How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity (15 page)

The so-called Carolingian Renaissance that began late in the eighth century initiated innovations in art and architecture. Most of the surviving art consists of illuminated manuscripts and of metal work. The architecture was mainly devoted to churches and castles, and many of the buildings were very large and quite attractive.

The remarkable artistic era that emerged in eleventh-century Europe is known as “Romanesque,” despite the fact that it was quite different from anything the Romans did. This name came from nineteenth-century professors who believed that Europe recovered from the Dark Ages only by
going back
to Roman culture. Hence, this could only have been an era of poor imitations of things Roman. In fact, Romanesque architecture, sculpture, and painting were original and powerful in ways that “even the late Roman artists would never have understood,” as the art historian Helen Gardner wrote.
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The Romanesque period was followed, in the twelfth century, by the even more powerful Gothic era. It seems astonishing, but Voltaire and other eighteenth-century critics scorned Gothic architecture—extraordinary achievements including the Chartres Cathedral—and painting for not conforming to the standards of ancient Greece and Rome. These same critics mistakenly thought the style originated with the “barbarous” Goths—hence the name. As anyone who has seen any of Europe’s great Gothic cathedrals knows, the artistic judgment of these critics was no better than their history. That is to say nothing of their disregard for the architectural inventions of the Gothic period, including the flying buttress, which made it possible to build very tall buildings with thin walls and large windows, thus prompting major achievements in stained glass.

Thirteenth-century artists in northern Europe were, moreover, the first to use oil paint and to put their work on stretched canvass rather than on wood or plaster.
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Anyone who thinks that great painting began with the Italian “Renaissance” should examine the work of the Van Eycks.

So much, then, for notions that the centuries following the collapse of Rome were an artistic blank or worse.

Chronic Warfare, Constant Innovation

All historians, both early and late, agree that medieval Europe was a war zone. So much so that throughout the eleventh century the popes attempted to impose a cease-fire to get the nobility to stop making war on one another (often seemingly just for the sport of it). When Pope Urban II addressed an assembly of knights gathered outdoors at Claremont in 1095 to propose the First Crusade, he told them: “Christian warriors, who continually and vainly seek pretexts for war, rejoice, for you have today found a true pretext.… Soldiers of Hell, become soldiers of the living God.”
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Although many knights responded by joining the Crusade (as will be seen in the next chapter), they never did stop picking fights with one another.

But this chronic medieval warfare had a significant by-product: innovation. Within several centuries of the fall of Rome, Europeans had developed military technology that far surpassed not only the Romans’ but that of every other society on earth.

Arms and Armor

Chain-mail armor probably was invented by the Celts—our first knowledge of it comes from a third-century-BC Celtic chieftain’s burial in Romania. The Romans first encountered chain-mail armor when fighting against the Gauls, and subsequently the Germanics perfected it. Chain mail consisted of tiny rings of metal (preferably steel) closely linked—the standard was for each ring to be linked with four others. Some chain mail consisted of one layer, but more often it consisted of two or three layers.
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With chain mail covering the arms and torso, sometimes the legs, and even the head and neck, Western knights during the Crusades often came away from an encounter with Muslim archers looking like porcupines, arrows sticking out in all directions, none of them having penetrated deeply enough to wound.
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Since a single chain-mail shirt might contain twenty-five thousand rings, it was very expensive, costing perhaps as much as “the annual income from quite a big village,” according to the military historian Andrew Ayton.
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A good sword cost about as much. The cost of arms tended to limit military participation to men of means—with a nasty exception.
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Although the English were famous for their longbows, and various
Germanic groups used excellent composite bows, the most popular and lethal weapon of medieval times was the crossbow, which was widely adopted during the tenth century.
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The crossbow could penetrate even heavy plate armor from medium distance. Anyone could be trained to use a crossbow effectively in a week or two, since one just aimed and pulled the trigger. And that was the rub. Like the Colt revolver in the Old West, the crossbow was the great equalizer, allowing untrained peasants to stand up to aristocratic knights who had devoted their lives to learning military techniques. Under the direction of Pope Innocent II, in 1139 the Second Lateran Council declared the crossbow “a weapon hateful to God” and prohibited its use against Christians. That still permitted the crusaders to use crossbows against the Muslims; Richard the Lionheart had a large number of crossbowmen with him during the Third Crusade in 1191. In any case, the pope’s prohibition had little influence: the Genoese several times deployed as many as 20,000 crossbowmen in a single battle,
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and the French used 1,500 at Agincourt in 1415. What the pope’s prohibition did accomplish was to cause crossbows to be little mentioned in contemporary accounts and subsequently by historians. Even some accounts of the death of Richard the Lionheart fail to mention that the wound that developed gangrene and killed him was from a crossbow.

