War, Society and Technology (3 pts)

[Longmane]

This chapter is taken from the same book, "Western Warfare in The Age of The Crusades 1000 – 1300.", as the one concerning fortifications ect I posted earlier.

Pt/1


War, society and technology

Medieval metallurgy was advancing. Although primitive bloomery hearths, which could only produce a maximum of 40kg in a session, continued to be used, larger and more advanced furnaces, such as the Corsican and Catalan types, with powerful bellows could smelt up to 150 kg of iron in one process. The Stückhofen, which was developed in Germany at the end of our period, was 3–4m high and capable of producing up to 900kg in a single operation.

None of these furnaces could produce liquid iron except accidentally and under the most favourable conditions, when the subsequent cast iron seems to have been rejected as too brittle to use. They produced a soft malleable mass of iron, the bloom, which could be forged into wrought iron, or, at great trouble and expense, into steel.

By the end of the twelfth century there was substantial industrial production of iron in virtually all of the countries of western Europe. Larger furnaces put pressure on wood reserves and as a result coal was used from about 1190, although this was only to bulk out charcoal. Water-driven bellows were employed from the twelfth century, and by the thirteenth century hammer mills using water power are known. The scale of production could be considerable – the great iron forge-building at the Cistercian abbey of Fontenay in Burgundy is testimony to that. Trade in metal was vigorous, with Flanders, for example, importing iron from Spain.

The development of a flourishing iron industry all over Europe was a product of the great European expansion of the period 1000–1300, whose most obvious symptoms were the growth of populations and the flowering of cities. But the demand for arms must have been a powerful stimulant, for by the end of the thirteenth century there was large-scale weapons production in most European countries, with very notable centres in Italy, Flanders and Germany, especially in the Rhineland.

The scale of production could be very large: in 1172, the ironworkers of the Forest of Dean sent 100 axes, 1,000 picks, 2,000 shovels and 60,000 nails for Henry II's expedition to Ireland, and 50,000 horseshoes were supplied for Richard I's crusade. More particularly, the demand for weapons must have stimulated production of steel. Since Roman times there had always been an awareness of the superior qualities of steel, and medieval sources distinguish between the two metals.

Since there was no science of metallurgy, the production of weapons and other metal goods was a craft process that was dependent on the skills of the individual smith, whose experience taught him how to create iron with the right qualities. Even large-scale production of arms was essentially craft-based, and remained so through to the nineteenth century. Production methods for many weapons were probably pretty routine, but the production of steel involved great skill.

The sword, the finest of all weapons, was created by the pattern-welding of strips of iron, which produced a strong, flexible steel that could take an edge and stand up to the violent hammering on hard surfaces that characterized medieval warfare. Damascus and Toledo blades were much admired in the West, which for a long time did not have access to the Indian crucible steel from which they were forged. But the very high international reputation of German swords shows that even by the eleventh century European techniques were developing.

The hauberk was made of rings, some of which were punched out of carefully flattened steel; mostly, however, they were drawn from wire, shaped on a mandril and the ends holed for a rivet. Each ring was threaded with four others and the rivets inserted to build up the whole. It was a very slow process that required great patience, an impression well conveyed by a fifteenth-century illustration. Once it was assembled, the whole hauberk was annealed in the forge.

Plate armour only began to appear towards the end of the twelfth century and then it seems that small reinforcing pieces were fitted under the hauberk. It is unfortunate that we do not have any early pieces. It was only towards the later thirteenth century that plate armour proper emerged, and we can assume that this was the result of smiths gradually working out how to produce, at reasonable cost, good-quality steel which was light and designed to fit well, yet was strong enough to protect.

It is interesting that manuscript pictures of armourers nearly always include the making of helmets, and this presumably reflects the fact that the fabrication of any kind of large plate involved considerable skill. Sometimes the pointed helmet was made by hammering a single piece of metal: tenth-century examples are the "helmet of St Wenceslaus" in the treasury of Prague cathedral and a Kievan example in the Artillery Museum in St Petersburg. In the form called the Spangenhelm, fabrication was by welding together a series of shaped segments on a conical frame. The appearance of these helmets varies considerably in the Bayeux Tapestry, with some seeming to have horizontal or vertical bands and others not: however, this may relate to decoration rather than structure. In an age of artisan production, knowledge of techniques must have spread slowly and unevenly, for there was no real technical literature or tradition of teaching.

Although the level of skill involved in the the production of minor weapons – spear and arrowheads, for example – was limited, it still involved much time and labour, especially if specific shapes were needed with hardened cutting edges. There were varieties of arrowheads, with long narrow types being used for piercing mail.

