The small coastal town of Dartmouth in Devon was long a favourite port for voyages of pilgrimage. In early 1147 it was the gathering point for the second crusade, drawing would-be crusaders from across northern Europe: from the Rhineland, and in particular Cologne, from Boulogne, Flanders and Scotland, as well as from Norfolk, Suffolk, London and Kent.
There were at least 164 vessels in the fleet. Each ship held perhaps 50 men; each was considered a parish and had its own priest. One such, a Norman priest named Raol, wrote an eye-witness account of the siege, De expugnatione Lyxbonensi, long on medieval siege tactics, longer on sermons and speeches.
Sailing in May, the crusaders stopped at Oporto where they were persuaded to help King Afonso I of Portugal liberate Lisbon from the Moors. They reached the city on 28 June, chased into the mouth of the Tagus by a storm. Raol was in the vanguard: one the first onto the shore, one of just 39 who spent the first night camping under the city walls away from the safety of the ships. The crusaders had with them a Pisan siege engineer, whose expertise proved invaluable.
Raol seems often in the thick of the fighting. In the climactic assault – “an almost unbearable contest” – he highlights the courage of seven young men from Ipswich who spent two days and a night in a ‘penthouse of plaited osiers’ – known as a ‘Welsh cat’ – between the principal siege engine and the city walls putting out the fires – “pitch and flax and oil and every kind of inflammable matter” – that rained down on the engine.
The city held out until 25 October 1147 when a combination of mines – a speciality of the Flemish and German contingent – and siege towers forced its surrender.
Raol likely continued onto the Holy Land and oblivion the following spring.
This is an extended version of a piece that first appeared in the October 2022 issue of History Today.
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Mathew Lyons 
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