CRUSADERS’ CASTLES

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30586, 31 October 1964, Page 4

CRUSADERS’ CASTLES

In Crusader Greece: A Tour of the Castles of the Morea (with map, index, and list of information sources). By Eric ForbesBoyd. Centaur Press. 254 PP-

Here is a book that informs, delights and entertains. For those who would like to visit Greece but cannot, it is the next best thing. There are 24 graphic photographs taken by the author s wife, Aileen, who has an eye for composition and for the sad. stark beauty that exists in ruins. For most New Zealanders there are only two Greeces—the ancient, glorious, classical Greece of Troy and Homer, of philosophers, dramatists and poets, of superlative architects and sculptors: and the modern Greece in which New Zealanders fought against great odds and learned to like the Greeks for their courage as guerrillas and their loyal friendship for soldiers on the run. This book has much in it of ancient Greece, and much of the courteous modern Greek; but it is mainly concerned with the history and relics of another and lessknown Greece—the Middle Ages Greece which for centuries was the shuttlecock of conquerors, and for a time

was renowned in Europe and Asia Minor for its knightly chivalry and tournaments. But these tiltings with the lance were only interludes in the everlasting military contentions for power between princely foreign invaders. This Greece began with the Fourth Crusade when, abandoning their Christian purpose at Jerusalem, some crusaders stepped aside in Greece for conquest and plunder. There were the French (or the Franks), Spaniards, Florentines, Venetians, Byzantines, and lastly the Turks. They fought and plundered the Greeks, fought, intrigued, bargained, cheated and tortured among themselves. And they built vast and seemingly impregnable castles in the land known as the Morea. It is among the ruins of these castles, most of them perched on the tops of high, steepsided, strategic hills, that Mi-

• and Mrs Forbes-Boyd take the i reader on exciting adventures into history where plot vies with counter-plot. The author's absorbing personal interest is plainly in the art of fortification. To quote an example, he says of the castle of Methoni: “Much of it is well preserved, and in it can be traced the evolution of defence from the days of the mangonel and battering ram to those of artillery." If there is a point for criticism from the general reader's view, it can only be that at each of the many castles visited he is deluged with details of ingenious and effective military planning in construction. That, however, could be the only complaint from the general reader: for Mr ForbesBoyd is extremely wellinformed about Greece from 1 its glorious past to its practical present, and he knows how to tell a story dramatically or humorously. For example, he takes the reader to Pylos, from which Nestor set sail for Troy with 90 ships: to Pylos and its celebrated defeat of the Spartans in the Peloponnesian War, its duel between the Aragonese admiral Roger de Lluria and Jean de Tournay. and its historic Battle of Navarino in 1827, which gave Greece her freedom from the Turks. There are stories of manystoried places, including

Geoffrey de Villehardotrin'a Nauplia. Kaamata, which overlooks Sparta, the forbidding battlements of Mistra and high - perched Monemvasia, moated Methoni and hoary Patras.

Between one castle and the next, a graphic pen introduces the charming, cheerful present people of this warscarred land—the obliging taxi and bus drivers, the friendly villagers and their children who live on historic soil surrounded by sparkling seas and magic isles. The author and his wife are gifted with both humour and humanity.