How effective were knights in battle when compared to regular soldiers? And how did their loadout differ from a normal infantryman for the late Middle Ages?
How effective were knights in battle when compared to regular soldiers?
How effective were knights in battle when compared to regular soldiers? And how did their loadout differ from a normal infantryman for the late Middle Ages?
Knights trained regularly, had quality armor, had horses
‘Regular soldiers’ depends on the era but standing armies were rare, pick a year and region and we can answer better
1350s France
Sorry man I want to learn more about late medieval warfare
franks get a whole bunch of bonuses to the knight line and have the strongest paladins despite no bloodlines
so in that case very much superior to an ordinary soldier
I was just playing this today
‘The forgotten’ campaigns fricking blow
>so in that case very much superior to an ordinary soldier
*blocks your path*
>dies to teuton paladin 1v1
1350s France?
The regular soldier was probably a random farmer who was told to March with a pike
A pike can kill a horse but realistically if a cavalry charge hits the side of his formation he’s going to drop his shit and run
Most medieval battles had lower rates of death than you’d expect, though I imagine the casualties that occurred later due to untreated medical issues was higher
In a 1v1 between a knight and a regular soldier it’s obvious that the better armored, better trained, mounted, and taller man is likely to win
Then they invented crossbows and knights were fricked.
The evolution of the ‘war meta’ during that period was fairly interesting and the Hundred Year War which was occurring in France makes a ton of information on the topic available
Obviously masses spearmen had been recognized as an excellent tactic for nearly two thousand year at that point but the invention of longbows and crossbows had changed things a bit
The French soldiers also developed ‘cheval de frise’ - the precursor to movable barbed wire fencing - in order to block off approaches from cavalry
Really, the British bowmen were dominating and won the first stage of the 1350’s war but then blew it because some teenage girl convinced the French that she could talk to God and he had told her that he thought the French were being pussies
Joan of Arc was a big morale booster, but the biggest thing was that the French Nobilty stopped acting like morons are worked together, made peace with Burgundy and the English couldn't sustain the campaign on the continent financially.
Two biggest “heroes” on the French side were a schizophrenic woman and a psychopathic sadistic pedophile murderer. It’s hard not to acknowledge that the bongs were the good guys there.
>The anglo propaganda in full swing.
Still salty that the french won, bong?
England is the main character of history.
>1350's "bong"
The Hundred Years War starsted because the french nobles threw a tantrum for succession (and a prostitute)
>British bowmen
lol no the French were being pressed by multiple kingdoms at the time
>1350s France
>How effective were knights in battle when compared to regular soldiers?
Effective enough that they remained the war-winning meta, but required support from crossbowmen and 1 or 2 squires with polearms each
>And how did their loadout differ from a normal infantryman for the late Middle Ages?
1350 IS the late Middle Ages, but if you want to compare them with 1400 and 1450, say, well earlier armour consisted of more chainmail while later armour consisted of more solid pieces of plate
nonsense
goats, chickens and pigs are piss easy to raise and coastal and riverine communities would have tons of fish
there was a tendency in the past to assume poverty diets but historians are constantly revising their guesses to incorporate more meat consumption, through isotopic analysis supported by English manorial records.
we now think the peasant's daily caloric intake appears to have been 1/2 grains, 1/4 meat and dairy, and 1/4 beer, and given the calorific requirements of manual labour, peasants are unlikely to have eaten very little or they would simply be unable to work.
assuming the minimum 2,000 calorie adult diet (a low bound), eating "just" 500 calories worth of meat, eggs, and milk daily isn't terribly arduous at all
>but required support from crossbowmen and 1 or 2 squires with polearms each
>till at Patay 180 knights French vanguard single handedly demolished 5000 strong English infantry army
>180 knights
>1,300 men-at-arms
why are you such a lying Black person?
not to mention that French accounts regularly forget to mention the squires and support troops, who are not considered men-at-arms
>accounts regularly forget to mention the squires and support troops
Course of battle had no supporting troops participating. It was French vanguard charging into "medieval machine guners" and English pissing their pants and fleeing from battlefield.
>battle had no supporting troops participating
because of course you were there and you saw it amirite
Men-at-arms and knights are functionally the same thing in the late 100 years war.
