Guns and Men in Medieval Europe, 1200-1500 (review)

This kind of book, a collection of essays by a single author, has become something of a speciality of Ashgate. They have evolved a standardised format. The pagination of the original is retained, but it is possible to find your way about because the articles are numbered in the Table of Contents and in the headers. In addition, there is a helpful index. The justification for such volumes is that they conveniently bring together some of the otherwise scattered articles produced by scholars. Kelly DeVries is amazingly prolific, with a great deal to say about military history, especially that of the later medieval period, and this gives the present volume a sense of unity. The essays here range from the extremely specialised, like II, "Medieval Declarations of War: An Example from 1212" which provides the text and an analysis of Otto IV's declaration of war upon Philip Augustus in 1212, to the wide-ranging, exemplified by XVI, "Gunpowder Weaponry and the Rise of the Early Modern State." In between there are fascinating insights, such as that provided by XVII, "Military Surgical Practice and the Advent of Gunpowder Weaponry." But the bulk of the material is about the Hundred Years' War and, most especially, the use of gunpowder weapons. What is striking about such articles, when they are read together, is DeVries's careful and relentless examination of source-material, very finely illustrated by IV, "Contemporary Views of Edward III's Failure at the Siege of Tournai, 1340," which carefully collates and analyses a lot of material. The same technique is evident in a very important article, XIII, "The Impact of Gunpowder Weaponry on Siege Warfare in the Hundred Years War." This study is impressive because it shows how architects and engineers, like Giorgio Martini, developed the design of fortifications in response to attack by cannons long before, and to a degree in anticipation of, the trace italienne. But what is unusual about DeVries's work is that, although he is deeply learned in technological development, he is strongly opposed to "technical determinism" because he appreciates the range of forces which shaped medieval society. The last of the articles collected here, XVIII, "Catapults Are Not Atomic Bombs: Towards a Redefinition of 'Effectiveness' in Premodern Military Technology" is a forceful critique of the notion that innovation in weaponry in itself has created "Military Revolutions" and produced earth-shaking historical changes. DeVries, unlike so many specialists, especially specialists in the history of technology, is not carried away by the lure of his own specialism and has a clear understanding of the complexity of historical causation. This is really what makes this collection worthwhile.