Robert Douglas Smith

First published in 1992, Medieval Military Technology has become the definitive book in its field, garnering much praise and a large readership. This thorough update of a classic book, regarded as both an excellent overview and an important piece of scholarship, includes fully revised content, new sections on the use of horses, handguns, incendiary weapons, and siege engines, and eighteen new illustrations. The four key organizing sections of the book still remain: arms and armor, artillery, fortifications, and warships. Throughout, the authors connect these technologies to broader themes and developments in medieval society as well as to current scholarly and curatorial controversies.

In 1480 the Ottoman Turkish army and artillery that had defeated the Byzantine Empire arrived on Rhodes to attack the walled headquarters of the Crusading military order, the Knights Hospitaller. After a siege of three months during which time the Turks bombarded the walls daily with gunpowder weapons they withdrew, defeated. In 1522 they returned and, after a six-month siege, captured Rhodes but were unable to defeat the Hospitallers who were allowed to leave with their lives, arms and religious emblems. This book uniquely uses the eyewitness accounts, surviving guns and extant walls to tell the story of these two sieges, and the efforts made by the Hospitallers to adapt their fortifications and artillery to defy the most powerful military power in the world. In doing so it rewrites the history of fortifications and gunpowder artillery during the Renaissance.

The four Valois Dukes of Burgundy created, in little more than a century, a fabulously wealthy and independent state. Their centralised control and chancellery have bequeathed to us a vast treasure trove of documents, including accounts and inventories of the Masters of the artillery under the later Dukes. Although many of these were extracted and transcribed in the late nineteenth century, modern historians have largely ignored their unprecedented insights into fifteenth-century guns and their use. When Charles the Bold, the last Valois Duke, took on the combined Swiss confederate forces in 1476 he lost not just the battles and his personal fortune, but much of his artillery train as well. Of the dozens of cannons captured, at least 25 pieces survive in Swiss museums. The documents that survive from the Valois state give us, almost for the first time in medieval Europe, the ability to see the course of history in a period when Europe was undergoing some of the most profound changes before the 20th century. The Artillery of the Dukes of Burgundy is the first attempt to combine all these sources, bringing new and fresh insights into the development and use of artillery in the fifteenth century. Moreover this is the first modern study of medieval cannon, one of the most important discoveries of the post-classical world. KELLY DeVRIES has authored numerous books and articles on medieval warfare. ROBERT DOUGLAS SMITH formerly Head of Conservation in the Royal Armouries, Tower of London, is an acknowledged expert on medieval artillery. This study is the first major fruit of their combined researches.