The Varangian Guard 988-1453

The Varangian Guards were Viking mercenaries who operated far beyond their native shores as an elite force within the Byzantine Armies. Descendants from a legendary line of warriors, the Varangian Guard was formed after a group of Viking mercenaries made a major contribution to the ...

Imperial armies of the Thirty Years' War.T.2

Cavalry

This history of the Catholic armies of the Habsburg Empire that fought in the Thirty Years' War explores the role of cavalry during the last major religious war in mainland Europe, which saw the end of the large mercenary forces and the beginnings of the ...

Romano-Byzantine armies 4th-9th centuries

By the late 4th century the pressures on the frontiers of the Roman Empire had transformed the nature of the army which defended it. With the western half of the empire in economic decline and chronic manpower shortages the army had proved incapable of defending ...

Byzantine armies 886-1118

Byzantine armies

AD 1118-1461

The Mongols

The Moors

the islamic west 7th-15th centuries AD

The high point of medieval islamic expansion was the 700-year presence of the 'Moors' in Spain and Portugal. The Arab and Berber conquest was followed by the establishment of a richly distinct culture in Andalusia, where for a while Muslim and Christian co-operated as often ...