Post by Creative Consortium on Jan 22, 2008 19:43:56 GMT -6
Combat
There are a lot of variations. Some nations still rely on a lot of infantry, if only because they are too poor to support a lot of mounted troops. Example is the Scots. The poverty stricken Scots, with a more populous and wealthier England to the south, always face their mounted foes with infantry, and had often managed to hold their own.
But, all things being equal, the mounted man-at-arms was superior. It wasn't just the horse, the knight was also better armed and armored. Moreover, a knight devoted his life to training with his weapons and was usually quite good at it. The downside was that the knight's believed their own propaganda. Foot soldiers were disdained and discipline was seen as incompatible with a noble warriors honor.
The basic problem was that every noble (knights and above) thought he was above obeying orders. A duke or a count had some control over his knights (and each knight's small band of armed followers), but each such noble was less impressed by the royal official, or king himself, in charge of the entire army. Every noble thought he, and his troops, deserved the post of honor in the first rank. An army commander would try and line up his various contingents in such a way that each would be used to best effect. Most knights (of whatever rank) simply wanted to get at the enemy and fight it out man to man. This was the mentality of knights.
Communication is done through musical signals, audible commands, messengers, or visual signals such raising a standard, banner, or flag.
The infantry, including missile troops, would typically be employed at the outset of the battle to break open infantry formations while the cavalry attempted to defeat its opposing number. When one side gained superiority in cavalry (or had it at the outset of battle) it could attempt to exploit the loss of cohesion in the opposing infantry lines caused by the infantry conflict to hit the opposing infantry and attempt to rout it. This could often be difficult, and careful timing would be necessary for a direct cavalry assault, as an ordered infantry line would often be able to beat off the cavalry attacks. Pure infantry conflicts would be drawn-out affairs.
The most effective infantry were the English yeomen. These were English and Welch farmers who owned their own land (hence the term "yeomen") and were paid by the king to train in peacetime, and answer his call when he needed to raise an army. The typical English army of the period would be 80-90 percent yeomen, the remainder being men-at-arms (knights and sergeants, commoners equipped as knights). The yeomen were basically light infantry, who knew how to ride a horse.
For hand-to-hand fighting they usually carried a sword, an axe, or a mallet (quite effective against a dismounted knight in full armor). But their principal weapon was the longbow. Originally a hunting weapon in Wales, its major drawback was that it required years of practice to use effectively.
The king offered money, and other favors, to encourage the peacetime training, and good pay for when the yeomen were called to action. The king also offered fines and other punishments if the yeomen didn't practice their archery in peacetime. But the yeomen were skilled at more than just handling the bow. Their training concentrated on firing in groups (they were organized into units of 20 and 100 men).
Peacetime training consisted of individual archers learning how to fire at a specific range. This took a lot of practice. The archers soon learned which angle to point their bows in order to land their arrow on a white sheet (the common target, representing a group of enemy troops) at different ranges, a practice called "clout shooting" (i.e, cloth shooting). In addition to individual practice, they also drilled with their units. In a formation ten ranks deep, only the men in the first few ranks could even see the enemy, or hear the commands of their "centenaur" (leader of a hundred.)
In battle, the centuries (each with a hundred archers) would line up in formations of up to ten ranks deep. In front of each century would be an experienced (and very well paid) centenaur. A typical English army would have 50 or more centuries of archers available.
In overall command would be a Master of the Archers, an experienced knight who was (unlike most knights) skilled with the longbow. The Master of the Archers would keep his eye on the enemy and judge how many yards distant the foe was. When ordered to fire, the Master of the Archers would estimate the range to the enemy and then bellow out "ready," quickly followed by his range estimate, to the Centenaurs, who would turn and bellow it to their archers (especially the most experienced ones, placed in the first rank to provide an accurate guide for the archers behind them). The Master of the Archers would then yell "loose," the Centenaurs would echo the command, and thousands of arrows would fly skyward, most of them to land where, and when, the Master of the Archers wanted them.
