Dungeon, Fire and Sword by John Robinson - A Review

Dungeon, Fire and Sword by John J. Robinson provides a chronological history of the Templars that is based for the most part on historical fact rather than fantasy, mystery, hysteria or conspiracy theories. Compared to most of the books out there which want to see Templars behind every bush and transform devout Christians into Jews, Atheists, secret Muslims, aliens from other planets, warlocks and whatnot, it’s not bad. 

It is what the Germans would call “popular history,” which is a polite way of saying it’s been “dumbed down” a bit to make it an easy read.  In this sense, it as a book that can serve as an introduction to the Templars for people only superficially interested the topic but nevertheless interested in facts rather than fantasy. It also has lists of the Templar Masters, Popes, Kings of Jerusalem, France and England, and the Holy Roman Emperors at the back of the book that is a very handy reference even for a serious scholar! 

However, the very gossipy style that makes it such an easy read also makes it judgmental and superficial. Rather than exploring possible motives or balancing conflicting theories, it chooses one version and then blithely presents this as “the truth.” 

Here's an example, the following quote from the book describes the aftermath of Conrad de Montferrat’s assassination (p. 191). “Henry of Champagne hurried back to Tyre when he got the news [of Conrad de Montferrat’s assassination]. To the local citizens, the handsome young count appeared to provide the ideal solution to the problem of finding a new husband for Isabella, a man who would then be eligible to reign as king of Jerusalem. Princess Isabella, a beautiful young woman twenty one years of age, had not had much success at marriage. She had been married first to the handsome but homosexual Humphrey of Toron, and then the stern, middle-aged Conrad de Montferrat, by whom she had an infant daughter. Perhaps a third marriage, with this dashing, wealthy, popular man, would be the answer. She agreed to the marriage.”

Now, first of all “the local citizens” did not select the husband and future king of Jerusalem -- the High Court of Jerusalem did that. Second, we have no idea what Henri de Champagne looked like, nor Isabella for that matter. She was not yet 21, either, nor had her daughter by Montferrat been born yet. I’ve never heard Conrad described as “stern” -- he had quite a reputation as a charmer and a seducer in the Byzantine court! Most important, however, as the daughter of a Byzantine Princess, Isabella wasn’t thinking of her own happiness; she was a queen concerned about the future of her kingdom. She agreed to the marriage because Henri of Champagne offered significant political advantages: he was the nephew of both the King of England and the King of France and so stood a chance of uniting the (then bitterly divided) crusaders behind him. All in all, the passage is light, gossipy, and fun, but it neither gives credit to the historical figures for rational action nor does it give the reader much insight into what is going on here.

More egregious, however, is the following passage (p. 154) describing the fall of Jerusalem. Having failed to mention that Ibelin defended Jerusalem with virtually no fighting men and 50 women and children to every man so well that the Sultan had to abandon his assaults after five days, Robinson writes: “By September 29 Saladin’s sappers had effected a breach in the wall. The Christians tried to fill and defend as best they could, although by now both sides knew that it was just a matter of time. The Greek Orthodox Christians in the city got word out to Saladin that they would open the gates to him, in exchange for his mercy.  They had come to bitterly resent the arrogant Roman clergy who had forced them to attend church services alien to their traditions, conducted in a language they did not understand. They would welcome a return to the religious tolerance they had enjoyed under Muslim rule.”

This utter nonsense. The Greek Orthodox had NOT enjoyed “religious tolerance” under the Muslims. They had been taxed, disenfranchised and persecuted to the point where they had appealed to Constantinople for aid -- aid that came in the form of the First Crusade. Furthermore, they were NOT forced to attend Latin church services. They retained their priests and their language and their rites -- only the Bishops had been replaced by Latin Bishops (which offended the displaced bishops but affected the vast majority of Orthodox Christians not at all). Last but not least, people facing slavery and slaughter can be forgiven for searching for any way out of their situation; it implies absolutely nothing about overall attitudes of Orthodox residents toward the Crusader States.There is plenty of evidence that suggests the Greek Orthodox were very loyal to the Christian kingdom.

The description is facile, superficial and just bad history. This is nothing but a thoughtless regurgitation of something someone else said (but without attribution). Robinson has not adequately analyzed it nor provided supporting evidence.  If you want a really good history of the Templars I recommend Malcolm Barber’s The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple.

Children of the Crusades — the Militant Orders

The crusades, far from being exclusively destructive as is often suggested today, gave birth to many things. First and foremost, of course, they "sired" the new kingdoms in the Levant, which themselves were the birthplace of new forms of art and architecture. They spawned new trade with "the East," along with many new technological developments in warfare and shipping. They inspired romances and literature, including the very notion of the Grael Quest. But undoubtedly one of their most curious off-spring of the crusades were the "militant orders" -- religious orders for fighting men. 