The basic smelting of the iron was difficult and required careful judgement of times and temperatures, and the whole manufacturing process was a handcraft that was dependent on individual skill and knowledge. These were expensive processes: tools were commonly made largely of wood, and shod with iron only at the cutting edges. A spade of this kind appears in the twelfth-century manuscript illumination of the "Dream of Henry I" and in the Maciejowski Bible, and precisely similar tools dating from the nineteenth century can be found in the Beaune wine museum.

It is difficult to establish what costs were in the Middle Ages, not least because of regional variations. In tenth-century France, a mailed coat was valued at 60 sheep or six oxen. In early fourteenth-century England, the price was a sterling pound, the equivalent of about 20 sheep or two oxen, while at the same time in France it was three livres tournois. Although there were variations, on the basis of such figures it is possible to postulate a real fall in prices over the period under consideration. But demand for iron was clearly rising and the development of the industry was proceeding apace, even though it remained, broadly, a craft industry.

It was this huge expansion of production, rather than any pattern of innovation, that made possible more and more sophisticated weapons in the thirteenth century. In the early ninth century, Charlemagne demanded that each pair of freemen summoned to the host should bring between them a lance, a shield and a bow with two strings and twelve arrows. This would have involved a very minimal amount of iron. By contrast, vassals were expected to come well armed with a mail shirt and provided with horses.

By 1181, iron weapons were evidently more common, because Henry II of England promulgated an Assize of Arms in 1181 requiring all those who possessed £100 Angevin to provide themselves with a horse and full knightly equipment, while those with £20–40 should have a hauberk, iron cap, lance and sword, and even those of lesser status were to have a quilted coat, iron cap and sword, or bow and arrows. The Assize for England commanded that the burgesses and the "whole body of freemen" should have a padded surcoat, an iron cap and a lance, while knights were required to provide themselves with a hauberk, iron helmet, shield, lance and horse.

By the time of Edward I's Assize of Winchester in 1285, the regulations demand even more metal weapons. Those with land to the value of £15 and with 40 marks per year must have a full hauberk, helm, sword, knife and horse: lesser men with land worth £10 and incomes of 20 marks can make do with a short-sleeved hauberk, but must have helmet, sword and knife. The 100 shilling freeholder must provide a padded surcoat, iron cap, sword and knife, and a sword is expected even of a 40 shilling freeholder, along with a knife, bow and arrows. Even the 20 shilling man must produce a spear, scythe and knife, and only the poorest are limited to bows and arrows.

Communal charters in the Low Countries tell the same story. In 1244, the better-off amongst the Luxembourg bourgeoisie were expected to serve their lord armoured and on horseback, while at Mortagne in 1251 and at Bruges at about the same time they were required to produce a sword and elaborate equipment. The less well-off in these city ordinances were footsoldiers with a padded surcoat, iron cap and lance.

By the end of the thirteenth century in Flanders, weapons were much more common than ever before and the widespread circulation of the short-sword, which was of Italian origin, is particularly indicative of this. In the Italian cities the communes required men to serve well armed either as infantry or, in the case of the wealthy, as cavalry, and laid down minimum specifications. By the mid-thirteenth century, Florence was divided into six quarters (Sesto), each of which was responsible for a proportion of the specialized troops required, from heavily armoured cavalry through crossbowmen to Pavesarii (shield-bearers) and sappers.

Such provisions were commonplace in the cities of Italy. And this new availability of iron, which gave western Europeans a huge advantage over the peoples on their periphery, was a result of the general development of the European economy, which had great influence on the conduct of war.

[Longmane]

pt2

This is hardly the place to analyse at length the great European expansion of the period 1000–1300. The simplest evidence of it was the growth of cities, which was much commented on by contemporaries. The development of trade produced new classes of people and new kinds of wealth. A major consequence was the burgeoning diversity of European society. The famous characterization of European society as divided between those who fight, those who pray and those who labour was formulated in the early eleventh century and was visibly inadequate by the mid-twelfth century. John of Salisbury described the amazing diversity of his world, which included the townspeople who Henry II's Assize of Arms of 1181 recognized as a distinct social category.

What has been called the "monetary explosion" of the eleventh century had a deeply unsettling effect on Western society, creating a new fluidity as society became richer. This enabled those who controlled the new wealth, the kings and nobility, to protect themselves better than ever before. In so far as there was innovation, this was its motor, for the idea of technical innovation was not yet strong enough and the educational underpinning for it emerged only slowly.

