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Medieval Warfare: A History. Edited by Maurice Keen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-820639-9. Maps. Illustrations. Chronology. Index. Pp. viii, 340. $40.00.
Maurice Keen is to be congratulated for editing a readable collection of essays bringing a broad public up-to-date on medieval warfare. This book is a welcome popularization of a rapidly expanding body of specialized literature in English. During the last three decades, Anglophone medievalists have reconceptualized the study of war during the entire Middle Ages. Gone are easy generalizations concerning the invincibility of swashbuckling "feudal" levies, who allegedly dominated the battlefields of Europe for almost a millennium, until, finally, hardy peasants with English long bows and Swiss pikes came along in the fourteenth century to disembowel these centaurs. In fact, medieval infantry frequently defeated cavalry charges centuries earlier (p. 64). As for the term "feudalism," now in disfavor among many medievalists, it appears rarely in these pages, most frequently in the introduction, where the...