The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of distinction between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.
-- Sir William Francis Butler
This is the only survey of feudal warfare in Europe aimed primarily for the general reader who may know little about either medieval or military history. The author discusses military feudalism as it originated and developed in the Frankish kingdom of the Carolingians and as it operated during the early Capetian period in the Ile-de-France and the feudal principalities of northern France. He treats each of the major regions where feudalism was a conscious importation, showing how such factors as native military institutions, the pattern of landholding economic structure, and manpower problems worked to modify feudal military institutions and practices.