Siege Warfare and Military Organization in the Successor States (400–800 AD), by Leif Inge Ree Petersen

Rare indeed is the young historian who is ready to range over several centuries and probe several cultures, when most of his contemporaries are hunkering down to look closely at small, carefully delineated topics, often as members of project-oriented research teams. Leif Petersen is indeed wonderfully anomalous in the early twenty-first century. He sets out to document what is reported of siege operations across the whole west Eurasian world in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, compiling a massive compendium of meticulous mini-narratives. The result is a Corpus obsidionum , which runs to over three hundred pages and which will prove an invaluable resource for future historians. He scrutinises and evaluates the performance of the main historical players on this vast stage—namely east Romans who mutate into Byzantines, Arabs, northern nomads (principally Huns, Avars and Bulgars), Slavs, and the major military political entities (Ostrogoth, Visigoth, Lombard and Frank) which took root in the western half of the Roman empire in the fourth to fifth centuries. He identifies the various techniques and machines used in siege warfare, paying particular attention to a new form of artillery, the lever machine known as the trebuchet , and the circumstances of its appearance in the West (it had long been known and used in China). Finally, he extends his field of inquiry to the organisational infrastructure needed to maintain a siege-warfare capability, making forays into the institutional and social history of each of his historical players.

Ancient history · Archaeology · Artillery · Byzantine architecture · Political science · Politics · Roman Empire · Siege · Successor cardinal · Byzantine Studies and History · Classics · Eurasian Exchange Networks · Historical and Archaeological Studies · History · Law