David Nicolle, Warriors and their Weapons around
the Time of the Crusades Aldershot: Ashgate/Variorum, 2002,
pp. xiv + 324. £57.50 (hardback). ISBN: 0 86078 898 9.
This selection of eleven essays from the work of the
historian of medieval warfare forms part of Ashgate's Variorum Collected Studies
Series. The series reprints selected articles by prominent scholars, with the
original pagination, updated bibliographical references and a useful index, and
is extremely valuable since it makes available in one place articles that would
otherwise be difficult of access, buried in obscure journals or conference
proceedings. In this case, there is also one article which is published for the
first time (XI) and a very helpful introduction by the author which draws
together some of the themes made in the different articles.
The chosen articles cover a wide range of topics. Some, such as David
Nicolle’s observations on the depiction of arms, armour and horse bridles on
the painted ceiling of the Parma baptistery (XI), are very specific. ‘Medieval
warfare: the unfriendly interface’ (I), by contrast, contains general
reflections on the ways in which hostile societies can influence each other’s
military technology, with particular reference to medieval Christendom and
Islam.
Throughout the collection, it is clear that Nicolle, who is an artist as
well as a scholar, is adept at working with visual evidence. Many of the
articles are accompanied by his own line drawings, taken from wall paintings,
stone carvings, manuscript illuminations and other sources, such as the Bayeaux
Tapestry, and these are referred to constantly in the text. Reference is also
made to a number of black and white photographs of sites and art works.
There are, of course, a number of pitfalls in
using contemporary illustrations as a source for military technology. Medieval
artists, like medieval authors, had a tendency to ‘classicise’: to
illustrate not the conditions of their own time but of some idealised past (II,
p.300). Thus many Byzantine manuscript illuminations portray soldiers in a
stylised way, carrying equipment which must have been obsolete centuries before,
if indeed it had ever been used. Islamic art had a tendency to stylise and to
repeat standard models over and over again (II. p.301). Another problem is that
the people who created these portrayals were probably not military men and could
not be expected to be entirely accurate. Nicolle is, however, well aware of
these problems and discusses them at a number of points. Artistic depictions
have to be used selectively, he argues. Homely, provincial art is often more
likely to provide details of actual practice and equipment than the more
stylised works created in a metropolitan centre (II. p. 300). To overcome the
problem of inaccuracy, he provides diagrams of cavalry tactics, based on
medieval art work but ‘rationalised’ by his own riding experience (IV, pp.
6, 19). The overall result is a visual encyclopaedia of medieval portrayals of
arms and armour brought together into one volume. Even if the reader does not
agree with Nicolle’s interpretations of this evidence, he has nevertheless
provided ample material for others to use in forming their own views.
Nicolle is, perhaps, slightly less convincing when he turns from the
visual to the textual record, largely because he sometimes avoids citing texts
in the original. The fascinating Taktika of the Byzantine emperor Leo VI
(886-912), for example, is freely available in Patrologia Graeca, vol.
107, cols. 673-1080, but Nicolle cites the 1771 French translation by Joly de
Maizeroi (IV, p.9; I, pp. 588-9). Even if a translation is used, the original
text should at least be referred to in a scholarly work of this type, especially
as it is so easily accessible.
The great strengths of Nicolle’s work are most apparent in the fourth
article in the collection, ‘The impact of the European couched lance on Muslim
military tradition’. Although not stated explicitly, this article was probably
partly aimed at the views of the late R. Allan Brown who believed that the
adoption of the couched lance technique by the Normans in the eleventh century
allowed them to create a cavalry which was ‘a devastating weapon, polished and
tempered by continual training and application’ (The Normans and the Norman
Conquest, London, 1969, p. 49). The technique has also been seen as the
reason for the initial success of the crusades. Nicolle, on the other hand,
insists that the couched lance technique was neither new nor particularly
effective (IV, p. 6). His eleven pages of illustrations show that the couched
position was only one of many ways in which western knights used their lances,
depending on the situations in which they found themselves. The analysis is more
sober and much less dramatic than that of Brown but it has the ring of truth to
it.
Again, Nicolle’s use of the textual evidence is less convincing. He is
heavily reliant on three unpublished, and so inaccessible, PhD theses by Bashir
Ibrahim Bashir (1970), James Howard-Johnston (1971) and John Haldon (1975) for
his knowledge of Greek and Arabic sources. The account of the tactics employed
by the Byzantine emperor Nikephoros II Phokas (969-76), for example, is culled
from Howard-Johnston, so that one is left in the dark as to the ultimate source
of Nicolle’s assertion that the Byzantines held the Frankish cavalry in
contempt as ‘the easiest of their foes’ (IV, pp. 11-12).
Minor points like this aside, this book is an extremely useful one. It
demonstrates the primary scholarship which underlies Nicolle’s many popular,
illustrated books on medieval and modern warfare, and should be included in any
library specialising in medieval military history and the crusades.
Jonathan Harris
University of London