This narrow view of the purpose of technology had profound effects on warfare. The crossbow was an effective weapon but its development seems to have been slow and it was rarely deployed en masse. Richard I, quite exceptionally, used large numbers at Arsuf, to deadly effect. Mounting crossbowmen enhanced their mobility and with it the firepower of patrols and strike-forces, and they were commonly used in this role from the time of Philip Augustus onwards. But, generally, the weapon never reached its full potential, and seems to have been most effectively deployed in sieges.

This was partly a matter of expense, a reluctance to spend on mere foot. Partly, it was a consequence of ambivalent attitudes: at the siege of Rochester John wanted to hang the garrison but was persuaded to spare all but the crossbowmen. Richard I on his deathbed spared the life of the crossbowman whose quarrel mortally injured him, but his intimates nevertheless butchered him. But there was a further cause of the slow development and deployment of this useful weapon. There was no forum in which to develop weapons. Warfare was episodic and there were no permanent staffs to form intellectual centres: the "Twelfth-century Renaissance" bred no academies of war, for war already had its elite, who felt no need to give way to any new forces.

By the end of the twelfth century, powerful monarchies were acquiring arsenals and these must have been busy places in times of war. Their very existence must have stereotyped arms and armour to a degree. But there was no marriage of thought and technology, so that advance remained piecemeal and by individual experiment. In these circumstances, new ideas would have been diffused only slowly and unevenly. In this way, the conservatism of a social elite slowed military development, and it was in areas where expertise was most needed and theirs most lacking that technology made its greatest impact – on military architecture and poliorcetic.

The slow development of technology had other effects on the conduct of war. Supply was always a major constraint on the size and movement of armies. William the Conqueror made a very cautious and entirely unopposed approach to London in 1066, but his army became desperately short of supplies on the way. At Flarchheim on 27 January 1080, Henry IV was victorious in battle, but was unable to follow up his victory because the Saxons had sacked his camp, and he had to retreat. In 1097, William Rufus's attack on Wales was frustrated by guerrilla tactics that prevented his army from foraging and thus forced a retreat, and the same happened to Henry II in 1165. Richard went to great trouble to guard his supply lines during the Third Crusade.

St Louis made the most elaborate preparations to feed his army for his attack on Egypt, creating what was virtually a logistic base on the island of Cyprus: ultimately, his army was destroyed not by enemy victory but by the cutting of his communications with Damietta – without food he had to surrender. Philip III was equally careful in stockpiling provisions for his attack on Aragon in 1285, but he faced retreat in desperate conditions of starvation when the enemy cut him off from secure access to his bases.

The basic necessity of an army was food, and in the context of the age this meant bread: even at a moment when the First Crusade was blessed with plentiful supplies of meat, Raymond of Aguilers commented on the lack of bread. The technology of food preservation was not highly advanced: grain would have been the most durable form in which to carry this staple, but that would have meant carrying waste husk and some kind of milling equipment. Flour saved weight but was very liable to go off. In any case, both are bulky and bulk transport was limited by the available technology.

The basic measure of food which we need to take into account is that a man living a fairly active life needs about 1 kg of bread (or the calorific equivalent) to feed him per day. Packhorses could carry 100–150kg, enough to feed 150 men for a day, so a force of 3,000 would need 140 horses for a single day's food. Each horse takes up about 2.5m of road, so that in single file they would be strung out along 350m of road. However, if the 3,000 men included cavalry, the warhorses would need fodder, because except at the most favourable times of the year they could not fend for themselves without losing condition: in the German army of 1914 the ration was 11 kg of grain and fodder per day for a horse.

The advantage of pack animals was that they could go almost anywhere: in Byzantine times the road system of Asia Minor included stepped roads which clearly could not carry wheeled vehicles, and it is likely that the preserved stretch of road from Antioch to Aleppo was intended for pack use, because it is not scored by wheels. The army of the First Crusade certainly had carts when it travelled across Europe: Peter the Hermitis force had a train a mile long, but these seem to have been abandoned in Asia Minor. The French army on the Second Crusade was also dependent upon pack animals. Since these were some of the best roads available, the advantages of this form of portage are evident, but so, equally, are the drawbacks. Pack animals cannot carry large or awkward objects, their packs need careful balancing and they must be emptied at night. They also need to be fed, and so consume much of their carrying capacity.

[Longmane]

pt3 (last part)

Wagons could carry much more. By the eleventh century, the horseshoe had made the horse a formidably efficient form of traction. Better harnesses and linkages meant that a single horse could pull a load of 900 kg. Moreover, the better harnesses meant that teams could be linked to wagons, with improved results. Wagons themselves developed: pivoted front axles made large four-wheeled types possible, and by the thirteenth century they were replacing two-wheeled ones. But horses were not always available and oxen all too often had to be used. Moreover, even the most efficient wagon was limited by roads and weather, both very uncertain quantities in the medieval West.