The Master of the Archers might order only a few of his Centuries to fire, if enemy troops were only advancing on a portion of the front. But it was generally all or nothing. An attack usually called for the knights to advance on a broad front. The yeomen could let loose a dozen arrows a minute, creating a steady stream of deadly missiles. Advancing horsemen were doomed, as their unarmored (or even partially armored) mounts went down from arrow wounds. The riders went down also, often with broken bones and other injuries in the process, not to mention exposing them to the possibility of being trampled by their onrushing comrades.
When enemy knights advanced on foot, the results weren't much different. The long range (up to 300 yards) plunging fire would eventually cause some wounds. The sight and sound of all those arrows raining down was quite demoralizing. As the enemy knights got closer to the yeomen, they would get hit by direct fire from the front row of archers (the most experienced and accurate ones) and discover that at point blank range, the yard-long arrows did indeed have an armor piercing tip.
For those knights that got to within ten yards of the yeomen would encounter several rows of sharpened stakes, and perhaps even a ditch. Usually the English would post their own dismounted knights in a sort of phalanx to support their archers, which only made matters worse for the attacking enemy. At this point, there were few enough knights for the yeomen to successfully engage them in single combat.
Well, it was more lopsided than that. Supported by the English knights, the archers would put down their bows and come out from behind their defenses with sword or axe or mallet once they saw they had a 2-to-1 or better advantage over the surviving knights. The yeomen would then team up to capture knights alive, and reap the ransoms captured nobles always brought. One yeoman would engage the knight from in front while another hit him from the side or rear with the flat end of an axe or a mallet.
The stunned knight, now on the ground, would invariably surrender. The yeomen rarely lost these combats and took few casualties in them, even if they did not wear much armor. The ransoms thus obtained made many a yeoman family wealthy. The news of these riches traveled far and fast, making it easier for the king to keep his yeoman at their peacetime training and eager to answer the royal call when another campaign was afoot.
There were never that many yeomen, some 10,000-20,000 were raised for each campaign. While some of them became full-time professionals, most remained basically farmers who fought on the side. Typically, they would answer the king's call in the Spring. If they were lucky, they would go off to war after the Spring planting was out of the way. With the approach of Winter, the king would allow many to return home. In practice, all those that wanted to go home would do so. Campaigning was rarely done in the Winter and all the king needed then were troops to man the fortifications in his lands. Garrison soldiers could be obtained locally and cost less than yeomen.
Sieges (http://www.hyw.com/books/history/Sieges.htm) were the most common for of large scale combat. Political control depended on who held the numerous castles and walled cities that dotted the countryside. These fortifications held reserve supplies of food and large numbers of troops. From these bases, the nobility controlled the countryside. If you wished to "conquer" an area you had to take the fortified places away from whoever currently held them. Since these places were built to resist being taken, a siege was the usual result. Sieges took time, some went on for months, and money, some cost literally millions of ducats.
The larger force outside often had more serious food problems than the besieged. The surrounding countryside was often stripped bare of food at the approach of an enemy army. But the defender could not always depend on the besieger giving up because he was hungry. The usual hope was that a friendly army would come up and chase the besiegers away. This often resulted in a battle as a means to determine of the siege would continue or not.
Sieges themselves were largely a matter of engineering work, with a little knightly combat thrown in to keep the warriors from getting bored. It was not uncommon for an impromptu tournament, or series of duels, to be arranged between the knights on both sides, just to enliven what was otherwise a very tedious process. The English had an advantage in sieges for most of the war (until the French developed superior cannon [http://www.hyw.com/books/history/cannon.htm] ) because their yeomen were more effective at siege warfare. In addition to being able to sweep defenders from castle walls with their accurate and long range archery, the yeomen were also more skilled at the more mundane aspects of siege work. Being well paid mercenaries, the yeomen went about the digging and building that comprised most siege work in more professional manner than most of their counterparts.
