Few Pitched Battles But Many Sieges
Medieval strategy does indeed appear to have been dominated by two general principles: fear of the pitched battle, of the confrontation in open country, and what one could call the ‘siege mentality’, in other words ‘an automatic reaction which consisted in replying to an attack by shutting oneself up in the most easily defensible strongholds of the country’. From this emerged the shape which the majority of medieval conflicts assumed—the very slow progress of the attackers, the obstinate defense of those attacked, limited operations both in time and distance, a war of attrition (guerre d’usure), ‘a strategy of accessories’ where each combatant or group of combatants, often in an incoherent and discontinuous fashion, fought primarily for immediate material profit. Contemporaries had an expression to describe this kind of warlike activity on a reduced scale. It was the guerre guerroyante, made up of losses and recaptures, surprises, incursions, ambushes and sallies. ‘War is…above all made up of pillaging, often of sieges, sometimes of battles.’ Moreover, because of a lack of money, men, supplies and provisions, many plans failed to mature: ‘A campaign brought to a conclusion constitutes an exception, an enterprise which defies the rule.’
— Phillipe Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, p. 219
Emphasis mine.
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