A late-medieval army was, essentially, composed of two groups, those who fought on horseback and those who fought on foot. In itself, the horse was both an arm and a sign of social distinction, as well as a means of transport. In the English civil wars of the mid-thirteenth century the cavalry had been in command; but fifty years later, things were beginning to change. If the cavalry were still, in every sense, the army’s natural leaders, the victories of the Flemish burgher forces and militia over French knights at Courtrai in July 1302, and that of the mountaineers of Schwyz and Uri over the formidable feudal array of knights and footmen belonging to Leopold of Austria at Morgarten in November 1315 had shown what could be done in conditions and terrain unsuited to the effective use of cavalry. Not surprisingly, some saw these victories as signs that the days of the mounted knight as the dominant military arm were coming to an end.
Yet care must be taken not to dismiss too readily the value of cavalry as an arm – or worse, as a relic – of the past. The mounted soldier still had a long way to go and his influence was very considerable in the whole period covered by this book.3 None the less, as has been argued, the Hundred Years War would never be settled by a major engagement in which the cavalry alone played the decisive role. It is important to recognise this, for an acceptance of this fundamental point leads more easily to an understanding of the reasons which caused an increase in the military significance of those who did not fight on horseback.
For what sort of wars are we concerned with? Those of the first two Edwards were fought against enemies whose common aim was to rid their countries of the English aggressor, but whose methods of doing so differed. In both cases the leaders did their best to avoid full-scale confrontation. In Wales (under Edward I), in Scotland (under the first three Edwards) and in France (from Edward I to Henry VI) England fought a succession of wars in which she was, in fact, the aggressor. In spite of this, how far did the initiative really lie with England, and to what extent was she able to dictate the kind of war which she wanted to fight? In all cases English kings had to come to terms with the conditions which they found in these three different countries; and in all cases they had to show an ability to adapt themselves and their armies to new conditions, military, social and economic, as well as to new thinking in the ways that armies were formed and war was fought.
The English were faced by the different physical conditions and social organisation of the countries which they invaded. The army which Edward I led against Llewelyn ap Gruffydd in north Wales in 1277 consisted of less than 1,000 feudal cavalry and some 15,000 foot soldiers; in 1282 the king had only some 750 cavalry as against 8,000 or 9,000 foot soldiers, including archers and crossbowmen, most of them paid troops. In Wales the nature of the war was largely dominated by physical factors: in mountainous territory foot soldiers were of greater use than heavy cavalry would ever be. Ideally, a way should be found to employ both arms together. At Maes Moydog, near Montgomery, in March 1295 that way was found. The cavalry, combined with archers and crossbowmen, played havoc among the Welsh. A new weapon had been discovered.
That weapon may have been used to good effect against the Scots who were defeated at Falkirk in July 1298. Here, in a major battle, two factors were emphasised. One was the effectiveness of the longbow in the hands of the Welsh archers of whom Edward I had over 10,000, all of them paid, on campaign that summer. The other factor was the importance of the formations which allowed the archers to act in liaison with the cavalry, of whom some 2,500 served that year. Here were the two developments, the use of the longbow and the adaptation of the traditional use of cavalry, which were to bring victories to the English in a number of foreign fields in the coming century or so.
It was the willingness to adapt which was important. The process begun under Edward I was continued in July 1333 when, at Halidon Hill, outside Berwick, the English showed that they had learned to coordinate the use of ‘traditional’ cavalry with the ‘new’ archer force, the combination on this occasion being that of archers and dismounted men-at-arms drawn up in a defensive position which showed what successes a measure of flexibility could bring to an army led by men willing to experiment.
Yet, in the immediate future, the success of English arms would be limited. The Scottish leaders, notably Robert Bruce, understood well the need to approach the enemy with care. Bruce, therefore, became a kind of guerilla leader whose main means of harming the English was to harass them rather than seek a formal confrontation with them. Using highly mobile soldiers to avoid battle, Bruce used the physical geography of Scotland to make conditions as difficult as he could for the English who, risking starvation and ambush, had to be very careful not to overstretch themselves and to keep open their lines of communication as best they could through the control of castles, in particular the vital one at Stirling, which dominated the lowest point at which the river Forth could be crossed by bridge.
