A concise and entertaining explanation of how other accounts, and popular culture such as films, have misrepresented medieval warfare. We don't know how medieval soldiers fought. Did they just walk forward in their armor smashing each other with their maces and poleaxes for hours on end, as depicted on film and in programs such as Game of Thrones? They could not have done so. It is impossible to fight in such a manner for more than several minutes as exhaustion becomes a preventative factor. Indeed, we know more of how the Roman and Greek armies fought than we do of the 1300 to 1550 period. So how did medieval soldiers in the War of the Roses, and in the infantry sections of battles such as Agincourt and Towton, carry out their grim work? Medieval Military Combat shows, for the first time, the techniques of such battles. It also breaks new ground in establishing medieval battle numbers as highly exaggerated, and that we need to look again at the accounts of actions such as the famous Battle of Towton, which this work uses as a basic for its overall study.

This books shows for the first time the battle techniques of the medieval period and reexamines the sources for battle numbers.

Describes the fighting techniques of soldiers in Europe and the Near East in an age before the widespread use of gunpowder.

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.

Originally published in Great Britain in 2000 by Greenhill Books; reprinted in this format in 2014 by Frontline Books.

Hono sapiens, homo pugnans, and so it has been since the beginning of recorded history. In the Middle Ages, especially, armed conflict and the military life were so much a part of the political and cultural development that a general account of this period is, in large measure, a description of how men went to war.

This awesomely illustrated and factual account sheds light on medieval warfare, as well as their weapons, armor, siege engines, and much more.