The naval battles of Roger of Lauria

Roger of Lauria's family was exiled from the kingdom of Sicily by Charles I of Anjou for its support of the Hohenstaufen cause but in the service of Aragon he became the most feared and renowned warrior of his generation. His six great naval victories during the War of the Sicilian Vespers closely determined the outcome of that struggle.Lauria's fame has been diminished by the minor place awarded to the War of the Vespers by modern medievalists and by its overshadowing by the Hundred Years War. But in fact it was an extremely important war in medieval history, witnessing the decline of the papacy and the kingdom of Sicily and the rise for a brief time of a new power in the Mediterranean: Aragon. Moreover, it was in this war that medieval warfare first began to acquire attributes characteristics of the later middle ages: supremacy of archers and infantry over mounted and mailed knights, appearance of disciplined and professional companies of mercenaries led by professional war leaders, and decline from chivalric warfare into nationalistic hatred and ferocity.Lauria's success lay in the superior qualities of his crews and in his own genius. Handling galley fleets successfully required mastery of the difficult nexus between land and sea for Mediterranean galley warfare was more amphibious than naval in the modern sense of the word. Lauria proved to be the greatest master of the science in the middle ages; a war leader deserving to be ranked with Richard Coeur de Lion, the Black Prince, and Nelson.     

Sentiment vs Strategy: British Naval Policy,Imperial Defence,and the Development of Dominion Navies, 1911–14

This article examines British naval policy towards imperial defence and the development of autonomous Dominion navies in 1911–14. It shows that the Admiralty's main goal under the leadership of Winston Churchill was to concentrate British and Dominion warships in European waters, and ideally in the North Sea, to meet the German threat. Churchill's approach to naval developments in the Dominions was also shaped by his desire to fulfil the Cabinet's policy of remaining strong in the Mediterranean Sea. He made some concessions to sentiment in the Dominions, but his attempts to create a coherent imperial policy for the naval defence of Britain and its empire were ultimately unsuccessful. By 1914 it was clear that the Dominions would not provide the additional warships Britain required for the Mediterranean, and on the eve of war the Admiralty was beginning to prepare an imperial naval strategy that more accurately reflected the Empire's capabilities.     

King John's military reputation reconsidered

A measure that medieval chroniclers used for judging kings was success in battle. King John obviously failed this test with his loss of Normandy, 1202–04, and the failure of his 1214 continental campaign. Modern scholars prefer to depict the king as an able administrator, downplaying his military activity; they continue to follow medieval writers in labelling John an incompetent general, lacking boldness, even cowardly. In fact, John's poor military reputation is based on only a few comments in chronicles and verse narratives. While his defense of Normandy from the French was a disaster, partly because of his own failings, factors beyond his control contributed heavily to his loss of the duchy, such as the superior wealth of Philip Augustus. Critics neglect the link between the English king's warfare and his administrative activity, which aimed at raising men, money and other resources for wars. John conducted campaigns capably before and after the loss of Normandy. Some moderns accept traditional condemnation of his military skill, because of a misunderstanding of the nature of medieval warfare. Pitched battles were rare, and war consisted of seemingly aimless plundering raids and sieges of castles. John's supposed lack of boldness merely reflects a medieval commander's caution. His plans for the relief of Château Gaillard in 1203 and his 1214 two-pronged attack on Philip illustrate skill in strategy. Unlike many medieval generals John was skilled at siegecraft, seen at Rochester Castle in 1215. While King John's two greatest campaigns failed, costing him most of his continental lands, his failures in warfare are due neither to incompetence nor to cowardice.     

An enduring influence on imperial defence and grand strategy: British perceptions of the Italian Navy, 1935–1943

The Mediterranean was a vital artery of the British Empire. It was a strategic corridor, linking Britain to its Middle and Far East possessions and precious resources. Its control was a central tenet of British imperial strategy, yet by the mid-1930s, this faced a new challenge from Fascist Italy. The Italian Navy was central to expansionist aspirations and forced British reappraisals of the allocation of defence resources both in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. It therefore came to exert a generally under-appreciated influence on pre-war British imperial defence policy and war planning. Although consistently viewed as vastly inferior to the Royal Navy, it was still seen as an impediment to Britain's ability to deliver imperial defence across the globe, or conduct a worldwide war against multiple enemies. This view persisted even after important defeats were inflicted on it in 1940–1941, and continued right through to 1943. Awareness of the seriousness with which the British viewed Italian naval strength adds important context to debates about British strategy in the Far East and over Winston Churchill's preference for a ‘Mediterranean first’ strategy. Italian naval power played a greater role in shaping the Allied prosecution of the Second World War than is commonly accepted.     

