The ‘Infantry Revolution’ of the Late Middle Ages - A Video Essay

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The ‘Infantry Revolution’ of the late Middle Ages is kind of a hot topic among armchair historians and academics alike. This is how the argument goes: In the late Middle Ages, infantry grew in importance to the detriment of heavy cavalry; by then battles were increasingly won with pikes, longbows and arquebuses instead of mounted knights with lances., the argument continues, and as a result of that, the socio-political make-up and development of European polities changed lastingly. So, this infantry Revolution supposedly had an incredible impact on European state building processes AND, the argument finally concludes, it laid the foundation to Europe’s conquest and colonization of many parts of the world. However, in public spaces such as YouTube this whole debate is more discussed in regards to tactics and fighting techniques than economics and politics. Consequently, much of the public discussion is about how and if the importance of knights changed after the high medieval ages. Likewise, Topics such as the efficacy of the English Longbow or the impact of pikes in the late Middle Ages are frequently the subject of discussions. All of that is controversial to say the least but it gets worse: these changes must be viewed in the broader military changes such as the rise of gunpowder artillery between 1420 and 1530 is called an artillery revolution, the decline of sieges between the 1420s and the 1530s which, among many things, led to the resurgence of heavy cavalry in the later late middle ages. Lastly, all of these revolutions belong to a notion called ‘military revolution’. This video is not intended to argue one side or the other of the ‘infantry revolution’ but to provide a broad overview over both the debate and the military changes during the 14th and 15th centuries. It explains how contemporary historiography quarrels over the infantry revolution.

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