Warfare had become endemic in eleventh- and twelfth-century Europe.
Castle building used up the resources of the land as every landholder from
the king and great nobles to the small landholders fortified their
dwellings. Constant skirmishing, brigandage, and open warfare at home
and abroad meant that people poured vast resources into training and
equipping warriors and building castles and siege machines. The motte
and bailey castle with its great tower, as the keep or donjon is called in
medieval documents, was admirably suited as a defense against local skirmishes.
The castle was also a symbolic expression of its owner’s power
and pride (Figure 11). During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as
kings and nobles tried to form larger estates and nations, they built massive
stone castles.
Cities and towns sought to define and defend their borders by building
walls and fortified gates. Even churches and monasteries had defensive
walls. At the city of Avila, Spain, the cathedral apse formed one of
the most powerful towers in the encircling walls, and in northwest Spain,
the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela had to withstand a siege. Even
monasteries like the Abbey of St. Denis just north of Paris in France had
crenellated walls. In the nineteenth century the French architect Violletle-
Duc restored the walls and towers of Carcassonne. Today the old city
gives us a romanticized idea of medieval fortifications (Figures 11, 12, and
13).
The emergence of Islam as an international religion and the success of
Muslim armies also energized Christian forces and drew them into wars
where tactics—and castles—became increasingly sophisticated. Jerusalem
as the holy city of three faiths—Jewish, Christian, and Muslim—remained
the focus of western European thought and pilgrimage even though the
city and the holiest sites in Christendom lay in Muslim hands. Muslims
also controlled northern Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. In the ninth
century St. James miraculously appeared in northern Spain to turn the
tide of battle, leading Christian forces to victory and so beginning the
Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula.
At the end of the eleventh century (1095) Pope Urban II traveled
through France preaching a crusade to liberate Jerusalem. French, Flemish,
German, and English nobles joined in the enterprise. The First Cru
sade left in 1096, Christians captured Antioch in 1098, and by July 1099
Jerusalem again lay in Christian hands (Documents 29–32). The crusaders
established Christian kingdoms in Palestine and Syria, ruled by the
warriors Bohemund in Antioch and Godfrey of Bouillon and then Baldwin
in Jerusalem. But Muslims captured Christian Edessa in 1144, and
in 1147 the Christians mounted the Second Crusade. When the Muslim
leader Saladin (r. 1174–93) recaptured Jerusalem in 1187, the kings of
western Europe—Frederick Barbarossa of Germany (r. 1152–90), Philip
Augustus of France (r. 1180–1223), and Richard the Lion Hearted of
England (r. 1189–99)—rallied the Christian forces yet again. The Third
Crusade ended in a truce. Mythmakers glorified the leaders: Saladin and
Richard became models for the perfect knight. Frederick, who drowned
before even reaching the Holy Land, supposedly was only sleeping until
called again to save the German people. Only Philip Augustus was not
glorified by the troubadours, and only he profited from the Crusades. As
an astute politician, Philip Augustus emerged as the leader of the everlarger
and more powerful nation of France.
The Crusades led to rapid developments in castle design as the combatants
studied each other’s buildings and weapons. The most sophisticated
and skilled military engineers had been the Byzantines. As early as
the “Golden Age” of Theodosius and Justinian in the fifth and sixth centuries,
the Byzantines knew the advantages of double walls staggered in
height, independent projecting wall towers, round rather than squaredoff
corners, masonry built up in alternating bands of stone and brick, and
heavily fortified gateways. Christians and Muslims alike had the mighty
walls of Constantinople before them as models (see “Overview: Castles
in Context”). Muslim military engineers paid special attention to gateways
and invented the most complex turns and traps, murder holes and
arrow slots, portcullises and drawbridges. The crusaders, as invaders without
a local support system, became painfully aware of the problems of
supplying their forces, and they added huge water reservoirs and storage
facilities within their castle walls. When these warriors returned to their
homelands, they took with them the experience gained in the Holy Land.
In the twelfth century, sophisticated defense systems appeared throughout
Europe.
Intermittent warfare between Christians and Muslims in the Iberian
Peninsula, Syria, and Palestine also led to cultural as well as military exchanges.
Crusaders returning to their homes in western Europe brought
back new ideas of luxurious living (spices, perfume, carpets, and pieces
of richly inlaid metal), new plants (rice, lemons, melons, and apricots),
and new technology (water wheels, windmills, and chimneys). The
knightly order of the Templars established a rudimentary international
banking operation leading to new opportunities for merchants and rulers.
Finally, the experience of travel led to further exploration, and gradually
European society changed.
World History
