"Good books on late medieval/early renaissance warfare?" Topic

Any good books on the period 1450~1500ish n Europe? I'm after a discussion on tactics and battles rather than a history of the period. For example, were pike used in the same way in different armies or did their use differ. That kind of thing.
Not Wars of the Roses please, I'm after mainland europe.

A decent starting point for the 1300-1487 period – especially from a wargamer's perspective – is Ian Heath's Armies of the Middle Ages, Volume 1, published by Wargames Research Group. It covers organisation, tactics, dress and weapons for England, Burgundy, France, the Free Companies, Grenada, Ireland, Italy, the Low Countries, Navarre, Scotland, Spain and Switzerland. It includes a bibliography so you can find books that will go deeper if you want. It came out in the early 1980s so if you want something more up to date you might find it useful to visit the Ancmed Yahoo Group. There are plenty of 'learned' people there who could point you to more up to date research.

Try 'The art of war in Italy, 1494-1529' by Taylor:

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or Oman:
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oman

Hall's Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe – very technical, especially on the details of gunpowder its manufacture, shipment and use. A technical and social history, it discusses individual battles in the context of how weapons were employed in them rather than with regard to their place in any war or campaign.

I also recommend Mallet's "Mercenaries and Their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy." Mind this will tell you more about how an army was raised than about how it fought.

The appropriate chapters of Oman are worth a read, I personally prefer the corresponding chapters of Arnold's Renaissance at War. It covers the same ground, and has better pictures.

Oman is sort of a seeping narrative start point. Once you have that under you belt, you have a context for more recent scholarship which brings a different perspective of the details.

Also, if you get into it, read Montloc'c commentaries link and the life of Bayard link both of which can be found in English and will tell you more about the head-space of the period than any number of secondary sources.

Perhaps a bit off the era and off the teritory,but I really like
Peter Reid's "Medieval Warfare -The rise and Fall of english Supremacy at arms,1314-1485".First part covers The Hundred Years War.The second part could be of the interest for you,it deals with The Wars of the Roses.

I just finished Matthew Bennett (etc) Fighting Techniques of the Medieval World AD 500 to AD 1500

that is very good.

Arnold's Renaissance at War is also very good (as are the 16th and 17th century volumes which follow it)

The Oman I'd recommend is the art of war in the 16th century – if you can find it,
but I can't tell you the number of books I have read this year which have a passage in them which dismiss Oman's beliefs on tactics and strategy in the Middle Ages, so you may not want to look for those two volumes by him.