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Tactical Units in Knightly Warfare
In order to lessen the danger for the individual, to give him confidence in battle, to carry out an effective charge and also go into action in tactical units, the formations of knights were in closely serried ranks. It's already been shown how Ambroise and Guillaume Guiart, the one late in the twelfth century and the other early in the fourteenth, described the advance of the knightly units. Both chroniclers were eyewitnesses, and had a sound knowledge of methods of warfare of their time. Ambroise gave us several fine examples, and it is hard to resist the temptation to quote another good extract:
There were many units,
The most beautiful Christian warriors
That ever saw the people of the earth.
They were serried in ranks
As if they were people forged in iron
The battle line was wide and strong
And could well sustain fierce attacks;
And the rearguard was so full
Of good knights that it was difficult
To see their heads,
If one was not higher up;
It was not possible to throw a prune
Except on mailed and armoured men.
And in the Chanson d'Antioche we read:
And the other units of the Frankish family
March serried and in step.
The princes lead them on their lively chargers,
There is no space open where a glove can fall to earth.
Even the chansons de geste which are naturally inclined to relate the individual heroic deeds of the great lords, are here close to the accounts of eyewitnesses. The same image of the apple or glove thrown in the air is used over and over again:
Their units advance towards them in serried ranks;
If you throw a glove over their helmets
It would not land within a mile.
And:
The barons are so closely packed as they advance
That if you throw a glove on their helmets
It would not fall to ground within a mile.
Even between the formations of knights, advancing beside each other on the same front, there were sometimes only small spaces. When a formation is especially well drawn up, in order to make a surprise attack on the enemy, it advanced like the detachment of duke Girart de Fraite in the Chanson d' Aspremont:
They advanced secretly through a valley.
He had seventeen hundred men with him.
He led them in such close formation
That the wind could not blow between their lances.
Allowing for poetic exaggeration, the fact remains that the units were so closely packed that the horses were touching each other in formation.
An excellent narrative source explains why the cavalrymen were formed up so closely. In 1180 king Amalric wanted to relieve the fortress of Darum in the kingdom of Jerusalem, which was being besieged by Saladin. It describes how the king acted in order to break the enemy lines: 'Our army observed the enemy camp. Terrified because they were so powerful, our men began to draw closer together, as they had been trained to do, indeed so closely that they could scarcely carry out an attack because of the mass. The enemy fell upon them at once, and tried to force them apart … but our men… were too tightly packed. They fought off the enemy attack and continued their advance deliberately.
By means of this dense formation, which made a charge very difficult, king Amalric broke through the besieging army and liberated the beleaguered fortress. Here it is explicitly stated that the very dense formation was used for fear of the enemy, and this shows that our analysis of the psychology of the knight is borne out by the statements of contemporaries. But at the same time the chronicler points out that in this case the formation was too dense, and made the charge more difficult: nevertheless, this density enabled the army to make stouter resistance to the attacks of the enemy, who tried vainly to break it up.
The importance of such descriptions of battle-order can scarcely be over-emphasized. If an advance in very close order is the ideal to be aimed at, and is indeed achieved as far as possible, then it follows that duels and individual combats are out of the question. They became, in fact, increasingly difficult as the ranks were more tightly packed. These formations are a complete negation of the so-called duels, of which a battle between two knightly armies was supposed to have consisted.
Closely drawn-up units are encountered in the tournaments as they were described in the Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal. They are also found in the battles at Acre and Arsuf during the Third Crusade, in the battles of Bouvines, Worringen and Mons-en-Pévéle, and in most of the narrative sources. It has been shown elsewhere that the chronicles are clear on this point. All the sources written in the vernacular and quoted above—Ambroise, the Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, Villehardouin, Robert de Clari, Joinville, Guiart, and many other chroniclers—mention conrois, banners, batailles and échelles. Knights in conrois, échelles or batailles fight on nearly every battlefield. The close similarity of the technical terms—bataille, battaglia, bataelge; eschiele, scara, scare, schiere; conrois and conroten—shows that they have a common origin and that they were widely spread over western Europe. The Germanic origin of the words indicates that tactical units had been used for a long time.
In small units the vassals wore the insignia of their lord, if he was rich and powerful enough to maintain them in his retinue. When William the Marshal belonged to the retinue of the chamberlain of Tancarville, he wore a shield with the device of his lord: 'Sis escuz est de Tankarvile' In 1176 Raymond le Gros had a retinue of some thirty kinsmen with shields of one pattern in Ireland. A while later the coat of arms was introduced.
His horse was covered with iron
On it was placed a cloth of blue silk
With golden flowers of the arms of the king
Of France, the whole unit bore the same.