It was with this kind of experience of rapidly changing war behind them that the English began their long conflict against France. There they were to face yet another situation, a large country whose main physical characteristic was open countryside (‘plat pays’) broken up by rivers, with the social and economic characteristic of castles and towns (some already fortified) which helped society to defend itself against enemies from both within and without. In practice the countryside was easy to conquer; but it could only be controlled properly if the fortified places upon which it depended for its economic well-being and defence were also in friendly hands. Control of the towns and castles of France, therefore, was the first objective which the English needed to achieve. As regards the French, their aim must be to harass the English as best they could, to make their task of governing those parts of France which they controlled, and of conquering those not yet in their hands, as difficult and as expensive as possible. In this process, battles did little to help either side achieve its military aim, and were not to be an important part of the strategies pursued by the two main protagonists in the Hundred Years War.
If battles were to assume a role of secondary significance, then the cavalry, who might play a vital part on such occasions, were likely to become less important. A further – and connected – factor contributed to this change: the expense which the individual cavalryman had to incur in order to fulfil his proper role in war. There can be little doubt that this fact proved influential in reducing the strength of the cavalry (a strength which, as we have seen, was contracting because of the new requirements of war) and of turning many who might have fought on horseback into men-at-arms who rode into battle, dismounted, and then fought on foot. In such circumstances, the armour needed by each individual provided less cover and was less cumbersome and cheaper than that required by the mounted knight. In these conditions, too, the mount required either to give a force mobility or to approach a battlefield could be of inferior breed, and consequently cheaper, than a cavalry horse capable of carrying a fully armoured knight, in addition to its own armour.
Thus the hobelar, a form of light horseman, came to provide the mobile and versatile force which was to be characteristic of so much war on the Anglo-Scottish border in the early fourteenth century. For a few decades, too, the English also used hobelars with success along the borders which separated them from the enemy in France, and in particular at the siege of Calais in 1346–7, where they had some 600 or so to help them keep the French at a distance. Nor was the lesson lost upon the French whose army, which harassed the English borders in southwestern France in the 1370s, contained a preponderance of mounted soldiers.
The weapon of the day was to be the bow. The crossbow, most useful in defence when the crossbowman, who needed protection for the time required to wind up his weapon, could hide himself behind a wall, was an elitist weapon, most effective in the hands of Gascons, who fought in Wales for Edward I, and of Genoese, a large contingent of whom fought on the French side at Crécy. But it was the longbow, with its range of up to 200 metres, its power of penetration which was to compel the development of more effective plate armour in the first half of the fourteenth century, its rate of fire which was easily twice that of the crossbow, and which, held vertically, (earlier bows and crossbows were held horizontally) could be aimed more accurately along the line of the bow, which was to give the archer, above all those serving in English armies, so important a role to play in every form of war at this time. The bow’s greatest asset was its versatility. It could be used in sieges; it was valuable when used in the open by a lightly armed foot solder; likewise, a mounted archer, who did not need a first-class horse to ride, could prove to be a very mobile and effective combatant. In the early thirteenth century Gerald of Wales had advocated the combined use of archers and knights; it was precisely this combination which, as shown above, was to be employed to such good effect in defensive positions against the Scots in the first half of the fourteenth century, before being used, in broadly similar conditions, against the French at Crécy, Poitiers and, later, at Agincourt.
What essential changes did this new combination of archers and men-at-arms, some mounted, others on foot, bring about? In attack, the archers could break up either those massed in defensive position or, as at Agincourt, they could disperse cavalry which had begun to charge, leaving the frightened and wounded horses to turn upon their own side. In such conditions, concentrated fire from the archers on the wings wrought such havoc that the French could provide but little resistance to those English who set upon them. In defence, the dismounted men-at-arms and archers (the archers being either in ‘wedges’ or set out before the men-at-arms) provided density of resistance, giving each other support, the men-at-arms being all the better protected, since the archers were able to fire their weapons a considerable distance against an advancing enemy, thus disrupting them before they reached the defending men-at-arms who, with their own cavalry, could then mount a counter-attack. The ability of each group to fight alongside the other (something which depended upon a very disciplined approach) was undoubtedly one of the main tactical developments of the fourteenth century, and was to play an important part in helping bring about a succession of English victories in battle.
The other important development was that of the use of the mounted archer, who, paid twice the wage of the foot archer, was first found in English armies in 1334. By the time of the war in Brittany in 1342 there were already more than 1,700 of them in service. Not all may agree with one critic who termed these ‘the finest fighting men of the Middle Ages’.4 None the less, their ability to achieve rapid movements not only in battle but, more important, before it, and to act in unison with the men-at-arms (who were also mounted) made them into ‘by far the most important element in the armies which fought in France’.5 By the time of the Crécy campaign in 1346 men-at-arms and mounted archers, who would fight on foot in positions chosen, as far as possible, for their defensive possibilities, were being recruited in broadly the same numbers. In both England and France the need to make armies mobile was perhaps one of the major developments of the period, and shows how important versatility was coming to be regarded by the leaders of the day.
