Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Topics - Longmane

Pages: [1] 2 3
1
p1

The Arming of Knights and its Influence

In the Middle Ages emphasis was always laid on the armour, for 'armed' meant wearing a coat of mail. Those without it were unarmed or 'inermes'. Knights were heavily armed cavalry; in the Crusades they were called 'armed' in contrast to their enemies who were called 'naked'. The knights are 'heavily armed', while the lightly-armed Moslems were 'unarmed' (desarmée).

The Christians are very well armed
And the Saracens are unarmed
They have only a bow, a mace or a sword
Or a well-sharpened stick
And a cuirass that is not heavy.

The armor and heavy weapons made knights invulnerable to the arrows of the Moslems. They were called the 'iron people' by the Turks. In the Third Crusade Saladin did not dare fight again after his defeat at Arsuf. Against the well-armored crusaders his troops had no chance of success.

Their armor and heavy weapons were tremendously important to the knights because they made them invulnerable or greatly restricted the numbers of those killed in action. There is ample evidence that a greater sense of security due to their good protective armor spurred the knights on to the utmost bravery on the battlefield.

We know already that Anna Comnena depicted the western knights in the first Crusade as 'unconquerable in a confined area, but easy to capture in open terrain: indomitable on horseback, but powerless when they have to fight on foot, irresistible in the first shock.'  She lays great stress on the advantages of heavy armor and equipment, which made it possible for a charge to be so violent that the Moslem cavalry never stood their ground, and generally avoided a hand-to-hand combat.

The disadvantages of heavy equipment were not overlooked, however, and she makes the contrast stand out sharply. But it is not true to say that the knights were easy to beat in the open field; on the contrary, the reverse was true for it enabled them to pursue the enemy effectively. Nor is it true that they were useless on foot. It is quite clear on balance that the armor was invaluable.

When the spoils were divided after the fall of Constantinople in 1204, the clerk Aleaume de Clari asked for a knight's share, since he had fought on horseback, wearing a coat of mail. The count of St Pol granted his request, because he had borne himself so bravely.

'Li Frans…s' arme pour poour de mort!'  The knights wear armor for fear of death! The importance of iron armor was great because it eliminated a large part of the danger on the battlefield: anyone who wore it had to fight like a knight, as is clear from the Rule of the Templars.

This Rule contains important information on the knightly art of war, and the distinction is sharply drawn between the armored aristocrats of the Order and the light sergeants, who were not so well armed and did not normally wear full armor. The same tenacity in battle was not expected of them as it was of the knights, and they were allowed to retreat. But if these sergeants were given a knight's equipment by their Order, and were therefore similarly armed, this permission was no longer valid. 'The brother sergeants who wear an iron cuirass must fight on the battlefield just as is required of the brother knights; and the other brother sergeants wearing no armor will have the gratitude of God and of the Order if they fight well. But if they see that they cannot endure the battle or are wounded, they may withdraw without asking permission and without punishment.' Heavily armored sergeants could not leave the battlefield without permission or before the Christian army had been routed.

Knights, covered from head to foot in armor, had little to worry about when facing ill-armed foot-soldiers. This is obvious from the swift subjugation of the Irish at the end of the twelfth century by ridiculously small armies. Against those 'unarmored men, who either won or were beaten in the first charge', such heavy armor was not necessary and this was true wherever the foot-soldiers were not well armed. As long as the common people were too poor to buy heavy arms, and the princes could not buy them any, the situation did not change, until the cities and rural communes solved the problem and at the same time infused greater self-confidence into their men.

The high degree of invulnerability and relatively small number of dead among the knights following a battle encouraged them to fight bravely. The state of the mail-shirt after a battle served as a means of judging the man had fought bravely or not:

I know full well that you are a coward:
Your coat of mail is neither pierced nor torn,
And neither your head nor arms are wounded.

says Bueves de Commarchis to his son Girart.

The excellent protection of the armor also impressed the Moslems after the defeat of the army from the kingdom of Jerusalem at Hattin near Lake Tiberias in 1187. The knights of king Guy of Lusignan had struggled vainly to break out of the encirclement of their army. Totally exhausted by thirst and fatigue after a full day's fighting in the scorching heat, and a night without food or drink, following sporadic attacks, they were forced the next day to cease fighting and capitulate. Their horses were dead tired and covered with wounds. 'It was an extraordinary and wonderful thing that the French knights kept on fighting as long as their horses were all right. They were armed from head to foot in a sort of armor made of a fabric of iron rings. They seemed to be an iron mass, off which blows simply glanced.' … 'These Christians were lions at the start of the battle; by the end they looked more like scattered sheep.' Their might had been feared at first, but the Moslems mocked the miserable aspect of their disarmed and exhausted prisoners.

Contemporary western observers were also conscious that in combat between knights there were fewer casualties than in battles of classical antiquity. 'Formerly, many thousands perished in battle, but now, because of increasing calamities the means of protection have also been improved, and new defense has been found against new weapons.'

It is true that there was no difference in equipment when knights in western Europe were fighting against their equals. In such case they knew they could give themselves up if the odds seemed hopeless, and they could count on their comrades in battle. We must now consider the units in which the knights fought, and discuss the inner cohesiveness of these formations.

2
This is taken from the same book and follows on directly from the earlier piece on collective training.

The Psychology of Knights on the Battlefield

The turbulent chivalry of the eleventh and twelfth centuries had gained the reputation of having a gigantic and insatiable lust for fighting, which led to the innumerable wars of the times. This rather too simple explanation is suggested by the lyrical outpourings of some poets, whose evidence should now be re-examined. No one voiced this warlike attitude more clearly than Bertrand de Born in his well-known poem:

"I love the gay season of Eastertide, which brings forth flowers and leaves, and I love to hear the brave sound of the birds, making their song ring through the thickets, and I love to see tents and pavilions set up in the meadows. And I am overjoyed when I see knights and horses, all in armor, drawn up on the field. I love it when the chargers throw everything and everybody into confusion, and I enjoy seeing strong castles besieged, and bastions broken down and shattered, and seeing the army all surrounded by ditches, protected by palisades of stout tree-trunks jammed together.

And I love just as much to see a lord when he is the first to advance on horseback, armed and fearless, thus encouraging his men to valiant service: then, when the fray has begun, each must be ready to follow him willingly, because no one is held in esteem until he has given and received blows.

We shall see clubs and swords, gaily-colored helmets and shields shattered and spoiled, at the beginning of the battle, and many vassals all together receiving great blows, by reason of which many horses will wander riderless, belonging to the killed and wounded. Once he has started fighting, no noble knight thinks of anything but breaking heads and arms—better a dead man than a live one who is useless.

I tell you, neither in eating, drinking, nor sleeping, do I find what I feel when I hear the shout 'At them!' from both sides, and the neighing of riderless horses in the confusion, or the call 'Help! Help!', or when I see great and small together fall on the grass of the ditches, or when I espy dead men who still have pennoned lances in their ribs.

Barons, you should rather forfeit castles, towns, and cities, than give up—any of you—going to war.


Bertrand's warlike verses are not unique in their testimony. In the chanson de geste called Girart de Vienne the aged Garin de Montglane expresses himself in very similar fashion in a family council of war. Peace would make him ill, and he likes nothing better than the neighing of horses, and battle in the open field. In the Moniage Renoart a knight would even return from Paradise to fight the Moslems.

Such lyrical effusions have made scholars think that the knight felt contempt for life and human suffering. Léon Gautier, a great glorifier of chivalry, wrote:

There were two main elements in chivalrous courage, Germanic and Christian, which were not always properly blended. Too often the knights loved battle for its own sake and not for the cause they were defending. Under their mail shirts the primitive barbarian of the German forests still quivered. In their eyes the sight of red blood flowing on iron armour was a charming spectacle. A fine lance thrust transported them to the heavens. 'I prefer such a blow to eating or drinking!' cries out quite naturally one of the savage heroes of Raoul de Cambrai. This naive admiration is most apparent in the oldest epics and, in particular, in the Chanson de Roland. In the midst of a horrible battle our Frenchman, more than half dead, still finds time to criticize or admire skilful blows of lance or sword.

We read in Huizinga: 'The psychology of courage in battle has probably never been so simply and strikingly expressed as in these words from Le Jouvencel':

It is a joyous thing, a war … You love your comrade so much in war. When you see that your quarrel is just, and your blood is fighting well, tears rise to your eyes. A great sweet feeling of loyalty and of pity fills your heart on seeing your friend so valiantly exposing his body to execute and accomplish the command of our Creator. And then you are prepared to go and die or live with him, and for love not to abandon him. And out of that, there arises such a delectation, that he who has not experienced it is not fit to say what delight it is. Do you think that a man who does that fears death? Not at all, for he feels so strengthened, so elated, that he does not know where he is. Truly he is afraid of nothing.

By way of commentary, Huizinga adds that this passage 'shows the emotional ground of pure courage in combat: shuddering withdrawal from narrow egotism to the emotion of life-danger, the deep tenderness about the courage of the comrade, the voluptuousness of fidelity and self-sacrifice'. In discussing the proverbial gallantry of a knight, one scholar was so carried away that he wrote that it was easier for the Knights Templar to stand fast till the end of a battle than to subordinate their will to that of their commander and to fight in units.

Without wishing to detract from the courage, daring and self-sacrifice which the knights so freely displayed both in battles and on many other occasions, especially in the East, it is nevertheless necessary to contradict this often-repeated, usually biassed, praise of their warlike spirit and their contempt for death. Despite their great and sometimes wholly admirable gallantry, the knights were still human beings who feared for their lives in the presence of danger, and who behaved as men have always done in battle—in fear of death, mutilation, wounds and captivity. It is better to look for courage in the manner in which they braved danger, for it is important to know how they overcame their fear and what made them fight bravely.

3
Background / Collective Training: Tournaments. 3 pts
« on: April 27, 2014, 09:54:58 PM »
pt 1

The Art Of Warfare In Western Europe  During The Middle Ages – J F Veruggen

Collective Training: Tournaments

Even in the Middle Ages it was thought that tournaments were of quite recent origin. Their inventor was said to have been a certain Geoffrey of Preuilly, who died in 1066. Actually they go back to rather primitive collective games, although it is possible that the classic form encountered in the twelfth century had been introduced in the eleventh.