> poverty diet
On the topic of diets, there are a number of castle ledgers that set detail rations for peasants, clergy, men-at-arms etc and the quantities are closer to 6,000-9,000 calories daily. There were also ledgers for how much to account for Christmas feasts (e.g. the kind that run several weeks), but I could swear the 6-9k number was regular consumption in the 1400s. Which does make sense when you consider how much more labor-intensive life was, but also, imagine the smell.
Yeah I've read that, that's from a paper written by Christoper Dyer analysing records of food provided during harvest time from an English manor, and one of the suggested reasons is that the amount of food provided was for the worker and his family included. Which I think makes sense, because right up to the 20th century (and maybe even now still for all I know) harvesting was an all-hands evolution where all able-bodied men and women came out to work, including adolescent kids.
The different volumes of food provided per head of household, 6k to 12k, could indicate shifts in demographics of a household over the decades, or changes in accounting system e.g. to exclude adolescents, or to exclude women, or to account on a per capita instead of a per family basis... we don't know for sure.
5k calories is not exceptional for an individual male adult doing hard manual labour from sunup to sundown. consider that an MRE clocks in at roughly 3k+ and soldiers still lose weight in combat. RN sailors in Napoleonic times received about 5k daily, and their physical work rate is probably comparable. 12k is rather out of the question however and must be a group provision of some kind.
what else is interesting is the large proportion of meat provided in these records by the 15th century era, about 1k calories worth.
iirc the church records from the draining of the fens are still existant, and they showed that the navis (guys who dug the cannels) were consuming 8000 kcal per day. they also had to move x amount of earth per day. they were machines.
The battle of Poitiers in 1356 was the biggest battle in France of the 1350s.
>English/Gascon army of 3000 Men-at-arms [read- knights or guys with similar equipment to knights eg horses, lances, heavy armour, swords, etc] 2000 longbowmen who were commoners and about 1000 irregular light infantry who also would have been commoners
>French army of 10,000-12,000 Men-at-arms, 2000 crossbowmen, and 2000 irregular infantry
So around half of the English/Gascon army and 3/4 of the French army were what you would recognise as knights and I will refer to them that way.
Almost all of the knights at the battle fought on foot as heavy infantry for most of it rather than riding their horses, which was due to the terrain of the battlefield being unsuitable for riding.
During the battle, English longbowmen and Gascon common infantry scored a number of tactical victories over the French knights when defending a marsh and a thick hedge which they fortified with trenches. In most cases, the English and Gascon knights would engage the French knights directly while the longbowmen and light infantry shot at them, which at Poitiers had a devastating effect. The bulk of the melee press was handled by the knights while the commoners on both sides supported them with missiles and occasionally flanking attacks - the latter of which would have been led by knights even if the bulk of the men were commoners. The eventual decisive action, when the French were about the break through the English/Gascon position after a long and bloody fight, was a long flank carried out by knights.
So knights did the bulk of the fighting and were relied on the most tactically, but commoners served an important and highly effective support role. It is widely believed that the earlier French attacks would have succeeded if not for the support of the longbowmen and Gascon commoners, who suppressed the French crossbowmen and commoners and inflicted heavy losses on the knights.
>French army of 10,000-12,000 Men-at-arms, 2000 crossbowmen, and 2000 irregular infantry
it is likely that the number of "other infantry" (spearmen and bowmen) besides men-at-arms is understated, given that historically English ratios tended to be roughly 3 others to 1 armoured knight / man-at-arms
even allowing for France's noted preponderance of armoured knights / men-at-arms in their force composition, if say their ratios were 2:1 that is lots of infantry not included in that count
French records tended to leave their unarmoured squires and grooms out of the counts while the English tended to be more conscientious in including them.
While that is probably true the forces directly involved in the fighting would have been weighted considerable more towards knights. Common soldiers got a lot more of the shitmuncher grunt tier military duties like guarding wagon laagers and carrying shit to and from the fighting lines and holding pieces of ground from which higher ranks could observe the battle. The point of the post was that the efficacy of the knights vs that of the commoners isn't a very clear cut issue, given their mutually supportive roles. The English would have been flattened quickly if they had only commoners but the French attacks failed in large part because their commoners were suppressed and unable to support effectively while the English commoners were able to support their men-at-arms.
Contrastingly, at the battle of Mello/Meaux 2 years later in 1358, a small force of mostly knights mostly fighting dismounted one-sidedly bulldozed a much larger army of rebellious peasants, who lacked command structure and leadership after the knights bushwhacked their leader in a very unchivalrous manner the day before. The peasant army crumbled and routed quickly and losses among the knights were few while most of the peasants were massacred.