The Cavalry Controversy

As pointed out in chapter 3, without stirrups a cavalryman could not charge behind a lowered lance without being vaulted from his horse. Thus it wasn’t until the stirrup appeared sometime during the seventh century that there could exist the celebrated armored knight astride his great charger and armed with a long lance. Unfortunately, the development of this knightly heavy cavalry has led many historians badly astray. In his classic
Arms and Armour in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
(1871), Charles Boutell noted that “it was not possible that an infantry … should withstand the shock of mail-clad men-at-arms with their long lances, their strong swords, and their powerful horses. Hence, the serious fighting in those days took place between the mounted combatants.”
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R. Ewart Oakeshott agreed, writing in 1960, “The armoured cavalryman fighting with the lance and sword on a heavy horse became for the next 1,100 years the arbiter of war.”
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Similarly, Archibald R. Lewis claimed that the stirrup made “heavily armed cavalry carrying lances the decisive battle-troops of the period.”
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And the influential Lynne White believed that
“the new military method of mounted shock combat” made cavalry the “backbone of [the medieval] army.”
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If so, why did the knights, even though they rode to the battlefield, usually dismount when it came time to fight? For example, at the Battle of Agincourt (1415) both the French and the English had thousands of mounted knights, all of whom dismounted and marched into battle. Or if cavalry were the key to victory, why did the infantry overwhelmingly outnumber the cavalry in medieval European armies? As a typical example, for his Falkirk campaign in 1298, England’s Edward I assembled a force of 3,000 heavy cavalry and 25,700 infantry.
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In fact, throughout the entire medieval era, battles were fought and won by infantry. Good commanders never committed their cavalry until the enemy infantry had broken ranks. The “glorious” knights on their chargers were reserved for riding down those poor souls who were already fleeing for their lives.

The Muslim Threat

Shortly before his death in 632, the Prophet Muhammad’s forces, gathered in the Arabian Peninsula, began probing attacks into Byzantine Syria and Persia. These attacks were in keeping with what came to be known as Muhammad’s farewell address, during which he said: “I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god but Allah.’”
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That was entirely consistent with the Qur’an (9:5): “Slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them [captive], and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush.” In this spirit, Muslim armies launched a century of successful conquests.

First to fall was Syria, in 636, after three years of fighting. Other Arab forces conquered the Persian area of Mesopotamia, known today as Iraq. Subsequently, the caliph al-Mansur built his capital city on the Tigris River. Its official name was Madina al-Salam (City of Peace), but everyone called it Baghdad (Gift of God). Eastern Persia, the area that is today Iran, soon fell to Muslim invaders as well.