Initially, true to the Word of Christ, the Church of Rome condemned violence of any kind. By the 5th century, however, the Church conceded that there were circumstances under which the use of force – even homicide – was necessary, excusable, and potentially pious. The concept of the “just war” emerged and was recognized theologically by St. Augustine.

Furthermore, the more Islam threatened the Christian world, the more the Church recognized the need for armed men to defend it against armies determined to spread Islam with the sword. Meanwhile, wherever secular power was weak, the need for men willing to protect clerics, women, and peasants against everything from Vikings to common robbers was equally evident and urgent.

St. George, the Epitome of the Christian Warrior

The fact that the Church drew its leadership from the ruling class – the secular lords with strong military traditions – meant that most clerics in the Middle Ages were themselves imbued with a warrior ethos. This fact in underlined by the number of bishops who donned armor and took active part in warfare — from the Battle of Hastings to the Battle of Crécy. Thus, it is not surprising that by the end of the first Christian millennium, Christianity recognized the need for armed force and men who wielded it, but that did not mean the Church had completely abandoned its principles.

On the contrary, the Church sought repeatedly to restrict, reduce, control, and direct warfare and violence. Violence against churches and clergy was punished with excommunication, for example, and there were frequent clerical diatribes against the vanity, arrogance, and violence of the warrior class. When the Byzantine Emperor appealed to Pope Urban II for aid in fighting the Seljuk Turks and freeing the Holy Land, there is little doubt that Urban II had double motives for calling for a crusade: on the one hand, he wanted to free the Holy Land, but on the other he wanted to free France and Western Europe from excess numbers of violent young men, trained in the profession of arms, who were too quick to fight each other and prey upon the defenseless.

Pope Urban II Calling for the First Crusade

Balderic, one chronicler of Urban II’s speech calling for the First Crusade, quotes the Pope as saying:

Christian warriors, who continually and vainly seek pretexts for war, rejoice, for you have today found a true pretext. You, who have so often been the terror of your fellow men, go and fight for the deliverance of the holy places. You, who sell for vile pay the strength of your arms to the fury of others, armed with the sword of the Maccabees, go and merit eternal reward …. If you must have blood, bathe in the blood of the infidels …. Soldiers of Hell, become soldiers of the living God!

What is remarkable in retrospect is the extent to which Pope Urban II struck a chord with his audience. Not only did they take the cross in great numbers (and proceed to bathe in the blood of infidels when they reached Jerusalem), but for the next 200 years fighting men flocked to serve Christ, not just in crusades, but as fighting monks bound by monastic vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. 

This was made possible by the creation of new monastic orders that enabled men to be both monks and knights. While members of these orders were expected to abjure all wealth and property, to attend Mass multiple times a day, to fast, pray, and eat in silence, and to live in controlled communities cut off from the outside world, especially women, members were not required to give up the profession of arms. Rather, these orders were designed to capture the religious zeal of the time and funnel the fervor and energy of fighting men into religious channels.

Before this spirit if militant Christianity had burned itself out, no less than 17 military orders, 8 on the Iberian Peninsula, 2 in what is now Italy, and 2 in German speaking Europe had been founded. The most famous and most powerful militant orders, however, were the Templars and the Hospitallers, both founded in the Holy Land and international in their structures and membership. 

The Hospitaller and Templar Churches -- side-by-side -- in Famagusta, Cyprus

The Militant Orders play an important role in my three-part biography of Balian d'Ibelin:

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Crusader Castles

One of the most impressive and visible legacies of the crusader kingdoms were the castles erected by Latin rulers in their territories.

One of the best preserved crusader castles: Krak de Chevaliers

T.E. Lawrence, famous as “Lawrence of Arabia,” disparaged the crusader castles as irrelevant and ineffective because these fortifications ultimately proved incapable of preventing the fall of the crusader kingdoms. Yet this is too facile a judgment. In fact, the crusader castles enabled numerically small fighting forces to withstand repeated invasions by numerically vastly superior armies. Christian defeats in the first hundred years of the crusader kingdoms occurred almost exclusively in the open field, where Muslim leaders could bring their larger forces to bear, e.g. the Field of Blood (1119), Hattin, (1187). By contrast, when the crusaders retreated into their fortified cities or castles, forcing the Saracens to besiege them, they usually survived to fight another day. 

The Crusader Castle of Kantara, Cyprus

Yet even the strongest walls require defenders and when a castle like Krak de Cheveliers, built to be defended by 2,000 knights, has a garrison of only a few hundred, it becomes indefensible. Outremer was not lost because its castles were irrelevant or ineffective, but because its castles could not be used as intended due to inadequate and dwindling manpower.

It is also important to remember, that crusader castles were not merely border fortresses designed for the defense of the realm against external enemies. They were also administrative and economic centers, symbols of royal/baronial power, residences, and places of refuge.  As in Western Europe, castles came in different shapes and sizes, each reflective of the original and evolving purposes of the castle and the wealth and power of respective patrons.

