French Troops at Mortimer's Cross

[Hu Rhu]

I have been putting a WotR army together for the Battle of Mortimer's Cross 1461 but am slightly stuck as to how to depict the French troops that fought in the Earl of Wiltshire's ward.  In particular I am looking for information on their weapons compared to the English/Welsh contingents.  Would they have been armed with crossbow and pike?

Thanks for your help.

[Orlock]

Hi there,

I cannot seem to find any conclusive evidence as to the type of Breton, French soldiers present. I would imagine though that they would have used European pole weapons similar to bill hooks, perhaps halberds, glaives and the like. I doubt there would have been significant numbers of pikemen.

I would also think that they would use the crossbow, maybe a few with hand guns or bows. As I say this is not definite, rather an estimated guess based on what little information I can find relating to the battle.

As for modelling the French, in 28mm check out Perry Miniatures, they do quite a smart set of European pole weapons for their plastic ranges of late medieval miniatures.

[Atheling]

I cannot seem to find any conclusive evidence as to the type of Breton, French soldiers present. I would imagine though that they would have used European pole weapons similar to bill hooks, perhaps halberds, glaives and the like. I doubt there would have been significant numbers of pikemen.

Very likely this is so.

The 'Swiss' revolution took it's time to take hold on other armies.

Darrell.

[Arlequín]

I'm sure one of our French members will correct me if I'm wrong, but 'pique' can refer to a spear, just as 'lance' does likewise. As far as I know the French didn't adopt the 'pike' until 1480 when they hired Swiss to teach them how to use them.

Of course the point where a spear becomes a pike is relative. If you have a spear that's 6' and your opponent has one 12', then he pretty much has a pike all things considered.

As far as I know, French footmen liked glaives, voulges and spears as much as the English liked glaives, bills and spears, comme ci comme ça.

 


 

[Hu Rhu]

Thanks to all for your replies.  I shall probably use a mix of bills, halberds and spears (with the odd glaive for good measure) for the melee troops and crossbows for the shot.

[Le Korrigan]

I'm sure one of our French members will correct me if I'm wrong, but 'pique' can refer to a spear, just as 'lance' does likewise.

Yep! You are right 

La pique is a pole weapon and very long spear (from 3 to 7.5 metres) used by infantry = a pike

The French word lance refers to a spear or a lance.

[Atheling]

Yep! You are right 

La pique is a pole weapon and very long spear (from 3 to 7.5 metres) used by infantry = a pike

The French word lance refers to a spear or a lance.

It's probably worth adding that sometimes Billmen during the Wars of the Roses were referred to as Spears- or it may have been a reference to Scurrers- or rather confusingly both! 

Darrell.

[Arlequín]

Close.... 'Spears' were men at arms, it was the direct translation of 'lances', which is what the French and posher Englishmen called 'men at arms' and is the form used in the records for the 1475 Expedition to France.

Scowrers, scurriers and curriers etc. were scouts and light horse. Costelers or custrells are derived from 'coustilier' and typically refer to a man at arms's fighting attendant, although pre-1480s are usually grouped under the general headings of 'spears' or 'man at arms'. 'Stave' was the usual term for an infantry spear... or indeed a staff and could apply to foot or mounted, replacing 'hobilar' in general use by the early 15th Century (except for at least one occasion when it crops up in a document in the Mid-15th Century).

'Byll' (or however they choose to spell it) is used to refer to the weapon itself when it is not being called somewhat generically a 'glayve', but not the man wielding it, who might be called a footman on the rare occasions they are mentioned as distinct from archers, at least up to the late c.1480s when 'bylls' appears in documents referring to the troops themselves. It is way more common in the 16th Century.  

This is why people are extremely dubious about the Strickland Indenture, which talks about 'mounted bylls' and 'foot bylls' along with the archers. It appears by its language to be from the Mid-16th century, rather than 1449 or 1458; the dates normally attributed to it by various authors using it as 'evidence'. I think it was actually attributed to another 'Walter Strickland esq' who died in 1569.

Why would they copy/forge it? Perhaps to 'prove' a history of service for some legal dispute regarding enfeoffment of estates and the other such things people took each other to court over.

[Jericho]

'Spears' were men at arms, it was the direct translation of 'lances', which is what the French and posher Englishmen called 'men at arms' and is the form used in the records for the 1475 Expedition to France.

Can 1 lance mean just 1 man-at-arms or just always a group of 3-5 men led by a knightly type?
And are these supposed to be mounted or dismounted?

Yesterday I bought a series of old books about the history of Antwerp, and in one of them is an order to mobilise mentioned.
Charles the Bold, in May 1472, demanded 30 lances and 30 crennequiniers for an expedition against France in June.
The author, Floris Prims (early 20th century priest), thinks that it were just 30 men-at-arms and 30 crossbowmen because the city and the duke seem to have made a deal about their participation in the expedition.

But 60 men sounds really low for a city...