Next, Muslim forces moved west. First up was the Holy Land, at that time the most western part of Byzantine Syria. Muslim forces entered it in 636, and in 638, after a long siege, Jerusalem surrendered to the caliph ‘Umar. In 639 ‘Umar invaded Egypt, a major center of Christianity and
also a Byzantine colony. Because the major Egyptian cities were strongly fortified, the Arabs massacred the villages and rural areas in hopes that Byzantine forces would be drawn into open battles. That occurred from time to time, but following each engagement, the Byzantines withdrew to their fortifications in good order. In 641 a new Byzantine governor of Egypt was appointed. For reasons that remain unknown, a month after his arrival by sea in Alexandria he arranged to meet the Muslim commander and surrendered the city and all of Egypt to him. A Muslim army of perhaps forty thousand then swept over the Byzantine cities along the coast of North Africa. In 711 Muslim forces from Morocco invaded Spain and soon pushed the defenders into a small area in the North, from which they never could be dislodged. A century later Sicily and southern Italy fell to Muslim forces.

Except for the one in Spain, all of the Muslim victories over Christians in the Middle East, North Africa, Sicily, and Italy had come against Byzantine forces—most of them low-quality fortress troops, all of them mercenaries. In Spain the Muslims had defeated a small Visigothic force—after several centuries of peace, the ruling Visigothic elite had felt no need to maintain a substantial army. Worse yet, a number of Visigothic leaders and their troops deserted to join the Muslims. After these easy victories, the Muslims were quite unprepared for what was to come.

The Battle of Tours/Poitiers

The Pyrenees Mountains contained the Muslim advance in northern Spain—for a few years. But in 721 Al-Samh ibn Malik al-Khawlani, the Muslim governor of Spain, led his troops north intent on annexing the Duchy of Aquitaine in southern Gaul (now France). His first step was to lay siege to the city of Toulouse. After three months, with the city on the brink of surrender, Duke Odo of Aquitaine arrived with an army of Franks. While Odo had been away gathering his forces, lack of opposition had encouraged Muslim arrogance. They had constructed no defenses around their camp, had sent out no scouts to warn of an approaching threat, and may not even have posted sentries. Taken completely by surprise when the Franks attacked, the Muslims fled, many without their weapons or armor, and most of them were slaughtered by Frankish heavy
cavalry as they ran away. Al-Samh ibn Malik al-Khawlani was mortally wounded.

In 732, led by ‘Abd-al-Rahmân, the Muslims tried again, this time with a far larger force. Muslim sources claim it was an army of hundreds of thousands; the Christian Chronicle of St. Denis swore that three hundred thousand Muslims
died
in the battle. More realistic is Paul K. Davis’s estimate of an army of eighty thousand Muslims.
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In any event, contrary to some historians who want to minimize the importance of the engagement, this was no mere raid or exploratory expedition. The Muslims came with a large army and drove deep into Gaul. The battle occurred only about 150 miles south of Paris, although it is uncertain precisely where it was fought. The best that can be done is to place it near where the rivers Clain and Vienne join, between Tours and Poitiers. Thus some historians refer to it as the Battle of Tours, while others call it the Battle of Poitiers.

As the Muslims moved north from Spain everything went well for them. They defeated a company of Franks attempting to defend Bordeaux and plundered the city. Then they slaughtered another small Christian army at the Battle of the River Garonne. At this point, according to Isidore of Beja’s contemporary account, the Muslim commander “burned churches, and imagined he could pillage the basilica of St. Martin of Tours.” But first he paused to regroup. Once again the Muslims were brimming with confidence. According to an anonymous Arab chronicler, “The hearts of ‘Abd-al-Rahmân, his captains and his men were filled with wrath and pride.”
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Hence they sent out no scouts and failed to detect the approach of Charles Martel (688–741), de facto ruler of Gaul, who was leading an army of battle-hardened Franks.

Charles (Martel means “the hammer”) was an unusually tall and powerfully built man, the bastard son of King Pépin II and famous for his military exploits. Even had he not confronted Muslim invaders, Martel would have been a major historical figure. By winning many battles against the Bavarians, the Alemanni, the Frisians, and the Saxons, he had founded the Carolingian Empire (named for him; Charles is Latinized as Carolus)—an empire later perfected by his grandson Charlemagne. Now, after gathering his troops, Martel marched south to meet the Muslim threat.