Clauss, Martin Militärgeschichte des Mittelalters

This military history of the Middle Ages provides an overview of the period from about 500 to 1500. It illuminates a world in which war was omnipresent: no empire or social group was spared it permanently or in the long term; periods of peace lasting for centuries - as in the Italic core area of the ancient Imperium Romanum - were unknown in the Middle Ages. War shaped the social structure of this epoch from the beginnings of the so-called army kingship; the medieval nobility always remained bound to war and the knightly "bellatores" remained the most influential group in warfare and society.

Who was involved in warfare and how, how recruitment mechanisms functioned, what strategies, tactics and weaponry were used and what the situation was with regard to the victims of war are discussed in this volume, as are questions of religious, social and cultural history that arise in the context of the military history of the Middle Ages. The history of the military in the Middle Ages is presented in this volume in a vivid and precise, exciting and comprehensive way. Readers can expect a large panorama - from the Merovingians to the conquest of Constantinople, from the Crusades to the Hundred Years' War, from shield and sword to the invention of gunpowder, the decline of chivalric culture and the rise of the Landsknechtheere.