>I want to learn
if this was true you'd have just googled your question.
The Hundred years War is an interesting period for infantry, since they actually were important enough to be mentioned. Lets begin with English longbowmen, who were exceedingly cost efficient and had multiple victories attributed to them. Poor England would had never stood a chance against rich France without its use of mass archery. And as the years passed in the Hundred Years War the ratio of archers to men at arms only rose. Of course, they had a system that worked well for them, consisting of a by-then well-oiled tradition of dismounted men at arms working defensively with longbowmen. The longbow was just a typical war bow and what distinguished the English from everybody else was the sheer numbers of them, and their willingness to use them in an effective way. Contrast this with France, who habitually and contemptuously rode through their own infantry. Longbowmen were held in such high esteem by the English that they practically represented the only type of non-dismounted infantryman, and mounted ones replaced hobilars (light cavalry). This was not as bad as it might seem since the longbowmen displayed a consistent willingness to engage in melee, and would had been supported by dismounted men at arms.
There's a few battles of this period where "cheap" infantry were particularly prominent due to making up the majority of the army. I'll ignore the three famous battles of the Hundred Years War, since they acted in concert with dismounted men at arms. The most notable is Courtrai (1302) where a bunch of civilians (in the sense that they lived in a city) defeated a massive army of knights. These were not mere rabble, they would had been drilled and there would had been many armored men among them. The key to their victory was cohesion, this enabled them to hold firm and win even when the occasional knight that plunged deep into their ranks. Then we have several battles of the late Hundred Years War. English armies would had been composed of almost all longbowmen by that point, a vulnerable composition that made them both worse at scouting the enemy and vulnerable to attacks when not prepared. Plate armour (more effective against missiles) was prominent, and English generalmanship had degraded to the point that that several English armies were taken by surprise and defeated. We have
Patay (1429), where the army was were taken by surprise and the men at arms ran away.
Verneuil (1424) where the English won but notably the unprepared longbowmen were defeated by heavily armoured Milanese cavalry (they came back and joined the melee after the Milanese went off to loot the camp).
Formigny (1450) where the army was was split up and defeated in detail.
There was also the Anglo-Scottish war, with Scottish pikemen showing that they could repel cavalry but don't generally get mentioned because were vulnerable to archery.
And lastly, there are the peasant rebellions. Disorganised, and often having what command structure they had literally decapitated before battle started, it is no surprise even a small amount of men at arms could disperse them.
Basically, as long as an infantry army was not taken by surprise, they could defeat cavalry, even without pikes.
Just checking, but you realize why the 1350s is not a "normal" era in the middle ages, right?
1330s? yeah sure.
>Knights trained regularly
Varies from knight to knight. Some just spent their days drinking.
>Had quality armor
Again, varies. Many did, some MAYBE had a helmet. It all depends on how much land one had and how they ran it.
>Had horses
This one is true and that is main thing that differentiated knights from the rest.
This isn't super accurate, knight is a title, not a military unit, men at arms is the unit during mid to late medieval times. But Squires, and a nobles common retinue would have been equipped in a similar manner and fought identically to the actual titled knights.
you're technically correct but colloquially, "man at arms" refers to a dismounted armoured warrior, knighted or not; and knights refer to the same but horsed. the reason is because at some point in the past the twats recording the details of battles used this format.
Complete nonsense.
>a normal infantryman for the late Middle Ages?
That was a knight m8.
Stop projecting your American Revolution times history on the medieval age.
>Knight
>Infantry
have a nice day.
That's just semantics. Knights often fought on foot as heavy 'infantry' in the 14th century.
Dumbest post in the thread.
Would you rather be the guy who grew up on a high protein diet preparing his whole life for war and armed with the best gear money can buy fighting for land titles and loot, or a peasant deciding which of his farm implements he's going to take to the battle that decides which king gets to collect his taxes next season?
>fuddlore but about the middle ages
Peasants usually had healthier diets than lords
>10 servings of grains
Hello FDA
Best movie ever. Kudos Op
>Best movie ever. Kudos Op
yep. love their chain pullovers..
It is the best representation of the Arthurian romance and the chivalric ideal in general. It might not be very correct on historic detail but it carries the spirit of the myth like no other. The use of imagery is just beautiful.
Also the director's daughter is so hot.
>It is the best representation
group of british pedos playing sword fencing?