Military leaders have always tried to reproduce war conditions as closely as possible in their training exercises. The Romans attempted to do this in their manoeuvres, and the Germans had military games for the whole population. Tacitus speaks of this with reference to the Tencteri: hic lusus infantium, haec juvenum aemulatio: 'here lies the diversion of infancy, the rivalry of youth'. They are also mentioned at the court of Theodric, king of the Ostrogoths, and Isidore of Seville records that the Visigoths liked sham battles and held military games daily. Einhard reports riding exercises and weapon practice, which according to Frankish custom were carried out by Charlemagne's sons, while the emperor himself liked riding and hunting as his ancestors had done, 'for no one matches the Franks in these arts'.
 
During the struggle between the sons of Louis the Pious there were group exercises and military games among the Franks following the celebrated Oaths of Strasbourg of 14 February 842. These cavalry games were often held by the troops of Louis the German and Charles the Bald, probably at Worms: causa exercitii, for the training of their own followers. In the presence of spectators ranged on both sides of a place which had been prepared for the spectacle, equal numbers of Saxons, Gascons, Austrasians and Bretons rode at each other at full tilt, as though they were going to join battle. But a moment before they met, one of the parties made a turn and pretended to escape the attacking enemy by flight, while the horsemen protected themselves with their shields. Then it was the turn of the fugitives to attack the pursuers. Finally both young princes sprang on to their horses and with great exuberance took part in the game, encouraged by loud cheers from the crowd. Lance in hand, they charged first one group and then another of those who were fleeing.

This kind of mock battle is not yet like the eleventh—or twelfth century—tournament. The lances were held in the hand and were not used to administer a heavy blow. The attack was devised in the same spirit: there was no clash, it remained just a manoeuvre, in which equal numbers of fighters faced each other. But men from the same region were practicing together, attacking and retreating. It is evident from the summary of Vegetius' work on the art of war among the Romans, made by Hrabanus Maurus for King Lothar II, that such exercises were a normal thing among the Franks and he states that the art of horsemanship also flourished among them. 

Half a century after Nithard, the Council of Tribur mentions heathen games which sometimes had a fatal ending. In the tenth and eleventh centuries the Saxons and Thuringians followed the example of the Franks: foot-soldiers had formerly been their main arm, now they introduced cavalry, which quickly became skilled in the new manner of waging war. The Saxon rulers Henry I and Otto the Great were both praised by their biographer for their military games and their skill on horseback. Henry I surpassed all others in military exercises: in exercitiis quoque ludi tanta eminentia superabat omnes, ut terrorem caeteris ostentaret, and Otto practiced riding regularly.


In Flanders we find the earliest traces of tournaments in 1095. One was held near Tournai by the burgrave Evrardus, who had a number of gallant knights under him. Henry III, count of Louvain, invited one of his vassals, who was in the opposing camp, to enter the lists against him personally. Jocelyn of Vorst accepted his lord's challenge only after repeated pressure. Finally he couched his lance, spurred his horse savagely, and charged the count with the intent of unhorsing him, but the thrust struck the count in the heart, and he died instantly.

The counts of Flanders used tournaments to distract their knights from the private wars which were disturbing the peace in the county, and at the same time to give them a chance to practice. After he had restored peace and order in his county, Baldwin VII went abroad to get practice in the knightly profession of arms. His successor Charles the Good pursued the same policy, and went with 200 knights to tournaments in France, in Normandy and even outside France, to enhance his own fame as well as the might and honour of his land, and being a pious man, he atoned for the sins incurred through these ventures with rich gifts to the Church.

Even after the First Crusade the clergy were just as disturbed about these dangerous games as they had been over private wars, for they thought that both meant needless squandering of strength, and bloodshed, and that knights could test their prowess better against the Moslems in the Holy Land. The Council of Clermont in 1130 forbade tournaments because they entailed loss of human lives: anyone who perished in such a game was not to receive Christian burial. But the knights thought otherwise. For them the tournament was a training-school, a pastime, a source of income and a suitable opportunity for meeting men of their own class and their feats to be admired by noble ladies, which was not possible on the battlefield. They let themselves be daunted neither by the criticism of the clergy nor by the prohibitions of the Church.

The ablest clerical figures of the day vigorously attacked tournaments. St Bernard of Clairvaux wrote to Suger: 'Take the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God, against these accursed gatherings which Robert the king's brother and Henry son of the count of Champagne want to hold after the coming feast of Easter'. These two lords had just returned from the Holy Land and wanted to hold a tournament. One of the biographers of St Bernard wrote that all those who perished in a tournament 'certainly go to Hell'. James of Vitry portrayed the opposing champions in a tournament as follows: 'They are jealous of each other and inflict vicious blows on each other. The victor takes horse and arms from the vanquished. Knights cause considerable damage and destroy whole harvests. The lord burdens his subjects with heavy taxes in order to meet these foolish expenses, and the immorality of the feast follows the slaughter'.

The judgement of Humbert des Romans was less harsh: 'Although tournaments are rightly forbidden because they are so dangerous for body and soul, and fighters often perish in them, yet they also have some advantages; some practices should be condemned and others allowed.'

Humbert condemns the dissipation, the gross expenditure, ruinous to the knights and their families, which come from pride and an idle desire for glory because men like to be thought brave and gallant. What was still more serious was that some noblemen seized the opportunity of carrying on personal feuds. Others transgressed the tournament rules and made their opponents a laughing-stock. There were also knights who consorted with women of evil repute after tournaments.

So there were three practices to be condemned, 'dissipation through unreasonable expense, desire for vainglory, and malicious intentions in battle'. But if a knight wanted to fight for God, he might take part in reasonable games so that he acquired skill in combat, for without practice one has no knowledge of the art of war. In tournaments the knights encouraged each other, and what they had long been doing for the vainglory of the world, they could also do for God in the worthy fight against the Saracens. In every case, wanton characters, the 'ribauds' and other evil persons were to be removed.

The Church's prohibitions were repeated without much success in an imposing series of Councils: in 1139 at the tenth General Council, at the Councils of Rheims in 1148 and 1157, at the Lateran Councils in 1179 and 1215, and at the Council of Lyons in 1245. Tournaments were also forbidden by Pope Nicholas III in 1279. They were, however, permitted twice during the reign of King Philip the Fair of France. The first occasion was after Pope Clement V had forbidden them on 14 September 1313. Pierre Dubois then wrote his treatise De torneamentis et justis to please the king and to answer the papal prohibition. The pope permitted them again before Lent in 1314, and later a little known edict of Pope John XXII allowed them again at Philip's request, when their decline had already begun.




4
Background / Everyday life in the Castled. 3 pts
« on: April 09, 2014, 07:12:03 PM »
pt 1

Gies, Frances and Giles, Joseph – Life in a Medieval Castle.

VI
A Day in the Castle

THE CASTLE HOUSEHOLD WAS ASTIR AT DAYBREAK. Roused from their pallets in the attics and cellars, servants lighted fires in kitchen and great hall. Knights and men-at-arms clambered to the walls and towers to relieve the night watch. In the great chamber, the lord and lady awakened in their curtained bed.

They slept naked, and before rising put on linen undergarments—drawers for the lord, a long chemise for the lady. After washing in a basin of cold water, they donned outer garments, essentially the same for both: a long-sleeved tunic, slipped over the head and fastened at the neck with a brooch; a second tunic, or surcoat, over it, shorter, and either sleeveless or with wide, loose sleeves, and often fur-lined; finally a mantle, made from an almost circular piece of material, lined with fur and fastened at the neck either with another brooch or with a chain. The lord’s garments were shorter than the lady’s, with looser sleeves. Both wore belts tied at the waist or fastened with a metal buckle. The man’s costume was completed by long hose attached to the belt that held up his drawers, while the woman’s hose, shorter, were suspended from garters below the knee. Both wore shoes—slippers for the house, low boots for outdoors.

The colors of tunics, mantles, hose, and shoes were bright—blues, yellows, crimsons, purples, greens—and the fabric of the garments was usually wool, though fine silks such as samite, sendal (taffeta), and damask (a kind of brocade) were occasionally worn. Camlet, imported from Cyprus, was sometimes used for winter robes, woven from camel’s or goat’s hair. The fur trimmings and linings were of squirrel, lambskin, rabbit, miniver, otter, marten, beaver, fox, ermine, and sable. Tunics and mantles were decorated with embroidery, tassels, feathers, or pearls. For festive occasions belts might be of silk with gold or silver thread, or adorned with jewels.

Both men and women wore head coverings indoors and outdoors. The lord usually wore a linen coif tied by strings under the chin, sometimes
elaborately embroidered, or decorated with feathers and buttons; the lady wore a linen wimple, either white or colored, that covered hair and neck. Outdoors, hoods and caps were worn over the coifs and wimples. Elegant gloves, sometimes fur-lined, and jewelry—gold rings with stones, pins, necklaces, hairbands, shoebuckles, and bracelets—completed the costume.

The lady might arrange her hair with the aid of a mirror—an expensive article, usually small and circular, mounted in a wooden or metal case, and made either of polished steel or of glass over a metal surface. Despite the disapproval of preachers and moralist writers, ladies wore cosmetics—sheep fat, and rouge and skin whiteners with which they tinted themselves pink and white—and used depilatory pastes.

After mass in the chapel, the household breakfasted on bread washed down with wine or ale. The morning was spent in routine tasks or amusements, depending on whether the castle had guests. The lord had his round of conferences with stewards and bailiffs, or with members of his council; the lady conversed with her guests or busied herself with embroidery and other domestic projects. Knights and squires practiced fencing and tilting, while children did their lessons under the guidance of a tutor, commonly the chaplain or one of his clerks. Lessons over, the children were free to play—girls with dolls, boys with tops and balls, horseshoes, bows and arrows.

Archery was a favorite pastime with boys of all ages. In the twelfth century the son of the lord of Haverford Castle in Wales, and two other boys sent there for their education, made friends with an outlaw confined in the castle who fashioned arrows for their bows. One day the robber took advantage of the negligence of the guards to seize the boys and barricade himself in his prison. “A great clamor instantly arose,” recorded the chronicler Gerald of Wales, “as well from the boys within as from the people without; nor did he cease, with an uplifted axe, to threaten the lives of the children, until indemnity and security were assured to him.”




5
Background / Hunting as a Way of Life (3 parts)
« on: January 27, 2014, 07:30:52 PM »
Pt 1

This has been taken from the book  - Life in a Medieval Castle –  by Joseph and Frances Gies

VII
Hunting as a Way of Life

AT DAWN ON A SUMMER DAY, when the deer were at their fattest, the lord, his household, and guests loved to set out into the forest. While the huntsman, a professional and often a regular member of the lord’s staff, stalked the quarry with the leashed dogs and their handlers, the hunting party breakfasted in a clearing on a picnic meal of meat, wine, and bread.