[[In 1327 King Edward III of England (reigned 1327-1377) [http://www.hyw.com/books/history/Who_Was_.htm] appears to have brought some cannon along on an invasion of Scotland. This campaign gives us our first picture of an early gun, in the Millemete Manuscript, a document in the library of Christ Church College at Oxford. The manuscript is an illuminated copy of a speech commemorating the King's success in the field. In one of the margins is depicted a vase-like object lying on a kind of table. A man in armor is holding a match against the bulbous base of the piece and an arrow-shaped projectile is emerging from the muzzle. Known in Italian as a "vaso" (pot or vase) and in French as a "pot de fer" (iron-pot), such primitive cannon must by then have been relatively commonplace. Over the next few years references to firearms begin to proliferate, and it appears that they were known everywhere in Europe, classified as a form of artillery, a term then including all missile weapons. It seems probable that gunpowder and cannon were first used in attack on and in the defense of fortified places.]]
Armies took siege technicians with them on campaign. These were usually carpenters and miners, plus master siege artisans who had years of experience in the techniques of siege warfare. The typical siege consisted of throwing a cordon of troops around the fortified place and then building rock (or fire) throwing catapults to attack the troops on the walls, tunnels to collapse the walls, scaling ladders and movable towers to allow troops to go over the walls, and battering rams to demolish walls or gateways. But the typical activity was the threat of an attack. The custom was that if the city surrendered without a fight, it would not be pillaged by the enemy troops. Both sides preferred to end the matter through negotiation and this was basically a war of nerves. The besieger didn't really want to attack, as this would get a lot of his troops killed and it might not work, at least not the first time. Moreover, the besieger was usually after permanent possession of the place and didn’t want to be stuck with the damage his angry troops would inflict if, after successfully storming the place, they pillaged it (thus wrecked everything in sight and killed off a fair percentage of the population). The defender didn't want to risk an assault either, but for different reasons. In many cases, time was on the side of the besieged. If careful preparations were made, the defenders might well have had a better supply of food and water than the besiegers. Moreover, there might be a relief army on the way. The defender had to calculate whether he could fight off enough assaults so that the attacker ran out of men or enthusiasm for the task.
If the attacker could make a breach in the wall with, say by tunneling which caused the wall to collapse, this might give the defender sufficient reason to surrender without an assault. Catapults throwing fire balls into the city or castle might start fires that would also encourage a surrender. Negotiations were usually underway from the very beginning (or even before, as the advancing army sent forward Heralds to try and convince the commander of the castle or town that it was never too early to surrender). Of course, the commander of the defenders had more than his honor at stake. His boss might punish him quite severely (unto death, perhaps) if the fortified place was lost without every possible action being taken to avoid such a loss.
There was also the question of cost. Your typical fortress or castle (the former had fewer towers and less comfortable living accommodations) had a garrison of 100-300 men. These were usually locals, full or part time soldiers on the regular payroll of the local lord. Say an army of 1,000 men approached, mercenaries, costing the attacker, on average, 170,000 ducats a week to maintain. It would take several weeks to invest the place, build siege engines (catapults, etc.), and start digging tunnels. By this time, the cost would already be up to half a million ducats, with less than a hundred thousand gained from pillaging the surrounding countryside. That pillage would going to cost the local lord tens of thousands of lost taxes in the future, and some of the damage would be to things the lord owned, such as flour mills or buildings. Nevertheless, it would be costing the besieger a lot more than it would be costing the defender. If the place is taken by negotiation, there would be loot inside the castle. In addition to at least several thousand ducats in cash, there were no doubt many other valuable items. Everything from captured weapons and tools, to perhaps some gold or silver objects. But the besieger had to decide when to stop throwing good money after bad.
[[ We may not think of Medieval warlords as accountants, but they had to pay their bills, too. Unpaid troops tended to drift away, leaving you defenseless in hostile territory. It wasn't all adventure and glory. A lot of Medieval warfare was the headaches delivered via a clerk's report on your current cash position. ]]
Warfare was also very dependant on the quality of leadership. The troops didn't vary much from area to area (except in the case of the yeomen or Swiss pikemen), nor did the methods. There were few books on "how to make war," and most military leaders obtained their positions because of their social standing, not their military track records. As a result, when good leaders were present, they would quickly reorganize their troops, redistribute what good subordinate leaders there were more effectively, and run their army on a more efficient basis than their opposition.
