1 - The Vegetian ‘Science of Warfare’ in the Middle Ages

Summary

The scholarly study of medieval warfare began almost as a study of medieval battles. Authors like Sir Charles Oman, A.H. Burne, John Beeler, and even Hans Delbrück, writing mainly from the 1890s to the 1960s, considered the evolution of tactics to be the central and most intriguing aspect of the subject, and devoted the bulk of their works to case studies of individual battles and the campaigns which led up to them. These historians, whose ideas about strategy were largely based on the battle-oriented conceptions of post-Napoleonic military theorists and generals, were aware that full-scale battles were relatively rare in the Middle Ages, a fact which they sometimes explained in terms of the incompetence of medieval commanders and the indiscipline of medieval troops, and sometimes attributed to the strength of the defensive in siege warfare, which made it easy for reluctant commanders to avoid battle. These historians were also aware that devastation was very common in medieval warfare, but often saw this as evidence of a lack of strategic purpose, a sign that medieval campaigns were mere “purposeless parades,” or viking-like plundering expeditions motivated mainly by the desire for loot. Despite their recognition of the relative rarity of general engagements, however, they implicitly or even explicitly considered campaigns which did not culminate in open battle to be “uninteresting.”

Starting as early as the 1950s with the superb contributions of historians like J.F. Verbruggen and R.C. Smail, scholars began to look at medieval warfare from different perspectives. One group, including people like Warren Hollister and H.J. Hewitt, influenced both by the Annales school and later by the “New Military History” movement, downplayed the importance of battle and instead emphasized document-based institutional military history, rightly arguing that subjects like the recruitment, provisioning, equipment and financing of medieval warfare were far more important for understanding the political, social, and economic structures and the cultures of medieval society than were the details of individual fights. Another group, following the lead of Smail, revisited the subject of the conduct of medieval warfare and the competence of medieval generals. These historians also downplayed the importance of battle, but for different reasons. They argued that the rarity of battle in the Middle Ages was not the result of the military incompetence of medieval generals.