Like the other Australian operations in the south Pacific in 1944–45, the campaigns in Aitape-Wewak and New Britain during those years have been tarred with the label of ‘unnecessary’. Certainly, there were soldiers fighting in these campaigns who were frustrated by their circumstances. Some Australian 6th Division veterans felt that they were ‘first rate troops given a second rate job’. Conversely many historians have argued that it is inaccurate and misleading to regard these campaigns as unnecessary (see chapter 1), but leaving aside the debates surrounding ‘mopping up’ at Aitape-Wewak, this campaign was one of the longest fought by Australian troops during the war, in some of the toughest and most unpleasant conditions.

THE AMERICANS AT AITAPE

The northern coast of New Guinea between Aitape and Wewak is characterised by low-lying swamps, thick vegetation and numerous streams prone to flooding. The coastal plain is hemmed in by the Torricelli Mountains, whose grassy foothills steadily rise, forming steep gullies and ridges above the coastal plain. On 22 April 1944, the US 163rd Regimental Combat Team of the 41st Division landed at Aitape. Their job was to capture and defend the nearby Tadji Airfield and to help block the Japanese Eighteenth Army, based around Wewak, from interfering with operations further westward at Hollandia. The Eighteenth Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Hatazō Adachi, had been in a continuous westward retreat along the coast since the Allied advances along the Huon Peninsula and Finisterre Range the previous year. On 3 May, the 163rd Regimental Combat Team was replaced by the US 32nd Infantry Division and the 112th Cavalry Regiment, and they were later joined by the 124th Regimental Combat Team of the 31st Infantry Division, as well as the 43rd Infantry Division. The task of the Americans was to protect the airfield, and they stayed mostly within their small perimeter. Between 10 July and 25 August, a major battle took place at the Driniumor River, 32 kilometres east of Aitape. On the night of 10–11 July, some 10,000 Japanese attacked the US positions across the Driniumor River. The attackers suffered appalling losses from machine-gun and artillery fire, and over the following weeks fell back to the Wewak area. During the initial attack, one Japanese battalion was hit by an artillery barrage and was reduced from 400 men to 30 within minutes.

When historians discuss the revolutionary changes associated with guns, they tend to focus on Europe's early modern period (1500–1800), but the late medieval period (1300–1500) was arguably more significant. It was then that guns became widely adopted, grew in power and size, and, finally, toward the 1480s, took on their classic form, which would remain largely the same for the next three centuries. The work of scholars such as Kelly DeVries, Robert Smith, Bert Hall, and Clifford Rogers has examined these developments in Europe, establishing that the late medieval period was a key watershed in the history of guns, as important as – perhaps more important than – the early modern period. But what is intriguing is that this was not just true of Europe. Recent work by historians of China has demonstrated that during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries Chinese guns were also evolving rapidly, transforming East Asian warfare.

Reading the evidence from China in conjunction with that from Europe reveals puzzles that I believe illuminate both historiographies, because although gunpowder warfare evolved rapidly in both Far Eastern and Far Western Eurasia, it also evolved differently: Western Europeans focused on gunpowder artillery; Chinese focused on smaller guns, particularly firearms (handheld guns). Thus, whereas it seems that firearms did not play a major role on Western European battlefields until the mid-1400s at the earliest (they were present, but in relatively small proportions), there were around 150,000 dedicated firearms units in the Chinese armed forces by the 1370s, a proportion of 10 percent of infantry forces, a ratio that would rise to 30 percent by the mid-1400s. This latter figure would not be matched in Europe until the mid-1500s. In contrast, wall-smashing gunpowder artillery began to appear in Europe by the late 1300s and did not appear in Chinese warfare until introduced by Europeans, starting in the 1500s.

What accounts for these divergent developments? And, equally importantly, why in Europe did all forms of guns – handheld and artillery – improve so rapidly in the second half of the 1400s, whereas in China development slowed or ceased, so that by the early 1500s Chinese recognized that European guns were superior and began adopting them?

