at the same time, had to be modified accordingly. Military service could not be limited to a mere 40 days but could be due when needed and for as much as 6 consecutive months. Another consequence, partly linked with the shortage of military manpower, was the usage of money fiefs instead of land grants, to maintain knights. This was particularly the case at the beginning of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, when most of the Kingdom still had to be conquered, and at the end, when it was reduced to a handfull of heavily fortified coastal cities and forteresses.- Another was that Catholic Christians from the West were always a minority within each of the four (and then three) States, and all of these states were always short of soldiers. Following in Smail's footsteps, historians have shown that even in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the population that originated from Western Europe is unlikely to have exceeded 20% of the total and that most of these "Franks" lives in the towns and cities or in castles and fortified habitations. The further North you went and the fewer "Franks" you could find. In the County of Edessa, for instance, they were only a handfull, with most of the rest of the population being either Armenians or Moslems.- The shortage in military manpower had a number of consequences, in military terms:1) One was that, to relieve a fortress under siege, the various states had to strip most of their other strongpoints of their troops to come up with an army that they could not really afford to loose. Hence their optimal strategy would be to harass the moslem besiegers and deny them supplies until they were forced to lift the siege and return home. It was NOT to offer a large scale battle.2) Another was that they heavily relied on their fortresses, castles and fortified towns to block the advance of any moslem army and give them the time to gather their forces by stripping the garrisons from all other fortresses.3) A third was that they depended heavily on a steady stream of reinforcements coming from the West every year during the sailing season (March to October) both as pilgrims and as longer-term settlers. This was also true for horses and for leaders whose life expectancy tended to be short (through a combination of the climate and fighting). So the coastal cities were essentially the lifeline of Outremer.4) The last (or at least the last I will mention in this review) was that the various principalities, the Kingdom and all of the lords and barons had to be, if not constantly at war, at least constantly on a war footing. This meant that they were often short of money and, in the case of the Kingdom of Jerusalem at least, often close to bankcrupcy.Given these constraints, and as Smail makes out quite clearly, it is therefore not surprising that the Military Orders expanded so rapidly and that their help could not be anything else than wellcomed.In addition to laying out clearly the strategic context, Smail's book contains detailed analysis on troop types, numbers, and the various campaigns and engagements. It is completed by its companion book by Marshall, which covers the second century to the Fall of Acre in 1291 and which is just as brilliant. Both books are "MUST READ" for anyone interesting in the Crusades and crusading warfare.

I finished reading this wonderful book last weekend. The amount of useful information that i gathered was enormous and very interesting and that makes this book a valuable resource for my research, since i write articles about the crusades in military magazines.Nevertheless i found it annoying that there were whole paragraphs in the text or in the footnotes area presented as they were in the primary text in latin language but ufortunatelly they were not translated in English, hence i was lacking the meaning of the primary text although i speak Italian.The footnotes on the other hand were plenty and useful by all means, but another disadvantage that i traced was that there were few maps within the book and those presented needed a better placement all in all.For example i would like from such a book to include more accurate maps instead of poor hand made pictures. I needed a map that could explain thoroughly the topography of the jerusalem kingdom as well as one that could explain the topography of the principalllity of Antioch and one for the county of Tripoli.Concluding, i would suggest this book gladly for all those readers interested in the demanding topic of the crusades, especially if they need informations about the 12th century events and campaigns.Haratsis Evangelos Hector

Crusading Warfare is a historical overview of the factors that Smail feels make up the way of war for the Latin crusaders from 1097 to 1193, the era of the Crusader states. After first presenting an overview of the historiography of the period, Smail essentially argues that previous historians did not adequately cover the crusader period, and when they did, the focus was on the battle itself. Smail argues that commanders of the period had to make a deliberate decision to do battle because of the risk involved in not knowing the outcome. This means you have to consider factors beyond the battle itself; factors commanders of the period had to take into account: policy, relations between the Franks and the native population, and the structure of the opposing armies to include their tactics and weapons.Smail believes crusader warfare meant wars of limited objectives either for land or to defend the land; even the battlefields were located in the land under contention. The wars were not about destroying the enemy. He also describes three phases of war during this period; phase I related to the First Crusade and occupying the Holy Land; phase II is basically the Latin states maintaining the status quo with some adjustments to the boundaries for greater security; phase III arrives when Saladin is able to link the resources of Egypt and Syria together to put the Latin states on the defensive and force them out.In the end the Franks did not have the resources required to both hold their strongpoints and maintain a field army. If they held strong points Moslem forces could lay waste to the land and destroy needed resources. If they field an army Islamic forces could take the strongpoints since they were normally denuded of troops for the field army. Ultimately this lack of resources cost the Latins the Holy Land.Although dated, this is still a very interesting read that looks at the operational-level of warfare, vice focusing on individual battles.