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Cavalry has nearly always been the prestige arm in the military, so the Osprey Elite book on the Sassanian empire is indeed focused on the ‘elite’ branch of their military. It does also touch on the rest of it, but the noble-based savaran cavalry is the focus.

The book starts with a very good look at pre-Sassanian cavalry, and how that shaped their units. A recurring theme is how much Parthian influence there was early in Sassanian rule, and how that shifted over time to northern Iranian influences. Unfortunately, while there’s a good amount of talk about things like this, and how the cavalry was generally equipped, there is no timeline, and most of this feels kind of nebulous (the lack of a good map doesn’t help).

I imagine the problem is a lack of written records. We’re getting outside of the realm where Roman sources are plentiful, and a fair amount of the photographs in the book are of various stellae… that are highly weathered or damaged. There’s also a couple of excellent metal plates, and a couple statuettes. The late Angus McBride’s art is great as always, and my only problem is actually on the cover. Sources describe something meant to fire five arrows at a time, but there’s no surviving evidence of what it was like, I don’t buy the idea used in that plate.

Six major campaigns are covered in the last chapter, most of which are often covered in other books. Three of them are familiar from the Roman side of things, and the last section is the career of Khosrow II, well known from his defeat of Eastern Rome, being defeated in turn, and the Arab conquest. In between, there’s a short discussion of the Peroz’s defeat of the Hephthalite Huns (which gets talked about with the Huns), and finally the campaigns of Bahram Chobin and Smbat Bagratuni, which are the most interesting part of the chapter.

So, it feel less grounded than most Osprey books, but as ever, the visual reference is good. At the same time, this is a subject without a lot of attention in English, so it is a good primer.

The “Pike and Shot” period that marks post-medieval warfare is one that I’ve never known a lot about, and so Osprey’s Elite book on the subject looked like just the thing.

It actually deals with a just a portion of the period, as it’s generally considered to cover from 1500 to a bit after 1700, but Keith Roberts wisely concentrated on the reforms and changes that occurred from the Dutch Revolution through the Thirty Years War. The volume also covers the English Civil War, but that just shows how existing theory was used in the ECW, especially by the Royalists, and doesn’t go into the New Model Army at all. (Which is generally covered by other books anyway.)

I found a lot of the detailed breakdowns hard to follow, and had trouble sorting out the many diagrams in the book. Part of it is because I breezed through some of it without really studying them, and part of it is because several different styles of diagrams are given, with some being contemporary illustrations, or done in the style of certain contemporary diagrams, so they can be compared, and some in modern color illustrations. I’ve seen presentations of things like this where I didn’t need to sit down and study it, so I think the diagrams could have been much better done, even though I don’t know just what went wrong.

But the real meat of the book is a look at how European thinking about combat evolved and tried to bring more more flexibility and greater tactical acumen to the field through theorizing and then training their armies in smaller formations that covered more frontage with less depth and incorporated various methods of volley fire. I’d like to see something on the period immediately preceding, that shows how the Spanish tercio came to prominence, but I don’t know of an Osprey tactics book (much less any other book) on the subject.

I’ve generally been liking Osprey’s turn towards specialized subjects in their Elite line, and this is no exception. The book takes a look at what is known of Roman sieges from the fall of Carthage to the siege of Cremna (no, I hadn’t heard of it either). The bulk of the book is taken up with recounting what sieges we know something of, and points out the large number of cases where the Romans simply stormed the town as fast as possible (as opposed to the usual impression that every Roman siege was a big, lengthy production such as at Alesia). Along the way, there is some reconsideration of the archaeology at Numantia and Dura Europos.

There’s no strong theme to the book, but it makes a good survey of the subject. I wish more attention had been given to Dura Europos, as only a couple parts of the fortifications are shown in diagrams and illustrations. On the other hand, apparently there’s no good theories as to just what happened (and in what order) there, and it is a large site, so presumably a detailed look could take up most of the book without saying anything conclusive. There’s also reproductions of some older (18th and 19th century) diagrams of some of the sites with short critiques.