Excerpts from Knights (2001) by Andrea Hopkins

Weapons of War

The main weapons of the medieval knight were the sword and the lance. In a cavalry charge, the long, heavy lance would be the first weapon with which a knight would make contact with the enemy. After the charge, fighting would be hand-to-hand in a mêlée, rather similar to, but more deadly than, the tournament mêlée. Knights sometimes used a mace, a heavy club often reinforced with metal ribs at the head. This was a weapon favoured by military-minded clerics (who were not allowed to carry weapons with blades or to shed blood) . . .

It was customary for knights to form about a quarter or a fifth of an army, the rest being composed of various kinds of infantry: men-at-arms, and archers or crossbowmen. Increasingly during the fourteenth century, knights dismounted and fought on foot during battles, though the cavalry charge was still an effective way or disrupting the enemy’s ranks. The increased effectiveness of the longbow and the crossbow meant that even plate armour could be pierced, and the importance of cavalry in battle declined. Axes were another weapon favoured by knights and men-at-arms. A short-handled battle-axe, especially if wielded from horseback, could deliver fatal blows . . .

The short bow, the weapon of the archers at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, was not as powerful or long- ranging as the crossbows, a weapon which had been known in classical times but was not widely received until the late eleventh century. The Italian city of Genoa specialized in its manufacture. Trained mercenary Genoese crossbowmen featured in the armies of several medieval warlords. The crossbow was able to deliver its bolt at great speed over a long range . . . Its disadvantages were that it took a relatively long time to load the bolt, as the string had to be pulled back mechanically, using a lever or ratchet, and the steel bolts called “quarrels”, were expensive.

The longbow, which had been in Wales in the twelfth century, became more widely known during the thirteenth and was made a crucial weapon by the English forces during their invasions of France during the fourteenth century. Properly used, it was deadly: a trained longbowman could fire up to twelve arrows a minute, and the bands of archers so effectively deployed by the English at the Battle of Crécy in 1346 could loose off tens of thousands of arrows per minute, producing a deadly rain. When used in battle against a charging mass of enemy soldiers, it was not important to aim at a particular target, as it would be if the archer were acting as a sniper shooting from the walls of a besieged castle. Thousands of arrows falling onto a host of men and horses were bound to hit something. Horses were particularly vulnerable as they were not as heavily armoured as knights. Knights did not use bows of any kind, for their ability to destroy an enemy anonymously from a safe distance was at odds with the knightly ethos of individual combat and heroic achievement . . . .

Battles

Knights played an important part in most battles throughout the Middle Ages, but the importance of the heavy cavalry charge as a battle-winning tactic, which had originally brought them to prominence, steadily declined as the period progressed. Knights had never fought without the support of infantry, and usually during the first half of the Middle Ages an army was composed of mixed cavalry and infantry, with proportions ranging form one knight to four foot soldiers, up to one knight to eight foot soldiers. But with time, the development of new weapons and new ways of fighting, the deployment of specially trained infantry emerged as the decisive factor in pitched battles.

The role of the knight in battle should be seen in parallel with developments in weapons technology, and the counter-developments in the knight’s protective armour against the superior firepower of the infantry. During the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and a large part of the thirteenth centuries, the knight reigned supreme. He was always supported by infantry in battle. The infantry was equipped with the despised bows, but they were intended to support the cavalry, to protect their horses from enemy missiles, and to fend off enemy frontal attacks, until the right moment came for the devastating cavalry charge that would decide the outcome of the battle. This was the outstanding battle strategy of the period: the cavalry charge, if delivered in a well- timed, well-organized way, broke the ranks of the enemy’s soldiers, who would be overcome in the furious hand-to-hand fighting that followed. However, it was essential for the knights to act in unison for the charge to be effective. For every battle that was won by the cavalry sweeping the enemy from the field, another was lost by hot-headed, ill- disciplined knights charging under their own impulses rather than at the command of their leaders. Outstanding examples of battles won by mounted knights are those of Ascalon during the First Crusade (1098), Arsouf during the Third Crusade (1191) and Bouvines (1216) . . . .