When the dogs found a deer’s spoor, the huntsman estimated the animal’s size and age by measuring the tracks with his fingers and by studying the scratches made by the horns on bushes, the height of the rubbed-off velvet of the antlers on trees, and the “fumes” (droppings), some of which he gathered in his hunting horn to show his master.

The lord made the decision as to whether it was a quarry worth hunting. Sometimes the huntsman, by silently climbing a tree, could get a sight of the deer. The dogs were taken by a roundabout route to intercept the deer’s line of retreat. They were usually of three kinds: the lymer, a bloodhound that was kept on a leash and used to finish the stag at bay; the brachet, a smaller hound; and the greyhound or levrier, larger than the modern breed and capable of singly killing a deer. The huntsman advanced on foot with a pair of lymers to drive the deer toward the hunting party. Meanwhile the lord raised his ivory hunting horn, the olifant, and blew a series of one-pitch notes. This was the signal for the greyhounds. Once begun, the chase continued until the hounds brought the stag to bay, when one of the hunters was given the privilege of killing it with a lance thrust. Sometimes the hunters used bows and arrows. The kill was followed by skinning and dividing up the meat, including the hounds’ share, laid out on the skin.

Although the hart could be a dangerous quarry, the wild boar, usually hunted in the winter, was more formidable. A wily enemy, he would not venture out of cover without first looking, listening, and sniffing, and once his suspicions were aroused no amount of shouting and horn blowing would lure him from his narrow den. The boar-hunting dog was the alaunt, a powerful breed resembling the later German shepherd. Even when dogs and hunters caught the boar in the open, his great tusks were a fearful weapon. “I have seen them kill good knights, squires and servants,” wrote Gaston de la Foix in his fourteenth-century Livre de la Chasse (“Book of the Hunt”). And Edward, duke of York, in the fifteenth-century treatise The Master of Game wrote, “The boar slayeth a man with one stroke, as with a knife. Some have seen him slit a man from knee up to breast and slay him all stark dead with one stroke.” An old boar usually stood his ground and struck desperately about him, but a young boar was capable of rapid maneuvers preceding his deadly slashes.

The huntsman was always well paid, and in a great household might be a knight. Henry I employed no fewer than four, at eight pence a day, at the head of a hunting company that included four horn blowers, twenty sergeants (beaters), several assistant huntsmen, a variety of dog handlers, a troop of mounted wolf hunters, and several archers, one of whom carried the king’s own bow. A royal hunting party was a small military expedition.


But the form of hunting that stirred the widest interest throughout medieval Europe was falconry. Hawks were the only means of bringing down birds that flew beyond the range of arrows. Every king, noble, baron, and lord of the manor had his falcons. A favorite bird shared his master’s bedroom and accompanied him daily on his wrist. Proud, fierce, and temperamental, the falcon had a mystique and a mythology. Of many treatises and manuals about falconry, the most famous was the exhaustive De Arte Venandi cum Avibus (“The Art of Falconry”) by the erudite emperor Frederick II (from which most of the following information is drawn).

The birds used in medieval falconry belonged to two main categories. The true falcons, or long-winged hawks, included the gerfalcon, the peregrine, the saker, and the lanner, all used to hunt waterfowl, and the merlin, used for smaller birds. The short-winged hawks included the goshawk and the sparrow hawk, which could be flown in wooded country where long-winged hawks were at a disadvantage. Only the female, larger and more aggressive than the male, was properly called a falcon; the smaller male was called a tiercel, and although sometimes used in hunting was considered inferior.

One of the essential buildings in a castle courtyard was the mews where the hawks roosted and where they took refuge during molting season. It was spacious enough to allow limited flight, had at least one window, and a door large enough for the falconer to pass through with a bird on his wrist. The floor was covered with gravel or coarse sand, changed at regular intervals. In the semidarkness inside, perches of several sizes were adapted to different kinds of birds, some high and well out from the wall, others just far enough off the floor to keep the bird’s tail feathers from touching. Outside stood low wooden or stone blocks, usually in the form of cones, point down, driven into the ground with sharp iron spikes, on which the falcons “weathered,” that is, became accustomed to the world outside the mews.

A good falcon was expensive chiefly because her training demanded infinite patience and care. The birds were obtained either as eyases—nestlings taken from a tree or a cliff-top—or as branchers, young birds that had just left the nest and were caught in nets. Branchers were put into a “sock,” a close-fitting linen bag open at both ends, so that the bird’s head protruded at one end, feet and tail at the other.

Gerald of Wales reported that once when Henry II was staying at the Clares’ Pembroke Castle and “amusing himself in the country with the sport of hawking,” he saw a falcon perched on a crag, and let loose on it a large high-bred Norway hawk. The falcon, though its flight was at first slower than the Norway hawk’s, finally rose above its adversary, became the assailant, and pouncing on it with great fury, laid the royal bird dead at the king’s feet. “From that time the king used to send every year in the proper season for the young falcons which are bred in the cliffs on the coast of South Wales; for in all his land he could not find better or more noble hawks.”

The falconer’s first task was to have the bird prepared for training. The needle points of the talons were trimmed, the eyes usually “seeled”—temporarily sewn closed—and two jesses, strips of leather with rings at the end, were fastened around the legs. Small bells were tied to the feet to alert the falconer to the bird’s movements. She was then tied to the perch by a long leather strap called a leash. At the same time, whether seeled or not, she was usually introduced to the hood, a piece of leather that covered her eyes, with an opening for the beak. Now, blinded, she had to be trained through her senses of taste, hearing, and touch.

The falcon’s first lesson was learning to stand on a human wrist. To begin with, she was carried gently about in a darkened room for a day and a night, and passed from hand to hand, without being fed. On the second day, the falconer fed her a chicken leg, while talking or singing to her, always using the same phrase or bar of a song, stroking her while she ate. Gradually the bird was unseeled, at night or in a darkened room, with the attendant being careful not to let her see his face, on the theory that the human face was particularly repugnant to the falcon. Again she was carried about for a day and a night and fed in small quantities while being gently stroked, and gradually she was exposed to more light. When she was well accustomed to the new situation, she was taken outdoors before dawn, and brought back while it was still dark. Finally her eyesight was fully restored, and the falconer exposed her to full daylight.

The initial stage of her training was accomplished: The captive was partially tamed and accustomed to handling. But the falconer still had to guard the sensitive, excitable creature closely to prevent her from taking alarm and injuring herself. If she became restless and tried to fly off her perch, or bit at her jesses and bell and scratched at her head, she had to be quieted by gentle speech, stroking, and feeding, or by being sprinkled with drops of water, sometimes from the falconer’s mouth (which had first to be scrupulously cleansed).

Once the bird felt at home on her master’s wrist outdoors, she was taken on horseback. Now the falcon was ready to be taught to return to her master during the hunt by means of the lure. This device was usually made of the wings of the bird which was to be the falcon’s quarry, tied to a piece of meat. If a gerfalcon, a bird distinguished by its size, dignity, speed, and agility, was to be used to hunt cranes, the lure was made of a pair of crane’s wings tied together with a leather thong, in the same position as if folded on the crane’s back. To the lure was tied a long strap. To keep the falcon from flying away during these first departures from his fist, the falconer fastened a long slender cord, the creance, to the end of her leash.

In the field, as much of the line was unwound as was necessary for the bird’s flight, and she was taken on the falconer’s fist. An assistant handed him the lure as he removed the falcon’s hood, at the same time repeating the familiar notes or words that he always used while feeding her. The falconer held firmly onto her jesses while she tasted the meat fastened to the lure. Then his assistant took the lure and moved away with it, always keeping it in the falcon’s vision, finally placing it on the ground and withdrawing, while the falconer released the bird, letting the line run through his free hand. When the falcon landed on the lure, the assistant slowly approached her, holding meat out, repeating her call notes, and finally setting it down before her. While she seized it, he picked her up on the lure, and gathered the jesses and drew them tight.

Once the falcon responded well to the lure, she was taught to come to it when it was whirled in the air by the assistant while he uttered the call notes. Finally the falcon sprang eagerly from the fist when she saw the lure and flew directly at it. The Creance was now abandoned and the bird could be allowed to fly free.


Now she was ready to be taught to hunt. A gerfalcon to be used in hunting cranes was often started on hares, because the same method of flight was used for both, and because a hare would be unlikely to distract a falcon when she hunted for cranes, since hares always had to be driven out of cover by dogs. Sometimes a stuffed rabbit pelt baited with meat was dragged in front of the falcon, with the falconer on horseback racing over the fields after the decoy, letting the falcon loose only to jerk her up short before she could strike, teaching her to swoop and pounce suddenly. Then the falconer brought out the hounds, who drove live rabbits out for the falcon. Next the gerfalcon was exposed to snipe and partridge. Only when she became proficient with these was she ready for her real quarry, and even now her introduction was gradual.

At first a live crane was staked in a meadow, its eyes seeled, its claws blunted, and its beak bound so that it could not injure the gerfalcon. Meat was tied to its back. The gerfalcon was unhooded and the crane shown to her. When the falcon killed the crane, the falconer removed its heart and fed it to the falcon. The process was repeated, increasing the distance between the mounted falconer and the crane bait until the gerfalcon began her flight a bowshot away (300 to 400 yards). At the same time the falconer trained the falcon to recognize a crane’s call by slitting a crane’s larynx and blowing into it.

Dogs, usually greyhounds, were often used in teaching the gerfalcon to capture larger birds. This meant special training for the dogs as well as the falcons, so that the dog did not desert the hunt to chase a rabbit. Dog and falcon were fed together to enhance their comradeship, while the dog was trained to run with the falcon and help her seize her prey.

A different technique was used for “hawking at the brook,” that is, hunting ducks on the riverbank. Here the hawk was trained to circle above the falconer’s head, “waiting on,” while the hounds raised the ducks. She then “stooped” (dived) to strike them in the air.

The good falconer, according to Frederick II, who employed more than fifty in his Apulian castles, had to be of medium size—not too large to be agile and not too small to be strong. Besides the cardinal virtue of patience, the falconer needed acute hearing and vision, a daring spirit, alert mind, and even temper. He could not be a heavy sleeper, lest he fail to hear the falcon’s bells in the night. And he had to be well versed in the ailments of hawks and their remedies—medicines for headaches and colds, salves for injuries: mixtures of spices, vinegar, snakemeat, gristle, and drugs almost as unpleasant as the medicines prescribed for human beings.



6
Background / Sense of Honour and Duty
« on: December 09, 2013, 11:09:17 PM »
This is from a chapter in the book  -The Art Of Warfare In Western Europe During The Middle Ages –  by J F Verbruggen.

