Routledge Revivals: A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages (1978)

Volume One 378-1278

Charles Oman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351335522
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia europea medieval

First published in 1898, this history of medieval warfare, written by one of the great medievalists of his time, Sir Charles Oman, remains for students and general readers one of the best accounts of military art in the Middle Ages. The book begins with the significant battle of Adrianople in 378 A.D. (the most fearful defeat suffered by a Roman army since Cannae in 216 B.C.) and Marignano (1515 A.D.), the last of the triumphs of the medieval horseman. It was extensively revised and edited by John H. Beeler in 1953 to incorporate many new facts uncovered since the late nineteenth century. This edition is based on Methuen's 1978 revised and enlarged edition, which includes new chapters and the author's original preface.

Book VI
Western Europe from the Battle of Hastings to the Rise of the Longbow

Chapter I
Introductory

IN studying the Crusades we have seen the military art of the nations of Western Europe at its best and its worst. Nowhere are more reckless displays of blind courage, or more stupid neglect of the elementary rules of strategy and tactics to be found, than in the great expeditions to the Levant. On the other hand, we have also had to observe among the more capable leaders of the crusading armies a far higher degree of intelligent generalship than was usual among their contemporaries in the West. If the Crusades of 1101 and 1147 are decidedly more distressing to the critic than the average wars of France, England, or Germany, there are also battles and campaigns—such as that of Arsouf—which show very favourably beside those of the lands nearer home. Many of the Crusaders seem to have been at their best when facing the new problems of the East. Richard Coeur de Lion at Acre, Arsouf, and Jaffa rises far above his ordinary level: we find ourselves wondering how the very capable general of 1190–91 can on his return waste so much energy and ability to no purpose in the wretched peddling French wars of 1194–99. We may add that the great Frederic 1. of Germany never shows to such good effect in his home campaigns as in the conduct of his expedition through Asia Minor. Many of the lesser figures of the Crusades, including the good Godfrey of Bouillon himself, are obscure and undistinguished in the wars of their native lands, and only show the stuff that is in them when they have crossed the high seas.

The worst military errors of the Christians in the East came, as we have seen, from their gross ignorance of the conditions of warfare in Syria or Asia Minor, and of the tactics of the enemies with whom they had to deal. At home leaders and led alike were safe from such dangers since they knew the military character and usages of their neighbours, and had some rough idea of the geography, climate, and productions of their neighbours’ territory. But if this knowledge preserved them from certain dangers, it seems, on the other hand, that in the familiar border wars of the West the best qualities of a commander were often not developed. It is new and unforeseen dangers and difficulties that test most adequately the stuff that is in a man.

When we turn from the history of the Crusades to consider the contemporary history of the Art of War in Western Europe, the first thing that strikes us is the comparatively small influence which the great campaigns in the Levant seem to have had upon the development of strategy and tactics at home. Tens of thousands of barons, knights, and sergeants came back as veterans from the East, and one would expect to see the lessons which they had learned in fighting the Turk and Syrian perpetually applied to the wars of their native countries. Yet it is by no means easy to point out obvious instances of such application of new principles of war, save in the provinces of fortification and of arms and armour. In strategy and tactics it is difficult to detect from a broad survey much direct influence flowing from the Crusades.

We may take as the clearest example of this the entire neglect by the Western nations of the most important tactical lesson of the Crusades. We have shown by a score of examples that the one great principle which settled the fate of wars with the Turk was that generals who properly combined infantry and cavalry in their line of battle were successful, and that generals who tried to dispense with the support of foot-soldiery always failed disastrously. The fact that the combination of the two arms is better than simple reliance on one had been shown at Hastings long ere the Crusades began, but the lesson was even more clearly visible in the details of such fights as Antioch or Ascalon as compared with the disasters of nor or the narrow escape from destruction at Dorylseum.

