Medieval Warfare 1000–1300

John France

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351918466
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

The study of medieval warfare has developed enormously in recent years. The figure of the armoured mounted knight, who was believed to have materialized in Carolingian times, long dominated all discussion of the subject. It is now understood that the knight emerged over a long period of time and that he was never alone on the field of conflict. Infantry, at all times, played a substantial role in conflict, and the notion that they were in some way invented only in the fourteenth century is no longer sustainable. Moreover, modern writers have examined campaigns which for long seemed pointless because they did not lead to spectacular events like battles. As a result, we now understand the pattern of medieval war which often did not depend on battle but on exerting pressure on the opponent by economic warfare. This pattern was intensified by the existence of castles, and careful study has revealed much about their development and the evolving means of attacking them. Crusading warfare pitted westerners against a novel style of war and affords an opportunity to assess the military effectiveness of European methods. New areas of study are now developing. The logistics of medieval armies was always badly neglected, while until very recently there was a silence on the victims of war. Assembled in this volume are 31 papers which represent milestones in the development of the new ideas about medieval warfare, set in context by an introductory essay.

[1]
War and Finance in the Anglo-Norman State

By J. Ο. Prestwich, M.A.

Read 14 February 1953

MONEY', wrote Richard FitzNeal in the preface to the Dialogue of the Exchequer, 'appears necessary not only in time of war but also in peace. In war it is poured out: in fortifying castles, in soldiers' wages and in numerous other ways, depending on the nature of the persons paid, for the preservation of the kingdom.'¹ In time of peace, the Treasurer added, money was spent on charitable purposes; but it is clear from even the limited evidence of the Pipe Rolls of Henry II that expenditure on defence greatly exceeded that on charity.

This statement on the relations between war and finance made about 1179 raises the general problem which I wish to consider in this paper. Was Richard FitzNeal merely justifying himself and his book with a well-worn commonplace, appropriate for inclusion in a preface? Or was he calling attention to a change in the character of war and its demands upon revenue, a change which both reflected and conditioned a major transformation of society and government under Henry II and his sons?

Few historians are now prepared to commit themselves to clear, confident generalizations about this period; but it still appears to be the orthodox view that such a major transformation was taking place in these reigns. Indeed, it is precisely because the transition is so obvious to historians that they find generalization so difficult. Dr. A. L. Poole, writing of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, has told us that 'already in this period a society based on tenures and services is beginning to pass into a society based on money, rents and taxes'; that 'the feudal levy had ceased to be an effective fighting force ... It was superseded by an army chiefly composed of men paid to fight'; and that 'in the Pipe Roll of 1162 we have the earliest mention of milites solidarii'.¹ Moreover, the records of the reigns of Richard and John reveal the startling magnitude of the financial effort made in their wars, and allow us to trace in great detail the expenditure on paid troops, castles, foodstuffs, materials, weapons, ships and allies. The wages of soldiers, sailors and workmen absorbed a high proportion of this expenditure, though the payment of Richard's ransom and the subsidies to John's allies imposed a great additional strain. We can also follow in this period the ambitious attempts to organize a war economy: the direct taxation of incomes, price controls, import and export licences, the regulation and close supervision of certain industries, requisitioning, control of currency and credit and an expansion of borrowing, the organization of a national customs system, regulations against trading with the enemy and even the use of the black-list technique. It is only against this background of war finance that it. is possible to understand the administrative expedients and the complicated interplay of ideas, interests and personalities which make up the political history of these years.

If we now look back to the first century following the Conquest, we find ourselves, it seems, in a very different and a much simpler world. Mr. Jolliffe, for example, when in an illuminating discussion of Magna Carta he turned back to this earlier period, observed that 'the military habit of the Normans and the comparative modesty of the wars of the first century after the Conquest enabled the monarchy to survive without putting any intolerable strain upon the generosity of its vassals'.² The demands of these modest wars were largely met by the system of knight-service and castle-guard, supplemented at need by the fyrd or militia. Round long ago taught us of the introduction of knight-service by the Conqueror. Vinogradoff spoke of the post-Conquest period as one in which 'society settled down on the basis of land tenure, and natural economy superseded for a time the "cash" system which had ruled the relations between the government of Canute or Edward the Confessor and its hired soldiers'.³ Sir Frank Stenton, although warning us that the influence of money on feudal relationships has often been underestimated, has emphasized that throughout this period 'the feudal army remained the ultimate defence of the land', and that for over sixty years after the Conquest the monarchy therefore 'depended in the last resort on the loyalty of individual barons and the knights of their honours'.¹ Professor Painter was even more categorical when he wrote of the Conqueror that 'even if there had been sufficient resources to maintain an adequate hired army, the fact that William and his men were deeply steeped in feudal tradition would have made the adoption of such a military system out of the question'.²

