James Titterton
Deception in Medieval Warfare: Trickery and Cunning in the Central Middle Ages
(The Boydell Press, 2022), 292pp. $125
War is a realm full of secrecy, uncertainty, misinformation, and blunders. Unlike Hollywood, no war is only a pitched battle with neat lines of men organised in front of one another, and many conflicts have ended without such battles at all. This is true for all periods. Deceiving your enemy, knowing what they do, or preventing them from knowing your plans, were an integral part of warfare at all times, and so, achieving these advantages and victory necessitated trickery and cunning. The current monograph deals with these aspects of warfare that are too often taken for granted. It focuses on what Titterton defines as the Francophone world, which is more precisely the French sphere of influence, i.e. France, the English Isles, the Low Countries, and Crusader warfare in the middle Medieval period, 1000-1300 CE. There were a few works in the past that touched upon espionage in the medieval period and warfare, but none were quite the same as this book. Titterton sees this book as a continuation and expansion of the ideas and research presented in Yuval Noah Harari’s 2007 book Special Operations in the Age of Chivalry, 1100-1550. While Harari’s book was innovative in its approach, and opened a window to a new, almost unexplored topic, he unfortunately stopped writing academic literature almost a decade ago, and later moved to the realm of fiction, or even science fiction, becoming what many as defined as Goro, offering predictions on the distant future of humanity. However, as Titterton’s current book demonstrates, Harari’s decision was not due to a lack of material to continue in medieval military research.
To do justice for this book, it is vital to start at its end, where Titterton provides a vast corpus/database of 427 entries, split into categories such as ambushes, distraction, bribery and inducement, and so on. This database, titled “Taxonomy of Military Deceptions in Medieval Chronicles c. 1000-1320,” is the outcome of pedantic academic work, which is unfortunately too rare. The entire book is based on this database, with most of the 9 chapters focusing on analysing one or more of the categories in it, by using many of the entries under the said categories in the database. The book starts with a short introduction that also includes a summary of the chapters. This is followed by the first chapter, that is very introductory to the topic and to the texts. It discusses the materials used, the problems of the texts, the benefits that the research and the texts can provide and so on. The book then moves to analyse the database itself. The second chapter, “Military Intelligence: Misdirection, Misinformation and Espionage” like many other chapters, examines some of the relevant entries in the database, such as, in this case, some of the category called “Spies and Spying” (12 cases which represent 2.81% of the database) as well as other categories within the database. This chapter is highly important due to the lack of academic writing on the topic of espionage in the medieval period. The third chapter similarly deals with “The Element of Surprise: Ambushes and Night Raids”, with ambushes consisting of 31.61% (135 entries) of the database and night/dawn attacks 18.5% (79 entries). Regarding ambushes, it is interesting that 32 entries, almost a quarter of the category, refers to the Muslim armies. The four other following chapters are similar, as they too analyse a category from the database, such as the fourth chapter, which deals with “The Feigned Flight” (39 entries that are 9.13% of the database), the fifth (“Disguises”, 57 cases that are 13.34%), the sixth (“Bribes and Inducements”, 20 entries that are 4.68% of the database) and the seventh (“Oaths and Truces”, 25 cases which are 5.85%) chapters.
On the other hand, the last two chapters are framed differently and touch upon an important element that was previously mentioned, but is rather the main research point and discussion in these chapters: the language used to describe trickery and cunningness, and how they were perceived. The main conclusion is that in some texts, the language changed in accordance to who did the deed, and if the war they conducted was perceived as just, thus implying that deception, trickery and certain tactics were not considered as unhonourable. The primary factor that does seem to be considered as immoral was breaking an oath and revolting because such acts were considered unjust. The derogative rhetoric of these acts in comparison to the rhetoric of other tactics and acts emphasises that tactics of surprise attack and ambushes, and other such special deeds, were seen as an integral part of warfare and even a sign of a capable commander.
To conclude, this book is important and vital to the research of medieval warfare, and is an excellent example of how much more one can learn and research on such topics. Titterton’s immaculate research indicates what can be achieved by utilising databases correctly. We can only hope that similar research and databases will be created for other texts and periods from the medieval period. Accordingly, as this volume is a great example of high-quality research and an indication to where the academic world should aspire to be, this book should be available at every university library and will also be a very good addition to the library of many enthusiasts of the topic and the period.
Haggai Olshanetsky
Department of Ancient History
University of Warsaw
[email protected]
