Matt Quinn said:
Carlton,
If there are fewer "hard-core warrior types" in the Crusader armies (your comments about their geographic origins), I'd expect the war to be longer and bloodier. I've sketched the campaigns a bit (the opening attack will be in Sicily); perhaps that'll be the Crusader equivalent of Operation Torch, where the bugs get worked out and perhaps the leaders see a need to import a butt-load of Norman warriors to give the army some backbone.
Fewer 'warrior virtues' does not equate military weakness. In fact I'm fairly convinced that the majority of the Crusader armies were fairly useless at doing anything other than spread devastation and terror. The deciding moments in the First crusade are usually the ones when people with military leadership skills come to the fore. We don't know this, of course (the chronicles were all written by nobles and their servants), but I wouldn't be surprised if the French infantry and Italian marines had played as big a role as the vaunted knights. At least, an Italian-run crusade would have the first clue about supply management, siegecraft, and combined and amphibious operations.
That, I think, would be the clincher (and may well have been during the OTL crusades) - breaking the Islamic rule of the sea. With its increasing wealth and sophisticated organisation and access to German iron, Alpine silver and Illyrian, French and Lombard timber, Italy could become the focus of this sea power. First taking Sicily and Sardinia, then the Balearics and Malta, the city states of Genoa, Venice, Pisa and Amalfi can become your spearpoint of Christian aggressiveness. They would, naturally enough, need extra manpower and get themselves Norman and German knights, Alpine crossbowmen and even their recently conquered Muslim archers, but the whole endeavour stays under their control (a North African crusade would need to be maritime, so they naturally call the shots. If you don't like it, WALK home!).
If you want to use Italy as your point of origin, the resulting power structure is liable to look more like medieval Italy - cities (either run as Republics, though naturally only second-generation Christians of honest birth have the vote - or by well-born rulers), each surrounded by its 'contado' and tied to each other by a network of alliances. Of course, they could also be run by governors from the mother cities (the way Venice ran its Empire), but that strikes me as unlikely in the long run. The territory is just too big.
Crikes, in a centuery or so the entire upper class of the Western Med will be speaking some weird kind of Arabic-influenced Italian (located somewhere between Lombard and Tuscan)! Poor Holy Roman Emperors! (or maybe not? If Italy is so much of a player, they might just choose not to meddle and look to Poland or France instead. Definitely bad news for France, though - I just don't see the Italianate community looking on calmly while the king turns the Occitan south into a wasteland. Heh, for all we know, most of the Rhone valley could end up Genoese...
Good point about the Crusaders speaking the proper languages and having more cultural experience. That might cancel out their lack of military experience due to the fact that they won't bother the locals as much (I read "an Arabic account of the Crusades" where a Frankish knight kept physically re-aligning a Muslim who was praying towards Mecca b/c in his experience, people prayed sitting in another direction).
Usama Ibn Munqidh is always good for a laugh. But yes, the Muslims would find much more quickly that these infidels were people you could do business with. I don't know what whoever ends up ruling Egypt will make of it (we certainly aren't going to get the Ayyubids or Mamluks), but a big rival power next door might just be what the Christian powers need to keep them on their toes and from each other's throats. Could 'The Red Sea' become the military mirage that 'Jerusalem' was for the later crusaders ATL?)
Oooh, I *really* like this.
Effendi Giovan le Balester, second junior Gonfalonier of Sfax, commander of the Berber horse, honorary citizen of Amalfi, lay knight of the Order of St Augustine, all red-faced, pacing an underground fountain courtyard of marble, vocally chewing out an Anglo-Norman mercenary knight in the foulest street Arabic imaginable while a white-bearded qadi looks on in quiet satisfaction...
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