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Medieval Armies
From: The British Library
| By:
Pamela Porter |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
War during the Middle Ages was a rough and often very chaotic affair: battles were fought on the decks of fishing and merchant ships in lieu of purpose-built crafts, wagons carrying equipment frequently broke down on the rough terrain, and the common soldier often found himself hastily resorting to homemade armour and weaponry. British Library curator Pamela Porter explains. |
 ith no concept of a regular army in the Middle Ages, almost any man could find himself involved in military action. Knights, wealthy enough to equip themselves with armour, weapons and a horse, rendered military service in return for the possession of land, while foot soldiers came from the poorer classes. The only body armour they could afford was usually homemade--a quilted tunic or gambeson--sometimes with a helmet or other piece that they had been lucky enough to find on the battlefield. Frequently they fought with axes, clubs or whatever they could lay hands on, but their ranks also included the archers, an extremely significant force in military engagements, particularly in the later part of the period. |
The longbow, used by foot soldiers, was a fast-shooting long-range weapon of great impact and importance. Although capable of accuracy if carefully aimed, its chief strength in battle lay in its suitability for massed attack. A volley of arrows fired by a comparatively small body of archers could easily destroy a charge by mounted knights. The longbow first appeared in the English army after Edward I had seen it in action in Wales in the late thirteenth century. It rapidly proved its worth, becoming a decisive factor in many of the battles of the Hundred Years War. |
The crossbow existed earlier, rising to prominence in the twelfth century. It consisted of a short, heavy bow, powerfully sprung and attached at right angles to a stock, which performed the same function as the arm of the longbow archer. Mechanical devices were used to span the bow, which was too stiff and powerful to be spanned by hand. It was long-range, hard-hitting, efficient and deadly accurate, but slow and cumbersome to use. For a long time regarded as the ideal infantry weapon, it finally lost its superiority when the longbow appeared, mainly because it just could not compete with its rival's rapid rate of fire. |
The miniature to the right shows part of a fifteenth-century army on the march with its horse-drawn baggage train. Moving an army from one place to another was a challenging manoeuvre in medieval times, as the country was rough, the roads were poor, and accurate maps just did not exist. Wagons frequently hindered the army's progress by breaking down on the uneven terrain, but they were the only means of transporting all the paraphernalia of a fighting force in transit. Although food could sometimes be secured en route by plunder or pillage, there was no alternative but to transport the rest of the equipment in this way. |
On the battlefield
A large army comprised three main divisions, or "battles," each consisting of cavalry supported by a body of infantry. When marching they adopted the order of vanguard, main guard and rear guard, but on the battlefield the divisions were deployed in any formation suitable for the situation at hand. An encounter with the enemy might start with preliminary skirmishes of outriders and perhaps some crossbow fire while the armies manoeuvred into position, each hoping to tempt the other into making an impetuous assault with a disastrous outcome for the aggressor. |
When an attack finally began, it took the form of a succession of charges, section by section, thus ensuring the continuous application of pressure, even if one group failed and needed to retreat to reorganise. Charges were made by separate units, each containing 30 to 40 knights grouped round a leader's flag and using a common battle cry for mutual encouragement in the assault. Although medieval battles now conjure up images of colourful banners, spirited charges and deeds of bravery, the lack of discipline in most medieval armies undoubtedly led to a great deal of brutality and bloodshed. |
Battles would have been extremely noisy, with the thudding of horses' hooves, the clash of weapons and armour, the whirring of arrows and the shouts of the participants. A battle cry was probably distinguishable amid the general uproar, but reliable comprehension of a leader's verbal commands would have been impossible. The need for an alternative means of transmitting orders led to the development of military music; nowadays this is an activity in itself, but formerly it was a vital element of battlefield action. Various instruments--horns, pipes, drums and particularly trumpets--were employed to produce melodic calls to indicate commands or identify centres of resistance, as well as generally intimidating the enemy with their noise. The trumpeters shown wear armour, but many miniatures depict musicians as unarmed, even when performing at the heart of the action. |
War at sea
Purpose-built fighting ships were unknown in the Middle Ages. In times of war, fishing craft and merchant vessels were organised into fleets, and every sailor had to become a soldier when the need arose. Although not designed for fighting, a medieval ship might be converted into a "man-of-war" by erecting wooden towers at each end and fastening a fighting top, a structure sometimes resembling a large barrel, at the highest point of the mast to serve as an observation post or provide height for the archers. |
In a naval battle, two ships came as close together as possible, allowing the occupants to fire arrows at their opponents and attempt to board the enemy vessel, a grappling hook being carried for this purpose. Once aboard, they engaged in hand-to-hand combat (an undertaking fraught with danger in itself because of the confined space) until one side overpowered the other. With the outcome decided, the victors threw their opponents overboard, unless they were important enough to command a ransom. |
