В книге, написанной академическими специалистами, дан краткий обзор войн эпохи средневековья. /The dozen chapters of Medieval Warfare are written by academic specialists, but it is an overview aimed at students and the general public: it lacks references, offering instead a further reading section with around a dozen titles for each chapter. The chapters themselves are clear and concise; they cover their topics thoroughly and without assuming an intimate knowledge of the period, but skillful use of detail gives them bite and depth.
This finely 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, each expert in his own field, have contributed to this survey. 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, the wars and expansion of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Crusades, and 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 crafts; 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 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.
Название: Medieval Warfare. A History
Автор: Maurice Keen
Издательство: Oxford University Press
Год издания: 1999
Страниц: 178
Язык: english
Формат: pdf
Размер: 94,7 Мб
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