LATE GALLEYS: The Fredriksvern Naval Shipyard and the coastal defence in Norway 1750–1814

From the early 18th century the Mediterranean galley experienced a new golden age in the Baltic Sea, as it was well adapted to the shallow sea with the islands and skerries found there. In Norway the Fredriksvern naval shipyard was founded in 1750 to build a galley fleet. For various reasons progress was slow, and when the galley fleet finally was built in the 1760s, it was probably the last one in Europe. New and more efficient inshore vessels were soon developed in the neighbouring countries, but they were not put into use in Norway in the 18th century. The explanation for Norway’s poor performance was probably too much peace: when Denmark-Norway became involved in the Napoleonic Wars, naval development was dramatically improved.     

Lincoln as Commander-in-Chief

Abstract

Abraham Lincoln's presidency was defined and dominated by war, yet Lincoln himself had very little direct experience with warfare; nor had the American presidency been truly tested by war when he took office. Lincoln had to negotiate very difficult political and constitutional terrain as he waged the Civil War: issues of executive authority, constitutional powers and their limitations, and the nature of civil liberties during war constantly bedeviled him. His guiding principle in all these matters, and the greatest lesson we can learn from him today, was his flexibility and his pragmatism.     

Wellsprings of a ‘World War’: An early English attempt to conquer Canada during King William's war, 1688–97

The military historiography of early modern colonial America currently offers two contrary interpretations. One emphasises the exceptional nature of American warfare as a product of a process of military acculturation between the colonists and the native Americans; the other denies this acculturation in favour of the successful importation of orthodox European forms of warfare. By assessing the military history of the early years of King William's War, 1688–97, including in particular an early attempt to conquer French Canada in 1690 by Sir William Phips, this article contributes to this historiographical debate. King William's War (known on the European continent as the Nine Years' War) has been little studied in this context and the article argues that not only was military acculturation less relevant in the later seventeenth century, but also that the colonists' deployment of amphibious actions against the French demonstrated an increasing recognition that, strategically and militarily, they were required to draw closer to London's war policy and to replicate European combat.     

From experience to law: Leo Strauss and the Weimar crisis of the philosophy of religion

This paper is a study of the origins of Leo Strauss's thought, arguing that its early development must be understood in the context of the philosophy of religion of late Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany. More specifically, it shows that Strauss's early works were written against the background of Kantian philosophy and post-Kantian accounts of religious experience, and that his turn towards medieval law as a topic and ideal was precipitated by the critique of those accounts by radical Protestant theologians writing in the post-World War I era of crisis. Ironically, then, Strauss's investment in premodern Judaism—and his related rejection of modern philosophy—had important Christian origins.     

René of Anjou,King of Sicily,and the order of the Croissant

Founded in 1448 by René, Duke of Anjou and titular King of Sicily, the Order of the Croissant represents one of many secular orders of chivalry established by late medieval rulers. An examination of the Order's statutes and membership indicates that the Croissant was more than a colourful convocation of knights. As René's personal creation, the Croissant served as a political instrument not only for controlling his vassals, but also for advancing his territorial claims.     

On the path to oblivion: The pilgrims' declining role in the St. Christopher plays of early and early modern Spain

This article examines the representation of the pilgrim in the corpus of St. Christopher dramas of early and early modern Iberia. The importance of the character's supporting role varies according to the era in which each play is written. At first, in the medieval religious dramas of the Crown of Aragon, the pilgrim not only celebrates St. Christopher's piety and anticipates his meeting with Jesus Christ, but also embodies the sanctity and devotion necessitated of pilgrimage. The pilgrims undergo a transformation in the sixteenth century as they become comic and serve as foils to the protagonist's gravity. On the seventeenth-century secular stage, the representations diverge: they begin with a traditional representation of the pilgrim, but then the figure ultimately disappears as the comedias focus on the later period of St. Christopher's life, the result of a Tridentine directive that refocused the general worship of saints and hagiographical literature.     

