Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/617

 Dclbriick : Gcschichte der Kricgskunst 607 Book two deals with the perfected feudal state. It describes the blending of the feudal elements of the time of Charles into a systematic whole and the building of the states on the ruins of the Carolingian empire. Sixteen pages are given to the battle of the Lech, the author closing with the statement — in opposition to Nitzsch, Waitz, and Breslau — that this battle " macht Otto I zum grossen Feldherrn ". Other chapters take up the battles under Emperor Henry IV., the con- quest of the Anglo-Saxons by the Normans, the Norman constitution of war as it was developed in England, the Norman state in Italy, and the situation in the East which led up to the Crusades. The third book treats of the science of war as it developed at the height of the Middle Ages. Knighthood as a calling is a central thought. Its foreshadowings from the time of Tacitus are shown, its developinent into a military profession, and the transition to a mercenary system. Strategy is treated briefly. Then follows a lengthy discussion of the art of war as illustrated in city life — in the Italian communes under Frederick Barbarossa; in the administration of Frederick II., in such German cities as Koln and Strassburg — and in the conquest of Prussia by the Teutonic Knights. The subject of English archery is developed in connection with the conquest of Wales and Scotland by Edward I. This book closes with a description of some thirty single campaigns, battles, or skirmishes, illustrating the opinions advanced by the author. In his " 'orwort " to book iv., dealing with the later Middle Ages, Professor Delbriick says that the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries bring a series of new phenomena in the conduct of war, which so modify the picture given thus far as to require a new division. These phenomena are not of such a sort as to make the transition from the old to the new forms a constant development. Nor do they stand to each other in an organic relation. They are rather " singularities ", which either disappear or first gain their true significance after cen- turies — as in the introduction of firearms or in the victories of an army of burgher and peasant " infantry-folk " over an army of knights. He proposes in the remaining chapters to show the particular phenomena of these centuries in their fundamental meaning and historical causality. By special examples he tries to show that the conduct of war in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was essentially the same as in the thirteenth or twelfth centuries, or even earlier — that is, that the new phenomena were not yet incorporated as part of the military system. The only exception he makes is the Swiss, whose history he treats sepa- rately in his final chapters. The first battle in which we get a glimpse of the new order of things is the battle of Courtray, in 1302. The changes are suggested in the title of the chapter : " Phalangen-Schlachten. Burgerwehren und Landsturm-Aufgebote." Crecy, in 1346, is a type of a number of battles illustrating archers fighting in combination with dismounted knights. Others chapters follow on the Osman Empire; the Hussites; the Con- dottieri, Ordinance Companies, and Free-Shooters. The volume closes