Volume 83, Number 1 · January 2019

The Viking Age in popular culture is often set in a dark and lawless era, a Hollywood conception of Ultima Thule, in which individual warriors fought for personal glory. But the archaeological evidence suggests a much different reality; the tale told by the inanimate objects uncovered from archaeological sites is one of a highly organized society in which justice and equality mattered. This view is also supported by the written sources. Most scholars concede that society in Roman Iron Age to Viking Age Scandinavia was well organized, and that a process of state building was under way. Less focus, however, has been put on warfare and military tactics during this period. What was warfare really like in Norway and Scandinavia in the years before, and during, the Viking Age? In this paper, an attempt will be made to analyze the extent to which early Scandinavian society was organized for warfare, and possible external influences on Scandinavian tactics in the Roman Iron Age and up to the Viking Age/early medieval period will be explored.

The battle of ʿAin al-Mallāha (19 June 1157) is an excellent case study for analyzing battles based on studies of historical battlefields. The battle of ʿAin al-Mallāha took place in a well-identified location within a well-studied area. Therefore, the information about the armies’ routes before the battle, their maneuvers before and during the battle, and both sides’ positions is quite clear and instructive.

Jacques Antoine Hippolyte, the Comte de Guibert, was the Enlightenment-era author of two major books on military matters, the Essai générale de tactique and the Défense du système de guerre moderne. Historians still cite the first book as a foundational text for the wars of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. His second work, however, retracted most of his earlier ideas, and instead argued in favor of the “limited warfare” perfected by Frederick the Great of Prussia. This second work attracted little attention in its own time, and historians likewise have cast it as a text that calls into question Guibert’s reputation as the great prophet of Napoleon. This essay, however, argues that the Défense proved to be equally as prophetic as the Essai, and represents more of a continuation than a refutation of Guibert’s earlier ideas.

On 6 September 1781 turncoat Brigadier General Benedict Arnold led a major British raid against the patriot privateer base of New London, Connecticut. The historical narrative of this undeniably destructive operation has largely mirrored contemporary rebel accounts emphasizing the violence and damage perpetrated under Arnold’s command. This article, however, maintains that Arnold fought within the generally recognized rules of engagement of jus in bello, the rules of “civilized warfare.” In this broadened context, the New Londoners, by actively providing a supporting physical and economic infrastructure for privateer operations in attacking and capturing British vessels, were hardly the innocents depicted in patriot propaganda and related presentations down to our own time.

The fall of 1864 saw one Confederate military disaster after another: Sherman took Atlanta, Farragut seized Mobile, Sheridan defeated Early three times in the Shenandoah Valley, and Grant penned up Lee in Petersburg. Northern voters followed the battle returns and reelected Lincoln. The South had lost both the military and the political war by mid-November 1864. Yet Lee, who was the real head of the Confederacy, remained silent on the need to make peace on Union terms. This article addresses the question—largely ignored by historians—of the reasons for Lee’s Great Silence and concludes that Lee’s unwillingness to oppose his friend and sponsor, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, was the decisive factor in his inaction, although reluctance to engage in confrontation and belief in civilian supremacy over the military had some impact.

Throughout the nineteenth century, U.S. Navy medical men, believing that airborne filth—miasmata—caused many of the diseases afflicting sailors and that humid air carries more filth than dry, sought to curtail the cleaning of the decks of warships with wet swabs. They met resistance to this reform from line officers who, from a variety of motives, were committed to keeping their ships clean. The medical reform movement attained its greatest intensity in the 1870s but quickly dissipated at the end of the century when steel hulls replaced wooden ones and the germ theory of disease replaced the theory of miasmata

This essay looks closely at psychology and escalation dynamics within war. It argues that the appearance of the V-1 flying bomb, V-2 rocket, and other German “secret weapons” in the summer of 1944, combined with Hitler’s unanticipated counteroffensive in December, had a significant escalatory effect on World War II’s last months in Europe. Such weapons coincided with jarring Anglo-American battlefront setbacks and acute manpower shortages. To hasten Germany’s defeat before more “secret weapons” appeared, Anglo-American leaders redoubled their destructive strategic bombing campaign, focusing on eastern German cities to insure the westward progress of Russian armies. The violence unleashed still weighs heavily on the Western conscience and remains a source of debate.