Medieval warfare is sometimes caricatured as a matter of crude frontal collisions lacking in tactical finesse.
This was sometimes true. Anglo-Saxon and Viking warfare seems to have consisted of little more than head-on clashes between dense blocks of spearmen ranged behind their respective shield-walls. Much later, the Wars of the Roses seems to have been similarly lacking in tactical sophistication, perhaps because the English way of war developed in the early 14th century – discussed in this special – culminated in tactical stalemate when both sides deployed the same system, especially as armoured protection reached its dizzy peak in the late 15th century.
But stalemate is a recurring feature of warfare. The wars of Louis XIV (r. 1643-1715) tended to be tedious wars of position on heavily fortified frontiers involving one long siege after another. The generals of the First World War were unable to break the deadlock of the trenches until the development of embryonic blitzkrieg tactics in the last year of the conflict. It was not that medieval commanders necessarily lacked subtlety; more often they simply lacked the means to do anything other than accept a crude slugging match.
