Choice and exploitation of terrain
Choosing the most suitable terrain for a battle was naturally an important matter for a medieval commander. He had to consider the lie of the land and the composition of his army, since a place might be ideal for cavalry but quite unsuitable for foot-soldiers, or vice versa.
Giraldus Cambrensis discussed this very sensibly in describing the differences between tactics in France, Wales and Ireland.
'Although the French cavalry are excellent', he says, 'and well versed in the arts of war, they used methods very different from those employed in Wales or Ireland. In France they choose fields or flat country, in Wales or Ireland difficult or rugged places and forests. Fighting is an honorable occupation in France, but here it is a heavy burden: sheer strength triumphs there, but agility here. Over there they take prisoners, here they are beheaded: there they are ransomed, but here they are killed. Where military formations are fighting in open country, knights are both protected and decorated by heavy and complicated armour, made of iron and linen. But if they have to fight in a confined space, or in wooded or marshy country, where foot-soldiers can fight better than cavalry, light armour is much more suitable. Against these unprotected men (from Ireland) who almost invariably win or lose in the first assault, much lighter weapons suffice. Where a highly mobile army is fighting in a confined or rugged area, it is only necessary to have a few heavy and medium-weight troops make a flexible attack in order to get the enemy confused. Complicated armour and high curved saddles make it difficult to dismount, and it is even harder to remount. Also, it is much more exhausting to fight on foot if one has to.'
Several centuries earlier, the author of the Strategikon had already noticed this in the Frankish cavalry. Since they were used to charging with their lances in their hands, they needed flat ground, and could not fight so well in a small space or on uneven ground. Of his own army, he wrote that his cavalry was best on flat ground in open country, his foot-soldiers in wooded country.
The crusaders also chose spacious and open country for their battles. Twelve battles which Heermann was able to study took place in flat open country. The Turks also needed this sort of country to let their mounted archers manoeuvre and encircle the Western cavalry.
The crusaders had to solve the important problem of protecting their flanks. In the battle of the Lake of Antioch they chose a confined space in which both flanks were supported by impassable obstacles. During the great sortie from Antioch itself they protected their left flank by placing it against the hills. The deployment of these forces was not yet complete when the Turks outflanked this formation, and a hastily collected force was able to put the enemy to flight.
Baldwin of Boulogne set out for Jerusalem in 1100 to follow in the footsteps of his dead brother, Godfrey of Bouillon, with a little force of 160 knights and 500 foot-soldiers. Originally his army had consisted of 200 knights and 700 foot-soldiers, but when these soldiers heard that the enemy was likely to intercept them, many of them went no further. The coast road from Tripoli to Beirut was constricted at the river Nahr al-Kalb into a narrow pass between the sea and the mountains, where a hundred men were enough to hold the pass against a larger force, by the forces of Duqaq, ruler of Damascus, and his ally the emir of Homs.
An enemy squadron was ready at sea to hinder Baldwin's retreat. When Baldwin's scouts approached the bottleneck, they espied Turkish scouts and realized that a stronger force lay in ambush further on. They sent a message to their commander who at once got his troops into battle-order and ordered the first section to advance. This formation attacked the enemy, but soon found that it was impossible to break through their lines. Baldwin stopped the fight at nightfall, pitching his tents as close as possible to the enemy. 'We pretended to be brave, but were in fear of death. It was hard to stay there, but even worse to retreat: we were besieged on all sides by the enemy. They were threatening us from the sea, and from the hills they were pressing down on us. We had neither food nor rest that day, nor any drink for our beasts. How much rather would I have been in Chartres or Orléans!' says Fulcher, who was there as Baldwin's chaplain.
They spent the night outside their tents, wide awake. In the morning Baldwin decided to lure the enemy from their position in order to attack them in a place where the cavalry would have the advantage. The little army set off with the baggage animals, the knights forming the rearguard to protect the baggage and the foot-soldiers. He withdrew to a small plain, where he hoped to be able to deal with the enemy decisively. His enemies had wanted to attack him first by night but this plan had not worked.
