PowerPoint: Late Medieval Warfare

Late Medieval Warfare

Evolution of Armor, c.1075-1300

Bayeux Tapestry, ca. 1075

Brass of Sir Robert de Trumpington, d. 1289

Evolution of Armor in the 14th Century

Sir William fitzRalf (d.1323)

Sir John de St. Quentin (d. 1397)

Evolution of Armor, 15th Century

Sir John Segrave (c.1425)

Armor for field and tournament, 1527 (Metropolitan Museum)

Hundred Years War • The Hundred Years War is a name given (in the 1860s) to a series of dynastic wars between the ruling families of England and France. The causes of the wars were dynastic (King Edward III of England and his heirs claimed to be the rightful kings of France), territorial (King Edward III held Gascony from the French Crown as a French duke), and economic (the English Crown depended on custom taxes on wine from Gascony and the wool exported to Flanders). • Between 1337 and 1453 there were only nine years of ratified peace (1360-1369), although there were also extended periods with little or no military activity (e.g. 1380-1415). • The Hundred Years War spawned side conflicts: Scotland (as an ally of the French) vs England, Flanders (as an ally of the English) vs France, the Burgundians vs the Armagnacs (a civil war between noble factions within France, 1407 to 1435, with the Burgundians allying with England), civil wars in Spain over succession to the throne and in Brittany over succession to the duchy in which the English and French supported different claimants.

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The war can be divided into five phases: 1337-1360: the early phase of the war was dominated by a series of English chevauchées (mounted raids designed to devastate regions economically, destroy the morale of the enemy, and provide plunder for the raiders), two of which culminated in battles won by the English, Crecy in 1346 and Poitiers in 1356. The latter battle resulted in the capture of King John II of France, which led a revolt of the Parisian bourgeois under Etienne Marcel, a feudal revolt by Charles the Bad of Navarre, and a peasant revolt known as the Jacquerie. All of this, tempered by a few French victories, led to the peace of Bretigny in 1360. Bretigny restored an enlarged Duchy of Aquitaine to Edward III and set John II’s ransom at 3 million gold crowns. An omitted clause would have granted Edward III sovereignty over Aquitaine in return for giving up his claim to the French throne. This period also witnessed innovations in taxation by dauphin Charles (the future Charles V)—the creation of the taille—as a mechanism for paying his father’s ransom.

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1364-1380: reign of Charles V. This phase of the war was characterized by the French adopting Fabian tactics under the constable Bertrand du Guesclin. The result was that Charles V recovered everything his father had lost. During this period the French and the English fought a proxy war in Spain, as each side supported a different claimant to the Spanish throne.

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1380-1413: England and France both suffered internal political turmoil. 1392 Charles VI went mad, which led to civil war. In 1399 Richard II of England was deposed by John of Gaunt's son Henry Bolingbroke, who secured the throne as Henry IV (1399-1413).

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1413-1429: high point for English under Henry V (1413-1422). 1415: Henry V’s victory at Agincourt. 1417-1419: Henry V conquers Normandy by besieging towns with artillery and through diplomacy. 1419: Burgundians ally with English. 1420: Treaty of Troyes names Henry V as heir to French throne.

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1429-1453: French win the war. 1429: Joan of Arc lifts the siege of Orleans, leading to Charles VI being crowned king of France. 1430: Joan of Arc captured and burnt as a witch. 1435: Burgundians abandon allegiance with English. 1436: Charles VII recaptures Paris. 1449-1450: Charles VII retakes Normandy through the use of artillery. 1449-1450: Charles VII retakes Normandy through the use of artillery. 1451-1453: English lose Guyenne.

Phases of the Hundred Years’ War

Military Developments during the Hundred Years War

• Effective use of English long bow (massed fire) • Mounted infantry: men at arms (heavy infantry), hobelars (light infantry), mounted archers • Increase in ratio of archers to men at arms, • Contract armies (indenture system) • Reemergence of standing armies: French “Companies of Ordonnance” in 1445 • Development of full plate armor and full barding of horses in 1400s (result of metallurgical technological innovations) • Gun powder artillery in 1400s.

Hundred Years War: Military Activities

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Contracts in the form of “indentures of service” was a new form of military recruitment that arose in the late thirteenth century and became the dominant form of recruitment by the third quarter of the fourteenth century. Indentures arose from a sociopolitical system in which retainers were bound to their lords through the acceptance of wages. An indenture was a specific form of document in which a contract was written in duplicate and the copies were then divided with a scraggletoothed cut, one copy being retained by the lord and the other by the contracted retainer. Indentures served two functions. 1. They created relationships of loyalty and service between a magnate and a noble retainer. 2. They were the mechanism by which kings and magnates raised military forces.

