Info on late 15th century German armies?

[Charlie_]

Does anyone have any good pointers for info on warfare / armies in the Holy Roman Empire in the 1450-1500 period?

I have the Osprey German Medieval Armies 1300-1500 book, but I want more detail.

[Arlequín]

That's quite a large swathe of Europe and what holds true, for example; Saxony, does not for Styria or Bohemia.

I don't know of one single source in English, but the old WRG Armies of Medieval Europe vol 2 covers the Holy Roman Empire to a degree. The Ospreys on the Hanseatic League and the Hussites give snippets too, but in all you might get as much historical detail reading an early Warhammer Empire Army list. I can't recommend one single book as a 'One-Stop-Shop', but if you like reading up on stuff, go for any/all of the above.

Detailed details on army composition are few and far between though, and pretty vague in everything I've read (I'm also looking at Germany, or more correctly Austria atm), Maybe one of our German members can help us out?

[NurgleHH]

It is nearly impossible to say "the german army" in this period, because there were several independent states in the whole area. Great armies were the hanseatic league (osprey book), the landsknechte (merncenerys - Osprey I think) and the emperors army (but he also had a lot of mercenaries). In think you will find more in german libraries and website, I afraid.

[Arlequín]

Sure, you had the 'Imperial Army' selectively raised across the various princes, bishops, dukes, cities and whatever, then the individual forces of the same, often in 'leagues' within what would become the various 'circles' of the Empire and of course the mercenaries all of these employed. Then there were the 'raubritten' eking out a living by highway robbery and raiding and rural 'bunds' fed up of everyone picking on them; and in some cases the bunds turned the tables and picked on everyone else nearby.

It's complicated stuff, but a very rich table filled with all sorts of possibilities. I wasn't jokjng earlier; take the Warhammer Empire, strip away the fantasy races and elements, and you have a carbon copy historical HRR. Obviously I doubt this was coincidence.

[Koppi]

Just have a look at my BLOG, especially my Bretten reports.

http://thrifles.blogspot.de/2016/10/bretten-1504-eine-belagerung.html

http://thrifles.blogspot.de/2016/12/bretten-2016-der-festumzug.html

Maybe you can get some inspiration. The Bretten history groups are really authentic.

[Elrak]

In the second half of the century you also can observe a strong influence of Bohemian mercenaries on the warfare and military customs, at least in the "German" territories around Bohemia. That means a lot of mounted crossbowmen and infantry using paveses, polearms, crossbows and early firearms. The rise of the landsknechts and their pike formations started around 1480 and the final clash of these two types of mercenaries occured 1504 in the battle of Wenzenbach during the War of the succession of the Duchy Bavaria-Landshut.
Literature and websites I know only exist in German.

[Mad Doc Morris]

Strong emphasis on what Arlequín said: There were certain trends in fashion, armour, etc that were regarded 'German'. But the Holy Roman Empire was by no means a unified entity, neither politically nor culturally. Thus you won't find books or websites covering "German armies", even in German – at least nothing worth your money or time.
Also, during the late 15th century the 'core territories', i.e. roughly modern Germany, were relatively peaceful. Sure, there were quite a few feuds and one-off campaigns, yet very little in the way of all-out war and large-scale battles. Warfare was mostly irregular in nature, with a great variety of forces involved.

You may therefore want to focus on the occasional outbreak of 'Imperial wars' declared by the emperor and the imperial diet (siege of Neuss 1474, Swabian War of 1499) for detailed information on the composition and look of the armies involved.
Furthermore, there were a good number of treatises on 'regular' warfare which deliberated the equipment and choice of troops and how to deploy them effectively. Some of these books (keywords are Kriegsbuch or Hausbuch, resp. Kriegsbücher or Hausbücher) contain detailed illustrations as well. Perhaps best-known is the Wolfenegg manuscript, composed c. 1480, which includes an illustration of an army on the march (Wiki link). Here's another example from a slightly later book, the Kriegsbuch by "Philipp the Monk", depicting two armies arrayed for combat:


(Full source here at Heidelberg University library)

You may gather that there are no simple answers to your questions. The topic requires a bit of research, especially since, despite some academic studies, there's not much available in German as well. Still, the reference sections of Wikipedia articles to the keywords mentioned above should be a good starting point.

One last piece of advice, though: Beware of generalisations and random pre- or backdating of evidence. So, for example, please no landsknecht fashion in pre-1500 armies or houndskulls for post-1450 soldiers.

[bluechi]

To make it easy.....the south german cities, dukes etc armies would be like the swiss...but with lots of cavalry...the fashion and style of weapons still the same...the habsburger have the power in the south and thats for a long time.the only difference was the long speer (pike)....and the special swiss formation since the old zurich war. The pavese/tartschen was most used by the bohemian troops....maybe last time in the battle of .....where they used the hussits tactic with pavese and wagons...in the other areas the pavese where used only by siege or by crossbows..

