Okay, so, that’s all very depressing, makes you wonder why on earth you’d be a medievalist no doubt. Well, here’s one reason. While updating myself on the Fourth Crusade by reading Jonathan Phillips‘s excellent The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, I found something I never knew before. Stupidly I gave the book back to Cambridge UL before transcribing the relevant section, and the way the UL works, it won’t be back on the shelf yet. However, I find someone who clearly read the same book writing an article on Historynet.com which basically repeats the relevant text:
To complete their side of the bargain, the Venetians closed their entire commercial operations for a year — a demonstration of the massive effort required to build and equip a fleet of such a size. The ships were of three basic types: troop carriers, horse transports, and battle galleys…. The horse transports had specially designed slings to carry their precious cargo; once the ship drew close to shore, a door below the waterline could be opened to allow a fully armed and mounted knight to charge directly into battle — rather like a modern landing craft disgorging a tank.
I try and restrict my use of this term, but: dude! Why did no-one ever tell me the Fourth Crusade had Knight Landing Ships before? (And, research reveals, so did the Byzantines, as early as 960, so it’s on topic!) Seriously, you reenactment types, you should get on this, that’s a spectacle I’d cross the Atlantic for all right. And you might not have to do all the work yourselves: fruitless Googling for images turns up a guy who’s trying to make a film about the Fourth Crusade and has already started building a 23 ft model of one of these vessels to use in it, of which this seems to be the skeleton:
Ribs and keel of a model Venetian ship for the film Blackernae
This is not the only reason to be a medievalist in this. There is also the fact that someone has done some work on this, and in particular the question of whether or not the door (or ‘horse-port’—y’see, what’s not to love about this?) was really below the waterline. Do we imagine these things beaching? It seems that we have to, or disbelieve Joinville. But dammit: I am in a field where people struggle to work out how people eight hundred years ago landed fully armed knights onto beaches from ships. If you don’t think that’s cool, er, what are you doing reading this?
Jonathan Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constaninople (London 2004), which compares startlingly to his Defenders of the Holy Land, 1119-1187 (Oxford 1996) because, where that is dense and detailed and learned, this, while not lacking the learning, is nonetheless a page-turner. He has of course a great story to tell, but I knew how it ended already and I still stayed up late to finish the book. Seriously engaging writing style, and as I say, one much changed from the earlier book, which is still very useful. The detailed work on the ships that I found, meanwhile, is Lillian Ray Martin, “Horse and cargo handling on Medieval Mediterranean ships” in International Journal of Nautical Archaeology Vol. 31 (Oxford 2001), pp. 237-241, and has a few very fuzzy illustrations that weren’t worth breaking the copyright to reproduce here but might be better in hard copy.
A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe 
I haven’t read that specific book, but the ships built by the Venetians are a big part of the argument for the Crusade attacking Constantinople NOT being a conspiracy. The shallow hulls would have been necessary for an attack on Egypt, but Constantinople had a deep-water harbour, so there’d be no reason for such galleys.
In terms of the landing ships, they were pretty awesome, but also hella confusing. We have no idea how the hell they kept the area under the deck ventilated or how they cleared out the huge amounts of dung that must have been produced. The whole thing is just so awesome.
If you want to know more, John Pryor is the go-to man on this stuff. I’ve sat through his lectures on these ships 4 or 5 times and every time I end up impressed beyond words at how skilled the shipwrights and sailors were. I can’t remember a specific article to look for, but there’s a good list here.
And looking at that, I found this: “Transportation of horses by sea during the era of the Crusades: eighth century to 1285 AD”, Mariner’s Mirror, 68 (1982), 9-27 and 103-25.
Not sure if it’s exactly right but it’s in the same vein.
Worth a look, certainly! Thankyou. But as to the conspiracy theory, I’ve seen the galleys explained (at that same link, indeed) as defence at sea, warships to protect the fleet from naval attack, and Phillips suggests that at one point in the 1204 attacks the landing ships were used, so I don’t know how well that holds up. I don’t actually believe in the conspiracy, I should make clear, but I don’t know that this works as an argument against.