Indenture of 1439 recording an agreement between John Kereforth of Barnesley and John Cothewath of Estfeld, from a private collection. http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/word/chirograph.htm

An Indenture of War, 1347. from Clifford J. Rogers (ed.), The Wars of Edward III: Sources and Interpretations (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999), by permission of the editor. •

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This indenture, made between the noble men Sir Ralph, Baron Stafford, on the one hand, and Sir Hugh fitz Simon on the other hand, bears witness that the aforesaid Sir Hugh is to remain as a banneret with the aforesaid Sir Ralph, along with four knights and eight esquires, for one year following the date of this document, to go with the said Sir Ralph wherever he wishes to make war, receiving from the said Sir Ralph the customary wages, or else direct support at court, at the choice of Sir Ralph, which is to say for himself 4s., for each knight 2s., and for each esquire 12 d. per day, and for his fee for the entire year, 100 marks. And the aforesaid Sir Ralph promises that he will pay to the aforesaid Sir Hugh, before his departure across the sea, half of his fee, which is to say 50 marks, and his wages, as specified above, for a quarter of a year in advance. And in case the said Sir Ralph wishes that he shall have direct support at court, he, his knights, and his esquires and their chamberlains, as is specified above, shall get hay and oats and stabling for forty-five horses, and eight horses for baggage, and wages for their grooms. And Sir Ralph shall provide a mount for Sir Hugh, for his own person. And in addition to the aforesaid, Sir Ralph promises that the great horses of the said Sir Hugh shall be appraised in the same fashion as his own great horses are by the King and his Council. And that the said Sir Ralph shall be bound to restore to the said Sir Hugh the loss of his said horses, thus appraised, if they should be lost in the service of the said Sir Ralph. And concerning the prisoners which may be taken by the aforesaid Hugh, or by his men, the aforesaid Sir Ralph shall have half the profits of their ransom, etc. In testimony whereof, etc. Written at London, the 16th of March, the year 21 Edward III [1347]. from http://www.the-orb.net/encyclop/late/england/rogers01.html

14th century horse breeding revolution: warhorses c.1250 (Morgan Picture Bible) and the “great horse” of the late Middle Ages (Ucello’s funerary monument for the condottiere Sir John Hawkwood, 1436) •

Costs of warhorses c.1350

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Earl or king’s: £20- £100 Knight’s: £7- £30+ Squire’s £5- £10+ (High grade riding horse £5 or less)

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Comparisons Cow Sheep Pig

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Annual wages/revenues Earl or baron £200- £1100 Knight £40+ Squires/gentry £20-40 Master carpenter £5 Laborer £2 (max)

6s= £0.3 1s5d= £0.07 3s= £0.15

Evolution of infantry: eleventh through fifteenth centuries

Swiss mercenaries (late 15th and early 16th centuries)

Battle of Pavia 1525 (French vs. Spanish)

yew longbow (110 lb draw weight) vs. hand-spanned crossbow (14th century stirrup and belt hook, 130 lb draw weight)

Siege Warfare: late 11th Century, mid 13th Century, late 15th Century

medieval guns: 14th and 15th centuries

Earliest picture of a European cannon (“pot de fer”), "De Nobilitatibus Sapientii Et Prudentiis Regum," Walter de Milemete, 1326

hand culverin between two small cannons, 15th century

Great Turkish Bombard used in the siege of Constantinople 1453

Late 14th and early 15th century “handgonnes”

Konrad Kyeser, “Belli Fortis” (military engineering manual, c.1400)

From top to bottom: i) hackbut with iron tiller, early 1400s ii) bronze hackbut with socket for stock, early 1400s iii) Regensburg hackbut, about 1400 iv) bronze handgonne from Tannenburg, pre 1399 v) hackbut of forged iron with beam-shaped stock, with fitted ramrod about 1400. Barrel length 297 mm, cal. 32mm.

Figures grinding powder, priming and firing handgonnes, from a manuscript of 1410 (Codex 34, Imperial Library, Vienna)

First illustration of a serpentine lock. The other figure is casting bullets. From a manuscript of 1411 (Codex Vindobana 3069, Austrian National Library, Vienna)

Hussite wagon-fort 1437

Handgonners assaulting a castle, from a manuscript of 1468 (Burney MS 169, British Museum)

German ms from 1440 on uses of gunpowder: soldiers shooting incendiary arrows (above) ; cannons, bombs, and handguns at a siege (bottom)

Naval Warfare