A History of the Crusades (28 page)

The warfare conducted by the orders on the various fronts also differed to some extent in aims and method. In Syria and Spain the primary purpose of offensive warfare was to assert control over land: the conversion of Muslims was not a direct aim. In the Baltic, however, conquest was accompanied by the
baptizing of pagans. The Baltic region was also different in that campaigns were often conducted in winter, when marsh and river were frozen, and movement easier. But on all fronts the military orders were concerned mainly with warfare on land. Even the order of Santa María de España did not devote itself to fighting exclusively at sea, and in the eastern Mediterranean it was only at the end of the thirteenth century that the Templars and Hospitallers were developing sizeable fleets of their own.

On land, the orders’ activities comprised both the defence of strongholds and fighting in the field. In Palestine and Syria during the twelfth century the Templars and Hospitallers were entrusted with a growing number of castles, which were either given or sold to them by rulers and nobles who lacked the manpower or resources to defend them adequately. It has been estimated that in 1180 the Hospitallers were responsible for the defence of about twenty-five castles in the East. Already before 1150 Bait Jibrin and Gaza, near the southern borders of the kingdom of Jerusalem, were held by the Hospitallers and the Templars respectively, while lesser fortifications in their hands came to include forts which lay along pilgrim routes and provided refuges for those travelling to Jerusalem or the Jordan. In the twelfth century, however, these two orders held more castles in northern Syria than in the kingdom of Jerusalem. In 1144 Raymond II of Tripoli gave the Hospitallers a group of strongholds, including Crac des Chevaliers, near the eastern borders of his county, while in the north of the principality of Antioch the Templars were entrusted with the Amanus march. The most important Hospitaller castle in the principality was Margat, which the order received in 1186, after its former lord ‘realised that he could not hold the castle of Margat, as was necessary in the interests of Christianity, because of excessive expenses and the very close proximity of the infidel’. Most of these castles were lost in the aftermath of the battle of Hattin. Some, however, were later recovered, and other strongholds were newly acquired by the Templars and Hospitallers in the thirteenth century, while the Teutonic Order also at that time became responsible for garrisoning and defending castles, particularly in the
hinterland of Acre. The orders were taking on the main burden of defence.

The orders’ responsibilities were not limited to supplying manpower for the defence of castles: they also undertook the building of new strongholds as well as the repair and extension of existing ones. Among Templar constructions were those of Chastel Pèlerin, built on the coast in 1217/18, and Safad, which was rebuilt after the place had been recovered from the Muslims in 1240. Besides building new castles, such as Belvoir, the Hospitallers also extended Crac des Chevaliers, where an outer enceinte was added about the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Less is known in detail about building operations in Spain, but it is clear that a large number of frontier castles in the peninsula passed under the orders’ control. In Aragon and Catalonia during the twelfth century reliance was placed mainly on the Templars and Hospitallers: an attempt by Alfonso II to promote the order of Montegaudio in southern Aragon came to nothing. But in the southern part of the kingdom of Valencia, conquered towards the middle of the thirteenth century, the Aragonese King James I chiefly favoured Santiago. In the same way, on the other side of the peninsula, the Templars and Hospitallers were used by Portuguese rulers in the twelfth century, while Spanish orders, especially Avis and Santiago, were preferred in the thirteenth. In the centre of the pensinsula, however, the Castilian and Leonese kings consistently relied mainly on Spanish orders—particularly Calatrava and Santiago—to undertake the defence of frontier castles.

In the Baltic region the orders built as the conquest progressed. This was done, for example, by the Teutonic Order as it advanced along the river Vistula and then the Frisches Haff in Prussia. In Livonia the orders similarly made an important contribution to castle-building. In both districts, the primitive pagan structures of wood were often fired during assault and were replaced, although the early fortifications built by the orders were themselves mostly of wood and earth, and it was not until later that more sophisticated structures became the norm, with brick being extensively used.

It should not be assumed that all the castles in the orders’ hands were defended by large garrisons of brothers. In 1255 the Hospitallers stated that they intended to maintain sixty mounted troops at Crac des Chevaliers, and it was reported that eighty Templars were necessary to garrison Safad. But these are amongst the largest figures to which credence can be given, and the number of brothers in a castle was often much smaller, particularly in the Baltic region and Spain. A chronicler reports that only seven brethren were left at Thorn, on the Vistula, after the Teutonic Order had fortified it in 1231. And some minor fortifications had no permanent garrison of brethren.