[Arlequín]

Thanks gents, nice to know I'm on the right track. I opted for the Tirol/Kärnten region for feuding and later expansions to involve Venetians and maybe Turks and Hungarians. It did seem to be much more chaotic than the rest as far as I could make out.

Also, during the late 15th century the 'core territories', i.e. roughly modern Germany, were relatively peaceful.

So it's the Austrians who are the troublemakers?   Okay, got that.

[Mad Doc Morris]

So it's the Austrians who are the troublemakers?

Goodness, no! It's those pesky neighbours disturbing the peaceful Habsburg rule of the later 15th century: Hungarians, Bavarians, Swiss, Burgundians, Venetians…

[bluechi]

@mad dog....you forget the french, turks 

[Charlie_]

Thanks for the replies guys, very useful.

Great armies were the hanseatic league (osprey book), the landsknechte (merncenerys - Osprey I think) and the emperors army (but he also had a lot of mercenaries).

I have the Hanseatic League one, the Landsknechte one is on my shopping list (though obviously I've familiar with them at least in a post-1500 context).

Then there were the 'raubritten' eking out a living by highway robbery and raiding and rural 'bunds' fed up of everyone picking on them; and in some cases the bunds turned the tables and picked on everyone else nearby.

Yes, this is the level of warfare that interests me!
I'm picturing neighbouring nobles having their own little feuds and private wars.... And employing mercenaries (including Italian, Swiss and English).
I'd love to find some accounts of such conflicts to read... perhaps I need to learn German?

One fun scenario I'm looking forward to is a certain rogue duke, robber knight or what have you who has been pissing off his neighbours for a while with his raids and mischief making... They've all had enough, and have banded together to come and sort him out once and for all (perhaps with the Imperial seal of approval?). He's realised his now desperate situation and has hired a mercenary company to protect his lands.
So it would be the duke and the mercenaries (my own 'Company of the Rose'), along with his own lack-lustre household troops, against a union of other nobles with their own troops and mercenaries. The defending player will take the role of the mercenary captain, and the Duke himself (leading a unit of cavalry) will be somewhat uncontrollable, prone to go charging towards the enemy and ruining well-laid battle plans on a bad dice roll.... The captain needs to make sure he doesn't get himself killed or captured, or he's not getting paid.


Anyway, I'm thinking for my Germans a general mix of infantry units with polearms, pikes, handguns and crossbows, plus cavalry and the odd cannon. Mercenaries can bring English longbowmen, Swiss pikemen, veteran heavy cavalry and various Italian troops into the mix.

Do we know if  longbowmen were used much in the HRE? I know of course longbows weren't a purely English thing as we're sometimes led to belive, and were found a lot in northern France, but don't know about Germany...
(I'm talking about native longbowmen, rather than the afore-mentioned English mercenary archers I've got)

[bluechi]

They use longbows....the high time of robbery knights are the end of the 14 century...many of the robbery castles got destroyed by cities...Freiburg i.B. is one of the citys who destroyed lot of castles of these knigths.Burg Falkenstein (Höllental), wilde Schneeburg, Keppenburg etc...altough some knights entered into the militia force of the habsburgian like Humel von Keppenburg, died in Sempbach with a lot of different exciting knights.
One of the high generalisimus for the 15 century would be Wilhelm Herter von Hertneck. The only battle i know were italian troops under habsburgian banner is the battle at the calven 1499.one of the exciting robbery knights are Bigerli von Heudorf really interesting live...

[Arlequín]

I don't think you're far off the mark with that scenario. You don't even have to have Imperial approval, as many nobles had the right to wage war on their own account. My impression of the HRR is that Imperial control largely relied on the consent of the bulk of the nobility, along with the projection of visible Imperial power by the Emperor.

Don't get hung-up on just nobles as the movers and shakers, many cities were quite influential and domineering. There were two 'peasant republics' just off the top of my head too; the Swiss obviously and the Dithmarschen, three if you count the Hussites as sort of like one.

Wikipedia in English will unravel like spaghetti once you get going and start clicking links and of course Google Translate gets better by the day; beware of some quite obscure words and changed meanings though. I picked an area and started there, you'd be surprised at what comes up from that. I was quite taken with this guy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigismund,_Archduke_of_Austria

The longbow was very popular in North-West Europe, but I'm only seeing crossbows and handguns in German illustrations. Plenty of sites hinting at an archery tradition too, but no actual proof. I'll take bluechi's word though and perhaps include them in a peasant levy.

[bluechi]

Check Landshuter Erbfolgekrieg 1504/1505...there are lots of longbow in combat...battle of Bretten or Wenzenbach.many of them where english....koppi's side and report with picture gives good information how the look was at the time from 1480-1510. But i think great longbow troops where only used in great wars....in 3 weeks is the Peter and Paul festival in Bretten...so...lots of pictures in the net...from the battle of Seckenheim we know that the farmers ahere armed with different speers and helmbarts and fought with the swiss method against the knights on horse."swissmethod" is to go on first against the horse.altough from that battle we know that the badish got some swiss mecenaries...but they arived to late...