Edward III and the Dialectics of Strategy, 1327–1360 (The Alexander Prize Essay)
He that will fraunce wynne, must with Scotland first beginne.WHEN I tell people that I'm studying English strategy in the Hundred Years War, the response is very often something to the effect of ‘did they really have “strategy” in the middle ages?’ This idea, that strategy was absent from the medieval period, remains deeply embedded in the historiography of the subject. Sir Charles Oman, probably still the best-known historian of medieval warfare, wrote of the middle ages that ‘the minor operations of war were badly understood, [and] strategy— the higher branch of the military art—was absolutely nonexistent. Professor Ferdinand Lot said much the same. Other scholars have argued that the medieval commander ‘had not the slightest notion of strategy’, or that ‘never was the art of war so imperfect or so primitive.’ But the truth is that most medieval commanders did not show ‘a total scorn for die intellectual side of war’ nor ignore ‘the most elementary principles of strategy’; nor is it fair to say that ‘“generalship” and “planning” are concepts one can doubtfully apply to medieval warfare.’