Mercenaries have always had a poor press. Theirs is one of the world's oldest professions, but the very word has profoundly negative connotations of infidelity and ruthlessness. But were they so different from soldiers? Why, in any case, were they so omnipresent in the warfare of the medieval and early modern period? What kind of men became mercenaries and where did they come from? These are some of the questions which the essays in this volume address. Contributors are: Richard Abels, Bernard Bachrach, David Bachrach, Adrian Bell, Charles Bowlus, David Crouch, Guido Dall'Oro, Kelly Devries,...

From the author of Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade, this book offers a wide-ranging and innovative survey of crusading warfare, and is intended as a standard reference for students and professional historians

The articles in this volume explore the way in which military developments helped to sculpt, out of very strange and diverse components, our familiar Europe. The period studied covers the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the rise of the Carolingian Empire and its eventual collapse, leaving a vacuum in the heart of Europe into which flowed new forces: the Vikings from outside and the great lords from within.

The Crusades and the Expansion of Catholic Christendom, 1000-1714 is a fascinating and accessible survey that places the medieval Crusades in their European context, and examines, for the first time, their impact on European expansion.

Taking a unique approach that focuses on the motivation behind the Crusades, John France chronologically examines the whole crusading movement, from the development of a 'crusading impulse' in the eleventh century through to an examination of the relationship between the Crusades and the imperialist imperatives of the early modern...

This volume is concerned with the sources for the study of the Crusades, conceived in terms of the records of their history and of their enemies, the motives that inspired them, and the monuments which they left behind. Some of the studies analyze particular historical sources, both written and visual, for the events of the Crusades and the history of the Crusader states. Others look more broadly at the impact of the Crusading movement in the West, its origins and its propaganda, from the first Crusade to the time of Erasmus.

This volume brings together a series of articles by John France, published over a span of more than forty years, covering a number of aspects of the military and crusading history of the Middle Ages, both in Europe and the Near East. An interest in understanding how war worked and why informs a first group of articles, ranging from Carolingian armies to the organisation of war in the 13th century. The focus then turns to the Crusades, the most ambitious conquests of the era, with a set of studies on the First Crusade and others on the manner and conduct of warfare in the territories of the...

On July 4, 1187 the legendary Muslim leader Saladin destroyed the Crusader army of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem with a terrible slaughter at the battle of Hattin - and subsequently restored the Holy City of Jerusalem to Islamic rule.
The carnage at Hattin was the culmination of almost a century of religious wars between Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land. It had enormous consequences for the whole medieval world because it produced an intensification of holy war between Islam and Europe for over another century and, in retrospect, marked the beginning of the end for the Crusader...

In the crusader period Acre was in many ways a remarkable place, but the most striking thing about its history is the number of times it fell to enemies. The present volume Acre and Its Falls is unusual in that it analyses a wide range of aspects of the history of Acre across the crusader period, combining political, military and cultural history, with a notable emphasis on the memory of the city in Europe. This may have been a city famous for its falls, but most certainly not for them alone. Contributors are Adrian J. Boas, Charles W. Connell, Paul F. Crawford, Susan B. Edgington,...