Crusader artillery, 1097-1148 : typology, terminology and character

Abstract

This thesis aims to investigate the use of artillery in the crusades and the crusader states for the period starting with the 1097 siege of Nicaea and ending with the siege of Damascus in 1148. In this forty-nine year period there are accounts of artillery use at thirty-five sieges as well as mentions of artillery at a number of other events - such as the civil strife that took place in Edessa while Baldwin of Boulogne was taking control of the city and during the planning of an assault on Sidon in 1106 that never took place. This large number of incidents provides a rich mine of infonnation on the nature of artillery in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, information which is far richer in accounts of the crusades than it is in the accounts of contemporary events in Western Europe.