Reconquista: Weapons and Tactics in Crusader Spain

This video details the arms, armor, and military approach of Crusaders in the Spanish wars against Islam.
Source cited:
Joseph O'Callaghan
Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain

[@Pyrrhus399]

probably wouldn't be cutting through armor, no matter how good your sword is, blunt force trauma would still be a factor with that. killing blows would be delivered where armor isn't.

[@YourHumbleServant831]

Please keep up the good work!

[@RealCrusadesHistory]

+YourHumbleServant831 Will do thank you!

[@jamesa1360]

looks like he did :)

[@RealCrusadesHistory]

Awesome! I would prefer it be that way my self, so I'm glad to hear it. If the source I used was in error, then I certainly cede the point.

[@RobertoSantiagoRodriguez]

Thanks for the video, brother, may God bless you and keep you always!

[@RealCrusadesHistory]

@Pitttdog You make some very powerful and profound points, my friend. Indeed, were it not for the Crusades, Western Civilization would've never produced the profoundly affluent societies we today enjoy. Modern medicine, modern science, all of these were made possible by the Crusades. You are truly an informed individual, my friend.

[@HereTheArtBegins]

@alanheath When we look at skeletons, we see that Medieval Europeans were taller, and therefore better fed, than people who lived before them (Rome and Greece), and people who lived after them, right up to the middle of the 19th century. Only then did heights start to reach their modern state. You should also read some of the recent work coming out on peasant life; it was hard work, but it didn't have the oppressive quality you

[@billyslo87]

Another excellent video. Thanks for making them.

[@ApocalypticDevotee]

Thanks for all your work.

[@RealCrusadesHistory]

@HereTheArtBegins Excellent! Thanks for informed comments.

[@joshburch37]

Very informative thanks

[@RealCrusadesHistory]

@HereTheArtBegins This is absolutely true. Peasant life wasn't some kind of hell where people were on the verge of starving all the time. In fact they were very good at what they did and produced a great abundance and variety of foods. Yes there were times of illness and famine, but the High Middle Ages, the age of Crusades, was a period of economic boom.

[@atomicb8222]

Keep up the Good work.

[@RealCrusadesHistory]

@HereTheArtBegins From Hitler's personal comments it's very clear that he viewed religion as a tool to control his people. He commented once that he wished the Germans had gone for Islam instead so they wouldn't be burdened by the love and humility prized by Christianity. The man was obviously an atheist who saw religion as a cultural force to be manipulated and directed toward secular ends.

[@RealCrusadesHistory]

@Pitttdog Pittdog, your knowledge of this period is excellent. I'm really impressed with your comments. Please continue to contribute to the discussion.

[@RealCrusadesHistory]

@alanheath Your view of the medieval world is highly biased. People from that period were as serious about their ideals as we are about ours. There is every bit of evidence that the common people were as enthusiastic about the Crusades as the nobles. Medieval people did not live on the brink of starvation, they were very good at running their civilization and they did very well. You need to read more contemporary scholarship on the medieval world instead of repeating silly old myths.

[@CESSKAR]

Good answer.

[@stridertex]

Phenomenal videos! I'm currently in a writing project that has me reading several of John France's works on the First Crusade. It is so refreshing to see the real Middle Ages finally breaking free of all the myths that Modernity wants us to believe about them. How could the Middle Ages have given us things like Chartres Cathedral, The Summa Theologica, Magna Carta, and the University system if they were nothing but a bunch of superstitious bigots who didn't even know to wash their own hands?

[@andrewcanady6644]

After ten years I was your second thumbs up. That’s unsat. Well said, my friend.

[@stridertex]

@@andrewcanady6644 After 10 years - many thanks haha.

[@4ozgloves205]

You will fail if you use this as a source for your paper this is all lies

[@habibturay9930]

@@andrewcanady6644 Viva Christo Rey. Europe is in need of a crusade.

[@HereTheArtBegins]

@alanheath Wikipedia actually has a decent little description of Stalin's relationship with Religion; "Stalin followed the position adopted by Lenin that religion was an opiate that needed to be removed in order to construct the ideal communist society.... By the late 1930s it had become dangerous to be publicly associated with religion." So, what was that about Stalin being a Christian?

