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Miniatures Adventure => Medieval Adventures => Topic started by: MerlintheMad on January 03, 2015, 03:20:09 PM
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I do read Oman. "History" is largely created, not literal. How we interpret evidence now is colored by our perceptions just as much as at any earlier time. Oman's research was good, his pov flawed in many ways, his thesis a creation of bias that he set out to "prove". I don't see much if any difference in current writers, they all seem to have a point to make, which forms the impetus for their writing projects.
Thanks for your very informative posts. As I have always suspected, warfare in England of the late middle ages was hardly as simple or straight forward as most of us think. On another forum I had a discussion about the proportion of longbow to MAA, and whether or not mounted MAA were a reasonable or useful addition to a WotR war games army. The subject of armor always comes up, and it was argued that horse armor wasn't really part of English armies until the end of the 15th century. That was a new one for me. Gunners rendering horse armor obsolete. Crossbows in the field. Etc. and etc. and etc. If we go by what you've alluded to above, a war games army list for WotR could be quite a complex of available troops types, which isn't a problem to me!...
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Oh yes, history is certainly created and consciously or unconsciously, the historian and pseudo-historian adds his/her bias to what they produce. There's also little in the way of a career in agreeing with everyone else either, so the mileage is in 'revision' and the refutation of revision.
Horse armour does appear to be rare before the late 15th Century, but then I would put that down to the English usually dismounting to fight and of course the expense; why buy armour for an animal that gets led to the rear? You could put the acquisition of it down to need (they possibly fought mounted more frequently and there was a tangible threat that required that the mount be protected), or you could put it down to those who could afford it bought it as a naked display of wealth... or both even.
Certainly by the Tudor Era there was a distinct divide within the class who had previously been what we call men at arms (they called them 'spears'); you had the 'Gentlemen Pensioners' and suchlike, fully kitted out with full harness and barding, then there were the much more numerous demilances, with considerably less protection and no horse armour. While the name was new (1487 is the earliest I've come across), they were merely the bulk of men who were too rich to get away with being a mounted archer, but too poor to afford the full rig.
The MAA-Archer ratio argument will go on for ever I think, especially as what people call a man at arms varies. The prefered ratio within HYW armies went from roughly equal numbers in the 14th Century, to 1:10 by the time of Edward IV's expedition of 1475. In terms of raw population and if we are only talking gentry and above, and not the wealthier of the yeomen, it was more like 1:20.
Ask ten historians why the ratio changed and you will get eleven different answers. Personally I suspect it was because that your 12d could get you anything between two to four archers (depending on the economic climate), but only one man at arms, rather than any tactical reason. Garrisons in France tried 'foot men at arms' for a time, saving 4d in the process, but it did not last long. The trend across Europe from the 1430s onward was similar, with the French and Burgundians having between 8-10 'others' per man at arms, so the 1475 army was not so unusual for the time.
I won't go into the ratio of bows to bills, for in that direction lies madness. Suffice to say that the ratio would depend on the relative wealth of the region a company was recruited in and how desperate the recruiter was, possibly in equal measure. Companies recruited for Brittany or France in the 1490s barely had any bills (single figures compared to scores of archers), with one exception... that of Sir William Herbert, who had roughly equal numbers of both. The tradition of the Battle of Edgecote has his uncle short on archers too, so with the Herberts being 'poor Earls' and the area of Wales where they held land was also poor, it's not like they could raise more archers even if they could afford to pay them.
I suspect a good WotR army list would have more foot notes and options than it would have troop variety to be honest. ;)
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Would the "demi lances" category necessarily have exposed limbs though? Including horses flesh? Bards don't have to be the latest plate. If there are armored horses at all, it seems to me that cheaper yet effective bards would continue in use.
Just because the demographics of rich to poor create a population ratio of 1:20 MAA to infantry/archers doesn't mean that that ratio showed up in field battles. Even most archers would not have been suitable military material. The core army must always have been a disproportionate percentage of MAA. During the WotR I wouldn't expect MAA to ever amount to quite fifty percent of a given army of decent size (i.e. as seen in the notable battles). But I don't think that the cost factor was nearly as important for native armies that mustered, marched and fought all within a few weeks. Armies, like the 1475 one, that were going to remain together for probably months at a time and go oversea, had to be paid, whereas the hastily mustered armies of the WotR battles were already paid retinues, joined by very temporary troops as available. So the proportion of MAA would be much higher since economizing was not an issue, and quality certainly was....
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Depictions of demilances show unarmoured horses, with riders' protection consisting of anything between almost full harness and the brigandine/mail shirt combos we associate with 'lesser men at arms' (a modern term), or 'coustilier' (custrils, costrels and any other variation of the original French term). Essentially anyone not in full 'gendarme' rig on a horse. They would eventually be called 'light horse' (chevaux leger, reiter etc in Europe) although there was little that was light about them in truth.
As for the archers, no I wasn't suggesting 20:1 as a ratio in warfare, just in terms of the population as a whole. There was indeed a disproportionate ratio of men at arms in armies, but also a reduction in the comparative numbers of knights and nobles within that group around the same time too.
As you say, the men for 1415/1475 were raised over period of months, tried and tested to see if they were up to the job and had the requisite equipment, all the usual things English armies did before sailing to France. WotR armies were raised in a hurry, usually each contingent as recruited within a small locale, so you got who was available and willing to fight.
Given that there was no loot to be had, risking life and limb for a few pence a day (or in some cases the promise of it, or out some form of obligation), especially as civilian wages had by now caught up with military ones, probably didn't attract the best that could be had. Billmen are a significant group now, but they were drawn from the poorest sectors of society and were not usually recruited for HYW armies, nor the households of the nobles and their retainers.
The gentry, knights and nobles who took part in the WotR did so out of political and social self-interest, and as you suggest appear to have formed a larger group overall than in the HYW, certainly the attainders for treason in the WotR feature more names of note than the documents for forces serving in France between 1417-53. This group was the same one which provided the king's sub-contractors in the HYW and from the few documents that survive, they and their retainers were maintaining one to three mounted archers per man at arms, either as full-time professionals, or on a part-time risk/reward basis.
