Hungary and the Fall of Eastern Europe 1000-1568 (Men-at-Arms)

The book was exactly as I expected. It came to me fast and in perfect condition. The price was very good. All that I could expect.

I enjoyed reading this book and I love the artwork.

A useful book with fine plates. As is often the case with men-at-arms titles, it does not have enough space to get extremely detailed, but within the confines of this series it is excellent.

Great book for reference, especially if you are into SCA or are doing historical research. If your kids do not enjoy history, giving them this book might change their mind.

This is one of the Men-at-Arms grabbag volumes. While there are wonderful illustrations and lots of facts crammed in here, one has to wonder just how accurate a book covering warfare in approximately 1/2 of Europe over a 570 year period can be. In the end, use this book as a jumping off point, but not the last word on Eastern Europe.The Angus McBride illustrations are mostly up to their standards of excellence, although he has left the last painting only partially done for some obscure reason and he DOES like to focus on atypical arms and armour, which can be interesting, but also presents a rather skewwed vision of the armies of the period.Nicolle tries valiantly with this volume. As I said above, there are a LOT of facts in here. There are two problems that press on the information. 1) Militarily, this is a poorly chronicled era and the sheer number of languages makes the task all the more duanting and 2) the timeframe is just far too broad for any serious considerations. Imagine lumping all of, say, American military developement from 1492 to the present (a similar timeframe) into a volume this size and you will get a notion of the enormity of the task.The informaion is as good as the team can get it. The illustrations do their best to bring a candle to the minds of Western Europe and America as to what Eastern Europe went through. The writing is solid. In the end, though, the book has severe limitations. Take it with a grain of salt.

I had many problems with this title, partly because it is one of these Osprey titles which try to cram hundreds of years of military history into less than fifty pages. As a consequence, and even when the author is at his most interesting, what he has to show barely scratches the surface and remains superficial. The point here is that it is simply impossible to treat adequately over 560 years of history of at least half a dozen people in such a small book.However, it gets worse than that, because the author also gets side tracked and uses up valuable space to deal not only with Byzantium, but also with Byzantium in Asia Minor, which is hardly past of Eastern Europe. He also makes a number of mistakes along the way. It is arguable whether the main threat for Byzantium during the 12th century was the Normans of the Kingdom of Sicily, as the author contends, rather than the Seljuk Turks. However, it is quite certain that the Byzantines held on to the Western part of "Anatolia" (or Asia Minor) well beyond the end of the century (and for most of the first half of the 14th century in fact), contrary to what the author seems to imply. Anyway, all of this is only at best indirectly relevant to the topic that the author was expected to cover.I also have for a few other problems with this title. One is that it is simply outdated and needs to be either retired or rewritten significantly. It was first published in 1988, at a time when the claim about the medieval of south-eastern Europe not being widely studied was true. This is quite incorrect nowadays. There are for instance quite a few books available in English on the various populations of the Balkans, including some general histories covering most of the period. See for instance Florin Curta's South Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages 500-1250, 2006, in the Cambridge Medieval Textbook series, among others.Another problem which I have already alluded to is that the author, by attempting to cover such a long period and a wide scope (the whole of the Balkans) ends up by providing only a superficial outline of the main events of the period. Despite the series' title, there is no discussion on "Men-at-arms" or their equipment. Hungary, for instance, is covered in half a dozen pages, meaning that there is simply no room to provide any explanations, discussions or details on armies, campaigns or battles, and no room to discuss or even present the wars of Hunyadi or of Mathias Corvinus. With regards to the first Serbian Kingdom, there is very little on Stephan Dusan. There is also very little on Bulgaria. Skanderberg is briefly mentioned, and that it about it.The only redeeming element is the plates from Angus McBride but even there I had a bit of a problem with the accompanying text. One example (but there are others) is one of the plates illustrating one Charles Thopia but without mentioning who he was or what he did, and he is not even mentioned in the core text.To conclude, this title is not worth more than two stars. If I can dare to offer I bit of advice, I would suggest that Osprey replaces it with several titles from several of its series. For the Hungarians, for instance, this could include a first title until the arrival of the Angevins, followed by a second one on the reign of this originally French dynasty and one or even two more titles on Hunyadi and Corvinus. Or maybe the two last ones could be the subject of a couple of Campaign titles instead, just as there is already one for the battle of Nicopolis?

This is a very good reference book on European History. My current reading has led me to study Medieval German History. Accordingly, this book fits in, because in 886 CE the Magyars (Hungarians) became an international force in Eastern Europe and began to figure prominently in the history of the German state.

David Nicolle's work remarkable as always and the quality of this one matches those he did on the Middle East

Men at Armsシリーズの一冊で、ハンガリーを筆頭に、スロヴァキア、クロアチア、ボスニア、セルビア、アルバニア、ビザンツ帝国、ブルガリア、ルーマニア（ワラキアとモルダヴィア）などオスマン帝国の侵略を受けた東欧の国々の、１１～１６世紀の軍隊について約５０ページで解説していく、というちょっと無謀な企画の本です。短いページ数のためどの国もざっと触れられているだけですが、オスプレイ社の売りであるカラーイラストもついてるので大体の雰囲気はつかめるかと思います。時々妙に細かい情報も載ってるのでそこそこ面白かったです。ただ、この時代のビザンツは同じＭＡＡの"Byzantine Armies AD 1118-1461"でも扱われてるので、ちょっと内容が被ってるかもしれません。