In the continuation of Sigebert of Gembloux's Chronicon sive Chronographia the anonymous continuator noted on the year 1138:

This attack is not mentioned in any English or Danish contemporary sources, and to my knowledge only three modern historians, Frederik Schiern writing in 1860, John Beeler in 1966 and finally Peter Sawyer in 1995, have taken note of it. Schiern lauded the attack, whereas Beeler mentioned it in a footnote and mostly as a curiosity and Sawyer – also in a footnote – flatly refused that the attack had taken place, since it was not mentioned in any other source. Apart from these I have found no mention of this attack in either English or Danish modern historiography. The Stand der Forschung on Anglo-Danish relations in the twelfth century can therefore be summarized by the following quotation:

High up in the central mountains of Wales, in a parking lot beside the dam that forms the reservoir of Nant-y-Moch, is a memorial, dedicated in 1977, intended “to commemorate Owain Glyndŵr's victory at Hyddgen in 1401.” It is a simple monument, fitting for the stark wilds of the countryside surrounding it, and we can say one other thing for certain about this construct of stone: it is not in the right place.

The battle is named for the mountain of Hyddgen, next to or upon which it was reportedly fought, and that mount is roughly three-and-a-half miles northeast from this point as the crow flies, up dirt paths and the trackless rock-andbog slopes beyond. The memorial was placed where it is as a simple matter of convenience. What the setting of the monument lacks in terms of geographical accuracy, however, it makes up for in terms of its geographical precision: the wild feel of the place, subjective and immeasurable though that might be, is appropriate, as is the looming closeness of the mountains that surround Nanty- Moch: for the story of the battle of Hyddgen starts with the fastness of these remote mountains, an environment that is now, as it was then, high and hard and foreboding. Cold in summer, frozen in winter, ever deep and dire and deadly, these mountains of Wales have long stood as sentinel reminders of the smallness of man; and that power is evident whether you stand before the monument or at the foot of the mount of Hyddgen itself. These peaks have driven back kings and armies. A refuge for the hunted, a bane to the hunter, they have stood and withstood for ages. And in the summer of 1401 they made Owain Glyndŵr a prince.

Or they didn’t. Because one of the first and most important questions about the battle of Hyddgen is one that cannot be answered definitely: Did it happen at all? Certainly there is little doubt displayed in the scholarship. J. E. Lloyd thought it was real. So did R. R. Davies. Ian Fleming thought its reality so certain that he wrote a book about the event, reconstructing this “crucial battle” that is the “pivotal victory” from which “all the subsequent events of the Glyndŵr Revolt flow.”

In the second half of the fifteenth century gunpowder began to change the face of warfare. While the impact of gunpowder has often been cited on the Continent, historians have failed until recently to give proper consideration to the role of gunpowder weapons in England's dynastic struggle known as the Wars of the Roses. John Gillingham, for example, has stated that “for all the growing importance of artillery, it remains true that this arm played only a minor role in the campaigns of the Wars of the Roses.” He maintained that the reason for the failure of the English to use gunpowder effectively was the lack of sieges in the extended conflict. Anthony Goodman believed that English strategy of the period was too focused on bringing the enemy to battle quickly and the armies were too hastily organized to allow the creation of a large siege train or the use of artillery. Kelly DeVries delivered a paper in 2001 which has since been published, showing the wide use of gunpowder artillery in local conflict by nobles, towns and even religious houses. Yet he argued that in only one instance did gunpowder weapons affect the outcome of the fighting in the Wars of the Roses. Conclusions such as those of Gillingham, Goodman and DeVries are beginning to be eroded because the evidence suggests that, in reality, English gunpowder weapons were as numerous and advanced as those on the Continent. David Grummitt examined the history of the Calais garrison, the largest professional military establishment in England during the Wars of the Roses. He ultimately determined that the Calais garrison served as the conduit for technologies and tactics into the English military establishment.5 Striking evidence has also been provided by the survey carried out on the battlefield at Bosworth. This survey found lead shot in such abundance that the survey team shifted the location of the battle several kilometers away from where many historians believed the majority of the fighting had taken place. Foard speculated in 2009 that perhaps the largest gathering of artillery in the British Isles occurred at Bosworth. However, in the final published volume on Bosworth, Foard was more circumspect, arguing that the fifteenth century, and in particular the Wars of the Roses, “may span a key transition in the battlefield use of gunpowder weapons – at least so far as artillery is concerned.”

Introduction

The two stanzas reproduced above come from one of the most famous works of medieval literature, the Song of Roland, first of the chansons de geste or “song of deeds,” depicting in a highly fictionalized manner what would ironically become Charlemagne's most remembered battle, the defeat of his rearguard at Roncevaux. Prominent among those named in the chanson as having died fighting at Roland's side was Archbishop Turpin of Rheims, to whom the passages refer. Although the appearance of the poem around 1100 converted Turpin into the prototype “warrior churchman” of the age, there is no certainty that such an individual actually existed outside of legend. To the extent that the fictional character accords with reality, he was probably a conflation of several clerics who held the see in the late eighth century, the best-known of whom was no warrior at all.

