A wonderful, information-dense book surveying the evolution of warfare across the Middle Ages, and a glorious starting point for readers to contextualize an enormous amount of European history. There's a great deal of historical knowledge here that author Charles Oman assumes in his readers.
And so the very act of reading this book (and looking up the author's near-constant historical references) equates to a semester or two--at least--of upper-level undergrad European history.
Read this book and spend some time looking things up. Then read several more books like this[1]. Pretty soon, enough osmosis happens such that the various battles and historical figures this author mentions casually will be things you start mentioning casually: Cannae, Adrianople, Brunanburh, Hastings, Robert Guiscard, Durazzo, Tours, Crecy, Agincourt, Arnold von Winkelried, Albrecht von Wallenstein, and so on.
(This will be an inner monologue of course, because we all know how much everybody loves it when you "casually mention" battles and historical figures at parties. The ladies in particular.)
Inner monologue or not, what I'm finding with repeated exposure to books like this, is how, gradually, you orient these figures and events into your own mental matrix. And that helps you develop a ready array of historical analogies to help you understand today's events.
[A quick affiliate link to Amazon for those readers who would like to support my work here: if you purchase your Amazon products via any affiliate link from this site, or from my sister site Casual Kitchen, I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you!]
Very little is truly new in human history; nearly everything looks like something that's happened before. Therefore the more you cultivate the ability to analogize, the more predictive (and, interestingly, more accepting) you'll be with all the seemingly unprecedented craziness happening today.
Today's craziness only appears unprecedented to those who don't know their history. It's all happened before, and it will happen again. You'll see it, and you'll have the mental models to fit to it.
Finally, as is nearly always the case with truly great books of the past, this book is available free in the public domain.
Footnote:
[1] Feel free to consider the suggested book pairings just below, as well as the long list of titles in the "To Read" section at the very bottom of this post.
Suggested book pairings:
[Readers, what follows is a long list of extensive notes and quotes from the text along with comments of my own. It might be worth skimming if the subject grabs you.]
Notes:
Introduction
1 On the variety of relevant subjects to the art of war: strategy, tactics, discipline, organization, armament, physical and moral efficiency of an army.
1 "In the present century [nb: the 19th century, this book was pubished in 1884] wars are but episodes in a people’s existence: there have, however, been times when the whole national organization was founded on the supposition of a normal state of strife. In such cases the history of the race and of its 'art of war' are one and the same. To detail the constitution of Sparta, or of Ancient Germany, is to give little more than a list of military institutions. Conversely, to speak of the characteristics of their military science involves the mention of many of their political institutions." [Note the irony of this quote, as the author contrasts two sorts of cultures, one an episodic warmaking culture, the other fully martial all the time. The century to come would involve a type of civilizational war no one ever imagined.]
2 "There is a point of view from which its history could be described as 'the rise, supremacy, and decline of heavy cavalry as the chief power in war.' To a certain extent the tracing out of this thesis will form the subject of our researches. It is here that we find the thread which links the history of the military art in the middle ages into a connected whole. Between Adrianople, the first, and Marignano, the last, of the triumphs of the mediæval horseman, lie the chapters in the scientific history of war which we are about to investigate."
Chapter I: The Transition from Roman to Mediæval Forms in War (A.D. 378-582)
[From the battle of Adrianople to the Accession of Maurice]
3 "Between the middle of the fourth and the end of the sixth century lies a period of transition in military history, an epoch of transformations as strange and as complete as those contemporary changes which turned into a new channel the course of political history and civilisation in Europe. In war, as in all else, the institutions of the ancient world are seen to pass away, and a new order of things develops itself." Examples here: the gradual disuse of the honoured name of "Legion"; "The day of the sword and pilum had given place to that of the lance and bow."
4ff "The organization of Augustus and Trajan was swept away by Constantine, and the legions which for three hundred years had preserved their identity, their proud titles of honour, and their ésprit de corps, knew themselves no longer." On Constantine cutting down the millitary to a quarter of its size for political not military motives, while strengthening the calvary. Also on the idea that the Roman Empire was no longer expanding and using war for offensive means, thus it needed to switch over to a protective force that could move rapidly "from one menaced point on the frontier to another." [Note the obvious parallels here in British decline over the 19th century as well as American decline today]. Also on the fact that the Roman infantry didn't have the same advantages over enemy forces as before, and it was now dependent on calvary support. "The Franks, Burgundians, and Allemanni of the days of Constantine were no longer the half-armed savages of the first century..."
5 "At the same time, the morale of the Roman army was no longer what it had once been: the corps were no longer homogeneous, and the insufficient supply of recruits was eked out by enlisting slaves and barbarians in the legions themselves..." [A typical problem for any declining multi-ethnic empire. Note Lee Kwan Yew famous quote "In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion."]
6 On the "disaster" of the battle of Adrianople in AD378 [see Alessandro Barbero's wonderfull book The Day of the Barbarians], "the most fearful defeat suffered by a Roman army since Cannæ" where "the army of the East was almost annihilated." "...it was a victory of cavalry over infantry" as Gothic cavalry "swept down on the [Roman] infantry of the left wing, rolled it up, and drove it in upon the centre. So tremendous was their impact that the legions and cohorts were pushed together in helpless confusion."
6-7 What was worse though was the Roman cavalry saw that the day was lost and rode away!! "It was a sight such as had been seen once before at Cannæ, and was to be seen once after at Rosbecque [here Oman is referring to the Battle of Roosebeke (Rosbecque), fought on November 27, 1382: where a French army led by Charles VI defeated Flemish forces under Philip van Artevelde. The victory helped Count Louis II of Flanders crush a major rebellion; this was an important point in 14th-century Flemish wars]. Men could not raise their arms to strike a blow, so closely were they packed; spears snapped right and left, their bearers being unable to lift them to a vertical position: many soldiers were stifled in the press. Into this quivering mass the Goths rode, plying lance and sword against the helpless enemy. It was not till two-thirds of the Roman army had fallen that the thinning of the ranks enabled a few thousand men to break out, and follow their right wing and cavalry in a headlong flight."
7-8 "Theodosius, on whom devolved the task of reorganizing the troops of the Eastern empire, appears to have appreciated to its fullest extent the military meaning of the fight of Adrianople. Abandoning the old Roman theory of war, he decided that the cavalry must in future compose the most important part of the imperial army... He did not, like Constantine, raise new corps, but began to enlist wholesale every Teutonic chief whom he could bribe to enter his service. The war-bands which followed these princes were not incorporated with the national troops; they obeyed their immediate commanders alone, and were strangers to the discipline of the Roman army. Yet to them was practically entrusted the fate of the empire; since they formed the most efficient division of the imperial forces."
8 "Only six years after Adrianople there were already 40,000 Gothic and other German horsemen serving under their own chiefs in the army of the East. The native troops sunk at once to an inferior position in the eyes of Roman generals, and the justice of their decision was verified a few years later when Theodosius’s German mercenaries won for him the two well-contested battles which crushed the usurper Magnus Maximus and his son Victor. On both those occasions, the Roman infantry of the West, those Gallic legions who had always been considered the best footmen in the world, were finally ridden down by the Teutonic cavalry who followed the standard of the legitimate emperor." [Disturbing to see foreign troops "employed" in your own civil war, riding down soldiers (your own people) as the technology of war changes.]
8-10 On Vegetius and his work Epitoma Rei Militaris; interesting that Oman claims Vegetius is mistaken in his explanation that the infantry eliminated their armor and shields because they were heavy: "The real meaning of the change was that, in despair of resisting horsemen any longer by the solidity of a line of heavy infantry, the Romans had turned their attention to the use of missile weapons--a method of resisting cavalry even more efficacious than that which they abandoned, as was to be shown a thousand years later at Cressy [Crecy] and Agincourt." [These were important battles of the Hundred Years War between England and France showing the superiority of the longbow against armored cavalry]. "As an antiquary [Vegetius] feels attached to the old Roman organization, and must indeed have been somewhat behind the military experience of his day." Note also that in the Western Empire at this time, Rome's opponents, chiefly Franks and Allemanni, were "nearly all footmen." "It was not till the time of Alaric [c.370-410AD] that Rome came thoroughly to know the Gothic horsemen, whose efficiency Constantinople had already comprehended..."
11 Discussion here of the battle of Chalons [451 AD, a coalition of the Western Roman Empire (under Roman general Flavius Aetius) and the Visigothic king Theodoric I defeated the Huns under Attila]. "Chalons then was fought by horse-archer and lancer against horse-archer and lancer, a fair conflict with equal weapons."
12-13 On the victorious armies of Justinian [Eastern Roman/Byzantine Emperor of the 5th-6th centuries AD]; according to Procopius, cavalry was the most important arm of their military; comments here also on how Justinian would divide up military command among many hands, as the military "constituted a standing menace to the central power... In the sixth century the monarch had always to dread that the loyalty of the troops towards their immediate commanders might prevail over their higher duties." [Note also the author's offhand reference to Wallenstein here, who was an important figure from the 17th century's Thirty Years War, and who accumulated so much power as general under Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II that basically the Emperor approved his assassination.] "The existence of such corps rendered every successful commander a possible Wallenstein, to use a name of more modern importance." Comments here on the oath bond of the soldiers to their leader, linked by personal ties, "the characteristic military form of the sixth century."
14 "...in the troublous times which commenced in the end of Justinian’s reign and continued through those of his successors, the whole military organization of the empire began to crumble away. A change not less sweeping than that which Theodosius had introduced was again to be taken in hand. In 582 A.D. the reforming Emperor Maurice came to the throne, and commenced to recast the imperial army in a new mould."