Interior of Hospitaller HQ at Acre

Adrian Boas, in his excellent work Crusader Archaeology: The Material Culture of the Latin East, identified no less than five basic types of crusader castles. The simplest form of castle was a simple tower. Similar castles were already known in the West and became popular, for example, in Scotland. In the crusader kingdoms, such castles were usually square with a windowless cellar/undercroft used for storage, wells and or kitchens, over which were built two floors topped by a crenolated fighting platform on the roof.  Access from the outside was usually only at first floor level by means of an exterior stair that ended several yards away from the door; the gap was bridged by a wooden draw-bridge that could be closed from the interior to cover and so reinforce the door. Each floor had two or more barrel or cross-vaulted chambers, which might have been further partitioned by wooden walls or roofs/floors. Out-buildings containing workshops, storerooms, stables and the like were located around the foot of the tower but were not themselves defensible. A splendid, although late, example of a crusader tower castle is the Hospitaller castle at Kolossi on Cyprus.

Hospitaller Tower Castle at Kolossi, Cyprus

A second type of crusader castle, the castrum or enclosure castle, had their roots in Roman military architecture and evolved from Roman forts via Byzantium into crusader castles consisting of a defensible perimeter with reinforcing towers at the corners. The concept was similar to creating a ring of wagons behind which pioneers in the “wild west” defended themselves from attack by Indians or outlaws. The Muslims had also adapted this type of defensive structure, and on their arrival in the Holy Land the Franks took over a number of existing castles of this type. In addition, they built a number of castles following this design for themselves, notably Coliath in the County of Tripoli, Blanchegarde, and Gaza in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. These castles had large vaulted chambers with massive walls roughly three meters thick running between the corner towers. These housed the various activities necessary to castle life from kitchens and stables to forges, bakeries and bath-houses. The upper story of the enclosing buildings generally held accommodations, eating halls and chapels for the garrison. The roofs of the buildings were the fighting platform facing out in all directions and reinforced by the corner towers that provided covering fire.

Vaulted Chambers at Kolossi

The third type of crusader castle was a combination of the previous types: a strong roughly rectangular complex built around a tower or keep.  The enclosing walls (with their vaulted chambers) and corner towers formed the first line of defense and the keep the second. A surviving example of this kind of castle is Gibelet (Jubayl) in the County of Tripoli, and based on William of Tyre’s descriptions the royal castle at Darum in the Kingdom of Jerusalem was of this time.

As the Franks became wealthier or the threat became more intense the Franks started building outer works to provide a line of defense in beyond (i.e. before) the castrum containing so many vital parts of the castle’s inner life. These outer works may have originally been intended to provide a modicum of protection to the towns that often grew up around castles, but they soon evolved into what became one of the most distinctive, indeed iconic, type of crusader castle: the concentric castle. These were generally the castles of the military orders, built with the huge resources available to them and were more purely devoted to military dominance rather than the castles of secular lords or royal castles. These were the castles that inspired Edward I’s castles in Wales. In addition to Krak de Cheveliers, a famous example of this type of castle was Belvoir, overlooking the Jordan valley. Belvoir held out against Saladin a year and a half after the Battle of Hattin; Krak he never even tried to assault, deeming it too strong.

Another view of Krak de Cheveliers

Boas distinguishes between hill top and spur castles, but both of these castles were essentially castles that took advantage of natural geographic features to strengthen the overall defensibility of the castle. The hill-top castles and mountain spur castles were built on the top of steep slopes either occupying an entire hill-top of the tip of a longer corniche. They were undoubtedly the most difficult to take by storm since, built on bedrock, they were hard to undermine, and built on steep escarpments they were almost impossible to assault. Kerak, the castle of Reynald de Chatillon, was a spur castle and it withstood two unsuccessful sieges by Saladin, falling only to starvation more than a year after the Battle of Hattin.

Kerak 

Other crusader castles of this type were Montfort (or as the Teutonic Knights called it, Starkenburg), Beaufort/Belfort, Margat, and Saone.

The fosse at Margat, showing the pillar that supported the drawbridge.

A variation on the theme of the spur castle was the use of the sea rather than sheer mountain sides to provide protection. The Templar castle of Atlit Castle (Castle Pilgrim) and the castle at Tyre were both built on peninsulas extending into the sea and only accessible on one side from the land.  These castles proved almost impossible to capture as again, mining was impossible from three sides and assaults from boats were very precarious and difficult to carry out. As a result, a much smaller defensive force could hold such castles since only one side was vulnerable to attack and only a light watch was needed on the other three sides. Tyre became the only city in the Kingdom of Jerusalem that successfully resisted Saladin after the Battle of Hattin and became the base from which the coastal plain was reconquered.

Which seems a fitting place to end this brief description of crusader castles.

Crusader castles play a role in my three part biography of Balian d'Ibelin:

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                                                                                                                or Kindle!