Pitched battles and skirmishes in the open field were less frequent than sieges because they were likely to be more costly in terms of loss of men and equipment. In addition, armies were expensive to maintain, and there were the difficulties involved in moving a body of soldiers from one place to another. A far less risky campaign could be conducted by undertaking a succession of sieges to capture enemy strongholds which controlled the countryside around them, and siegecraft skills were an essential requirement for every military commander. |
The architecture of castles
Development in styles of military architecture in the Middle Ages owed much to progress in the field of ballistics and other forms of attack; the more efficient the weapons and methods used in sieges, the more modifications to strongholds were necessary to resist them. Assaults might involve towns and cities, generally fortified with walls and other defensive features, but siege warfare was particularly associated with the castle, an important feature of the feudal system in Europe which reached England with William the Conqueror. Although designed as a fortress, the castle was also the residence of its lord and symbolised his wealth and power. |
Early timber castles were built on a flat-topped mound of earth (the motte), connected to an enclosure (the bailey), the whole site being protected by a system of deep ditches and earthen ramparts surmounted by wooden palisades. This general plan remained, but fire-resistant stone soon replaced the timber structures. The rectangular stone keep, a distinctive feature of eleventh- and twelfth-century castles, was more resistant to attack, but sheer strength was not enough. Despite its formidable appearance, there was a weakness--sharp corners, easy to undermine--which prompted the appearance of round tower keeps in the early thirteenth century. By this time a stone curtain wall was also being constructed round the site, not only as extra protection for the keep but also to offer defenders a wider field of fire. |
Soon defence shifted from the keep, and curtain walls were modified accordingly. Built higher to discourage scaling by ladder, they were given towers curved to the field to maximise coverage of the ground beneath. The weakest point of this arrangement, the entrance, was protected by a strong gatehouse flanked by high towers and often equipped with a drawbridge and portcullis. Further elaboration produced concentric castles, the culmination of medieval design, where the provision of second, lower curtain walls created a double line of defence and counterattack, offering a model for the updating of many existing structures through the addition of an outer wall. |
Sieges
Siege warfare utilised a wide variety of skills and weapons. If initial diplomacy failed, an attempt could be made to enter the stronghold and gain control by means of hand-to-hand encounters. The image below shows one method of achieving this, an assault by a scaling party using tall ladders. Highly effective if well supported by covering fire, escalade was also an extremely dangerous activity, as defenders could dislodge the ladders or hurl down stones or other heavy missiles. The figure scaling the wall below is Bertrand Duguesclin, a fourteenth-century French knight whose courageous deeds earned him legendary fame. The accompanying account of his life reports that at one siege he fell some considerable distance into the moat when knocked from his ladder by a descending stone. Although lucky enough to survive, his image was almost certainly ruined when he had to be dragged out unceremoniously by his heels. |
The diversion created by the escalade provides cover for a sapper, otherwise unprotected as he breaches the base of the castle wall, while sappers carry out their work under cover of a movable shelter. An initial breach either preceded further destruction with a ram or was the first stage in undermining the foundations of the castle, an operation greatly feared by defenders because it was virtually impossible to counter.
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At a point where the structure was most vulnerable, a cavity was hollowed out in the base of the wall, underpinned with wooden stays to avoid premature collapse and packed with combustible material. When this was ignited, the stays caught fire and collapsed, bringing down the wall above. Such mining activity was sometimes concealed by starting operations under cover at a distance from the wall and tunnelling under the foundations. Defenders were totally helpless against such an attack, unless they could manage to dig a countermine and gain access to the besiegers' tunnel for a hand-to-hand engagement. |
Scaling, mining and other attempts to gain entry might be successful in their own right, but a castle could also be surrounded and attacked by means of bombardment. Arrows were useless against stone masonry, so huge engines, derived from those of classical antiquity, attacked the stonework and intimidated defenders by hurling dangerous or unpleasant missiles into the besieged area. Earlier machines, very rarely illustrated in manuscripts, were either a kind of giant crossbow relying on the principle of tension for propelling its missile, or a sort of catapult, sometimes identified as a mangonel. This was a wooden frame with a twisted skein of springy material stretched between its sides, through which was inserted a revolving arm with a hollow at one end for the projectile. The missile-carrying end of the beam was winched down and released, the twisting action of the skein bringing about the firing of the missile. |
The third type of machine, a medieval invention simpler than its earlier counterparts and more powerful, worked on the pivot principle. The trebuchet, portrayed in a remarkably detailed and convincing way in an amusing marginal drawing in a Book of Hours, had a sling at the longer end of the arm, while a box containing a heavy weight was attached at the other end. Thanks to the force of gravity, the counterweight dropped when released, causing the arm to revolve and the sling to be tossed outwards and upwards to discharge its projectile. This miniature also suggests the massive size of the trebuchet, generally much larger than earlier stone-throwing machines, and with a longer range. |
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