Journal of Medieval Military History: Volume XXII - by Kelly DeVries & John France & Clifford J Rogers (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The articles in volume 22 of the Journal of Medieval Military History range widely, not only in chronology but also in geography and approach. Sven Ekdahl looks at the big picture of the role of Swedish castles in the north; L. J. Andrew Villalon focuses on the very particular and culturally significant rewards given by the Catholic Kings to two noble families to celebrate minor victories on the borders of Granada in the far south. Subjects include fighting at the tactical level (the unexpectedly substantial tradition of mounted archery in England, the Low Countries and France, revealed by Sanders Goevarts), the operational level (Emperor Louis II's logistics in Italy, treated by Elijah T. Wallace), and the strategic level (King John's employment of naval power, analyzed by Adam M. McNeil). Vladimir Aleksic and Damnjan Prlinčevic consider military, political, geographical, demographic, and economic factors to contextualize the military history of the rich mining town of Novo Brdo in Serbia as it faced the rising tide of Ottoman conquest in the last century of the Middle Ages. Three contributions draw on the rich resources of the English royal archives to illuminate the material and technological tools of medieval warfare: individual weapons (most significantly both longbows and short bows) described with exceptional detail in a murder case of 1315 (Clifford J. Rogers); the horses of Henry V in the Agincourt campaign of 1415 (Gary P. Baker); and the military equipment stored at Dover Castle as described in inventories dating from 1320 to 1437 (Dan Spencer).