We should expect, therefore, to find that the return home of the warriors of the first Crusade would be followed by the development of a rational use of infantry and cavalry in close alliance and interdependence. But we find little of the kind: over the greater part of Western and Central Europe the cavalry arm still maintains its exclusive predominance, and infantry is still despised and distrusted. In Italy, it is true, the workings of the experience of the Crusades are to be recognised in the sudden growth of the popularity of the crossbow, and probably also in the increased importance of the civic infantry. But in the only other parts of Europe where foot-soldiery show to any effect—England and the Netherlands—we are dealing with an old Teutonic survival, not with any new development.

In many of the twelfth-century battles of Western Europe, when by some rare exception, we do find combatants on foot entrusted with a principal part in the fight, we discover on closer inquiry that they are not ordinary foot-soldiery, but knights who have dismounted in order to carry out some desperate duty. We are, in short, merely witnessing a recurrence to that ancient habit of the Teutonic races which Leo the Wise had described two hundred years before.¹ Such instances are to be found on the part of the English and the Normans at Tenchebrai² (1106), and again at the first battle of Lincoln³ (1146), where both King Stephen and the rebel earls dismounted the pick of their knights to form a solid reserve. The same is the case in the English army at Bremûle (1119), and at the battle of the Standard⁴ (1138), where the Yorkshire knights left their horses and joined the yeomanry of the fyrd in order to stiffen the mass when it was about to be assailed by the wild rush of the Scots. The Emperor Conrad’s German chivalry behaved in a similar way at the chief combat during the siege of Damascus in 1148.

Such expedients, however, are exceptional. On the other hand, we not unfrequently find battles in which neither side brought any foot-soldiery to the field, such as Thielt (1128), Tagliacozzo (1268), and the Marchfeld (1278). Cases where one side had no infantry whatever in the battle line are still more numerous. Such are Bremûle (1119), Legnano (1176), Muret (1274).

When true infantry are engaged on both sides, it is rare to find them actually settling the fate of the day. Generally they are only used as a very subsidiary force, employed merely for skirmishing and not for the decisive charge. The main exceptions to this rule are to be found, as we shall have to show later on, in Italy and the Netherlands. But if the infantry in most battles had no great part in the winning of the day, they were often the chief sufferers in a defeat. As a rule, those of the beaten army were fearfully mishandled by the knights of the victorious side. When the day was won, the infantry of the vanquished party were nearly always cut to pieces in the most ruthless manner, while their countrymen of the knightly classes were not slaughtered, but reserved for ransom.

The mailed horseman, then, maintains his place as the chief factor in battle down to the end of the thirteenth century, and the main features of the two hundred years from Hastings onward are the feudal knight and the feudal castle. We shall have to note that while tactics and strategy make comparatively small and slow progress in these two centuries, the art of fortification grows very rapidly. Between the simple castle of the time of William I. and the splendid and complicated fortresses of the end of the thirteenth century there is an enormous gap. The methods of attack made no corresponding advance, and by 1300 the defensive had obtained an almost complete mastery over the offensive, so that famine was the only certain weapon in siegecraft. It is not till the introduction of cannon and gunpowder in the fourteenth century that the tables begin to be turned.

In chapter iii. of Book ill. we dealt with the origin and evolution of the feudal knight and the feudal castle. We have now to treat of their further developments.

Notes

1 See p. 204.

2 See p. 381.

3 See p. 396.

4 See p. 390.

Chapter II
The Armies of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

Section A.—England.

WE have first to concern ourselves with the knighthood of Western Europe and its tactics. Fortress-building and siegecraft, though equally important in their influence on the general history of the period, must take the second place. An English writer is inevitably forced to illustrate the period mainly from English military history, but we shall conscientiously endeavour to point out all the details in which continental practice differed from that in use in our own island.

The Norman Conquest brought about a complete change in the military organisation of England: under William the Bastard the system of raising the armed force of the realm, the tactics that it employed, and the weapons that it used, were all alike transformed. For the next two hundred years the Norman castle and the Norman horseman were to be the main features in the military history of England.

