I'm VERY frustrated in my search for historically accurate medieval info on the internet and I need your help!

Question

It seems as if I've exhausted my research efforts online and I'm looking for suggestions of good places in which to continue my searches. I'm mainly interested in warfare (tactics, armor, weapons, etc.) and Irish ways of life and traditions, all during the early 1300's.

I know it's specific and therefore makes my searches more difficult, but I'm at wits end and I really need any help you can give me! Thanks very much for your time; I appreciate it! :]

Just to clarify, I've already been to the city library (and my school's library as well) and I've found very little. I've looked again and again but in the end I had to realize that the libraries where I live just don't have what I'm looking for. It's very disheartening because I've been persistant in these searches of mine throughout the libraries in town, and still I can't find much at all.

Thank you for your suggestions, though!

Answer 1

There are a few British web sites that may help - here's a list sponsored by History Online
http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Resources/Period/fourteenth.html

Try De Re Militari for general reading about medieval life.
http://www.deremilitari.org/resources.htm

Also, http://www.pmlib.org/Medieval%20Military%20History.htm is a list of primary sources.

Also, for medieval warfare, the Spartacus website has some great images from teh Battle of Hastings - as well as brief descriptions.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/MEDTwarfare.htm

Nova has put together this great site on medieval warfare
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lostempires/trebuchet/


Also if you go the Gutenberg project and enter Ireland in the title search, you will get a long list of primary documents on Irish history, some of which have great pieces on every day life. http://www.gutenberg.org/.

You may also find it helpful to go to the local college or ask your library to inter-library loan books if necessary.

Also, if you go to the website of a University that specializes in medieval studies, they will sometimes have lists of online sources.

But the sources listed above should be a good start. :)

Answer 2

Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror gives a lot of good information on the time, and for warfare perhaps Froissart was in the right period? I can't remember when Conan Doyle's White Company stories were set, but they have a good flavor of the time about them.

Answer 3

Try going to the library. Books are still your best source of information.

There are piles of material on that subject.

Answer 4

Have you tried contacting Irish history re-enactment companies? They could point you to their own sources. Even on their sites they usually put those down.
And as said above, books, books, books... That's from personal experience