[@HereTheArtBegins]

@alanheath These were; "Castitas", or "Chastity", "Temperantia", or "Temperance", "Industria", or "Diligence", "Patientia", or "Patience", "Humilitas", or "Humility", and finally "Caritas", or "Charity" and "Humanitas", or "Kindness/Humanity". The Seven Virtues were seven mental states which drew your mind /closer/ to God and kept your soul pure. How the hell do you make the argument that Charity and Humanity were not a part of Medieval Religion?

[@RealCrusadesHistory]

@HereTheArtBegins An excellent book I've read on several occasions.

[@RealCrusadesHistory]

Yes they were!

[@RealCrusadesHistory]

@HereTheArtBegins Brilliant comment! Your comment on Christianity as a language reveals a lot of understanding on your part. Thanks for contributing to the discussion!

[@RealCrusadesHistory]

@HereTheArtBegins Absolutely, there's no question these things have increased.

[@HereTheArtBegins]

@alanheath Actually humanity and charity were considered core tenets of Medieval Societies. Everyone was expected to give to charity. The Military Orders, as recorded by Michael the Syrian, gave 10% of all their food and wealth to the poor. Even common people were expected to give what they didn't need to the poor when they were asked. Charity is an INCREDIBLY common element of medieval Society.

[@RealCrusadesHistory]

@HereTheArtBegins Truly excellent points. Again, I appreciate your contribution to the discussion very much, HereTheArtBegins. Unfortunately, alanheath seems to be VERY confused about the Middle Ages and Christianity. I suspect this stems largely from his own personal prejudices.

[@HereTheArtBegins]

@alanheath I'm going to advise you to read "The Crusades" by Regine Pernoud; she was one of the first people to start interacting with the public at large about the real history of Medieval Europe.

[@VanlifewithAlan]

You deal with supply well. This is absolutely critical in any situation, today included. You mention plunder, which in my opinion is all the Crusades are about in any case. I think the way the First Crusade plundered its way through the Balkans and then what is today Turkey, Lebanon and Israel has been well documented by chroniclers. Plundering a village would possibly ensure that the population starved in winter and it is no surprise that people feared the Crusaders for hundreds of years.

[@VideoDromer316]

where are you getting your primary sources for this information?

[@deckiedeckie]

Do not forget the sling (honda) inherithe fm the sheepherders.....one can throw pretty big rock to a large distances....the romans already used the Honderos mallorquines (mallorqun slingers ) is their legions hundreds of yrs before...

[@HereTheArtBegins]

@alanheath Hi! I'm a Medievalist myself, and I'm going to have to agree with RealCrusadeHistory here; your conclusion on the motivations of the Crusades is pretty outdated (By decades to a century, in fact.). I don't know of any serious scholars on the Crusades today who deal with such a simplistic model. Some of the current research I've seen has suggested that the Crusades were actually an act of retribution; not about plunder. There is little evidence for that point.

[@MagagState13]

can we also talk about the surcoat. For some reason during depictions of the early middle ages crusaders are always pictured with surcoats. Military orders did where habits with long sleeves, but surcoats do not come into common usage till about 1220. And Everything from kingdom of heaven, to victorian paintings to historical text books gets this wrong.

[@carlosdelsol76]

A few corrections: Swords evolved from cutting to stabbing and mails are resistant to slashes not stabbings. Infantry used spears and Horsement used lances, in spanish spear is lanza which destribes both but anglos understand it as spear for infantry and lance for cavalry. Arabic horsemen were mainly rush cavalry with light equipment due to the weather, including horse archery, they were both good in both types of fighting. You are confussing the arabic term with the arabic armies, in the spanish peninsula the arabic army had contingents of native iberian cavalry that were of european descent and prefered heavy impact type of equipment The arabic saw the same advancements as the crusaders but the caliphate got weaker due to descentralization and entrophy this led to fielding smaller armies and the cohesion of such armies suffered due to internal strife, having to rely on slaves and mercenaries. The arabic native cavalry also had their own share of heavy equipment but as they were infighting the corruption didn't allow for proper equipment for a large sum of native andalusian cavalry, in contrast the northern kingdoms or christians had an advantage as the pope schemed to present a united front against the muslims or Al-Andalus. To prevent the christians from attacking the muslims while they were killing each other they would give the christians ''parias'' a sum of iron or helmets to one of christian kingdoms in order to make that kingdom more powerfull than the others and divide them (good old divide et impera) that would accentuate the problems as with every paria would make the christians stronger, an example of today would be the americans giving the afghans money and equipment.