Sense of Honour and Duty

A sense of honour is also very important for the psychology of the knight in battle, for the knightly concept of honour forbids flight before the enemy. The ideal knight is of course the hero of the Chanson de Roland. Roland accepts a battle against overwhelming odds when he might have avoided the combat, but being a proud and undaunted knight, he chose to fight. He refuses to flee, overcomes his fear, only to die in the end. He offers his life for the cause he is defending, and would never do anything throughout the hard fight which might taint his honour. Young Vivien is another such hero: he fought a battle against a king of Cordova with too few troops, and he too could have fled before it was too late. But when his uncle Guillaume had knighted him, he had solemnly vowed never to flee from the Saracens. He kept his oath and chose to die.

This problem of a knight's sense of honour especially occupied the writers of the chansons de geste. They show that the knights feared most of all being denounced as cowards: 'Mieux vauroit estre mors que coars appelés'166 —Better be dead than be called a coward. One of them wrote that 'a single coward can discourage an army' and 'U nos i garrons tuit, u nos tuit i morron', which may be roughly translated as 'win or die'. Charlemagne is portrayed as the emperor who chooses death rather than escape in the Chanson de Roland.  Roland and Oliver also die rather than avoid battle: 'Ja pur murir n'eschiverunt bataille.'  The solution is clear for the poets in the lines: 'See, the death comes upon us, but as noble men we prefer to die while fighting.'  This immutable judgment was given also in the Chanson d'Antioche, an epic based largely upon historical fact. 'It would be better for every man to lose his head than to flee even half a foot before the heathen.'  The crusaders during the Fourth Crusade considered it better to go down fighting than to be killed in flight.

The mirror that the poets held up to the knights often gives an accurate reflection. Stephen of Blois forsook the Crusaders' army during the siege of Antioch in 1098, but three years later he took part in the Lombards' Crusade. He died an honourable death at the taking of Ramla on 19 May 1102, thus restoring his good name. The chroniclers wrote a moving eulogy of him.

It is often difficult to separate the knights' sense of honour and of military duty. The dilemma of Joinville and his retinue during their night watch on the towers in Egypt has been mentioned: they remained at their post for the sake of honour, and did their duty at the same time, for in the Middle Ages, when the conception of duty was rather different from that of our day, knights feared shame more than punishment.

Men were keenly conscious of the shame of cowardice, and for that reason knights usually wrote very carefully about cases known to them personally. Joinville gives no names of the great nobles who fled so wildly at the battle of Mansurah, and who made no effort to redeem themselves even when they were back with their own troops.  It was dangerous to describe such acts in full: poets might make up scurrilous songs about them and not only the personal honour of the fugitive or coward would be attacked, but that of his family.  If the facts were generally known, the chronicler could not gloss them over, and if he were not a knight himself, he would not do so in any case. In the battle of Arsuf, the count of Dreux was reproached for not having gone to the help of James of Avesnes and his men: 'I heard so many people speak evil of that, that history cannot conceal it.'

But not every knight could be expected to fight as bravely as Roland, Oliver, or Vivien, and human weaknesses had to be taken into account. Nor could it be expected that everyone should let himself be killed as soon as it was clear that the army was beaten. Men knew from experience that a lost battle did not necessarily mean a lost war, which would have been the case if they all let themselves be killed: the absolute concept of honour had to be reconciled with the interests of society and of human safety. It is very hard to decide when this is right.

Actually, flight was regarded as a disgrace. Knightly honour demanded a fight to the death, and allowed two possibilities: death in action or capture. In the council of war held before the battle of Bouvines by the emperor Otto, count Ferdinand, Renaud de Dammartin and Hugues de Boves, Renaud is said to have foretold that Hugues would flee as a coward. Renaud would fight to the death or until capture. This happened. He kept up the fight and was taken prisoner after a bitter resistance. William the Breton testified as a spectator that the Flemish knights chose death or capture rather than flight. Count Ferdinand surrendered to the enemy, but his followers fought on till those who would not give in were all killed.

 In the battle of Worringen, Jan van Heelu tells that the knights from Guelders were also unwilling to leave the battlefield, and preferred to be taken prisoner. The count of Guelders, who wanted to flee with the help of some friends among the allies of duke John, after tearing off his coat-of-arms, was censured by the poet because he could no longer pass for one of the best in the enemy army.

The Grand Master of the Templars naturally regarded flight as a terrible scandal: such dishonour would affect not only him personally, but the whole Order. During the Third Crusade, he refused to flee at the battle of Acre while it was still possible, and perished. In the fourteenth century, the knights of the Order of the Star, founded by king John of France, swore that they would not flee further than four 'arpents', otherwise they had to hold out till they were killed, or else surrender.

A distinction must necessarily be made between the escape of an individual in battle when the fight was still going on, and the outcome was still in doubt, and retreat or collective flight when an army was faced with defeat. The Rule of the Templars provided for the case of defeat and its consequences: once the Christians were so near defeat that there were no banners left flying on the battlefield, the Templars might flee where they liked. This was generally accepted practice. It is of course axiomatic that not all defeats were thought dishonourable.

The knights' lofty concept of honour and duty is evident from the records of innumerable councils of war. Many times some nobles advised against a battle, but were overruled by a majority. Those who wanted to postpone the fighting to a more propitious time were frequently mocked because their courage was called into question. But every one of them, even those who did not want to fight, played their part bravely in the attack, and were frequently killed, refusing to survive on the battlefield out of a sense of honour and military duty.  At Bannockburn a famous knight, Giles of Argentan, one of the nobles charged with protecting Edward II, led him out of the battle. As soon as he had brought the king into safety, he said he was not accustomed to running away, returned to the battlefield, and was killed.

Public opinion in France could not understand that brave knights sometimes had to flee when they were defeated. In such a case the nobility was considered suspect, or else was openly accused of treason. Such accusations were made after the defeat at Courtrai. The nobles were said to have behaved treasonably in September 1302 during the retreat of the royal army.

They were again accused of treason when the knights fled in panic at Mons-en-Pévèle, but these accusations were very minor compared with those hurled at the nobility after the great defeat at Maupertuis near Poitiers in 1356. This time both clergy and citizens felt that far too many nobles had fled, and had not worried about defending their country, but had plucked the people clean, plundered them and robbed them of their possessions. France had been disgraced. The barons had committed a long-planned treason, as the circumstances of the defeat showed. The writer of the Complainte de la bataille de Poitiers advised the king to call up peasants: 'They will not flee to save their lives, as the knights did at Poitiers.' The nobles' shame was all the greater because they misused their military might in time of war, to promote their own interests and to exploit the common people.

7
Background / War, Society and Technology (3 pts)
« on: November 02, 2013, 10:45:30 PM »
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.


8
Background / Fortifications and Siege. (11 pts)
« on: August 07, 2013, 05:34:20 PM »
This thread will be concentrating on a chapter taken from the book "WESTERN WARFARE IN THE AGE OF THE CRUSADES 1000 - 1300" by John France.


Pt1

Fortifications and siege

Castles were never the only fortifications in medieval Europe. By the end of the period there were cities everywhere, and most had stone fortifications. Large cities were more common in southern France, Spain, Italy and the Holy Land than in northern Europe.

In Italy, Florence, Milan, Venice and Genoa, and in Spain Cordoba and Granada, all had populations of 50,000-100,000, but in northern Europe only Paris was of this magnitude, although Ghent and Bruges may have approached 50,000. Cities of 25,000–50,000 included Padua, Bologna, Verona, Pavia, Lucca, Rome, Naples and Palermo in Italy, Barcelona and Valencia in Spain, Toulouse in Provence and only Bordeaux, Lyons, Rouen, London and Cologne further north. In the 10,000–25,000 range, Italy had Cremona, Mantua, Modena, Parma, Pavia, Rimini, Forli, Faenza, Ravenna, Cesena, Orvieto, Perugia, Sienna, Pistoia and Pisa, and Spain had Zaragossa, while northern Europe could count Abbeville, Amiens, Arras, Lille, Ypres, Douai, Valenciennes, Mons, Louvain, Liège, Beauvais, Chartres, Troyes, Metz and Dijon. For the rest, the cities we hear of probably numbered between 2,000 and 10,000.

Because many towns grew up around castles, the distinction between a small town and a castle was not at all clear-cut and, indeed, in the Holy Land and elsewhere we know of towns founded in castles, while Latin terminology often uses confusingly overlapping words which further obscures the distinction. The basic strength of the fortified city, as of the castle, rested in its garrison and political connections, whether as part of a state, such as Ghent and Bruges within Flanders, or Paris within the Capetian monarchy, or as a city–state with alliances of its own. In this sense, the strategic problem for the attacker was the same – to isolate the target from a friendly field-army or the support of a network of castles.

It was simply more difficult for a besieger to mount a successful assault on a city or to cut it off beyond all hope of relief, both because of its size and because of the problem of sustaining a large army over a period of time. All besiegers faced certain common problems.

Any city or castle could obviously be blockaded, and so would eventually fall from starvation if relief did not arrive. But the besieger himself was just as likely to suffer from supply problems as the besieged, and was more exposed to weather and disease. In 1184, hunger forced the retreat of an allied attack on the county of Hainaut, while in 1198 the Piacenzans could not assault Borgo San Donnino because of drought, followed by bad winter weather.

The presence of a relief army imposed terrible risks on an attacker. At the siege of Acre, the crusaders dug earthworks that had to be manned when they attacked the city, lest they be taken in the rear by Saladin’s army; Philip Augustus did the same against an English relief force at Château Gaillard. Richard I argued against an attack on Jerusalem in 1192 because Saladin’s army could cut his communications with the coast. In 1199, the Piacenzans and Milanese were forced to withdraw from the siege of Castelnuovo Bocca d’Adda by the Cremonans, whose relief force established itself nearby in a fortified camp, and in 1237 the Milanese and their allies prevented Frederick II from besieging Brescia by establishing a similar camp 25km to the south, on the Lusignolo.

The problems of a major siege were aggravated by the loose and composite nature of medieval armies. Lack of discipline and a less than alert guard probably explains how Mathilda escaped from Oxford in 1142. At Ascalon in 1153, the Templars forced a breach in the walls, but refused to allow others to exploit it, with disastrous results. In 1238, Frederick II was anxious to follow up his great victory at Cortenova in the previous year, but he was unable to gather a sizeable army until July, and then it was with a very motley force that he attacked Brescia – Germans, Cremonans, Apulians, Saracens, Tuscans, English, French, Spanish, Provençals and even Greeks are mentioned, each with their own leaders.

