Medieval Warfare

Book Review

by Don Featherstone

by Terence Wise
8 3/4" x 5 1/2"; 258 pages; 242 photographs and drawings. Osprey - £ 4.50

Terry Wise is a well-known wargamer who has been a subscriber to this magazine for many years.

He is an able writer whose articles appear in the majority of military magazines and who also has a rapidly increasing list of books to his credit. This book is possibly as good as anything he has done and its attractive coloured jacket does it credit at the same time as it adequately exemplifies the book's contents. The chapter headings show the comprehensive manner in which the subject is covered - The Feudal System and Organisation of Armies; Armour; Weapons; Tactics; Castles and other Fortifications, Siege Warfare; Heraldry with appendices on Modelling Medieval Soldiers and Wargaming in the Medieval Period.

Terry has picked a very colourful era and its pages abound with ringing names such as Ziska, Landsknechts, the Swiss Pikemen, the Condottieri, the Free Corps and the incomparable English archer. The war«amer will find his notes on the organisation of the armies of the period to be invaluable while the elaborate details of arum ur; weapons and tactics together with numerous maps, provide a stimulating and informative background to those who are carrying out table-top battles in this period or contemplating doing so. I thought the chapter on Castles and Sieges to be excellent, bearing great potentialities for aiding in the formulation of suitable rules to carry out wargames sieges - surely one of the most colourful yet badly neglected aspects of our hobby. There is an extensive coverage of heraldry with some really excellent drawings of shields and armorial bearings - it might: just be that. there is slightly too much on this subject of heraldry which, although a tangible part of warfare of the period, does not really rate a great tactical bearing, at least not to the wargamer/reader.

Nevertheless, he has provided its a fine selection of crests with which to adorn our figures. The appendices slant the book very much in the direction of the readers of this magazine, describing the availability and practical aspects of modelling figures in this period and then wargaming it, giving rules and suggestions for rule-making. I found this a very stimulating and interesting book and congratulate Terry Wise on it.

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