In the year 1495, Charles VIII was the youthful King of France, the most powerful state in medieval Europe. A dreamer who saw himself as the saviour of Christian Europe, he believed he could roll back the ever-spreading tide of Ottoman Turkish conquest. As a base for his crusade he was determined to[...]

The Hospitallers were the first of the Secular Crusading Orders to be created, though they were only 'militarized' after the establishment of the Templers. The Hospitallers played a major role in the military struggle between Christendom and the Islamic World throughout the medieval and early modern[...]

Charlemagne's army enabled him to create what he and his contemporaries regarded as a 'reborn' Western Roman Empire. Charlemagne revolutionised the organisation, logistics, indoctrination and training of his army. His troops seemed able to fight on indefinitely, even when they were thousands of mile[...]

This Osprey Command book looks closely at the early life, military experiences and key battlefield exploits of Al-Malik al-Nasir Yusuf Ibn Najm al-Din Ayyub Ibn Shahdi Abu'l-Muzaffar Salah al-Din - or Saladin as he is more commonly known outside the Islamic world - who is broadly regarded as the gre[...]

"Medieval cavalry tactics: Europe AD 450-1250".

The Ottoman Turkish Empire was one of the leading protagonists of World War I, and the stolid courage of the individual Ottoman soldier was recognised by all. Yet the army in which he served is, like the Ottoman empire itself, generally little understood. Over the four years of the Great War, the Ot[...]

During the Middle Ages, Islam was Christian Europe's only civilized and most troublesome neighbor. The Middle Ages saw almost continual strife between these two distinct cultures. By the time the Frankish Crusaders reached the Middle East at the end of the 11th century, Islam had already incorporate[...]

The birth of the Ottoman state is shrouded in legend. Whatever the truth of its origins, the Ottomans formed an Empire which almost succeeded in bringing Christian Europe to its knees. During the last decades of the 13th century, the ambitious Osman Bey's tiny mountain state took eight frontier cast[...]

Osprey's study of the Normans during the Middle Ages. Despite the small geographic extent of Normandy its people played a crucial role in the history of the medieval world. Ferocity, boundless energy, cunning and a capacity for leadership were their heritage, to which modern scholars would add supre[...]

Tamerlane or Timur-i-Lenk ('Timur the Lame') is one of the most extraordinary conquerors in history. In the late 14th century his armies seized huge territories from the borders of Mongolia to Palestine and Anatolia. His passage was marked by massacres that outdid even those of the Mongols for sheer[...]

The June 1967 War fought between an Arab alliance and Israel was a pivotal event in the modern history of the Middle East. This study provides the most complete and detailed coverage ever of the Arab air forces during the course of that conflict. Supported by original documentation, and hundreds of [...]

Charlemagne's conquest of the Saxons was the hardest fought and most protracted of his wars; it involved 18 campaigns spread across 33 years, a great deal of lower-level fighting and the harshest final peace settlement that Charlemagne ever imposed upon a defeated foe. Rapidly taking on the characte[...]

Although it was one of the main centres of armour production for export, early medieval Italy's costumes and armour reflected a vigorous but fragmented military system, influenced by Byzantine and Islamic styles as much as by northern Europe. This book shows how the rise of independent city armies a[...]