Attlee,Bevin, and Political Warfare: Labour's Secret Anti-Communist Campaign in Europe, 1948–51

Clement Attlee's Labour Government oversaw the emergence of a vigorous anti-Communist discourse and the establishment of an anti-Soviet Western alliance in the early Cold War. In January 1948, the Prime Minister authorised the Information Research Department to launch a political warfare offensive designed to combat the spread of Communism in Europe. Two years later, against the wishes of his Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, Attlee set up a high-level interdepartmental committee to oversee the subversion of the Soviet Union's position in Eastern Europe. These developments forced Whitehall to re-fight the bureaucratic battles of the Second World War over who actually controlled covert warfare. Bevin, like his predecessor Anthony Eden, fought unsuccessfully to maintain exclusive ownership of national security strategy in this area. Attlee ended his monopoly by making a rare but significant intervention in his Foreign Secretary's domain in the search for a new central machine to fight the Cold War.     

Education of the Supreme Commander: The Theoretical Underpinnings of Eisenhower's Strategy in Europe, 1944–45

Abstract

Eisenhower's popular image as both senior officer and, subsequently, President of the United States tends to overplay his personal geniality and undervalues his intellect and clear professional mastery of the military art. This article argues for an Eisenhower who devoted himself to the study of war in the decades before the Second World War, and whose professional attainments defy the popular image.     

The Spanish American War’s ‘Most Durable Hero’: Admiral Pasquale Cervera and Popular Heroic Values in the United States, 1898–1909

The United States honored a host of military heroes during the Spanish American War including Pasqual Cervera y Topete, the enemy admiral who had experienced a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Santiago Bay, Cuba (3 June 1898) at the hands of US naval forces. Over the course of the war and in the year that followed, American public opinion of the admiral became positive and increasingly laudatory. By late 1899, Life Magazine, followed by other popular publications, claimed that Cervera was a better war hero then Admiral George Dewey and other American officers who had been wildly celebrated for their wartime heroics. The enemy admiral’s heroic rise was possible because of a fundamental change in the relationship between the press and the nation’s war heroes that sped up each champion’s ultimate decline. In the late nineteenth century Americans sought chivalrous, selfless men of action for their heroes. As journalists began covering each war hero’s daily life as they did other celebrities, however, they discovered character flaws in the nation’s homegrown champions. This examination of Cervera’s gradual rise as an American hero through his death in 1909 includes an overview of the American hero-making process and lifecycle and how celebrity journalism shortened the reign of most war heroes. After identifying the complicated set of values the nation sought in its war heroes at the end of the century, this study will also explain why journalists considered naval heroes as better representatives of those cherished ideals than those from the Army (including volunteer Theodore Roosevelt) until well after the end of the war. Roosevelt was honored as a hero during the war and won the 1899 New York gubernatorial election largely because of his wartime popularity, but was not considered selfless because of his clear political ambitions. American hero-worship of Cervera developed slowly, was considerably more subdued than the public enthusiasm displayed for America’s native-born champions, and was undoubtedly bestowed, in part, as a criticism of the failure of American heroes to live up to the heroic narrative created for them by reporters and biographers. Cervera’s ranking as Life’s ‘most durable hero’ of the war, while seemingly nonsensical, begins to make more sense when the Spanish admiral is reconfigured as a national cultural hero instead of an American military champion. Despite his enemy status, Cervera came to epitomise important military values of the day, because of the rapid decline of the nation’s American-born war heroes brought about by celebrity journalism.     

Mistranslations of Josephus and the expansion of public charity in late antiquity

Three Latin mistranslations of Josephus' Jewish War I.61 between the fourth and the seventh centuries ce reflect the expansion of a series of charitable institutions, called xenodocheia and nosokomeia, around the Mediterranean in late antiquity and the early medieval period. In the late fourth century, authors known as pseudo‐Rufinus and pseudo‐Hegesippus independently mistranslated Josephus' report that the Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus hired mercenary troops at the conclusion of a Seleucid siege of Jerusalem. In their confusion, these authors both interpreted this as a charitable action and pseudo‐Hegesippus anachronistically imported the xenodocheion into the Hellenistic period. In the early seventh century Isidore of Seville expanded upon pseudo‐Hegesippus' mistake to transform the hiring of mercenaries into the genesis of both the xenodocheion and the nosokomeion. Isidore's inclusion of these institutions in his Etymologiae indicated their ubiquity and popularity by the seventh century, while for later writers his work canonized the mistaken origin.     