The brothers defending a castle were, however, assisted by auxiliary troops. These might include vassals from the surrounding district. But colonization by westerners was often necessary before adequate aid from subjects could be obtained, and in some regions resettlement constituted a significant stage in the process of securing Christian control over border districts. Although colonization on the orders’ lands in Syria appears to have been very limited, the orders commonly sought to attract settlers to their lordships in conquered parts in Spain: numerous settlement charters issued by the orders have survived. Yet it was not always easy to attract settlers to lands which had been lying waste and were still under threat, and the process of resettlement in Spain was slow, while in Prussia colonization by western peasants did not make much progress until the closing years of the thirteenth century, after the Prussians had been finally subjugated, and in Livonia there was never any large-scale settlement by western peasants.

The orders were nevertheless often praised for their work in defending frontier castles, and at times they offered stout and determined resistance. The Hospitaller castle of Belvoir held out for more than a year after the battle of Hattin, and Saladin was at that time unable to take either Crac des Chevaliers or Margat. In the same way, in 1211 the brethren of Calatrava maintained lengthy resistance at their castle of Salvatierra, in Castile, when it was attacked by the Almohad caliph. There were, on the other hand, occasions when strongholds rapidly fell. The Templar castle of Gaza surrendered without a fight
after the battle of Hattin, and several of Calatrava’s fortresses in Spain were quickly lost after the Christian defeat at Alarcos in 1195. In some cases, particular factors explain success or failure. Gaza was surrendered by the Templars in order to obtain the release of their captured master, while according to Islamic sources it was the exceptional position and strength of Margat which enabled it to remain under Hospitaller control after the battle of Hattin. Yet it was usually the general military and political situation, rather than more particular factors, which determined the fate of the orders’ strongholds. After severe defeats in battle, such as those of Hattin and Alarcos, it was difficult to retain castles, especially when garrisons had been reduced or removed in order to put a viable force into the field. And when in the later thirteenth century the orders in Syria faced the growing power of the Mamluks, and could not look to relieving armies for help, garrisons could not easily hold out for long; it was sometimes even thought preferable to surrender in return for a safe-conduct for the besieged, rather than fight to the bitter end. In the 1260s numerous castles of the Teutonic Order in Prussia similarly fell following widespread revolts, because they lacked the resources to maintain prolonged resistance and could not be relieved. Yet, in defending strongholds, the orders were seeking to undertake a task which could not easily be fulfilled by any others.

In the field the military orders were not usually obliged to provide a fixed number of men, and it is difficult to assess the size of their contingents on any front. But the numbers of brethren seem to have been relatively small, even by medieval standards. A Templar letter from the Holy Land in 1187 reported that the order had lost sixty brothers at Cresson in May of that year and that a further 230 had been killed in the battle of Hattin: the central convent had been ‘almost completely annihilated’. A further letter written after the defeat at La Forbie in 1244 stated that the Templars and Hospitallers had each lost just over 300 knights, with thirty-three Templars and twenty-six Hospitallers surviving. These orders may therefore each have been capable of putting a force of about 300 brethren into the field in the kingdom of Jerusalem. If these figures are accepted,
the joint contingents of these two orders were similar in size in the second half of the twelfth century to the force raised through the feudal levy, and in the thirteenth century their contribution was proportionately greater.

The military orders were less significant numerically in the Iberian peninsula. When Santiago lost its master and fifty-five brethren at the battle of Moclín in 1280, the loss was serious enough to occasion the amalgamation with the order of Santa María de España; and in 1229 the Templar contingent comprised only about a twenty-fifth of the force which attacked Mallorca, even though the Temple was the leading military order in the Aragonese realms. But it should be remembered that the Christian rulers of Spain could call upon larger contingents of secular Christian troops than their counterparts in Syria could mobilize, for western Christians comprised a much larger proportion of the population of the peninsular kingdoms than of the crusader states, and the Spanish rulers made use of the general obligation of military service, as well as demanding contingents from the nobility.

