Kingdom of Jerusalem and Cyprus Units (In Progress)

[The_Fawn_Rescuer]

The units so far (early period)

Poulain Knights
Poulain was a French word for a Frank born in Outremer. They retain western traditions and the knightly style of fighting, but have a distinctly eastern flavor to their appearance.

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Poulain Dismounted Knights

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Ministeriales
Free noblemen can be uncooperative, especially when you want them to leave their comfortable estates in Cyprus to go defend Outremer. The ministeriale class was created in the middle ages to be a class of serf-nobility who could hold office and serve in their lord's military without having the same rights as a nobleman.

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Ministeriale Foot Soldiers

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Poulain Crossbowmen

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King of Jerusalem and Cyprus

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Crusader Knights
Westerners who traveled west to serve the King of Outremer and gain glory and salvation by fighting the infidel.

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Crusader Dismounted Knights
The middle east is not a friendly climate for the large horses used by western knights. As a result, crusading knights were often forced to fight on foot. This resulted in a somewhat unique (for the period) style of infantry fighting. These knights fought using their lances in a screen for defense. Historically they were not disciplined enough to advance in order (an innovation made later by the Swiss), but they can form a powerful defensive line, and use their swords in the attack if they are forced to go on the offensive.

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Crusader Northmen
Dismounted crusaders from the far north who use their terrible long-axes to great effect.

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Crusader Marksmen

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Crusader King (Capet)

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Templar Knight-Brothers
Knights pledged to the military orders had something that most soldiers of the time did not--fierce discipline. These troops fight like western knights, but are better trained at fighting as a unit, and have very high morale. They were feared by the muslims such that they were often executed on the spot if captured, being too dangerous to ransom or to keep as slaves. These knight-brethren and their counterparts the hospitallers were the elite units of the Kingdoms of Outremer.

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Templar Dismounted Knight-Brothers

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Templar Dismounted Confraters
Confraters were men who donated large sums to one of the military orders, and in exchange were made a sort of honorary brother of the order.

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[Påsan]

I'd rename the "Crusader Northmen" to some variant of "German Knights" and keep the appearance. The Daneaxe was in vogue around 1212, I believe Richard I used one while on the third crusade but I dont really think the "northmen" tag fit since people will interpret them as Scandinavian or something. The only Scandinavian crusade was a hundred years earlier and they ended mostly up in Constantinople.

[Ltd.]

Beautifully colourfull and with great diversity. Very nice units
+rep

[finix]

This time I disagree with Ltd. Some colors are too bright, do not know if this is from screenshots or not but they are unrealistically bright. Blue has too much magenta

[Dom1no]

Incredible work !

[You_Guess_Who]

Some colors are too bright, do not know if this is from screenshots or not but they are unrealistically bright. Blue has too much magenta

This. Agreed with finix

[The_Culverin]

Nice work man, though the color does seem a little bright on some units.

I would like to ask: How do you get those chain mail hoods, I cant seem to find it anywhere in the VE.

[+Marius+]

1) Remove the term Poulain and restore the proper name Frank/Frankish/Latin .etc, the vast majority of the crusaders of the period were not French, using a French word for them makes no sense.

2) Careful not to exaggerate with the Eastern niche, western knights did not adopt much from the Middle East apart from gambesons and horse barding, look up contemporary imagery of soldiers in the Levant, basically no eastern influence whatsoever.

3) The Jerusalem crown is to thick and big.

4) Did you seriously just gave a crusader king an Arabic sword guard?
You made a crusader sword...without a crossguard?

All else deserves nothing but applause.

Salute.

[Slytacular]

The widely spoken business language of the time was French in Western Europe? I would think that eastern materials wouldn't exist in the art because it would make the Crusaders look too Arabic to viewers, and symbolically eastern accessories would represent Islam in the paintings.

[The_Fawn_Rescuer]

Nice work man, though the color does seem a little bright on some units.

I would like to ask: How do you get those chain mail hoods, I cant seem to find it anywhere in the VE.

Thanks. I think the colors are appropriate given period artwork and the medieval penchant for vibrant color, though there are perhaps a few models that need adjusting.

The maille hoods are difficult to find in the VE. There's only 3 I have found, the best one is under helmets and is called crusader_koif or something like that ('coif' is spelled with a 'k' in the VE). The other two start with 'soldierhelm' IIRC. Hope that helps!

