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TMS - God Wills It, Understanding the Crusades - Thomas F. Madden Download the lecture

Medieval World Websites - links list with descriptions

In addition to the siegecraft for assault and battery there were weapons used in artillery. These were, of course, available to defenders and besiegers alike. The mangonel was really a corrupted form of the onager, the simplest of Roman siege machines. 

Final assault and capture. (July 15, 1099.) (Gesta.) At length, our leaders decided to beleaguer the city with siege machines, so that we might enter and worship the Saviour at the Holy Sepulchre. They constructed wooden towers and many other siege machines.

The Middle Ages saw the development of new modes of warfare encompassing both pitched battles and siege warfare. Then as now the western world was engaged in an arms race. New weapons technology prompted new defensive technologies, for example the introduction of cross-bows led quickly to the adoption of plate armour rather than chain mail.

Then our leaders planned to attack the city with machines, in order to enter it and adore the sepulchre of our Saviour. They made two wooden towers and many other machines. . . . Day and night on the fourth and fifth days of the week we vigorously attacked the city on all sides; but before we made our assault the bishops and priests persuaded all by their preaching and exhortation that a procession should be made round Jerusalem to God's honour, faithfully accompanied by prayers, alms and fasting. Early on the sixth day we attacked 19th century illustrator Gustave Dore's conception of the seige of Jerusalemthe city on all sides and could do nothing against it. We were all surprised and alarmed. Then, at the approach of the hour at which our Lord Jesus Christ deigned to undergo the passion of the cross for us, our knights in one of the towers fought bravely, amongst them Duke Godfrey and his brother, Count Eustace

Two siege-towers, a huge battering-ram, and a quantity of mangonels were constructed before the next attack was made.   Some Genoese ships which reached Jaffa on 17 June brought a welcome supply of provisions and also workers skilled in the construction of siege material.

Throughout the siege, attacks were made on the walls, but each one was repulsed. The Genoese troops, led by commander Guglielmo Embriaco, had previously dismantled the ships in which the Genoeses came to the Holy Land; Embriaco, using the ship's wood, made some siege towers. These were rolled up to the walls on the night of July 14 much to the surprise and concern of the garrison. On the morning of July 15, Godfrey's tower reached his section of the walls near the northeast corner gate, and according to the Gesta two Flemish knights from Tournai named Lethalde and Engelbert were the first to cross into the city, followed by Godfrey, his brother Eustace, Tancred, and their men. Raymond's tower was at first stopped by a ditch, but as the other crusaders had already entered, the Muslim guarding the gate surrende

For the next three weeks, the crusaders feverishly constructed ladders, catapults, battering rams, and siege towers: wheeled, wooden towers filled with men that could then be pushed up against the walls of the defending city, releasing its soldiers against the parapets. Perhaps the most devastating of the wooden war machines constructed by the crusaders though, was the trebuchet.

This interest stands in contrast, as Hatcher points out, to the view of the Black Death taken by historians at mid-century and it may be that the social and economic history of late medieval English society has emerged from the shadow of historians such as Postan and Levett, where the Black death was seen as a catalyst, not a prime mover. Colin Platt's King Death. The Black Death and its aftermath in latemedieval England is a work of synthesis which continues this trend. Written in a fairly chatty style (phrases such as 'Mickey Mouse numbers' and 'rich old ladies' abound) with a liberal sprinkling of modern marketing-speak ('shopping blight', 'customer base' and 'market spread', for example), it is a personal tour through a great deal of the recent secondary literature, largely generated by historians of town and countryside; the book also offers a brief survey of postplague art and architecture.

Consequences of the Black Death

Major setbacks occurred at the end of the thirteenth century and continued into the fourteenth, when population expansion and declining crop yields coincided with a devastating and widespread plague, the Black Death (1348-1349). This had a major impact on population numbers-which dramatically declined-and on both society and economy. Immediately following an economic crisis, a period of crop failure, and an intensification of criminal activity (which may, perhaps, have been linked to fluctuations in food prices), the plague was devastating in its effects, and forms a turning point in the history of medieval England. Nor was the Black Death an isolated event; further pestilence struck in the 1360s, accentuating the problems. Read more: Medieval Britain - Documentation, Norman Period, Feudal Period, Economic Recovery, Cathedrals, Churches, and Monasteries, Impact of Protestantism - England, Castles, Century, Period, Norman, and Built - JRank Articles http://www.jrank.org/history/pages/5958/Medieval-Britain.html#ixzz1Z3mRCdHa

The Role of Trade in Transmitting the Black Death

The long term effects of the Black Death were devastating and far reaching. Agriculture, religion, economics and even social class were affected. Contemporary accounts shed light on how medieval Britain was irreversibly changed.

The majority of the population lived in the countryside at the time of the Black Death. Dr Mike Ibeji traces the plague's devastating impact on the rural communities.

The Black Death reaches England. The summer of 1348 was abnormally wet. Grain lay rotting in the fields due to the nearly constant rains. With the harvest so adversely affected it seemed certain that there would be food shortages. But a far worse enemy was set to appear. It isn't clear exactly when or where the Black Death reached England. Some reports at the time pointed to Bristol, others to Dorset. The disease may have appeared as early as late June or as late as August 4. We do know that in mid-summer the Channel Islands were reeling under an outbreak of the plague. From this simple beginning the disease spread throughout England with dizzying speed and fatal consequences.

William was furious and decided to lay waste the north of England - the so-called "Harrying of the North". Norman soldiers destroyed anything that might have been of use to those who lived in the north. It is thought that as many as 100,000 people died of starvation.

The Harrying (or Harrowing) of the North was a series of campaigns waged by William the Conqueror[1] in the winter of 1069-1070 to subjugate Northern England, and is part of the Norman conquest of England. It effectively ended the quasi-independence of the region through large-scale destruction that resulted in the relative "pacification" of the local population and the replacement of local Anglo-Danish lords with Normans. The death toll is believed to be over 100,000, with substantial social, cultural, and economic damage.[2][3] Because of the scorched earth policy, much of the land was laid waste and depopulated, a fact to which Domesday Book, written almost two decades later, readily attests.[4]

In the English Peasants' Rebellion of 1381, continued enforcement of the Statute of Laborers no doubt rankled and perhaps made the peasantry more open to provocative sermonizing but labor legislation had not halted higher wages or improvement in the standard of living for peasant. It seems likely that discontent may have arisen from an unsatisfying pace of improvement of the peasant's lot. The regressive Poll Taxes of 1380 and 1381 also contributed to the discontent. It is furthermore noteworthy that the rebellion began in relatively affluent eastern England, not in the poorer west or north.

By contrast, the rebellions in Norfolk in 1381 and 1549 were centrally concerned with the nature of the manorial system and terms of tenure, issues that split lords and tenants into two competing groups. Conceived in Marxist terms, as Rodney Hilton put it, these rebellions were manifestations of conflict between the two main classes in late medieval England, lords and peasants. 4