Medieval Warfare II.1, 2012

Buy now

Theme: Creating a Viking empire – The wars of Cnut the Great, king of Denmark, England and Norway.

Introduction: Gareth Williams, 'A selective Viking history until Cnut the Great - Cry Havoc!'. Illustrated by Carlos Garcia.

The Vikings surreptitiously appear on the Anglo-Saxon scene in 789, with a murder recorded in the Chronicle of Florence of Worcester. Beaduheard, a reeve (a type of sheriff) of Wessex, confronted a raiding party, although “entirely ignorant” of their identity. While seeking to drive them into a nearby town, his imperious manner cost him his life. The Chronicle remarks that “these were the first Danes who ever came to England” (Chronicle of Florence of Worcester, entry for 789). William of Malmsbury’s Chronicle states that the local population retaliated and scattered the Danes, who dropped their booty while fleeing. The same raiding party of three ships may have been responsible for another atrocity at Lindisfarne in June, 793, when the monastery of St. Cuthbert was sacked and “heathen men” created “lamentable havoc in the church of God (…) by rapine and slaughter” (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, entry for 793). These violent attacks heralded the Viking Age.

Theme: Murray Dahm, 'Warfare in Anglo-Saxon poetry - Chainmail’s terror song'.

Poetry is not usually considered as a go-to source of information for warfare, but three Anglo-Saxon poems provide us with some of the most informative, and most evocative, insights into warfare during the entire Viking Age (eighth-eleventh centuries). The three poems are The Fight at Finnsburh, The Battle of Brunnanburh and The Battle of Maldon. These three fragments provide information on battle tactics, the comitatus warrior code, the role of the commander, the attitudes of combatants and the society in which they fought. And all with the distinctly terse but powerful imagery of Old English poetry.

Theme: Sidney E. Dean, 'Cnut’s conquest of Norway - Embracing the North Sea'. Illustrated by Carlos Garcia and Christos Giannopoulos.

Cnut was elected King of England in 1016 and inherited the Danish throne in 1018. As he consolidated his hold over these nations, he cast his eye towards Norway. For significant periods over the preceding century, the rulers of that nation were at least nominal vassals of the Danish Kings Harold Bluetooth and Sweyn Forkbeard, grandfather and father of Cnut. In the year 1000, Sweyn and his Swedish ally King Olof reconquered and divided Norway. Sweyn retained the southern coastal region known as the Viken, to be administered directly by Denmark. He granted the greater part of the nation to his Norwegian son-in-law, Earl Eiríkr Hákonarson (or Eric of Norway), who ruled as a Danish vassal. Other parts of Norway became Swedish fiefs governed by Eiríkr’s brother Earl Sveinn Hákonarson.

Theme: Raffaele D’Amato, 'The bodyguards of Cnut the Great - The housecarls'. Illustrated by Giorgio Albertini.

In the Anglo-Saxon army of the eleventh century, the most famous of all the Viking mercenaries were the housecarls (or huscarls). The word means ‘household men’, the warriors who made up the household troops of a ruler. They were a permanent body of royal guards that some historians claim were recruited among the descendants of the Jomsvikings and lived according to a strict military code.

Theme: Owen Rees, 'The psychology of the Berserkers - Going berserk'. Illustrated by Johnny Shumate.

His terrifying howl chills the blood of his enemies. Each of his mighty footsteps echoes the rhythm of their heartbeat. The mist of his breath resonates like dragon smoke, as he bides his time before taking the life that belongs to him. His cold, dilated eyes scan the surroundings, before they settle upon his unfortunate victim. His axe is raised and, with his sonic howl ringing in the ears of his adversary, the metal bites through flesh like the jaws of the wolf whose skin he wears. His enemies flee in all directions with but one thought on their mind: the Berserker has arrived.

Theme: Joshua Gilbert, 'The Danish conquest of England - Mercenaries, warlords and kings 1009-1018'. Illustrated by José Daniel Cabrera Peña.

The Vikings returned to raid England in the year 980, after a quarter century of peace following the death of Eiríkr ‘Bloodaxe’ Haraldsson in 954. By 994, those raids had become larger in scale and sophistication, as they were carried out by professional soldiers and mercenaries. These forces were commanded either by royal figures (Sweyn Forkbeard, for example, or Cnut), or by experienced warlords in their service (men like Eiríkr Hákonarson of Hlaðir, or Thorkell the Tall). This resulted in the conquest of England, accomplished temporarily by Sweyn in 1013, and more lastingly by Cnut in 1016. It is with Cnut’s conquest that this article is concerned, and in particular the decisive confrontation with the English King Eadmund II ‘Ironside’ at Assandun.

Features

The Castle: Andrei Pog?cia?, 'The castle of Hunedoara - John Hunyadi’s stronghold'. Illustrated by Alina Bondrea

The Castle of Hunedoara lies in the city of the same name, in the south-western corner of historic Transylvania. It is one of the best preserved medieval residences in Romania, and is a very popular attraction for many Romanian and foreign tourists. The castle was never besieged, always switching masters by peaceful means. The version that we see today is the result of centuries of building, rebuilding, and renovating. Thus, various construction styles mingle and give the castle its unique appearance. From the rough form of the first walls, through the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles, and finishing with the Neo-Gothic, combining French and German styles, the castle is a living compendium of architectural history.

Special: Michael Curl, 'A look at the armour industry of the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth century - The industry of defence'. Illustrated by Douglas Girard.

When discussing medieval armour, many writers frequently give the false idea that armour was only for the knightly class. While it is true that armour was obscenely expensive in the Early and High Middle Ages, by the Late Middle Ages even infantry could afford to wear several pieces of plate armour. Armour production was a profitable and pervasive industry during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Endemic warfare coupled with the knightly class’s love of tournaments and martial skill created an insatiable demand for armour, both practical and whimsical. On the other side of the coin, large quantities of cheap, unmarked munition-grade plate armours were made with a “one size fits all” mindset to fill the armouries of Europe. Thus, skilled and ingenious armourer-merchants arose, first in Italy and then in German lands, to meet the demands of war.

The Battle: David Santiuste, 'The Battle of Tewkesbury, 1471 - Victory of York'. Illustrated by Graham Turner and Carlos Garcia.

The Battle of Tewkesbury, which took place on May 4 1471, was one of the most important battles of the Wars of the Roses. These were a series of civil wars fought in England during the later fifteenth century, with the families of York and Lancaster vying for the throne. Tewkesbury confirmed the recovery of the throne by Edward IV, the first Yorkist king, after he had been temporarily deposed.

The Duel: John Clements, 'The slow knight in clumsy armour - Killing the myth'.

Despite the continued importance of the armoured warrior in medieval military history, common opinion – even among historians – is that, at the apogee of his development in the ‘Age of Plate’, he was an awkward lobster out of water. This was a leitmotif in much nineteenth and twentieth century writing on fencing history and descriptions of personal combat from the Middle Ages. Claims that, once unhorsed, a knight was a ‘clanking tank’ at his foe’s mercy have unfortunately become common among academics, to the point that it has become something of an unquestioned mantra. This picture of untutored knights clumsily swinging crude swords while stomping around half-blind like beached crabs is terribly inaccurate. Popular culture has embraced this vision by consistently depicting the medieval armoured warrior as an overburdened, lumbering figure in heavy plate armour, who relied on brute strength to overwhelm his adversaries. In fact, this notion of the medieval knight is nothing but a modern myth that must be finally killed off.