Lawrence’s Undergraduate Dissertation – Page 20

II.

The classical view of the subject may be summed up in the statement that “the Western builders were for many years timid copyists of the crusading architects.”⁽¹⁾ The idea is that the Franks marched east with hardly any under-standing of fortifications more elaborate than earthworks; and that in their passage through Roumelia and Asia Minor they were so dazzled with the architectural genius of the Greeks that they laid aside their rudimentary ideas of def-ensive work in favour of a wholesale parody of the castles of the Eastern Empire, “learning everything and forgetting nothing.” Their supreme contempt for the light-armed Greeks, who could not, or at least did not, wear the heavy armour of the Frankish knights, -until Manuel Comnenus beat them on their own ground, – enabled them to appreciate the assistance lent the weaklings by fortresses in their pro-longed resistance against attack on three sides. And having thus turned their attention to the military archi-tecture of the Byzantines, they soon discovered its pecu-liar suitability to the conditions of eastern warfare.

The Crusaders, therefore, copied the Greeks, whom they

(a). Oman, “Art of War,” p.⁵³².