It can't be correct on the historical details because 99% of the Arthurian legend is fictional to begin with. The real Arthur is extremely far removed from the legendary Arthur.
Great fricking movie
Whatever you do, don't you FRICKING DARE post the name of the movie so the rest of us know.
Joan of Arc the one with the Mila Jabagogogogogblagogogognananaingananavochikarinananananglabovava.
Or maybe King Arthur? Idk man just watch em all.
Excalibur 1981
Best fantasy/mythology movie ever made by far.
A knight was usually minor nobility, this allowed them to focus on military training their entire life, instead of doing seasonal farming like it was common in Europe. It is unprecedent in this age to see not just someone, but a whole social class of people that where physically fit, strong and had immense dexterity in the bellic arts, without mentioning their horse-riding and horse-fighting skills.
While knights where expected to be able to fight in different scenarios, their main use was primordially like that of the Macedonian hetairoi (which were all nobility as well), which flanked the enemy on horseback, and charged at them while they flee, while the phalanx was used to create battle lines and hold them. The medieval infantry was not, like many believe, mainly composed of levies (which were rare for most of Europe, and across time), but men who knew what they were doing and had basic training and equipment, and did regular jobs most of the time, until the was a period of war (which wasn't as common as it is usually thought). When a battle was fought, these men looted, cleaned, and recycled the dead's equipment, and by the end, if they survived their war time, they would had been quite well equipped, even if it wasn't as well as a knight.
Well, the actual standing army of the LMAs was the Knight.
The armies of tens of thousands of people were peasants that were given a pike and maybe a knife and told to march.
It was like this until Europe could afford to have men away from the fields for extended periods of time, so early modern age.
Well OP, first you need to ask yourself WHEN and WHERE you want to define what a Knight is.
In the early medieval period you had household warriors on horses called Miles and regular joes owning armor made generations ago (mostly chainmail).
Then you had the high medieval period with fancy tourney armor and not so fancy but good real armor made to purpose. Exceptions were hand etched armours for kings and emperors, like the one made for Maximilian I.
As a general rule: The knighthood caste were most of the time rules/leaders in their fiefs or communities. As many anons stated, standing armies were really rare. Charles Martell was the rare exception in his period, because he used the surplus from harvests to pay for soldiers. This paid off handsomely at the battle of Tours, but at the end of the day most medieval states lacked the beraucratic sophistication to create large armies.
This didn't mean medieval european armies were shit. Quite the contrary. The few guys that usually showed up for a battle were well trained and drilled, even the Hollywood "peasant rabble" knew what the frick they were doing.
What nobody probably even realizes, how goofy most medieval armies must have looked. You had your average joes in shit they got their hands on or their lord/commander paid for standing next to nice banners. Banners/Flags and trumpets were used to coordinate each other and people didn't wear uniform armor or clothing.
The more elite formations, like in the early period the Huscarls or simply houshold retinue of a Lord were better equipped and had something akin to marching gear like modern soldiers.
Then you had the important guys. Ranging from average knights who owned some small frickoff castle, important townspeople, larger Lords who had several vassals and finally kings. Everyone showing up with several horses, a retinue of household guards, servants as well as goofy looking armor.
>cont.
Certain positions at court or in a large city council also used special armor/weapons. For instance in the HRE it was very popular for the highest town judge of a free city to use a special mace in battle. If he ever used it is up to debate, but he carried it with him nonetheless.
This part I think is the most important aspect of medieval armies: You had average joes led by the actual leadership of the state. They didn't sit behind and have lower rank officers eat shit, like today, but were actually on the front lines and commanding their armies.
So obviously nobles had better training and the tourney scene was an outlet for the younger or more professionell knights to train and blow off steam. The most famous knight was probably William Marshall. If you want to know a lot more about what knights did, read his bio. He achieved pretty much everything a knight can dream of.
>judges carry a combat gavel
No, that has to be made up, but I like it so much I’ll believe it.
it's true, the mace is a traditional sign of authority from governments to courts to universities.
The tradition is thought to date back to the time when Roman senators were allowed a number of "lictors" or bodyguards armed with "fasces" or sticks, both as symbols of authority and as actual nonlethal weapons to guard him with.
>Order in the court!
>WHAM!!
>I will not..umm...oh hell. Ok, short recess while we find a new stenographer.