[+Marius+]

The widely spoken business language of the time was French in Western Europe?

So every unit, item and building in Europe should then be in French?

I would think that eastern materials wouldn't exist in the art because it would make the Crusaders look too Arabic to viewers, and symbolically eastern accessories would represent Islam in the paintings.

That is a conspiracy theory.

All surviving examples of equipment I have seen are western to the core.

In fact, you will find far more western type X swords with Arabic/Persian/Islamic prayers embedded into them then vice versa.

[Slytacular]

I'll supply Baldwin with some more very needed models such as a crown for the king.

For using French, no, it's a good excuse to prevent redundantly naming everything the same name.

You can call it a conspiracy theory, but I call it individual speculation on the subject. A lot of decoration in the 14th and 15th century seem to derive from what Fawn Rescuer displays on his units. An obvious example is the torse (the ring of cloth around the helmet).

[You_Guess_Who]

1) Remove the term Poulain and restore the proper name Frank/Frankish/Latin .etc, the vast majority of the crusaders of the period were not French, using a French word for them makes no sense.

So what name should be used? The_Fawn_Rescuer want to emphasize the outremer-birth-ness of the units.

2) Careful not to exaggerate with the Eastern niche, western knights did not adopt much from the Middle East apart from gambesons and horse barding, look up contemporary imagery of soldiers in the Levant, basically no eastern influence whatsoever.

Ought not be full-blown Tuareg headwrap, true. But some practical use of cloth as havelock and facescarf should be expected, useful in the Middle-eastern climate.

4) Did you seriously just gave a crusader king an Arabic sword guard?
You made a crusader sword...without a crossguard?

You mean this one?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The sword got crossguards, Its just the difference in texturing between the blade and the guard is not very apparent. There are better models with better texturing that can be used though.

EDIT: I recheck through the swordmodels at VariantEditor, and yes, the model used was ltd_1257_andalusian_sword. So yes, there are better sword model that can be used, such as ltd_xiiic_euro_sword_4

[+Marius+]

For using French, no, it's a good excuse to prevent redundantly naming everything the same name.

So what name should be used? The_Fawn_Rescuer want to emphasize the outremer-birth-ness of the units.

Well you could use Levantin/Levantine or something, or keep the French name if you see it as so immersive.

I was just daunted by it considering how utterly predominant the term "Frank" was at the time, even Indians and the Chinese used it for western Europeans as late as the 16th century.

You can call it a conspiracy theory, but I call it individual speculation on the subject. A lot of decoration in the 14th and 15th century seem to derive from what Fawn Rescuer displays on his units. An obvious example is the torse (the ring of cloth around the helmet).

I may have been rash with that sentence, but I still stand by my opinion.

But some practical use of cloth as havelock and facescarf should be expected, useful in the Middle-eastern climate.

Perhaps.

But do keep in mind that the crusades were mostly restricted to the coastal area of the Middle Eastern Mediterannean, a climate not unlike the Mediterannean climate of European coasts.

You mean this one? The sword got crossguards

That is not a crossguard.

That is just a guard.

[Ltd.]

EDIT: I recheck through the swordmodels at VariantEditor, and yes, the model used was ltd_1257_andalusian_sword. So yes, there are better sword model that can be used, such as ltd_xiiic_euro_sword_4

To the new colleagues:: yes, there are several other swords that can be used. Please refrain from using anything that says "ltd_1257..." or just 1257 , as we don't use anything from that mod any longer.
Make sure you extract the latest build and use those files in the VE. , also make sure to check the drive every now and then . I uploaded a major update yesterday with the stuff you have seen in my latest preview..

[The_Fawn_Rescuer]

Well you could use Levantin/Levantine or something, or keep the French name if you see it as so immersive.

I was just daunted by it considering how utterly predominant the term "Frank" was at the time, even Indians and the Chinese used it for western Europeans as late as the 16th century.





I may have been rash with that sentence, but I still stand by my opinion.




Perhaps.

But do keep in mind that the crusades were mostly restricted to the coastal area of the Middle Eastern Mediterannean, a climate not unlike the Mediterannean climate of European coasts.




That is not a crossguard.

That is just a guard.