The siege seems to have been decided upon at a very late stage, for it was only after the arrival of the young King Henry in June that the army gathered. By that time, the four months’ supply of rations that Frederick had commanded the Cremonans to take with them must have been running low. Although the only serious relief effort was an attack by the Piacenzans on Cremona, the siege, begun on 11 July, seems to have been conducted in a dilatory way which failed to prevent Brescian sallies, one of which, in August, captured Frederick’s engineer, Calamandrinus, who was persuaded to work for the city. It was not until September that great siege towers were built and serious assaults made, but by then it was too late and inclement weather forced the imperial army to return to Cremona.

In February 1248, Frederick II’s army was encamped in his siege-city of Victoria outside Parma when the besieged noted his absence – he had gone hunting. A minor skirmish of a few knights on both sides led to a determined sally by the Parmans, which panicked the imperial army before Frederick could impose order – the result was a major defeat for the imperialists. Edward I’s siege of Caerlaverock in 1300 began with futile assaults by notables intent on displaying their bravery; these were soon replaced by a systematic siege.

The factor that distinguished siege warfare against important cities was their enormous potential for resistance. Street-fighting was just as costly in the Middle Ages as at Stalingrad. When the crusader army reached Toulouse in 1217, the city was virtually unfortified, but the crusaders were unable to enter because the citizens barricaded the streets and showered the attackers with missiles from the rooftops. At Mansourah, over 300 mounted knights were lost when they charged into the town and were overwhelmed by blocks of wood thrown down from the houses.

When the First Crusade attacked Antioch in October 1097, their army of about 50,000 faced a garrison of no more than 5,000 Turks, who had limited support from the population, many of whom were Christians. But the walls were 10km round and enclosed an area nearly 3km long and 2km wide. On the west they abutted the river Orontes, while to the east they rose abruptly up the mountainside to 500m; the more vulnerable north side was reinforced by barbicans. This strong city wall dated from Justinian’s time and it was defended by a hierarchy of great and lesser towers. The crusaders were not even able to blockade all of the main gates until April 1098, after seven months of siege. The risk that they ran was dispersal of forces, which might open them to defeat in detail by a determined sally, precisely the fate of Kerbogah’s army on 28 June 1098, after his siege of the crusaders who had obtained entry to Antioch by betrayal.

Similarly, in Italy, Barbarossa’s first siege of Milan in 1158 was dogged by many sallies because his army was stretched out around the walls. By contrast with the garrison of Antioch, the Milanese enjoyed the support of the city population, whose limitations as soldiers counted for less behind city walls. Internal lines enabled defenders to launch effective sallies: it was probably for this reason that on the eve of the crusader attack in 1099, Jerusalem was reinforced with 400 horsemen. Medieval pictures almost always show knights in besieging armies; their mobility was necessary to defend against such sudden attacks. It is worth noting that the destruction of Frederick II’s siege-city of Victoria began with a small cavalry skirmish.
   

9
Background / The Italian Job
« on: July 23, 2013, 05:47:07 PM »
PT 1

This thread concentrate's on a chapter taken from the same book as my last one, and while this will also be rather long it'll certainly not be as long as that was.    (Now if I decide get around to posting "Fortifications and Siege", that will be "long"  ;D

THE ITALIAN JOB

War has always provided opportunities for adventurers and mercenaries, as the story of the Najera campaign and the Lithuanian crusades illustrates so well, and the early decades of the Hundred Years' War saw many other examples of men fighting in armies for the personal gain that could come either from loot or from an agreed fee. In many cases, however, mercenary companies or individual 'soldiers of fortune' are indistinguishable from the rest of an army in the overall operations of siege and battle, and it is only during times of truce that real mercenary activity can be identified.

The Peace of Bretigny in 1360 provided just such an opportunity. Large bodies of troops were suddenly disbanded, and instead of returning home, sold their skills to the highest bidder, and even, when no bidder was available, started wars of their own. It is with a sense of shame that one records the name of Sir Hugh Calveley and Sir Robert Knowles as leaders of these despicable bands.

Profit had once been made from the capture and ransom of the rich. Now it was to be scraped from the bottom of war's empty barrel. A stable government, such as that exercised by the Black Prince in Aquitaine, could close its borders to them, but this only put the pressure on to neighbours in turn. As a result the so-called 'Free Companies' flourished where the populace was weakest to withstand them, and where relatively unspoiled lands promised rich pickings. All that was necessary was for them to take a few castles and hold the populace to ransom.

Local defence against them was almost non-existent, although the towns built as fortified bastides fared better than others. As for getting rid of these brigands there seemed little alternative to paying them to go away and attack someone else - a scarcely satisfactory arrangement, unless the alternative place were a distant country. As Lithuania, which provided working holidays for the nobility, was hardly a convenient dumping ground for unwanted plunderers,' a much more promising location was to be found in Italy.


CONDOTTIERI WARFARE

Service in Italian wars was not a new phenomenon, and in fact the curse of 'the mercenary was to afflict the peninsula for a further century and a half. When the French king Charles VIII invaded Italy in 1494 and captured Naples within six months, his rapid success was blamed on the predilection of the Italians for employing mercenaries. According to influential commentators such as Machiavelli, the Italian states were crushed so easily because for centuries they had hired others to fight on their behalf rather than relying on their own militias. To name names, Italy owed its latest disaster to the long and disreputable history of the condottieri.

The condottieri were the captains who represented the supply side of the mercenary equation. They owed their title and their continued livelihood to the granting of a condotta or contract between an employer, usually a prince, a baron or a city, and the captain who would supply soldiers to fight on the commissioner's behalf. Machiavelli's sense of outrage was given additional colouring from a long humanist tradition that cherished the notion of free citizens rallying to the flag to defend their homes, and despised and vilified the very notion of the mercenary. He was not alone. Another Florentine politician wrote of a contemporary condottieri captain that 'in general all men of his occupation disgust me, because they are our natural enemies, and despoil all of us, and their only thought is to keep the upper hand and to drain our wealth'.

These were perceptive comments, because, although mercenaries clearly had their uses, they were a highly volatile and extremely dangerous commodity. Stories abounded of mercenaries coming to a halt within sight of an advancing enemy and refusing to engage in battle until they were paid in advance, and of condottieri captains changing sides so frequently that even their own men were unsure whom they were expected to fight. In 1441 the condottiere Piccinino insisted on a guarantee that he would be given the fief of Piacenza before he would agree to attack the Venetian army, which provoked an explosive outburst from the man who had hired him to do just that.

Most employers of condottieri no doubt appreciated that any contract to provide such an unpredictable service as mercenary warfare, where the signatory faced his own possible extinction, was naturally prone to ambiguity and wide open to exploitation. But to Machiavelli condottieri warfare was an inferior product compared to the heroic deeds that could be expected from a national militia. Indeed, he claimed, the wars waged by condottieri had not been real wars at all, but bloodless mock battles contested by rival mercenaries who were concerned only to give the show of conflict for the benefit of their respective paymasters, who could then each be threatened with real force if the cash was not forthcoming. 'Wars were commenced without fear,' he wrote in a famous passage, 'continued without danger and concluded without loss.'

In fact Machiavelli was sorely mistaken about the true nature of condottieri warfare. At the Battle of Anghiari in 1440, according to Machiavelli, 'one man was killed, and he fell off his horse and was trampled to death', but according to reliable eyewitnesses the list of dead topped 900. At Molinella in 1467, where 'some horses were wounded and some prisoners taken but no death occurred', the actual losses were 600. The one justification for Machiavelli's exaggerated comments may lie in the fact that in these battles, as in similar encounters throughout contemporary Europe, the bulk of the casualties tended to be lower-class troops who were both more numerous and less well protected than their betters, and out of 170 named condottieri captains only a dozen actually died fighting, and some of these deaths may have been as a result of assassinations carried out under the convenient cloak of anonymity that a battle provided.

In part 2 "THE FIRST CONDOTTIERI

10
Background / The Ill-made Knight
« on: June 26, 2013, 09:42:33 PM »
This thread will be concentrating solely on one particular chapter from the book “The Knight Triumphant~The High Middle Ages, 1314 – 1485” by Stephen Turnbull,  and which itself involves the life and deeds of a fascinating, brilliant and very colourful, (and very wrongly largely unknown to many) French hero of that time, Bertrand du Guesclin.

I apologise in advance for the fact it'll be a rather long thread to say the least, as likewise that it might be a while before I get the chance complete it, but I'm hopeful that many of you will find it an informative and enjoyable  read.


The Ill-made Knight

As victories are better remembered than defeats, Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) is probably the one French name to be well known in England from the Hundred Years' War, but in this chapter I will examine how France performed a similar miracle of recovery in the third quarter of the fourteenth century. This revival stemmed from a number of factors, not the least of which was the service to the French king and the inspiration to the French armies, rendered by a Breton knight called Bertrand du Guesclin.

Unlike the Maid of Orleans, he is practically unknown outside his own country, yet his unconventional style of warfare produced the counter to the terrible chevauchee, so that, although he was of lowly birth du Guesclin rose to the highest office that France could bestow. The reason why du Guesclin's career is so little known outside France lies to some extent in the timing of his appearance on the military scene. While he was winning modest victories for France, his nobler, but less adaptable contemporaries were busy suffering catastrophic defeats, and the popular English chauvinism which tends to close the history books at Poitiers and reopen them at Agincourt dwells little on the years between. This chapter will perhaps make amends.

Bertrand du Guesclin was born in about the year 1320 near Dinan in Brittany. He was the eldest of ten children and apparently a bit of a handful, being boisterous to the point of brutality, his heavy features and incredible strength terrifying his younger brothers and sisters. Only the intervention of a nun, who foretold his future greatness, prevented his distraught parents from disowning him.

His adolescent years were spent, we are told, in organizing the local children in gangs to fight one another, the young Bertrand always playing the part of commander. In 1337, at the age of seventeen, he went to Rennes where a tournament was being held to honour the marriage of Charles de Blois with Jeanne de Penthievre. He rode a carthorse belonging to his father, and was met by jeers from the well-to-do young knights assembled for the joust. His father, apparently, was there in an official capacity, which begs the question of why an impoverished Breton family had been invited to a tournament.

In fact the whole incident is apocryphal, and comes from the pen of du Guesclin's first biographer, Cuvelier. His Chronique de Bertrand du Guesclin is a heroic poem composed shortly after du Guesclin's death in 1380, by which time he had already become a legend in his own lifetime. Cuvelier's work is one of the last flourishes of the chanson de geste, written by a man who was effectively one of the last minstrels, an admirer both of the knight who formed his subject, and the tradition of the heroic poets of the eleventh century. The Chronique is, therefore, a dramatic hagiography, embellished by some imagination, but, according to Cuvelier, based on eyewitness accounts by du Guesclin's contemporaries.

