The Battle of Manzikert on August 26, 1071 is widely regarded as one of the most significant turning points in medieval history, frequently presented as the culmination of a Turco-Islamic assault upon the Byzantine bulwark of a Christian world struggling for survival. Emperor Romanus IV's campaigns between 1068 and 1071 do, in many ways, represent the empire's fightback against an enemy that for decades had penetrated deep into Asia Minor, its heartland and strategic bulwark. Yet Manzikert was not a disaster. This book examines the geopolitical background and the origins of the campaign that led to the battle, the main protagonists, and their strategies and battle tactics. It also evaluates the primary sources and the enduring legacy of the battle, for both the Greek and Turkish historiography of the twentieth century.

In June 1219 Danish crusaders fought a vicious battle against local pagan warriors at the place in northern Estonia where Tallinn now lies. The battle - known then as the Battle of Lyndanise - was a narrow victory for the crusaders and eventually turned out to be a pivotal event in the national histories of both Denmark and Estonia as a milestone in the overall military conquest of the entire region by (mostly) western military powers. The main scope of this book is to present a study of this military conquest of Estonia around 1200 with a special focus on the Scandinavian involvement, enabling us to better understand the intense political, military, and religious changes that came to influence the region and its many people from the early high medieval period onwards.

This book uses sociological perspectives to bring together work on war and identity in the Middle Ages relating to a range of peoples and geographical settings from Europe, the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Asia. Focusing on the interrelation between ideological practices and group formation, it examines the role of warfare in the emergence and decline of particular social structures, and changing patterns of collective identification. It contributes to the debate on the longue durée development of the phenomena of ethnicity and nationhood by drawing attention to the impact of war on the evolution of various types of polity and visions of community in the Middle Ages. Its use of non-European as well as European exemplars provides a wealth of fruitful comparative material, shedding new light on the relationship between medieval warfare and high-level identities.

This book provides an overarching, comprehensive analysis of the French military in the medieval period. The focus is on the armies of the French monarchy and the lands close around them, extending from the Low Countries to Provence. Central themes include recruitment and payment; military organisation; leadership, strategy, and tactics; weapons and arms; chivalry, military culture, and the rise of military professionalism.