Then they thought of surrounding the Christian army completely by occupying a pass in its rear. They harassed the flanks of the Christians along the sea, and attacked Baldwin's troops from the mountains and the road. Nevertheless, the crusaders managed to reach the little plain. There the knights suddenly faced about, couched their lances and charged in close formation. The shock was so tremendous that the enemy was halted and thrown back to the narrow pass. There was the utmost confusion in the Turkish ranks: some made for the ships, others fled to the mountains, the rest poured through the pass in full retreat. They made no further effort to stop the crusaders.
It was his clever use of terrain which secured this victory. Tancred provides us with a similar example at Tizin on 20 April, 1105. There was a battle between the Norman armies and Ridwan, ruler of Aleppo. Between the two armies lay a rocky plain, on which horses could not move faster than a walking-pace, and even so, many were injured and fell. Tancred knew this and waited on the far side of the plain in order induce the enemy to attack. Ridwan advanced over this difficult country and fell into the trap. Tancred opened the battle with his first formation, which checked the enemy and brought him to a standstill. Then the Norman commander led a counter-attack himself. The enemy withdrew a little in the hope of being able to employ his favorite tactics. But it was too late: the Turks were overtaken and crushed. Their foot-soldiers had already advanced further and had reached the crusaders' camp, but after the flight of the cavalry they were mercilessly cut to pieces by Tancred's men.
There are other examples of this clever exploitation of terrain. At Thielt William Clito made use of a hill to defeat his enemy with a hidden reserve. At Arsuf, Saladin's armies attacked the crusaders' armies under Richard I in a wide plain which admirably suited his encircling tactics. They advanced out of a great wood, which allowed them to surprise the enemy and which made pursuit exceedingly difficult for their opponents in the case of retreat.
In each of these battles it can be seen how the commanders tried to get an advantage from the nature of the terrain in order to force the enemy into an awkward position. Again, King Philip Augustus of France left Tournai in 1214 to seek a suitable battle-ground where he could better deploy his knightly formations, at Bouvines.
While the knights sought wide open country for fighting, the foot-soldiers naturally chose country in which armoured cavalry could not charge. Giraldus Cambrensis has already been quoted on this subject, describing how the Welsh and Irish fought against this sort of cavalry. At Hastings the English took up a position on a ridge which was very favourable for the foot-soldiers against the cavalry and archers of William the Conqueror; the forest behind their position would facilitate a retreat. Every victory of the footsoldiers in the early fourteenth century was won on ground that was very difficult for knights, such as Courtrai, Bannockburn, Morgarten, and Vottem. At Cortenuova the Lombard foot-soldiers were placed behind a ditch, with their rear protected by the village.
Jean le Bel, who gave such an excellent account of the campaign of 1327, also gives very interesting examples of the use of terrain. The Scots had chosen a position on the slope of a hill behind a brook, at such a distance from the water that the English could get part of their troops across but could not properly manoeuvre on the far side. The rocky nature of the ground was extremely unfavourable to the knights, who dared not risk an attack. Four days later, the Scots chose another position, once more on a hill and behind a river, but better than the first one. Their troops camped in a wood so that they could move off unseen when the command came.
The Welsh selected similar sites. At Orewin Bridge, in 1282, they took up position on a steep hill behind the bank of the river Yrfon, accessible only by a bridge which was blocked by their pikemen, who were nevertheless out of range of arrows from the further bank. In 1295, at Maes Moydog near Conway they stood on the slope of a hill, above the road between two woods into which they could withdraw if an enemy attack were successful. During the conquest of Ireland, at the Dinin in 1168, the knights lured the Irish foot-soldiers out of a secure position by a feigned flight and then defeated them soundly in open country.
In general, the Flemings could not reckon on terrain as favourable as the Welsh, Scots and Swiss, but they exploited the advantages of brooks and ditches with considerable cunning. In September 1302, at Flines, they did as they had done at Courtrai, and again in 1304 a few days before the battle of Mons-en-Pévèle. In each case the French king had the sense to delay his attack.
At Falkirk and at Bannockburn the Scots derived great advantage from the lie of the land, as we have seen. If the position of the foot-soldiers was far enough behind the water, and the enemy knights were allowed to cross this obstacle, then the foot-soldiers could fall on the enemy when only part of their forces had crossed. In that case, a large proportion of the enemy cavalry could be annihilated while the obstacle was behind them and the rest were powerless to help. This is just what happened at Stirling Bridge in Scotland in 1297, and demonstrates the great importance of the choice and exploitation of terrain for a battle.
