The award for the medieval military history book of the year goes to…

Christophe Masson’s Des guerres en Italie avant les Guerres d’Italie. Les entreprises militaires françaises dans la Péninsule à l’époque du Grand Schisme d’Occident has won this year’s Verbruggen Prize by De Re Militari: The Society for Medieval Military History. The Verbruggen Prize is given annually for the best book on medieval military history, and is named in honour of Jans F. Verbruggen, who was leading scholar in the field.  The award was announced yesterday during the De Re Militari business meeting, which is being held at the International Congress on Medieval Studies.

Masson’s book, which examines French military campaigns in the Italian Peninsula between the years 1378 to 1417, is the first non-English book to win the award, which began in 2002. The award committee released the following statement about this year’s winner:

Masson’s book is a very important work for both French and Italian military history of the later Middle Ages which shows a quite remarkable use of primary sources from the two realms it covers. He analyzes a huge amount of archival documents; with chapters on the composition of the armies, the logistics and finances of war, it is indispensable to understand the religious, social and military background of this period of Medieval Italy.

Des guerres en Italie avant les Guerres d’Italie was published in 2014 by École française de Rome - click here to learn more about it.

Click here to visit the De Re Militari website to learn more about Verbruggen Prize.