The soldier of the late Middle Ages was in receipt of a wage. There was, therefore, no obligation upon his paymaster, the crown, to provide him with the food and drink which he would need on campaign. Yet, if the task of finding provisions was left to the soldiers themselves, the results could be disastrous, for the men might become more involved with that preoccupation than with their prime concern, that of making war. Discipline could suffer. Moreover, they might take it out on the population of the country through which they were advancing: Henry V had to issue orders that all food consumed by his army in Normandy should be paid for on the spot, so that the local population should not be antagonised. There was the added, and very serious, danger that food would run out; a scorched earth policy was, after all, intended to make life as difficult as possible for those who expected to be able to live off the land. Not without reason it has been claimed that ‘few problems facing governments in the pre-industrial age could have been as difficult as that of providing sufficient food for an army in the field.’3
There was a close relationship between providing an army with its subsistence and that army’s success as a military machine. Feeding an army was one way of making it efficient. Provisioning was, in itself, a test of efficiency. Castles, outlying garrisons, and ships at sea had all to be catered for. Calais, for instance, was almost totally dependent upon England for its food, its munitions, and the other materials required for its defence as a bastion of English power on the continent. In the fourteenth century its large garrison (up to 1,000 men or more in time of war) was provided with food as part payment of its wages under a system organized by the Keeper of the King’s Victuals. The importance of maintaining such places with all that they required was underlined in March 1416 when the earl of Dorset, captain of Harfleur in Normandy, which was being blockaded by the French by both land and sea, had to make what turned out to be a very dangerous sortie to secure food which was fast running out.
Everything pointed to the fact that, in time of war, provisioning could not be left to hazard. In this respect the problems faced by the French and English crowns were a little different. Fighting mainly in their own country, the French were less likely to meet opposition to the collecting of victuals and other provisions than the English, the enemy fighting in a foreign country, would do. They could probably rely on greater co-operation when buying on the spot; they could more easily anticipate the needs of their armies by sending agents ahead to see to the levy of provisions in the areas through which an army might pass; and they might also, with greater ease, organise merchants (to whom safeconducts would be given) to provide for the needs of the army at certain pre-arranged places. All this was essential if a degree of efficiency was to be established by avoiding the need for the army to live off the land and protecting the interests of the civilian population.
When they fought in France, and to a certain extent in Scotland, the English could not count upon the advantages of fighting ‘at home’. Basically this involved them in a system which was an extension (at least in scale) of the way they provided for the needs of the Calais garrison, for even if an army could live off the land, it was none the less advisable for it to have easy access to the everyday provisions which it required. In a war of sieges, an army seeking to starve out a garrison had to be free of such practical problems as providing its own food, so that during the long sieges of Calais in 1346–7 and of Rouen in 1418–19, both Edward III and Henry V had supplies specially shipped to them from England.
In both England and France the systems used to provide for the country’s military needs had much in common. In France the prise was the normal way of raising provisions, from both individuals and institutions. An official of the royal household, called thePanetier du Roi, had charge, designating his powers to the regions, sometimes to baillis, sometimes to royal captains and others. Under Philip VI those responsible were divided into three main groups: those who collected cereal products, those with responsibility for raising wine, and those who sought the large quantities of fodder required for the horses and other animals. The work of these people was, militarily, of the very greatest importance, but the system was open to abuse, with many disputes arising out of acts committed by over-zealous officials against, significantly, exemptions from the prise, ending up in the courts.
In England the system of purveyance, as it was called, was to become a major cause of dispute between the crown and its subjects. ‘Purveyors’, wrote William of Pagula, ‘were sent to act in this world as the devil acts in Hell’. The financial difficulties experienced by Edward I led him to try to exploit the crown’s claims to the full, but with only moderate success. The issue between king and subjects was both a financial one (was it right that those who had already paid taxes should have to contribute substantially towards the upkeep of the army by providing it with cheap food?) and a constitutional one, for the crown, by extending the idea that the king’s army, in T. F. Tout’s words, ‘was essentially the household in arms’ which the country could be called upon to provide for, was demanding help to feed that now greatly extended household of, perhaps, several thousand men. However, opposition to this had reached its limits by about the middle years of the fourteenth century, and thereafter, with royal agents acting more reasonably, purveyance became much less of an issue between crown and people.
Unpopular though it was, the system none the less helped to make England’s fighting forces abroad more efficient. In its least objectionable form it enabled the sheriff to compel the purchase of provisions which he had been ordered to contribute towards a general requisition which was going on all over, or in most parts of, the country at the time. All were liable to contribute. Monasteries, with the produce of their estates stored in barns and granges, were particularly vulnerable, although some, the rich or locally influential, might purchase exemptions from the need to contribute; some counties, on the other hand, had demands made upon them more frequently than others. During the first years of the war against France the task of raising provisions for the army was handed over to merchants who, with a network of subordinate agents, combed the countryside exerting pressure on all to contribute. Obtained at rates usually below the current market price, and paid for in a way which often made it difficult for the seller to obtain the money owed him, the produce of land (essentially bread, meat, beer or wine), together with fish, but little or no fresh fruit or vegetables (a dull diet at best), and oats for horses, was taken away to sustain the army or, as on some occasions, to stores and depots.
