/his/, can you recommend me any solid books about the history of Knights, especially during the Early and High Middle Ages? Looking for Anglo-French books, but anything on Italy would be pretty cool too.
Alternatively, books on the overall nature of war from the Norman Invasions of Sicily and England to the Hundred Years' War.
>>451624
Richard Barber has various jobs about knights and chivalry.
Jean Flori has another easily readable book in the subject.
Georges Duby has an small article about about the young and the chivalry society that its really funny and interesting to read.
How did knights come to be?
Was there a vacuum previously occupied by something from classical times that they filled?
>>452420
Not really. There was cavalry, but previously this was mostly light cav that used javelins. IIRC the Normans largely defined the role in the 11th Century, with the Norman cavalry deciding to hang onto their spears in Hastings instead of tossing them.
>>452420
Feudal system, coupled with the fact that heavy cavalry was overpowered.
There was no real counter to cavalry until pikes/gunpowder.
>>452493
>pikes
Why did Europe kind of suddenly forget that massed pikes was a tried and tested thing?
>>452516
Because Romans and Europe suddenly lost professional infantrymen
>>452539
I wouldn't say lost. The Brits still had professional archers due to mandatory training. People just focused on more highly skilled units for the meager amount of resources they ad available instead of throwing it all into pikemen which is extremely expensive and needs constant drilling. Meanwhile an archer can be taught how to shoot a bow as a teenager, practice on his own for years, then get a quick lesson on operating as a unit when marching off to war when called.
>>452485
You are speaking from a purely military pov and not really going into the societal role that I think other anon is concerned with.
>>452420
Knights in the early years were alot like modern gangsters. They had a small territory they extracted money and resources from by fortune of superior weaponry and skill at arms in exchange for protection. Then they kicked a percentage and military loyalty to the next guy up the ladder.
>>451624
Contamine, Philippe. War in the Middle Ages. Translated by Michael Jones. Oxford: Blackwell, 1984.
>English translation of La Guerre au moyen âge first published in 1980. This general textbook of medieval warfare deals only briefly with the early Middle Ages, but is very important because Contamine rejected the Brunner thesis (see Soldiers and Tactics: Cavalry and Infantry) and its obsession with the origins of the knight.
:^)
annotated bibliographies:
Feudalism
http://pastebin.com/5WxCvCr4
if you ctrl f "knight" you see that most books in this bibliography discuss the knight not as a military unit but as a fixture of the feudal hierarchy. there is a section on "feudalism and chivalry"
Crusades
http://pastebin.com/7h8fASgv
for the section on "crusading orders" and the last section on "crusader motivations," which examines why 11th knights decided to fight in the holy land.
Chivalry
http://pastebin.com/uB2cZDef
Charlemagne
http://pastebin.com/QYMYkwq8
specifically the section on "General Studies and Works of Reference on Military History," but all the sections that follow also focus on charlemagne during the carolingian period, but also contain more general books on medieval warfare from 800 to ~1100s
Has anyone read the "crusade through arab eyes"?
