medieval warfare Archives

medieval warfare

Ambush at Morgarten

By Victor Kamenir

The logs and boulders came tumbling downhill, gaining speed before they reached the bottom of the hillsides in the mountain pass. Read more

medieval warfare

Charlemagne: Warlord of the Franks

By Ludwig Dyck

On Christmas morning, 800 ad, a tall, powerfully built man walked up the steps of Saint Peter’s basilica in Rome. Read more

medieval warfare

Bright sunshine flooded the sedge-covered, damp ground in Sussex on the morning of October 14, 1066. Having attended mass at sunrise, Duke William of Normandy shouted commands to his senior officers outlining their positions for the coming battle with English King Harold II Godwinson’s army. Read more

Saint Louis, King Louis IX of France receives Robert of Nantes, Patriarch of Jerusalem, in Damietta, Egypt, in June of 1249. Robert is lending his knights to the battle ahead, the Seventh Crusade. Nineteenth century painting by French artist Oscar Gué.

medieval warfare

The Battle of Al Mansourah and the Seventh Crusade, 1251

By Douglas Sterling

After a century and a half of efforts—with mixed success—by Western Europe to seize control of the Holy Land, the Seventh Crusade of 1250 led by Louis IX of France was the last best chance to change the political and military situation in the Eastern world before the Reformation. Read more

medieval warfare

Byzantine Cataphract, 10th-13th Century CE

By Giuseppe Rava

The Byzantine Empire extended from the 4th century through the fifteenth century, with one of the most effective militaries in the world. Read more

Cloaked in distinctive white mantles with red crosses, a charge of the “warrior monks” known as the Knights Templar was a fearsome sight. The devout medieval Catholic military order was established to protect Christian pilgrims after the Holy Land was reopened following the First Crusade.

medieval warfare

Bloody Brotherhood

By Kelly Bell

By 1119, the Holy City of Jerusalem had been back under Christian control for 20 years. The soldiers of the First Crusade had secured the city and re-opened it as a center for Christian pilgrimage. Read more

medieval warfare

The Battle of Lechfeld 955 AD

By William E. Welsh

When summer arrived in Bavaria in late June ad 955, thousands of unwelcome barbarians from the Carpathian basin were gathering on its eastern fringe, poised to invade the southern part of the East Frankish kingdom once again. Read more

medieval warfare

The Battle-Ax

By William McPeak

The shafted ax has been around since 6000 bc, in both peaceful and warlike uses. The so-called battle-ax cultures (3200 to 1800 bc) extended over much of northern Europe from the late Stone Age through the early Bronze Age. Read more

The 9th-century Oseberg ship in the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo was excavated in the early 20th century from a burial mound in southern Norway. The karve-style, clinker-built ship with its broad hull is made almost entirely from oak.

medieval warfare

The Viking Longship

By John Spindler

In the first week of October 844, Emir Abd ar-Rahman II of Cordoba learned disturbing news: Vikings had captured Seville. Read more

medieval warfare

Roncesvalles and the Birth of Chivalry

By Don Hollway

The Age of Chivalry brings to mind knights in shining armor and damsels in distress, along with traveling troubadours and minstrels singing chansons de geste, “songs of deeds,” telling of feats of arms and labors of love. Read more

medieval warfare

Hussite Jan Zizka

By John E. Spindler

Jan Zizka belongs to the elite group of leaders who never lost a battle. He was born on or around 1360 in the village of Trocnov in the Kingdom of Bohemia. Read more

A crowned Duke William II of Normandy discovers the Saxon King Harold lying dead on the battlefield in this Victorian painting of the Battle of Hastings by Frank Wilkin. The actual encounter was some six miles from Hastings, at Senlac Hill, near the present-day town of Battle, East Sussex.

medieval warfare

William, Duke of Normandy

By Mark Carlson

The final defeat of the Saxon King Harold at the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066, meant that England became forever Norman. Read more

Reenactors heft medieval bills in anticipation of an attack by men on horse. Bills were favored by the English but were more effective on mail than on plate armor.

medieval warfare

Polearms

By Michael Kluever

The medieval polearm was the Colt Pistol equalizer of the Middle Ages. it placed the common infantry soldier on par with the heavily armored horseman. Read more

medieval warfare

Thundering Clash at Lewes

By Terry Gore

Royalist knights under the command of Prince Edward of England rode with furious speed toward the thousands of London militia who had been sent to set fire to the town of Lewes. Read more

A colorful illustration depicting the naval Battle of Sluys attempts to demonstrate the common tactic of maneuvering the ships to touching and then letting onboard combatants fight it out like infantry. The battle was an early struggle of the Hundred Years’ War. OPPOSITE: Edward III warred with France to win its crown. He was 38 at the time of Sluys.

medieval warfare

“Please God and St. George”: The Battle of Sluys

by Douglas Sterling

English King Edward III’s ship drew out from the fog, and before him he saw such a long, deep concentration of masts that it looked like a forest rising to meet him. Read more

A crusader prince establishes control over the West Slavs during the Wendish Crusade of 1147. Duke Henry the Lion and his allies fought continually against the Wends in the two decades that followed the initial crusade.

medieval warfare

Baptism or Death: The Wendish Crusade, 1147-1185

By Kirk Freeman

By the middle of the 12th century, much of western Europe had settled into a tenuous, often interrupted peace, and many modern nation-states had begun to emerge. Read more

This painting by Graham Turner depicts Sir John Hawkwood pulling the Veronese standard bearer Francesco Visconti from his saddle during the 1387 Battle of Castagnaro. Following closely are Hawkwood’s own standard bearer and one of his captains, John Coe.

medieval warfare

English Mercenary Captain John Hawkwood

By William E. Welsh

Long columns of heavily armed soldiers streamed southeast along the left bank of the Adige River in the Veneto region of northern Italy on March 11, 1387. Read more

Yermak’s Cossack brigade drives a wedge into Khan Kuchum’s Tatar horde in the climactic Battle of Chuvash Cape on the Irtysh River in 1582.

medieval warfare

Russia’s Conquest of Siberia

By Victor Kamenir

Russian historical documents dating back to 1095 speak of an unknown people living beyond the Ural Mountains in Siberia who spoke an incomprehensible language and traded furs for iron knives and axes. Read more

Croatian nobleman Nikola Zrinski leads a sortie against the Turks at the Hungarian fortress of Szigetvar in 1566. The bloody siege was Suleiman’s last battle.

medieval warfare

Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I

By William E. Welsh

Venetian military engineer Gabriel Tandini listened intently in the semi-darkness of the Knights Hospitaller counter-tunnels beneath the walls of Rhodes for sound of Turkish sappers trying to dig under the city’s walls. Read more

Pope Eugenius III presents his pilgrim staff to King Louis VII at the Church of St. Denis. A high-ranking knight holds the Oriflamme, which was the battle standard of French kings.

medieval warfare

Crusader Calamity at Damascus

By William E. Welsh

The hot sun beat down on the mud-brick and wooden buildings, the lush orchards, and the patchwork of pastoral fields around the oval-shaped, walled city of Damascus in southern Syria on the morning of July 24, 1148. Read more

medieval warfare

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