Medival Warfare essays

Medival Warfare essays Medieval Warfare Amos 1 Warfare and Punishment during the Middle Ages were very brutal and used a variety of weapons, strategies, and torture devices. Spanning some 1,000 years of conflict, from the fifth to the 15th century, the Middle Ages was a period in which the mounted warrior, armored or otherwise, dominated the battlefield. This was particularly true of the nomadic warrior societies from the European steppes and Central Asia, who had a massive impact on settled society. (Gilbert 40) Many of these warrior societies turned themselves into Middle Age empires, awaiting to be conquered by another. The forces of Byzantium, or the Eastern Roman empire were defending remnants of Romes conquests. Eventually due to fierce pressure from the Turkic peoples, the army faltered and lost some of their territory. The Roman tradition did live on. While the Western half of Romes empire collapsed, the Eastern empire reasserted itself as a military force in the eastern Mediterranean, using combinations of infantry, cavalry, bowmen to defeat their less sophisticated foes (Gilbert 42). A very important element to the strength of the Byzantine empire, lay in its disciplined heavy cavalry- the cataphracts. These cavalry men were equipped with full metal scale armor which extended to cover the horse as well as the rider. Both men and horses were trained very rigorously and were capable of carrying out very complex and difficult objectives on the battlefield (Gilbert 43). These men were not only talented in the use of their lance or sword, but also very skilled bowmen which made them very intimidating adversaries. The role of calvary - and the status of the horse and its rider - was of paramount importance in the religiously inspired territorial expansion of the Arab tribes (Gilbert 46). The Islamic empire not only delivered serious blows to Byz...