Chapter II: The Early Middle Ages (A.D. 476-1066-1081)
[From the Fall of the Western Empire to the Battles of Hastings and Durazzo]
[NB: The battle of Durazzo in 1081 was between the Byzantine Empire and the Normans of southern Italy under Robert Guiscard, ending in a Norman victory]
15 On the lack of hard information available about northern and western Europe during this period.
15-16 "The true interest of the centuries of the early Middle Ages lies in the gradual evolution of new forms of warlike efficiency, which end in the establishment of a military class as the chief factor in war, and the decay among most peoples of the old system which made the tribe arrayed in arms the normal fighting force. Intimately connected with this change was an alteration in arms and equipment, which transformed the outward appearance of war in a manner not less complete. This period of transition may be considered to end when, in the eleventh century, the feudal cavalier established his superiority over all the descriptions of troops which were pitted against him, from the Magyar horse-archers of the East to the Anglo-Danish axe-men of the West. The fight of Hastings, the last attempt made for three centuries by infantry to withstand cavalry, serves to mark the termination of the epoch." [The Battle of Hastings, 1066AD, pitted William, Duke of Normandy against the Anglo-Saxon King Harold Godwinson. It resulted in a decisive Norman victory and led to the Norman conquest of England.]
16ff On the Franks of the 6th century: no helmet, no body armor, but a heavy shield and an angon (a mid-sized pike/spear with a barbed tip), as well as the francisca (a single bladed battle axe that could be thrown or swung), plus a sword and dagger. "Such was the equipment of the armies which Theodebert, Buccelin, and Lothair led down into Italy in the middle of the sixth century."
17 "A problem interesting to the historian was worked out, when in A.D. 553 the footmen of Buccelin met the Roman army of Narses at the battle of Casilinum. The superiority of the tactics and armament of the imperial troops was made equally conspicuous...The Roman infantry and the dismounted heavy cavalry of the Herule auxiliaries held them in play in front, while the horse-archers closed in on their flanks, and inflicted on them the same fate which had befallen the army of Crassus. Hardly a man of Buccelin’s followers escaped from the field: the day of infantry was gone, for the Franks as much as for the rest of the world."
18 On a steady increase in the proportion of cavalry in the Frankish armies from the 6th to the 9th centuries; at Tours [in AD 732] "a considerable number of horsemen appear to have served in the army of Charles Martel": "In the time of Charles the Great [Charlemagne, late 8th to early 9th century] we are told that all men of importance, with their immediate followers, were accustomed to serve on horseback." Comments here on documentation to local commanders of how each infantry must be supplied in the Capitularies, indicating still a dependence on infantrymen.
18-19 "The Franks had therefore become heavy infantry at the end of the eighth century: in the ninth century they were finally to abandon their old tactics, and to entrust all important operations to their cavalry. Of the causes which led to this consummation the most important was the character of the enemies with whom the Franks had to contend in the ninth and tenth centuries." Comments here on the "Northman" in the west and the Magyars in the east, who plundered Frankish lands via rapid movement; also on Vikings keeping distance from slow-moving infantry, making that infantry "absolutely useless."
19 On the power vacuum left after Charlemagne's death, leaving a sort of age of anarchy; of various counts and mini-monarchies throughout the land, to whom landowners and freeman would commend their services in return for protection.
19-20 Interesting quote here indicating that the post-Charlemagne, decentralized feudalist system could still defend itself: "Politically retrogressive as was that system, it had yet its day of success: the Magyar was crushed at Merseberg and the Lechfeld, and driven back across the Leith, soon to become Christianised and grow into an orderly member of the European commonwealth. The Viking was checked in his plundering forays, expelled from his strongholds at the river-mouths, and restricted to the single possession of Normandy, where he, like the Magyar, was assimilated to the rest of feudal society. The force which had won these victories, and saved Europe from a relapse into the savagery and Paganism of the North and East, was that of the mail-clad horseman." This style of battle would perpetuate for another 400 years.
20ff On the British Isles being largely the same as the Franks here in terms of military evolution, but "with a single exception in the form of its final development." "While this inclination towards union was developing itself, the whole island was subjected to the stress of the same storm of foreign invasion which was shaking the Frankish empire to its foundations. The Danes came down upon England, and demonstrated, by the fearful success of their raids, that the old Teutonic military system was inadequate to the needs of the day." Basically by the time any defense was raised and arrived to the scene they would find smoking ruins and no enemy; the mobility of the Danes made them easily dominant.
22-3 Comments here on Alfred and Eadward [cribbing from Wikipedia here: Alfred the Great reigned from 871–899 and his son Edward the Elder reigned from 899–924; they were Anglo-Saxon kings crucial to the unification of England. Alfred saved Wessex from the Vikings, while Edward expanded this foundation by conquering Viking territories in the Midlands, setting the stage for his son, Athelstan, to become the first king of all England] creating a new military organization of "thegn-hood" to form a permanent basis for the national army. "...the tide of war turned, and England reasserted itself, till the tenth century saw the culmination of her new strength at the great battle of Brunanburh." [The Battle of Brunanburh, which effectively unified much of the British Isles, was fought in 937 between Æthelstan, King of England against an alliance of Olaf Guthfrithson, King of Dublin; Constantine II, King of Scotland; and Owain, King of Strathclyde.]
23ff On England facing the same challenge as France, but with a delay of one century; also struggling to a great degree until the ascension of King Canute, who instituted the House-Carles, "a force sufficiently numerous to be called a small standing army rather than a mere royal guard." [once again, cribbing from Wikipedia: Canute was King of England from 1016, King of Denmark from 1018, and King of Norway from 1028 until his death in 1035. The three kingdoms united under Canute's rule are referred to as the "North Sea Empire." Uh, note also his name is typically spelled Cnut today, a rather unfortunate anagram.]
23-4 "These [House-Carles] troops are not only the most characteristic token of the existence of a powerful central government, but represent the maximum of military efficiency to be found in the Anglo-Danish world." On the weaponry of the House-Carles soldiers, including the long Danish battle-axe, able "as was shown at Hastings" to lop off a horse's head in one stroke. The men lined up in a close column but had the defects of "slowness of movement and vulnerability by missiles."
24ff The Battle of Hastings: "The Norman knights, if unsupported by their light infantry, might have surged for ever around the impregnable palisades. The archers, if unsupported by the knights, could easily have been driven off the field by a general charge. United, however, by the skillful tactics of William, the two divisions of the invading army won the day. The Saxon mass was subjected to exactly the same trial which befell the British squares in the battle of Waterloo: incessant charges by a gallant cavalry were alternated with a destructive fire of missiles... The tactics of the phalanx of axemen had been decisively beaten by William’s combination of archers and cavalry."
26ff Finally another, final example of the failure of infantry at the Battle of Dyrrhachium, 1081, between Robert Guiscard and Alexius of Byzantium, where English axemen (who were fighting for Byzantium) were run down by a cavalry charge. "Such was the fate of the last attempt made by infantry to face the feudal array of the eleventh century. No similar experiment was now to be made for more than two hundred years: the supremacy of cavalry was finally established."
Chapter III: The Byzantines and their Enemies (A.D. 582–1071)
[From the accession of Maurice to the battle of Manzikert]
28ff On the character of Byzantine strategy, on the efficiency of the Byzantine army in this era; for some 500 years the Byzantines successfully held off "Slav and Saracen"; also note the author's comment that the Byzantine empire received "scant justice at the hands of modern historians" as he quotes Gibbon: "'The vices of Byzantine armies,’ says Gibbon, ‘were inherent, their victories accidental.’ So far is this sweeping condemnation from the truth, that it would be far more correct to call their defeats accidental, their successes, normal." [ouch!] "Leo the Philosopher declares in his Tactica that, except the Frankish and Lombard knights, there were no horsemen in the world who could face the Byzantine Cataphracti, when the numbers of the combatants approached equality."
29 "The causes of the excellence and efficiency of the Byzantine army are not hard to discover. In courage they were equal to their enemies; in discipline, organization, and armament far superior. Above all, they possessed not only the traditions of Roman strategy, but a complete system of tactics, carefully elaborated to suit the requirements of the age."
30 On the Byzantines knowing tactics and strategy and knowing precisely which tactics and strategy to use on which enemy: Frank, Turk, Slav or Saracen. Here's a typical example the author cites from the Tactica of Emperor Leo VI the Wise: "'The Frank,' says Leo, 'believes that a retreat under any circumstances must be dishonourable; hence he will fight whenever you choose to offer him battle. This you must not do till you have secured all possible advantages for yourself, as his cavalry, with their long lances and large shields, charge with a tremendous impetus. You should deal with him by protracting the campaign, and if possible lead him into the hills, where his cavalry are less efficient than in the plain. After a few weeks without a great battle his troops, who are very susceptible to fatigue and weariness, will grow tired of the war, and ride home in great numbers.... You will find him utterly careless as to outposts and reconnaisances, so that you can easily cut off outlying parties of his men, and attack his camp at advantage. As his forces have no bonds of discipline, but only those of kindred or oath, they fall into confusion after delivering their charge; you can therefore simulate flight, and then turn them, when you will find them in utter disarray. On the whole, however, it is easier and less costly to wear out a Frankish army by skirmishes and protracted operations rather than to attempt to destroy it at a single blow.'"
31-2 Similar examples given here for tactics against the Turks "by which name he denotes the Magyars and the tribes dwelling north of the Euxine" where "a pitched battle was desirable." "The adoption of the bow by infantry had now changed the aspect of affairs, and it was the horse-archer who now found himself at a disadvantage in the exchange of missiles" because the Byzantine infantry arrows had greater range. "Hence the Turk avoided conflicts with the imperial infantry, and used his superior powers of locomotion to keep out of its way. It was only the cavalry which could, as a rule, come up with him."
32ff On the unique danger of the Saracen: "‘Of all barbarous nations,’ says Leo, ‘they are the best advised and the most prudent in their military operations.’" On their fanatical, fatalistic courage in their conquests of the 7th century; on their copying of the Roman and Byzantine combat methods; but also fighting with irregular forces, some fighting to satisfy their greed, others to satisfy their fanaticism; on their rapid mobility, except when loaded down with plunder, when they could be caught.
35-6 "...it was seldom that the whole Byzantine force in Asia was drawn out to face the enemy in a great battle... To meet the Saracens the Byzantine commander would probably have no more than the 4000 heavy cavalry of his own... When he had come up with the raiders they would turn and offer him battle: nor was their onset to be despised. Though unequal, man for man, to their adversaries, they were usually in superior numbers, and always came on with great confidence. ‘They are very bold at first with expectation of victory; nor will they turn at once, even if their line is broken through by our impact.’ When they suppose that their enemy’s vigour is relaxing, they all charge together with a desperate effort. If, however, this failed, a rout generally ensued, ‘for they think that all misfortune is sent by God, and so, if they are once beaten, they take their defeat as a sign of divine wrath, and no longer attempt to defend themselves.’ Hence the Mussulman army, when once it turned to fly, could be pursued à l’outrance, and the old military maxim, Vince sed ne nimis vincas [Conquer, but do not conquer too much], was a caution which the Byzantine officer could disregard."
36ff On the perfection of cavalry tactics by the Byzantine army by the 10th century, using three successive shocks of cavalry charges. "The Byzantines had already discovered the great precept which modern military science has claimed as its own, that, ‘in a cavalry combat, the side which holds back the last reserve must win.’" [The author says here he will detail these specific cavalry formations in a later section.]
37 On how the Byzantines would raid in Saracen territory as soon as word arrived that the Saracens had raided them: "Much could also be done by delivering a vigorous raid into his country, and wasting Cilicia and Northern Syria, the moment his armies were reported to have passed north into Cappadocia. This destructive practice was very frequently adopted, and the sight of two enemies each ravaging the other’s territory without attempting to defend his own, was only too familiar to the inhabitants of the borderlands of Christendom and Islam."
37-8 Comments on Leo the Wise, and differences between Byzantine military art vs Western European: "Leo himself was not a man of any great ability, and his Tactica are intended to codify an existing military art, rather than to construct a new one. Yet still the book is one whose equal could not have been written in Western Europe before the sixteenth century. One of its most striking points is the utter difference of its tone from that of contemporary feeling in the rest of Christendom. Of chivalry there is not a spark in the Byzantine, though professional pride is abundantly shown. Courage is regarded as one of the requisites necessary for obtaining success, not as the sole and paramount virtue of the warrior. Leo considers a campaign successfully concluded without a great battle as the cheapest and most satisfactory consummation in war. He has no respect for the warlike ardour which makes men eager to plunge into the fray: it is to him rather a characteristic of the brainless barbarian, and an attribute fatal to any one who makes any pretension to generalship. He shows a strong predilection for stratagems, ambushes, and simulated retreats. For an officer who fights without having first secured all the advantages to his own side, he has the greatest contempt."
38 "'The Art of War," as understood at Constantinople in the tenth century, was the only scheme of true scientific merit existing in the world, and was unrivalled till the sixteenth century."
38ff On Emperor Maurice and more discussion of the "Arms, Organization, and Tactics of the Byzantine Armies": "The Byzantine army may be said to owe its peculiar form to the Emperor Maurice, a prince whose reign is one of the chief landmarks in the history of the lower empire. The fortunate preservation of his Stratêgikon suffices to show us that the reorganization of the troops of the East was mainly due to him." His most important change was "the appointment of all officers above the rank of centurion a care of the central government. The commander of an army or division had thus no longer in his hands the power and patronage which had given him the opportunity of becoming dangerous to the state. The men found themselves under the orders of delegates of the emperor, not of quasi-independent authorities who enlisted them as personal followers rather than as units in the military establishment of the empire."
40ff "The new system introduced by Maurice was destined to last for nearly five hundred years." Comments here on the structure of the individual unit, on the odd mix of Latin, Greek and German words in its military terminology; on the various peoples of the empire who furnished soldiers: "The Armenians and Isaurians in Asia, the Thracians and Macedonians--or more properly the semi-Romanized Slavs--in Europe, were considered the best material by the recruiting officer."
41 On how Maurice's arrangements remained unchanged 300 years after his death and that Leo's Tactica is just a rendition of Maurice's Strategikon.
41ff Description of the weapons of both the heavy and light cavalry, as well as the heavy and light infantry of the Byzantine army.
42-3 "An extensive train of non-combatants was attached to the army.... So perfect was the organization of the Byzantine army that it contained not only a military train, but even an ambulance-corps of bearers and surgeons. The value attached to the lives of the soldiery is shown by the fact that the scriboni (bearers) received a nomisma for every wounded man whom they brought off when the troops were retiring."
43-4 On the entrenching techniques used when the army was halted.
44-5 On Byzantine tactics: "The main characteristic of the Byzantine system of tactics is the small size of the various units employed in the operations, a sure sign of the existence of a high degree of discipline and training. While a Western army went on its blundering way arranged in two or three enormous battles, each mustering many thousand men, a Byzantine army of equal strength would be divided into many scores of fractions... The fact that order and cohesion could be found in a line composed of so many separate units, is the best testimony to the high average ability of the officers in subordinate commands. These counts and moirarchs were in the ninth and tenth centuries drawn for the most part from the ranks of the Byzantine aristocracy. 'Nothing prevents us,’ says Leo, ‘from finding a sufficient supply of men of wealth, and also of courage and high birth, to officer our army. Their nobility makes them respected by the soldiers, while their wealth enables them to win the greatest popularity among their troops by the occasional and judicious gift of small creature-comforts.'"
45 See the screenshot below of the Byzantine "turma" battle order: "It is, therefore, with the design of showing the most typical development of Byzantine tactics that we have selected for description a turma of nine bands, or 4000 men, as placed in order, before engaging with an enemy whose force consists of horsemen. The front line consists of three banda, each drawn up in a line seven (or occasionally five) deep. These troops are to receive the first shock. Behind the first line is arranged a second, consisting of four half-banda, each drawn up ten (or occasionally eight) deep. They are placed not directly behind the front bands, but in the intervals between them, so that, if the first line is repulsed, they may fall back, not on to their comrades, but into the spaces between them."
.png)
45-6 "To each flank of the main body was attached a half-bandon of 225 men; these were called plagiophylakes, and were entrusted with the duty of resisting attempts to turn the flanks of the turma. Still further out, and if possible under cover, were placed two other bodies of similar strength; it was their duty to endeavour to get into the enemy’s rear, or at any rate to disturb his wings by unexpected assaults: these troops were called Enedroi, or 'lyers-in-wait.'"
46 "This order of battle is deserving of all praise. It provides for that succession of shocks which is the key to victory in a cavalry combat; as many as five different attacks would be made on the enemy before all the impetus of the Byzantine force had been exhausted. The arrangement of the second line behind the intervals of the first, obviated the possibility of the whole force being disordered by the repulse of the first squadrons. The routed troops would have behind them a clear space in which to rally, not a close line into which they would carry their disarray."
46 "To give a complete sketch of Leo’s 'Tactics' would be tedious and unnecessary. Enough indications have now been given to show their strength and completeness. It is easy to understand, after a perusal of such directions, the permanence of the military power of the Eastern Empire. Against the undisciplined Slav and Saracen the Imperial troops had on all normal occasions the tremendous advantages of science and discipline. It is their defeats rather than their victories which need an explanation."
46-7 "We have fixed, as the termination of the period of Byzantine greatness, the battle of Manzikert, A.D. 1071. At this fight the rashness of Romanus Diogenes led to the annihilation of the forces of the Asiatic Themes by the horse-archers of Alp-Arslan. The decay of the central power which is marked by the rise of Isaac Comnenus, the nominee of the feudal party of Asiatic nobles, may have already enfeebled the army. It was, however, the result of Manzikert which was fatal to it; as the occupation of the themes of the interior of Asia Minor by the Seljuks cut off from the empire its greatest recruiting-ground, the land of the gallant Isaurians and Armenians, who had for five hundred years formed the core of the Eastern army."
47 Note the comments here on "Greek fire" which Oman thinks was not a significant factor in Byzantine war-making: "It will be observed that we have given no long account of the famous ‘Greek-fire,’ the one point in Byzantine military affairs which most authors condescend to notice. If we have neglected it, it is from a conviction that, although its importance in ‘poliorcetics’ and naval fighting was considerable, it was, after all, a minor engine of war, and not comparable as a cause of Byzantine success to the excellent strategical and tactical system on which we have dilated." Likewise comments on the war machines the Byzantines used, which produced awe in their enemies: "The old skill of the Roman engineer was preserved almost in its entirety" in Byzantium; but again, this was less important than the "discipline, strategy and tactics, of a professional and yet national army, of an upper class at once educated and military."
47-8 "When the aristocracy became mere courtiers, when foreign mercenaries superseded the Isaurian bowman and the Anatolic cavalier, when the traditions of old Roman organization gave place to mere centralization, then no amount of the inherited mechanical skill of past ages could save the Byzantine empire from its fall."
48 Now the author jumps ahead, making a reference to Frankish Crusaders: "The rude vigour of the Western knight accomplished the task which Chosroes and Crumn, Moslemah and Sviatoslaf, had found too hard for them. But it was not the empire of Heraclius or John Zimisces, of Leo the Isaurian, or Leo the Armenian, that was subdued by the piratical Crusaders, it was only the diminished and disorganized realm of the miserable Alexius Angelus."
Chapter IV: The Supremacy of Feudal Cavalry (A. D. 1066-1346)
[From the battle of Hastings to the battles of Morgarten and Cressy]
49 "Between the last struggles of the infantry of the Anglo-Dane, and the rise of the pikemen and bowmen of the fourteenth century lies the period of the supremacy of the mail-clad feudal horseman. The epoch is, as far as strategy and tactics are concerned, one of almost complete stagnation: only in the single branch of Poliorcetics [siege warfare] does the art of war make any appreciable progress." On the unsoldierlike quality of the feudal force, hard-to-corral noblemen without discipline or tactical skill; unable to maneuver, ready to "melt away" as soon as his period of service was over, etc.
50ff "When mere courage takes the place of skill and experience, tactics and strategy alike disappear. Arrogance and stupidity combine to give a certain definite colour to the proceedings of the average feudal host. The century and the land may differ, but the incidents of battle are the same: Mansoura [Frankish Crusaders in battle against Egypt in 1250] is like Aljubarotta [between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Crown of Castile in 1385], Nicopolis [Ottomans aided by the Venetian navy routed a broad alliance of Crusader in 1396] is like Courtrai [1302 battle between the France and rebellious forces of the County of Flanders in which the French nobles were routed]. When the enemy came in sight, nothing could restrain the Western knights: the shield was shifted into position, the lance dropped into rest, the spur touched the charger, and the mail-clad line thundered on, regardless of what might be before it... The enemy who possessed even a rudimentary system of tactics could hardly fail to be successful against such armies." Example given here of the Battle of Mansoura where the French vanguard couldn't restrain themselves and just charged, while the Mamelukes retreated, letting the French flow into a nearby town, where they were then cut to pieces. Then, as the rest of the French army arrived, they never united into anything but detached incoherent fragments.
51-2 "The most ordinary precautions, such as directing a reserve on a critical point, or detaching a corps to take the enemy in flank, or selecting a good position in which to receive battle, were considered instances of surpassing military skill." [I love this author's turn of phrase.]
52-3 On a total lack of generalship and no strategy whatsoever; on the Feudal knights failing even to think about provisioning themselves. (!)
53 "Nothing could show the primitive state of the military art better than the fact that generals solemnly sent and accepted challenges to meet in battle at a given place and on a given day. Without such precautions there was apparently a danger lest the armies should lose sight of each other, and stray away in different directions." [!!!]
54 On the insignificance and uselessness of infantry during this period: "Infantry was in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries absolutely insignificant: foot-soldiers accompanied the army for no better purpose than to perform the menial duties of the camp, or to assist in the numerous sieges of the period. Occasionally they were employed as light troops, to open the battle by their ineffective demonstrations."
55 On the rise of the mercenary, "inferior in morale to the feudal force, but more amenable to discipline." "The mercenary comes to the fore in the second half of the twelfth century." Paid for by scutage, levying a fee on each noble to pay the mercenaries;
56 "Every ruler found him [the mercenary] a necessity in time of war, but to the unconstitutional and oppressive ruler his existence was especially profitable: it was solely by the lavish use of mercenaries that the warlike nobility could be held in check. Despotism could only begin when the monarch became able to surround himself with a strong force of men whose desires and feelings were alien to those of the nation. The tyrant in modern Europe, as in ancient Greece, found his natural support in foreign hired soldiery."
56 "The military efficiency of the mercenary of the thirteenth century was, however, only a development of that of the ordinary feudal cavalier. Like the latter, he was a heavily-armed horseman; his rise did not bring with it any radical change in the methods of war... The final stage in the history of mercenary troops was reached when the bands which had served through a long war instead of dispersing at its conclusion, held together, and moved across the continent in search of a state which might be willing to buy their services. But the age of the Great Company and the Italian Condottieri lies rather in the fourteenth than the thirteenth century, and its discussion must be deferred to another chapter."
56-7 On fortifications and "the ascendency" of the defensive: "If battles were few, sieges were numerous and abnormally lengthy. The castle was as integral a part of feudal organization as the mailed knight, and just as the noble continued to heap defence after defence on to the persons of himself and his charger, so he continued to surround his dwelling with more and more fortifications. The simple Norman castle of the eleventh century, with its great keep and plain rectangular enclosure, developed into elaborate systems of concentric works, like those of Caerphilly and Carnarvon. The walls of the town rivalled those of the citadel, and every country bristled with forts and places of strength, large and small."
57 "The strength of a mediæval fortress lay in the extraordinary solidity of its construction. Against walls fifteen to thirty feet thick, the feeble siege-artillery of the day, perriéres, catapults, trebuchets, and so forth, beat without perceptible effect."
57ff Other examples of innovations: bastions (which permitted fire in many directions at besiegers), the brattice (a projecting wooden balcony or gallery built over gateways or along walls that enabled soldiers to shoot or drop objects directly down on attackers), or the machicolation (essentially a permanent stone brattice).
59 Also on the design of flanking towers, which the author calls "the other great improvement made by the defence. This rendered it possible to direct a converging fire from the sides on the point selected for attack by the besieger. The towers also served to cut off a captured stretch of wall from any communication with the rest of the fortifications. By closing the iron-bound doors in the two on each side of the breach, the enemy was left isolated on the piece of wall he had won, and could not push to right or left without storming a tower."
59 "The number and strength of the fortified places of Western Europe explain the apparent futility of many campaigns of the period. A land could not be conquered with rapidity when every district was guarded by three or four castles and walled towns, which would each need several months’ siege before they could be reduced."
59-60 "The invention of gunpowder was the first advantage thrown on the side of the attack for three centuries. Even cannon, however, were at the period of their invention, and for long years afterward, of very little practical importance. The taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II [in 1453] is perhaps the first event of European importance in which the power of artillery played the leading part."
60ff Brief comments here on the Crusades: "The Crusaders were seldom indulged in the twelfth century with those pitched battles for which they craved. The Mahometan leaders would only fight when they had placed all the advantages on their own side; normally they declined the contest... nothing but the ascendancy enjoyed by the defensive could have protracted the existence of the 'Kingdom of Jerusalem,' when it had sunk to a chain of isolated fortresses, dotting the shore of the Levant from Alexandretta to Acre and Jaffa... On the whole, the military results of the Crusades were curiously small. As lessons they were wholly disregarded by the European world. When, after the interval of a hundred and fifty years, a Western army once more faced an Oriental foe, it committed at Nicopolis exactly the same blunder which led to the loss of the day at Mansoura." [Those who are ignorant of history are always condemned to repeat it...]
Chapter V: The Swiss (A.D. 1315–1515)
[From the battle of Morgarten to the battle of Marignano]
62 [Nice lead paragraph here] "In the fourteenth century infantry, after a thousand years of depression and neglect, at last regained its due share of military importance. Almost simultaneously there appeared two peoples asserting a mastery in European politics by the efficiency of their foot-soldiery. Their manners of fighting were as different as their national character and geographical position, but although they never met either in peace or war, they were practically allied for the destruction of feudal chivalry. The knight, who had for so long ridden roughshod over the populations of Europe, was now to recognize his masters in the art of war. The free yeomanry of England and the free herdsmen of the Alps were about to enter on their career of conquest."
62-3 On war "reduced to its simplest elements": the shock or the missile; referring here to the English archer or the Swiss pikeman; both worked well against mail-clad cavalry. "Hence the whole military system of the middle ages received a profound modification. To the unquestioned predominance of a single form, that of the charge delivered by cavalry, succeeded a rapid alternation of successful and unsuccessful experiments in the correlation and combination of cavalry and infantry, of shock tactics and missile tactics."
63-4 "The Swiss of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have been compared with much aptness to the Romans of the early Republic. In the Swiss, as in the Roman, character we find the most intense patriotism combined with an utter want of moral sense and a certain meanness and pettiness of conception, which prevent us from calling either nation truly great." [It's interesting to continue the analogy here to the United States, which has become both increasingly petty and morally wanting in past decades.]
65-6 On the Swiss infantry weapons and battle array: the prototype here was the Macedonian phalanx; masses of enormous depth; using the pike, an eighteen foot long shaft with a head of steel, each of the first four ranks had its pike forward, "an impenetrable hedge of bristling points." Also using the halberd, eight feet in length with a hatchet blade on the end, with a hook on the other end of the blade. "The sight of the ghastly wounds which it inflicted might well appall the stoutest foeman: he who had once felt its edge required no second stroke. It was the halberd which laid Leopold of Hapsburg dead across his fallen banner at Sempach, and struck down Charles of Burgundy--all his face one gash from temple to teeth--in the frozen ditch by Nancy."
66 The pike resisted cavalry charges, and the halberd would follow up as the ranks of the pikemen opened up, then they'd be "joined in their charge by the bearers of two-handed swords, Morning-Stars, and Lucern Hammers, all weapons of the most fearful efficiency in a hand-to-hand combat."
67 On how quickly the Swiss could be mustered: "When emergencies arrived a Confederate army could be raised with extraordinary speed; a people who regarded military glory as the one thing which made life worth living, flocked to arms without needing a second summons... Thus an invader, however unexpected his attack, might in the course of three or four days find twenty thousand men on his hands. They would often be within a few miles of him, before he had heard that a Swiss force was in the field."
68 "This power of swift movement was, as Macchiavelli observed, the result of the Confederates’ determination not to burden themselves with heavy armour. Their abstention from its use was originally due to their poverty alone, but was confirmed by the discovery that a heavy panoply would clog and hamper the efficiency of their national tactics."
69 On the homogeneity, coherence and simplicity of the Swiss army: "...there was no residuum of untried or disloyal soldiery for whose conduct special precautions would have to be taken. The larger proportion of the men among a nation devoted to war had seen a considerable amount of service; while if local jealousies were ever remembered in the field, they only served to spur the rival contingents on to a healthy emulation in valour. However much the cantons might wrangle among themselves, they were always found united against a foreign attack."
70 On the decentralized nature of the Swiss army, which led to a total lack of strategy: "Another consideration was even more important among the Swiss; there was a universal prejudice felt against placing the troops of one canton under the orders of the citizen of another. So strong was this feeling that an extraordinary result ensued: the appointment of a commander-in-chief remained, throughout the brilliant period of Swiss history, an exception rather than a rule. Neither in the time of Sempach, in the old war of Zurich, in the great struggle with Burgundy, nor in the Swabian campaign against Maximilian of Austria, was any single general entrusted with supreme authority."
71ff But on the fact that the Swiss army excelled in tactics: "A real tactical system was developed, whose efficiency was proved again and again in the battles of the fifteenth century. For dealing with the mediæval men-at-arms and infantry against whom it had been designed, the Swiss method was unrivaled: it was only when a new age introduced different conditions into war that it gradually became obsolete." The Swiss "system" involved leaving clear spaces between three separate corps arranged in columns, so if one were thrown back the full army wouldn't be in disarray; also if the other army attempted to wheel in and attack the flank of the first column, its flank would be exposed to the second Swiss column. Also comments on variations of this battle formation used in various battles: Frastens in 1499, at Laupen, at Sempach, at Waldshut, also the Swabian war of 1498.
73ff On the battle of Morgarten [1315, a smaller Swiss confederate force ambushed and defeated a much larger Austrian Habsburg army] and the emergence of Swiss military superiority: this battle was won "not by the tactics which afterwards rendered them famous, but by a judicious choice of a battlefield." The Swiss lured the Habsburg army through a narrow pass, pouring rocks and tree trunks on the knights in front, freezing the column, then continuing to pour debris on the rest of the infantry behind, and then the knights broke away and trampled their own infantry. "The Swiss, having now exterminated the few knights in the van who had remained to fight, came down on the rear of the panic-stricken crowd, and cut down horseman and footman alike without meeting any resistance. ‘It was not a battle,’ says John of Winterthur, a contemporary chronicler, ‘but a mere butchery of duke Leopold’s men; for the mountain folk slew them like sheep in the shambles: no one gave any quarter, but they cut down all, without distinction, till there were none left to kill. In short, the Swiss won their freedom, because, with instinctive tactical skill, they gave the feudal cavalry no opportunity for attacking them at advantage."
75ff On the Swiss army's "second great success," the Battle of Laupen, in 1339, where the city of Bern fought against Habsburg and Burgundy forces: "At Laupen, for the first time almost since the days of the Romans, infantry, entirely unsupported by horsemen, ranged on a fair field in the plains, withstood an army complete in all arms and superior in numbers... Bannockburn [Scotland] had already sounded the same note in the distant West, but for the Continent Laupen was the first revelation as to the power of good infantry.
77 [Interesting quote here on how generals always fight the last war and how armies hate to give up the things they once used with success. It's incredibly relevant to today, when the US navy sails around with gigantic $13 billion aircraft carriers that unfortunately appear to be evolving into very large, very slow targets for thousand dollar drones.] "Seven years later a yet more striking lesson was to be administered to feudal chivalry, when the archer faced the knight at Cressy. The mail-clad horseman was found unable to break the phalanx of pikes, unable to approach the line from which the deadly arrow reached him, but still the old superstition which gave the most honourable name in war to the mounted man, was strong enough to perpetuate for another century the cavalry whose day had really gone by. A system which was so intimately bound up with mediæval life and ideas could not be destroyed by one, or by twenty disasters.
77ff On the battle of Sempach, 1386, where the Swiss nearly were driven off the field by dismounted knights in armor; note also the reference to "Winkelried’s heroic death" [another indication of the historical context assumed here, which I had to look up: Arnold von Winkelried is a legendary Swiss hero who, according to tradition, secured victory for the Old Swiss Confederacy at the Battle of Sempach on July 9, 1386. Facing a solid wall of Austrian Habsburg pikes, Winkelried rushed forward, allegedly shouting "Make way for liberty" gathered a bundle of enemy spears into his body, and created a gap, allowing the Swiss to break the line.] "...every one knows how the Austrian column was broken, how in the close combat which followed the lance and long horseman’s sword proved no match for the halberd, the battle-axe and the cutlass, how the duke and his knights, weighed down by their heavy armour, neither could nor would flee, and fell to a man around their banner."
78 "Historians tell us all this, but what they forget to impress upon us is that, in spite of his failure, duke Leopold was nearer to success than any other commander, one exception alone being made, who faced the Swiss down to the day of Marignano. His idea of meeting the shock of the Swiss phalanx with a heavier shock of his own was feasible."
79-80 "What a better general could do by the employment of Leopold’s tactical experiment was shown thirty-seven years later on the field of Arbedo in 1422. On that occasion Carmagnola the Milanese general, who then met the Confederates for the first time, opened the engagement with a cavalry charge. Observing its entire failure, the experienced condottiere at once resorted to another form of attack. He dismounted the whole of his 6000 men-at-arms, and launched them in a single column against the Swiss phalanx." This fight was won, although the author goes on to say this tactic wasn't used against the Swiss again as they resorted to the pike to better defend against the lance.
81ff On the magnificence of the Swiss militia: "Even the most dangerous attack ever aimed against Switzerland, the invasion by the Armagnac mercenaries of the Dauphin Louis in 1444, was destined to result in the increase of the warlike reputation of its soldiery. The battle of St. Jacob, mad and unnecessary though it was, might serve as an example to deter the boldest enemy from meddling with men who preferred annihilation to retreat." Here the Armagnac army was 15 times the size of the Swiss, yet the Swiss attacked, were surrounded, and then formed their "hedgehog" to successfully repel all the attacks of the Armagnacs. "Not until the evening was the fighting ended, and then 6000 Armagnacs lay dead around the heap of Swiss corpses in the centre. Louis saw that a few such victories would destroy his whole army, and turned back into Alsace, leaving Switzerland unmolested." [I never learned any history of Switzerland, and so it is interesting to see how, in order to preserve your independence as a small country, you have to be vicious, malicious and absolutely relentless. And still other nations will fuck with you!]
82ff "From that day the Confederates were able to reckon their reputation for obstinate and invincible courage, as one of the chief causes which gave them political importance... It was no light matter to engage with an enemy who would not retire before any superiority in numbers, who was always ready for the fight, who would neither give nor take quarter. This fact is especially noticeable in the great Burgundian war. If Charles the Rash himself was unawed by the warlike renown of his enemies, the same cannot be said of his troops." Then a discussion of the Battle of Granson in 1476, which ended up resembling Hannibal's movements at Cannae--but with the opposite result: the Burgundian infantry broke and ran as their army drew back their center luring the Swiss in. "...the duke may be censured for attempting a delicate manœuvre with an army destitute of homogeneity..."
84ff The Battle of Morat, 1476, once again involving Charles the Bold [note that Charles the Bold was pejoratively known in his day as Charles the Rash, see the note above from p82ff] vs the Swiss Confederates: a failure of generalship here on the Burgundians' side, as Charles didn't know where the Swiss were until they were in front of his lines, he also had set out his force in three parts too far apart to assist in a flanking attack, leaving also a lightly guarded garrison which collapsed as soon as the Swiss attacked it. "Favoured by his astonishing oversight in leaving their march unobserved, they were able to surprise him, and destroy his army in detail, before it could manage to form even a rudimentary line of battle."
86ff The Battle of Nancy [the final, decisive battle of the Burgundian Wars, in 1477]: The Burgundian army was surrounded and destroyed, including Charles himself "refusing to fly, and fighting desperately to cover the retreat of his scattered forces, was surrounded, and cleft through helmet and skull by the tremendous blow of a Swiss halberd." This battle actually involved some good generalship from the Swiss side, rather than solely the courage and fighting ability of the soldiers.
87ff Causes of the decline of Swiss ascendancy: "Their disregard for the higher and more delicate problems of military science, was destined to enfeeble the power and destroy the reputation of the Confederates. At a time when the great struggle in Italy was serving as a school for the soldiery of other European nations, they alone refused to learn. ...Scientific engineers and artillerists had begun to modify the conditions of warfare, and feudal tradition was everywhere discarded. ...The improvement of the firearms placed in the hands of infantry was only less important than the superior mobility which was given to field artillery. The Swiss, however, paid no attention to these changes; the world around them might alter, but they would hold fast to the tactics of their ancestors." Note also the Swiss would be facing more cohesive, better disciplined and more professional troops going forward.
89ff Emperor Maxmillian and his German Landsknechts troops who used the same tactics as the Swiss; this analogizes to WWI on some level as the two phalanxes would literally wipe each others' front ranks out with their pikes as the deeper ranks would step into fill the gap; See the 1513 Battle of Novara [part of the War of the League of Cambrai], which the Swiss won, causing the Germans to lose half their men; but the author notes here that Swiss military dominance was declining here, they weren't just sweeping the enemy off the field anymore. "In spite of their defeats the Landsknechts kept the field, and finally took their revenge when the Swiss recoiled in disorder from the fatal trenches of Bicocca." [1522, part of the Italian Wars.]
90ff The rise of the Spanish infantry: "The Spanish infantry of Gonsalvo de Cordova displayed once more to the military world the strength of the tactics of old Rome." They were armed with a short sword but much better armored than the Swiss; "When the pikeman and the swordsman first met in 1502, under the walls of Barletta, the old problem of Pydna and Cynoscephalæ was once more worked out. A phalanx as solid and efficient as that of Philip the Macedonian was met by troops whose tactics were those of the legionaries of Æmilius Paullus. Then, as in an earlier age, the wielders of the shorter weapon prevailed. [Now quoting Machiavelli here in his book Art of War] 'When they came to engage, the Swiss at first pressed so hard on their enemy with the pike, that they opened out their ranks; but the Spaniards, under the cover of their bucklers, nimbly rushed in upon them with their swords, and laid about them so furiously, that they made a great slaughter of the Swiss, and gained a complete victory.'"
91 "The bearer of the longer weapon becomes helpless when his opponent has closed with him... Whatever may be the result of a duel between sword and spear alone, it is certain that when a light shield is added to the swordsman’s equipment, he at once obtains the ascendancy."
92ff On fortified defense and artillery, another factor degrading Swiss supremacy: a study of the ancients during the Renaissance period led to the adoption things like the intrenching tactics of the Romans, use of favorable choice of land to engage, use of artillery, etc. "Such a phase in war was most disadvantageous to the Swiss: even the most desperate courage cannot carry men over stone walls or through flooded ditches, if they neglect the art which teaches them how to approach such obstacles. The Confederates in their earlier days had never displayed much skill in attacking places of strength; and now, when the enemy’s position was as frequently behind defences as in the open plain, they refused to adapt their tactics to the altered circumstances." See here the Swiss example of the Battle of Bicocca where the Swiss bravely crossed several hedges and trenches but could not pass the final deep trench, where they were easily killed by German pikemen. "Three thousand corpses were left in the ditch before the Swiss would desist from their hopeless undertaking; it was an attack which, for misplaced daring, rivals the British assault on Ticonderoga in 1758."
94ff On artillery use which "wreaked even more havoc" with Swiss troops: "Of all formations the phalanx is the easiest at which to aim, and the one which suffers most loss from each cannon ball which strikes it. A single shot ploughing through its serried ranks might disable twenty men..." Swiss "hedgehogs" might have succeeded against clumsy 15th century guns which fired slowly and inconsistently, but in some 40 years, artillery had become much more dangerous, mobile, rapid-firing and consistent.
95 Finally on the declining discipline and arrogance of the Swiss military: throwing away "even the semblance of obedience to their leaders." [Holy cow on this quote]: "Before Bicocca the cry was raised, 'Where are the officers, the pensioners, the double-pay men? Let them come out and earn their money fairly for once: they shall all fight in the front rank to-day.' What was even more astonishing than the arrogance of the demand, was the fact that it was obeyed. The commanders and captains stepped forward and formed the head of the leading column; hardly one of them survived the fight..."
95 "What was to be expected from an army in which the men gave the orders and the officers executed them? Brute strength and heedless courage were the only qualities now employed by the Swiss, while against them were pitted the scientific generals of the new school of war. The result was what might have been expected: the pike tactics, which had been the admiration of Europe, were superseded, because they had become stereotyped, and the Swiss lost their proud position as the most formidable infantry in the world."
Chapter VI: The English and their Enemies. (A.D. 1272-1485)
[From the accession of Edward I to the end of the Wars of the Roses]
96ff On how the longbow was just as critical to the English army as the pike was to the Swiss army; on the irony that the commanders who employed the longbow would have been horrified to know that it would signal the end of the chivalric style of war and the horseman in a coat of mail: England's Edward the Black Prince and his father saw themselves as the flower of chivalry "and would have been horrified had they realised that their own tactics were going far to make chivalrous warfare impossible." On the longbow appearing in warfare in the "last quarter of the thirteenth century."
97-8 Debate on the origin of the longbow: "As a national weapon it is first accepted in the Assize of Arms of 1252, wherein all holders of 40s. [shillings] in land or nine marks in chattels are desired to provide themselves with sword, dagger, bow and arrows. Contemporary documents often speak of the obligation of various manors to provide the king with one or more archers when he makes an expedition against the Welsh."
99 On the rise of the longbow: "To Edward I the longbow owes its original rise into favour: that monarch, like his grandson and great-grandson, was an able soldier, and capable of devising new expedients in war. His long experience in Welsh campaigns led him to introduce a scientific use of archery, much like that which William the Conqueror had employed at Hastings. We are informed that it was first put in practice in a combat fought against Prince Llewellin at Orewin Bridge, and afterwards copied by the Earl of Warwick in another engagement during the year 1295."
99ff "The battle of Falkirk, however (1298), is the first engagement of real importance in which the bowmen, properly supplemented by cavalry, played the leading part." [This battle involved Edward I vs Lowland Scots under Wallace] "The plan succeeded, the shaken parts of the masses were pierced, and the knights, having once got within the pikes, made a fearful slaughter of the enemy. The moral of the fight was evident: cavalry could not beat the Scotch tactics, but archers supplemented by horsemen could easily accomplish the required task. Accordingly, for the next two centuries, the characteristics of the fight of Falkirk were continually repeated whenever the English and Scotch met. Halidon Hill, Neville’s Cross, Homildon, Flodden, were all variations on the same theme. The steady but slowly-moving masses of the Lowland infantry fell a sacrifice to their own persistent bravery, when they staggered on in a vain endeavour to reach the line of archers, flanked by men-at-arms, whom the English commander opposed to them. The bowman might boast with truth that he ‘carried twelve Scots’ lives at his girdle;’ he had but to launch his shaft into the easy target of the great surging mass of pikemen, and it was sure to do execution."
100 [Note also the footnote on p100]: "It is surely unnecessary to call in the aid of treachery--as historians have so frequently done--in order to account for the rout of a force numbered by hundreds, by one numbered by thousands."
101ff On the Battle of Bannockburn, 1314, between Robert the Bruce and Edward II: [It's fascinating to consider how all of the wars that occupied the British in their own islands ultimately served to make them robust in their wars outside of the islands. It's interesting--and a bit disturbing--to consider war through this lens! There are also analogies for this in ancient Greek history as well as in Roman history.] This battle was an exception to the longbow rule, but because the tactics were ill-applied. Edward's "most fatal mistake, however, was to place all his archers in the front line, without any protecting body of horsemen. The arrows were already falling among the Scotch columns before the English cavalry had fully arrived upon the field. Bruce at once saw his opportunity: his small body of men-at-arms was promptly put in motion against the bowmen. A front attack on them would of course have been futile, but a flank charge was rendered possible by the absence of the English squadrons, which ought to have covered the wings. Riding rapidly round the edge of the morass, the Scotch horse fell on the uncovered line, rolled it up from end to end, and wrought fearful damage by their unexpected onset. The archers were so maltreated that they took no further effective part in the battle."
102 "The moral of the day had been that the archery must be adequately supported on its flanks by troops capable of arresting a cavalry charge. The lesson was not thrown away, and at Creçy and Maupertuis the requisite assistance was given, with the happiest of results." [A perfect example here of what I mean: England applied what it learned from military mistakes at home to great effect against foreign enemies.]
102-3 "In France those absurd perversions of the art of war which covered themselves under the name of Chivalry were more omnipotent than in any other country of Europe. The strength of the armies of Philip and John of Valois was composed of a fiery and undisciplined aristocracy, which imagined itself to be the most efficient military force in the world, but was in reality little removed from an armed mob. A system which reproduced on the battlefield the distinctions of feudal society, was considered by the French noble to represent the ideal form of warlike organization. He firmly believed that, since he was infinitely superior to any peasant in the social scale, he must consequently excel him to the same extent in military value. He was, therefore, prone not only to despise all descriptions of infantry, but to regard their appearance on the field against him as a species of insult to his class-pride. ... Pride goes before a fall, and the French noble was now to meet infantry of a quality such as he had never supposed to exist... [The English archer] was by this time almost a professional soldier, being usually not a pressed man, but a volunteer, raised by one of those barons or knights with whom the king contracted for a supply of soldiers. Led to enlist by sheer love of fighting, desire for adventures, or national pride, he possessed a great moral ascendancy over the spiritless hordes who followed the French nobility to the wars."
103ff Use of the English longbow at Crecy, which was in defensive use rather than the offensive use used against weaker forces like in Scotland. Edward III "was soon to find that the charging squadron presented as good a mark for his shaft as the stationary column of infantry. Nothing indeed could be more discomposing to a body of cavalry than a flight of arrows: not only did it lay low a certain proportion of the riders, but it caused such disorder by setting the wounded horses plunging and rearing among their fellows, that it was most effective in checking the impetus of the onset. As the distance grew shorter and the range more easy, the wounds to horse and man became more numerous: the disorder increased, the pace continued to slacken, and at last a limit was reached, beyond which the squadron could not pass."
.png)
Crecy, order of battle
105 "The English had won the day without stirring a foot from their position: the enemy had come to them to be killed. Considerably more than a third of his numbers lay dead in front of the English line, and of these far the greater number had fallen by the arrows of the bowmen."
105ff On the Battle of Poictiers [modern spelling "Poitiers," 1356, another battle in the Hundred Years' War where the French got their asses kicked]. On France's poor tactics here: "Nothing, indeed, could have been more fatal than [France's King] John’s conduct throughout the day. The battle itself was most unnecessary, since the Black Prince could have been starved into surrender in less than a week. If, however, fighting was to take place, it was absolutely insane to form the whole French army into a gigantic wedge--where corps after corps was massed behind the first and narrowest line--and to dash it against the strongest point of the English front."
107 "Confounded at the blow which had been delivered against their old military system, the noblesse of France foreswore the open field, and sullenly shut themselves up in their castles, resolved to confine their operations to petty sieges and incursions. The English might march through the length and breadth of the land, as did the Earl of Lancaster in 1373, but they could no longer draw their opponents out to fight. Intrenched behind walls which the invader had no leisure to attack, the French allowed him to waste his strength in toilsome marches through a deserted country. Opposed as was this form of war to all the precepts of chivalry which bid the good knight to accept every challenge, they were on the whole well suited to the exigencies of the time." [Note the author's offhand references to du Guesclin--once again assuming knowledge a reader of that era would have, but that clearly I lack!--this is Bertrand du Guesclin (c. 1320–1380) a Breton knight and military commander under French King Charles V during the Hundred Years' War who mastered reasonable and effective tactics instead of the foolish bravery of chivalrous warfighting. Per Wikipedia, "he was a master of guerrilla warfare, attrition, and Fabian strategies, which allowed him to break English dominance in France."]
108 "The English were better fitted for winning great battles than for carrying on a series of harassing campaigns. Tactics, not strategy, was their forte, and a succession of petty sieges and inglorious retreats put an end to their ill-judged attempt to hold by force a foreign dominion beyond the Channel."
108ff Unfortunately, the French knights reverted back to their foolish, dated tactics "during the reign of an imbecile king... and made France a fit prey to a new series of English invasions." On Henry V's march to Agincourt: note the author's hilarious comment here on how it was "probable that he had taken the measure of his enemies and gauged their imbecility..." He chose excellent position, while "The Constable of France committed as many faults in drawing up his array, as could have been expected from an average feudal nobleman."
110 The actual battle of Agincourt, 1415: The French cavalry sank into the sodden fields before the British and were picked apart by bowmen from the front as well as concealed in the woods from the sides: "Not one in ten of the horsemen ever reached the line of stakes, and of the infantry not a man struggled on so far."
110-1 "The power of the bow was such that not even if the fields had been dry, could the French army have succeeded in forcing the English line. The true course here, as at Poictiers, would have been to have starved the king, who was living merely on the resources of the neighbourhood, out of his position."
111 On how the French couldn't seem to learn from these disasters: "Such a day as Agincourt might have been expected to break the French noblesse of its love for an obsolete system of tactics. So intimately, however, was the feudal array bound up with the feudal scheme of society, that it yet remained the ideal order of battle. Three bloody defeats, Crevant, Verneuil, and the ‘Day of the Herrings,’ were the consequences of a fanatical adherence to the old method of fighting. On each of those occasions the French columns, sometimes composed of horsemen, sometimes of dismounted knights, made a desperate attempt to break an English line of archers by a front attack, and on each occasion they were driven back in utter rout."
111 "It was not till the conduct of the war fell into the hands of professional soldiers like Xaintrailles, La Hire, and Dunois, that these insane tactics were discarded. Their abandonment, however, was only the first step towards success for the French. The position of the country was infinitely worse than it had been in the days of Du Guesclin, since the greater part of the districts north of the Loire were not only occupied by the English, but had resigned themselves to their fate, and showed no desire to join the national party."
111-2 "It is on this ground that we must base the importance of the influence of the Maid of Orleans [here Oman means Jeanne d'Arc]. Her successes represent, not a new tactical system, but the awakening of a popular enthusiasm which was to make the further stay of the English in France impossible. The smaller country could not hold down the larger, unless the population of the latter were supine; when they ceased to be so, the undertaking, in spite of all military superiority, became impossible."
112 Examples here in the 15th century where the French got religion and stopped attacking well positioned English archers, instead waiting to attack them when they were on the march or when their ranks were unformed. "Patay is a fair example of a conflict of this description; the battle was lost because Talbot when attacked was not immediately ready."
113ff On the book Reductione Normanniae by Robert Blondel, which gives "a full account of the disastrous field of Formigny, the last battle but one fought by the English in their attempt to hold down their dominion beyond the Channel. The narrative is most instructive, as explaining the changes of fortune during the later years of the Great War."
116 "The moral of Formigny was evident: an unintelligent application of the defensive tactics of Edward III and Henry V could only lead to disaster, when the French had improved in military skill, and were no longer accustomed to make gross blunders at every engagement. Unless some new method of dealing with the superior numbers and cautious manœuvres of the disciplined compagnies d’ordonnance of Charles VII could be devised, the English were foredoomed by their numerical inferiority to defeat. It was probably a perception of this fact which induced the great Talbot to discard his old tactics, and employ at his last fight a method of attack totally unlike that practised in the rest of the Hundred Years’ War. The accounts of the battle of Chatillon recall the warfare of the Swiss rather than of the English armies. That engagement was a desperate attempt of a column of dismounted men-at-arms and billmen, flanked by archers, to storm an intrenched camp protected by artillery. The English, like the Swiss at Bicocca, found the task too hard for them, and only increased the disaster by their gallant persistence in attempting to accomplish the impossible."
116-7 "The expulsion of the English from their continental possessions had no permanent effect in discrediting the power of the bow. The weapon still retained its supremacy as a missile over the clumsy arbalest [mechanical crossbow] with its complicated array of wheels and levers. It was hardly less superior to the newly-invented hand-guns and arquebuses, which did not attain to any great degree of efficiency before the end of the century."
117 On the War of the Roses and the dearth of information about the various engagements of this civil war: "Not in one single instance can we reconstruct the exact array of a Yorkist or a Lancastrian army... The engagements show no stereotyped similarity of incident, such as would have resulted from a general adherence to a single form of attack or defence. Each combat had its own individuality, resulting from the particular tactics employed in it. The fierce street-fight which is known as the first battle of St. Albans, has nothing in common with the irregular skirmishing of Hedgeley Moor. The stormings of the fortified positions of Northampton and Tewkesbury bear no resemblance to the pitched battles of Towton and Barnet. The superiority of tactics which won Bloreheath contrasts with the superiority of armament which won Edgecot Field."
118ff On the generalship of King Edward IV: "Already a skillful commander in his nineteenth year" executing decisive actions like rapid marches, etc., "he was himself at the first blast of the trumpet" but careless on the throne. "Nor was his genius less marked in his last great military success, the campaign of Barnet and Tewkesbury."
119ff On the battle of Tewkesbury, 1471: Edward marches his men 32 miles in a day with no halting for a meal and through a region with little water. Edward used cannon to break down the Lancastrian line, then thrust his main-battle [the central core of his army] into them, driving the Lancastrians into disorder and surrender. "It will at once be observed that the king’s tactics on this occasion were precisely those which had won for William the Norman the field of Senlac. He repeated the experiment, merely substituting artillery for archery, and put his enemy in a position where he had either to fall back or to charge in order to escape the Yorkist missiles."
120ff Other examples of good generalship in the War of the Roses: the Earl of Salisbury who continually retreated until his foe was careless, then suddenly attacked while enemy forces were divided by a stream "and inflicted two crushing blows on the two isolated halves of the Lancastrian army." Also on Falconbridge [this is Thomas Neville, 1429-1471], who "gave in the great battle of the ensuing day an example of the kind of tactical expedients which sufficed to decide the day, when both armies were employing the same great weapon. A snow-storm rendered the opposing lines only partially visible to each other: he therefore ordered his men to advance barely within extreme range, and let fly a volley of the light and far-reaching flight-arrows, after which he halted. The Lancastrians, finding the shafts falling among them, drew the natural conclusion that their enemies were well within range, and answered with a continuous discharge of their heavier sheaf-arrows, which fell short of the Yorkists by sixty yards. Half an hour of this work well-nigh exhausted their store of missiles, so that the billmen and men-of-arms of Warwick and King Edward were then able to advance without receiving any appreciable damage from the Lancastrian archery. A stratagem like this could only be used when the adversaries were perfectly conversant with each other’s armament and methods of war."
122 On cannon: "Throughout the whole of the war artillery was in common use by both parties. Its employment was decisive at the fights of Tewkesbury and 'Lose-coat Field.' We also hear of it at Barnet and Northampton, as also in the sieges of the Northern fortresses in 1462–63. Its efficiency was recognised far more than that of smaller fire-arms, of which we find very scant mention."
122-3 "The direct influence of English methods of warfare on the general current of European military science ends with the final loss of dominion in France in the years 1450–53. From that period the occasions of contact which had once been so frequent become rare and unimportant. The Wars of the Roses kept the English soldier at home, and after their end the pacific policy of Henry VII tended to the same result."
Chapter VII: Conclusion
124 "We have now discussed at length the two systems of tactics which played the chief part in revolutionising the Art of War in Europe. The one has been traced from Morgarten to Bicocca, the other from Falkirk to Formigny, and it has been shown how the ascendancy of each was at last checked by the development of new forms of military efficiency among those against whom it was directed. While ascribing to the pikemen of Switzerland and the English archery the chief part in the overthrow of feudal cavalry, and to no small extent in that of feudalism itself, we must not forget that the same work was simultaneously being wrought out by other methods in other quarters of Europe."
124ff On the great Hussite wars of the first half of the fifteenth century; these were social and religious "convulsions" in Bohemia, evicting the Germans; "All Bohemia was ready to march, but still it was not apparent how the overwhelming strength of Germany was to be met." On John Zisca, "a man of genius" who armed and utilized a peasant army: developing a "goliaigorod," a portable barricade, essentially a "moving fortress" made of military wagons chained to one another, impregnable to a cavalry charge. "The onset of the German horseman being the chief thing which the Hussites had to dread, the battle was half won when a method of resisting it had been devised." Zisca trained his wagon men well to arrange them in any shape needed; they could be used as defense but also in an attack behind which missiles and pikes could be used. "From the first Zisca set himself to introduce fire-arms among the Bohemians: at length nearly a third of them were armed with 'hand-guns,' while a strong train of artillery accompanied every force."
127 "The only real danger was from artillery fire, which might shatter the line of carts: but the Hussites were themselves so well provided with cannon that they could usually silence the opposing batteries... were the records of the Hussite victories not before us, we should have hesitated to believe that the middle ages could have produced a system whose success depended so entirely on that power of orderly movement which is usually claimed as the peculiar characteristic of modern armies."
127 On Hussite conscription: "A conscription law of the most sweeping kind, which made every man a soldier, was thus in force, and it becomes possible to understand the large numbers of the armies put into the field by a state of no great extent."
127-8 "Zisca’s first victories were to his enemies so unexpected and so marvelous, that they inspired a feeling of consternation. The disproportion of numbers and the inexperience of the Hussites being taken into consideration, they were indeed surprising. But instead of abandoning their stereotyped feudal tactics, to whose inability to cope with any new form of military efficiency the defeats were really due, the Germans merely tried to raise larger armies, and sent them to incur the same fate as the first host which Sigismund had led against Prague."
128 "Bands only a few thousand strong sallied forth from the natural fortress formed by the Bohemian mountains, and wasted Bavaria, Meissen, Thuringia, and Silesia, almost without hindrance. They returned in safety, their war-wagons laden with the spoil of Eastern Germany, and leaving a broad track of desolation behind them. Long after Zisca’s death the prestige of his tactics remained undiminished, and his successors were able to accomplish feats of war which would have appeared incredible in the first years of the war."
128ff "When at last the defeat of the Taborites took place, it resulted from the dissensions of the Bohemians themselves, not from the increased efficiency of their enemies. The battle of Lipan, where Procopius fell and the extreme party were crushed, was a victory won not by the Germans, but by the more moderate sections of the Tzech[sic] nation." The Czechs used their own tactics against their own people, emerging from behind their wagons expecting their foes to run like the Germans did, but in this battle the retreating masses turned to fight while a cavalry reserve rode in as well. "Thus three-quarters of the Taborite army were caught and surrounded in the plain, where they were cut to pieces by the superior numbers of the enemy. Only the few thousands who had remained behind within the wagon-fortress succeeded in escaping. Thus was demonstrated the incompleteness for military purposes of a system which had been devised as a political necessity, not as an infallible recipe for victory."
129 "The moral of the fight of Lipan was indeed the same as the moral of the fight of Hastings. Purely defensive tactics are hopeless when opposed by a commander of ability and resource, who is provided with steady troops. If the German princes had been generals and the German troops well-disciplined, the careers of Zisca and Procopius would have been impossible. Bad strategy and panic combined to make the Hussites seem invincible. When, however, they were met by rational tactics they were found to be no less liable to the logic of war than other men."
129-30 On the success of the Turkish Janissaries: "Long before the flails and hand-guns of Zisca’s infantry had turned to rout the chivalry of Germany, another body of foot-soldiers had won the respect of Eastern Europe. On the battlefields of the Balkan Peninsula the Slav and the Magyar had learned to dread the slave-soldiery of the Ottoman Sultans... The Janissaries of Murad and Bayezid had stood firm before desperate cavalry charges, and beaten them off with loss. It is curious to recognize in the East the tactics which had won the battles of Creçy and Agincourt."
130 "The Janissaries owed their successes to precisely the same causes as the English archer. Their great weapon was the bow, not indeed the long-bow of the West, but nevertheless a very efficient arm. Still more notable is it that they carried the stakes which formed part of the equipment of the English bowman, and planted them before their line whenever an assault by cavalry was expected. [It's fascinating to see an example of a type of parallel evolution in military technology here, developing in places so far apart.] Again and again--notably at Nicopolis and Varna--do we hear of the impetuous charge which had ridden down the rest of the Turkish array, failing at last before the ‘palisade’ of the Janissaries, and the deadly fire of arrows from behind it."
131 "Attacked in its own home the Hungarian, perhaps even the Servian[sic], state could in the fourteenth century put into the field armies equal in numbers and individually superior to the Ottoman horsemen. But the Servian and the Hungarian, like the Persian and the Mameluke, did not possess any solid and trustworthy body of infantry. To face the disciplined array of the Janissaries they had only the chaotic and half-armed hordes of the national levy. To this we must ascribe the splendid successes of the Sultans: however the tide of battle might fluctuate, the Janissaries would stand like a rock behind their stakes, and it was almost unknown that they should be broken. Again and again they saved the fortune of the day: at those few fights where they could not, they at least died in their ranks, and saved the honour of their corps. At the disaster of Angora they continued to struggle long after the rest of the Turkish army had dispersed, and were at last exterminated rather than beaten. No steadier troops could have been found in any part of Europe."
131-2 On the second battle of Kossova, 1448, between the Ottoman Janissaries and a Hungarian-led Crusader army: "The tactical meaning of the engagement was plain: good infantry could make a long resistance to the Ottoman arms, even if they could not secure the victory. The lesson however was not fully realized, and it was not till the military revolution of the sixteenth century that infantry was destined to take the prominent part in withstanding the Ottoman."
133 on the Janissaries/Turks recognizing and adopting firearms early on, replacing their arbalests/crossbows. Also they adopted artillery early on as well: "The capture of Constantinople by Mahomet II was probably the first event of supreme importance whose result was determined by the power of artillery. The lighter guns of previous years had never accomplished any feat comparable in its results to that which was achieved by the siege-train of the Conqueror."
133 "The ascendency of the Turkish arms was finally terminated by the conjunction of several causes. Of these the chief was the rise in central Europe of standing armies composed for the most part of disciplined infantry. But it is no less undoubted that much was due to the fact that the Ottomans after the reign of Soliman fell behind their contemporaries in readiness to keep up with the advance of military skill, a change which may be connected with the gradual transformation of the Janissaries from a corps into a caste." [Google AI, when asked about this, cites a transformation of the Janissaries from an elite, slave-soldier corps into a privileged, hereditary caste over the 16th to the 19th centuries, where Janissaries were permitted to marry, engage in commerce, and even having political power over the Sultans. This created "a bloated, corrupt, and politically entrenched ruling class that resisted modernization until their brutal elimination in 1826."]
134 "All the systems of real weight and consideration have now been discussed. In the overthrow of the supremacy of feudal cavalry the tactics of the shock and the tactics of the missile had each played their part: which had been the more effective it would be hard to say. Between them however the task had been successfully accomplished. The military strength of that system which had embraced all Europe in its cramping fetters, had been shattered to atoms. Warlike efficiency was the attribute no longer of a class but of whole nations; and war had ceased to be an occupation in which feudal chivalry found its pleasure, and the rest of society its ruin. ...The middle ages were at last over, and the stirring and scientific spirit of the modern world was working a transformation in military matters, which was to make the methods of mediæval war seem even further removed from the strategy of our own century, than are the operations of the ancients in the great days of Greece and Rome."
Vocab:
gesith: historical term for a trusted attendant or armed warrior in the personal retinue of an Anglo-Saxon king or nobleman
vedette: a mounted sentry positioned beyond an army's outposts to observe movements of the enemy
scutage: (in a feudal society) money paid by a vassal to his lord in lieu of military service
moirarch: a Byzantine military title denoting the commander of a moira (division/brigade), typically consisting of 2,000 to 3,000 soldiers
poliorcetics: the ancient and medieval art of conducting or resisting sieges [Greek, lit. "things related to sieges")
To Read:
Tacitus: Annals
Vegetius: Epitoma Rei Militaris [Epitome of Military Strategy]
Procopius: The Secret History
Procopius: The History of the Wars
Geoff Mortimer: Wallenstein: The Enigma of the Thirty Years War
***Friedrich Schiller: Wallenstein: A Historical Drama in Three Parts (trans. Charles E. Passage)
Agathias: The Histories
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Anna Comnena: Life of Alexius (The Alexiad)
Leo VI the Wise: Tactica
Digenes: Akrita [epic poem] (trans John Mavrogordato)
Blaise de Monluc: Commentaries (trans. Charles Cotton)
Niccolo Machiavelli: Art of War
John Foster Kirk: History of Charles the Bold
***Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi: History of the Italian Republics in the Middle Ages
Robert Blondel: Reductione Normanniae [Narratives Of The Expulsion Of The English From Normandy, 1449-1450]
Ernest Denis: Hus and the Hussite Wars, 1419-1434