Infantry - A Summary

It was by no means a new departure for English knights to fight on foot. To say nothing of the times before the Conquest, Henry I. won two victories with dismounted knights: Tenchebrai (1106) over his brother Robert, and Bremule (1119) over Louis VI. of France. At Tenchebrai he followed Robert’s example in making his knights dismount “ut constantius pugnarcnt,” but he kept a small body of French knights on horseback and posted them at some distance on his right, to charge the flank and rear of the enemy. At Bremule (according to Ordericus Vitalis) he dismounted 400 knights out of 500 in an open plain, and awaited the charge of the French knights, who as usual preferred to fight on horseback. They won some success at first, perhaps against Henry’s mounted detachment, but they could not break the men on foot ; many of their horses were killed, and the riders made prisoners ; the rest fled, including Louis himself. The Anglo-Norman knights remounted, and pursued them so vigorously that the French king was driven to take refuge in a wood, and his horse and banner were captured.

Again at the Battle of the Standard (1138) the EngHsh knights fought on foot, drawn up with the Yorkshire levies of spearmen and archers that had been brought together to check the Scotti.sh invasion. The Highlanders refused to let King David’s knights lead the way, and claimed the front place. Their wild rush made only a momentary impression on the armoured spearmen, and they bristled like hedgehogs, we are told, from the arrows of the archers. Their ardour was quenched, and  the Scottish army melted away to the rear, in spite of some success achieved by a small body of mounted knights.

Three years later, at the battle of Lincoln, Stephen fought on foot with the greater part of his knights and with the burghers of the city. He had two bodies of horsemen, but they were routed and driven off” the field, and the horse and foot of the two earls (Gloucester and Chester) then combined against the king’s corps, the foot charging it in front, while the horse fell upon its flanks and rear. After a stout resistance it broke up, many of the men seeking refuge in the city, and Stephen, who continued fighting by his standard, was overthrown and made prisoner.

Considering the weight of armour, it must have been a disagreeable necessity for knights to fight on foot. There seem to have been two motives for it : to encourage and stiffen bodies of less well-armed footmen which had been brought into the field, or to make a stand against an enemy to whom they were unequal as cavalry, either in numbers or quaUty. The French knights were said to be terrible on horseback, but little to be feared on foot. The Germans were described as unskilful horsemen, and better able to strike with the sword than to thrust with the lance, and it became recognised as a Teutonic custom to dismount in grave emergencies. But probably it was a question of horses rather than of men. Matthew Paris speaks of English knights being mounted ” in equis satis bonis, licet non Hispanis, vel Italicis, vel aliis preciosis.”  William the Conqueror had a Spanish charger, and the infusion of Arab blood made the horses of Southern Europe generally sought after ; but in England only the richest barons and knights could afford them. In the thirteenth century plate armour began to come into use, superseding mail. As it developed the weight to be carried by a barded war-horse increased, and became s omething over 25 sto ne. Flanders and the north of France produced the animals best suited to such heavy loads; they could not move rapidly for any distance, but men on lighter horses were at a great disadvantage in direct collision.

The coming of the Normans brought depression of the peasantry. A good deal of the land became the lord’s domain-land, and “churls” mostly saiak into “villeins,” serfs bound to the soil. Nevertheless, the divisions between classes were less sharp than in France. Between lords and villeins there were sokemen, who were freemen and freeholders in a limited sense; they served in the wars, and formed the yeoman class, described by Raleigh as “an order of men which generally have composed our better sort of foot soldiers, and with which few parts of the world besides England are acquainted.”  The Norman kings were not obliged or disposed to give their great vassals the independence and power which they enjoyed in France. William and his successors always had mercenary troops in their pay, which might be used against rebellious lords, and they encouraged the payment of scutage in lieu of military service as it furnished them with the means of hiring knights. Private war was restricted, and few nobles had strong castles except during the years of anarchy which preceded the rule of Henry II. The barons, when resisting aggressions of the crown, and the king, when upholding the royal authority, felt the need of help from the lower classes, and had to buy it by concessions. As time went on the status of the villeins improved, the services due from them to their lords were defined, they became well-to-do, and were able to commute their obligations for money which was readily accepted by lords bound on Crusades or distant expeditions. By the middle of the fourteenth century a large proportion of the peasantry had become hired labourers instead of villeins. There is a ring of good fellowship which would have seemed strange to a French prince in the speech of the Black Prince to his archers before the battle of Poitiers.

The armies which Edward III. led to France were national armies of paid soldiers. The drawbacks of feudal service had been keenly felt by Edward I. m his Welsh and Scottish wars. It yielded an ill-trained and undisciplined host which was not bound to remain more than forty days in the field. The twelfth century alternative, to accept scutage and hire foreign mercenaries, had been checked by Magna Carta, and could only be adopted on a small scale, as in the case of Gascon crossbowuien. The king might bargain with his vassals that they should furnish him with a reduced number of knights for an increased period, and so obtain a more useful force ; but this method did jiot prove sufficient, and Edward I. introduced thesystem of payment in spite of the opposition of the greater lords.i Of the 2400 men-at-arms which he took with him to Scotland in 1298, more than half were receiving wages from him.In the fourteenth century this developed into the indenture system, under which tEe king made contracts with certain leaders to furnish so many men at fixed rates of pay.