Medieval Warfare 1300–1450

Kelly DeVries, Kelly DeVries

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351918435
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia militar y marítima

War was epidemic in the late Middle Ages. It affected every land and all peoples from Scotland and Scandinavia in the north to the southern Mediterranean Sea coastlines of Morocco, North Africa, Egypt, and the Middle East in the south, from Ireland and Spain in the west to Russia and Turkey in the east. Nowhere was peaceful for any significant amount of time. The period also saw significant changes in military theory and practice which altered the ways in which campaigns were conducted, battles fought, and sieges laid; and changes in the leadership, recruitment, training, supply and financing of armies. There were changes in the relationship between those waging warfare, from generals to irregular troops, and the society in which they lived and for or against which they fought; the frequency of popular rebellions and the participation in them by townspeople and peasants; changes in the desire to undertake Crusades, and changes in technology, including but not limited to gunpowder weapons. This collection gathers together some of the best published work on these topics. The first section of seven papers show that throughout Europe in the later Middle Ages generals led and armies followed what are usually defined as "modern" strategy and tactics, contrary to popular belief. The second part reprints nine works that examine the often neglected aspects of the process of putting and keeping together a late medieval army. In the third section the authors discuss various ways that warfare in the fourteenth and fifteenth century affected the society of that period. The final sections cover popular rebellions and crusading.

Part I
Military Theory and Practice

[1]
Edward III and the Dialectics of Strategy, 1327-1360

The Alexander Prize Essay

By Clifford J. Rogers
READ 28 MAY 1993

He that will fraunce wynne, must with Scotland first beginne.¹

WHEN I tell people that I'm studying English strategy in the Hundred Years War, the response is very often something to the effect of 'did they really have "strategy" in the middle ages?' This idea, that strategy was absent from the medieval period, remains deeply embedded in the historiography of the subject. Sir Charles Oman, probably still the best-known historian of medieval warfare, wrote of the middle ages that 'the minor operations of war were badly understood, [and] strategy— the higher branch of the military art—was absolutely nonexistent.² Professor Ferdinand Lot said much the same. Other scholars have argued that the medieval commander 'had not the slightest notion of strategy,' or that 'never was the art of war so imperfect or so primitive.'³ But the truth is that most medieval commanders did not show 'a total scorn for the intellectual side of war' nor ignore 'the most elementary principles of strategy'⁴; nor is it fair to say that ' "generalship" and-"planning" are concepts one can doubtfully apply to medieval warfare.'⁵

If medieval commanders have in general received litde credit for their strategic understanding, Edward III in particular has been singled out as, in Oman's words, 'a very competent tactician, but a very unskilful strategist'. Oman argued, indeed, that 'the details of the campaign which led up to the battle of Crecgy are as discreditable to his generalship as those of the actual engagement are favourable'.⁶ J. F. C, Fuller agreed that 'what his strategic aim was, it is impossible to fathom ... Edward's conduct of the campaign of Crécy shows no proof of any rational scheme'. Major-General George Wrottesley, an amateur historian of some distinction, wrote that the campaign was conceived 'against every principle of the military art'.⁷

H,J. Hewitt's study of the organisation of war under Edward III, which appeared in 1966, put forward a new interpretation of the strategic rationale for Edward's campaigns of devastation in France.⁸ He argued that these great English chevauchees of the fourteenth century served two purposes: to undermine the political support of the Valois monarchy by showing its military weakness in comparison with English might; and, as part of a war of attrition, to destroy the resources with which the Valois fought the war. Hewitt argued further than the aim of the chevauchée 'was not, as might have been supposed, to seek out the enemy and bring him to decisive combat'; indeed, according to his analysis, the English actively sought to avoid battle.⁹

This new interpretation of the chevauchée has become the dominant one, adopted by C.T, Allmand, Kenneth Fowler, Michael Prestwich, and Maurice Keen, among others.¹⁰ It comes much closer to the truth than the older ideas of Oman and his school; but it still misses the mark in important ways which have led to serious misinterpretations of some of the English campaigns, notably the 1346 'Crécy' chevauchée. The most important error made by Hewitt and his followers is to portray the chevauchée as a battle-avoiding rather than a battle-seeking strategy. In this paper, using the Crécy chevauchée as my primary example, I will put forward the opposite case, I will then proceed to a deeper analysis of what Hewitt correctly perceived to be the other important components of the chevauchée strategy: political destabilisation and economic attrition. First, though, I will address the origins of the English version of the chevauchée in the Scottish campaigns of the earlier fourteenth century, and also the tactical basis on which the English method of war rested: for without the 'Halidon' tactics, there could have been no strategy of chevauchée.