Probably you know this already but because it’s relevant - the last king to serve on the front lines of a major war was Leopold of Belgium, who would regularly tour the battlefield in an extremely rickety WW1 airplane
He’s remembered fondly but his generals claimed that the behavior was reckless and unnecessarily dangerous
Disregard that I meant Albert of Belgium
>the behavior was reckless and unnecessarily dangerous
It was.
Fortunately, Belgium has always been an irrelevant pissant. I don't even know why it's not part of France.
Realistically, belgium exists mainly as a compromise between European powers and as a buffer state
It’s currently 3 different ‘nations’ and the seat of the EU, subdivided into ‘linguistic communities’ with constitutional rights, it would be hard to find a more muddled nationality
Regardless, people often complain about how the elite just sit in the back during wartime and profit, Albert stayed at the front and personally led the reclamation of his capital - his death would’ve been an easily preventable disaster but he was also willing to risk his own life whenever he asked his soldiers to risk theirs for their country, a ‘based moron’ as the youth would say
>subdivided into ‘linguistic communities’ with constitutional rights, it would be hard to find a more muddled nationality
Canada?
>the elite just sit in the back during wartime
for good reason, the risk of the subsequent command chaos from losing the nation's leader outweighs even the symbolic benefit of having him out front
nonetheless,
>a ‘based moron’ as the youth would say
True, true
In Britain the service and loss rates were proportionally much higher among the upper class in all historical wars including WW1.
323 then-current members (out of ~600, representing the very tippy top of British aristocracy) of the House of Lords served in WW1, alongside over a hundred sons of the older lords.
Imagine half the sitting US Senators packing their bags and personally going off to war.
Define served.
Actively in combat zones as soldiers, in harms way enough for 24 of them to be killed in action.
Led platoons and companies in the infantry. Anon's right, it's always been an upper class thing in the UK to serve in the Army.
Here's the thing though, they lead from front because they had to because there was no radio or telephone or cameras to help them dictate battle. They had to be on the field in order to organize the battle. As technology got better, it would be stupid for the general to lead the charge because he can organize and lead from a safer distance now and while today's armies can still be effective if leadership is killed, it leads to warriors typically with no authority to keep the men in line.
They didn't have to lead from the front. Roman generals didn't lead from the front. Hell, medieval generals didn't always lead from the front either.
>Roman generals didn't lead from the front
Alexander and Caesar did, and it didn't seem to be considered extraordinarily heroic, but more like an obligation or at least a matter of course.
>they had to because there was no radio or telephone or cameras to help them dictate battle
Partially yes, but also because the nobility made up a significant proportion of the most capable warriors in a medieval nation. In fact it can be argued that EVERY knight was a key government official, as even the lowliest knight was mayor, judge, landowner and chief executive of his manor and its associated village of peasants. So if you ask a medieval commander not to lead from the front, well... you're left with nearly nobody to fight really.
Medieval aristo culture also rewarded personal bravery and heroism very richly. You could be elevated from poorgay to among the most influential men in the land if you were impressive enough on the battlefield. Add in that a lot of debuting knights were very young and you get very reckless actions.
How come there's been no rear-line general worth mentioning since Eisenhower? If these glorified radiomen are unable to actually win a war, what's the point of trying to keep them safe?
because they are extremely good at losing wars if you get moronic ones. a bad general is far far worse than a good one.
Stormin' Norman did pretty damn well, and you're also moronic for drawing comparisons to Ike, who was a professional tard wrangler of the people who were paying for the war and the people actually commanding the forces.
>As many anons stated, standing armies were really rare
This is fake narrative pushed by Marxist historicans with general "old bad new modern communistic ways good"
Medieval societies had standing armies: noble knighthood class, they were ready to leave their castle in battle order at like 30 minutes notice. Compare this to "muh conscription mobilisation".
Reject Marxism.
You are moronic. Take your meds and go leave.
>no arguments
>AD hominem
I smell liberal.
Lords who serve as tax collectors in peace time and cavalry in wartime are not the standing army of soldiers that anyone is talking about
Kings creating centralized standing armies under their own control is what led to the end of the Middle Ages and feudal system to be deadass no cap with you
gods, it must be hard being you. I dont think there are enough meds on the planet.
You're a Black person.
>people didn't wear uniform armor or clothing.
