Infantry - A Summary

According to Baker of Swynbrook, the archers were placed, not in front of the men-at-arms, but at the sides of the king’s army, like wings, so that they might not get in the way of the men-at-arms, nor meet the enemy face to face, but discharge their arrows at his flanks. Similarly a Valenciennes chronicler says that King Edward “ne fist que deux batailles d’archiers a deux costes en la maniere d’un escut ; et au milieu d’eulx se tenoit le prince de Galles.”  Froissart, on the contrary, says of the Prince’s “battle” that the archers were placed in front in the form of a “herse,” and the men-at-arms at the back. He mentions that in the course of the fight some of the French knights went round the archers, and others broke through them, and fought hand to hand with the Prince’s men-at-arms. King Philip would gladly have done the same, but there was such a great hedge of archers and men-atarms in front that he could not.

Sir John Smythe, who wrote when archers were still to be seen in the field, and described how they were drawn up by “our most skilful and warlike ancestors,” helps us to reconcile these conflicting statements. He says they were formed ” into hearses  that is broad in front and narrow in flank, as for example if there were 25, 30, 35, or more or fewer archers in front, the flanks did consist but of seven or eight ranks at the most. . . . They placed their hearses of archers either before the front of their armed footmen, or else in wings upon the corners of their battles, and sometimes both in front and wings.”  A contemporary plate of the battle of Pinkie (1547) shows the archers extended across the whole front of the three corps which are advancing to attack the Scots. George Monk, writing during the Civil War, shows how musketeers forming wings to a body of pikemen should be moved forward and spread out across its front for more eft’ective fire. We may conclude that the archers at Crecy were formed by companies of 100 men in oblongs not more than eight men deep, with open ranks and files, that their normal position was on the flanks of the men-at-arms and a little in advance of them, but that they may also have formed a continuous screen in their front, at all events at the beginning of the action. Shallow pits were dug in front of the line of battle, and would give the archers some protection from charging horsemen. ‘

It was late in the afternoon when the French army came up, but the impetuosity of the lords, each eager to be foremost, disregarded Philip’s orders to halt. The Genoese crossbowmen were sent forward, weary from a long march, and their bowstrings wet from rain, for they could not be taken off’ and put under cover like the string of the longbow. As they came on they gave great shouts at intervals to scare the English, and when they reckoned themselves within range they shot fiercely; but their bolts fell short. ” Then the English archers stept forth one pace and let fly their arrows so wholly and so thick that it seemed snow. When the Genoese felt the arrows piercing through heads, arms, and breasts, many of them cast down their crossbows and did cut their strings and returned discomfited.”

While the Goths, Lombards, and other races which had settled in the plains of Eastern Europe became nations of horsemen, the races which occupied North Germany and Scandinavia were accustomed to fight on foot. Tacitus says that the chief strength of the Germans was in their infantry ; their cavalry was not well mounted, and had no skill in evolutions.^ It was the same with the Franl^s. As described by Agathias in the sixth century, ” they wear neither mail-shirt nor greaves, and their legs are only protected by strips of linen or leather. They have hardly any horsemen, but their foot soldiery are bold and well practised in war. They bear swords and shields, but never use the sling or bow. Their missiles are axes and barbed javelins.” ^ The francisca was their special weapon, as the seax or short sword was the weapon of the Saxons. It was a single-bladed axe with a curved edge, which could be either thrown or wielded, like a tomahawk.

Theodebert, the grandson of Clovis, invaded Italy with an army of 100,000 men in 539 a.d., when Belisarius was at war with the Goths. Both sides made overtures to the king of the Franks, but he fell upon both and scattered them. Fifteen years afterwards the Franks again descended into Italy, but Narses obtained a complete victory over them at Casilinum by means of his mounted archers. Formed in a dense mass, checked in front, and threatened on both flanks, they were a helpless target for arrows for some hours, but at length broke and were cut to pieces. They fared better at the battle of Poictiers (732 a.d.). They stubbornly resisted, “as if they were frozen to the ground,” all the assaults of the Moorish cavalry, and turned back the tide of Saracen invasion.

But in two or three centuries this sturdy infantry had become a thing of the past. Mounted men-at-arms were the only soldiers of any account in France; and it was nearly a thousand years before French infantry recovered their reputation. General Susane begins his history of it by remarking that infantry always shares the lot of the mass of the population. When men are slumbering, careless or brutalised, under the weight of their chains, it is abject and despised ; and it only shows what it is capable of when privilege and inequality have been displaced by a social system which pays more respect to the dignity of man. Whether or not this is true as an universal proposition, it is certainly true of French infantry. It declined with the growth of the feudal system, and was at its best after the Revolution.