Part of the 'Soldiers' Lives Through History' series, this book examines all aspects of soldiers' lives, including weaponry, clothing, medicine, transport and more. Illustrations, maps, chronologies, and bibliographies provide added resources.

Part of the 'Soldiers' Lives Through History' series, this book vividly brings to life the soldier in the Middle Ages, from Scotland to Portugal, and the Mediterranean to the Baltic. All aspects of soldiers' lifes, including weaponry, clothing, medicine, transport, and more, are examined.

Once warfare became established in ancient civilizations, it's hard to find any other social institution that developed as quickly. In less than a thousand years, humans brought forth the sword, sling, dagger, mace, bronze and copper weapons, and fortified towns. The next thousand years saw the emergence of iron weapons, the chariot, the standing professional army, military academies, general staffs, military training, permanent arms industries, written texts on tactics, military procurement, logistics systems, conscription, and military pay. By 2,000 B.C.E., war was an important institution in almost all major cultures of the world. This book shows readers how soldiers were recruited, outfitted, how they fought, and how they were cared for when injured or when they died. It covers soldiers in major civilizations from about 4000 B.C.E. to about 450 C.E. Topics are discussed cross-culturally, drawing examples from several of the cultures, armies, and time periods within each chapter in order to provide the reader with as comprehensive an understanding as possible and to avoid the usual Western-centric perspective too common in analyses of ancient warfare.

Examines the fascinating role of medicine in ancient military cultures; Shows how the ancients understood the body, patched up their warriors, and sent them back into battle; Reveals medical secrets lost during the Dark Ages; Explores how ancient civilizations' technologies have influenced modern medical practices

The Roman army was the greatest fighting machine the ancient world produced. The Roman Empire depended on soldiers not just to win its wars, defend its frontiers and control the seas but also to act as the engine of the state. Roman legionaries and auxiliaries came from across the Roman world and beyond. They served as tax collectors, policemen, surveyors, civil engineers and, if they survived, in retirement as civic worthies, craftsmen and politicians. Some even rose to become emperors. Gladius takes the reader right into the heart of what it meant to be a part of the Roman army through the words of Roman historians, and those of the men themselves through their religious dedications, tombstones, and even private letters and graffiti. Guy de la Bedoyere throws open a window on how the men, their wives and their children lived, from bleak frontier garrisons to guarding the emperor in Rome, enjoying a ringside seat to history fighting the emperors' wars, mutinying over pay, marching in triumphs, throwing their weight around in city streets, and enjoying esteem in honorable retirement.

Explains how the discipline, courage, and preparation of the Roman soldier combined with the strategies and tactics of his commander and the organization of the military establishment resulted in the conquest of many lands for the Roman Empire.

The most dangerous arms in the world are those of horse and lance, because there is no means of stopping them, wrote a 15th-century commander, Jean de Bueil. From the fall of the Roman Empire to the end of the 15th century, the men (and a few women in disguise) who reported for military service or who led other men, scouted and skirmished, plundered and burned. If they did not slaughter the peasants they met, they took them prisoner to be sold as slaves or ransomed at heavy cost. It was a brutal time. Rogers illuminates the history of medieval soldiers in wartime and in peacetime, describing the lives of those who attacked, and those who defended, the fortified castles, towns, and lands of Europe and beyond in the Middle Age.