Military history as a subfield within medieval studies has suffered considerably from the fact that both medieval authors and modern scholars have seen warfare as a nasty element of the human experience, that is better condemned or even ignored than studied. As a consequence, the examination of warfare is often treated as an adjunct to other areas of inquiry, with the result that many well-meaning historians continue to pass along shibboleths long-since discarded by the relatively small number of specialists in medieval military history.