Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century: Discipline, Tactics, and Technology by Kelly DeVries

Abstract

362 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE finding good managers among their engineering staffs. Although most indicated that it is useful for managers of technical enterprises to know something about technology (ifonly to be able to communi­ cate with their technical people), none of them thought a technical background alone was good preparation for management. Many in­ terviewees, moreover, believed that engineers often were too con­ cerned with technical excellence, with adding what one manager called “bells and whistles,” to be really effective managers. Peter Meiksins Dr. Meiksins is associate professor and chair of sociology at Cleveland State Uni­ versity. He is the author, with Chris Smith, of Engineering Labour: Technical Workers in ComparativePerspective (London: Verso, 1996). His current research concerns parttime work among technical professionals. Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century: Discipline, Tactics, and Technology. By Kelly DeVries. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1996. Pp. 216; figures, notes, bibliography, index. $63.00 (cloth). The periodization of history is at best a tricky business and often results more in the creation of myth than in bringing understanding to the past. One great and long-enduring myth is that medieval war­ fare was dominated by feudal knights engaged in mounted shock combat. This notion has been particularly resistant to demythologizing because it has the great circular value of helping to sustain the periodization of Western civilization. Thus, it is commonly believed that in military terms the ancient world was dominated by the infan­ try phalanx (best exemplified in the Roman legion), the Middle Ages by the feudal knight on horseback, and the early modern era by mixed arms in which gunpowder was queen. Despite the widely held beliefamong medievalists that warfare was dominated by knights on horseback, a misconception inextricably intertwined with the study of “chivalry,” specialists in medieval mili­ tary history have long known that this was romantic nonsense. In­ deed, even scholars who helped create the knightly myth fully under­ stood that medieval military action was dominated by siege warfare in which the man on horseback, much less mounted shock combat, had a small role at best. Since World War II, however, specialists in medieval military history have done much to put the knight in his proper place, namely, on foot. Kelly DeVries, whose important MedievalMilitary Technology (Peter­ borough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 1992) gave palpable form to a new field, has now with Infantry Warfare delivered a hammer blow to the romantics (the fall of the Soviet Union apparently has taken care of the Marxists) who continue to believe in the military supremacy of TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 363 feudal-knightly cavalry on the battlefields of medieval Europe. In an exhaustive if somewhat repetitive examination of nineteen battles fought throughout Western Europe during the first half of the four­ teenth century, DeVries shows that forces fighting on foot in pre­ pared positions, even when greatly outnumbered, could not be bro­ ken, much less defeated, by the repeated charges of Europe’s best mounted troops. The evidence has been fully compiled and systematically exam­ ined. These nineteen battles represent all the battles concerning which there is sufficient evidence to render an opinion regarding tactics for this period. Scholars can now come to know the material and no longer must second guess on this matter. Surely, some spe­ cialists will quibble with DeVries’s interpretation on minor points such as the effectiveness ofarchery. Putatively major points will likely still be disputed. For example, should the campaign highlighted by the battle of Crecy be considered a war or a raid? From another venue, the self-styled postmodern literary gurus, if they deign to rec­ ognize military history, may find the entire historical enterprise of trying to figure out what happened on the battlefield a mere politi­ cally tainted construction of reality. Elowever, this French disease likely will pass before it does too much further damage to traditional history. I have a list of my own quibbles but space to discuss only one. DeVries seems to take at face value the observation by Geoffrey le Baker, writing about the mid-fourteenth century, that the English horsemen at Halidon Hill (1333) who dismounted to fight beside the foot soldiers were acting “against the ancient...