T. E. 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.