The regular supply of arms was also becoming increasingly important at this period. It was accepted that, when leaving his county, the English soldier raised by commission of array would be adequately armed, his locality having assumed responsibility for the payment of his weapons. The cheaper and simpler weapons could be demanded from the localities: bows, arrows, not to forget the six wing feathers which, in 1417, the sheriffs were ordered to obtain from every goose in their jurisdiction at a low price, could all be demanded from the country at large. But in both France and England weapons needed to be provided by the crown, too. Bows could be lost; arrows would certainly be used up, even if they were sometimes retrieved and used again, as the evidence of manuscript illumination suggests they were. In this essential work the English king’s privy wardrobe, a vital part in his household, played the leading role. Its centre was the Tower of London where, in the reign of Edward III, the Keeper of the King’s Arms had his base from which he organised the work of purchasing, storing, and finally distributing arms to armies, garrisons, and ships. In 1360, the store held over 11,000 bows and some 23,600 sheaves, each holding twenty-four arrows. By 1381 there were less than 1,000 sheaves left, an indication of the need for constant replenishment of stock, above all in time of war. But it was not only bows and arrows which were kept in this, the nearest which the Middle Ages had to a national armaments depot. Other essentials had to be maintained: tents for the soldiers; saddlery; crossbows and bolts; shields; lances; heavy siege-engines; all had to be provided.
The provision of cannon was to require radical measures. In France, the cost of manufacturing artillery was borne almost entirely by the crown, and, in this way, cannon became essentially a weapon of state which now took on an increasingly important role in providing the equipment for its armies.4 The argument can be supported by noting that in both England and France those who were made responsible for the founding of cannon, their distribution and use did so under royal auspices, holding their position by authority of the crown and being paid directly by it. Theirs was a specialist’s work, which sometimes ran in families. In 1375 Milet de Lyon succeeded his father, Jean, as head of the French king’s artillery, while in England, at about the same time, four men of the Byker family served Edward III and Richard II in the work of providing slings and, finally, small iron cannon.
The trend continued in the fifteenth century. The work of the Bureau brothers, whose reconstruction of Charles VII’s artillery train played so considerable a part in bringing about the defeat of the English, is well known. But the French kings were not alone in developing the use of artillery. James II of Scotland, who died of injuries incurred when one of his cannon, ironically called ‘Lion’, exploded in 1460, had a royal gunner. Before him, Henry IV of England was said to be interested in cannon. His son, Henry V, certainly was, and used the weapon to good effect in the sieges of his campaigns in France between 1415 and 1422. Henry took the matter of the organisation of his artillery very seriously: he had no real choice, for cannon were essential to him if he was to bring his war of sieges to a successful conclusion. He kept officials busy, ordering cannon to be shipped to him from England while he was in France and arranging for gunstones, ‘salt pietre, cole and brymstoon’, stored at Caen ‘in ye howse of oure ordennance’ and at Harfleur, to be sent to the siege of Meaux in March 1422 (the Musée de l’Armée in Paris still shows pieces of artillery left by the English after their successful siege). On Henry’s death, John, duke of Bedford, established an organisation under the ‘maistre de l’artillerie du roy’ which carried out the unspectacular but vital work of ordering the construction and repair of cannon, large and small, the purchase of the ingredients of gunpowder, the transport of weapons (since they were heavy and difficult to move, this was done as often as possible by water) from one siege to another, and the rendering of what was becoming increasingly professional advice on the problems of how to place the pieces of artillery to achieve maximum effect. The growing professionalism required to make the most of this relatively new weapon is emphasised by the fact that those who had charge of the English artillery in France in the fifteenth century were at the head of retinues which consisted of specialists who stayed together in teams, sometimes for years at a time, thereby adding a strong element of cohesion to their efforts which were often well rewarded.
What of the horses? These, as we have seen, were very expensive. ‘Hors flesche’, wrote William Paston from London in February 1492, ‘is of suche a price here that my purce is schante able to bye on horse.’5 In the war’s early phases, at least, a knight who provided a horse might, if it were injured or killed, claim compensation under the old custom of restor (frequently invoked in French indentures). For this purpose horses were valued by experts before a campaign, rather as today’s knight of the road values his vehicle in agreement with his insurers. In addition to a horse, a knight would also be expected to provide himself with armour, the nature of which was changing from mail to plate by the mid-fourteenth century. The notion that a man, even under contract, should provide his mount, his armour, and his weapons died hard. The high social ranks armed themselves; in return, it should not be forgotten, they received more pay.
There must have been a great variety in the clothing worn by, and the arms carried by, armies of this era. Yet the achievement of a certain level of standardisation of dress and armament was slowly being introduced. This was to be accomplished in two ways. The first was the result of musters, at which were noted not only the absences of individual soldiers, but also the failure of those present to keep themselves properly in arms and armour. The other way was the gradual introduction of the uniform. This, in the modern meaning of the word, was yet to come, but in 1340 the town of Tournai provided Philip VI with 2,000 foot soldiers ‘all clothed identically’, while, from the mid-fourteenth century onwards, others coming from Cheshire and North Wales were often dressed in green and white ‘uniforms’.
The provision and transport of weapons were increasingly organised centrally. Bows and arrows made in the country were sent up to London to be stored in the Tower (in Paris weapons were kept in the Louvre and the Bastille) from where, packed in chests together with spare bowstrings, feathers and arrowheads specially manufactured in areas such as the Forest of Dean (where iron was worked), they were despatched when required to the ports, such as Sandwich or Southampton, for forwarding to armies overseas. When all was ready, time was often spent waiting for a favourable wind to blow, during which period soldiers had to be fed and their morale maintained, as those who lived near ports of embarkation realised, sometimes to their cost. One cannot but wonder that the departure of a transport fleet bearing an army and its equipment was an event which amounted to a considerable managerial achievement, reflected in certain chronicles as something of which men could be proud.