First of all, thanks for the responses, I enjoy the feedback. I'm not going to get embroiled in a prolonged argument on here, but I have good reasons for the stylistic choices I made for these units, so I don't mind clarifying some things. The most important thing to keep in mind is that when creating/critiquing something like this is that you sometimes have to compromise between what is historically accurate, and what is distinctive. That being said, I err on the side of accurate as much as possible, and I know that the rest of the people working on the mod do as well, and I think they have done a fantastic job so far reaching a balance between the two. Another important thing to keep in mind is not to fall victim to finder's bias when representing how people looked back then. Just because you've seen something in a museum, doesn't always mean that it is 1. How it looked back then, or 2. The only way something like that could look. Many preserved pieces have modern or 19th century additions made to them, and almost all surviving artifacts survived only because they were well-made, not used in combat, and owned by someone very rich and powerful. This of course leads to an over-representation of the very top %1 when it comes to surviving archaeological finds. That leaves some room for interpretation (within reason) for the historian, reenactor, or in this case, modders.

As to the comment about most crusaders being french, there is so much leading scholarship about this that I won't belabor it with a long response. The vast majority of crusaders were French. I used the term 'Poulain' because it was a word used at the time to describe descendants of the original settlers. Sly is 100% correct that I used it because it is distinctive, and also I like that it's a term most people aren't immediately familiar with, so it may spark a google search for the word that will end up in them learning a bit more about the crusader states.

The reason I chose some of the eastern equipment for the Poulains is rather simple. Various accounts from the period speak to the historicity of poulains adopting curved eastern swords, growing eastern beards, and wearing eastern clothing. This is part of the reason foreign crusaders started calling them poulains in the first place! We can also find provisions in the rule of the Templars and Hospitallers which allowed for the wear of eastern-style turbans with their uniforms while deployed to Outremer. Now, the military orders were much more strict on uniform standards than anyone else in the middle ages, so you can just imagine how heterogeneous the poulains could have been. As to weapons and armor, it was exorbitantly expensive to import weapons and horses from western Europe. There are plenty of documents which prove that these things were imported, especially by the military orders (whose wealth allowed them to afford it), but I think it is also very likely that most soldiers could not have afforded a sword imported all the way from France. And, honestly, why would they want one, other than to show off how wealthy they were? There were plenty of excellent sword-smiths working in the middle-east at that time, plus the basic characteristics of many saracen swords were not all that different from contemporary european examples. Preserved european swords with arabic inscriptions on them are probably more common because, let's be honest, the muslims were more successful than the christians in that period when it came to warfare, so they had many more chances to capture and preserve such things. Again the preservation of such items is more an indication of their rarity than anything else. Why keep something in your collection if it is common? These sources, plus common sense, I think are more than enough justification for dressing and arming the poulains with elements of eastern-esque clothing. More wealthy poulains (such as the King unit) are depicted with more western-style armaments to show their wealth and status.

I used the african head-scarf model on the poulains to distinguish them better from the military orders, who wear a more bedouin-style headwrap in the mod. There are only so many ways to wrap your head with cloth, and since they are westerners, they are doing it because of the climate rather than any sort of religious reason, so I think they would have wrapped their heads based on personal preference from various methods they learned from natives, not adhering to any sort of particular style (at least there is no evidence to suggest otherwise). Also I liked the attila african wrap model because it automatically shades to the faction color, which will provide a way to further distinguish units in the thick of battle in a way that's not as obvious as making them all red or blue or purple.

My argument against representing poulains based on contemporary manuscript depictions of crusaders is just that: the manuscripts are depicting crusaders. Most if not all depictions from the period are of great crusader sieges such as Antioch and Jerusalem, so not only are they depicting westerners and not poulains, but also you must consider how the artist would want to represent them as distinctly western to set them apart from the infidels depicted in the manuscript. As such, I also did not use any eastern-style equipment on the crusaders, who are vibrantly colored and varied to represent the medieval love of gaudy, colorful things which is evident in all of their artwork and poetry, as well as to show a kind of hodgepodge collection of knights from every corner of Europe. Some of the colors turned out a bit neon, and those need to be adjusted, but the crusaders will remain very colorful if I have anything to say about it, because in actuality they probably were and there is much evidence to support this.

The sword model I used for the king of Jerusalem looks a lot like this european type XII sword dated from 1100 to 1200, which is one of my favorite swords:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

but if Ltd says I'm not supposed to use 1257 models, that's fine, because there are still a lot of great models to choose from!

I think that covers most of it. Thanks for checking out my units and giving your feedback! I know I'm very excited by the work being done on this mod, I think it's going to turn out pretty great in the end.