Vinogradoff's use of the phrase 'natural economy' in explaining the system of unpaid service and restricted warfare suggests that it may now be difficult to gain the support of economic historians for this part of the argument. But the difficulty appears to be verbal rather than substantial. Professor Postan, if I understand his chronology correctly, suspects that there was an economic slump at the time of the Conquest and holds that the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries were a period 'in which landlords happened to prefer fixed yield to fluctuating profits from rent and cultivation' and explains this in terms of 'the general economic and political insecurity of the age, which made it difficult for landlords to control production in their outlying estates, to exact labour services and to move large quantities of agricultural produce across the country'.³ Indeed, the interpretation of the evidence for military organization and the interpretation of the evidence for economic trends support each other in an unusually reassuring way. The first century of English feudalism when military needs were largely met by unpaid service coincides with a period when the volume of production and exchange was low. The succeeding period when a bureaucratic state was able to finance a war effort vastly greater in scale and different in kind coincides with the rapid economic expansion of the thirteenth century, defined as beginning in about 1180. Thus Richard Fitz-Neat's remark about the pouring out of money in war, made just when England was passing into this new phase of development, shows that he had a sharp and even prophetic eye.

Nevertheless, it is worth while re-examining the evidence on war and finance in the Anglo-Norman period. One reason is that Richard FitzNeal himself intended his remark as a commonplace, made familiar and respectable by long practice. Writing of the period immediately following the Conquest, he says that coined money for the wages and rewards of knights was derived from pleas of the kingdom, from voluntary payments for privileges and from the urban communities; and he adds that this payment of troops persisted under the Conqueror's sons.¹ But it would be unwise to make much of this, for the Treasurer could make mistakes, and we have been warned that he is 'a very unsafe authority for any tiling that had happened more than a generation before his own time'.² Next there are the qualifications and silences of the scholars whom I have already quoted. Round was concerned with, the introduction of knight-service, not with its enforcement; and he was only able to find three instances of the summoning of the feudal host.³ Sir Frank Stenton similarly noticed the paucity of evidence for the actual performance of knight-service.⁴ Both these scholars drew attention to the early evidence for the commutation of knight-service and castle-guard. And Vinogradoff pointed out that mercenaries were employed after the Norman Conquest, though he considered that the social importance of this expedient was not great.⁵