In contrast to such a shadowy figure, one encounters throughout the medieval period real flesh-and-blood warrior churchmen about whom a good deal can be known, men who make it possible to arrive at a better understanding of just what it meant to combine the two roles. One such individual who lived in the late Middle Ages was the cardinal-archbishop of Toledo, Pedro González de Mendoza (1428–95), who occupied the primate see in the Castilian church near the end of the fifteenth century and was dubbed by one of his early biographers el gran cardinal.

On a cool autumn Saturday in 1220, the combined forces of three warlords closed in on the northern Icelandic farmstead of Helgastaðir, trapping Bishop Guðmundr Arason and a number of his followers inside (Figure 1). This was hardly the first time in his long and tempestuous career that the nearly sixtyyear- old bishop, known to posterity as Guðmundr the Good, came under attack, nor would it be the last. Terse annals, as well as several more prolix sagas – which dignify the encounter with the title bardagi á Helgastôðum, “the Battle of Helgastaðir” – record Guðmundr's involvement in at least four other battles, and one commando-style raid besides, in the course of his thirty-four-year episcopate (1203–37). This time, the hostilities were to last the better part of twenty-four hours, involving heavy barrages of missiles, hand-to-hand combat, and even the operation of some sort of siege equipment. In addition to the human toll of dead and injured – among them, some of the highest-ranking combatants – the chapel at Helgastaðir would also sustain heavy damages, still visible a century later. Yet, for all its martial bluster, Helgastaðir's claim to a place in a military hall of fame appears tenuous. The performance of the combatants was noted for neither tactical nor strategic acuity; very few casualties were sustained on either side; and the attackers’ primary quarry, the bishop himself, got away safely (as did the chief men in his entourage), even after having been effectively trounced. It seems difficult to reconcile the stridently militant language used to describe this clash with its insipid outcomes. Helgastaðir appears to lend credence to the slur often repeated against the Icelandic sagas: that, despite their pretensions to recount sober, solemn history, they are mere tales of “farmers at fisticuffs.”

In this paper, I consider the Battle of Helgastaðir from several points of view: military, political, social, cultural, and religious. In spite of the lackluster initial impression it may give, I argue, Helgastaðir deserves notice on more than one count. First, in the perspective of thirteenth-century Icelanders themselves, this battle gave the measure of an ongoing, seismic shift in Iceland's political landscape, a shift that was opening up new opportunities for some, while threatening the stability of others.

The naval prominence of Castile in the late medieval and early modern period has been amply researched. However, the rise of the Castilian navies and their fundamental role in the thirteenth and fourteenth-century Castilian expansion have not been addressed properly. One of the principal reasons has been the relatively small amount of coverage of naval affairs in the chronicles, and the dearth of documentation in the archives in comparison to ground warfare and forces. After all, the Castilian elite, which takes up most of the attention in the sources, did not routinely train in maritime or naval matters as part of its upbringing. Maritime and naval historians, perhaps, have somewhat exacerbated the situation by appearing to treat naval issues separately from those of fighting on land.

Such a demarcation is untenable in Castile. The growth of its navies coincided with, and was important, if not fundamental, in its expansion and consolidation, which was accompanied by an increasing awareness and embrace of the importance of seafaring and the conquest and defense of the coasts. Castile struggled against not only the Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa, but also the kingdoms of Aragon and Portugal and the Italian city-states, especially Genoa, which sought to establish and protect commercial interests in the Mediterranean and the Maghreb. Since all of these conflicts invariably included a naval component, more analysis is necessary to fully understand how, when, and why the Reconquest unfolded as it did. Just as the Muslim territorial domination gave way to Christian southern expansion, so too the coastlines and sea lanes, in the Atlantic, the Strait of Gibraltar, and the Mediterranean, were gradually wrested away from total Islamic domination during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This was accomplished by following a familiar strategy of the capture and defense of important strongpoints, and only through difficult and slow progress. As Castile and Aragon emerged as the two top naval powers, their uneasy balance and later union in the fifteenth century signaled the end of any serious Muslim naval aspirations or capability, whether in Granada or North Africa. Navies played only a small role in the final defeat and annexation of Granada by the Catholic kings in 1492.