Some of these also committed to raising additional men (largely 'foot archers'), as per their indentures and the only way to ensure the speedy raising of forces, was for you and your own retainers to get local men to commit to serve when called. Those with several manors could put pressure on their tenants in various ways to get an offer of service, along with local artisans and tradesmen who relied on their custom etc. In the months it took to raise part of an expeditionary force, you would normally weed out those who were of little use, or ill-equipped, but often summonses during the WotR echo Richard III's desperate "... as many men as you can goodly make" plea, which could result in marching before all your forces were gathered, or additional numbers made up from men you wouldn't normally consider recruiting, like bill-armed men (or indeed men with any sort of weapon) to make up the numbers.
As record keeping was a low priority at such times, we have little idea of who and what were raised at such times. Sources like the Howard Household Accounts give glimpses that can be worked out by the rates paid to individuals and we even know the names of a large number of men who committed to serve prior to Bosworth, or at least what troop type they were, we just don't know how many actually turned up when the time came. Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex where these were drawn from, were both relatively wealthy and densely populated, so may only be representative of similar areas. There is an apparently wide gulf between Howard's 'archer-rich' and the previously mentioned Herbert's 'archer-poor' recruiting grounds however.
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These "light cavalry" could, as already suggested, be fully-armed MAA opting to divest themselves of unneeded or unwanted equipment to do a job that doesn't require it. That would put them in the category of unarmored horses as well. But I was opting for the logical assertion that if a man with full plate harness needs an armored horse (with malice aforethought), he would have an effective bard of some kind, even if not an articulated plate bard. Yes, there are a larger number of "lighter" cavalry, out of economic necessity, than what we term the "elite" or best of the best, the richest, MAA. But surely a significant portion of these "light cavalry" are not poor men, but instead voluntarily lightening themselves by discarding items of their equipment.
The possible proportion of one archer to one MAA is the upper limit of my army list (link in above post; I notice that I did not specifically state that some of the archers have horses, as indeed so would a portion of the other infantry, not just the "hobilars, spear and sword" guys). At what point in army size this became unrealistic is what is unknown: an army of 500, over a thousand? Impossible to say. So I didn't address army size, since the army list is for army sized games as compared to skirmish sized forces....
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Horse barding was not stipulated as an essential in England (nor France or Burgundy, although Duke Charles mentioned he thought it was a good idea in one of his ordinances), so short of a soul destroying search through surviving probate inventories, it would be hard to assess who had them and who didn't, of whichever type.
'Cavalry' and indeed 'light cavalry' are value laden terms and I try to avoid using them, as it implies men trained to fight as a mounted body, rather than a man using a beast to go from A to B. Many of the mounted men, be they men at arms, archers or hobilars (a term which had fallen out of fashion in the 15th Century, though it does pop up occasionally) were skilled riders, skilled enough to fight mounted, or in some cases shoot (if illustrations are taken at face value)... fighting mounted in a formation that would correspond to 'cavalry' is a different story.
While some knights and nobles still went through the classic 'trained from birth to be a knight' route, as a class they grew rarer and rarer in armies ( whether English, French or Burgundian) throughout the 15th century. By the end of it anyone with 'Sir' (or its continental equivalents) in their name, was more usually in command of a company or battle of lesser men. It was the gentry, sons not first in line for estates, professionals and jumped up farmers, lawyers and merchants (or their sons), who were the men at arms of the later 15th Century.
Most European armies lacked light cavalry as we would understand them, which is why Border Horse, Stradiots and Jinetes made such an impact when they were first encountered by armies lacking their own 'raider' types. The various mounted crossbow and other mounted missile types in Europe either dismounted to shoot, or may as well have done and there is a distinct lack of evidence that they were mounted skirmishers of any form.
It is conceivable that somebody possessing a full harness might leave sections of it off in certain circumstances, but put yourself in their place. If you'd spent a not inconsiderable sum on personal protection for yourself and your also considerably expensive mount, what would induce you to leave bits off? Certainly the number of famous names shot in the face or throat after removing their bevor served as cautionary tales for all.
Good plate weighed in at about 70lbs iirc, add in a saddle and tack and you are talking about the same weight as a WWI British cavalryman put on his mount (and somewhat less than a French one did). Iron 'munition' types weighed more, but not so much to make a difference. As your underlings had inferior mounts in the main, why reduce your personal protection for no real gain.
Lord Clifford appears to have died in a running mounted battle as he retired after Ferrybridge. The legend is that he removed his bevor, with the inevitable result. As this seems to be first item of armour people take off or try to do without (Charles the Bold lost his front teeth doing that), it implies that if you had it you wore all your armour, regardless of your role or circumstance.
All that being said, to be a man at arms in England only required a helmet, mail shirt (or its equivalent), lance and horse, unlike in France and Burgundy the English statute does not appear to have been updated (if it was nothing survives of that update). For a hobilar to become a man at arms, an upgrade from 'jack' to brigandine or mail was all that stood in his way.
As for army composition and formations, I'm clueless. You would assume that the French War veterans and professionals would form up in the standard formation of the HYW (whatever you believe that was).
Freshly raised troops were possibly kept together in the contingents they were raised into, so a mix of bills and bows and the men at arms of their leader and retainers. Breaking them up to form separate bodies of bills and bows would put them with complete strangers, which depending on where they were from, sounded like they didn't actually talk English, a distinct barrier to communication and cohesiveness.
Raising forces quickly and getting them post-haste into battle meant no shakedown time, nor training in fancy manouvres, so the army that moved had a distinct disadvantage (check the various accounts, the army that advanced first usually lost in the WotR). Rule sets advocating exchanging ranks, or indeed any manouvre (including turns) that isn't a clumsy and slow wheel, really don't work for me.
I picture fairly well-ordered stationary units, or somewhat disrupted and dispersed units if they move. Not a fashionable view by any means, but it fits my image of the time and circumstances. The lack of first-hand accounts of battles does mean nobody can tell me I'm wrong though.
;)
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Right or wrong historically, most of the medieval rules sets that I have seen break the troops up into separate units of archers or billmen (and don't allow the units to have both types in them). This is done probably because the main function of billmen is melee and the main function of longbow is shooting.
