Chapter 4 - Battles

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Historians of medieval warfare have devoted far more time to the study of battles than to other important topics, such as sieges and raids. For this period of the Latin East’s history, however, battles do not warrant quite such a central position. The gradual reduction of the kingdom from about 1260 to 1291 was achieved through a series of siege campaigns undertaken by Baybars and his successors. During this period, and indeed throughout the thirteenth century, the resident Latins did not try either to arrest their decline or to expand their territories by confronting the Muslims in open battle, since they normally had insufficient troops available to maintain an army in the field and at the same time protect their strongpoints. However, when a crusade was organised, the additional numbers tended to operate as a field army and battles were not infrequent. They were then fought by Christian troops who showed little understanding of how best to combat the tactics of their Muslim opponents. The consequences of this lack of understanding were serious. The crusades of Theobald of Champagne and St Louis, for example, both suffered major setbacks as a result of defeat, or costly victory, in battle. The methods and performances of Christian armies in battle during this period are therefore by no means insignificant aspects of the Latin East’s military history. The battlefield tactics of the Muslims will be given fuller treatment when they have a bearing on the techniques employed by the Christian soldiers in and around the Latin East.

The dividing lines between various types of military activity are not always easy to draw. For the purposes of this study, a battle can be defined as an engagement in which at least one of the opposing forces decides to seek military success through a direct confrontation, in the open, with its enemies. Many Christian raids of the second half of the thirteenth century were ended by the Muslims’ willingness to pursue such a direct encounter. In the case of sieges, a vigorous defence of a strongpoint could encourage the defenders to ignore the protection of the site and face their enemies in the open.