The tournament story finishes in suitable style. After his haughty dismissal we find our hero borrowing a horse and armour from one of his cousins who is just leaving, and with a closed visor concealing his identity this unknown knight enters the lists and proceeds to win every joust set against him. After a dozen combatants are unhorsed his own father presents a challenge. To the amazement of the crowd, Bertrand declines, but continues to joust with others, until a Norman knight opens his helmet with the point of his lance, displaying the stranger's identity to the admiring crowd and a delighted father.


Coming soon in part 2 “Du Guesclin Goes To War”

11
Background / The Villagers: Who they were.
« on: May 31, 2013, 11:13:10 PM »
This is an edited piece out of the same book as I took those concerning farming practices.

THE VILLAGERS:
WHO THEY WERE

THREE CONSIDERATIONS GOVERNED THE CONDItion of the Elton villager: his legal status (free versus unfree), his wealth in land and animals, and (related to the first two criteria but independent of them) his social standing. How the villagers interacted has only recently drawn attention from historians. Earlier, the peasant’s relationship with his lord dominated scholarly investigation.

This “manorial aspect” of the peasant’s life overshadowed the “village aspect,” which, however, is older and more fundamental, the village being older than the manor. The fact that information about the village is harder to come by than information about the manor in no way alters this conclusion. The manor has been described historically as “a landowning and land management grid superimposed on the settlement patterns of villages and hamlets.”

Both village and manor played their part in the peasant’s life. The importance of the manor’s role depended on the peasant’s status as a free man or villein, a distinction for which the lawyers strove to find a clear-cut criterion. Henry de Bracton, leading jurist of the thirteenth century, laid down the principle, “Omnes homines aut liberi sunt aut servi” (All men are either free or servile).  Bracton and his colleagues sought to fit the villein into Roman law, and in doing so virtually identified him as a slave.

Neat though that correspondence might be in legal theory, it did not work in practice. Despite their de jure unfree status, many villeins succeeded de facto in appropriating the privileges of freedom. They bought, sold, bequeathed, and inherited property, including land. Practical need created custom, and custom overrode Roman legal theory.

Back at the time of the Domesday survey, the English villein was actually catalogued among the free men, “the meanest of the free,” according to Frederic Maitland, ranking third among the five tiers of peasantry: liberi homines (free men); sokemen; villeins; cotters or bordars, equivalent to the serfs of the Continent; and slaves, employed on the lord’s land as laborers and servants.

In the century after Domesday, slaves disappeared in England, by a process that remains obscure, apparently evolving into either manorial servants or villein tenants. But meanwhile by an equally obscure process the villein slipped down into the category of the unfree. Historians picture a series of pendulum swings in peasant status reflecting large external economic shifts, especially the growth of the towns as markets for agricultural produce. R. H. Hilton believes that the new heavy obligations were imposed on the English villein mainly in the 1180s and 1190s.

The unfreedom of the villein or serf was never a generalized condition, like slavery, but always consisted of specific disabilities: he owed the lord substantial labor services; he was subject to a number of fines or fees, in cash or in kind; and he was under the jurisdiction of the lord’s courts. In Maitland’s words, the serf, or villein, remained “a free man in relation to all men other than his lord.”

To what Edward Miller and John Hatcher call a “positive jungle of rules governing social relationships” was added the fact that land itself was classified as free or villein, meaning that it owed money rents or labor services. Originally villein tenants had held only villein land, but by the thirteenth century many villeins held some free land and many free men some villein land.

But if legal status was clouded by complexity, economic status tended to be quite clear, visible, and tangible: one held a certain number of acres and owned a certain number of cattle and sheep. Georges Duby, speaking of the Continent, observes, “Formerly class distinctions had been drawn according to hereditary and juridical lines separating free men from unfree, but by 1300 it was a man’s economic condition which counted most.”  In England the shift was perhaps a little slower, but unmistakably in the same direction. A rich villein was a bigger man in the village than a poor free man.

In the relations among villagers, what might be called the sociology of the village, much remains obscure, but much can be learned through analysis of the rolls of the manorial courts, which recorded not only enforcement of manorial obligations but interaction among the villagers, their quarrels, litigation, marriages, inheritance, sale and purchase of land, economic activities, and crimes.

Evidence suggests that village society everywhere was stratified into three classes. The lowest held either no land at all or too little to support a family. The middle group worked holdings of a half virgate to a full virgate. A half virgate (12 to 16 acres) sufficed to feed father, mother, and children in a good season; a full virgate supplied a surplus to redeem a villein obligation or even purchase more land. At the top of the hierarchy was a small class of comparatively large peasant landholders, families whose 40, 50, or even 100 acres might in a few generations raise them to the gentry, though at present they might be villeins.

A statistical picture of the pattern was compiled by Soviet economic historian E. A. Kosminsky, who analyzed the landholding information supplied by the Hundred Rolls survey of 1279 of seven Midland counties, including Huntingdonshire. He found that 32 percent of all the arable land formed the lord’s demesne, 40 percent was held by villeins, and 28 percent by freeholders. About a fifth of the peasantry held approximately a virgate and more than a third held half-virgates. A few highly successful families had accumulated 100 acres or more. In general, the size of holdings was diminishing as the population grew. Out of 13,500 holdings in 1279, 46 percent amounted to 10 acres or less, probably near the minimum for subsistence.

The Hundred Rolls data for Elton are in rough accord with the overall figures. The survey lists first the abbot’s holdings; then the tenants, their holdings and legal status, and their obligations to abbot and king.The abbot’s demesne contained the curia’s acre and a half, his three hides of arable land, his sixteen acres of meadow and three of pasture, his three mills, and the fishing rights he held on the river.

The list of tenants was headed by “John, son of John of Elton,” a major free tenant who held a hide (6 virgates, or 144 acres) of the abbot’s land, amounting to a small estate within the manor, with its own tenants: one free virgater and nine cotters (men holding a cottage and a small amount of land). Next were listed the abbot’s other tenants, twenty-two free men, forty-eight villeins, and twenty-eight cotters; and finally the rector and four cotters who were his tenants.

These 114 names of heads of families by no means accounted for all the inhabitants of the village, or even the male inhabitants; at least 150 other identifiable names appear in the court rolls of 1279-1300, representing other family members, day laborers, manorial workers, and craftsmen.

John of Elton—or “John le Lord,” as he is referred to in one court record—was the village’s aristocrat, though devoid of any title of nobility. His miniature estate had been assembled by twelfth-century ancestors by one means or another.  Of his hide of land, thirty-six acres formed the demesne. He owed suit (attendance) to the abbot’s honor court at Broughton, the court for the entire estate, as well as “the third part of a suit” (attendance at every third session) to the royal shire and hundred courts. His one free tenant, John of Langetoft, held a virgate “by charter” (deed), and paid a token yearly rent of one penny. Half a virgate of the hide belonged to the abbot “freely in perpetual alms.” The rest was divided among nine cotters (averaging out to eight acres apiece).

The abbot’s twenty-two other tenants listed as free in the Hundred Rolls survey held varying amounts of land for which they owed minor labor services and money rent ranging from four shillings one penny a year to six shillings. Among them were three whose claim to freedom was later rejected by the manorial court, an indication of the uncertainty often surrounding the question of freedom.


The forty-eight villeins of Elton—“customary tenants,” subject to the “custom of the manor,” meaning its labor services and dues—included thirty-nine virgaters and nine half-virgaters. Growth of population had turned some family virgates into half-virgates, a process that had advanced much farther elsewhere, often leaving no full virgaters at all. No Elton villein held more than a virgate, though land-rich villeins were a well-known phenomenon elsewhere.

Elton’s villeins performed substantial labor services, which were spelled out in detail in the survey, the half-virgaters owing half the work obligations of the virgaters. This work had a monetary value, and exemption could be purchased by the tenant, with the price paid going to pay hired labor.

Every “work,” meaning day’s work, owed by the villein was defined. One day’s harrowing counted as one work; so did winnowing thirty sheaves of barley or twenty-four sheaves of wheat; collecting a bag of nuts “well cleaned”; or working in the vineyard; or making a hedge in the fields of a certain length; or carrying hay in the peasant’s cart; or if he did not have a cart, hens, geese, cheese, and eggs “on his back.”


In 1286, sixteen of the forty-eight customary tenants had all their yearround works commuted to money payments, and owed only the special works at harvest time. From the annual fee paid by these tenants, called the censum (quit-rent), they were said to be tenants ad censum, or censuarii. The other customary tenants were ad opus (at work [services]) and were operarii.

Though such substitution of money payments for labor services was convenient for the villein in many ways, in other ways it was a disadvantage. Much, obviously, depended on the size of the payment. J. A. Raftis has calculated that the amount of the censum paid by a Ramsey Abbey villein was substantially larger than the total sum of the prices of his individual works. The Elton court rolls imply that it was not desirable to be placed ad censum, and in fact that tenants were so classed arbitrarily. In 1279 two villagers accused the reeve of “taking the rich off the censum and putting the poor on it,” apparently in exchange for bribes.

Land was not the only form of wealth. Few areas in the thirteenth century as yet put sheep- or cattle-raising ahead of crop farming, but many villagers owned animals. Information about village stock is scanty, but some has been gleaned from the records of royal taxes levied at intervals to finance war. Villagers were assessed on the basis of their livestock, grain, and other products.

M. M. Postan has extracted valuable information from the assessment record of 1291, including data on five Ramsey Abbey villages. Elton was not among the five, but the figures may be taken as broadly typical of the region. They show the average taxpaying villager owning 6.2 sheep, 4.5 cows and calves, 3.1 pigs, and 2.35 horses and oxen.

These figures do not mean that each villager owned approximately 16 animals. Exempt were the poor cotters who owned property worth less than 6 shillings 8 pence, about the value of one ox or cow. Furthermore, as Postan demonstrates, many taxpaying villagers owned no sheep, while a few rich peasants held a large fraction of the total village flock. Plow animals, cows, and pigs appear to have been distributed more evenly, though another scholar, speaking of England in general, asserts that “the bulk of the people owned no more working animals, cows, and sheep, than were necessary for their own subsistence.”

The Elton manorial court rolls of the early 1300s list numbers of villagers, mostly customary tenants with virgates, but also a few cotters, whose “beasts” or “draught beasts” had committed trespasses “in the lord’s meadow” or “in the lord’s grain.” In 1312 the beasts of twelve villagers grazed in the fields at a time prohibited by the village bylaws, or “trod the grain” of fellow villagers. A number of villagers are mentioned as having horses, many as having sheep or pigs.