It was this factor which contributed heavily to the successes achieved by the French army in the 1370s. Yet we should not forget another: the significance of the noble contribution to the relatively small army of some 3,000 or so men (increased by half for part of the year), drawn largely from local men, all of them volunteers, all regularly paid and reviewed. These were factors of telling importance as the army sought to fight a war which would rely on its mobility to achieve success, a war in which confrontation on a large scale would be avoided. Well organised and well led, the small French army fulfilled these important, if undramatic, military objectives with complete success.
For the French the peace of the last years of the fourteenth century led to little more than the need to garrison their frontiers. But then the civil war of the first years of the new century caused what was virtually the collapse of the French army, a collapse confirmed by the defeat at Agincourt at the hands of English men-at-arms and archers. For much of the next generation there could scarcely be said to be such a thing as a French army, for a sizeable proportion of Charles VII’s soldiers came from Scotland. On the English side, what was needed was an army to fulfil two essential functions: conquest and maintenance of that conquest, requirements which demanded both field armies and garrisons. Partly because those who served in garrisons had to be ready to serve in the field when required (for a castle acted as a base where soldiers could remain when not in the field, and from which they could control the countryside around by mounted raids within a radius of, say, a dozen miles), partly because of an increasing difficulty in securing active support from the nobility and gentry for the war in France, English armies at the end of the war sometimes included a greater ratio of archers to men-at-arms than ever before, sometimes 7:1 or even 10:1, rather than the more usual 3:1 under Henry V and the parity of archers to men-at-arms normally found in the second half of the fourteenth century. We should also recall that the nature of the war, sieges pursued by both sides and the defence of a long frontier stretching from Le Crotoy in the east to Mont-Saint-Michel in the west, dictated a kind of war in which heavy cavalry played relatively little part other than in defence. An important change was coming about.
As already suggested, it was paid participation in war which saved a large number of the nobility and, in certain cases, helped them improve their social status. Fewer of the French nobility were drawn to looking after their estates. Rather they preferred to farm them out at a fixed rent, at leases which, in the fourteenth century, became progressively longer, and to enjoy the freedom to take up offices or to serve in the army. To a certain extent, it could be argued, taxes paid on their lands and its products could be recouped from the crown by entering royal service. Thus, instead of raiding the countryside under cover of defending it, or stealing money to pay for horses and their harnesses, the nobility entered the royal service in large numbers in both England and France so that, ironically, ‘the budget of the State was to some extent a budget of noble assistance’;6 used by kings on both sides of the Channel to pay the nobility, among others, for their services in war. In France many noblemen, especially those of middling to lower rank, were so impoverished that they needed the king’s wages, which provided them with a better and surer income than did their lands. In the period of the reforms carried out under Charles V, much of the French army was composed of members of the lower-ranking nobility. Being a soldier, they found, could be profitable.
In the England of Edward I, if the great feudatories had refused payment for fear of losing caste, by the reign of Edward III all were ‘now prepared to accept wages for military service’. The king himself was not paid (although Edward Balliol, ‘king’ of Scots, drew payment both in times of war and peace) but dukes received 13s. 4d; earls 6s. 8d; knights-baneret 4s; knights-bachelor 2s; and esquires is; these last sums corresponding proportionately to the amount each might expect to spend on a horse (as outlined above) whose value was agreed in advance, so that compensation for its loss could be paid by the crown.
Both the great nobility and the armigerous gentry, whose influence was more local, played a significant role in the organisation of military service, the gentry acting as sub-contractors in the work of raising forces. Together they acted as recruiters responsible for bringing together the large numbers of men who constituted the armies of the day. In this role the importance of the nobility in enlisting not only their feudal tenants but, in some cases, members of their households or those bound to them by indenture for service in war and peace, is considerable. As captains, they served sometimes as leaders of small expeditions, sometimes under the personal leadership of the king; as lieutenants, they exercised authority in castles and garrisons; while others still served as men-at-arms in the armies of both sides.
However, not all chose the way of active service in war, for other outlets, appropriate to their ranks and talents, could be found. War policy was settled in the councils of kings; many members of the nobility made the giving of counsel their contribution to war. Not far distanced from the council, in England at any rate, was Parliament, dominated for much of the fourteenth century by the peerage; and in that body, too, matters of policy and national finance were frequently discussed, for it was there that kings liked to benefit from the practical experience of men who had taken an active part in war. For others still, the administration which war inevitably brought in its wake provided further opportunities to serve their country’s cause.
