Louis IX of France had the structure rebuilt as the Castle of St. Louis, but it fell again, this time to the Mongols, in 1260

Separate from my news reading, I usually have 20-40 books going at any one time.  Part of that is due to a total lack of reading focus, the flip side of irrepressible curiosity.  I do justify it to myself, to a small extent, as a pattern of reading more likely to generate serendipitous connections, both between books and between books and news I am reading.

In a a continuing pitiable effort to weed out books, I am currently making my way through the many tall stacks of books on the floor of my library.  In doing so, I come across the Penguin Classics Joinville and Villehardouin Chronicles of the Crusades.  Joinville lived from around 1150-1218 and Villehardouin from 1224-1317.  They both accompanied their respective kings on their crusades and prepared accounts of their ventures.

I have been desultorily leafing through it, reading snatches here and there.  Wonderful material but not a compelling narrative drive.  

I see today in the news, reports of a recently excavated burial from this time.  From Mass Graves of 13th-Century Crusaders Reveal Brutality of Medieval Warfare by Livia Gershon.  

Archaeologists in Lebanon have unearthed two mass graves containing the remains of 25 Crusaders killed in the 13th century. The team found the skeletons of the young men and teenage boys in Sidon, on the Mediterranean coast, reports Ben Turner for Live Science.

All of the bones bear unhealed wounds from stabbing, slicing or blunt force trauma. Most of the injuries were to the fighters’ backs, suggesting they may have been killed while fleeing—possibly by adversaries on horseback, based on where the blows fell on their bodies. The archaeologists published their findings in the journal PLOS One.

“When we found so many weapon injuries on the bones as we excavated them, I knew we had made a special discovery,” says lead author Richard Mikulski, an archaeologist at Bournemouth University in England, in a statement.

Analysis of tooth isotopes and DNA showed that some of the deceased were born in Europe, while others were the offspring of European Crusaders who had children with locals in the Middle East, the Daily Mail’s Stacy Liberatore reports. The researchers also found European-style belt buckles and a Crusader coin, along with artifacts like fragments of Persian pottery and iron nails.

European forces captured Sidon—an important port city—in 1110 C.E., after the First Crusade, and held it for more than a century. But in 1253, Mamluk forces attacked and destroyed the fortress that the Crusaders were using to defend the city. The next year, Louis IX of France had the structure rebuilt as the Castle of St. Louis, but it fell again, this time to the Mongols, in 1260. The mass graves are located near the castle, and the researchers say it is “highly likely” that the Crusaders died in one of these two battles.

“Crusader records tell us that King Louis IX of France was on crusade in the Holy Land at the time of the attack on Sidon in 1253,” says study co-author Piers Mitchell, a biological anthropologist at the University of Cambridge, in the statement. “He went to the city after the battle and personally helped to bury the rotting corpses in mass graves such as these. Wouldn’t it be amazing if King Louis himself had helped to bury these bodies?”

 Mass Graves of 13th-Century Crusaders Reveal Brutality of Medieval Warfare by Livia Gershon stubbornly resides in the remain stack.  Not a page turner but a fascinating plate to serve from.  

From Villehardouin's account (Saida is Sidon):

As you know, the great host of Saracens assembled before Acre had not dared to fight against us nor against the men of Acre. When they heard the report (a true one) that the king had sent no more than a very small contingent of good men to fortify the city of Saida,1 they marched in that direction. Simon de Montbéliard, who was master of the king’s crossbowmen and in command of his Majesty’s forces in that city, no sooner heard that the Saracens were advancing than he withdrew to the fortress of Saida, which is very strong and surrounded on all sides by the sea. He did this because he was well aware that he had no power to resist the enemy. He took shelter in the castle with as many people as he could, but these were only a few, for space there was extremely limited.

The Saracens poured into Saida and met with no resistance, for the town was not completely surrounded by walls. They killed more than two thousand of our people, and then went off to Damascus with the booty they had gained in the town. When news of this reached the king he was deeply vexed. (Ah! if only he could have repaired the loss 1) The barons of the land, however, considered it a very fortunate occurrence, because the king had otherwise intended to go and fortify a piece of rising ground on the way from Jaffa to Jerusalem, on which an ancient fortress had stood since the days of the Maccabees.

The barons of Outremer did not think it advisable to have the walls of this old castle rebuilt, because it was five leagues from the sea so that no provisions could be sent there from the ports without the risk of their falling into the hands of the Saracens, who were stronger than we were. So when news of the destruction of Saida reached the camp, these men came to the king and told him that it would be more to his honour to re-fortify that town than to build a new fortress. The king agreed to follow their advice.

[snip]

The next day we returned to Saida, where the king was staying. We found that he had personally supervised the burying of the bodies of all the Christians whom the Saracens had killed when they destroyed the city. He himself had carried some of the rotting, evil-smelling corpses to the trenches to be buried, and that without ever holding his nose, as others had done. He had sent for workmen from all the country round, and had started to re-fortify the city with high walls and towers. When we arrived at the camp we found that he himself had seen to measuring out the sites where our tents were to be set up. He had allotted me a place near to the Comte d’Eu, because he knew that this young knight was fond of my company.