Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- List of figures and tables
- 1 Thinking about revolutions in warfare
- 2 “As if a new sun had arisen”: England's fourteenth-century RMA
- 3 Forging the Western army in seventeenth-century France
- 4 Mass politics and nationalism as military revolution: The French Revolution and after
- 5 Surviving military revolution: The U.S. Civil War
- 6 The Prusso-German RMA, 1840–1871
- 7 The battlefleet revolution, 1885–1914
- 8 The First World War and the birth of modern warfare
- 9 May 1940: Contingency and fragility of the German RMA
- 10 Conclusion: The future behind us
- Index
2 - “As if a new sun had arisen”: England's fourteenth-century RMA
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
- Frontmatter
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- List of figures and tables
- 1 Thinking about revolutions in warfare
- 2 “As if a new sun had arisen”: England's fourteenth-century RMA
- 3 Forging the Western army in seventeenth-century France
- 4 Mass politics and nationalism as military revolution: The French Revolution and after
- 5 Surviving military revolution: The U.S. Civil War
- 6 The Prusso-German RMA, 1840–1871
- 7 The battlefleet revolution, 1885–1914
- 8 The First World War and the birth of modern warfare
- 9 May 1940: Contingency and fragility of the German RMA
- 10 Conclusion: The future behind us
- Index
Summary
During the reign of Edward III (1327–77), England underwent a genuine and dramatic revolution in military affairs. The country's abrupt transformation from a third-rate military power into the strongest and most admired martial nation in Europe was obvious even to contemporaries. The great humanist Francesco Petrarca observed in 1360 that
In my youth the Britons … were taken to be the meekest of the [non-Italians]. Today they are a fiercely bellicose nation. They have overturned the ancient military glory of the French by victories so numerous that they, who were once inferior to the wretched Scots, have reduced the entire kingdom of France by fire and sword.
At about the same time, the Liégeois knight—cleric—chronicler Jean le Bel, who had served on Edward III's first campaign against the Scots in 1327 and had followed the English monarch's later military career with great interest, remarked that
When the noble king Edward [III] first reconquered England in his youth [in 1326], the English were generally not held in high regard, and no one spoke of their prowess or their boldness … [but] they have learned skill-at-arms so well in the time of this noble King Edward … that they are [now] … the best fighters known.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050 , pp. 15 - 34Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001
- 1
- Cited by