I just finished reading the novel Agincourt. It featured the English and Welsh long bowmen who also won at Crecy and Poitier previously. Apparently the reason no other military adopted the long bow was that in England training started at an early age and it took about 10 years to develop the strength and skill to use the long bow. Also, it seems to have become a popular fad which increased skilled members. I also recently read a novel about the struggle to control the Mediterranean Sea in the 1500s. Suliman the Magnificent decided to try to take over the Sea in the early part of century conquering the isle of Rhodes. The Knights Hospitalier fled to Malta and set up shop and had a great battle in the 1560s with Turks. Muslim raids up and down the coasts of Greece, Italy, France, Spain and north Africa decimated populations and had bad results that probably affect those areas even today. I always wondered why Spain did not do better with all that gold and silver coming from the Americas. It was mostly spent on wars and ships. When Pizarro got Atehualpa’s treasure worth more than a million dollars then, the king of Spain had to spend it all to replace his navy which had been destroyed by a freak tornado. And that was just one disaster. Carlos V and Philip II were the unlucky kings, and then the Spanish navy was destroyed by a storm when trying to invade England under Elizabeth. Meanwhile, the poor pope was trying hard to get the various European “Christian” countries to fight the Muslims who were still pixxed over the Crusades.
I have often wondered why the Europeans didn’t invade and conquer the Barbary Coast, which they could have easily done during the centuries they were taking over the New World and fighting with one another in Europe. It wasn’t until the second decade of the nineteenth century that the Barbary pirates were finally subdued.