Rhetoric and morale: a study of battle orations from the central middle ages

Courage and morale are often overlooked factors in medieval warfare. Nevertheless, they were as important in the middle ages as they are today. Although there is no psychological evidence of the type compiled in recent wars, the chroniclers of the central middle ages do provide a considerable amount of information about the different factors that stimulated the fighting spirit of medieval armies. They wrote hundreds of battle orations, harangues to the knights before or during combat, that show in detail the kinds of motive appeals the chroniclers believed would be most effective in building morale. This article analyzes battle orations as a rhetorical genre for the psychological insights they provide into the mentality of the medieval man at arms.     

Scholarship and the ship of state: rethinking the Anglo‐American strategic decline analogy

This article uses the centenary of the First World War as an opportunity to re‐examine a major element of the existing literature on the war—the strategic implications of supposed British decline—as well as analogies to the contemporary United States based upon that interpretation of history. It argues that the standard declinist interpretation of British strategy rests to a surprising degree upon the work of the naval historian Arthur Marder, and that Marder's archival research and conceptual framework were weaker than is generally realized. It suggests that more recent work appearing since Marder is stronger and renders the declinist strategic interpretation difficult to maintain. It concludes by considering the implications of this new work for analogies between the United States today and First World War‐era Britain, and for the use of history in contemporary policy debates.     

Techniques of seigneurial war in the fourteenth century

Despite the many studies devoted to medieval military history, most work has concentrated on royal wars, neglecting the petty seigneurial wars that made up most of the large-scale, organised violence of the middle ages. This article, based on judicial records for dozens of seigneurial wars waged in fourteenth-century southern France, shows that lords' tactics were not keeping up with those of royal commanders. Although royal wars increasingly involved large numbers of foot soldiers, large siege engines, and artillery, local lords' bureaucratic and financial limitations restricted their adoption of new techniques. As had been the case for centuries, most lords' wars were focused on causing economic damage and affective trauma through raiding. After the first phase of the Hundred Years War, local lords began to employ significant numbers of mercenaries, allowing them to wage war more frequently and perhaps making their wars more violent, a development which partly reflects the economic pressures of the period.     

Now More than Ever: Terrorism,Asymmetric Warfare,and the Just War Tradition

Abstract

For more than fifteen hundred years, the just war tradition has provided guidance about when wars should and should not be fought. It has also incorporated standards for how wars should be fought. The tradition rejects the claim that all use of force is evil, suggesting instead that in some circumstances the failure to use force is wrong. War is never desirable, but sometimes it is both right and necessary. The just war tradition helps us understand when this is true. The tradition developed to help control conventional warfare, but it is no less applicable to the terrorism and asymmetrical warfare prevalent in contemporary conflicts. In a world where American military power is unmatched, any opponent's best option is some form of asymmetric warfare. Such warfare is frustrating to conventional forces and tempts them to respond with an "all's fair in war" approach that is both morally wrong and militarily counterproductive. Neither pacifism nor "realism" deals adequately with the challenges of twenty-first century warfare. Only the just war tradition provides clear guidance about when and how it is right to go to war and places this in the context of establishing a peace based on justice and equity.     

Popular culture in seventeenth-century England

Carl Schmitt emphatically rejected intermediate formations between peace and war. Analysing Schmitt's oscillation between the domestic and the international, the article suggests that the notion of ‘intermediate state’ provides a vital route to the core of Schmitt's political theory. The concept emerges in Schmitt's analysis of the Rhineland crisis, recurs in his vehement critique of Weimar pluralism, and, finally, reappears in his theory of modern war from the Third Reich to the Cold War. ‘Intermediate state’ has both qualitative and temporal aspects; it connotes not only categorical confusion and impurity but also instability and limited duration. Despite his criticism, Schmitt himself utilised the ambiguity, polysemy, and normative ambivalence of the intermediate state in his argumentation, finally giving it an open theological reinterpretation in his later work. Schmitt's theory of political conflict, consequently, is problematically bound to the vague intermediate state of perpetual conflict that he sought to avoid, and to the metaphorical aspects of the notion of battle that he explicitly rejected.