Medieval Warfare

Posts about medieval warfare methods, techniques, and technology

Book Review: Knights of Jerusalem: The Crusading Order of Hospitallers 1100–1565 (World of the Warrior) by David Nicolle

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Knights of Jerusalem is not the book you would expect to read about one of the Crusading orders, it is not a list and description of battles the order fought, with blow by blow accounts of the most famous of these battles such as the Horns of Hattin or the Great Siege of Malta.  This is a history of how the order came into existence and how it operated and even continues to operate almost 1,000 years later when so many of its fellow orders in the Church Militant have disappeared.  The book focuses on the history of the order from its founding until the end of the Crusading era … More after the Jump…

St Crispin’s Day

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601 years ago today on 25 October 1415, the original band of brothers met the French army on the field of battle near Agincourt on northern France and gave them such a drubbing that the cheers of that victory have echoed down through the years.  On that day a hungry, bedraggled, cold, and wet English army met a superior French force and virtually destroyed it.  Those in England who lay a-bed did indeed come to think themselves accursed that they were not there.  The eve of the battle is remembered by the Bard himself in Act IV, Scene 3 of Henry V in what has become one of the most … More after the Jump…

Book Review: The Battle of Agincourt edited by Anne Curry & Malcolm Mercer

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author and/or publisher. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] October, 2015 was the 650th anniversary of the French defeat at Agincourt during the Hundred Year’s War. The Battle of Agincourt is a new volume released by the Royal Armories in commemoration of the battle featuring all new scholarship and the latest research on the battle and the campaign of which it was a part. First as always, some details about the book itself. This is a coffee table sized book with 273 pages of text separated into 3 parts … More after the Jump…

The Hattin Campaign and the Triumph of Saladin in 1187

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Medieval politics make modern politics look like child’s play.  If any act from medieval times highlights this it is the Hattin Campaign of 1187 in which the entire military might of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem was destroyed because the Christians themselves collectively acted stupidly due to internal political factors in the face of an existential external threat.  The final campaign of the Kingdom of Jerusalem is best seen as an object lesson of what happens when you let internal politics direct external actions. In 1186 Guy de Lusignan became king of Jerusalem through his wife Sibylla after the death of Baldwin V while in his minority.  The coronation was … More after the Jump…

Book Review: The Medieval Fortress by J.E. & H.W. Kaufmann

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The Medieval Fortress: Castles, Forts, And Walled Cities Of The Middle Ages is a good study of the art and methods of fortifications and castles built in Eastern and Western Europe during the Middle Ages from the fall of Rome to the early modern period. The book is right around 300 pages long and includes many illustrations.  It also includes a glossary, which is very helpful to those that are not familiar with the technical terms for elements of castles and fortifications. It is separated into 5 chapters, the first deals with the elements of fortification, the next three are chronological about the development of castles and the final chapter covers … More after the Jump…

The Significance of The Northern Crusades in History

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Modern historians tend to overlook economic factors when investigating historical motivations. The first Northern Crusade (The Wendish Crusade), as commonly narrated, was a branch of the Second Crusade, undertaken on behalf of St. Bernard de Clairvaux’s furious pulpit outreach to retake the holy land. Ideological motivation is difficult to overlook when analyzing historical empires: the majority of empires and religions are so closely intertwined that it is almost impossible to separate them. This is true of Roman Catholicism no less than for the Vedic seers who wrote the Rig Veda, the Achaemenids who patronized Zoroastrianism, and the cult of Quetzalcoatl in Aztec Mexico. Early Islam and Maccabean Judaism are virtually … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Castles and Fortified Cities of Medieval Europe: An Illustrated History by Jean-Denis G. G. Lepage

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Castles and Fortified Cities of Medieval Europe: An Illustrated History is a very interesting book.  I picked it up because we had a three hour bus ride to get to my son’s football game and my wife was using my Kindle.  I am certainly glad I did. This is a well written 330 page book.  It includes an index and bibliography, both unfortunately short.  The book is organized chronologically in five chapters covering fortification and castles from the 5th to the 16th century A.D.  Each chapter is further subdivided geographically and covers both eastern and Western Europe and the Middle East. There are many illustrations, both ground plans and sketches that help to illuminate the … More after the Jump…

How to Build and Fire a Medieval Trebuchet

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Who would not want to build their own Trebuchet and rain down destruction on various targets in their backyard? I know I did. Luckily, I got a Trebuchet kit from my wife for Christmas. The below video is the result of that and one I put together for a class I am currently taking on Desktop Video Production. The assignment was to make a five minute video on a topic of our choice. It had to have x-number of transitions, background music, narration and video effects. That is why there are so many crazy transitions in the video. Believe me, shooting it is way more fun that watching me shoot it. That doesn’t bother me because … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Anatomy of the Castle by John Gibson

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Anatomy of the Castle by John Gibson is perhaps the best book describing Castles aimed at the general reader that I have ever read.  The author manages to make the somewhat technical and dry language of describing castles and their construction lovely and entertaining. It is a coffee table sized book that is jam packed with beautiful color photos of castles from all over Europe and the Middle East.  There are 200 pages with a glossary, index, and bibliography.  It is divided into 6 chronological chapters with a lengthy introduction that describes the development of the art of fortification up to the development of the first castles.  He also includes a chapter describing what living in a castle must have truly been like.  The glossary is … More after the Jump…

War and the Modern Mind

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I have been pondering why modern Westernized man has such a problem successfully waging war for a few days and had a breakthrough recently.  Before we can really get to that, a few brief thoughts are in order. First, what is war?  Most people would probably agree that war is armed conflict between states, at least that is the classical definition.  I would add the modern caveat of armed conflict with what are euphemistically called non-state actors (IRA, AL-Qaeda, FARC, etc.).  These two definitions are good enough for my current purposes although I don’t think they really cover everything that we should or could call war. Second, what constitutes victory?  … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Holy Wars: 3000 Years of Battles in the Holy Land by Gary Rashba

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HOLY WARS: 3000 Years of Battles in the Holy Land is one of the better primers about conflict in the Holy Land to appear within the last few years.   It consists of 17 chapters covering the initial Israelite conquest of Canaan in 1400 B.C. to the Israeli offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in 1982.   The more recent Israeli-Palestinian conflict is covered in the epilogue.   The work is 288 pages and includes extensive notes at the end of each chapter as well as a well sourced bibliography and index.   The Kindle edition, which is what I have, was mostly free of editing errors and the only … More after the Jump…

Burg Waldeck in Waldeck, Germany

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Below is a series of photos I took recently when my family and I visited the castle ruins of Burg Waldeck in Waldeck, Germany.   The top photo is a screen shot from Google Earth showing the layout of the castle as it appears today. Burg Waldeck is a typical Keep and Bailey type castle.   There is a rounded keep at the center of the complex with a small courtyard and various outbuildings.   It is surrounded by a curtain wall that is currently about 10-15 foot high with rounded turrets defending the most vulnerable parts of the wall.   It sits on top of fairly steep hill that … More after the Jump…

Medieval Swordsmanship

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Found a really interesting website today about a society aiming to recreate medieval and renaissance sword-fighting methods based on the instructions produced during the period.   It is the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts.   They have a fairly extensive website with plenty of interesting discussion of medieval fighting styles.   They also rightly point out that what we see in movies is about as far removed from reality as The Hobbit.   Very interesting site and worth checking out.

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