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I suspect they do that because it's a convenient tool when making a set of rules work. Certainly what evidence we have implies that they served under the same captains, were raised and marched off to war as a single body, so it seems odd that they would be broken up for battle. I can think of no other era where such a thing took place, excluding 18th-19th Century 'brigaded' light infantry or grenadier formations, which is a whole different ball game.
I always took such categories as bill units or bow units as meaning just the predominant troop type, as is the case for later periods where regiments contained a proportion of lights and elites in their number, but the game scale doesn't support representing individual companies to that level. In other words a unit of bills has very few archers, a unit of archers has very few bills, units of men at arms contain a large number of well-equipped men, bills do not. The lie here is that there is no middle ground, so I stopped using them.
Also bear in mind that rule writers are generally not historians (which is probably a good thing), although some do claim to be so... I've yet to meet a true historian who claims to be an expert on several thousand years of military history, yet some rule writers expect you to believe they are.
You would be wrong in pigeon-holing medieval troop types, as they had a flexibility not apparent in later periods. They did what was needed at the time and situation. Men at arms could be pretty solid and deadly heavy infantry, or they could be heavy 'cavalry'.
Archers shot at distance, but fought hard at close quarters. Some archers had almost as much protection as the poorer of the men at arms and quite a degree of skill with their hand weapons. An archer's primary function was fighting - period; as such they became the preferred English 'line infantry' of the late medieval era. The idea that they were faint-hearted wimps who suffered when they faced 'real men', is a hangover from ancient wargaming where that was probably true of most.
Mounted archers could also take on the role of 'dragoons' and while they would suffer fighting mounted men at arms, they were equal to other mounted troops and at an advantage against footmen. Not all of them were so skilled of course and with the variation of quality amongst their mounts, some were almost literally 'donkey whallopers' and were truly just mounted infantry.
Billmen were perhaps the most limited class, on the whole the poorest equipped and the least experienced, not to say that most were also poorly-nourished and lacked the skill or strength (or both) to be archers. While indeed the bill was a formidable weapon, that only came with knowing how to use it. An experienced archer would make short work of a levied billman in hand to hand combat, a levied archer would probably be in trouble though.
I'm not sure where the 'retinue billmen' that feature in most rules came from though, as a troop type they are wholly absent from the historical record. The poorer of the men at arms might look like them, but they did not form a separate troop class, just part of the greater 'man at arms' grouping.
The usual 'paid the same as archers and so were grouped with them on payrolls' excuse doesn't hold up, as there were a number of craftsmen and specialists who did get paid the same as archers, but are still listed separately. I suspect that they are a creation of some rule writer somewhere and became 'wargaming fact' as a result.
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Right or wrong historically, most of the medieval rules sets that I have seen break the troops up into separate units of archers or billmen (and don't allow the units to have both types in them). This is done probably because the main function of billmen is melee and the main function of longbow is shooting.
I've had this out on "the other forum" recently. We finally agreed, more or less, that "battles" were polyglot, but that "units" within battles were not. This would separate out archers from the rest. There is no great distinction between a MAA of the lighter sort and a well equipped "billman". They would lump together to form "phalanxes" of "spears". So you do have dedicated melee troops, and "shot". I don't see volley shooting, saturation of the target area, working any other way. Interspersing shot with the melee portion of each contingent would produce a very diluted sort of missile fire. So it wasn't done, imho. The objection that this would separate men familiar with each other, and put them with men that they don't know, is easily dismissed. The archers of a contingent would continue to stand with each other regardless of where they were sent. The same remained true of the melee troops mustered around their lord or otherwise leader. Each contingent formed companies of varying size, but tending to follow the model of "One Hundred" and "Twenties". It mattered not which other contingents, from wherever, were stationed alongside of your company/contingent. All of you kept an eye on the battle standards as traditional military practice dictated. When it came time to move, you did your best to keep station with those on your right and on your left. You "patched it up" the best you could when things got wobbly and loose. Understanding the lingo of those companies flanking yours was not a necessity....
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It wasn't the understanding that was important, it was that whether men at arms, archers, or bills, they were at least familiar with each other, or knew someone that was. Even their leader would be known to them. Inexperienced men are shaky to begin with, are you likely to make it worse by grouping them with men who are an unknown quantity?
Getting all of an army's archers to step forward ahead of their contingents and shoot at a trumpet signal isn't complicated and is apparently what happened at Towton with the Yorkists.
Before the 15th Century men fought in 'local groups' and also did so in the 16th Century and the ECW; and in mixed units of missile and melee troops too. The faceless conscript didn't exist until nations started extensive training of recruits and even then most armies kept units grouped by locale. Even now the British Army's infantry and 'cavalry' regiments draw their recruits from defined areas (although with successive reductions the areas get bigger).
In WWI the British even introduced the 'Pals Battalions', with units drawn from very small areas, in the hope of making up for a truncated training schedule by putting men with their mates. Obviously the downside of this was whole villages being robbed of their young men after particularly bloody offensives.
Probably a bit redundant of me to say this now, but imho in the WotR men at arms, bills and archers fought in the contingents they came in (though I'm wary of saying in ECW-style missile/melee blocks), but the entire archer corps could also be commanded to shoot by a central commander. One period quote mentions "a bow with a bill at his back"... but for the life of me I forget who and where.
Professional contingents of the HYW and Tudor era are a different story however. When you raise a score of men at arms and a hundred or so archers or more, removing the men at arms to brigade them with others is less of an issue. The archers would barely register their absence and the men at arms would also be with both their own kind and quite often known to each other anyway, the pro soldiering circuit back then was a small one.
On a side note 'Spear' was the direct Middle English translation of the French 'Lance', meaning a man at arms (not to be confused with lance fournie, which was the man at arms, his attendants and one or more other fighting types depending on when we are talking). Both 'spear' and 'lance' are used interchangeably in 15th and early 16th Century English documents, alongside 'archer' and 'bills'.
In Henry VIII's day you even have a unit called the 'King's Spears' serving alongside the 'Yeomen of the Guard' and who were fully suited-up classic 'knights' and certainly did not include any commoners. The ME word for the infantry-type spear was 'stave' (staff), as in 'border staves' (later known as reivers).
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SOP made each man familiar with an ad hoc ordering of the mustered contingents. Nobody expected to fight only under his lord or leader, especially if that lord or leader was of subordinate status.
