Abstract
Early-modern military manuals are one of the main sources to study the ideal form of period military camps. There are usually no verbal descriptions, nor depictions of real early-modern camps on their pages, but it is possible to find the information about planning, measuring, building, fortifying, dividing on separate quarters or supplying of the period camps in them.
Military handbooks can also help us to understand, how did soldiers and tross live in the camps, what were their rights and duties or how did they spend their free time in the field camps. The main aim of this paper is to introduce the genre of military manuals which were published in Central Europe in 1550-1650.
The second part of the text is focused on the military handbooks that dealt with military camps. According to them, the main rules and customs concerning early-modern military camps are characterised.
There is also a bibliography of relevant military and engineering handbooks published in Central Europe in 1550-1650, which contain texts or illustrations focused on period military camps. This bibliography can become one of the theoretical bases for interdisciplinary research of early modern military camps of Christian armies.