Did the nobility, however, keep up with the changes in war taking place in this period? There has been (and there may still be) a tendency to run down the role of the European nobility in the wars so characteristic of the late Middle Ages. To many, the world in which they appear to have lived seems to have been distanced from reality. Changes in social status; changes in the technology of war; changes in the geographical and temporal scale on which it was fought are seen as having led to a decline in noble influence upon its conduct.
Some of these observations are well founded. The long occupation of northern France by the Lancastrian kings could never have been carried out without the active participation of men, many of them not yet noble, performing the tasks of their captains who, as noblemen with lands in England, had to return every so often to their estates to see to their upkeep. In this case it was the prolongation of war which gave an opportunity to men lacking landed ties in England to show how important their presence in France could be. For if the majority of the great nobility joined Henry V on his first expedition to France in 1415, such support could not long be maintained. By the end of the reign it was already falling off, and while Henry VI had much noble support for his coronation expedition in 1430–1, those who continued to serve him in the French war in the years to come constituted a relatively small group of men. In allotting commands, both English and French kings had to recognise that the extension of war was making considerable demands upon the nobility, and that changes were being forced upon them.
It is sometimes argued, too, that developments of a technological nature eventually forced the decline of the nobility as a fighting force. The successes of the English archers at the great battles of the Hundred Years War appear to point to that conclusion. Froissart’s account of the way in which many of the leading French nobility, by going forward at the battle of Crécy, in effect chose the likelihood of death to a dishonourable flight, suggests to the modern reader a group more intent upon self-immolation than upon the serious business of achieving victory through order and discipline. But the protective armour upon which a mounted knight and his horse, both very vulnerable in battle, depended did not remain undeveloped. The middle years of the fourteenth century saw the change from mail armour to plate, while the coming century or so witnessed many improvements in design, so that arrows, bolts, and pikes were met with glancing surfaces which, like the changes in architecture intended to counter the effect of the cannon ball, caused the deflection of the missile away from its target. Such developments, to which can be added improvements in the quality of steel used in the making of armour; the ability, as a consequence, to abandon the use of the shield, thereby freeing the left arm; and the development of special rests which permitted the use of a much heavier lance, meant that the cavalryman, far from being an outmoded liability on the field, remained an indispensable element of the army, one whose value was, as we have seen, enhanced by training and by association with men using other weapons. The long-lasting value of cavalry as a ‘follow-up’ force after a battle was shown on several occasions: at Verneuil in 1424 and, half a century later, in the battles involving the French, the Swiss and Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy.
It is arguable that a decline in the traditional role of the military nobility in war was presaged by the ever-greater use made of artillery, that most ‘un-noble’ and indiscriminate causer of death, which claimed among its victims several great noblemen, among them the Bastard of Bourbon, killed at Soisson in 1414; Thomas, earl of Salisbury (‘a worthi werrioure amonge all Cristen men… slayne at the sege of Orliaunce with a Gonne’, as the author of the Brut reported the event);7 John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, killed at Castillon in July 1453; and Jacques de Lalaing, ‘le bon chevalier’, killed in the very same month at the siege of Poeke, near Ghent. It is undeniable that artillery was making progress, and that its development was one of the major changes associated with the conduct of war at this time. But a sense of proportion must be maintained, and to regard artillery as an alternative to cavalry would be a mistake. The vision of Talbot and his mounted companions being mown down by an enfilade of artillery (as they were) was not typical of the time. The action smacked too much of the grandiose, if futile, gesture of the French nobility at Crécy just over a century earlier.
By and large, the occasions when the nobility might exploit a situation as cavalry and those when artillery could be used to best effect were not the same. One arm was valuable in certain circumstances, the other in different ones. It would be more profitable to relate the temporary decline in the use of cavalry to other factors. The wars of this period presented little opportunity to shock troops fighting on horseback. In the fourteenth century the Fabian tactics of the chevauchée found greater favour on both sides, although there were notable exceptions when the heavy cavalry did play a major role. Above all, it must be recalled that, at least in the fifteenth century, military objectives could best be achieved through siege warfare, which gave the cavalry less opportunity than it had enjoyed before. It is to these factors, rather than to artillery itself, that we should turn if we wish to see which arms were proving to be of the greatest significance in the war.
But one thing is clear. Knightly warfare, if it no longer enjoyed the supremacy of past centuries, was far from dead. It was still there, and would be used to good effect in the relatively near future when the pitched battle returned as the more usual way of deciding the outcome of wars. In 1494, it is as well to remember, at least one half of the army which Charles VIII led into Italy was composed of heavy cavalry.