Everyone outside of a contingent/retinue was an "unknown quantity" to some degree. How would lining up next to other retinues be any different than sending the archers under a known subcommander to line up between the archers from other contingents?
I don't see the necessary distinction between "archers grouped separately", and, "stepped forward ahead of their contingents". We have battles where archers are placed on the wings of MAA in the center. This would of necessity require all of the archers to leave their MAA and be arrayed with the other archers from all the contingents.
I'm sure that many examples exist of contingents remaining homogeneous, i.e. mixed arms remaining together. But the separation of archers from MAA also happened. Perhaps with the replacing of warbows with gunnes, the tactics changed such that integrated units became the norm instead of an option? Tercios definitely operated that way. Continental tactics and order and drill must have crossed the Channel.
I am sure that "Pals battles" existed all through the middle ages. At Hastings the Kent "contingent" took its place in the center where it was traditionally accepted it would stand (can't recall at the moment where I read that snippet). I am sure that tradition placed all of the various shire and earldom and royal troops in places in the battle line. That meant that locals fought surrounded by their neighbors.
But that isn't at the root of the question about archers being separated out and stationed on the wings. The troops from a contingent would not be broken up and mixed with strangers, they would stand together.
Yes, "spears" are melee troops, with the best being the nobility and most well off MAA, i.e. fully suited up. But lesser men would muster among them, probably in the rear ranks....
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Men who have never fought before or even trained to fight don't have an SOP. I think we need to draw a line here between HYW armies which contained picked men, many of whom were career soldiers (their names keep turning up in various documents) and the hastily raised forces of the WotR, which did not.
The households of nobles and their retainers would be pretty much the same as those forces raised for the HYW granted (indeed were the forces usually assembled to form HYW armies), but the rest were largely 'new menne of warre' and in the case of the bills came from a social class with no tradition of military service (Scots border excepted) for over a century. Prior to the WotR the last time domestic forces were raised en-masse was in 1403 for the Battle of Shrewsbury.
'Spears' were what we call 'Men at Arms' (you won't find 'man at arms' in a 15th Century document, only spears/lances) and came from the class above those who were mounted archers... essentially the nobles and knights, and the richer of the Yeomen, along with what were becoming termed 'Squires' and 'Gentry' - men who held land or owned land in their own right (but employed others to actually work it), or had material wealth derived from a profession (merchants and lawyers etc). Sure their equipment ranged from partial plate with a brigandine to full harness of varying qualities, but all possessed a horse. They might be 'commoners' if you were an earl, but in the same way as Princess Di was 'a commoner' before she married.
All that aside there is no actual evidence as to how armies were formed up, whether divided into homogenous blocks of men at arms/bills, and archers, or in mixed all-arms groups of contingents. Even for a battle we do have some evidence for (Agincourt), the debate over how the army formed up has lasted well over a century.
My own personal view is that in each contingent the 'spears' clustered round the lord, his banner and standard, the archers formed on either side of them and if there were bills, they formed the rear 'ranks' of the contingent as a whole. That contingent was placed alongside other similar contingents. No evidence for that of course, other than the "bill at his back" quote, but then there is none for any alternatives either.
;)
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I think we are mostly in agreement here. One point about "new men of war": there were always new men of war. Whether or not they formed a minority, or a majority, for a given battle/campaign, the veterans or trained/drilled men (the "spears") were the ones showing the new men of war what was what. The same would hold true for the veteran yeomen, showing the inexperienced archers how to do it.
I can use a modern, personal analogy. The last "big one" reenactment of Hastings (2006) had an unprecedented number of "fighters" on the ground, somewhere around two thousand, roughly twice as big as the 2000 event, which topped a thousand by some estimates. Many/most of us were not from England much less the "Vikings" reenactment group that oversaw and regulated with "the rules". Reenactors had to be divided off into one of the six parts ("commands") and placed in companies and assigned positions in the six formations (or battles, in fact). Once each participant was standing with his company, in position, note was made of the faces surrounding him(her) and relative position to the standards, etc. The tactics were explained and then the order to move (or receive attack) was given. Combat ensued and broke off. Resumed. Reordering of the line. Move to the front. Retire to the rear between fighting spells, etc. It all went down very well. Considering that we had never seen each other before, and that we newbies were cognizant of the "veterans" in our immediate vicinity and followed their lead.
That's how it worked. SOP was known by a sufficient number of "spears", who formed the front ranks while the new men of war formed up behind them and kept to their positions the best that they could. The side which held together best could expect to win.
We do know how the English army arrayed at Agincourt. The three battles are not an arguable point. The commanders of each, ditto. Archers (some, anyway) in front (at one point) and on the wings, ditto. Positioned well back for several hours, then moved up within long range arrow shot, all are in agreement (by "all", I mean the sources that were there, not the first seminal sources for the battle that sprang up some years later). Any "new men of war" in the ranks simply do not show up, because they were told where to stand and what to do, and apparently had no difficulty following the lead of the veterans. Best source evidence says that Agincourt's English army was actually divided into three smaller armies that moved independently of each other. Each was arrayed identically, with MAA in the center and archer "wings" slightly angled forward like "horns". When these moved into line/contact with each other, the forward projecting "horns" of archers then touched at the furthest forward ends and looked like "wedges". When they stopped and planted their stakes, it created the "in herce" appearance remarked upon so much. They could advance beyond this obstacle and withdraw back behind it at will, which formed the opening tactic that was so effective against the mounted MAA of the French wings. So, we do know more than a little bit about how that army arrayed, moved and fought, and where the various troops moved to during the battle, etc. Erpingham moving the archers out in front during the advance can be seen as a temporary screen that subsequently moved back to the wings, or some remained for the opening stage as a thin line out in front of the MAA, and then moved back to the rear and off to the wings. There is no evidence of how they moved from out in front to the more detailed descriptions that place all of the archers on the wings (and some MAA too, there may have been a "stiffening" of MAA within the wings of archers).
