Now I've finally hit home base, and likewise "shouldn't" be required travel back to mainland Europe again for a week or more, I'm hoping to be able search out and post a few things folk might find most interesting, enlightening and informative from my favorite book of medieval warfare, and which if you read this part of the preface by it's author you'll perhaps understand why it is.
Page ix
General Preface
English-speaking historians probably have none to blame but themselves for, on the whole, not reading and digesting the lessons of De Krijgskunst in West-Europa in de Middeleeuwen IXe tot begin XIVe eeuw, when it was first published in 1954. It was unfortunate that the languages of the Low Countries were not widely-enough known, for J.F. Verbruggen was to make a significant contribution to understanding medieval warfare. So it gives me great pleasure to present a newly translated, expanded and revised edition forty years on. In one sense, at least, his work is now out of date. This is clear from the sentences which begin it, in which Verbruggen bemoans the 'unfortunate treatment' which the medieval 'art of war' has received from historians. That this is no longer the case is in a large part due to his influence on a post-war generation of scholars interested in medieval warfare. I remember with what joy I fell upon the partial translation of his work in the late-1970s when commencing my postgraduate research. Previously, when studying for an MA in Medieval History I had been advised by R. Allen Brown at King's College, London, of the value of the work.
Even in the much-reduced translation, I was delighted to find an author who took military historians to task for completely distorting and underestimating the skill with which medieval societies and individual commanders organized war. Delbrück, Delpech and Oman fell alike to his scholarly sword, as he demonstrated the inaccuracy of their assessments which presented the 'Middle Ages' as a primitive period in which the 'Art of War' was lost, not to be regained until the Renaissance. He showed an understanding of strategy, tactics, individual and collective discipline and the management of warfare which stood in stark contrast to their theses. Where they stressed the selfish and disordered behaviour of 'the knights', he was able to point to careful planning of campaigns and battles which emphasized coherent manoeuvre and tactical plans. Flank attacks, ambushes, use of combined arms and rearguards—ignored by the most influential writer in English, Sir Charles Oman—all were discovered by Verbruggen in detailed studies of battles.