Chronicles reporting fighting in the Baltic region also give the consistent impression that the numbers of brethren in the field were small by comparison with those of other troops raised locally. The
Livonian Rhymed Chronicle
, for example, states that in 1268 the provincial master of the Teutonic Order in Livonia summoned all the available brethren, and that these comprised 180 out of a total land force of 18,000. It is also clear that major advances in that district were often dependent on assistance provided by crusader contingents. Thus conquests in Samland in 1255 were effected with the aid of Ottokar II of Bohemia, the margrave of Brandenburg, and a large force of crusaders.

Despite their limited numbers, at least in the East the brethren’s bravery and determination were held in high regard by their opponents: the chronicler Ibn al-Athir, for example, described a Hospitaller castellan of Crac des Chevaliers as ‘a bone in the gullet of the Muslims’. The brethren also provided a more disciplined force than many secular contingents. The Templar Customs include strict regulations about conduct in
camp and on the march, and the brethren of all orders were, of course, bound by a vow of obedience, which was reinforced by the threat of severe penalties for disobeying orders in the field. In all leading orders the punishment for desertion in battle was expulsion, while Templars who launched an attack without permission lost their habit for a period. The threat of censure could not eliminate all acts of disobedience in the field, but several crusade theorists agreed with the view of the Templar master James of Molay that, because of their vow of obedience, brethren were superior to other troops. Some theorists also saw the military orders in Syria as having the advantage of experience. Certainly, leading officials in the orders had usually given long service, although in the Temple the rank-and-file knightly brethren in the East were normally fairly recent recruits, who served in the Holy Land for only a limited period while they were still young. Long service and experience did not, of course, always produce sound decisions: the losses suffered at Cresson in 1187 occurred when the Templar master Gerard of Ridefort rejected advice and committed his troops against a much larger Muslim force. Usually, however, the advice given by leading brethren of the orders on all fronts revealed a realistic assessment of the political and military situation, and often tended towards caution. During the Third Crusade the Templars and Hospitallers advised against besieging Jerusalem, partly on the grounds that during a siege they would be exposed to Saladin’s forces, just as during the conquest of Mallorca the Hospitaller prior counselled the Aragonese king against attacking the Muslims in the hills behind Inca because of the attendant danger. Brethren in the frontier regions were not fanatics, and were prepared—if the military situation demanded it—to fight alongside non-Christians.

In the eastern Mediterranean region, the orders’ experience and knowledge were often utilized by placing contingents of brethren in the vanguard and rearguard of crusading forces, as happened during the Fifth Crusade and Louis IX’s Egyptian crusade. They were not assigned this role in Spain, where the bulk of the secular forces were Spanish; but there they often
helped to provide a nucleus of an army at the start of campaigns, as it was difficult to mobilize most secular contingents very quickly. Nor was the service given by brethren usually affected by the limitations and restrictions which commonly characterized that provided by secular forces. On all fronts crusaders usually fought for only a limited period, while in Spain there were normally time limits on the service owed by subjects: thus in 1233 the siege of Ubeda was abandoned by some Castilian town militias because their term of service had expired.

Yet in practice brethren were not always themselves available to fight against the infidel. Their arms were at times being turned instead against fellow Christians in defence and in pursuance of the orders’ own interests. Examples can be provided from all fronts. In Livonia, the Swordbrethren in 1233 were in conflict with the supporters of the papal legate Baldwin of Alna; in the East the orders became involved in the internal political conflicts which characterized the thirteenth century, such as the war of St Sabas, as well as engaging in private quarrels; and the same happened in Castile, which was beset by political instability in the later thirteenth century. These activities used up resources which might otherwise have been employed against Muslims or pagans. In Syria the orders’ independence also meant that they could refuse to give service when asked; and although military orders enjoyed less freedom in Spain, they were displaying a growing reluctance to give service there in the second half of the thirteenth century. The registers of the Aragonese kings include not only repeated summonses after orders had failed to respond to a first request for service, but also threats of action against the orders’ property for non-compliance with royal demands. Yet, if there were times when military orders could not be relied upon, in the East and in the Baltic region they made significant contributions in the field against the infidel, and on all fronts they played an important role in the garrisoning and defence of strongholds. Already in the mid-twelfth century, Amalric of Jerusalem was telling the French king that ‘if we can achieve anything, it is through them that we are able to do it’.