None of these possible interpretations matter or change anything, when we are wondering how English armies arrayed MAA and archers for battle. The various sources are not in disagreement, imho. They are describing different things, different movements. Archers out front and on the wings are both supported by the sources. Archers shooting from behind MAA is not supported or anywhere alluded to, so we have discounted that one. Archers filtering forward and retreating back through the MAA is ASSUMED, but nowhere stated to be the case. That is a battlefield maneuver that is quite common throughout antiquity, including the middle ages. "Open order" lines have no trouble moving through each other. Closing back up into "close order" is a matter of seconds, especially for a line as thin as that of the MAA at Agincourt (only four ranks, empirically stated by one of the eyewitness sources).
It is perfectly reasonable and logical to assume that the last HYW veterans applied this SOP to the first battles of the WotR, and told the "new men of war" in each case where they were to stand and who they were to follow, etc. There was no broken tradition that had to be learned all over again as the English moved directly from their continental adventures and took up killing each other....
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Gents, informative as this is, we have strayed a fair way from the original sticky topic and into discussions of tactics, armour class and all sorts of other things not strictly concerned with the ratio of bills:bows:other things in a WOTR force, which was the oft-debated topic of the original sticky - and a subject which most people interested in gaming the WOTR probably want to know about.
I've therefore demerged the latter part of your discussion into a separate topic where you can continue debating the finer points to your hearts' content, and take the discussion off into related areas if you so wish :)
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I'm pretty much done to be honest... given that Agincourt was 50 years before the WotR and Flodden almost 30 after (where they did fight in contingents), there was clearly a gradual drift from one form to another, when that was is anyone's guess. With no eyewitness accounts for the WotR to go on, it's all a matter of opinion in which anyone's view is as valid as anyone else's. So as much as I've offered a view, there's no saying it's right.
That being said, having spent my younger years in numerous real 'shield walls', I can't really accept that a choreographed re-enactment has any relation to real warfare though. Despite my pretty thorough training, you really have to fight the 'flee' impulse (and one or two others) when facing a few thousand people who actually do mean to hurt you and have the objects/weapons to do it (short of longbows and cavalry obviously) for the first couple of times... try to re-enact that.
;)
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Well of course. All that fear of destruction/mutilation means is that the cohesion falls apart faster and more often. It doesn't mean that the methodology of getting "men new to war" into their assigned places was any different. We followed the guys who knew what was going on, who had done the battle many times in the past, and were our company leaders. Veterans of battle did the same job in the WotR battles. Sometimes it worked better for one side than the other, which would have played a role in victory for the advantaged side. I suspect the more veteran army was well on the way to winning their battle. The new men had more steady men to stand beside and to follow, etc.
Contingents by Flodden might not be that obvious. Keeping the bows with the MAA/bills/melee troops would only be obvious if somebody as an original source made the OB perfectly clear. Otherwise, seeing archers out in front, then withdrawing to the rear, could be a separate command for the bow, working in concert with the battles of melee troops. If the bow ever withdrew to the flanks, that would be a dead giveaway that the bow is not joined to a mingled contingent OB, but rather is a separated command....
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I never suggested the archers fell back to the rear, especially as after the MAA they were the best troops in the army. Stepping forwards to get some room to shoot, then falling back either side of their own MAA for the melee (but in front of the bills) would not be complex. I also didn't mention 'mingled', even within a contingent separate types were in their own sub-units under their own leaders, as was the case in Europe.
Cohesion would be easier to maintain if a force did not move. As I said earlier, for the most part the army which attacked seems to have lost the battle in the WotR. There are exceptions, but these usually rely on other factors (numbers, treachery etc). Maybe coincidence, maybe not, but even today a drill sergeant's problems begin with recruits when he gets them moving. A universal truth is that without constant badgering a body of men spreads out when it moves, only the relatively slow pace of later 'linear' period forces allowed them to maintain their dressing.
As I keep saying though... with no evidence to draw on, they could have done anything. We are tossing thoughts around with nothing to back them up. ::)
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I don't agree with your last assertion. Something in the oral tradition entered the first written accounts of the battles. The descriptions of the arrayed armies were based on known SOP and eyewitnesses. They weren't invented out of whole cloth. Drawing on those battles where we do possess eyewitnesses is of the highest value.
Are there eyewitness accounts of Flodden? I don't know, because it lies outside of "my period" of focus. I only recently got into a somewhat deeper interest in the battle of Verneuil. I've always had a mild interest in Formigny. In neither battle did the English array as contingents or retinues standing beside each other.
It's interesting how you view the yeomen as "some of the best troops in the army", vis-a-vis melee capacity. I do as well. But I had a lengthy debated discussion some years ago over on that "other forum" with a proponent of the view that archers could easily be "swept away" by MAA because of the differences in skill and armor. His question was, "why didn't the French simply attack the archers at Agincourt, drive them away and kill them, then envelope the heavily outnumbered English MAA?" His conclusion was that the archers were simply "not there" to be attacked in the first place!? Of course, his thesis was untenable and he wriggled and squirmed almost endlessly to make it work, finally placing ALL of the archers in the woods on either flank of the English position, with only the MAA out in the open between. The discussion ended soon after that.
The point is, even if the yeomen were the second best melee troops in the army, they still were far less effective than MAA. If a battle line was comprised of discrete retinues arrayed beside each other, in all of their variable sizes (from a few score men to several or many hundreds), the inherent weakness of the archers on the "wings" of each cluster of MAA/bills would create problems of solidarity. Some of those "wings" would rout off, leaving huge gaps in the line to be exploited. Bad idea!
It would make more sense to keep the archers out in front, then either withdraw them to form supporting rear ranks, or advance through them to produce the same effect. That way the MAA/bills would be cohesive across the entire front of the battle line.
Of course, the effect on the war games table would be identical whether the archers were grouped together in a massed "archers command" (such as we may see with Erpingham at Agincourt), or remained integrated with each retinue/contingent under their own subcommanders. Surely, the CinC did not possess a command structure allowing him to issue orders to each retinue/contingent, therefore they were lumped together into "battles", the smallest subunit a medieval army could be divided into and issued tactical orders. So retinues/contingents, in all their varying sizes, were not tactical "units" in any sense, but part of a much larger tactical unit, called a "battle". And there were only two or three (rarely four) of those to a side. The archers, under their own subcommanders, would perform separate duties from the MAA, and join them in the melee, probably as rear ranks, typically, but sometimes as active support troops if much more numerous than the MAA/bills (as at Agincourt). Probably in WotR battles, with the MAA/bills on a parity or even somewhat more numerous proportion to the archers, the archers withdrew out of the melee except in the most dire need.
