David Nicolle

There is actually rather less about the fall of Acre in this booklet than you might think, but that might be a commentary on the locality's relative irrelevance by 1291. What this book really deals with is the Mameluke state's wider diplomacy and strategy, as they cleaned up assorted loose ends in their greater conflict with their Mongol adversaries. The ongoing parallel war between Italian Angevins and Aragon was the main action in Christendom. Though the Christian "military" orders show more arguably never recovered their prestige in the wake of this defeat and the Mameluke ascendance accelerated the diminution of Christian culture in the Levant and sub-Saharan Africa. As this work is almost a generation old there is a certain grim irony in reading about the opportunities for tourism in the region. show less

The best part of the book is the many drawings of reliefs and artefacts showing Sassanid (or Sassanid-era) soldiers and gear.

I also liked the plates with reconstructions of what Sassanid armies may have looked like in real life. I was less impressed with the main text, partly because while every illustration has an accompanying text identifying what it's based on, the main text provides hardly any indication what the various assertions are based on.

Also, Nicolle seems to have something of an show more anti-Roman bias, being determined to deny or minimize any Greco-Roman influence on Sassanid Iran, while being perfectly happy to acknowledge two-way influence across the empire's other borders. show less

The mists of time are somewhat thick around the early stages of the Hundred Years War. There are conflicting accounts and gaps in the evidence; we do not even know if, when Edward III landed in Normandy in 1346, he intended a conquest or merely a grand chevauchée.

[a:David Nicolle|3260|David Nicolle|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png] takes the opposite view on almost all the contentious questions to [a:Burne|193637|Alfred H. show more Burne|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png] in his classic account of the war. Whereas Burne painted Edward as a great strategist surrounded by talented officers up against a weakling, Philip VI, aided, mostly, by nincompoops, Nicolle sees Edward as more favoured by fortune and Philip as rather shrewd.

While the truth undoubtedly lies somewhere between the two, I can't help feeling it lies closer to Burne than Nicolle. Take two examples. There is an old story that Genoese crossbowmen at Crécy were hindered by the strings on their bows getting wet. Burne discounts this, saying that professional soldiers would have known how to keep their equipment in working order in the face of a common event like rain, as the English longbowmen did. Nicolle, by contrast, credits the story, pointing out that it is more difficult to remove the string from a crossbow than from a longbow. True, but I still think, as Burne argues, that professional, mercenary soldiers would have known how to deal with this.

Second, the day after Crécy, a French force arrived from Abbeville and was seen off in short order. In Nicolle's narrative, they arrived on the battlefield in ignorance of the events of the day before and were surprised by the English. Burne, however, makes the point that the roads in every direction after a debacle like Crécy, would have been packed with survivors, with the road to Abbeville being no exception. Again, I find Burne's version more convincing.

This is a decent introduction to the battle of Crécy, but given the differing interpretations of it, it is best read in conjunction with another. show less

This is a rather mixed bag of a book. Due to the fact that I cannot find many books on the subject - military organization of elite units within Ottoman Empire - I am giving it 4 stars but in truth it is more like 3 1/2 stars.

Reason is very simple - for reasons I do not comprehend - Ottoman Empire get constantly represented as so advanced, varied and multinational state where everything was flourishing, everybody had equal rights and was so advanced that even levy-in-flesh (main source of show more Janissary's recruits) is seen as some sort of study-and-work-abroad program organized for the people of the conquered countries.

I will not go into inner workings of Ottoman Empire - but come on. They were a world power at the time. They had manpower, industrial strength and resources to start their own expansion on both East and West frontiers. They were good fighters and they had the military might. In other words they were powerful state of the time - with their expansionist politics and trigger-happiness not different than any other country/empire/kingdom/duchy of the period. To say that they get supporters in countries that they occupied is ridiculous - you think those people supported them because they believed they will be enlightened by the Ottomans? They allied themselves with them for simple reasons - either because they wanted to gain upper hand in their own country by joining with mighty conqueror or because they wanted to keep their riches by making friends with new power in the area that cannot be contended (yet). Again nothing that did not take place million times in the past through-out the Europe and world, so I always get surprised when I read something like this from respected historians. and to call counter attacks from opposing super-powers at the time as savage and aggressive - again what are we talking about here? Who came where first? In that case we can go way back and get lost because there is no piece of land that wasn't contended at some point in time.

This aside it is interesting work. If you are interested in the period I recommend it. show less