Another reason for re-examining the evidence is that, as Mr. McFarlane has pointed out, the origin of the practice of substituting paid for unpaid service remains untraced in detail; and indeed he left open the question whether even military service was ever wholly or mainly a matter of tenure.⁶ Moreover, the orthodox account of the military organization of the Anglo-Norman state presents anyone seeking to understand the political h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Series Preface
• Introduction
• 1 J.Ο. Prestwich (1954), 'War and Finance in the Anglo-Norman State', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4, pp. 19-43.
• 2 Elisabeth van Houts (1998), 'The Anglo-Flemish Treaty of 1101', Anglo-Norman Studies, 21, pp. 169-74.
• 3 Stephen D.B. Brown (1989), 'Military Service and Monetary Reward in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries', History, 74, pp. 20-38.
• 4 Jean Richard (1952), 'An Account of the Battle of Hattin Referring to the Frankish Mercenaries in Oriental Moslem States', Speculum, 27, pp. 168-77.
• 5 Ian Pierce (1987), 'Arms, Armour and Warfare in the Eleventh Century', Anglo-Normcm Studies, 10, pp. 237-57.
• 6 R.H.C. Davis (1987), 'The Warhorses of the Normans', Anglo-Norman Studies, 10, pp. 67-82.
• 7 Claude Gaier (1965), 'Analysis of Military Forces in the Principality of Liège and the Country of Looz from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Century', Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 2, pp. 1-12, 42a, 42b [205-61].
• 8 R. Allen Brown (1980), 'The Battle of Hastings', Anglo-Norman Studies, 3, pp. 1-21, 197-201.
• 9 Matthew Bennett (1998), 'The Myth of the Military Supremacy of Knightly Cavalry', in M.J. Strickland (ed.), Armies, Chivalry and Warfare. Proceedings of the 1995 Harlaxton Symposium, Stamford: Paul Watkins, pp. 304-16.
• 10 Michael Prestwich (1995), 'Miles in Armis Strenuus: The Knight at War', Transactions of the Roval Historical Society', 6, pp. 201-20.
• 11 Bernard S. Bachrach (1983), 'The Angevin Strategy of Castle Building in the Reign of Fulk Nerra, 987-1040', American Historical Review, 88, pp. 533-60.
• 12 Charles Coulson (1996), 'Cultural Realities and Reappraisals in English Castle-Study', Journal of Medieval History, 22, pp. 171-207.
• 13 Donald R. Hill (1973), 'Trebuchets', Viator, 4, pp. 99-114, 114a, 114b.
• 14 John Beeler (1963), 'Towards a Re-Evaluation of Medieval English Generalship', Journal of British Studies, 3, pp. 1-10.
• 15 John Gillingham (1984), 'Richard I and the Science of War in the Middle Ages', in J. Gillingham and J.C. Holt (eds), War and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of J.O. Prestwich, Woodbridge: Boydell, pp. 78-91.
• 16 Stephen Morillo (1990), 'Hastings: An Unusual Battle', Ηaskins Society Journal, 2, pp. 95-103.
• 17 Richard Benjamin (1988), 'A Forty Years War: Toulouse and the Plantagenets, 1156-96', Historical Research, 61, pp. 270-85.
• 18 Elena Lourie (1966), 'A Society Organized for War: Medieval Spain', Past and Present, 35, pp. 54-76.
• 19 Reuven Amitai-Preiss (1992), cAyn Jālūt Revisited', Tārīh, 2, pp. 119-50.
• 20 Thomas Asbridge (1997), 'The Significance and Causes of the Battle of the Field of Blood', Journal of Medieval History, 23, pp. 301-16.
• 21 A.J. Forey (1984), 'The Failure of the Siege of Damascus in 1148', Journal of Medieval History, 10, pp. 13-23.
• 22 Alan V. Murray (1992), 'The Army of Godfrey of Bouillon, 1096-1099: Structure and Dynamics of a Contingent on the First Crusade', Revue beige cle philologie et d'histoire, 70, pp. 301-29.
• 23 John France (2000), 'Crusading Warfare and its Adaptation to Eastern Conditions in the Twelfth Century', Mediterranean Historical Review, 15, pp. 49-66.
• 24 Denys Pringlc (1989), 'Crusader Castles: The First Generation', Fortress, 1, pp. 1-16.
• 25 Ronnie Ellenblum (1999), "Prankish Castle-Building in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem', in S. Rozenberg (ed.), Knights of the Holy Land. The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, Jerusalem: Israeli Museum, pp. 1-5 [142—7].
• 26 H.E.J. Cowdrey (1977), 'The Mahdia Campaign of 1087', English Historical Review, 92, pp. 1-29.
• 27 John Η. Pryor (1982), 'Transportation of Horses by Sea during the Era of the Crusades: Eighth Century to 1285 A.D.', Mariners Mirror, 68, pp. 9-30, 103-26.
• 28 John W. Nesbitt (1963), 'The Rate of March of Crusading Armies in Europe: A Study and Computation', Traclitio, 19, pp. 167-81.
• 29 Malcolm Barber (1992), 'Supplying the Crusader States: The Role of the Templars', in B.Z. Kedar (ed.), The Horns o f Hmi in, Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, pp. 314-26.
• 30 David Nicolle (2002), 'Wounds, Military Surgery and the Reality of Crusading Warfare: the Evidence of Usamah's Memoires', Journal of Oriental and African Studies, 5, pp. 33-46.
• 31 Yvonne Friedman (2001), 'Captivity and Ransom: The Experience of Women', in S.B. Edgington and S. Lambert (eds), Gendering the Crusades Cardiff: University of Wales Press, pp. 121-39.
• Name Index