But as an army level war game, how would viewing English organization one way or the other make any practical difference? Other than the convention of making the MAA/bills, and archers, check morale separately, the movement and demands of cohesion would be the same. The archers could not go hiving off, making long sweeping movements around the enemy rear, for example. They would have to remain in contact with their battle. And of course, if they are viewed as remaining in contact with their contingent/retinue MAA/bills, that restriction would be doubly applied. But surely each contingent/retinue would not be checking for casualties as a separate subunit to the battle. Only the battle would be checking for morale as its own holistic "unit". As I say, no difference, in any practical terms that I can see, as a war game, either way you look at the organization.
The one thing, again, that the archers would never do in a contingent/retinue, is form up on the wings of each cluster of MAA/bills. If you have the slightest reference which convinces you that this is in fact what archers did, please share....
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We may be slightly at cross-purposes here. When I talk about MAA, I'm talking everyone mentioned in the Assize of Arms (1181) & The Statute of Winchester (1285), whose income fell above £15 p.a. and those in the £10-15 bracket who were not mounted archers. This whole group were (or were to provide someone who was) mounted, lance-armed and in possession of a sword, helmet and a mail shirt as the legal minimum (haubergeon in the case of the £10-15 group).
The mounted archers were the bulk of the £10-15 class and except for possession of a horse, were identical to the £5-10 group, who were to possess a haubergeon (or 'doublet', i.e. a jack, in the case of the £5-10 lot), a helmet of iron, a sword and a knife. Original armament was a spear, but after Edward III's 1383 proclamation, they were required to own and practice with bows. The income group earning between £2-5 had always been required to possess a bow, arrows, sword and knife, but nothing else.
The group I refer to as 'bills' are those who were not serfs or villeins etc, who had an income of less than £2, who were only required to possess; "scythes, gisarmes, swords, knives or other small weapons". Undoubtedly some possessed various items of armour and/or helmets, but as a whole were the poorest, most malnourished and pitiful sector of medieval society; there were even serfs who were wealthier (by virtue of not having to pay taxes).
Overall this group could in no meaningful sense be considered the second most important group in a medieval army. As I mentioned previously, they were not even recruited other than for domestic squabbles to make numbers up. The spearmen/billmen/whatever, that were present in 14th Century armies were almost certainly those men in the £5-10 bracket who were not bowmen and as time progressed they steadily disappeared as men of their income group (or at least their sons) became archers.
By the 15th Century the only two classes (barring specialists like 'scourers', 'gonners' etc) you find mentioned in various teller's rolls and musters for service in France (including the 1475 expedition) are men at arms (as 'spears' or 'lances') and archers (mounted or foot). The exception being exotic types like the Welsh and Irish, who were not covered by the statutes, the bulk of whom were dirt-poor in any case and would probably fall below the £2 bracket.
On the domestic front, the few assessments carried out that have survived show large numbers of men possessing very little, with the usual notation 'able with a bill', meaning fit to serve and owns a bill. A very small number of these have helmets and/or jacks, or other odd items, the overwhelming majority do not. Many names have no notation against them (either meaning they either had nothing, or were not present to be assessed, the jury is out on that one), while others have various items of armour and weapons, almost all of which include a bow... as bowmen earned more than other 'footmen', it is guaranteed that come the muster, these folk would be carrying their bows.
As the 1450s progressed and things began to hot up politically, archers were being snapped up to serve in households, or being retained for future need. This exempted them from royal service (in theory their nobles were already royal officers, so they were already serving in theory), so when commissioners were sent out to assess for the raising of a paltry 13,000 archers from several prosperous southern counties, they only found 70% (or so) - the excuse being that these were the only ones not bearing exemptions from one lord or another. There's no record of anybody piping up and suggesting "It's okay, we'll raise billmen instead, they are far better than archers anyway".
When Charles the Bold asked Edward IV if he could recruit from within his aborted French adventure, he asked for leave to recruit archers, nothing else. That Edward had recruited around ten archers per man at arms in any case shows what value he placed on them, there was certainly no shortage of men at arms. Clearly he felt his limited funds were best spent on archers and with the biggest English army raised since 1415, he could have trimmed some to up the MAA total. In 1477 Lord Hastings sailed for Calais with 500 archers and just 16 MAA to potentially serve Marie of Burgundy (didn't happen in the end though), so no doubting who was deemed most valuable there. Take out the five MAA who would lead each 100 archers and you're left with Bill himself, his standard bearer and ten MAA... not much of a melee block for sure!
Clearly if such men were inevitably going to be 'swept away' as soon as the French charged them, it would certainly be a false economy employing so many... hence my view that they were the second most valuable (at least) element in English armies... not that it was exactly a close-run contest for that position, given my preceding comments on the billmen. That guy might as well have said why didn't Napoleon charge his cavalry at the British infantry at Waterloo and sweep them away?
By the same token, if the archers had an 'inherent weakness' in comparison to MAA, which may well be true 1:1, not so much at 2:1 and definitely not at 3 or 4:1, then it stands to reason that they would need protecting, whether massed on the flanks of the army, or on the flanks of individual battles or contingents... my view is that they were quite capable of looking after themselves, given their numbers. If anyone needed protecting it was the poor billmen.
The obvious question someone might be thinking at this point is "why bother with billmen if they were so bad"? To which the answer is "they didn't", at least not when they had to be paid, hence their absence from pay rolls for service in France. In the WotR and the incessant warfare on the Scots border, when they served for forty days for free, how could you refuse? They can fetch, carry and dig as well as anyone, and who knows, get enough of them together and they might manage to kill some of the enemy... if they don't desert or run off. Perhaps I'm exaggerating a touch, but not as much as you might think. However mix a few MAA with them, or use them to back the archers up and you may get some use out of them.
