INTRODUCTION

Unlike its companion volume, Armies of the Middle Ages, volume 1, this book deals largely with geographic areas that are almost as remote from the English-speaking world today as they were in the 14th-15th centuries. Written information on those regions is, as a result, in very short supply, and generally when it reaches our shores it is in an alien language or alphabet with which most of we lesser mortals are entirely unfamiliar. This book is therefore an attempt to fill a somewhat larger gap than any of the others I have written, but at the same time it omits rather more than it includes since proportionately little contemporary material has managed to survive the ravages of the last 5 centuries, and what has survived 500 years of foreign occupation, Turkish invasions, Balkan wars and peasant revolutions is largely available only in its original language. Most of what is included here is therefore culled from English or French books and translations studied over an extended period in Cambridge University Library, for access to which I am deeply indebted to the Library authorities. Other people to whom I owe my thanks for assistance directly or indirectly rendered include Phil Barker; the late Alan Nickels; Dr Erwin Schmidl; Dave Alsop; Dr David Nicolle; Peter Sherwood of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies; Roman Olejniczak, for his usual invaluable help on mediaeval Polish warfare; and the authors of all the books listed in the bibliography, and others besides, without whose own research in a difficult field of study this volume would not have been possible.

One thing that did become apparent as my research proceeded was that this book could easily have been called ‘Armies and Enemies of the Ottoman Empire’, since of all the nations or political entities it covers only the peoples of India never came into conflict with the Ottoman Turks during this period. Indeed, there are very few pages in this book on which some allusion or reference to the Ottoman Turks does not occur somewhere. It is the Balkans that captured my particular attention, however, where in the mid-15th century charismatic historical figures such as Scanderbeg, Dracula and Janos Hunyadi led wonderfully colourful armies against the Turks; theirs was a world which, once it had fallen, was never to re-emerge in its original form, even after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in Europe in the late-19th century.

As in volume 1, foreign terms are set in italic type where they first occur but thereafter usually appear in Roman. Though many variants occur, I have adhered to contemporary spellings for personal and place names wherever possible, except where a modernised spelling has become widely accepted. In addition, in keeping with modern parlance I have chosen to use the terms ‘Mongol’ and ‘Tartar’ interchangeably, historically inaccurate though this is.

Ian Heath July 1984

Copyright © Ian Heath 1984

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