Medieval Warfare Quotes

Knights die in battle,” Catelyn reminded her. Brienne looked at her with those blue and beautiful eyes. “As ladies die in childbed. No one sings songs about them.

It is permitted to surprise the infidels under cover of night, to bombard them with catapults and to attack them without declaring war.

The ferocious inroads of the Normans scared many weak and timid persons into servitude.

Stories of the Crusades are still told in Moslem cafes and families as if they occurred yesterday.

A personal game-changer was when Ridley Scott cast me as King John, the King of England, for 'Robin Hood.'

When I was a boy, I took over the shed at the bottom of the garden and displayed fossils and potsherds and coins in it and proudly called it my 'museum'. I charged people to come in, and my most prized possession was a Saracen shield dating from the Crusades.

The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical.

It will be your destiny to defend Christendom against the Turk. It will thus be an essential part of Your education that you be early taught the use of the bow, of the sling, and of the spear.

I, Alfonso, King of the Portuguese, with the consent of all my people, so that it may be remembered by future generations, do provide by this protocol of confirmation that the Franks who shall remain with me in the siege of the city of Lisbon shall have and take into their power and possession the goods of whatever kind belonging to the enemy and that I and my men shall have no part whatever of them. The Franks shall freely have the ransom money from the enemy prisoners

I've come off horses and fought in medieval battles using axes, hammers and swords as well as fists. Getting your teeth knocked out is an occupational hazard.

The halberd is inferior to the spear on the battlefield. With the spear you can take the initiative, the halberd is defensive.

Blessed be those happy ages that were strangers to the dreadful fury of these devilish instruments of artillery, whose inventor I am satisfied is now in Hell, receiving the reward of his cursed invention, which is the cause that very often a cowardly base hand takes away the life of the bravest gentleman.

We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity - romantic love and gunpowder.

All these portrayals we see of knights fighting must be absolute rubbish because knights in armour could literally have only had two or three blows and then they'd have had to sit down to have a cup of tea.

For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use.

It took 200 years for the Crusaders to create [this] Muslim fanaticism. It was the exact imitation of Christian intolerance.

The first two crusades brought the flower of European chivalry to Constantinople and restored that spiritual union between Eastern and Western Christendom that had been interrupted by the great schism of the Greek and Roman Churches.

My girlfriend has read all the 'Game of Thrones' books - twice.

The bow is tactically strong at the commencement of battle, especially battles on a moor, as it is possible to shoot quickly among the spearmen.

The idea of organizing any kind of defense aroused an almost innate repugnance. Digging into the earth was believed to be a dishonorable gesture for loyal fighters who in their heart of hearts wanted to offer themselves up to danger with their chests exposed. It was an instinctive thing, which seems to have passed down to our age of machines and merciless economic warfare from the reckless chivalry of Agincourt of the elaborate graces of Fontenoy.

MISERICORDE, n. A dagger which in mediaeval warfare was used by the foot soldier to remind an unhorsed knight that he was mortal.

With the advance of feudalism came the growth of iron armor, until, at last, a fighting-man resembled an armadillo.

'Henry V' is a great deal more than almost any other hell-bent-for-armor movie that you've seen.

The most part of all princes have more delight in warlike manners and feats of chivalry than in the good feats of peace.