[@cometblazt]

Great video!

[@BigBadassR]

Well, I would certainly hope arms and tactics improved, the war was 780 years or so. Only in Africa and North America do technology and tactics stay static for that long.

[@HereTheArtBegins]

@alanheath You should read up on the Nazi ideology; they weren't Christian per say; they instead were trying to create a 'new' religion, a 'materialistic' religion based upon blood and earth. There's little evidence that Hitler himself was a Christian; instead he used Christian language to persuade the Christians. Stalin was DEFINITELY not a theist; he was raised in a clerical family, but he was not a cleric himself and he had an adversarial relationship with the Orthodox church.

[@jeremythomas3064]

Pauldrons were not the jerkins they wore, rather it was the surcoat.

[@Mofeto69]

plese. talk about when spanish defended europe front turkish

[@ASTFRER36]

The Battle of Lepanto

[@ASTFRER36]

Castelnuovo

[@VanlifewithAlan]

@HereTheArtBegins I agree that the Crusades for many were a way of gaining penitence for sins (as dictated to them by the church). After the battle of Hastings, the Normans had to do penitence for killing the Saxons, within just over thirty years, penitence became the act of killing those that did not confirm to the dogma of the church.

[@HereTheArtBegins]

@alanheath One final point on the argument that Charity and Humanity were not considered a part of Medieval Religion. You know of the Seven Deadly Sins, right? These were seven mental states which distracted your mind from God and hence lead directly to sin and damnation. Well, there were also Seven Heavenly Virtues.

[@VanlifewithAlan]

I have often thought of the troops in Iraq in that heat but having to wear body armour. But how much worse it would have been in the summer in medieval Spain with the chain mail and outer garments. Furthermore in the winter it is very cold and chain mail offers little protection from the cold.

[@HereTheArtBegins]

@alanheath Religion does not necessarily bring hatred. Oppositional cultural groups inevitably start to hate one another, and there is little need for Religion specifically to do this. What actually happens is that the dominant language of the age is used to explain the war and its causes, and this happens in every age. Imperialism, for instance, was the language of the 19th century, and in China the potency of the Emperor was used to justify violence against dissidents.

[@HereTheArtBegins]

@alanheath Penitence was also only one factor of the Crusades. The Crusades are a multifaceted event in European history and you're not going to find the clear and easy answers you're trying to manufacture. Some people went for penitence; others went because of their devotion to God; others went for adventure, and others still went because there was little opportunity for them in Western Europe. All went with reasons generated by their cultural, Christian understanding of the world.

[@RealCrusadesHistory]

@alanheath You claim that Christianity is a violent offender, when you yourself are an atheist and atheism has killed FAR more people. The atheists regimes of Nazi Germany and communist Russia and China slaughtered untold numbers of people while robbing them of their dignity. How do you atheists answer for such crimes against humanity? The Crusades were people standing in defense of their own lands and societies which were threatened by invaders.

[@LJPMotorsports]

What about the common soldier? I heard all about knights in this, but not much else.

[@noelyanes2455]

The foot soldiers mainly comprised of javelin men and amulghavars

[@gregkosinski2303]

Who cares? They were peasants

[@7micho7]

No, the shields were also thick steel.

[@XmXFLUXmX2]

@RealCrusadeHistory That is interesting, what is your source for your claim about Hitler wishing his people were Muslims?

[@HereTheArtBegins]

@alanheath War, killing, pillage, and murder are facets of human psychology; you don't need religion in order to do these things. Look at the modern era; the modern era is one where Religion has taken a backseat to Capital and Finance; however we still have lots and lots of war, killing, pillage, and murder. In fact, as the world became less religious since the 1500s, one could argue such acts have only increased in scope.

[@HereTheArtBegins]

@alanheath Religion and mere superstition are two completely separate things. Look at the root word of Religion; it translates to "To bind". Religion forms a binding, universal language of understanding which I haven't seen any other socio-political force manage to do save for Communism, which itself has very religious characteristics at times. Mere superstitions don't form that sort of identity, and that sort of identity can't really be controlled by any one player.