Flodden and the Tudor era in the main are out of my comfort zone, as is the bulk of the HYW. Naturally you end up straying into them for context and I've previously spent a couple of semesters going over Tudor probate inventories and muster rolls (Henry VIII used them to assess liability for taxes, the old dog!). What was surprising was that in comparison to the rare surviving assessments of the WotR period, the numbers of MAA, archers and billmen in each locale remained similar and there are far more of them, with far more information about who had what.
Not surprisingly the billmen still pretty much had very little, however the type of guys who we might describe as 'lesser men at arms' are now sometimes called 'mounted billmen', as opposed to the rest who are usually called demilances, both of whom are usually described as possessing 'harness'. The quantities of men described as having 'full harness' is very few, usually one or two in each hundred or half-hundred (so about 0.5% of the total manpower). There's more info post-1520, but that's more complicated and way beyond my ken.
Anyway, how valuable information from 5-35 years after Bosworth is, compared to information 5-40 before 1st St. Albans, I'll let folk decide for themselves.
All I can add to the debate on whether they fought in contingents or not, comes down to standards. If the element of each contingent were separated for battle, what purpose would a standard bearing badge and livery colours serve? Standards were used to convey signals to the men serving under them and if all your men were split hither and yon, they would be a waste of time, except to those actually with them. Weak argument I know, but that's all I have left.
I believe there were eyewitness accounts of Flodden, but it's been a while since I read anything on it. We have a couple of Tudor aficionadoes here at LAF, so maybe they could educate us?
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Fascinating stuff. I'm glad that I "found" you. ;)
So you don't see archers as a "weak link" in the English battle line. I don't either, but you have to admit that they would not be as resilient as MAA. Now if they have two to one or more over an attacking enemy force, yes, numbers will count, as they did against the first dismounted French battle at Agincourt. John Keegan pointed out clearly how effective two archers versus one MAA were. Almost a foregone conclusion under those circumstances.
I'm afraid that I still cannot visualize an English line of mingled retinues lined up side by side during the WotR. Maybe later. I don't know either. But I see the WotR as a continuation of the HYW tactics-wise. Maybe by the end of it things had started to change into holistic retinue array, i.e. keeping the archers with their MAA. I don't know.
I do know that your objection to archers separating isn't actually an accurate objection. Because livery would ID each man wherever part of the contingent/retinue happened to be. And a company standard would be there as well. So, earl Humpdedump's MAA and bills get his standard (the big one), and all stand together in livery. And his yeomen, separated off with the other yeomen into one of the flanking wings of the battalion, stand together in livery with their own standard, with a few MAA as commanders, and a few bills "at their backs" to lend thickness to the line when melee comes. Works for me, for the WotR anyway....
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Don't take offence, but I'm not so glad you found me, this debate has diverted me from other things I should be doing, as much as I'm enjoying it.
:)
Archers are certainly not the weak link, but yes in a general sense they are 'second class' to the MAA. However when you bear in mind quite a proportion of the MAA were novices in armour during the WotR and some of the archers veterans, the dividing line gets a bit blurred. Some archers had also 'crossed the line' during the HYW to become MAA too. At the end of the day though, MAA were on the whole better armoured, which is largely their advantage. I'm tempted to say that the archers' flexibility in roles and cheapness won out, which is why the later contingents sent to foreign parts contain so few MAA; their expense outweighed their advantage (a trend evident elsewhere in Europe).
That being said a number of the archers were also novices and although I have a bit of a downer on billmen, some of them would be pretty tough customers in their day to day lives, so again things blur a little there too. The only barrier between the low end of archers and the bills, is of course being able to use a bow. While you can put armour on an archer and call him a MAA, you can't give a guy a bow and call him an archer.
We'll have to agree to disagree on what happened as regards to how forces were arrayed, although we're not a thousand miles apart. Contingents as I see them numbered in the hundreds, or in the case of the Percys, Nevilles and other 'over-mighty subjects', the thousands. Every Tom, Dick, or Harry didn't have a livery (the right to a badge and livery were granted by the crown and limited to nobles and hereditary knights - what used to be called bannerets) and as forces raised by individual worthies generally came from a single area, a single contingent would almost certainly contain wholly 'Cheshire-men', or 'Devon-men', or what have you.
In some cases it appears that entire battles themselves could contain men from a single wider area, it is believed that the men raised by Somerset, Devon, Hungerford and others in the South-West, formed a single battle at Towton, likewise Northumberland's, Clifford's, Dacre's and the other 'Northerners'. In both cases they certainly marched together to join up with the rest of the army. Barring his mercenaries, the army Edward IV took to Tewkesbury was raised in the Home Counties, while Margaret's force was largely composed of men from the South West again.
It seems that individual battles were sub-divided into a centre and wings, with their own sub-commanders; for example Clarence was given a wing of Edward IV's battle at Barnet, presumably so he could keep an eye on him. Whether these wings were composed of 'brigaded' archers, or just more contingents flanked by their own archers, I really couldn't say and if I've read you right, is the principle difference in our viewpoints. So either it was big groups of men at arms flanked by even bigger groups of archers in each battle, large groups of MAA, flanked by larger groups of archers in the centre and wings of each battle, or each contingent was flanked by its own archers.
That just leaves the billmen for which there wasn't an SOP for in the greater scheme of how the English usually did things. Grouping them with the MAA makes sense, but so does keeping them at the back of the MAA and archers too . It's entirely possible that a variety of options were tried at various times. History is of course about continuity, gradual change and evolution of concepts and the 16th & 17th Century 'mixed companies' didn't happen over night... the 'when' that change began to occur is the issue.
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'I believe there were eyewitness accounts of Flodden, but it's been a while since I read anything on it. We have a couple of Tudor aficionadoes here at LAF, so maybe they could educate us?'
Here goes
My interest in the Tudor period is that of the early reign of Henry VIII, In particular the campaigns of 1513.
Over the last few years there has been a resurgence of interest in Henry's reign and also Flodden, both had quincnteneries in 2009 and 2013 respectively. Thus, rather happily, thee have been a number of publications covering Flodden.
It's an interesting engagement as there are surviving eyewitness accounts, three to be exact, each with biases but a lot can be learned.
I have followed this thread with interest thus I don't consider the model of the Tudor army after Flodden to be of any great weight in the discussion.