12
Background / Medieval farming practices. pt 1
« on: March 08, 2013, 11:36:21 PM »
With the question of food production ect having been brought up, I thought I'd begin a thread to post excerpts dealing with it, either specifically or in general, from a book I have. "-Life in a Medieval Village-, Frances and Joseph Giles."

I appologise in advance not only for the size of the posts but also how uninteresting they'll likely be for most.


In the tenth century the first villages destined to endure appeared in Europe. They were “nucleated”—that is, they were clusters of dwellings surrounded by areas of cultivation. Their appearance coincided with the developing seigneurial system, the establishment of estates held by powerful local lords.

In the Mediterranean area the village typically clustered around a castle, on a hilltop, surrounded by its own wall, with fields, vineyards, and animal enclosures in the plain below. In contrast, the prototype of the village of northwest Europe and England centered around the church and the manor house, and was sited where water was available from springs or streams. The houses, straggling in all directions, were dominated by the two ancient types described by Tacitus, the longhouse and the sunken hut. Each occupied a small plot bounded by hedges, fences, or ditches.

Most of the village land lay outside, however, including not only the cultivated fields but the meadow, marsh, and forest. In the organization of cropping and grazing of these surrounding fields, and in the relations that consequently developed among the villagers and between the villagers and their lord, lay a major historical development.

Crop rotation and the use of fallow were well known to the Romans, but how the application of these techniques evolved into the complex open field village is far from clear. The theory that the mature system developed in Germany in the early Middle Ages, diffused to France, and was brought to England by the Anglo-Saxons has been exploded without a satisfactory new interpretation gaining consensus. In Anglo-Saxon England a law of King Ine of Wessex (late seventh century) refers to “common meadow and other land divided into strips,” and words associated with open-field agriculture turn up in many other laws and charters of the Saxon period.

Recent research has revealed common pasturing on the post-harvest stubble as early as the tenth century. Possible contributory factors in the evolution can be discerned. The custom of partible inheritance—dividing the family lands among children, or among male children—may have fragmented tenements into numerous small holdings that made pasturing difficult without a cooperative arrangement. A rising population may have promoted cooperation. The increasing need for land encouraged “assarting,” in which a number of peasant neighbors banded together to fell trees, haul out stumps, and cut brush to create new arable land, which was then divided among its creators. An assart, cultivated in strips, usually became a new “furlong” in the village field system. A strong and enlightened lord may often have contributed leadership in the enterprise.

What is clear is that a unique form of agrarian organization gradually developed in certain large regions. “On most of the plain of Northern Europe, and in England in a band running southwest from the North Sea through the Midlands to the English Channel, the land lay in great open stretches of field broken here and there by stands of trees and the clustered houses of villages.”  This was the “champion” country of open field cultivation and the nucleated village, in contrast to the “woodland” country of west and southeast England and of Brittany and Normandy.

In woodland country, farming was typically carried on in compact fields by families living on individual homesteads or in small hamlets. Neither kind of landscape was exclusive; hamlets and isolated farmsteads were found in champion country, and some nucleated villages in woodland country. In champion (from champagne, meaning “open field”) country an intricate system evolved whose distinctive feature was the combination of individual landholding with a strictly enforced, unanimous-consent cooperation in decisions respecting plowing, planting, weeding, harvesting, and pasturing.

Scholarly controversy over the beginnings of the system has a little of the chicken-and-egg futility about it. Somehow, through the operation of such natural forces as population growth and inheritance customs on traditional farming methods, the community organized its arable land into two (later often three) great fields, one of which was left fallow every year. Within each field the individual villager held several plots lying in long strips, which he plowed and planted in concert with his fellow villagers.

Common agreement was needed on which large field to leave fallow, which to plant in fall, which in spring. To pasture animals on the stubble after the harvest, an agreed-on harvest procedure was needed. Exploitation of the scarce meadow available for grazing was at least smoothed by cooperative agreement, while fencing and hedging were minimized. By the year 1200, the open field system had achieved a state of advanced if still incomplete development. Some degree of cooperation in cultivation and pasturage governed farming in thousands of villages, in England and on the Continent.

The broad surge, economic and demographic, that marked the eleventh century continued fairly steadily through the twelfth and thirteenth. Settlements—homesteads, hamlets, villages—were planted everywhere. The peasant villagers who formed the vast majority of the population cultivated wheat above all other crops, followed by rye, barley, oats, beans, peas, and a few other vegetables. Low and precarious crop yields meant that most available land had to be consigned to cereal, the indispensable staff-of-life crop. The value of manure as fertilizer was well understood, but so few animals could be maintained on the available pasture that a vicious circle of reciprocal scarcity plagued agriculture.

Yet there were notable improvements in technology. The heavy, often wet soils of Northern Europe demanded a heavier plow and more traction than the sandier soils of the Mediterranean region. The large plow that evolved, fitted with coulter and mouldboard and requiring several plow animals, represented “one of the most important agricultural developments in preindustrial Europe.”  It favored the open field system by strengthening the bias toward long strips.

The Romans had never solved the problem of harnessing the horse for traction. The padded horse collar, invented in Asia and diffusing slowly westward, was joined to other improvements—horseshoes, whippletrees, and traces—to convert the horse into a farm animal. Faster-gaited and longer-working, the horse challenged the strong, docile, but ponderous ox as a plow beast and surpassed it as a cart animal. One of the earliest representations of a working horse is in the Bayeux Tapestry (c. 1087).

The ox also profited from technical innovation in the form of an improved yoke, and refused to disappear from agriculture; his slow, steady pull offered advantages in heavy going. Indeed, the debate over the merits of the two traction animals enlivened rustic conversation in the England of Queen Victoria, though the horse slowly won ascendancy. The horse’s needs for fodder stimulated cultivation of oats, a spring crop that together with barley, peas, beans, and vetches fitted ideally into open field rotation. Stall-feeding became more prevalent, permitting more use of fertilizer, while the leguminous fodder crops restored nitrogen content to the soil.

The cooperative relationships of the peasants belonged to what might be called the village aspect of their existence; that existence also had a manorial aspect. In Northern Europe and in England following the Norman Conquest, the countryside came to be organized into land-management units called manors. The manor is usually defined as an estate held by a lord, comprising a demesne directly exploited by the lord, and peasant holdings from which he collected rents and fees. The village might coincide with the manor, or it might not. It might be divided into two or more manors, or it might form only part of a manor. The combination of demesne and tenants, a version of which dates back to the late Roman Empire, is first specifically mentioned in documents of the ninth century in northern France, and in the tenth century in central Italy and England. By the eleventh century it was well established everywhere.

It fitted comfortably into the contemporary political-military order known as feudalism. Evolving in medieval Europe over a lengthy period and imported to England by the Normans, feudalism united the European elite in a mutual-aid society. A lord granted land to a vassal in return for military and other services; lord and vassal swore reciprocal oaths, of protection by the lord, loyalty by the vassal; the vassal received as fief or fee a conditional gift of land, to “hold” and draw revenue from.

Older historians, including Marx, used the term feudalism for the whole medieval social order, a peasant society dominated by a military, land-owning aristocracy. Modern usage generally restricts the word to the network of vassal-lord relations among the aristocracy. The system governing the peasant’s relation to the lord, the economic foundation of medieval society, is usually designated the “manorial system.” Feudalism meant much to the lord, little to the peasant.

The relationships embodied in the feudal and manorial systems were simple enough in theory: In the manorial system, peasant labored for lord in return for land of his own; in the feudal system, lord held lands from king or overlord in return for supplying soldiers on demand. In practice the relationships were never so simple and grew more complicated over time. All kinds of local variations developed, and both peasant labor service and knightly military service were increasingly converted into money payments.

Whatever the effects of the two overlapping systems, they did not prevent villages from flourishing, until everywhere villages began to crowd up against each other. Where once the silent European wilderness had belonged to the wolf and the deer, villagers now ranged—with their lord’s permission—in search of firewood, nuts, and berries, while their pigs rooted and their cattle and sheep grazed. Villages all over Europe parleyed with their neighbors to fix boundaries, which they spelled out in charters and committed to memory with a picturesque annual ceremony. Every spring, in what were known in England as the “gang-days,” the whole population went “a-ganging” around the village perimeter. Small boys were ducked in boundary brooks and bumped against boundary trees and rocks by way of helping them learn this important lore.

A thirteenth-century European might be hazy about the boundaries of his country, but he was well aware of those of his village.

13
Background / Tournaments revisited
« on: December 11, 2012, 08:58:39 PM »

Although I've already posted something on Tournaments previously I nevertheless thought I'd visit the subject again, as while some of this near enough goes over the same stuff again it also gives more of an insight into what was actualy involved, insomuch as pageantry and rules ect.

Tournaments
The festival war games called tournaments first appear in the written records of Northern Europe around the year 1100.

Real wars were at a lull; the barbarian Vikings and Huns were no longer a problem, and the Hundred Years’ War between England and France had not yet begun. The First Crusade had been launched in 1095, but many knights had returned home, bored. Tournaments provided employment and entertainment for those not on Crusade. The object of a tournament was to capture, not kill, the opposing fighter. Losing knights paid ransoms to winning knights, which made tournament skill a possible source of income.

Since the time of Charlemagne, knights had sometimes staged mock battles for training. When there was no war, young knights had to be toughened up by facing danger and being injured. Tournaments made training into a sport. During the 12th and 13th centuries, the main feature was a large mock battle, the melee. Far more than any other sport, tournaments were violent and caused severe injuries. Knights went into the field as well armored as they were in battle, and although they often used blunt weapons, the violence was still savage.

Tournaments, unlike war, had strict rules. There were judges and heralds to register (or disqualify) all invited and uninvited participants. There were fenced zones where injured knights were safe from attack in a melee. These may have been originally called the lists, a word that later came to apply to the jousting field itself. It was a foul to aim for the other knight’s horse; the result was disqualification. One knight was chosen as a  field referee, called the chevalier d’honneur. His lance had a headscarf pinned to it, and he could go to any knight in distress and touch him with it, disallowing any further attacks. A melee could continue only until the president of the tournament, the official in charge, decided to throw down his warder as a signal to the heralds. Then the heralds’ trumpeters sounded retreat, and the fighting had to stop.

When a knight unhorsed his opponent, he claimed the loser’s armor and horse. The loser nearly always ransomed them back; if not, the winner could keep or sell the equipment. Ransoms were fixed in advance; the price rose with a knight’s rank. In this way, a poor but talented knight could become wealthy by playing the tournament circuit. Knights errant, who came from noble families that had lost their wealth and land, earned a living by jousting.

