pt2
This is hardly the place to analyse at length the great European expansion of the period 1000–1300. The simplest evidence of it was the growth of cities, which was much commented on by contemporaries. The development of trade produced new classes of people and new kinds of wealth. A major consequence was the burgeoning diversity of European society. The famous characterization of European society as divided between those who fight, those who pray and those who labour was formulated in the early eleventh century and was visibly inadequate by the mid-twelfth century. John of Salisbury described the amazing diversity of his world, which included the townspeople who Henry II’s Assize of Arms of 1181 recognized as a distinct social category.
What has been called the “monetary explosion” of the eleventh century had a deeply unsettling effect on Western society, creating a new fluidity as society became richer. This enabled those who controlled the new wealth, the kings and nobility, to protect themselves better than ever before. In so far as there was innovation, this was its motor, for the idea of technical innovation was not yet strong enough and the educational underpinning for it emerged only slowly.
This narrow view of the purpose of technology had profound effects on warfare. The crossbow was an effective weapon but its development seems to have been slow and it was rarely deployed en masse. Richard I, quite exceptionally, used large numbers at Arsuf, to deadly effect. Mounting crossbowmen enhanced their mobility and with it the firepower of patrols and strike-forces, and they were commonly used in this role from the time of Philip Augustus onwards. But, generally, the weapon never reached its full potential, and seems to have been most effectively deployed in sieges.
This was partly a matter of expense, a reluctance to spend on mere foot. Partly, it was a consequence of ambivalent attitudes: at the siege of Rochester John wanted to hang the garrison but was persuaded to spare all but the crossbowmen. Richard I on his deathbed spared the life of the crossbowman whose quarrel mortally injured him, but his intimates nevertheless butchered him. But there was a further cause of the slow development and deployment of this useful weapon. There was no forum in which to develop weapons. Warfare was episodic and there were no permanent staffs to form intellectual centres: the “Twelfth-century Renaissance” bred no academies of war, for war already had its elite, who felt no need to give way to any new forces.
By the end of the twelfth century, powerful monarchies were acquiring arsenals and these must have been busy places in times of war. Their very existence must have stereotyped arms and armour to a degree. But there was no marriage of thought and technology, so that advance remained piecemeal and by individual experiment. In these circumstances, new ideas would have been diffused only slowly and unevenly. In this way, the conservatism of a social elite slowed military development, and it was in areas where expertise was most needed and theirs most lacking that technology made its greatest impact – on military architecture and poliorcetic.
The slow development of technology had other effects on the conduct of war. Supply was always a major constraint on the size and movement of armies. William the Conqueror made a very cautious and entirely unopposed approach to London in 1066, but his army became desperately short of supplies on the way. At Flarchheim on 27 January 1080, Henry IV was victorious in battle, but was unable to follow up his victory because the Saxons had sacked his camp, and he had to retreat. In 1097, William Rufus’s attack on Wales was frustrated by guerrilla tactics that prevented his army from foraging and thus forced a retreat, and the same happened to Henry II in 1165. Richard went to great trouble to guard his supply lines during the Third Crusade.
St Louis made the most elaborate preparations to feed his army for his attack on Egypt, creating what was virtually a logistic base on the island of Cyprus: ultimately, his army was destroyed not by enemy victory but by the cutting of his communications with Damietta – without food he had to surrender. Philip III was equally careful in stockpiling provisions for his attack on Aragon in 1285, but he faced retreat in desperate conditions of starvation when the enemy cut him off from secure access to his bases.
The basic necessity of an army was food, and in the context of the age this meant bread: even at a moment when the First Crusade was blessed with plentiful supplies of meat, Raymond of Aguilers commented on the lack of bread. The technology of food preservation was not highly advanced: grain would have been the most durable form in which to carry this staple, but that would have meant carrying waste husk and some kind of milling equipment. Flour saved weight but was very liable to go off. In any case, both are bulky and bulk transport was limited by the available technology.
The basic measure of food which we need to take into account is that a man living a fairly active life needs about 1 kg of bread (or the calorific equivalent) to feed him per day. Packhorses could carry 100–150kg, enough to feed 150 men for a day, so a force of 3,000 would need 140 horses for a single day’s food. Each horse takes up about 2.5m of road, so that in single file they would be strung out along 350m of road. However, if the 3,000 men included cavalry, the warhorses would need fodder, because except at the most favourable times of the year they could not fend for themselves without losing condition: in the German army of 1914 the ration was 11 kg of grain and fodder per day for a horse.
The advantage of pack animals was that they could go almost anywhere: in Byzantine times the road system of Asia Minor included stepped roads which clearly could not carry wheeled vehicles, and it is likely that the preserved stretch of road from Antioch to Aleppo was intended for pack use, because it is not scored by wheels. The army of the First Crusade certainly had carts when it travelled across Europe: Peter the Hermitis force had a train a mile long, but these seem to have been abandoned in Asia Minor. The French army on the Second Crusade was also dependent upon pack animals. Since these were some of the best roads available, the advantages of this form of portage are evident, but so, equally, are the drawbacks. Pack animals cannot carry large or awkward objects, their packs need careful balancing and they must be emptied at night. They also need to be fed, and so consume much of their carrying capacity.