Most everything else you stated is more or less correct, but this is absolutely false. Soldiers would sometimes be given a ration of cloth in the lord's colors to have their wartime clothes made, and failing that, would be at least given a cheap cloth badge to sew on to their clothes featuring their lords symbol so they could be identified in the press of battle. As another anon stated, there was no method of communication like radio at the time so visual identification be it by flags, heraldry or uniform was absolutely crucial. If you think about it for a moment you'll realize that it would be impractical if not totally impossible to fight let alone coordinate even the smallest of battles without some marker to separate your own troops from those of the enemy.
Sources: 1. Have been fighting in armored combat for over half a decade, the team fights are much more difficult when you don't know who you're supposed to brain with your pollaxe.
2. Gerry Embleton's "The Medieval Soldier"
>In the early medieval period you had household warriors on horses called Miles
I would really love a deep look at the state of European armies in late antiquity and the early medieval. I'm halfway through "decline and fall", so obviously I wish to know more details than were included in the book.
400s, 500s, 600s, and onward, stopping at more familiar times, the 1100s. Basically, the "dark ages". With that crazy long list of nations moving to and fro, animating the corpse of Western Rome like the spiders that animate Richard Gere.
Consider looking up Hans Delbrück's History of Warfare, specifically volume II, The Barbarian Invasions and volume III, Medieval Warfare. I haven't read them in their entirety, but there are some salient parts in there regarding the transition from Germanic tribal societies to feudal societies, and the attendant military and social advancements of the time.
Effectiveness is a little bit difficult yo define but knights of course emerged into prominence as a social class because of their indispensable military importance and decisive impact at a number of formative battles in the early middle ages. They remained the backbone of most European armies for centuries, with common soldiers in more of a support role, generally speaking.
What's the name of the movie?
Excalibur.
Thank you.
knights understood as armored cavalry were absolutely OP against anything other than disciplined pike formations and these were harder to come by than you might think.
The problem with discussing this with autistic fricks on websites like these is that they all think they are Rambo, and that they would easily stand in the way of a mass of armored knights atop armored horses with lances that could rip your head off before you even manage to skewer them. In real life people weren't really keen to put themselves in that position and while a particularly disciplined formation could break up a charge the knight nonetheless dominated the battlefield for 1500 years for a good reason - it simply worked like nothing else.
The “no standing army” thing sounds weird to me. What were in castles if not armies? There’s supposedly still the remains of >800 medieval castles; were these just extravagant country homes for lords with space for an army when they need to fill them with peasant levies or something?
castles were staffed with the local guard mostly, everyone else was called to fight when needed
some of those where the homes of local lords other where just staffed by a few guards and some other staff.
my local castle wasn't even lived in because the counts didn't like being in my city on account of our tendency to rebel all the time. So while they maintained personal chamber for when they did come to visits once every few years. It was mostly an administrative center when servants of the counts kept track of how much taxes the city owed the count, held trails that fell under the counts jurisdiction and not the cities. Oh and a permanent garrison to make sure we didn't simply burn it down to get rid of the tax records.
belgian isn't a nationality it is citizenship
the only people that claim to be "belgians" are francophones that don't want to be called Walloons or lefty Flemings that don't like being Flemish because they see it as right wing
the fun part about Albert is that all that stuff is made up propaganda.
Belgium had a lot of propaganda going on to get more gibs from the other allies since they hadn't any production capacity of their own left
do you understand what a castle is? vs a fort/fortress? A castle is a fortification that also servers as the local center of government for a feudal lord. So it was full of his family, and personal retinue and their family, and the necessary staff and bureaucrats, to run the fief. But as far as being manned by a substantial garrison during peace time No. There are endless stories of castles being taken by surprise, precisely because there isnt a standing garrison to man its walls and gates in a substantial fashion.
Imagine you get 50 factory workers and pit them against 5 professional MMA athletes from the LHW and HW divisions with 10+ years of experience
Now imagine the MMA guys have also been training as a team for 2 years ready for this fight and drove there in their cars while the factory workers were lifted from their shifts in the middle of the day and made to walk for 2 days to reach the place
factory workers literally take that low diff
most infantry by the time of plate armor (1400s and later) was well equipped and paid enough to be suited pretty sinilar to the inage of a "knight", and the idea of a knight as a dedicated class is a much older concept that was kind of dying out, but nobility could afford better armor, and more armor, although many times they'd be just as well protected as everyone else to suit how they were fighting
this may sound unrealistic because how is a poor medieval government gonna afford all that armor to be made, and the answer is they didnt, armies just became smaller and more professional, often times only a few thousand or even only a few hundred, and often times were just mercenaries who got paid really well
you can look at original accounts and manuscript paintings and it'll describe exactly what i say
what "knights" did, or by this point its better to just say nobility, was lead the soldiers, give out pay, manage their army, etc.
sometimes they rode horses, sometimes they didnt, leading a charge or giving orders from the rear, they could choose
what so they'd basically take over as like a battalion grade officer and direct the couple mercenary bands they paid for?
