. BOOK REVIEW R CROSBIE WESTON CHARLEMAGNE AND THE DAWN OF CHIVALRY

BOOK REVIEW - R CROSBIE WESTON – CHARLEMAGNE AND THE DAWN OF CHIVALRY in JAMES LAWFORD’S THE CAVALRY. 1976 Roxby Press.

The heavily armoured Knight was the tank of the medieval period, able to smash his way through a swathe of arrows and pikes with lance and sword in close formation. Many armies were devastated by such manoeuvres. The cost was astronomical and had a huge impact on feudalism, as the people had to effectively pay for the army that protected them. Knights were often recruited from the peasant stock, which meant that their younger sons and wives and daughters would have to till the land. Many knights were badly fed and soon learned that plunder and taking enemy hostages was the best way to secure a greater income. The ransoms set on Frenchmen captured at Agincourt paid for many English estates. The great age of the noble Knight on horseback was over as quickly as it started. Charlemagne founded the first orders of knights in 1214. Knights soon became the central fighting unit of every European fighting force, but by the close of the century the close of the same century the crossbow was an increasingly effective threat to heavy armour, and the even more effective longbow soon followed. Of the eight major Crusades, only the first, launched in 1099, had a hope of success for the West. Capturing Jerusalem, the knights of Europe slaughtered thousands of Muslims and Jews.
In 1189, Richard 3rd in the Third Crusade is said to have fired up to half a million-iron horseshoes at the enemy in catapults. Horse and armour were not designed for desert warfare and town sieges such as the Crusades demanded. Heat exhaustion, lack of water and disease took their toll on the knights, while Saracens, by contrast, wore light armour and moved in small, fast moving guerrilla bands. They harassed the knights into breaking formation to chase them out into open desert where they could be mercilessly ambushed in terrain well known to the Saracens. Richard kept his forces well disciplined, and rarely allowed the knights in his charge to break from the lines and give chase no matter how intensely they were taunted as they escorted their convoys. When he finally moved against the Saracens, it was with a fully united army. His efforts were not enough however, and the Crusade was a disaster. It spelt the beginning of the end for the European knights.

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