Tournaments were a very expensive game for those who were not as talented; the average knight only entered the lists to the point that he could afford the losses. The biggest loser in a tournament would be a highranking nobleman, such as a count or even a king, who was a poor contender and only incurred losses that cost him high ransoms.

Tournaments always offered prizes, paid for by the sponsor or by aristocratic spectators, usually ladies. The most common type of prize was an animal, such as a dog, a falcon, a bear, or even a sheep or a large fish. Tournament records also tell us that some prizes were gilded statues of animals like deer, falcons, or horses. It is possible that the ladies who sponsored the prizes acted as judges. The tournament always closed with a feast at which the winners were honored at the high table.

Knights who made a habit of attending most tournaments in a circuit across France, Flanders, and England traveled many miles with large retinues of servants and horses. When a band of knights traveled together, each with his spare horses, pack animals, squire, and other servants, the group was not only large but also rowdy. They were a notorious roadside hazard to other travelers, with whom they were too eager to get into quarrels. At times they robbed less powerful travelers. This tendency of knights to use their power too freely was a primary motivator of the code of chivalry, which insisted that they must never rob, rape, or bully a weaker party.

During the 12th century, the kings of England and France, and some other ruling lords, opposed tournaments as violations of their decrees of peace. Counts and princes who liked the danger and excitement of tournaments continued to sponsor and organize them, often at outlying fields on the border of two realms.

The “Young King” Henry, son of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, was a big sponsor and participant in international tournaments. He kept a team of knights as paid staff to fight in melees and paid the ransoms when they lost. Aggressive, free-spending aristocrats of this type made the tournament the first-ranked interest all across Northern Europe.

There were cases of bored knights in besieged towns or castles challenging the besieging army to a tournament outside the walls. In most cases, both sides respected the rules, and then went back to their war stations when it was over.

The church at first opposed tournaments as festivals of pride and vice and as opportunities to sin by killing, even accidentally. Some bishops excommunicated tournament participants, but wealthy knights bought their way back into grace by giving alms or donating land to the church. Tournaments were so popular among the nobles of England, France, and Germany that the church’s opposition made no difference. People loved tournaments, where courage and skill could be seen close up without the danger and confusion of a real war. By the time minstrels were circulating stories of the Virgin Mary disguising herself as a knight, moral opposition had no effect, and the church stopped opposing tournaments.

Aristocratic women came to tournaments as spectators. By the 12th century, their role in public had changed, and the new spirit of courtly love encouraged knights to fight better to impress the women. Ladies chose champions and gave favors and were prominent guests in the viewing stands. Some ladies learned to joust, and by the 14th century, when knights began to come in costumes, some ladies came costumed as men. Their clothing fashions were also influenced by heraldry ; the cotehardie often bore embroidered heraldic arms so that the ladies could attend the games dressed like modern sports fans, in team colors. A few bold ladies grew so infatuated with tournaments that they began traveling from one to the next, instead of attending only those closest to home.

Tournaments filled nearby towns with participants, spectators, merchants, craftsmen, and horse thieves. When a knight could find a house to rent, instead of staying in the field in his tent, his squire hung his banner or shield in the window of the rented rooms. Local castles and manors permitted friends and other participants to stay, and visiting kings generally stayed at these castles, rather than in tents. In the tournaments where towns served as headquarters for regional teams of knights, halls and kitchens were rented for receptions and feasts. There was usually a trade fair associated with a tournament, and merchants and craftsmen for tournament related business set up booths. Some armor makers became itinerant armor menders, following knights on the circuit. The event was also a big opportunity for local merchants to sell more food and other provisions.

The nature of tournaments changed during the five centuries when they were popular. Early tournaments of the 12th century had both single-combat challenges and a mock battle—the melee. In single-combat challenges, unhorsing the opponent meant victory and the right to claim a ransom. In the melee, the knights were assigned to opposing armies, and they charged each other at a given signal. Although the object was to capture opponents, many knights were seriously injured or killed in melees.

In early tournaments, the mock battle was not formalized or confined to the field at hand. A group of knights could veer off the field and chase into nearby woods or fields. These large mock battles brought out hundreds of knights, and some large 12th-century tournaments claimed to have more than 1,000 participants.

The 13th century may be considered the height of the tournament. Each event, now formalized with traditional rules, lasted about a week. The knights began with some days of practice jousting, and then held formal jousting challenges. While the original meaning of a joust was any kind of single combat with any weapons, by the 13th century it meant only the combat when knights rode against each other with lances. Fights could be to the death (or until injury or surrender), or they could be just for points, like a game. If the lances and swords were blunt, they were called “arms of courtesy.” After a day of rest and paying ransoms, the knights chose sides for a melee. The mock battle was held in a more restricted area, a field rather than the general countryside as in the previous century. The last day was for feasting, dancing, and minstrel performances.

In the late 14th century, tournaments began to have as much pageantry as warfare. In some English tournaments, the knights wore costumes onto the field. They fought as monks or even as cardinals.  At the opening day of another tournament, the knights paraded onto the field, each held with a silver chain and led by a lady on a horse. In a French tournament of the middle 15th century, the participants dressed as shepherds. There was a trend away from full armor and real weapons; some places ruled that only partial armor could be worn, and even squires could not bring so much as a dagger.

By the 15th century, tournaments had completely changed. There were no dangerous melees, and the single combats were very formal and stylized. Battlefield fighting no longer used lances, so training with a lance was only for a tournament. Armor had become very heavy, as it was made entirely from plates of metal. It was less necessary and more ceremonial, often covered with decorative etchings and used mostly in parades. Horses were larger and slower, and saddles were improved to the point that knights could not always be unhorsed. Knights rode against each other with a low wall, called the tilt, between them. Contestants won on style points given by judges.

14
Background / General Tactics 2 'The Battle of Arsuf'
« on: July 31, 2012, 05:17:05 PM »
Apologies in advance as this will be a heck of a long description.

pt/1

The Battle of Arsuf, 7 September 1191

The march from Acre to Jaffa, and the battle of Arsuf (22 August–7 September 1191) are outstanding feats of the crusades. They were also the last great triumph of the Christians in the Near East, and deserve special mention because at the time the Christians were fighting Saladin, a most formidable foe. He had united the various Moslem states under his rule into a powerful empire, able to produce greater armies than those which the crusaders had fought against in the First Crusade. In his earlier battles Saladin had annihilated the troops of king Guy of Lusignan near the lake of Tiberias, at Hattîn (4 July 1187) and then captured Jerusalem (2 October 1187).

We have excellent accounts of the battle of Arsuf by witnesses from both sides, giving details of every stage of the march and the battle. The terrain is known, and the site of the battle can be identified unhesitatingly.

The commander of the crusaders, king Richard I of England, was a soldier of very high quality. As far as strategy is concerned, he seems to have been a man of excellent judgement, prudent and wise. He took good care of his troops, did not ask too much of them on the march and kept a close watch on their material needs.

In the sphere of tactics he showed prudence and insight. He reacted quickly to his opponent's tactics by excellent ordering of his troops and the imposition of strict discipline on the march. He was not the man to be surprised by a quick-moving enemy, but always kept a good reserve, as a study of his French campaigns also shows. He waited calmly for the moment to strike from a favorable position, and was never incautious in the use of his troops, even in the moment of success.

But although he won victories as a tactician and strategist, and cared for his men, his personal courage bordered on recklessness. He was, without doubt, one of the bravest men involved in the Third Crusade, and this has made him a legendary figure, not only in the West but also to the enemy in the East. After the Crusade, during his campaigns in France, he repeatedly defeated Philip Augustus.

After the siege of Acre, Richard decided with typical determination to press on to Jerusalem. The most direct route from Acre to Jerusalem lay through the mountains of Ephraim, and was ill-suited to military operations. Another road followed the coast to Jaffa and thence to Jerusalem: this was preferable because the crusaders would have the use of alternative ports, which would greatly facilitate the movement of supplies brought up by merchants. During a march along the coast, the fleet would be able to provision them and cover their flank on the sea side. For the subsequent march to Jerusalem, which meant penetrating deeply into the interior, the Christians would have a suitable base on the coast. The port of Jaffa lay closest to their objective. The road along the coast was very good, probably an old Roman road through Haifa, Athlit, Caesarea and Arsuf.

This plan was doubtless the best, but it involved all sorts of difficulties. In a long flanking march along the coast, the crusaders had to advance through a region offering very little food and still less water in exceedingly hot weather. They were perpetually menaced by Saladin's army, which was naturally hoping to surprise the long column of crusaders. In order to protect themselves from such a threat, a large part of the crusaders' army was bound to leave the road, which made the march even more exhausting. Saladin could attack behind and before as well as on the flank.

15
Background / General Tactics.
« on: July 04, 2012, 10:10:13 PM »
With the subject of flanking tactics having been raised as a subject on the forum, I thought I'd begin posting a few pieces on tactics in general out of Verbruggens excellent "The Art of Warfare In Western Europe During in the Middle Ages".

I apologize in advance if this particular thread not only takes me a while to finish, but also if some of the sub sections pieces are overly long.



Battle Order pt 1
The battle of Hab, in 1119, gives an interesting example of battle order, fully described by a contemporary writer.

King Baldwin II of Jerusalem formed his armies as follows: the front line consisted of three detachments, each made up of a body of knights and a body of foot-soldiers, for mutual protection.

In the second line was the count of Tripoli with his vassals, but these troops were drawn up further to the right than the first line, thus broadening the front.  Robert Fulcoy, lord of Zerdana, was on the extreme left, with the knights from Antioch in several smaller formations. These formations also made up part of the second line, and extended the front leftwards.  In the third line came King Baldwin, with three detachments, which were drawn up behind the front line units.

                                                                        …... …...    …... …...   …... …...   (knights)

                                                                   === ===    === ===    === ===    (foot)


                                                       …. ….                                                               …. ….

                                            (Robert  Fulcoy)                                                  (Pons of  Tripoli)


                                                                      ….......       …..........      ...….....

                                                                                    (Baldwin II)


Thus the troops of Robert Fulcoy and Pons of Tripoli were able to perform a double task, first to broaden the front and to attack the enemy frontally or in the flank, and secondly to protect the flank of their own army.  Baldwin's battle order was just such as Leo the Wise of Byzantium had praised centuries earlier in his Taktika.  As in the advance of Ascalon, Delbrück would like to suppose that these troops were marching in narrow columns, which were first deployed at the start of the battle. But the source says nothing about this, and we have already shown that there is no advantage in it if the enemy's position is known and fighting can start at once.


Pages: [1] 2 3