The Military Revolution in Sixteenth-Century Europe FROM OUR EDITORS
This meticulous study explores the development of armor, weapons, and tactics in the sixteenth century. From the time Hannibal crossed the Alps using elephants as beasts of burden, little changed in the art of warfare for some 1700 years (although no other leader employed pachyderms). The sixteenth century saw massive changes, and this book traces and documents the revolution in military strategies, weapons, and theories. What separates this text from previous studies is its careful analysis of the works of military writers of that period. So careful is the research that, for example, the author specifically compares the evolution from the longbow to the crossbow to the "arquebus" - precursor to the musket--explaining how improved armor made improved weapons a necessity in warfare. Carefully footnoted and easy to read, this is a must for the bookshelf of anyone interested in the history of military strategies and tactics. Indexed.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
This ground-breaking study represents a new twist in the already complicated debate on military change in the early modern period. Previous writers have for the most part defined a 'military revolution' focused on the seventeenth or even early eighteenth centuries. Eltis suggests that key developments in training, organization, tactics and siege warfare occurred in the sixteenth century and, taken together, these innovations constitute a military revolution, changing the face of war. In England, these changes came later than in the rest of Europe, and in Ireland later still. English writers, in their anxiety to spur their countrymen to adopt the new methods, produced some of the most useful manuals of sixteenth-century Europe. These, together with Italian, Spanish, French and German texts, form the main basis of David Eltis's study, allowing the ideas of contemporaries to be set alongside accounts of actual military conditions in explaining one of the turning points of world military development.
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