The Case for Limited War: European Military Treatises through Machiavelli

Warfare in the European Middle Ages (c. 500-1500) can be broadly characterized as limited: limited objectives, limited budgets, and limited size of armies. Despite medieval society having an overall martial culture, these factors conspired to make warfare episodic, defensively oriented, and positional in character. This lecture will explore the intellectual underpinnings of medieval limited war by surveying the major writers on the subject, including Vegetius, Maurice, Leo VI, Nikephoros Phokas, John of Salisbury, Giles of Rome, Honoré Bouvet, Christine de Pizan, and Niccolò Machiavelli.

John D. Hosler (Ph.D. University of Delaware) is a Professor of Military History at the Command and General Staff College. Before coming to Fort Leavenworth, he was a tenured Full Professor of History at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. An expert on medieval warfare in Europe and the Near East, he is the author or editor of nine books, including The Third Crusade, 1189-1192 (2025), the Routledge Handbook of Medieval Military Strategy (2024), Jerusalem Falls: Seven Centuries of War and Peace (2022), and The Siege of Acre ( 2018). He is a book series editor of “War and Conflict in Premodern Societies” for ARC Humanities Press and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He is currently writing his tenth book, a world history of the relic of the True Cross in war from A.D. 325-2025, for Yale University Press.

The Ft. Leavenworth Series is an annual roster of lectures focusing on significant historical events, usually with an emphasis on military history. Each lecture is presented by faculty from the United States Army Command and General Staff College in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. Established by General William Tecumseh Sherman in 1881, the CGSC is the graduate college for U.S. Army and sister service officers. The esteemed faculty and guests of the CGSC provide unique and captivating insights into the history of military conflict from the ancient to the modern ages at the Dole Institute of Politics.

The opinions expressed herein are those of the individual and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College or any other governmental agency.