Abstract
Modern narratives of the course of individual crusades often give the impression of an unremitting series of setbacks in the majority of cases: poor coordination of efforts, insufficient provisioning, rivalries between leaders, disputes with friendly powers, poor strategic decisions, and unforeseen accidents, which, combined with the often underestimated capabilities of enemy forces, led repeatedly to failure. Even the expedition which liberated the Holy Land in 1099 came close to disaster on several occasions. Yet it is clear that for the period between Pope Urban II’s call to crusade in 1095 and the early fourteenth century, there is scope for a thematic investigation which promises a more comprehensive yet nuanced assessment of the organization of crusading than is possible in a purely narrative approach. In this book Christopher Tyerman analyses the planning and preparation of crusades directed to the Holy Land and Egypt, with some additional consideration of crusades against the Muslims in Iberia, pagans in the Baltic region, and heretics within Christendom, dealing in turns with seven spheres: justification; publicity and propaganda; recruitment; finance; transport; campaign planning; and geopolitical strategy. The liberation or defence of Jerusalem was primarily a spiritual aim, rather than a military or economic one, yet the commitment of resources and time required in realizing it went far beyond the demands of any other forms of contemporary warfare at this time. Preachers were invariably keen to sign up as many recruits as possible, even though they might be indigent or incapable of fighting; it was crusade leaders and their administrators who had the burden of financing and mounting the campaigns. Tyerman is keen to situate crusading in a world populated by rational, enquiring, and practical people, with leaders who were both educated and intellectual, and the mere fact that most of the planned crusades were launched and actually reached the East is testimony to the remarkable capabilities of the many men (and a handful of women) involved in their organization.
The character of such organizational efforts can be only partially depicted for the First and Second Crusades; one wonders, for example, how much can be really read into a brief mention of the accounts (compotus) of Bohemund of Taranto, an example which is repeatedly cited as evidence of systematic book-keeping of expenses of crusade contingents in 1097–98. The scale of organization and costs required becomes much clearer in the more plentiful surviving documentation of the English and French monarchies after 1187. Richard the Lionheart’s preparations for the Third Crusade included the purchase of over 60,000 horseshoes and thousands of sides of bacon as well as the more obvious outlay on weapons, wages, and hire of ships, all of which amounted to the equivalent of one year’s ordinary income for the crown. What is remarkable is how the Exchequer managed to cover expenses far beyond these projected costs. When the English fleet failed to rendezvous with Richard’s land forces at Marseilles on time, he was prepared to hire 30 ships locally at short notice rather than wait for his own, while after arriving in Palestine he was willing to bail out a large number of increasingly indigent crusaders, both English and French. Yet after his return he was still able to pay a vast ransom to the duke of Austria and afford to fight another war with France. The Capetians themselves were not far behind, as can be seen from the vast costs incurred in the two crusades mounted by Louis IX, an indication that expeditions to the eastern Mediterranean – after 1198 invariably going by sea – increasingly required monarchies behind them. Royal governments might often be strapped for cash, but they generally had access to credit, and also had significant tools available to them in the rights to dispose of crusade taxation and to levy extraordinary imposts on their subjects, notably tallages on Jews. Tyerman’s focus is on the planning and preparation of crusades, rather than their execution, and so there is lengthy and detailed treatment of preaching and the justification of crusading. Readers primarily interested in the actual conduct of medieval warfare would undoubtedly welcome rather more discussion of nuts-and-bolts issues, to say nothing of horseshoes and nails, while the relatively slight discussion of the Baltic and Albigensian crusades does not do full justice to dynamics which were fundamentally different to those of expeditions to the Levant. Nevertheless there is a vast wealth of information, above all on how preaching, recruitment, and finance were planned and administered, combined with a highly perceptive analysis of the entire complex of issues involved in organization of crusades by land and sea. Its erudition, command of scholarship, and expressiveness of writing will make this book a first port of call for anyone seeking to understand the strategic and logistic challenges of crusades to the Levant.