Who would win?
• Cream of French Nobility stomping through a field
• a bunch of rowdy muddy English lads
the knights won, obviously
How common where mercenaries?
Where they professionals or some rabble?
Did mercenaries ever turn the tide of a battle/war?
How where they paid?
Any famous mercenary groups/companies?
>How common where mercenaries?
Depends on the area. The italians had a lot of paid mercs that bordered on professional.
The first free companies and routiers showed up in the 14th century during the 100 year war.
The eastern romans had the Varangians, nordic heavy infantry that protected the emperor and very very loyal. You could argue they weren't really mercenaries, but they recieved lavish payments and were hired swords.
>Where they professionals or some rabble?
They served a specific purpose and were used as such. The italians had great crossbowmen, the german free companies were famed for being very loyal soldiers if paid them on time. They were a cut above from the milita/levy system most feudal lords used but not numerous enough to rely on them 100%. They were mostly used to make sure people pay their taxes. The Varangians were used a shock troopers and saved numerous battles by simply showing up and cracking a frontline open.
>Did mercenaries ever turn the tide of a battle/war?
Only in the late medieval period with the rise of the swiss. Swiss pikemen or Reisläufer dunked on Burgundian heavy knights and inspired Maximilian I to create the Landsknechte, the most famous mercenaries of the late medieval/early renesaince period.
>How where they paid?
Depends on the guy who hired them. Smaller lords probably paid with produce or crafted goods, kings and emperors in gold.
>Any famous mercenary groups/companies?
Varangians, the Landsknechte, every Swiss born between 1400 and 1500, the free companies in the HRE and routiers in France, the numerous swiss mercs that offered great engineers, crossbowmen and various other specialized troops.
Thanks bro
Medieval people did not distinguish between a normal soldier and a mercenary because they would had considered anybody who fought for pay as mercenaries, which would had included practically everybody by the mid 14th century. This is why the mercenaries you are thinking of would had been inevitably referred to as "foreign mercenaries" or just "foreigners" in contemporary texts. The life story of career knights (as opposed to those who only occasionally participated in war as part of their social obligation) would had been identical to what we think of as a mercenary. They fought for pay, and were perfectly happy to go overseas and fight wars for other countries when their own country was at peace. Even during the time of feudal soldiery, mercenaries were noted as being more disciplined than levied knights, which makes sense since they actually had to fight for a living.
For the Hundred Years War, the most notable mercenaries would had been the crossbowmen that the French hired, who were indeed professional, and the routiers, who would had been indistinguishable from the regular army and indeed actually were the regular army whenever war happened.
cheap peasant conscripts vs dude who train regularly with better gear. Not a nut to crack.
>poor fricking infantry
she could take him easily
guten tag, fraulein
kek the camera pans to her and briefly stays on her for a second
giwtwm
pretty effective up until poor weak peasants with crossbows rocked their shit
Crossbowmen may have been commoners but they were elite soldiers able to sell their services as mercenaries across Europe. Some of them were from peasant backgrounds but they were first and foremost professional soldiers.
Knights completely dominated the medieval battlefield until the battle of Pavia in the Italian Wars when a bunch of Italian peasants with pikes pushed the French's shit in
I thought that was the battle of the golden spurs when a bunch of Flemish pikemen did the same thing basically
Yes but they lost that war, and heavy shock cavalry was still the meta for next hundred years plus until professional pike forces start showing up en masse in the Renaissance.
The Italian wars was the paradigm shift where the old knight steamroller meta finally died
>heavy shock cavalry was still the meta
all the way until Waterloo, maybe Koniggratz
The entire reason that feudalism existed was that the medieval battlefield was absolutely dominated by heavy cavalry, which are (a) very expensive and (b) require the rider to be a trained professional.
Medieval states lacked the administrative capacity to collect taxes to fund stables and to pay professional heavy cavalry troops. So medieval kings did the next-best thing: give your heavy cavalry soldiers (knights) an estate (a fief) over a piece of land, and power over the peasants living on it, and let them extract the surpluses from the land to pay for their horses and themselves.
