Infantry - A Summary

Such considerations as these, together with his previous experience at Halidon Hill, led Edward III. to make his Knight s dismount, when he turned to offer battle to Philip of Valois at Crecy (1346).’ Hejiad about 4000 cavalry, but nearly half of these were ” hobelars,” light-armed men mounted on little nags : and of the men-at-arms only one-fourth were ” knights ” in the restricted sense which the word had reached by that time. The rest were variously described as squires, sergeants, &c. In Philip’s army there were 12,000 men-at-arms, of whom two-thirds were “gentils gens,” and about 60,000 foot, mainly communal troops, but including 6000 Genoese crossbowmen and other mercenaries. The English army was under 20,000 men all told, but there were 10,000 archers, of whom one-fourth were mounted.

To make up for the disproportion of numbers an advantageous position was chosen between Crecy and Wadicourt, fronting south-cast. The right flank was covered by the forest of Crecy. There was a shallow valley in front, and in rear there was a small wood, by the side of which the king caused a park to be made, “and there was set all carts and carriages, and within the park were all their horses, for every man was afoot ; and into this park there was but one entry.” i The men-at-arms were formed in three “battles” with corps of archers, as_ at Halidon Hill ; that of the Prince of Wales was in front, that of Lord Northampton (rather weaker than the others) was in immediate support “on a wing,” and that of the king was in reserve on higher ground. Thus they were in echelon right in front.

At the battle of Bouvines (1214) the French cavalry were told  “One knight should not make another his shield; draw up so that all the knights may be in the front line.”  It seems likely that this was the general rule, and that at Crecy (as at Agincourt) the English men-at-arms were four deep. Behind them there would be hobelars, and other men less well armed, ” rascals that went afoot with great knives,” Welsh or Irish. Villani says that the English, when fighting on foot, formed a compact body, almost round (like a Scottish schildron), and that each lance was held by two men. An eighteen-foot lance was unwieldy for a single man on foot, but the common practice was to cut it down to a length of five feet, that dimension referring no doubt only to the part in front of the hand-grip.

According to Giraldus Cambrensis, the South Welsh, especially the men of Gwent, excelled in archery. They had bows of elm so stout that they would serve for cudgels, and could send the point of an arrow through a three-inch door.i It became a rule in later days that the length of a bow should equal the archer’s reach with his arms outstretched, and Welshmen are abnormally long in the arm. Three hundred Welsh archers formed part of the first expedition to Ireland ; and the secret of success in Irish warfare, Gerald says, lay in mixing archers with the troops of knights. The spear was the weapon of the men of North Wales. The South Welsh were Edward’s allies, and in the first war against Llewelyn (1277) there were special corps of sagittarii nearly all of whom came from Gwent.

At Falkirk (1298) five-sixths of the foot in Edward’s army were Welsh. They numbered more than 10,000 men. Falkirk was a repetition of Hastings. y’allace’s horsemen and light troops were soon driven away, and the solid rings or ” schlldrons ” of his spearmen were at length demoralised and broken by the combined action of the English heavy cavalry and archers. At Bannockburn  a much larger English army hough its numbers must have been vastly exaggerated by the chroniclers  was less skilfully handled and met with disaster. The Scottish and English accounts differ, and may be best reconciled by supposing that Baker describes what took place on the English right, Barbour what occurred on the left. On the right, then, the English cavalry advanced along the Roman road with bogs on either side of them, and floundered into the pits or trenches which the Scots had dug in front of their position covered with grass and brushwood. The archers whom they had left behind, were brought up to help them, but did more harm than good ; for being in rear instead of on a flank, most of their arrows fell short of the enemy and wounded their own horsemen. On the left there was firmer ground, and there the archers were thrown out on the flank, after crossing the burn, to prepare and support the advance of the knights. But they were rolled up and swept away by a well-timed charge of a small body of light horsemen.

At Halidon Hill (1333) the tables were turned. Edward III. was besieging Berwick ; the Scots marched to its relief, and were obliged to be the assailants. Adopting a plan which had proved successful the year before at Dupplin Muir, Edward made his knights dismount, and formed them in three bodies or ” battles ” with wings of archers. The archers were posted in marshy ground which probably secured them from direct attack. The Scots were blinded by the rain of arrows as they advanced, and though they began to mount the slope on which the men-at-arms were drawn up, their courage failed, and they fled. Edward remounted his men and pursued them for several miles. The chronicler says: “Ibi didicit a Scotis Anglorum generosilas dextrarios reservare venacioni fugienciuin et contra antiquatum morem suorum patruni, pedes pugnare.”

In England armies had passed through the same changes as in France, but the soil was less congenial to feudalism. Jutes and Anglo-Saxons came over in bands from different districts, and were only by slow degrees amalgamated into a nation. The Britons were mostly driven westward, instead of forming a subject population. The “folk” of each tribe controlled its affairs, and imposed restrictions on the right of private war. For war with other tribes, or defence against a foreign enemy, there was a general levy, the ” fyrd.” ” The folk-moot was in fact the war-host, the gathering of every freeman of the tribe in arms. . . . But the strength of an English army lay not only in these groups of villagers. Mingled with them were the voluntary war bands that gathered round distinguished chiefs.” ^ These bands of retainers were better equipped and more serviceable than the men of the fyrd, and superseded it in the time of stress caused by the inroads of the Norsemen. The sufferings of the people added to the power of the kings, who gave grants of land to their companions or ” thegns,” subject to the obligation of military service. The larger landlords made similar grants to their ” cnihts ” ; ‘^ sometimes weapons were provided as well as land. In Alfred’s time it was enacted that all owners of 5 hides of land. In England “knight” came to stand for the highest class of soldiery, while in Germany it dropped down to campfollowers. The knight was miles, not cqucs, while his equivalent abroad was ” Ritter ” or ” chevalier.” (probably 600 acres) should be reckoned as thegns and bound to thegn service, while smaller owners must combine to furnish an armed man for every 5 hides.

In England as in France, danger led the smaller land^ owners tojlace themselves under the protection of greater men, and to take an oath of fealty pledging themselves to be faithful and true, to love all that their lord loves and eschew all that he eschews.* The overlords took a similar oath to the king, and the king looked to them to bring the due number of armed men into the field. In this way something very like the feudal system was to be found in England before the Conquest, but it was developed by William I., who made grants to his followers on feudal tenure, and fixed the number of knights they were to furnish without much regard to hidage, by units of five or ten. The feudal force of England a century after the Conquest is estimated at 5000 knights.