Medieval Warfare: History of the Art of War, Volume III

by Hans Delbrück

Book Overview

From the eighth century through the Middle Ages feudalism determined the nature of European warfare. Medieval Warfare begins in the time of Charlemagne, who maintained a military system of freemen and of vassals bound to him in service for lands granted in fief. These pages are crowded with recreations of famous events like the Battle of Hastings and movements like the Crusades; with the brightest flowers of knighthood, and with the mercenary...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803265859
• ISBN13: 9780803265851
• Release Date: December 1990
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 712 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Disappointing

It is in this volume that Delbruck's sense of racial superiority shows the most. Although the longest volume in the work it deals almost exclusively with warfare among medieval Germans. He virtually ignores the Crusades, the Reconquista, the Hundred Years War, and Manzikert. His argument against including the Crusades is that they did not do anything to change warfare in Europe, but later mentions that the English experiences in Syria led to the development of the long-bow. This definitely should have been explored more. The best move Delbruck could have made to improve this volume would have been to split it into two books. Had he done that he could have dealt with the Hundred Years War in the same way that he dealt with the Punic Wars, gone into more detail about the Crusades, explored the Reconquista and the Norman migrations, and given the Byzantine Empire the focus it deserves.Delbruck's analysis of the Swiss (whom he constantly refers to as "German") contribution to modern warfare is amazing, however, and makes the work worth reading.

A Refreshingly Different Look at Medieval Warfare

Most historians speak of the Middle Ages as a period when cavalry had the ascendancy over infantry. Delbruk argues that there was no such thing as cavalry during the Middle Ages, and until the coming of the Swiss phalanx, not much in the way of infantry. Simply putting an armed man on horseback doesn't make him a cavalryman any more than handing a weapon to a peasant makes him an infantryman. Cavalry was a disciplined group of horsemen fighting as a unit. Mounted knights were an undisciplined group of horsemen fighting as individuals. A troop of cavalry should be able to defeat an equal number of knights, but a single knight defeats a single cavalryman. For a good description of what the military aspect of mounted knighthood was all about, read Delbruk's description of the encounter between two knightly armies at Pillenreuth. That alone is worth the price of the book.Delbruk doesn't stop with a description of the military art of knighthood. He studies every aspect of medival warfare, drawing insightful and iconoclastic conclusions.