Part of a sub-chapter on the role of foot soldiers in medieval warfare.
3 Foot-soldiers versus Knights in Battle
It is not easy nowadays to piece together an accurate picture of medieval warfare, and to re-create the atmosphere of battle, but this must be done if we are to form an idea of the value of the foot soldiers in battle.
Early in the morning, about 6 a.m., the men were called to arms, usually by trumpet. Sometimes the tents were first struck, huts were pulled down, and camp broken. The men armed themselves, then attended mass or went to confession and took Holy Communion, for they never omitted spiritual preparation. Franciscan friars usually served as chaplains in the Flemish communal armies. The men were restless and nervous, thinking of the forthcoming battle: many of them had no appetite and ate almost no breakfast, often just bread dipped in wine.
The preparation of the troops, and getting them ready in battle order took a long time. By 8 or 9 o'clock they would be ready for battle, drawn up in closely packed ranks, practically shoulder to shoulder, though the men with the goedendags had to have plenty of room to move so that they could strike and stab. The pikemen with their pikes or long lances got ready to halt the cavalry attack. A pikeman was stationed next to each man armed with a goedendag, or the pikemen formed the first rank, the men with the goedendags the second.
It is very rare to find a reliable description of the mental state of soldiers before a battle. Nervousness, tension, fear and dread all create a psychological condition which may just as likely lead to a heroic and stubborn defence as to disgraceful and cowardly flight. The feeling that defeat meant total ruin was often decisive in successful defence. At Legnano in 1176, at Cortenuova in 1237, as at Courtrai in 1302, the foot-soldiers knew that they must win or die. In each of these apparently hopeless situations they conquered their fear and beat off the attack of the armoured cavalrymen successfully. Once this was done, they had the self-confidence to offer further resistance.
It is difficult for us to imagine how hard the foot-soldiers of those days were tested. To stand up to the medieval heavy cavalry charge was no child's play, for in the thirteenth century cavalry could approach the foot-soldiers with impunity to within a hundred meters, and it was sufficiently well protected to stand up to the defenders' rain of arrows while covering that distance as quickly as possible.
The iron-clad horsemen attacked in close formations, their horses flank to flank, which increased mutual confidence and swept the less brave along irresistibly. In flat open country they came on at 250 meters a minute at a trot, and almost twice that speed at a gallop. The defending crossbowmen thus had only 15–24 seconds in which to shoot, as the cavalry approached, and they were possibly so nervous that they shot too high or too low. The cavalry came on in such force, with heavy horses and armoured riders, that the shock could easily break the wooden shafts of the pikes. It has been calculated that ten riders were mechanically equal to a hundred foot-soldiers, and that a galloping rider was equal to ten foot-soldiers on the defensive. This theoretical calculation is valid only in those cases where the knights carried the charge through to the final terrible clash.
If the ranks of the foot-soldiers wavered a bit, the cavalrymen could drive their horses between the pikes into any little gap, instead of riding up on them. The physical strength of the foot-soldiers was not great enough to withstand the assault if it was carried through quickly and relentlessly, but the absolute immobility of the foot-soldiers made their front into a kind of hedgehog, and the cavalry only ventured between the pikes with the terrifying prospect of death.
Instead of breaking the pikes in the shock of attack, it often happened that the horses were killed by the stout steel points of the long weapons. The fall or death of the horse threw the knight hard to the ground, right in front of the foot-soldiers or even in their ranks. Worse still, the rider was often pinned under his horse, or had to reckon with the long weapons of the foot-soldiers. Nothing but the strength of the foot-soldiers' morale could stand up to the attackers' brute force.
Such a charge took place amid deafening noise. The enemy blew trumpets to herald the attack and to encourage the troops. The horses became excited and whinnied. The shrill notes of the trumpets demoralized the foot-soldiers: many of them felt their heart beat faster, and almost everyone at such a moment would have preferred to be anywhere but on that terrible field of battle. Only the most experienced could remain unmoved by the hellish din. In the words of the French foot-soldier Guiart: 'Drums and trumpets boom, if you are not used to these things, you would soon be frightened.'
