Chapter 4
The age of the knight in armour will always possess a colour and glory because of its code of honour hallowed and revered by the upper classes in their attempts to render themselves worthy of their exceptional privileges. But much of the outward display and the class-conscious conventions on which such chivalry had always rested were swept away by the exigencies of serious warfare when the Hundred Years War brought national conflict between France and England. With such vast disparities of population – France had over ten million and England only three to four million2 – the English leaders had to make the best use of the material at their disposal and were highly satisfied if their methods enabled them to beat the enemy. These commanders who made such good use of archery as a national tactic had no real conception of the fact that in terminating the ascendancy in war of the mailed horseman they were putting an end to the feudal regime and all that it entailed. Regarding themselves as the very flower of chivalry, Edward I, Edward III and the Black Prince might have paused in their efforts had they realised that their successful tactics meant the end of so-called chivalrous warfare. It could be that the needs of the moment prevented them having such thoughts, just as the fullest implications of Hiroshima were not realised in 1945.
Before archery became of supreme importance in warfare there existed a lengthy and tactically stagnant epoch when the mail-clad feudal horseman reigned supreme. Because the feudal organisation of society made every man of gentle blood a fighting-man, but not necessarily a soldier, a feudal army presented an unbelievable collection of unsoldierlike qualities. Although arrogance, stupidity and great courage coloured the activities of these armies, their inability to replace skill and experience made tactics and strategy impossible. The knight had no conception that discipline and tactical skill were as important as courage; it was always possible that at some inopportune and critical moment a battle might be precipitated or a carefully laid plan ruined by the incredibly foolish bravery of some petty knight with lust for only personal glory. Social status rather than professional experience led to command, so that the noble with the largest following was always superior to the skilled veteran with only a few lances to lead.
When a number of tenants-in-chief, all blindly jealous of each other, had been collected together with great difficulty they formed an unwieldy, unmanoeuvrable host ready to melt away from the standard the moment their short period of war-service was over. They recognised no superior but the King, and, unless he were a leader of uncommon skill, he was often powerless to control them, so that the radical vice of insubordination continued unchecked. Their very formation encouraged this in many ways; confined to a single pattern, they were formed into three great masses or battles and then launched at the enemy; there could really be no other way because the troops were neither disciplined nor accustomed to act together so that combined movements of small bodies were impossible.
Keeping a reserve in hand was a refinement practised by very few commanders, partly because it would have been very difficult to persuade a feudal chief to stay out of the front line of battle so that he incurred the risk of missing some of the hard fighting. Regarded as a model of military efficiency if he could sit his charger steadily and skilfully handle a sword and lance, nothing could restrain him when the enemy came in sight. His shield would be shifted into position, the lance dropped into rest, the spur plunged into the charger and the mail-clad line would ponderously roll forward. Thundering on as they gained speed, they had little regard for anything that might lie before them; as often as not the formation dashed themselves against a stone wall or tumbled into a ditch; painfully floundered in a bog or surged futilely around a wall or palisade. If the enemy were similar to themselves the two forces would meet with a fearful shock, men and horses tumbling in all directions, and then a chaotic mêlée would follow, sometimes lasting for hours. This meant that most engagements were nothing more than a huge, sprawling scuffle and scramble of men and horses over a patch of bare land or a hillside. Sometimes, as if by general agreement, both parties would laboriously wheel to the rear, halt for a while as their horses regained breath, and then rush at each other again until one side was worsted and fled from the field. The most elementary military tactics, such as preselecting a battle position, or using a reserve to take the enemy in rear or flank, were considered examples of exceptional military skill. The commendation of the age boiled down to striking individual feats of arms rather than any efforts at real leadership.
Great battles did not take place very often, simply because opposing armies often completely lost each other because they neglected to keep in touch by vedettes or outposts and patrols. It was usually the existence of some topographical objective, such as a road, ford or bridge, which precipitated a conflict; with maps non-existent and geographical knowledge both scanty and inaccurate, it was easy for armies to stray away and lose sight of each other. A recognised manner in which this last contingency was prevented lay in the opposing generals solemnly sending and accepting challenges to meet in battle at a given place and on a definite date.
There was little for the infantry to do, no important part for them to play; they accompanied the armies for no better purpose than to perform the menial camp duties and assist in the numerous sieges of the period. Now and then, as a sort of overture, they were used to demonstrate ineffectually at the opening of a battle, but if they presumed to prolong these demonstrations, their lords, affronted by such presumption, would end the skirmishing by riding into and over their luckless followers. The half-armed peasants and burghers who had unwillingly joined the levy because it was the duty of every able-bodied man to do so were incapable of combining to withstand a cavalry charge; lacking adequate weapons and without discipline, they were ridden down and crushed.
The only infantry who commanded any respect were those bodies who were armed with more or less uniform equipment and weapons; the chief cause of the military unworthiness of infantry generally can be said to have been due primarily to the miscellaneous nature of their armament. The Scottish lowlanders, with their long spears, and the Saracen auxiliaries, plying their crossbows, stood out as troops capable of putting up good performances on foot and without all the benefits of high birth. The few infantry successes which occurred towards the end of the feudal period were exceptional and served to foreshadow the new era of co-ordinated dismounted warfare.
When a feudal host came up against a force or a commander capable of exercising even the most simple and rudimentary tactics on the field of battle they invariably took a hiding. With each commander making his own speed into the attack, followed by his supporters, the feudal force arrived at the scene of battle in small scattered groups. This meant that the battle was made up of a number of detached and unco-ordinated cavalry combats and a systematic enemy could defeat each of these groups in detail so that the sum total of the small routs added up to a great defeat. In this way a skirmish, a street fight or the bogging-down of a group of heavily armed horsemen could overthrow an entire force.
With such an unscientific method of warfare, resembling nothing more than a huge tilting-match, it only needed one side to bring into the field a factor that would prevent their opponents from approaching near enough to break a lance for the whole concept of then-known warfare to break down. By introducing auxiliaries like the English archer against a military caste too hidebound and blind to alter its losing methods throughout almost the whole of a hundred-year period, the English commanders could hardly fail to bring to earth the flower of French chivalry. French chivalry was to receive an early and striking lesson when the peasant-archer faced the high-born knight at Crécy in 1346. It was a lesson that was to be unheeded, in spite of finding himself unable to approach the position from which the deadly arrow reached him, the knight still clung to the tradition which gave the most honourable name in war to the mounted man. Thus were cavalry, whose day had really passed, perpetuated for another century; a system so intimately bound up with mediaeval life and customs would take more than a single disaster, or the dozen others to follow, before being irretrievably smashed.