Warfare

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War Summary

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Medieval France

WARFARE

. Warfare was a dominant feature of medieval French history. After the late 4th century, Germanic tribes penetrated the western Roman Empire in force, bringing important changes to the military system. Roman discipline and organization gave way to badly organized forces with poor training, few arms, and almost no discipline. Military recruitment and payment for services were based on the amount of booty a leader could provide his soldiers, and loyalty to this leader was dependent on the continued success of his conquests. Soldiers generally were equipped with only a rudimentary shield and helmet, and their arms consisted of a sword, ax, or spear. These militaristic barbarians had an almost Homeric sense of heroism and revered martial skills. Their names, both male and female, reflected the omnipresence of war, and warriors were the elite of Germanic society, placed at the top of the wergeld system of compensation and given elaborate burials with their equipment and booty.

By the 6th and 7th centuries, the Merovingian Franks, who required military service of all free men, had an effective army based on infantry. Their special weapon was the francisca, a throwing ax. They adopted body armor only gradually. Their fortifications, other than those inherited from Rome, were simple earth and wood ramparts.

When the Carolingians came to power in the 8th century, the requirements of a large empire led to new military institutions that presaged the feudalism of a later time. Rulers granted income-producing estates to followers who promised to render full-time military service at their own expense. The expanding role of the stirrup gradually encouraged the development of heavy cavalry and the archetypical medieval knight.

This system of land grants and oaths of loyalty enabled Charlemagne to muster an effective cavalry force almost annually. His armies were not large, but they were powerful and dominated their opponents. He generally led them himself, and although there were few “formal” military tactics, they were successful in most engagements.

The Capetian monarchy in France gradually emerged from the fragmentation of the Carolingian empire. The survival of the early Capetians depended on their military capabilities, and some of them suffered serious reversals. Recruitment of soldiers increasingly depended on feudal institutions in the 11th and 12th centuries, and the kings sometimes could not muster sufficient troops. As they began to acquire more resources, they began to supplement feudal troops with paid professionals. The king himself or a designated noble lieutenant generally commanded these armies.

Mounted knights were still the core of the army. With improved weapons and armor and mounted upon expen-sive warhorses, they usually decided the course of each battle, fighting with couched lance in a tournament-like fashion. Most knights by the 13th century were nobles supported by fiefs. Large battles were infrequent and those that were fought often included only rudimentary tactical combinations.

While knights were the core of the army, the most numerous forces were still the infantry. Levied from among the free men of the kingdom, these troops were armed much less well than their mounted counterparts. While some were protected by a helmet, a small shield, and a leather hauberk, infantry soldiers frequently served without armor. Offensive infantry weapons included the spear, sword, lance, and pike, with little standardization among these weapons. Archers also served in infantry contingents, initially being equipped with short bows. In the course of the 12th century, these began to be replaced with the more powerful crossbow.

In the Capetian period, the siege replaced the battle as the primary form of military engagement. Though Charlemagne had effectively altered the standard of battlefield fighting, he and his successors tended to neglect fortifications, leaving the empire vulnerable to the raids of Vikings and Hungarians. In the 11th century, local rulers led in the construction of fortifications, at first small earth and wood motte-and-bailey castles, but soon larger and stronger structures of masonry. These more intricate and costly fortifications provided valuable defenses. Although mining, sapping, and stone-throwing engines were used against them, a castle or town with strong stone walls could generally be reduced only by starvation.

In the late Middle Ages, five significant developments altered warfare. First, armies fighting on foot began again to predominate. The stunning defeat of French knights by Flemish infantry at Courtrai in 1302 showed that a strong unified infantry line could halt the charge of cavalry. The Scots similarly defeated English knights at Bannockburn in 1314, and Swiss infantry defeated Austrian cavalry at Mortgarten in 1316. French cavalry suffered serious defeats over the next century at the hands of English armies dominated by footsoldiers and longbowmen. The second development was the continual fighting that beset France between 1337 and 1453, the period misnamed the “Hundred Years’ War.” The long struggle exhausted the French military and required a stricter and often less noble military bureaucracy. The emergence of routiers and condot-tieri, paid mercenaries without feudal ties, weakened traditional military institutions. The third factor was the Black Death of 1348–49, which significantly reduced the numbers available to fight on the battlefield and defend French towns and castles. The fourth was the advent of frequent and often violent popular rebellions by French peasants and townspeople, the suppression of which required changes in military tactics.

Finally, warfare was changed by the advent and proliferation of missile weapons employing gunpowder. Appearing initially in the early 14th century, they began influencing warfare by the 1380s, when they were used effectively against fortifications and also on the battlefield. By 1400, no siege was free of their use, as they reduced substantially the time needed to destroy walls. No longer was it necessary to rely on starvation to force the capitulation of castles or towns. By the 1430s, hand-held gunpowder weapons began to take their place among infantry contingents, changing the face of battlefield engagements. By the Swiss and Burgundian wars of 1475–77, one third of the infantry on each side was outfitted with handguns. These late-medieval changes brought an end to feudal methods of warfare and encouraged the development of states capable of financing mod-ern armies.

Kelly De Vries

Allmand, Christopher T. The Hundred Years War: England and France at War c1300-c1450. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Contamine, Philippe. Guerre, état et société à la fin du moyen âge: étude sur les armées des rois de France, 1337 7–1494. Paris: Mouton, 1972.

——. War in the Middle Ages, trans. Michael Jones. New York: Blackwell, 1984.

Kaeuper, Richard W. War, Justice and Public Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988.

Verbruggen, J.F. The Art of Warfare in Western Europe During the Middle Ages: From the Eighth Century to 1340, trans. