This richly illustrated book explores over seven hundred years of European warfare, from the time of Charlemagne to the end of the middle ages (c.1500). The period covered has a distinctive character in military history. It was an age when organization for war was integral to social structure, when the secular aristocrat was by necessity also a warrior, and whose culture was profoundly influenced by martial ideas.
Twelve scholars, experts in their own fields, have contributed to this finely illustrated book. It is divided into two parts. Part I seeks to explore the experience of war viewed chronologically with separate chapters on, for instance, the Viking age, on the wars and expansion of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, on the Crusades and on the great Hundred Years War between England and France. The chapters in Part II trace thematically the principal developments in the art of warfare; in fortification and siege craft; in the role of armoured cavalrymen; in the employment of mercenary forces; the advent of gunpowder artillery; and of new skills in navigation and shipbuilding. In both parts of the book, the overall aim has been to offer the general reader an impression, not just of the where and the when of great confrontations, but above all of the social experience of warfare in the middle ages, and of the impact of its demands on human resources and human endurance.
Chapter 1. Introduction: Warfare and the Middle Ages
Chapter 2. Carolingian and Ottoman Warfare
Chapter 4. An Age of Expansion, c.1020–1204
Chapter 5. Warfare in the Latin East
Chapter 6. European Warfare, c.1200–1320
Chapter 7. The Age of the Hundred Years War
Chapter 8. Fortifications and Sieges in Western Europe, c.800–1450
Chapter 9. Arms, Armour, and Horses
Chapter 11. Naval Warfare after the Viking Age, c.1100–1500
Chapter 12. War and the Non-Combatant in the Middle Ages
Chapter 13. The Changing Scene: Guns, Gunpowder, and Permanent Armies
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF IMPORTANT DATES AND EVENTS