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4 produkter
4 produkter
412 kr
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Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas:TheWhite Death of the Saracens is the first ever English-language biography of the man who broke the stranglehold of Islam over Byzantine Rome so that by the year 968 his forces could invade the Muslim lands virtually unopposed. This was the result of his military reforms and remarkable gifts as a military commander. The text provides thorough analysis of how he reformed military equipment, tactics and strategy to achieve this. The ambushes, battles and military campaigns are discussed in unprecedented detail. Special attention is also paid to the influence of the ascetic Christian lifestyle of Nikephoros on the morale of the armed forces.In spite of his religiosity, Nikephoros was a military man through and through, and the civilian population of the Empire were constantly reminded of this. Soldiers were billeted in Constantinople and showered with favours and Nikephoros even pressured the Church to declare soldiers who died in combat as martyrs. Ilkka Syvänne meticulously explores the relationship between the Church and armed forces in the emperor’s policies. Of course Nikephoros had his human weaknesses which led to his untimely assassination. Why and how this happened is also analysed in detail. The assassination of Nikephoros deprived the Byzantine Romans of their ‘Bearer of Victory’, but his military reforms and campaigns had paved the way for Byzantine Rome to reach its apogee under his immediate successors.
177 kr
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This is a narrative military history of the emperors Lucius Domitius Aurelianus (‘Aurelian’, reigned 270-275) and Marcus Aurelius Probus (276-282) which also includes the other reigns between the years 268 and 285. It shows how these two remarkable emperors were chiefly responsible for the Empire surviving and emerging largely intact from a period of intense crisis. It was Aurelian who first united the breakaway regions, including Zenobia’s Palmyra, and it was Probus who then secured his achievements.The reigns of Aurelian and Probus have been subjected to many studies, but none of these have approached the extant material purely from the point of view of military analysis. Most importantly, the previous historians have not exploited the analytical opportunities provided by the military treatises that describe the strategy and tactics of the period Roman army. It is thanks to this new methodology that Ilkka Syvänne has been able to reconstruct the military campaigns of these two soldier emperors and their other contemporaries in far greater detail than has been possible before.
368 kr
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Late Roman Combat Tactics by Dr. Ilkka Syvänne is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand land combat in the period from the Tetrarchy to the death of Heraclius, a period when the Romans faced serious and growing military threats on many fronts. The author’s detailed analysis provides the reader with a complete understanding of the combat equipment worn by the soldiers, types of troops, tactics, different unit orders and formations used by the late Romans and their enemies. Importantly, he lays out the developments and changes in these aspects across this critical period, assessing how the Romans adapted, or failed to adapt to the varied and changing array of enemies, such as Persians, Avars and Arabs.The discussion examines how the Romans fought at every level, so that it covers everything from the individual fighting techniques all the way up to the conduct of large-scale pitched battles. There is an immense amount of technical detail but the human element and the experience of the officers and ordinary soldiers is not forgotten, with such factors as morale and the psychology of battle (the ‘face of battle’) given due consideration. The thoroughly researched text is well supported by dozens of diagrams and illustrations. A thoroughly illuminating read on its own, Late Roman Combat Tactics is also the perfect companion to Dr Syvänne’s eight-volume Military History of Late Rome.
316 kr
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Military History of Late Rome 565-602 provides a new fresh analysis of the Roman Empire in the aftermath of the reconquests of Justinian I (527-65). It is often claimed that Justinian overstretched the Roman resources, but this analysis proves that view wrong. It demonstrates that the initial troubles were largely the result of the mistakes of Justin II (565-78) and that his successors, Tiberius II (578-82) and Maurice (582-602), not only restored its fortunes but were, at the time of the death of Maurice, actually poised to complete the reconquests of Justinian. It was thanks to the reforms of Maurice, which were codified in the military treatise the Strategikon, that the Roman army had achieved a position of relative superiority over all of its enemies so that by 602 the Romans had decisively defeated the Persians, Slavs and Avars and were poised to complete the project of reconquest. These gains, however, were lost when Maurice was murdered in a military mutiny which brought Phocas to power. This volume explains why the Roman army overthrew one of the greatest Roman emperors who ever lived. This was an era of epic battles so it is not a surprise that the author also pays particular attention to the period tactics and analyses all of the period battles in great detail. These include for example such battles as Melitene, Constantia, Sirmium, Nymphius River, Solanchon, Lake Urmiah, Plain of Canzak, Iatrus, and the epic battles of Priscus and Comentiolus in the Balkans.