Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of plates
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Maps
- 1 After “Rome”
- 2 The Arab conquests
- 3 The age of the Carolingian Empire
- 4 The tenth century
- 5 Shifting balances : the eleventh century
- 6 Franks and Saracens : the early crusades
- 7 The twelfth century in Northern and Central Europe and Byzantium
- 8 Consolidation and centralisation
- 9 The developing technology of attack and the response of the defence
- Time line
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - Consolidation and centralisation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of plates
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Maps
- 1 After “Rome”
- 2 The Arab conquests
- 3 The age of the Carolingian Empire
- 4 The tenth century
- 5 Shifting balances : the eleventh century
- 6 Franks and Saracens : the early crusades
- 7 The twelfth century in Northern and Central Europe and Byzantium
- 8 Consolidation and centralisation
- 9 The developing technology of attack and the response of the defence
- Time line
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
OVERVIEW
BY THE THIRD QUARTER of the twelfth century, the same methods of building, defending and attacking fortifications held good from the Anglo–Scottish border to the river Ganges and the China Sea. During the next half century, there would be significant developments that would turn the balance of advantage firmly in favour of the attacker, in response to which the builders of fortifications had to make very substantial changes in the design and construction of their fortresses. By the early thirteenth century, neither the old Roman walls (except for those of Constantinople) nor (in the west) the earthwork castles and palisades that had continued to do service for centuries would suffice any longer.
In the Christian kingdoms, a gradual process of centralisation, and consolidation, of royal power was taking place, well exemplified in France, where Philip Augustus achieved a significant extension of royal authority and confirmed it with the erection of a new generation of royal castles. The crown in the Anglo-Norman kingdom was also consolidating its power. Henry II continued to push out the boundaries of the Angevin domain, and although his sons then presided over the loss of Normandy, royal authority was restored despite civil war. Combined with this centralisation went investment in a new generation of fortresses, far more powerful and far more expensive than any that had gone before. Some of the new stone castles built during this time were so much stronger than their predecessors as to be in a different league from the strongholds that most of the baronage could afford to put up. Powerful castles became part of the symbolism as well as part of the effective authority of the monarch, and kings were employing a regular corps of engineers, carpenters and masons to oversee the building work, and to build the siege equipment that would represent another element of the greater power of the crown. The surviving records that illustrate the establishment and spread of administrative government no longer dependent on the person of the monarch contain the clear evidence of this process.
The Staufer (Hohenstaufen) dynasty continued its embroilment in its Italian and Mediterranean territories. Barbarossa and his son Henry VI would devote most of the last years of the century to crusading and campaigning in the south.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A History of the Early Medieval Siege, c.450–1220 , pp. 299 - 356Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2010