The general consensus you will find if you study the work associated with Flodden is that it was the last medieval battle / first renaissance; the former as the english army was effectively recruited by indenture and similarly armed to their WOTR forefathers, indeed the CinC was a WOTR veteran, the Scots were a feudal host. It was also the first artillery duel on a battlefield with modern artillery, furthermore modern tactics were attempted by the Scots.
The English at Flodden were recruited by indenditure but perhaps different to the WOTR were all paid and quite well equipped in comparison, in addition there were a number of professional soldiers and mariners from the fleet. The majority of the host were from Northern counties and would have been familiar at least with border conflict, in some cases, active participants.
As for battlefield composition, I'll leave it to Niall Barr to explain;
'English armies deployed in a linear, shallower formation. The MAA and billmen would form up in compact lines, roughly four or five deep while the archers, also four or five deep would deploy either on the flanks of the billmen in rough wedges or stand in front of the billmen. Thus the archers were deployed to develop their maximum firepower at the beginning of a battle. However, as the two forces closed, the archers would retreat through the lines of billmen and take post in the rear when the two bodies came to 'hand strokes'.
Once the English billmen were closely engaged with the enemy the English archers would take up their secondary weapons and join the melee.
This simple, yet effective tactical system remained relatively unchanged since the Battle of Agincourt, 1415. English armies had certainly had plenty of practice using this tactic during the bloody engagements of the Wars of the Roses and subsequent military operations.'
I think that sums things up fairly well, and in particular it supports both of your notions; at certain points in the battle archers were distinct bodies of men separate from the bill / MAA, at others they were part of the same collective body of men, their use was reactionary to what was happening in the battle - a similar argument has long been held about the role of arquebus and pike formations, were the separate or one body, I think as wargamers we are often too keen to compartmentalise for better visual identification and representation but it's not necessarily true.
I will take my hat off to the first gamer who bases their bow, bill and MAA together - historically accurate but how do you game with them?
in conclusion, you're both right for different reasons, now shake hands and show us some of your miniatures :D
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in conclusion, you're both right for different reasons, now shake hands and show us some of your miniatures :D
lol
Amen to that!
;)
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... in conclusion, you're both right for different reasons, now shake hands and show us some of your miniatures :D
I can claim a pass on that surely, as I'm separated from my paints and figures by about 1700 miles? It's a better excuse than my previous "too lazy to paint" one though.
;)
No shaking hands required though, as is usual for us civilised types on the Medieval Board it's been a clean and civil debate, and certainly has had me thinking and challenging my beliefs on all things WotR. Accordingly I tip my hat to Merlin in true English fashion.
Thanks for your input too btw... and of course your own posts and rather excellent blog; an inspiration to all of us 'non-doers' out here. :)
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By "SOP", I mean archers to the rest of the army, the dedicated melee troops, of which "billmen" became a more noticeable part during the 15th century. This was probably because (as has been stated) archers opted out and took to the bill instead. More and more archers failed the test of the warbow. It had always been a challenge to handpick the warbow archers from the pool of archers. And such a task seems to have required months of preparation before an army could go to the continent.
Archers were "brigaded" together on the battlefield during the HYW. Sometimes they formed in front. But normally they formed on the "wings" of the bodies of melee troops, appearing as projecting "wedges" between the battles of MAA (and billmen).
The advent of artillery (and less importantly, at first, personal firearms, "gunnes") began an alteration to the SOP of continental armies. And the alteration came to Britain as well, only more slowly because of the presence of the traditional archer pool. Nevertheless, despite the archer presence, changes occurred as well, as artillery and gunnes impacted the SOP of the medieval battle line. It got thinner, to reduce the casualties from the artillery (and increasingly, the gunnes). Apparently by Flodden, the English lines had thinned to c. half what they had been during (and before) the apogee of the longbow: when MAA would form up to eight ranks deep and archers could be seen eight to sixteen ranks deep (as at Agincourt). The process of changed SOP continued on after the "last medieval battle", until the warbow was being supplanted by firearms. During the process of change, it became normal SOP to no longer separate out the archers from their contingents, but rather to leave them integrated with their MAA and billmen. It was now common to advance with the archers in front, rather than on the wings, of the battles, and for the battles to be contiguous to each other, thus presenting a continuous doubled line of archers in front, melee troops behind. After the shooting phase was over, the archers either withdrew behind the melee troops, or the melee troops advanced through the archers. The archers took up melee weapons and formed the rear ranks in support of the melee troops, and then the hand to hand fighting commenced.
I am sure that there were exceptions to this altered SOP, where the "old ways" were resorted to in expedient or opportunistic situations. For example, an army that found itself composed of, say, eighty percent archers (or more) would hardly be able to cover a parity of melee troops, and in such a condition would form the bulk of the battle line, with the MAA and billmen being more of a "stiffening" of the battle line of archers. In such a hypothetical case, discrete battles of archers might form as the "wings" of a composite central battle of archers, MAA and billmen.
Applying this altered SOP to the war games table should be simple enough. If we limit the tactical "units" available to the CinC to the one to three (or four) "battles", and if we make morale checks based on the over all numbers in the battles (rather than conduct morale checks on the individual contingents/retinues composing the battles), we have a situation where there is no practical difference in how battles function externally, even though internally the array has changed. The end result is the same: archers form in front, then move to the rear, with an option to form on the wings if the commander so wishes. Morale tests impact the entire battle, composed of MAA, bills and archers, in either "period". (I don't see a need to create miniature elements with archers, MAA and bills intermixed. It would still make the most sense to keep archers based separately, to facilitate moving them to the fore or the rear. MAA and bills would look natural based together. And bills separately based would work for those situations where archers have a "backing" of bills. The heretical approach that I prefer is to base each miniature by itself. And use movement bases/trays. That way total control of composing a retinue is obtained.)
Anyway, I surely do appreciate the input offered already. If anyone else has more to add, I am all eyes....
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So many words ......... :o
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Look at it as "content". :D
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This is more like what I think of as 'content' :D
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=59864.0 (http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=59864.0)
(http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x69/pantomaniac/IMG_3328_zpsbe381b3b.jpg)
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Oh, my my my, that is pretty....
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Gentlemen. I think this could run and run. But we may not have the bandwidth.
Let's declare it an honourable draw and leave it there :)