Talk:Siege of Lisbon

"Muslims were killed..."

 * ""The Muslims were killed, and the city was thoroughly submitted to one week of rape, murder and plunder. By some accounts as many as 50,000 men, women and children were butchered, and not a single woman was left unmolested. King Afonso was reported to have been so sickned by the carnage that he threatened to abandon the city and the crusaders.  This finally put an end to the mayhem.""

The above text was deleted from the page, it does not agree with the Osbernus account of the siege of Lisbon ( at least seams like it was in a lesser scale). Do provide the sources of "some accounts"...if you want to revert it back to the page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 89.152.94.142 (talk • contribs).

Commanders
Arnold III of Aerschot, Christian of Ghistelles, Simon of Dover, Andrew of London and Saher of Archelle are not listed in Runciman and are of questionable notability. Does anyone have a citation for these fellows? -- Secisek (talk) 08:10, 31 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah they're listed at the beginning of the anonymous De expugnatione Lyxbonensis (The Conquest of Lisbon, trans. by Charles Wendell David). Jonathan Phillip's new book also mentions them on page 143. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:22, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I think they are going to red link until the end of time because that is probably the only place they are named. Are they notable to include?


 * I think they should be named here as the leaders of the expedition, but without the wikilinks. I don't know about the others but Arnold could have an article...he was related to Godfrey of Bouillon, ruled an imperial county, and is attested in other places unrelated to the crusade. But I don't imagine anyone ever bothering to write about him, so he can remain unlinked until someone does. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:59, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll add them back in, but unlinked. -- Secisek (talk) 09:12, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

In fiction
The Nobel Prize-winning author José Saramago wrote a novel about the history of the siege História do Cerco de Lisboa (1989) (English: The History of the Siege of Lisbon (1996)), wherein a character imagines the implications of the Crusaders electing not to aid King Afonso Henriques.

This is uncited and not directly related to the history of the battle or the effect of it. If this is returned, please cite this material. -- Secisek (talk) 08:51, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

No portuguese soldiers?
So I assume Alfonso was using sticks and stones to besiege Lisbon until the 2nd Crusade arrived? Gabr-  el  00:11, 25 October 2008 (UTC)


 * The infobox not only doesn't contain the Portuguese troops (who had been already waiting for the crusaders for at least 8 days, but whose number isn't known), but also the 164 ships that brought the crusaders an blocked the city from the riverside. Also, incorrectly puts the number of defenders at 7000 even though Osbernus repeatedly mentions the city's huge population boosted by merchants and refugees from other cities recently conquered by the Portuguese: 60,000 tax-paying families alone, plus an undisclosed number of untaxed ones to the astounding total of "one hundred fifty-four thousand men, not counting women and children" - but "only fifteen thousand lances and shields with which to arm its men", forcing them to rotate the weapons at each shift and retrieve them from the fallen.Cmdr. Maegil (talk) 14:55, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Almost vandalism, needs rewrite
The siege began on 1 July. The Christians soon captured the surrounding territories and besieged the walls of Lisbon itself, although the Muslim defenders were able to destroy their siege engines. After four months, the Moorish rulers agreed to surrender (21 October), primarily due to hunger within the city, which was sheltering populations displaced from Santarém as well as "the leading citizens of Sintra, Almada, and Palmela."[10] This makes to look as if the crusaders only sat and waited, not mentioning that the city only asked for terms on that date, -not surrendered- on the verge of a two-front attack from a wide breach on the walls and a siege tower that was about to drop the gangplank. Also, on the Portuguese translation excerpt covering some of the same as in the English excerpt, but also develops much more the events leading to the capitulation itself: in http://www.arqnet.pt/portal/pessoais/cruzado_lisboa.html, Osbernus mentions the abandonment of an early mining attempt due to the sorties, and the defence of the siege tower when it was isolated by the high tide - but not its destruction, nor that of the two ballistas used to bombard the city, nor of any other siege equipment. The footnote leads to a fallacious religious-oriented disparagement to the city's medina architecture taken out of context; the original actually reads: The city's buildings were jammed so closely together that it was scarcely possible, save in the merchants' quarters, to find a street more than eight feet wide. The reason for such a dense population was that there was no established religion there. Each man was a law unto himself. As a result the basest element from every part of the world had gathered there, like the bilge water of a ship, a breeding ground for every kind of lust and impurity.Cmdr. Maegil (talk) 14:55, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

A Catholic, not just a Christian victory
Please, the article must be clear. This wasn't just a Christian victory, but in fact, it was a Catholic victory.Agre22 (talk) 19:07, 25 October 2009 (UTC)agre22

The difference and the use of such language would be anachronistic to describe the pre-Reformation Church. Kerregor (talk) 02:34, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Spontaneous nature of the siege (Section: Redirected Efforts)
This section should be updated to reflect the new scholarly work that has been done with respect to the so-called "Lisbon Letter", which demonstrates that Lisbon may have been a goal of the Crusaders before they left port, and was a decision influenced by Bernard himself. See: Jonathan Phillips, “St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the Low Countries, and the Lisbon Letter of the Second Crusade” in The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 48(3):1997, 475-497 as well as Susan Edgington, “Albert of Aachen, St. Bernard, and the Second Crusade” in The Second Crusade: Scope and Consequences, Jonathan Phillips and Martin Hoch, eds. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 54-70. Kerregor (talk) 02:38, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Numbers of Christian attackers
As per the Portuguese page, 7,000 Portuguese, 6,000 English, 5,000 Germans and 2,000 Flemish participated in the siege. Since it's possible to differentiate between the participating nations I decided to break down their numbers instead of just having them all indiscriminately bundled into a single figure for greater accuracy. Crenelator (talk) 21:35, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

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William Viel and damaged edit
An edit of 10 May 2019 tried to add something about "William Viel" and friends being difficult in negotiations. I can find at least one source that discusses this, searching for "William Viel crusader" finds "The Second Crusade: Scope and Consequences" by D. M. Hadley, Hoch Phillips, which has description on page 76. There may be more and better elsewhere. The added sentence is malformed, and possibly misplaced. And of course the mention may be superfluous to begin with. Shenme (talk) 03:25, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Almoravids or Taifa of Badajoz?
Do any sources actually specify which state or political group held the city when it came under siege? The Taifa of Badajoz is named in the first paragraph but I don't see any clear citation to support that, and wherever I look in available sources elsewhere the authors are frustratingly vague and refer to the "Muslim" garrison without actually clarifying the political attachment of the city at the time. Given the progressive collapse of Almoravid rule in al-Andalus during this exact period, both an Almoravid or a Taifa affiliation seem plausible, but this needs clarification/confirmation. (I'm asking partly because I saw this information being changed recently at Siege of Lisbon (1142), but the sources there are no help either.) Thanks in advance for any help. R Prazeres (talk) 23:44, 11 June 2023 (UTC)