There are a lot of variations. Some nations still rely on a lot of infantry, if only because they are too poor to support a lot of mounted troops. Example is the Scots. The poverty stricken Scots, with a more populous and wealthier England to the south, always face their mounted foes with infantry, and had often managed to hold their own.
But, all things being equal, the mounted man-at-arms was superior. It wasn't just the horse, the knight was also better armed and armored. Moreover, a knight devoted his life to training with his weapons and was usually quite good at it. The downside was that the knight's believed their own propaganda. Foot soldiers were disdained and discipline was seen as incompatible with a noble warriors honor.
The basic problem was that every noble (knights and above) thought he was above obeying orders. A duke or a count had some control over his knights (and each knight's small band of armed followers), but each such noble was less impressed by the royal official, or king himself, in charge of the entire army. Every noble thought he, and his troops, deserved the post of honor in the first rank. An army commander would try and line up his various contingents in such a way that each would be used to best effect. Most knights (of whatever rank) simply wanted to get at the enemy and fight it out man to man. This was the mentality of knights.
Communication is done through musical signals, audible commands, messengers, or visual signals such raising a standard, banner, or flag.
The infantry, including missile troops, would typically be employed at the outset of the battle to break open infantry formations while the cavalry attempted to defeat its opposing number. When one side gained superiority in cavalry (or had it at the outset of battle) it could attempt to exploit the loss of cohesion in the opposing infantry lines caused by the infantry conflict to hit the opposing infantry and attempt to rout it. This could often be difficult, and careful timing would be necessary for a direct cavalry assault, as an ordered infantry line would often be able to beat off the cavalry attacks. Pure infantry conflicts would be drawn-out affairs.
The most effective infantry were the English yeomen. These were English and Welch farmers who owned their own land (hence the term "yeomen") and were paid by the king to train in peacetime, and answer his call when he needed to raise an army. The typical English army of the period would be 80-90 percent yeomen, the remainder being men-at-arms (knights and sergeants, commoners equipped as knights). The yeomen were basically light infantry, who knew how to ride a horse.
For hand-to-hand fighting they usually carried a sword, an axe, or a mallet (quite effective against a dismounted knight in full armor). But their principal weapon was the longbow. Originally a hunting weapon in Wales, its major drawback was that it required years of practice to use effectively.
The king offered money, and other favors, to encourage the peacetime training, and good pay for when the yeomen were called to action. The king also offered fines and other punishments if the yeomen didn't practice their archery in peacetime. But the yeomen were skilled at more than just handling the bow. Their training concentrated on firing in groups (they were organized into units of 20 and 100 men).
Peacetime training consisted of individual archers learning how to fire at a specific range. This took a lot of practice. The archers soon learned which angle to point their bows in order to land their arrow on a white sheet (the common target, representing a group of enemy troops) at different ranges, a practice called "clout shooting" (i.e, cloth shooting). In addition to individual practice, they also drilled with their units. In a formation ten ranks deep, only the men in the first few ranks could even see the enemy, or hear the commands of their "centenaur" (leader of a hundred.)
In battle, the centuries (each with a hundred archers) would line up in formations of up to ten ranks deep. In front of each century would be an experienced (and very well paid) centenaur. A typical English army would have 50 or more centuries of archers available.
In overall command would be a Master of the Archers, an experienced knight who was (unlike most knights) skilled with the longbow. The Master of the Archers would keep his eye on the enemy and judge how many yards distant the foe was. When ordered to fire, the Master of the Archers would estimate the range to the enemy and then bellow out "ready," quickly followed by his range estimate, to the Centenaurs, who would turn and bellow it to their archers (especially the most experienced ones, placed in the first rank to provide an accurate guide for the archers behind them). The Master of the Archers would then yell "loose," the Centenaurs would echo the command, and thousands of arrows would fly skyward, most of them to land where, and when, the Master of the Archers wanted them.
