Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of plates
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Maps
- 1 The age of the Mongol conquests
- 2 Attack and defence in the late thirteenth century (c.1260–1320)
- 3 The fourteenth century: siege warfare at the start of a new age
- 4 The age of Timur “the world conqueror”: the fourteenth century in the East
- 5 The early fifteenth century: changing times
- 6 The late fifteenth century, I: Britain, France, Central Europe and the Balkans
- 7 The late fifteenth century, II: a “time of transition”
- 8 New weapons and new defences
- Time line
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Attack and defence in the late thirteenth century (c.1260–1320)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of plates
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Maps
- 1 The age of the Mongol conquests
- 2 Attack and defence in the late thirteenth century (c.1260–1320)
- 3 The fourteenth century: siege warfare at the start of a new age
- 4 The age of Timur “the world conqueror”: the fourteenth century in the East
- 5 The early fifteenth century: changing times
- 6 The late fifteenth century, I: Britain, France, Central Europe and the Balkans
- 7 The late fifteenth century, II: a “time of transition”
- 8 New weapons and new defences
- Time line
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The period between the middle of the thirteenth century and the middle of the fourteenth centuries represented the end of a long period of continuous expansion of wealth and population. In western and central Europe, the fourteenth century was one of calamity, with the arrival of the Black Death preceded by years of awful famine. Massive social change, and beginnings of challenges to the social order, would be among the consequences.
In 1260 this all lay ahead. The Byzantines were about to recover Constantinople from the Latin emperors, but not to recover the glory of the east Roman empire. The Staufen dynasty was about to be extinguished. North of the Alps a long interregnum in the German kingdom would consolidate the already substantial independent power of numerous princes, bishops and city-states and leave the empire as a token of great esteem but only such power as the individual ruler's own resources would permit. In contrast, the French kingdom under St Louis continued as a rich and powerfully centralised state, soon to host the popes in Avignon. The Plantagenets found in Edward I a king to extinguish the independence of Wales, and to come very close to doing so in Scotland. In eastern Europe, a strong new political force began to emerge in the still pagan state of Lithuania, but the dead hand of Mongol overlordship still lay over most of the Russian lands. At the other end of the Asian continent, Mongol rule was consolidated in China, but resisted in Japan, and in these struggles is found the first evidence for the military use of gunpowder.
In Iberia, the Muslim kings of Granada consolidated their small realm and continued to relate to the power struggles that characterised the emerging dynasties of North Africa. Many of the crusades launched during this age were to be directed against the papacy's Christian enemies. The new Mamluk rulers of Egypt and Syria were about to remove the Latins from the Middle East altogether, a struggle that tested their ability to overcome massive modern fortifications to the full.
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- Information
- A History of the Late Medieval Siege, 1200-1500 , pp. 55 - 111Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2010