I think a big part of it is that there were no ships commissioned that weren’t shaped like galleys. They were all shallow-hulled and if one was to attack Constantinople by sea, one would want the stowage capacity of deeper ships because it was such an imposing target.
The landing ships were still useful, but more so in the narrow passages of the Nile Delta than the deep waters around Constantinople.
But then, the only academic I know who believes in the conspiracy theory is a Byzantinist, who bases his argument on Dandolo’s dislike of Byzantium, which is…iffy at best. As JHP is so fond of saying, “Egypt was by far the more glittering prize”.
I would have to check the sources there, but that’s certainly not the impression Phillips gives, and both the roughly contemporary illustrations I can think of show deep-hulled cogs as well as (or to the exclusion of) galleys. What’s your basis for this, can I ask?
I still agree about Egypt, of course, but as above, not sure how much water this particular argument holds.
I could well be wrong, but the impression I’ve got from JHP is that the fleet was overwhelmingly shallow hulled (saying that none of them were deep was me not thinking). But as far as I know, the fleet was disproportionately composed of ships that would be necessary for an amphibious assault on Egypt, but which would be a waste of resources if the Venetians wanted to go after Constantinople.
I think we need some sources. Niketas Choniates says:
; Villehardouin doesn’t specify one way or the other, though that article I mention remarks that he says the horses left via the sterns of the vessels and believes he was wrong; and Robert of Clari classes the fleet as “the great dromonds, the transports for carrying the horses, and the galleys”, and I’m not sure if that tells us anything or not, especially since his numbers for the ships turn out to be exaggerated compared to Niketas’s, and he thinks the dromonds and transports were different whereas Niketas seems to think the dromonds were for the horses. It’d be easier to beach a dromond than a cog, but I’d have thought beaching any ship carrying loaded horses was asking for broken legs all round! But, Niketas, who saw the ships, though who also would have wanted to make it plausible that they’d come to get Constantinople I suppose, says round ships too. What’s Pryor resting on?
First off I should say that I might be wrong and if I am that’s all me, not JHP. I do’t want to tar his reputation if I’ve misunderstood something. I’ll try to track down some of his work, I don’t think he’s around at the moment or I’d just ask him.
Beaching a horse transport of the sort used for disgorging armed knights would probably be a necessity to get them onto the shore. Horses are fairly sturdy and I believe the ships had slings for extra support.
I’ll try to find JHP’s argument,might take me a little while to get back to you.
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Well, it IS cool. And kind of fascinating. But I am not very good at getting excited about weapons and armour and actual fighting – it’s the ideas people dress it in that interest me.
I realise this is going to come back to bite me in two months when I teach an intensive course for interested teenagers on the Middle Ages. My colleague who did it last year promises they do it because they’re enthusiastic and the subject matter, and of course for a very high percentage of the boys who sign up for it, this means swords and armour.
I think I fail as a mediaevalist if I cannot answer teenage boys’ questions about swords and armour.
There is, I fear, much in what you say, but the knowledge is fairly quick to pick up at least. And being able to keep teenage boys focussed on a topic is in itself a great desideratum in such circumstances.
Just to say: very cool. are we to imagine fully battle-dressed knights on horseback charging out of landing craft, or a more sedate unloading of horses and bundles of gear?
In Robin Hood starring Russell Crowe you can watch Philippe II’s knights disembarking on medieval Higgins Boats, eventually to be pushed back across the Channel by Robin’s bows and arrows. A great battle scene, albeit lacking medieval Spitfires or Messerschmitts to buzz the troops… ;-)
I’ve been forewarned about that scene by the number of links to this post from fora discussing it, indeed! Suffice to say that Ridley Scott did not consult me :-)
The former, of course. Since it’s imagination, why would we go for the sedate? I’m sure if Froissart was around at the time he’d tell us that was what happened. Imaginative potential writes history!
Phillips certainly buys into the Froissart model, and suggests (on the basis of Joinville, which may not be much better) that they were set up so that the knights could disembark on horseback and charge up the beach. I am still wrestling with how one beaches a ship with men mounted in armour on horses without knocking over said horses and ruining them and the knights. Slings, an earlier commentator says, but can you really rig a horse for battle while it’s in a sling? I would doubt it. Oh dear. If I were able to hear Froissart tell his stories, I’d be at the back loudly requesting him to tug the othere wanne, for yt hath belles thereupon, I fear.
