Military Organization

The information on this page has been borrowed from Medieval Warfare. Please support the official release.

The medieval knight was usually mounted and armoured, often connected
 with nobility or royalty, although especially in north-eastern Europe
 knights could also come from the lower classes.

The cost of a knight's armour, horses, and weapons was great. This
 helped transform the knight, at least in western Europe, into a
 distinct social class separate from other warriors.

 During the crusades, holy orders of monks who were also knights
 were created, including the Knights Templar, the Knights Hospitaller
 and the Teutonic Knights. They were formed to fight in the Holy
 Land and became the "storm troops" of the Christian crusaders.

 Heavy cavalry, armed with lances and an assortment of hand weapons,
 played a significant part in the battles of the Middle Ages. The
 heavy cavalry consisted of nobles and wealthy knights who could
 afford the equipment.

 Heavy cavalry made the difference between victory and defeat in
 many key battles. Their charges could break the lines of most infantry
 formations, making them a valuable asset to all medieval armies,
 the equivalent of twentieth century tank regiments.

 Light cavalry consisted of lighter armed and armoured men, who
 could have lances, javelins or missile weapons, such as bows or
 crossbows. Light cavalry were used as scouts, skirmishers or outflankers.
 Many countries developed their own styles of light cavalry, such
 as Hungarian mounted archers, Spanish jinetes, Italian and German
 mounted crossbowmen.

 Crusaders tended to favour heavy cavalry mounted on mares while
 the Saracens favoured light cavalry mounted on stallions.

 Infantry were recruited and trained in a wide variety of manners
 in different regions of Europe all through the Middle Ages, and
 probably always formed the most numerous part of a medieval field
 army. Many infantrymen in prolonged wars would be mercenaries. Most
 armies contained significant numbers of spearmen, archers and other
 unmounted soldiers.

 In sieges, perhaps the most common element of medieval warfare,
 infantry units served as garrison troops and archers, among other
 positions. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, with the advancements
 of weapons and armour, infantrymen became more important.

 In the earliest Middle Ages it was the obligation of every noble
 to respond to the call to battle from his liege lord with his own
 equipment, archers, and infantry. This decentralized system was
 necessary due to the social order of the time, but could lead to
 motley forces with variable training, equipment and abilities. The
 more resources the noble had access to, the better his troops would
 typically be.

 Typically feudal armies consisted of a core of highly skilled knights
 and their household troops, mercenaries hired for the time of the
 campaign and feudal levies fulfilling their feudal obligations,
 who usually were little more than rabble. They could, however, be
 efficient in disadvantageous terrain. Towns and cities could also
 field militias.

 As central governments grew in power, a return to the citizen and
 mercenary armies of the classical period also began, as central
 levies of the peasantry began to be the central recruiting tool.
 It is often claimed that the best infantrymen came from the younger
 sons of free land-owning yeomen, such as the English archers and
 Swiss pikemen.

 England was one of the most centralized states in the Middle Ages,
 and the armies that fought the Hundred Years' War were mostly paid
 professionals. In theory, every Englishman had an obligation to
 serve for forty days. Forty days (called quarantine) was not long
 enough for a campaign, especially one on the continent.

 Scutage was introduced, under which most Englishmen paid to escape
 their service and this money was used to create a permanent army.
 Almost all high medieval armies in Europe were composed of a great
 deal of paid core troops, and there was a large mercenary market
 in Europe from the early twelfth century.

 As the Middle Ages progressed, both the Papacy and Italian cities
 began to rely mostly on mercenaries to do their fighting rather
 than the militias that had dominated the early and high medieval
 period in this region. These would be groups of career soldiers
 who would be paid a set rate. Mercenaries tended to be effective
 soldiers, especially in combination with standing forces. In Italy
 they came to dominate the armies of the city states. While at war
 they were considerably more reliable than a standing army, but in
 peacetime they proved a risk to the state itself (as the Pretorian
 Guard had once been in Roman times).

 Mercenary-on-mercenary warfare in Italy led to relatively bloodless
 campaigns which relied as much on manoeuvre as on battles, since
 the condottieri recognized it was more efficient to attack the enemy's
 ability to wage war rather than his battle forces,, and attempting
 to attack the enemy supply lines, his economy and his ability to
 wage war rather than risking an open battle, and manoeuvre him in
 a position where risking a battle would have been suicidal.

 Knights were drawn to battle by feudal and social obligation, but
 also by the prospect of profit and advancement. Those who performed
 well stood to increase their landholdings and advance in the social
 hierarchy - this was a major factor in the Crusades in the Holy
 Land and also European crusades such as the Albigensian Crusade
 - the War against the Cathars of the Languedoc.

 For the mounted knight Medieval Warfare could be a relatively
 low risk affair. Nobles avoided killing each other, rather preferring
 capturing them alive, for several reasons for one, many were related
 to each other, had fought alongside one another, and they were all
 members of the same elite culture; for another, a noble's ransom
 could be very high, and indeed some made a living by capturing and
 ransoming nobles in battle.

 Huge ransoms could be demanded for captured knights and more still
 for high nobles and kings. Some knights made their fortunes by fighting.
 William the Marshall being the best known example. Even peasants,
 who did not share the bonds of kinship and culture, would often
 avoid killing a nobleman, valuing the high ransom that a live capture
 could bring, as well as the valuable horse, armour and equipment
 that came with him. On the other hand it was quite common, even
 at the height of "chivalric" warfare, for the knights
 to suffer heavy casualties during battles. Christendom was shaken
 when King Peter II of Aragon was killed fighting on the side of
 his vassal Raymond of Toulouse at Muret in the Languedoc.

 Clergymen
 played a major part in battles - from their planning to building
 siege engines (a clerical specialty), encouraging the troops and
 taking part in the fighting. We have many accounts of senior clergy
 leading battles and not only during the crusades. They are also
 depicted in contemporary art - popes, cardinals and bishops, wearing
 full armour and wielding weapons. The role of military bishops is
 commemorated today by the presence of four bishops on a chess board.
 Clerical combatants are depicted in medieval art and according to
 tradition favoured the mace as a weapon (a mace could kill without
 shedding blood which the Church considered desirable).

 On the other hand swords feature more heavily than maces in the
 arms of England bishops Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller, the shock troops of Christian
 armies, were monks in the fullest sense- they took the same vows
 as other monks in addition to their vows as knights. If caught by
 the enemy they were almost always executed while other knights were
 usually ransomed. The reason was that they were such fanatical fighters
 that it made sense to put them permanently out of the war whenever
 possible.

 The practice of carrying relics into battle is a feature that distinguishes
 medieval warfare from its predecessors or from early modern warfare.
 The presence of relics was believed to be an important source of
 supernatural power that served both as a spiritual weapon and a
 form of defence; the relics of martyrs were considered by Saint
 John Chrysostom much more powerful than "walls, trenches, weapons
 and hosts of soldiers" - another reason for so many lost battles.

 In Italy, the carroccio or carro della guerra, the "war wagon"
 , was an elaboration of this practice that developed during the
 13th century. A Carroccio was a four-wheeled war altar drawn by
 oxen, used by the medieval republics of Italy. It was a rectangular
 platform on which the standard of the city and an altar were erected.
 Priests held services on the altar before the battle, and the trumpeters
 beside them encouraged the fighters to the fray.

 The carro della guerra of Milan was draped in scarlet cloth and
 drawn by three yoke of oxen caparisoned in white with the red cross
 of Saint George, the city's patron, it carried a crucifix so massive
 it took four men to step it in place, like a ship's mast.