The Battle of the Golden Spurs: Courtrai, 11 July 1302 (review)

On 11 July 1302 the chivalric cavalry of Philip IV of France suffered a shattering defeat at the hands of Flemish militia. A Flemish army of perhaps 10,000 infantry had besieged the citadel of Courtrai and the French had sought to crush resistance to the Capetian subjection of Flanders by lifting the siege. With their backs to a river and shielded to their front by a formidable morass of streams and flooded ditches, the rebellious guildsmen committed themselves to complete victory or defeat. After preliminary infantry skirmishes the French prematurely launched a catastrophic cavalry charge across unfavorable terrain. The Flemish withstood the shock and counter-attacked in a massacre in which at least half of the 2,500 or more French knights were slaughtered. The hundreds of their golden spurs collected and saved to memorialize the victory gave the battle its name.

Courtrai is unique in military history as a great battle that was not decisive but was nonetheless epochal. Its political consequences, the independence of Flanders and urban self-government, passed quickly, but the battle marks a new era in the history of warfare, shattering the myth of cavalry invincibility and launching what many call "the infantry revolution." The author of the classic history of this celebrated battle, J. F. Verbruggen is, of course, one of the founders of the modern military history that sees armed force as the most "reliable picture of society at the time." Best known for his The Art of Warfare in Western Europe During the Middle Ages, Verbruggen transformed the field, moving beyond the reliance on narrative sources found in Delbrück and Oman to draw on associated disciplines examining warfare in the broadest possible context.

This earlier analysis of an exemplary battle epitomizes the methodology and provides case-study confirmation of Verbruggen's core idea that medieval soldiers were disciplined professionals rather than heroic amateurs of war. Textual and literary analysis allow him to construct the most reliable narrative out of the many conflicting sources, historical geography allows an authoritative reconstruction of the battlefield itself, and close textual analysis and even art history make possible the definitive reconstruction of the dimensions and character of the combatant forces. One might still ask what warrants the republishing of a battle narrative written over fifty years ago. To begin with, the book fills a notable gap in providing the first English-
language monograph on the oft-discussed battle. More importantly, however, the new edition is welcome because the book remains a classic of military history, enduring as the indispensable study of the battle and the foundation of all subsequent scholarship which has refined but not reversed his conclusions. It constitutes a welcome addition to the superlative Warfare in History series that is producing so many important studies of medieval warfare and will prove invaluable both to students of military history and of European medieval civilization.