[Arlequín]

Can 1 lance mean just 1 man-at-arms or just always a group of 3-5 men led by a knightly type?
And are these supposed to be mounted or dismounted?

Yes...

Medieval writers knew what they meant and that anyone of their time would get it, whereas we don't. If they were writing in the style of today's historians they would say 'lance' for just one guy and 'lance fournie' for one guy with his small entourage of valet d'armes, archers and whatever, which frequently changed.

They also had an ambivalent attitude towards infantry and cavalry, and Medieval soldiers could frequently serve as both types to suit, or as merely mounted infantry. Given that most professionals could do both and rode, and that a formal cavalry and infantry divide was far into the future, they didn't feel the need to specify. The only time it was relevant was when such troops were augmented with large bodies of conscripts or militia, in which case they were usually mentioned as being horsemen or some similar term to differentiate them.     

Yesterday I bought a series of old books about the history of Antwerp, and in one of them is an order to mobilise mentioned.
Charles the Bold, in May 1472, demanded 30 lances and 30 crennequiniers for an expedition against France in June.
The author, Floris Prims (early 20th century priest), thinks that it were just 30 men-at-arms and 30 crossbowmen because the city and the duke seem to have made a deal about their participation in the expedition.

But 60 men sounds really low for a city...

It's not a reflection of the capability of what the city could put out, but more of what Duke Charles thought they would pay for without grumbling and becoming rebellious. They would typically hire professionals to meet the quota rather than send actual citizens. He probably sent similar demands to other cities like Ghent, Brugge and Ypres at the same time, so that those 60 men might form part of a larger contingent of some few hundred, or even the equivalent of a whole compagnie d'ordonnance if he asked around enough.

As for whether they were one man at arms and one crossbowman each case is open to interpretation. If we were talking 'ordonnance' troops I would be pretty sure a man at arms, valet, 2-3 archers and a coustilier were meant by 'lance' and a company of 60 crossbowmen on foot to come with them.

In Flanders however a 'lance' was traditionally a man at arms and his valet de guerre (who was essentially a 'lesser man at arms') and given that the crossbowmen are given in equal numbers, they were to be added to the lance in equal measure. Maximilian did something similar in his ordonnance of 1487. So my guess is that 120 horsemen and 60 mounted crossbows (who would probably dismount for battle) is the actual force in this case. 

The actual potential of the city might be in the region of 5,000 pike and pole-armed men, some 500 or so crossbows, handgunners and archers combined, several artillery pieces and possibly some 200 or so men at arms... plus those professionals it employed as police, like the White-Caps of Ghent, or the Blue-Caps of Brugge. On their home ground you could possibly double this amount.   

[Jericho]

Yes...

Medieval writers knew what they meant and that anyone of their time would get it, whereas we don't. If they were writing in the style of today's historians they would say 'lance' for just one guy and 'lance fournie' for one guy with his small entourage of valet d'armes, archers and whatever, which frequently changed.

They also had an ambivalent attitude towards infantry and cavalry, and Medieval soldiers could frequently serve as both types to suit, or as merely mounted infantry. Given that most professionals could do both and rode, and that a formal cavalry and infantry divide was far into the future, they didn't feel the need to specify. The only time it was relevant was when such troops were augmented with large bodies of conscripts or militia, in which case they were usually mentioned as being horsemen or some similar term to differentiate them.

Thanks, so it's as I feared. We'll never be really sure and it comes down to what sounds most probable for every instance it's mentioned...

It's not a reflection of the capability of what the city could put out, but more of what Duke Charles thought they would pay for without grumbling and becoming rebellious. They would typically hire professionals to meet the quota rather than send actual citizens. He probably sent similar demands to other cities like Ghent, Brugge and Ypres at the same time, so that those 60 men might form part of a larger contingent of some few hundred, or even the equivalent of a whole compagnie d'ordonnance if he asked around enough.

As for whether they were one man at arms and one crossbowman each case is open to interpretation. If we were talking 'ordonnance' troops I would be pretty sure a man at arms, valet, 2-3 archers and a coustilier were meant by 'lance' and a company of 60 crossbowmen on foot to come with them.

In Flanders however a 'lance' was traditionally a man at arms and his valet de guerre (who was essentially a 'lesser man at arms') and given that the crossbowmen are given in equal numbers, they were to be added to the lance in equal measure. Maximilian did something similar in his ordonnance of 1487. So my guess is that 120 horsemen and 60 mounted crossbows (who would probably dismount for battle) is the actual force in this case. 

The actual potential of the city might be in the region of 5,000 pike and pole-armed men, some 500 or so crossbows, handgunners and archers combined, several artillery pieces and possibly some 200 or so men at arms... plus those professionals it employed as police, like the White-Caps of Ghent, or the Blue-Caps of Brugge. On their home ground you could possibly double this amount.   

This all sounds much more probable than what's in my book. Maybe the joke was on Antwerp thinking that 30 didn't sound much until, under the Abbeville Ordonnance, 30 lances became up to 270 men with an additional 30 crossbowmen.
And looking at the 1250 lances of the Abbeville Ordonnance, you would need about 42 cities each giving 30 lances; sounds reasonable to me for the times.

