This volume offers an annotated translation and commentary on five thirteenth-century narrative accounts of the battles of Steppes (1213), Ane (1227), and Hausbergen (1262) as well as the overall political and military circumstances in which they occurred. These battles have received some scholarly attention, but the broader military organization of the German kingdom as well as the conduct of war require considerable further work. The commentary provided in this translation in both the introduction and notes will help orient readers toward these matters and explain their significance.
The volume makes accessible to an English reading audience five narrative works that are very important for understanding the nature of warfare within the German Empire of the thirteenth century. The introduction brings together the most up to date scholarship regarding the origin, authorship, and purpose of these texts, which is largely in German, French, and Dutch. The commentary provided in the introduction regarding military affairs and the annotations for the translation enables readers to situate these texts in their proper political and military contexts.
This work will be of value both to specialists in medieval history who wish to gain a more thorough understanding of military affairs and also to teachers, who would like to provide their students with an opportunity to read narrative works from the German kingdom that offer insights to a wide range of social, political, and military phenomena. In this context, although a great many of the main narrative sources for the earlier medieval period in Germany have been translated, this is not the case for texts produced after c. 1200.