Historians now generally accept that Edward s war-aims in 1337 were first and foremost to secure sovereignty over his continental possessions, and so to put an end to the interference of the French royal bureaucracy in his government of Guienne.¹¹ Doubtless, Edward would have preferred to have made good his claim to the French throne, but he was realistic enough to know—even after his triumphs in the 'year of miracles', 1346, that this was practically beyond his reach. Still, it did remain a secondary goal, to be pursued if opportunity arose, as his negotiations with Burgundy in the course of the 1359—60 Reims campaign show.¹²

It is striking that Edward, when he began the war, had already seen equivalent goals accomplished by others. In 1326-7, his mother Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer succeeded in defeating and deposing Edward II, and replacing him on the throne with the young Edward III himself. Then, just a year later, Robert Bruce of Scotland wrested from the English exactly what Edward himself would later seek for his duchy of Aquitaine: de jure acknowledgement of long-held de facto sovereignty. A smaller, weaker, poorer country had forced its larger, richer, more populous neighbor to renounce its claim to feudal superiority in order to put an end to devastating mounted raids. If this sounds familiar, it is for good reason: there is more than a coincidental relationship between the 'Shameful Peace' of Northampton (1328) and the Treaty of Brétigny which Edward imposed on the French in 1360 Edward won that latter treaty precisely by doing unto the French as the Scots had done unto him in 1327.

The experiences of the English in their Scottish wars, especially from Bannockburn to Halidon Hill, led Edward III and his advisors to develop new tactical and strategic conceptions that decisively shaped the first half of the Hundred Years War. Tracing Edward's military evolution through these Scottish campaigns serves two important purposes: it enhances our understanding of English strategy during the first phase of the Hundred Years War; and it provides a valuable paradigm of the dialectical process by which a commander's understanding of the craft of war develops.

In 1314, not long after Edward's birth, his father, Edward II, led a large English army to the relief of Stirling castle, which was under siege by the Scots. The English were attacked under unfavourable circumstances near Bannockburn and decisively defeated. The military reputation of the English sunk so low as a result that, as Knighton commented, 'two Englishmen were hardly a match for one feeble Scot'.¹³ Bannockburn, by far the most important battle fought during Edward Ill's childhood, showed clearly the difficulty of disrupting a tight infantry formation by cavalry charges alone, a lesson Edward was later to use to good effect.

Over the succeeding years, the triumphant Scots used the threat of further devastating raids to extort large sums of money from the northern counties, in the process almost totally eliminating the revenues which the Exchequer received from the region.¹⁴ In 1327, the year of Edward Ill's coronation, with England weakened by internal dissension arising from the deposition of Edward II, Robert Bruce decided to try to extort a much greater prize from the English: acknowledgement of his independent sovereignty over Scotland.

A large group of Scottish mounted infantry (soldiers who rode from place to place, but fought on foot in pike phalanxes called 'schiltrons') raided deep into English territory that year 'with a strong hand, and laid it waste with fire and sword'.¹⁵ An English army under Edward III's nominal command set out after them, but could not match the speed of the highly mobile Scots. Eventually the English abandoned all their excess baggage and tried to outmanoeuvre the Scots instead of out-marching them. Their intention, explains Jean le Bel (who took part in the campaign on the English side), was to pin the Scots against the Tyne and force them 'to fight at a disadvantage (à meschief ) or to remain in England, caught in the trap'.¹⁶ But they failed, and in the end were only able to find the Scots because the raiders sent a captured English esquire to inform the English of their location. The Scots were quite eager to give battle, so long as they could do so on their own terms.¹⁷ The English host found the Scottish schiltrons deployed in an unassailable defensive position, across a swift river (the Wear) and atop a steep hill, without enough room between the water and the slope for the English to form up,¹⁸ The English tried to persuade the Scots to fight on a more even field, but the raiders declined. 'The king and his council saw well,' they replied, 'that they were in his kingdom, and had burnt and devastated it; if this annoyed the King, he might come and amend it, for they would stay there as long as they liked.'¹⁹

This left the English in a lose-lose situation. To attack would be to invite a repetition of Bannockburn, which is clearly what the Scots hoped for; on the other hand, not to attack would be to allow the enemy to escape unpunished; the massive effort and expense put into mounting the English expedition dissipated without result; and the royal government's prestige once again sent to rock bottom. Opting for the lesser of the two evils, the English declined the assault. As a result, their enemies escaped—Scot free, as it were—after having committed such destruction that, because of it, for the Twentieth granted in the fall of 1327, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Northumberland contributed nothing at all, and even Yorkshire and Lancashire contributed only about 40 per cent of their 'peacetime' levels.²⁰ The young king returned to England 'in great desolation and sorrow because things hadn't gone better for him at the beginning of his reign; and, stricken with shame, he grieved much,'²¹ as Knighton tells us. The Brut adds that 'when the Kyng wist that the Scottes were ascapede, he was wonder' sory, and ful hertly wepte with his yonge eyne.'²² Murimuth describes him as returning to York 'sorrowing and without honor'.²³ The point I want to make here is that this expedition was deeply engraved on the consciousness of the young king, and did much to shape his understanding of the craft of war. The moreso, since the end result of his military failure was the turpis pax, or 'shameful peace' of 1328, which required Edward to renounce his suzerainty over Scotland.²⁴ However, he learned well the lesson of the power of a mobile raiding force relying on the tactical defensive when brought to battle. In his later conflicts with France, he would use this lesson extremely well.

First, though, England had to quell the menace to the north. When Robert Bruce died in 1329, leaving an infant son to be king after him, the opportunity soon presented itself. In 1332 Edward Balliol, a pretender to the Scottish throne, mounted an invasion of Scotland with an army composed largely of English men-at-arms and archers. BaUiol's tiny ...