The enemy knights shouted their battle cry to terrify their opponents and to bolster up their own courage, hoping up to the very last moment that the foot-soldiers would abandon their position and take to their heels in panic. The horses were naturally not at all willing to break into the ranks of the foot-soldiers and ride them down. But out of a sense of duty, from courage, a high concept of personal or corporate honour, or simply because the others were doing it and one had to behave like a brave man, the cavalry forced their warhorses to charge. This was best done in a group at a quick trot, or rather more slowly if there was any hesitation, and the horses, who immediately sensed it, had slackened their pace.
In any case, even if some of the knights did not carry on the charge to the utmost, a terrible shock followed. This came with a hellish din when the armoured formations charged a wall of foot soldiers, exactly as when two knightly armies met each other. 'Four hundred carpenters would not have made so much noise.' 'They closed in with such force that the clash of weapons and the din of blows made the air ring, just as though trees in the forest were being cut down with innumerable axes.' 'The fighters were like woodcutters, chopping down the trees of a forest.' 'The din was so frightful that one could not have heard even God's thunder.' 'It was as if all the smiths in Brussels and Bruges were striking their anvils.'
Yet the frightful noise of the battle was merely a minor part of the atmosphere. Far more terrible was the fact that men saw their comrades fall, trampled by enemy warhorses, or felled by the lances of the knights. Some men fell dying, others were more or less seriously wounded and their blood stained the ground or the grass on which they fought. Fighting with heavy weapons was extremely fatiguing. The men wore very heavy clothing or some kind of protective equipment, and had to lift the pike or goedendag with both hands in order to bring the iron head down on the warhorses, aiming at the legs, head, or belly of the animals. The tremendous blows resounded fiercely on the helmets or metal plates of the knights. Every man was put through a terrible trial.
In the most favourable situation—that is when the foot-soldiers were greater in number than the cavalry, and in the mêlée two or three foot-soldiers could tackle each knight—the knights who had broken into the ranks were mercilessly slaughtered. Horses were brought down, the riders fell, and before they could get up again, or could scramble free from under their chargers, it was often too late. In such a case the fighting might go on for a long time, but the knights' fate was sealed: they were doomed.
This was not always the case however. Sometimes the knights entrusted the task of holding the enemy in check in front to their own foot-soldiers, perhaps reinforced by dismounted noblemen, as happened at Westrozebeke in 1382. Then heavy cavalry units attacked the enemy foot-soldiers on the flanks and in the rear, so that the flanks of the foot-soldiers were hurled back, and they lost a great deal of their room to manoeuvre. The men who were attacked on their unprotected flank had to form a new front hastily, which was not always an easy thing to do. If the cavalry were successful in keeping up the attacks, they pressed the men on the flanks up against those in the centre. They then had too little room to move, and could not easily use their weapons. The more successful the cavalry were, the more they went on charging, and the more tightly they crushed the foot-soldiers together.
After the battle of Westrozebeke the body of Philip van Artevelde was found, and it showed no wound. He had been crushed in the tightly packed mass of the men of Ghent. The same thing occurred in the Scottish army at the battle of Dupplin Moor in 1332, when their foot-soldiers had gone out to attack, but were held in check in front and then were attacked on both flanks by English archers. The Scots on the flanks were driven in toward the centre to such an extent that more men perished by being crushed to death than were killed by arms.
This general picture of a fight between foot-soldiers and armoured cavalry would naturally show different features from battle to battle. As remarkable examples of pure tactics of foot-soldiers, let us now turn to a brief discussion of the two important battles of Courtrai and Mons-en-Pévèle, and a less important but nevertheless interesting battle of Arques. They give an excellent picture of the possibilities and limitations of the tactics of the Flemish foot-soldiers.
NB I'll attempt cover one of those in a later post.