Miss K: you know a bit about petitions, can I entice you to weigh in on the thread above, too?
I guess the Phillips article does suggest the charging off scene, but really: were there crusades battles fought on beaches in the first place? It seems the logistical challenges would outweigh the tactical advantages….
There were a couple of recorded ones. Richard charged straight off the boats (though not on horseback) at least once during the Third Crusade, at .Jaffa I believe.
Other than that, my understanding is that horses were literally ridden out off the boat.
Mr. Jarrett – I can’t see any problem with their tack in terms of a sling. As far as I can tell (and it’s really hard to research) horses in the 12th and early 13th centuries didn’t wear barding, at least in the Holy Land – Europe is harder to be sure. But most of the depictions of horses in that period show them with saddles (with breaststraps and stirrups) and bridles, but nothing else. Even though the saddles were fairly solid, I can’t see anything that would stop someone loosening the sling (so there’s room), putting the saddles and bridle on, then tightening the sling again. Once you reach land, you undo the slings, the knights climb on and the ‘door’ opens, then everyone rides out.
The main logistical problem, I think, would be supplies. The unit would have limited range, but for raiding or emergency reinforcements or some-such, it would be ok. Beyond that, the knights would very soon have exhausted mounts, and given that each knight needed multiple horses for any more than a couple of charges, AND that one simply did not use a warhorse for transport (the cost, the cost!) they couldn’t reasonably expect to operate independently for any serious length of time.
Well, yes, and even if you could rig them up in the slings and keep them from falling over with the shock of the landing, I imagine once you loosened the sling and put a knight on top of them the equine response to ‘CHARGE!’ would be an awful lot of drunken staggering.
To be fair, if the charters and laws we have are anything to go by, the riders were more likely to be staggering around drunk. The amounts of alcohol allocated to people on boats were astronomical!
In all seriousness though, even if they knights were literally charging ASAP on the beach they’d still be walking the horses out. No knight with half a shred of brains would charge in a column. That way lies madness (also death).
I envisage walking the horses out (perhaps, maybe, possibly at a trot, but I reeeeeeaaally doubt it) then lining up for the charge.* The whole manoeuvre would take a little while, but it’s still much faster than the usual methods of getting horses and men from ship to shore.
*Which itself would start as a walk anyway unless the enemy was within arms’ reach or something.
See, I would buy tickets to see the Society for Creative Anachronism re-enact a fully-dressed knights charge off a wooden boat onto a local beach.
Well, exactly!
And, ‘Dammit, Jim, I’m a Dr, not a Mr,’ or something.
*headdesk* I went into auto.
Many apologies, Dr. Jarrett! I beg forgiveness.
Te absolvo!
The Villehardouin bit that Phillips seems to be going on is a charge at Byzantine troops near the Blachernae Palace, and does seem to indicate some marshalling on shore:
The only weird thing about this is that it reads as if the first men ashore, who cleared the beach for the horses to disembark, were setting up to charge on foot… I might want to look at the original, but it being in Old French, it might not help me much.
It does seem to suggest that. It’s hardly uncommon, and if they couldn’t get the ships close enough for the horses to be happy walking off it would be easier. It sounds exactly like what Richard did at Jaffa, really, except that he ran all the way up the beach and took the city, which was rather smaller than Constantinople.
Would one really run with a lance? Could one move fast enough to do any damage with it on arrival?
I don’t think battlefield lances in the late 12th and early 13th centuries were as specialised as they became later. Plus spears are often referred to as lances, from the Holy ‘Lance’ that pierced Christ’s side onward. There are even references to people using ‘lances’ in one hand. Robert Guiscard supposedly did so (with a sword in the other) at the Battle of Civitate. I think that’s in William of Apulia. But the chronicles and images don’t really show any difference between lance and spear – it’s basically just a long pointy stick wither way.
Lowering of lances, I think, is a nice way of saying “battle was joined” or something. Even on foot, you’d probably still march with spears raised and then lower them toward the enemy when you get within a reasonable distance.
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