Then the king runs into the problem that he needs his knights to show up ready to fight when he wants to go to war, especially if the war looks like it might not go so well. Since he's already paid them up front by giving them the land, he doesn't have the threat of withholding future pay to compel them to to fight and potentially die for him. So that's why this intricate system of oaths and fealty and honor comes into existence, creating strong social pressure to show up to fight.
Interesting. Especially that last part. How does this system compare to the samurai in Japan? Was it basically the same?
Very similar, but Japan had a figurehead Emperor instead of a head of state who was actively involved in things like a medieval European king.
kind of a broad question and depends on time period. early tribal/royal japan evolved into a centralized imperial system along the chinese model, then for various reasons the shogunates arose and this marked a tranisition into a feudal system that was fairly parallel with europe. the different shogunates had sort of different systems. by the time of the final shogunate, the tokugawas, more and more retainers were placed on landless rice stipends by their lords rather than being given acreage. this was due to the country being mostly peaceful and fairly prosperous; there was a limited amount of land. by this time being a samurai was very much a hereditary job with a rice-numerated salary. you would have certain tasks to perform and you could also lose your position, and your food and income source, if you fricked up. by the same token, you could also advance and get richer through service; it was somewhat bureaucatic. and by this time many samurai are often living in a township and having to report to his lord to recieve his stipend. japan had a large population that was increasingly urbanized.
>more and more retainers were placed on landless rice stipends by their lords rather than being given acreage. this was due to the country being mostly peaceful and fairly prosperous
somewhat disagree
Japan underwent a form of bastard feudalisation with rice taking the place of money. Where during the Renaissance the invention of cash and debt meant feudal service became replaced with money, in Japan the invention of rice futures made rice become the commodity currency of choice.
Rice had several advantages as commodity money; it was universally in great demand, quite fungible, RELATIVELY imperishable, and had a firm fixed intrinsic value that was easy for all to understand: traditionally, three 180ml cups* of uncooked rice equalled 1 day's subsistence diet, and that works out to about 1800 calories.
>*used as the customary rice measure in Japanese rice cookers to this day
While on the one hand this relatively sophisticated financial system reduced waste and created a fairly developed and urbanised civilisation for a while, since bureaucrats no longer needed to physically be on a farm and could centralise administrative duties in a city, after a time the limitations of basing the economy solely on one commodity (rice) kicked in.
it became too difficult to estimate a wide range of increasingly complex goods and services in the form of rice. Inefficiencies and tech developments in other areas were manipulated to cause destructive economic crises. For example, land-owning warlords who introduced more efficient farming methods of NON-rice commodities could subsist on, say, tubers and chicken, saving rice to hire more soldiers and thus tilting the balance of power.
That's a rather Victorian view of history. You have cause and effect mixed around. Rather, the dominance of cavalry same about because of feudalism, a weak state.
A weak state means being unable to gather enough dedicated men and money to drill and train effective infantry. Instead cavalry, which required only small formation training were far more effective.
A weak state means a reality of independent barons existing under a (sometime real, sometimes imagined) dominance of a leading royal power, and the legal niceties of fealty and fiefdoms were forcibly overlaid on top in the hopes of binding through social pressure. This whole thing about how knights get given a piece of land and serfs to exploit by the king? They would have had that land regardless of the intentions of the king. Perfect pure feudalism like that described never existed in history except in theory. The reality is that kings did not give all knights fiefs. Rather, if they could, they made or demanded quotas from the lords of a territory, who were free to raise the men however they wanted, by in subinfeudation, mercenaries, household knights or any number of other arrangements.
In the "dark age", we have kings mandate military service based on wealth, not the other way around (Edict of Pitres,'Rectitudines), and assessed units of land (manse, hide) which formed the basis for raising miles. So we have a system where personal wealth itself obligated your personal service, and excess wealth obligated finding extra cavalry in proportion. This is the reality that underlaid the nice fiction of feudalistic bonds.
>the dominance of cavalry same about because of feudalism
wrong
cavalry has always been tactically more capable than infantry and has always dominated the battlefield
everything you wrote about feudalism could apply equally to armoured footmobile men-at-arms, it has nothing to do with them being horsed or not
>Google, what even is it
Frick you and frick your nogun slide thread
literally the most epic 10 seconds music moment in the movie history