[Arlequín]

I very much doubt Charles got very much past the good burghers of any of the towns and cities. They were the sort of guys, who would steal your watch when you shook hands with them and then sell it back to you for more than you originally paid for it.

 

Charles organised his professionals in his own fashion, but contingents levied as part of the 'feudal obligation'would likely be organised in their own manner and fighting under their own banners and Burgundy's. There is nothing to suggest that even all of his directly hired professionals followed his ordinances to the letter... his English company couldn't (Men at arms and archers... no pikes, crossbows, or handgunners) and his Italian ones came as whole condottieri bands, or companies of several bands combined... again these would be Italian troop types not Northern European ones.

It may or may not be the case that the Burgundian ordinances were similar to the French, in which case a '100 lance company' might have been just the ideal. Louis XI granted captaincies on a favour basis and if you were not in favour you might only be commissioned to raise 40-50 lances, or alternatively far more than the typical '100'.   

[Arthur]

Chiming in a bit late, but back to the subject at hand, a French ordinance lance (meaning here a unit rather than a polearm) of the period was normally composed of one mounted and fully armoured man-at-arms, one coustilier, three or four archers and a page, who was a non-combattant.

Unlike their Burgundian counterparts, French coustiliers fought on foot rather than mounted and were armed with a halberd or a glaive. Archers still used bows in large numbers on the battlefield, but crossbows were becoming increasingly common and the men could be equipped with either (they were also supposed to be proficient with polearms as well for maximum flexibility).

Another important component of the French army at the time were the Francs-Archers (or free archers, thus called because of the fiscal advantages they received in exchange for military service). As their name implies, they too were armed with either the bow or the crossbow and they were organised into separatel companies.

Considering how little we know about the French troops who fought at Mortimer's Cross, it is hard to tell how they were organised : there may have been enough men-at-arms among them to create lances, or these mercenaries may well have been all archers and crossbowmen organised into free companies (I doubt they were francs-archers proper as those would have been loath to give up their tax exemptions to fight abroad, though there was a not insignificant percentage of notable ruffians among the free archers, who were notorious for their lack of discipline).

This is pure speculation on my part and I have no hard evidence to back this theory, but I wonder if most of the French mercenaries were not recruited from the ban and arrière-ban, i.e the vestiges of the old feudal troops of yore who would only be summoned in times of crisis and disbanded immediately afterwards. If this was indeed the case, then most of the French mercenaries at Mortimer's Cross would have been bowmen/crossbowmen supported by small groups of halberdiers/billmen, with the odd man-at-arms around and ready to engage in hand to hand combat.

[Arlequín]

Indeed, the coutillier/coustilier was an armed 'servant' for the archers of the lance, just as the page was to the homme d'armes and the valet de guerre (or gros varlet).

I seem to recall that it wasn't actually 'France' that provided the money for the mercenaries, but Margaret's father René the Duke of Anjou. Any troops raised would be called 'French' in the same way as anyone from the UK would typically be described as 'Anglais' in France. 'France' itself would be more interested in keeping the war in England going, or at least destabilising the monarchy so much so that a French Expedition would be the last thing on the mind of whoever the King of England was.

Given the time scale involved between Ormond travelling to France, securing the funds and returning to Ireland and then to Wales, it seems a borderline case as to whether there was actually time for him to recruit men and bring them with him, and it's possible that the recruiting was left to someone else (Pierre de Brézé perhaps, see below), while Ormond returned with his mission complete, but few actual men with him. Alternatively the 'French' at Mortimer's Cross may actually have been Bretons funded by their duke.

Pierre de Brézé used his own private army in 1457 and was in the process of raising a force to serve the Lancastrians in 1461, when he was imprisoned by the new king Louis XI. It may be the case that this was the force that Ormond had been tasked with raising and which in the event didn't arrive until after de Brézé's release in 1462.   

Certainly I would agree that arbeletier, voulgier and piquets would be the predominant (if not sole) troop types... and add that these were also probably men who had failed to get a place in the Royal Army, so perhaps not the elite of the mercenary 'pool' either. 

[Hu Rhu]

Many thanks for the additional information.  I think I have enough to go on for my 'French' contingent.  

I will be using 8 stands of 3 figures each (all my stands for WotR have 3 figures).  4 stands will be crossbowmen (some possibly with pavises), 3 will be halbardiers/polearms with a mix of armour and jacks and one will be made up of Men At arms (on foot) as the command stand.  That should give me a good enough mix of troops to be realistic.

I play with the Perfect Captain's 'A Coat of Steel' rules which allows mercenaries to have a range of commitment/courage.  I shall make this contingent a 2 which is ok but not that committed to the cause (they were mercenaries after all), but enough courage not to run away at the first sign of mishap.

Does anyone know if the crossbowmen would still be carrying pavises at this stage?