Soldiers’ Lives through History: The Middle Ages

Soldiers’ Lives through History

by Clifford J. Rogers

The most dangerous arms in the world are those of horse and lance, because there is no means of stopping them, wrote a 15th-century commander, Jean de Bueil. From the fall of the Roman Empire to the end of the 15th century, the men (and a few women in disguise) who reported for military service or who led other men, scouted and skirmished, plundered and burned. If they did not slaughter the peasants they met, they took them prisoner to be sold as slaves or ransomed at heavy cost. It was a brutal time. Rogers illuminates the history of medieval soldiers in wartime and in peacetime, describing the lives of those who attacked, and those who defended, the fortified castles, towns, and lands of Europe and beyond in the Middle Age.

Genres: History, War, Medieval, Nonfiction, Research

336 pages, Hardcover

First published April 30, 2007

About the author

Clifford J. Rogers is a professor of history at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He has also been a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Swansea University, an Olin Fellow in Military and Strategic History at Yale, and a Fulbright Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research in London.

Reviews

[David Santiuste]

This is one of the best books about medieval warfare I have ever read. Clifford Rogers writes well, and this is packed with insights and fascinating information. I wish the publisher would release a more affordable paperback edition, as this book deserves to be more widely available.