The Master of the Archers might order only a few of his Centuries to fire, if enemy troops were only advancing on a portion of the front. But it was generally all or nothing. An attack usually called for the knights to advance on a broad front. The yeomen could let loose a dozen arrows a minute, creating a steady stream of deadly missiles. Advancing horsemen were doomed, as their unarmored (or even partially armored) mounts went down from arrow wounds. The riders went down also, often with broken bones and other injuries in the process, not to mention exposing them to the possibility of being trampled by their onrushing comrades.
When enemy knights advanced on foot, the results weren't much different. The long range (up to 300 yards) plunging fire would eventually cause some wounds. The sight and sound of all those arrows raining down was quite demoralizing. As the enemy knights got closer to the yeomen, they would get hit by direct fire from the front row of archers (the most experienced and accurate ones) and discover that at point blank range, the yard-long arrows did indeed have an armor piercing tip.
For those knights that got to within ten yards of the yeomen would encounter several rows of sharpened stakes, and perhaps even a ditch. Usually the English would post their own dismounted knights in a sort of phalanx to support their archers, which only made matters worse for the attacking enemy. At this point, there were few enough knights for the yeomen to successfully engage them in single combat.
Well, it was more lopsided than that. Supported by the English knights, the archers would put down their bows and come out from behind their defenses with sword or axe or mallet once they saw they had a 2-to-1 or better advantage over the surviving knights. The yeomen would then team up to capture knights alive, and reap the ransoms captured nobles always brought. One yeoman would engage the knight from in front while another hit him from the side or rear with the flat end of an axe or a mallet.
The stunned knight, now on the ground, would invariably surrender. The yeomen rarely lost these combats and took few casualties in them, even if they did not wear much armor. The ransoms thus obtained made many a yeoman family wealthy. The news of these riches traveled far and fast, making it easier for the king to keep his yeoman at their peacetime training and eager to answer the royal call when another campaign was afoot.
There were never that many yeomen, some 10,000-20,000 were raised for each campaign. While some of them became full-time professionals, most remained basically farmers who fought on the side. Typically, they would answer the king's call in the Spring. If they were lucky, they would go off to war after the Spring planting was out of the way. With the approach of Winter, the king would allow many to return home. In practice, all those that wanted to go home would do so. Campaigning was rarely done in the Winter and all the king needed then were troops to man the fortifications in his lands. Garrison soldiers could be obtained locally and cost less than yeomen.
Sieges (http://www.hyw.com/books/history/Sieges.htm) were the most common for of large scale combat. Political control depended on who held the numerous castles and walled cities that dotted the countryside. These fortifications held reserve supplies of food and large numbers of troops. From these bases, the nobility controlled the countryside. If you wished to "conquer" an area you had to take the fortified places away from whoever currently held them. Since these places were built to resist being taken, a siege was the usual result. Sieges took time, some went on for months, and money, some cost literally millions of ducats.
The larger force outside often had more serious food problems than the besieged. The surrounding countryside was often stripped bare of food at the approach of an enemy army. But the defender could not always depend on the besieger giving up because he was hungry. The usual hope was that a friendly army would come up and chase the besiegers away. This often resulted in a battle as a means to determine of the siege would continue or not.
Sieges themselves were largely a matter of engineering work, with a little knightly combat thrown in to keep the warriors from getting bored. It was not uncommon for an impromptu tournament, or series of duels, to be arranged between the knights on both sides, just to enliven what was otherwise a very tedious process. The English had an advantage in sieges for most of the war (until the French developed superior cannon [http://www.hyw.com/books/history/cannon.htm] ) because their yeomen were more effective at siege warfare. In addition to being able to sweep defenders from castle walls with their accurate and long range archery, the yeomen were also more skilled at the more mundane aspects of siege work. Being well paid mercenaries, the yeomen went about the digging and building that comprised most siege work in more professional manner than most of their counterparts.
