Logistics is an area that has been comparatively neglected amidst the continuing renaissance of medieval military history. Certainly, while much has been done on the wider issue of the purchasing of supplies (notably on the organization of purveyance in England), there has been rather less work to elucidate how armies were supplied on a day-to-day basis while on campaign. Mollie Madden attempts to rectify this, using the Black Prince's chevauchée of 1355 as a case study.

Madden's introduction covers the historiography of the expedition and of medieval military logistics, and includes some of the research methods that she used. The first chapter covers the diplomatic and military background, the planning and organization of the expedition, and the raising of the fleet to transport it. Madden is not, however, altogether sure-footed in navigating the complexities of fourteenth-century English government; the recipients of a crown writ are, for instance, misidentified as its witnesses (24). The second chapter examines the recruitment and command structure of the prince's army, although given that it is not one of the best documented English armies of the period, there is not much new that can be said about it.

Thus far, Madden follows a well-trodden path; it is the third and fourth chapters that are the most original and that form the heart of the book. Here, Madden focuses on the logistical organization of the Black Prince's army in the field and attempts to demonstrate in detail the influence of logistics in determining the strategy and tactics adopted from day to day over the course of the entire campaign. Madden's premise is that the strategic and tactical choices made by the prince and his advisers can best be understood by calculating the logistical needs of the army. Using this data, taking into account the limitations imposed by those needs, and the often difficult and barren terrain of the Languedoc, she attempts to determine the precise route taken by the army and the overall course of the campaign.

The difficulty with this approach is the lack of solid evidence—which, indeed, goes a long way to explain why this aspect of medieval military logistics has not been more widely studied. There are many surviving financial records, notably those of John Henxteworth, the Black Prince's treasurer for the campaign, which Madden employs to good effect. However, these are concerned with recording overall expenditure, rather than detailed administrative arrangements. Furthermore, as Madden makes clear (54–60), it is possible to make only an educated guess at the size of the army, in part because there is comparatively little evidence from which to gauge the size of the Gascon contingents, and there is no evidence at all for the size and composition of the army's baggage train. It is therefore possible to make only the broadest of estimates of the army's supply requirements and the number of days’ supplies that could be carried with it. Moreover, although there are some surviving estimates made by the English crown in the fourteenth century of the supplies necessary for feeding men and horses, Madden does not employ them; instead, she relies on figures used by the US army in the twentieth century (13–14). (On fourteenth-century estimates, see, among others, Michael Prestwich, “Victualling Estimates for English Garrisons in Scotland during the Early Fourteenth Century,” English Historical Review 82 [1967]: 536–43.) But it is by no means clear that the Black Prince's ministers would have based their logistical planning on the same assumptions as the American military some six hundred years later, particularly given that the Americans did not need to provide for the same range of different breeds of horses, from nags to destriers. Indeed, there are other instances where Madden deploys anachronistic data, as when the weather in Languedoc in the 1960s is used as a guide to the chances of frost in 1355 (109).

Haunting this whole methodology is the specter of Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Higgins Burne (ret.), and his doctrine of inherent military probability: the theory that the course of medieval campaigns can be worked out logically by considering what any right-thinking officer ought to have done in the circumstances. However, as with inherent military probability, the logistical imperatives that seem inescapable to the modern historian, armed with a computer, maps, and the benefit of hindsight, may not have seemed so inevitable to the Black Prince and his advisers back in the 1350s. Given the limitations of the evidence, it is questionable whether the logistics of the English army and the consequent decision making of its leaders can be reconstructed at the level of detail attempted here.

One interesting point raised by Madden is that Henxteworth accounted for a number of items that seem to have been purchased while the army was in enemy territory. This seems rather odd, on the face of it, and could perhaps have been explored further. Were some of these items perhaps bought from soldiers in the army who had acquired them as plunder during the expedition?

The book is rounded off with a chapter examining the aftermath of the campaign, and a brief conclusion. Useful appendices cover the ships of the transport fleet, the known personnel of the army, and various financial matters. Another appendix sketches Madden's presumed route for the chevauchée (which is subject to the reservations raised above).

On a practical level, the book is very nicely produced (as ever with Boydell), but the sole map provided is rather too small scale, missing out many places mentioned several times in the text. Overall, Madden adds to the existing historiography of the Black Prince's expeditions, providing a valuable service in highlighting the extent to which the strategy of the Hundred Years War—like all military strategy throughout history—was shaped and determined by the demands of supply, and the difficulties of keeping an army fed on the march through enemy territory. However, her attempt to demonstrate how such issues played out in detail on this particular campaign perhaps goes rather beyond the limits of the available evidence.