Furies: War in Europe, 1450–1700 - Softcover

Martines, Lauro

3.62

302 ratings by Goodreads

9781608196180: Furies: War in Europe, 1450–1700

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1608196186 ISBN 13: 9781608196180

Publisher: Bloomsbury Press, 2014

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We think of the Renaissance as a shining era of human achievement-a pinnacle of artistic genius and humanist brilliance, the time of Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and Montaigne. Yet it was also an age of constant, harrowing warfare. Armies, not philosophers, shaped the face of Europe as modern nation-states emerged from feudal society. In Furies, one of the leading scholars of Renaissance history captures the dark reality of the period in a gripping narrative mosaic.

As Lauro Martines shows us, "total war" was no twentieth-century innovation. These conflicts spared no civilians in their path. A Renaissance army was a mobile city-indeed, a force of twenty thousand or forty thousand men was larger than many cities of the day. And it was a monster, devouring food and supplies for miles around. It menaced towns and the countryside-and itself-with famine and disease, often more lethal than combat. Fighting itself was savage, its violence increased by the use of newly invented weapons, from muskets to mortars.

For centuries, notes Martines, the history of this period has favored diplomacy, "high politics," and military tactics. Furies puts us on the front lines of battle, and on the streets of cities under siege, to reveal what Europe's wars meant to the men and women who endured them.

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Review:

Fascinating.... Martines is a master researcher and, like a collector showing off his treasures, his delight in his findings sparkles on every page (Philadelphia Inquirer)

An intriguing book.... Every situation and character Martines presents to usis of marvelous complexity. (New York Review of Books)

A spine-chilling political drama of conspiracy, murder at High Mass, and bloody revenge. (The Times (UK))

Impressive narrative power.... A thoroughly good read that is also reliable history, scrupulously documented yet with its pages uncluttered by footnotes... Savonarola's story...bears fresh retelling, and Lauro Martines does so with scholarly authority and an admirable combination of clarity and pace. (The Wall Street Journal)

In telling his tale, Martines moves easily between a top-down account and a bottom up one, with liberal use of specific cases to illustrate broad trends or patterns. He is careful to integrate his account of war in the period into the broader pattern of political, social, and cultural trends, the rise of the nation-state, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and the growth of a global economy. (A. A. Nofi StrategyPage)

Book Description:

A master historian reveals the dark side of a golden age-the brutal warfare that ravaged Europe and shaped the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity.

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