[[In 1327 King Edward III of England (reigned 1327-1377) [http://www.hyw.com/books/history/Who_Was_.htm] appears to have brought some cannon along on an invasion of Scotland. This campaign gives us our first picture of an early gun, in the Millemete Manuscript, a document in the library of Christ Church College at Oxford. The manuscript is an illuminated copy of a speech commemorating the King's success in the field. In one of the margins is depicted a vase-like object lying on a kind of table. A man in armor is holding a match against the bulbous base of the piece and an arrow-shaped projectile is emerging from the muzzle. Known in Italian as a "vaso" (pot or vase) and in French as a "pot de fer" (iron-pot), such primitive cannon must by then have been relatively commonplace. Over the next few years references to firearms begin to proliferate, and it appears that they were known everywhere in Europe, classified as a form of artillery, a term then including all missile weapons. It seems probable that gunpowder and cannon were first used in attack on and in the defense of fortified places.]]
Armies took siege technicians with them on campaign. These were usually carpenters and miners, plus master siege artisans who had years of experience in the techniques of siege warfare. The typical siege consisted of throwing a cordon of troops around the fortified place and then building rock (or fire) throwing catapults to attack the troops on the walls, tunnels to collapse the walls, scaling ladders and movable towers to allow troops to go over the walls, and battering rams to demolish walls or gateways. But the typical activity was the threat of an attack. The custom was that if the city surrendered without a fight, it would not be pillaged by the enemy troops. Both sides preferred to end the matter through negotiation and this was basically a war of nerves. The besieger didn't really want to attack, as this would get a lot of his troops killed and it might not work, at least not the first time. Moreover, the besieger was usually after permanent possession of the place and didn’t want to be stuck with the damage his angry troops would inflict if, after successfully storming the place, they pillaged it (thus wrecked everything in sight and killed off a fair percentage of the population). The defender didn't want to risk an assault either, but for different reasons. In many cases, time was on the side of the besieged. If careful preparations were made, the defenders might well have had a better supply of food and water than the besiegers. Moreover, there might be a relief army on the way. The defender had to calculate whether he could fight off enough assaults so that the attacker ran out of men or enthusiasm for the task.
If the attacker could make a breach in the wall with, say by tunneling which caused the wall to collapse, this might give the defender sufficient reason to surrender without an assault. Catapults throwing fire balls into the city or castle might start fires that would also encourage a surrender. Negotiations were usually underway from the very beginning (or even before, as the advancing army sent forward Heralds to try and convince the commander of the castle or town that it was never too early to surrender). Of course, the commander of the defenders had more than his honor at stake. His boss might punish him quite severely (unto death, perhaps) if the fortified place was lost without every possible action being taken to avoid such a loss.
There was also the question of cost. Your typical fortress or castle (the former had fewer towers and less comfortable living accommodations) had a garrison of 100-300 men. These were usually locals, full or part time soldiers on the regular payroll of the local lord. Say an army of 1,000 men approached, mercenaries, costing the attacker, on average, 170,000 ducats a week to maintain. It would take several weeks to invest the place, build siege engines (catapults, etc.), and start digging tunnels. By this time, the cost would already be up to half a million ducats, with less than a hundred thousand gained from pillaging the surrounding countryside. That pillage would going to cost the local lord tens of thousands of lost taxes in the future, and some of the damage would be to things the lord owned, such as flour mills or buildings. Nevertheless, it would be costing the besieger a lot more than it would be costing the defender. If the place is taken by negotiation, there would be loot inside the castle. In addition to at least several thousand ducats in cash, there were no doubt many other valuable items. Everything from captured weapons and tools, to perhaps some gold or silver objects. But the besieger had to decide when to stop throwing good money after bad.
[[ We may not think of Medieval warlords as accountants, but they had to pay their bills, too. Unpaid troops tended to drift away, leaving you defenseless in hostile territory. It wasn't all adventure and glory. A lot of Medieval warfare was the headaches delivered via a clerk's report on your current cash position. ]]
Warfare was also very dependant on the quality of leadership. The troops didn't vary much from area to area (except in the case of the yeomen or Swiss pikemen), nor did the methods. There were few books on "how to make war," and most military leaders obtained their positions because of their social standing, not their military track records. As a result, when good leaders were present, they would quickly reorganize their troops, redistribute what good subordinate leaders there were more effectively, and run their army on a more efficient basis than their opposition.