1. Special operations in medieval and late modern popular culture
It is interesting to note that the basic plot of even futuristic special operations films such as the Terminator trilogy or Twelve Monkeys actually copies the plot of chivalric special operation romances. Thus the twelfth-century Chanson du Chevalier du Cygne et de Godefroid de Bouillon recounts how several years before the First Crusade, the mother of the Muslim ruler Corbaran (Kerbogah) – who was a powerful sorceress – foretold the events of the Crusade. She warned her son that a prince called Godfrey of Bouillon will come from the land of the Franks and conquer Nicea, Antioch and Jerusalem. Corbaran’s son and heir, Cornumaran, resolved to prevent this catastrophe. Taking with him a single companion, he disguised himself as a Christian pilgrim returning from the Holy Land, and set out to Europe to find Godfrey and kill him while he was still young. Cornumaran managed to cross the whole of Europe and reach Hainault without being detected, but there he was recognized by a real Christian pilgrim, and he consequently failed to change the future.

2. Unchivalrous tricks and ruses
In 1141 Earl Ranulf of Chester and Earl William of Roumare rebelled against King Stephen of England. They began the uprising by sending their wives to pay a friendly visit to Lincoln Castle, one of the most important royalist strongholds. The ladies were entertained for some time by the castellan’s wife, until Earl Ranulf arrived with three of his knights to escort the ladies back home. They were unarmed, and were allowed inside without hindrance. Once inside, however, they suddenly snatched whatever weapons lay at hand, and took over the castle’s gate. Earl William, who was waiting nearby in ambush with a large troop of men, quickly arrived to reinforce Ranulf, and Lincoln Castle together with the surrounding town passed into the rebels’ hands.

2b. Unchivalrous tricks and ruses
Outside Europe too, early modern Europeans frequently relied on such underhand methods. During the conquest of Mexico (1519-21), Hernando Cortés quickly realized that his few hundred Spaniards could not hope to conquer the Mexican Empire by themselves. They faced tens of thousands of Mexican warriors, and the Empire’s subjected people were so afraid of their overlords that few of them dared to offer the Spaniards any help. Cortés therefore based his initial strategy on the hope of capturing the person of Emperor Montezuma II. Setting the precedent for aliens in Hollywood’s science-fiction films, from the moment Cortés set foot in the New World he pretended to be a diplomatic envoy, and repeatedly asked the natives he met to take him to their leader.

3. Demolition of strategically important infrastructure
As late as the sixteenth century, a raiding party that wanted to destroy a bridge, a dam, or a mill usually had to do so by means of fire or hard manual labor. For example, in January 1544 a French force raided the strategically important Po Bridge at Carignano, in the hope of destroying it and crippling the Imperialist transport network in the area. The raiders were provided with certain ‘artifices of fire’, which they were to attach to the bridge’s posts. These gunpowder-based fireworks were supposed to ignite the bridge’s posts and burn them down to the waterline.
   The raiders managed to surprise the guards and take the bridge. However, when the pioneers attached the fireworks to the bridge and lit them, the fireworks made a lot of noise and smoke but no apparent damage. Luckily, the French commanders, who were skeptical about these ingenious inventions, also brought with them several dozen workmen supplied with axes, hatchets and saws. Even so it took them more than four hours to accomplish the mission, and it was daylight by the time the bridge was broken.


4a. The Nizari Assassins (The Order of the Assassins)
High motivation in itself was not enough, for it does not necessarily turn people into effective fighters and assassins. The Nizari fidā’īs clearly possessed superb skills in the arts of infiltration and murder, which distinguished them from the run-of-the-mill medieval zealot, and transformed them into one of the most fearsome of medieval strategic weapons. How exactly did they acquire these skills, which obviously could only rarely be transmitted from one generation of fidā’īs to the next?

4b. The Nizari Assassins
The linguistic skills of fidā’īs and their ability to merge into different cultural habitats were often commented upon not only by ignorant Europeans, but also by far better informed Middle Eastern authors and even by Nizari authors. Thus an apocryphal Nizari tale, which is a garbled account of Conrad’s murder, and which was preserved in a Nizari biography of Sinān, tells how Sinān had “a king of the Franks” assassinated at Acre. The tale stresses the importance of the fidā’īs’ linguistic skills, explaining that the two fidā’īs who killed the Frankish king were taught by Sinān to speak the Frankish tongue, were dressed in Frankish customs and carried Frankish swords, and were thereby able to infiltrate the Frankish camp at night, enter the king’s pavilion, and cut off his head.

4c. The Nizari Assassins
It is notable that on many occasions the fidā’īs disguised themselves as ascetics or monks, and often murdered their victims in or near mosques and other holy places. Thus the Nizaris’ first famous victim – Nizam al-Mulk – was killed by a fidā’ī disguised as a Sūfī ascetic (1092). When the Nizaris first arrived in Syria, one of their principal enemies was Janāh al-Dawla, the ruler of Homs. Fearful of an attack, Janāh al-Dawla left his citadel as little as possible, and when doing so, went about dressed in full armor and surrounded by a bodyguard. On Friday, 1 May 1103, he left the citadel and went to the town’s main mosque to take part in the Friday prayers. As he was taking his customary place, three fidā’īs ‘dressed in the garb of ascetics’ charged him, and neither his armor nor his bodyguard saved him from their daggers.