T. E. Lawrence’s Undergraduate Dissertation – Page 156

and the one least fruitful of results. The characteristics of the Templar style will be grasped at once if a plan of Château Pèlerin (Athlit ع...ل...) their chief stronghold be considered. They held possession there of a narrow promontory of rock and sand, eminently defensible according to mediaeval ways. Yet here the Templars, working in 1218, threw aside all the carefully arranged schemes of flanking fire, all the covering works, all the lines of multiple defence which were being thought out meanwhile in Europe. At Athlit they relied on the one line of defence - an enormously thick wall, of colossal blocks of stone, with two scarcely- projecting rectangular towers upon it. These were the keeps, the master towers of the fortress, and instead of being cun- ningly arranged where they would be least accessible,they are placed across the danger line, to bear the full brunt of the ... ... attack. One would expect them to be unusually massive, but ... ... ... they are in true Byzantine style of thin walls, compared with ....... their curtain, and the hoard, which was just then being ... ... generally adopted, is not made use of to repair the weakness. The projection of these towers is very slight, insufficient to rake an enemy busied on the face of the curtain, and the little Tr...y(ı͟ga in front is not of a force to be held alone. The strength of Athlit was brute strength, depending on the defence- less solidity of the inner wall, its impassable height, and the obstacle to mining of a deep sea-level ditch in the sand