[@andrewbatist6355]

how common it was to see a spanish or iberian cruzader wearing a Great Helm on the battlefields of the reconquista ? in 13th century

[@HereTheArtBegins]

@alanheath "In the name of superstition" is a very ignorant, chronocentric way of framing things. That's something no good historian should practice. Again, you're incorrect about the lifestyle of Peasants in Medieval Europe. While they were not as well fed as they were today, analysis of skeletons actually show something very interesting.

[@RealCrusadesHistory]

@alanheath The Poles were Crusaders! The wars conducted by the Poles against the Turks WERE Crusades!

[@Mofeto69]

crossbow???

[@Mofeto69]

ok. spanish crusaders. but not spanish reconquest

[@VanlifewithAlan]

@RealCrusadeHistory That is the first time I have heard of 1683 being a Crusade period. Tthe Ottomans were allied to Protestant rebels in Hungary to whom they had been providing military aid against the Habsburgs in Vienna. Therefore this would be within the Crusader tradition of killing anyone for plunder irrespective if they are Moslem or not.

[@HereTheArtBegins]

@alanheath As stated, "in the name of superstition" is not a good attitude. Christianity was probably one of the greatest forms of language and understanding in the pre-modern world. How much better it would have been if they had stayed at home? Probably not better at all. It probably would have wound up like a second India, where millions of Hindus were murdered by Muslims because the Hindus never united and took the fight back to them.

[@7micho7]

No, the shields were also steel.

[@ricardosoto5770]

A thin steel plate backed with wooden planks on a iron framing.

[@HereTheArtBegins]

@alanheath Christianity created those problems? Are you sure it was Christianity? Or are you oversimplifying the issues at hand. After the Protestant Reformation, you saw rapid changes in culture so that Religion increasingly took a back seat. Was it because of Christianity that we saw Slavery boom in the 1600s? Or was there another reason? Regine Pernoud, for instance, states that the prime reason may actually have been the Humanist infatuation with the Roman world.

[@ricardosoto5770]

Slavery and torture as a criminal investigation proceeding, came back into European culture due to a increased interest in the Roman world after the 12 century... the only exception was England, were common law evolved due a lack of interest in the Roman law who was sweeping continental Europe.

[@RealCrusadesHistory]

@alanheath Your problem is that you're a dogmatist who's mind is completely closed to the voices of history. The people of the past had values different from your own, and yet you arrogantly denounce them and tell them what was best for them. Give them the right to their own voice and stop being so close-minded.

[@VanlifewithAlan]

@HereTheArtBegins Of course religion is a superstition. Belief in a supernatural being is just as silly as thinking that a black cat should not pass you or walking under ladders etc. Nonetheless the fear of death is a strong one, stronger than that of black cats or ladders. Therefore he who controls the dominant superstition can control what happens after death and therefore what happens on earth now.

[@camiyyb7530]

You sound like brad pitt ... seriously , is that you brad ?

[@VanlifewithAlan]

@RealCrusadeHistory You may enjoy killing people I would not. As for welfare states, I as a humanist believe I have an obligation to share with those less fortunate than myself. You as a Catholic do not have this obligation. No doubt some could feel as though they could conquer the world and subdue other peoples when wearing mail. It is sad there is so much evil in the world that others feel the requirement of making lives of others miserable through greed + a desire to steal.

[@juansantiago7109]

yes as Catholics we are obligates to contribute in society with charity, in Mexico Catholics share money when having a feast of their particular saint, Why do you think we don;t fallow faith alone

[@theimmortal4718]

Lol. Is this guy twelve? His understanding of the world seems to be infantile

[@MsHelene2009]

the moors looked more African than Arab

[@ricardosoto5770]

Only the upper classes were syrians, the rest were magrebi or local spanish islamic converts (yes the Reconquista was also a civil war).

[@VanlifewithAlan]

The huge cost of these military adventures in the name of superstition put humankind back hundreds of years. The cost of equipping one noble was born by his bonded underlings in the feudal age who themselves were one bad harvest away from starvation. How much better it would have been if they had stayed at home and instead thought of their fellow humans and provided services for them such as housing, water and less taxation instead of butchering those who were otherwise superstitious.

[@juansantiago7109]

European Catholics (latins) where the least superstitious of any of the christian sects, in fact the latin west didn't really beleaved in witches

[@enriquetaborda8521]

LOL, what a sad caricature