These and other similar victories were achieved because infantrymen had not yet developed any weaponry or strategy that enabled them to withstand the onslaught of heavily-armed cavalry. Correspondingly, there was little real change in a knight’s armour during this period; it consisted of a suit of chain mail, which began as a tunic and eventually stretched to cover the knight from head to toe and down to his finger ends, with a shield and a helmet. From the second half of the thirteenth century, the protection afforded by chain mail became inadequate and had to be supplemented by additional body armour. The “plate” armour of the later medieval knight began to make its appearance; greaves for the shins, vambraces for the arms, poleyns for the knees and cuisses for the thighs were strapped on over the chain mail, while the body was protected by a “coat of plates”, a jerkin of padded cloth or leather on to which metal plates were sewn. The reason for these additional defences was the emergence of two weapons which could be used effectively against armoured, mounted knights: the pike and the longbow.

Although knights continued on the whole to prove a decisive element in battle until well into the fourteenth century, the future of warfare was shown by some grievous defeats suffered by cavalry forces, all inflicted by infantry. One of these was the Battle of Courtrai in 1302. The French army was opposed by a force composed largely of infantry, levied by the burghers of Flemish cities. These foot soldiers were armed with an early forerunner of the halberd, a weapon which combined a long bayonet-like blade at the top with a broad, axe-like blade at one side and a short hook or spike at the other, on top of a long pole. Knights could be hooked from their mounts with the spike, then stabbed with the bayonet or sliced or chopped with the axe. The long handle enabled the foot soldiers for the first time to inflict deep wounds on a charging horse or a knight before they were within range of his weapons. At the Battle of Courtrai, as often happened during the fourteenth century, the French knights underestimated their lower-class opponents and recklessly thrust aside their own infantry so as to charge, as they thought, to victory. Experience had taught them that the usual result was a disorganized, panicking rabble which could be cut down at will. This time it didn’t work. The Flemings dug a deep ditch into which most of the knights in the front rank fell headlong, bringing the knights behind them down also. The vicious slicing blades of the Flemish godendacs made short work of the chivalry of France, flailing helplessly on the ground . . . .

At about the same time, the Scots pioneered a successful defensive technique using pikes, in which knots of infantry stood together with their pikes bristling outwards, presenting a wall of dense points towards the knights on horseback. Soldiers standing, kneeling and crouching presented three different levels and angles of spikes, and these schiltrons successfully repelled cavalry attacks at the Battles of Falkirk (1298) and Bannockburn (1314). The Swiss, in their struggles to be recognized as an emergent independent state, became adept in the use of pikes and halberds, and eventually enjoyed the reputation of being the finest, best-trained infantry in Europe, who could stand firm against any cavalry attack . . .

The potential of the longbow was first fully realized by the English. The long-range destructive power of bows and crossbows had long been recognized, and the famed Genoese crossbowmen were employed as auxiliaries by many medieval war-leaders, but not until the reign of Edward I were archers actually deployed as a major destructive force in themselves. The longbow, originally a traditional Welsh weapon, was adopted by the English army and a programme of intensive, compulsory training was set up in villages and towns throughout the country. Edward III, in his campaigns against the Scots during the 1330s, introduced the revolutionary tactic of having his knights dismount and provide armoured support for the longbowmen, while they fired thousands of deadly arrows into the advancing Scottish army. During the Hundred Years War, the use of highly trained companies of English longbowmen enabled the English repeatedly to gain victory against the cavalry of French armies, many times their number . . . But the lessons of these experiences had still not been learned by the knights of France and Burgundy . . .

In the thirteenth century knights were protected by full plate armour, which consisted of a made-to- measure iron suit, cunningly jointed to allow its wearer freedom of movement. The smooth, polished, convex surfaces of the metal plates caused arrows or bolts striking it at any angle other than ninety degrees to glance off, and were strong enough to withstand most missiles unless delivered at point blank range. There can be no doubt that a fully armoured knight was well protected during battle; he was only vulnerable if he was knocked to the ground, when his restricted mobility . . . might prevent his being able to rise again . . . Accounts of battles such as Agincourt [in 1415] record the horrible sight of infantrymen sitting astride fallen knights and driving daggers into the slits in their visors, or between the vulnerable joints of their harness. For this reason it was important for knights to fight together . . .

During the fifteenth century, plate armour became even more elaborate but the advance in firearms— handguns and cannon—made it largely obsolete. By the end of the fifteenth century the days of the cavalry charge (at least as a successful battle strategy) were over. Though knights continued to take part in battles no new ideas emerged to revive the role of the knight in active warfare after they had been superseded by the infantry. [126-137]

1) How & why did the role of medieval knights change from the 11th to the 15th centuries? 2) What role did changing technology play in altering the medieval battlefield? Explain.

Further Reading: Medieval Military History