Re: My book is out
Sure.Originally Posted by LittleGrizzly
Basically, the introduction looks at some of the wider issues involved in studying the 'Investiture Wars' of the eleventh and twelfth century, when popes and emperors went to war with one another over control of the church (or to be more specific, control over who got to be elected/appointed bishops within the church, since the office of bishop often now had important political, economic and military power attached to it). The introduction also looks at the issue of women in war, and why people have previously had such a hard time accepting that a woman was a genuine commander (not just a figurehead). I argue that in the Middle Ages, war was 'a practical, not a theoretical art' (the phrase is historian Timothy Reuter's). This meant that proficiency in command was generally passed down through families in an apprentice-style system: if your father was king or duke, he taught his children the skills he had acquired, much like a knight would teach his sons how to fight. In Matilda's case, her other siblings died, and she was the only one left, so her father, stepfather and mother taught her the family business, and she grew up surrounded by war.
Chapters 1-4 are essentially a narrative of her major campaigns.
Chapter 1 looks at her early education and her difficult childhood, which inured her to war. By the age of 10, her father had been assassinated, the Holy Roman Emperor (Henry III) had invaded her family lands, and she herself had been taken as a POW. She learned pretty quickly that if she couldn't protect herself, she may not survive. By the time she was approaching her 30s, her mother was grooming her for office, and she even participated in an attempt to lauch a 'crusade' with the famous Pope Gregory VII in 1074 (this was 21 years before the First Crusade was formally proclaimed). Unfortunately, this expedtion broke apart, but Matilda learned a lot from it.
Chapters 2 and 3 look at Matilda's great victory over the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV in the Investiture Wars. It covers the famous meeting between pope Gregory VII and Henry IV at Canossa in 1077, when the emperor was humiliated by being forced to stand out in the snow before the front gates for three days. While this is one of the most famous events in medieval history, most historians are not aware of the fact that the castle of Canossa itself was Matilda's, and it was she who was protecting the pope from the emperor at that time!
The rest of chapters 2 and three document Matilda's early defeats at the Battle of Volta (1080) and Gregory's expulsion from Rome (1084). But it also looks at the turning of the tide with Matilda's great victory at the Battle of Sorbara (1084), her invasion of Rome (1087) and her final victory over Henry at Canossa (1092) and Nogara (1095). In fact, it was really Matilda rather than the popes that defeated the emperor in this phase of the Investiture Contest.
Chapter 4 examines Matilda's later campaigns, when she was called the gran contessa ('great countess') and ruled a huge swathe of Italy with an iron fist. She led successful sieges against the cities of Ferrara (1101), Parma (1104), Prato (1107), and Mantua (1114). In fact, she seems to have staved off the communal movement in Northern Italy mainly due to the great fear that so many people had of her. We find her leading military campaigns well after her 60th birthday.
Chapter 5 switches gears to take a look at the ways in which male authors dealt with the idea of a woman in command. While her political enemies predictably savaged her as a quarrelsome, irrational woman, her allies defended her as a just warrior and servant of God. Some of her allies were actually some of the most prominent legal theorists of the age-- men like Anselm of Lucca-- and so her campaigns did have some impact on the propaganda and law of the day.
In the conclusions I return to the wider issue of women in war and try to put Matilda's campaigns into context. I note that the Investiture War was as much a war of ideas as of territory, and in this respect sometimes mirrors modern insurgencies and 'Fourth Generation Warfare'. I also take some parting shots at modern military historians who don't know that thinking about these types of wars did not suddenly begin with the introduction of gunpowder :)
In short, my book is not for everyone-- while I give a pretty detailed introduction to the period in my introduction, it would be a little hard for someone with no knowledge at all of medieval history to jump right into it. But if you do have a bit of a background, I think you'll find it pretty interesting, as most of these campaigns have not really been studied in English before.
Cheers,
--Hurin (Dave)
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