The kings continued to call out the fyrd on occasion, but they never treated it as the chief part of their host: it was indeed mainly employed when the feudal levy of the realm was, for some reason or another, not to be wholly trusted. William Rufus summoned the fyrd once for real active service, and once as a mere means of getting money. It was employed in the first year of his reign for the sieges of the castles of the barons who had rebelled against him under the pretence of supporting his brother Robert. Infantry were always required for siege-work—the knights would have resented the hewing and digging, and a large force of pioneers was needed. The second occasion on which we hear of the mustering of the old national host was when Ralph Flambard taught the king to turn a dishonest penny by a new device. Rufus called the shire-levies to Hastings, nominally for a campaign in Normandy (1094). They came to the number of twenty thousand, each bearing the ten shillings which the shire was bound to provide for him. William took the money from them and then told them that they might disperse, as they were not needed.¹ Henry I. also used the fyrd early in his reign, in circumstances much like those which had forced his brother to employ it. Robert of Belesme and his fellows were in rebellion, and had manned and stored their castles. Large forces were needed for siegework, and Henry called upon the English, who came gladly, and, as Orderic tells us, greeted him, after the surrender of the enemy’s great stronghold at Bridgenorth, with the joyful cry, “Rejoice now, King Henry, and say that you are truly lord of England, since you have put down Robert of Belesme and driven him out of the bounds of your kingdom.”² Still later the shire-levies were raised by Stephen for the battle of the Standard,³ and by Henry II. to put down the great feudal rising of 1174. The Assize of Arms of 1181 shows us how miscellaneous and heterogeneous was their armament: even when providing for the improvement and reorganisation of the force, the king does not dream of enforcing uniformity, and the poorer classes are allowed to come to the muster armed with nothing better than swords, knives, and darts. There is evidently a wish to assimilate the wealthier men to the armament of the mercenary Brabançon pikemen whom Henry was employing in large numbers at the time, as the sheriffs are directed to see that persons owning sixteen marks of chattels are to bear mail-shirt, steel cap, shield, and spear.

But alike for foreign expeditions and domestic wars, the Norman and Angevin kings relied mainly on the masses of mailed horsemen provided by their feudal vassals. Still armed, like their fathers at Hastings, with the long mail-shirt, the peaked helmet with its nasal, and the kite-shaped Danish shield, the Norman knights were the flower of the chivalry of Europe, whether they served in their own land, in the conquered realm of England, in the new kingdom which they had built up in Apulia and Sicily, or in the Crusades of the far East.

William I. had divided up the greater part of the soil of England among new holders. Only about a fifth stayed with the old Saxon owners, and such of them as survived were compelled to surrender their land to the king, and receive it back from him saddled with the duties of the continental vassal. We have seen¹ that “knight-service” and garrison duty were ideas not altogether unfamiliar before the Conquest, and that the notion that every five hides of land should send a mailed warrior to the host was generally acknowledged. But after 1066, it would seem, the old notion that the five hides must provide a fully-armed man was out of date, while the typical warrior for the future was to be a horseman instead of a foot-soldier. And William, in distributing the burdens of military service among his tenants, the servitium debitum, seems to have dealt with them much as he pleased, acreage and military contingents having no fixed relation to each other.” Beneficial hidation,” the counting by favour of four or five hundred acres as if they were but a mere hundred and twenty, was as prevalent in military arrangements as in taxation. It was specially frequent when Church lands were being dealt with; e.g. we know that the Abbey of Ramsey had seventy hides, but was let off with an assessment of four knights. Nor was this favour confined to ecclesiastical estates alone: some lay tenants-in-chief got off very easily, though the majority were obliged to supply a reasonable contingent.

It has been clearly shown, by the most eminent inquirer into early English antiquities, that the hidage of the townships was very roughly assessed, and that the compilers of Domesday Book incline towards round numbers.² Five-hide, ten-hide, or twenty-hide townships are so common that there was little difficulty in apportioning the military service due from the tenants-in-chief who owned them. Hence there was not so much difficulty from fractions as might have been expected. If estates had been assessed with absolute accuracy in acres and yards, nearly every landholder would have been responsible for eccentric fractions of a knight, if there had been a regular correspondence between acres and the military service due by t...