Böcker av Sidney Painter

Louis, the struggles between French kings and vassals, and the rivalry of the Capetian and Plantagenet monarchies.

His attempts to adjust a political system to cope with this threat and at the same time to assert the hegemony of the monarchy over its chief rivals-the barons and the church-made his reign one of particular importance and significance in English history.

The first chapter provides readers unfamiliar with medieval history the background required for understanding the chapters on chivalry.

Finally in 1216 he was chosen regent of England for the young king, Henry III, and his biography becomes for three years the history of England.

His book challenges the traditional view of the Hundred Years' War as pivotal to the transition from twelfth-century lords and vassals to the nobility of the fifteenth century; from Painter's perspective, the feudal structure of the military had dissipated by the thirteenth century.

The Rise of the Feudal Monarchies provides a rapid but careful survey of the principal events connected with the accretion of territorial bases and development of institutional foundations for three of the great political sovereignties of modern Europe. This is an early, but none the less important, chapter in the story of the growth of political units which has dominated much of European history.