Ian Garrick-Mason

The crusaders were not such incompetent zealots after all

Steve Tibble portrays them not only as brave missionary knights with a Christian mission, but as strategic planners too

After decades of patient effort, the crusaders took Ascalon in 1153. The siege, depicted in a French miniature of 1490 [Alamy] 
issue 15 August 2020
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  • The Crusader Strategy: Defending the Holy Land

    Steve Tibble

    Yale, pp. 353, £25

One of the strange effects that modernist, progressive society has had on what the French Annales school would refer to as our civilisation’s mentalité is the almost complete attenuation of memory about what the crusades were, why they were fought and what part they played in a multi-century struggle between two successful, expansionary and universal religions.

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