Force composition, armour and tactics in the Wars of the Roses

[MerlintheMad]

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....

[Arlequín]

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. 

[MerlintheMad]

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....

[Arlequín]

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?

[MerlintheMad]

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....

[Arlequín]

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.

[Stuart]

'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 

[Captain Blood]

in conclusion, you're both right for different reasons, now shake hands and show us some of your miniatures 

Amen to that!

[Arlequín]

... in conclusion, you're both right for different reasons, now shake hands and show us some of your miniatures 

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. 

[MerlintheMad]

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....

[Silent Invader]

So many words .........

[MerlintheMad]

Look at it as "content". 

[Silent Invader]

This is more like what I think of as 'content' 

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=59864.0

[MerlintheMad]

Oh, my my my, that is pretty....

[Captain Blood]

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