Introduction: the Study of Warfare in the Latin East

Summary

In May 1291 Muslim troops commanded by the Mamluk sultan al-Ashraf Khalil captured and destroyed the city of Acre. Although it was not the last Latin-held site to be surrendered, contemporaries regarded the fall of Acre as symbolic of the temporary end of Latin rule in the area. Similarly, in July 1191, the capture of Acre by forces of the Third Crusade had been a decisive point in the campaign, even though the treaty of Jaffa, which acknowledged the re-establishment of the Latin Kingdom, was not signed until September 1192. The Kingdom of Jerusalem, which had been virtually eliminated by Saladin after the battle of Hattin in 1187, was to survive, in a rather reduced form, for nearly a century. Until the defeat of St Louis’s first crusade in 1250, the kingdom was maintained largely as a result of Muslim divisions, rather than Latin strength. After this, the Mamluks’ usurpation of power in Egypt and their subsequent unification of the Muslim states in the area lead to the Christian losses of the 1260s. Only a few, mainly coastal, sites were able to hold out until 1291.

It would be quite unreasonable, however, to regard the ‘Second Kingdom’ as a mere appendix of the First. Recent work on the constitutional and social history of the Latin Kingdom has shown that there was much positive achievement in the later period — even allowing for a fragmentation of authority, implications of innate strength are apparent in, for example, the baronial resistance to the demands of Frederick II and the constitutional debates and internecine conflicts which raged throughout much of the thirteenth century.

MILITARY HISTORIANS AND THE MILITARY HISTORY OF THE LATIN EAST

In 1956 R. C. Smail published his book on the military history of the Latin states from the period of their establishment to the end of the Third Crusade. By analysing a detailed body of evidence, Smail was able to place the military history of the period in its social and political context, and thus demonstrate the importance of warfare to the Latin East.