From A.D. 545 to 546, Totila, the king of the Ostrogoths, besieged the city of Rome.¹ The general in charge of the Byzantine garrison in Rome was Bessas, himself a Goth born in Thrace. The historian Procopius of Caesarea tells us that Bessas was lethargic in the defense of Rome and, more than that, used his powers as a general to extort money from the populace by selling the scarce grain within the city at enormously inflated prices. When Rome fell to Totila in 546, Bessas fled the city. The fall of Rome just six years after the general Belisarius...

For more than a century, specialists in medieval German history have labored diligently to establish a Sonderweg or special route for the history of the early medieval German kingdom.¹ These efforts have focused, in their initial phase, on distinguishing and distancing the institutions of the Saxon monarchy (919–1024) in Francia orientalis from those of the French kingdom, i.e., Francia occidentalis. While often recognizing continuity between Carolingian institutions in the West into the tenth century and beyond, specialists in the history of the German lands have tried either to deny or to diminish the supposed role of continuity and even...

The Lay of the Cid is, without doubt, the most important epic poem of Spanish medieval literature.¹ As is well known, the poem narrates the heroic deeds of the Castilian nobleman, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, also known as El Cid Campeador (Campi Doctor in Latin sources). During his exile from Castile to Muslim territory the Cid led a small army formed by his vassals and friends, a force which was involved in numerous military engagements. Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar’s exploits took place between the end of the eleventh century and the beginning of the twelfth. The poem, however, was composed...

The battle of Salado (1340) remains one of the most compelling episodes of Iberian medieval military history. This is unsurprising when one considers that it appears to have everything to fire the imagination – an encounter between armies led by charismatic and powerful rulers on both sides, a moment in which the fate of the Reconquest appeared to hang in the balance, and a resounding Christian victory over the Muslims – and also the tools to analyze it – detailed accounts in the Christian and Arabic chronicles¹ and ample documentary sources to place it in context. In fact, from classic...

I would like to begin my talk today with sincere thanks to De Re Militari and the Society for Military History, and in particular to Kelly DeVries, for inviting me to give this year’s Journal of Medieval Military History Lecture. This series of lectures and the other military history sessions at Kalamazoo have for years brought together on a regular basis some of the most active medieval military historians, who constitute an enthusiastic and very discerning audience. I am honored and happy to have this opportunity to speak to such a group.

Although I spent my early years as a...

The anti-Ottoman campaigns of 1442 mark a turning point in the career of one of East-Central Europe’s most celebrated military leaders – John Hunyadi. In the course of the year Hunyadi would wage a total of four victorious campaigns against the Ottomans, two of which were decisive and celebrated throughout Christendom. His success was likewise the catalyst for two major crusade expeditions that followed in 1443 and 1444. For the Ottomans, they were the first major military defeats at the hands of a Christian army in almost four generations. They had the effect of reversing a hitherto aggressive Ottoman policy...

The origin of the Guelders wars lay in a loan of 300,000 gold guilders that Arnold, duke of Guelders, borrowed from Charles the Bold of Burgundy in 1471, and for which he pledged the title to his duchy as security. Arnold failed to repay the loan and so, when he died in 1473, Charles the Bold foreclosed and assumed the title and rights to the duchy. First Arnold’s son Adolf, and then his grandson Charles of Guelders (1467–1538) took up the cause of recovering the duchy by military means from Charles the Bold’s Burgundian-Habsburg heirs, Emperor Maximilian I (1459–...

Edward I’s wars have yielded a splendid range of documentary evidence. Accounts enable the composition of armies to be studied in remarkable detail. Cavalry retinues can be reconstructed, and infantry numbers and desertion rates calculated. Heraldic lists recorded those present on campaigns, and they can be compared with pay accounts, to demonstrate the scale of unpaid service. The quantities of food supplies are listed in detail; even the calorific value of the daily rations provided for soldiers on garrison duty can be worked out. In contrast, the chronicles describing the king’s wars against the Welsh, the French and the Scots...