In the right conditions, good wagons could help an army enormously. When Philip Augustus decided to retreat from Tournai before the Battle of Bouvines, his infantry were able to move very quickly because they put their weapons and equipment in carts which, perhaps, resembled the ladder-sided examples portrayed in the Maciejowski Bible, which were pulled by two horses. At Hattin, Guy was able to carry elaborate tents into battle, and these must have been transported in wagons. In the plain of the Po, armies carried wooden sheds for shelter and we hear of small missile throwers mounted on carts, but this was flat easy country in summer: in winter cartage would have been more difficult.

Lack of bridges was another formidable problem for an army that was dependent on wheeled transport – indeed, in Spain the existence of Roman bridges was a major influence on campaigns. On the northeastern frontier of Germany there were virtually no roads, and the German expansion was long confined to the river valleys where supply by ships was possible: on one occasion, scouts blazing a route through virgin territory took nine days to cover less than 70 miles.

Carts of the two-horsed type shown carrying armour and equipment in the Maciejowski Bible must have been able to carry a load of about 450kg, which would have fed 500 men for a day. But because good carts and good roads did not always coincide, we have to recognize that the transport problem continued. Moreover, many commanders would not have been able to specify what kind of transport they received.

The efficiency of carts explains why armies such as that of Frederick I on the Third Crusade could pass through friendly territory without pillaging and still sustain themselves. But there were definite limits to what could be carried, imposed by roads, weather and seasons and by military necessity – for mobility could be compromised by too elaborate a baggage-train. This is why armies often used fleets.

Henry II employed ships in his attacks on Wales. Edward I used huge fleets to supply his great armies as they destroyed Welsh resistance. Once the conquest was achieved, he built ports to supply his major strongpoints. Great engineering works were undertaken to straighten the River Clywdd, so that a port could be built by Rhuddlan castle. Edward's elaborate logistic preparations for the Scottish campaigns are well known and always included a major fleet: even so, before the Battle of Falkirk in 1298 his supply situation was so bad that elements of his army were rebellious. The army of the First Crusade enjoyed invaluable naval support, as did Richard I at the Battle of Arsuf.

But naval support was not always available, and the transport problem was one of the factors that limited the size of medieval armies. It was probably not as important in this respect as cost or the need to adjust the force to the scale of the task, but it was a major consideration. In 1066, England was conquered by an army of about 7,000 Normans and allies. Just over 200 years later, the fate of South Italy was decided at Tagliocozzo by armies which, together, numbered only about 10,000.

In the light of this, scepticism of the large numbers that chroniclers often attribute to armies is a right and proper reaction: for example, the idea that Frederick Barbarossa mobilized 100,000 for the Third Crusade needs critical examination. In fact, the threat of starvation remained with armies from first to last: Jean le Bel reported his sufferings during a 1327 campaign against the Scots – bread, when there was any, soaked in horses' sweat, foul water and expensive wine. His experience could stand for that of the soldiers across this period and far beyond.

It is very difficult to gain a real impression of what a medieval army on the march looked like. Our illustrations are only occasionally large-scale, but they convey a suspicious uniformity which was probably imposed by the artist on a much more diversified reality. Because weapons and armour changed only slowly, they must have enjoyed very long lives. The sword that Otto IV (1198–1215) bore at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214 was actually made in the eleventh century and redecorated for him in about 1208. Probably only the better-off could afford to be up to date, while the remainder wore what amounted to hand-me-downs, patched, developed and augmented as their pockets made possible.

However, the increasing production of iron improved the weapons and protection of even the footsoldiers. In the Maciejowski Bible of c.1250, many footsoldiers are seen wearing padded aketons and steel caps: this is the kind of equipment that contemporary kingdoms and cities were requiring their poorer citizens to keep for the purposes of war. A minority of the infantry illustrated carry much more elaborate equipment – hauberks and swords. In the case of mounted men, an apparent uniformity probably conceals considerable differences in the quality of protection, but they are almost invisible to us.

There must have been enormous diversity, but mainly of variants of basic types. Weapons and armour had advanced somewhat, but the knights and foot of the Bayeux Tapestry would have been able to fight perfectly competently at the end of the thirteenth century, although their equipment would have relegated them to the second or third rank. Better carts and more horses improved supply marginally, but without any dramatic advance. War had changed in the two and a half intervening centuries, but even at the end of the thirteenth century the warriors of the Bayeux Tapestry would not have found their equipment hopelessly obsolete.