[The_Fawn_Rescuer]

I'll supply Baldwin with some more very needed models such as a crown for the king.

For using French, no, it's a good excuse to prevent redundantly naming everything the same name.

You can call it a conspiracy theory, but I call it individual speculation on the subject. A lot of decoration in the 14th and 15th century seem to derive from what Fawn Rescuer displays on his units. An obvious example is the torse (the ring of cloth around the helmet).

One thing I forgot! Sly no need to worry about the crown. Plenty of depictions of similar crowns from the period:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Ltd.]

I specifically made that crown for the polish king taking notes from here https://de.pinterest.com/pin/493073859178493096/ and here https://de.pinterest.com/pin/349803096033868730/ so we might end up figuring out something else for the crusader king

[+Marius+]

That leaves some room for interpretation (within reason) for the historian, reenactor, or in this case, modders.

Of course, that is why I merely warned about going overboard with it, I did not argue against it.

I did not point out a single specific thing you did wrong apart from the sword.

As to the comment about most crusaders being french, there is so much leading scholarship about this that I won't belabor it with a long response. The vast majority of crusaders were French.

In the First Crusade, yes, they were the majority, but by the time period of this mods start date(early 13th century) they were not.

Apart from the constant influx of crusaders from all parts of Europe, we have accounts of plenty of English, Flemish, Italians and Germans staying in the Holy land after the Third Crusade and especially after the German Crusade of 1197.

There is also the fact that the Hungarian prince Geza remained in the Levant his entire life with a lot of his troops from Croatia/Hungary staying there with him.

When you add all these up you get quite a departure, especially considering that the Levantine crusaders themselves rarely fielded more than 300-500 knights.

I used the term 'Poulain' because it was a word used at the time to describe descendants of the original settlers. Sly is 100% correct that I used it because it is distinctive, and also I like that it's a term most people aren't immediately familiar with, so it may spark a google search for the word that will end up in them learning a bit more about the crusader states.

Alright.

The reason I chose some of the eastern equipment for the Poulains is rather simple. Various accounts from the period speak to the historicity of poulains adopting curved eastern swords, growing eastern beards, and wearing eastern clothing.

State a single source describing them as such.

I am especially suspicious of the curved sword part.

As to weapons and armor, it was exorbitantly expensive to import weapons and horses from western Europe.

Horses?
Absolutely.

Equipment?
They had their own local production along with plenty of imports that arrived at Acre, which was the most busy port in the Eastern Mediterranean, by some accounts surpassing both Constantinople and Alexandria.

Saladin himself stated;

"European merchants supply us the best weaponry, contributing to their own defeat."

One of his own commanders, in Kitab al-I'tibar, bragged about his "Frankish" shirt of mail he wore instead of a locally produced one.

And, honestly, why would they want one, other than to show off how wealthy they were? There were plenty of excellent sword-smiths working in the middle-east at that time, plus the basic characteristics of many saracen swords were not all that different from contemporary european examples.

How do you then explain that the entire Middle East refused to adopt plate armor even though it was utterly superior to anything they had?

Culture and fashion does wonders to equipment choices.

Preserved european swords with arabic inscriptions on them are probably more common because, let's be honest, the muslims were more successful than the christians in that period when it came to warfare, so they had many more chances to capture and preserve such things.

That is a ludicrous statement.

The Muslims had swarms of defeats against the crusaders just as the crusaders had their own defeats, both sides had humiliating blunders on the battlefield, the main reason the Muslims won was because it was their "home terrain" and they had far more local manpower(especially in cavalry) than the crusaders.

The sword model I used for the king of Jerusalem looks a lot like this european type XII sword dated from 1100 to 1200, which is one of my favorite swords:.

That guard has nothing to do with the one in the crusader king image.

That is an inwardly pointed crossguard, the one in the image is a Middle Eastern curled guard, as shown in this image(4th sword from the right);

http://www.cheikh-skiredj.com/sabres-rassoul.jpg

[stevehoos]

The reason I chose some of the eastern equipment for the Poulains is rather simple. Various accounts from the period speak to the historicity of poulains adopting curved eastern swords, growing eastern beards, and wearing eastern clothing.

UH.... Yeah, I am not buying this at all, especially the part about poulains adopting curved eastern swords. I don't find this to be credible in any capacity. Find one source of a Crusader army using eastern swords?