Summary: Through eyewitness accounts and harrowing detail, Lauro Martines’ book paints a grim portrait of premodern warfare, not as grand battles between armies but as prolonged campaigns of starvation, pillaging, and social collapse. Lauro Martines’ book Furies: War in Europe, 1450–1700 powerfully illustrates the impact of war and war-driven famines. To the agricultural laborers along an army’s route, even friendly (as opposed to enemy) troops could cause a food shortage. strangled, and [the] body [of the old woman in their household] was dug out of its grave and burned. She had died on the day after their arrest.” Presumably the old woman died of starvation, despite her cannibalistic attempt to ward off that fate.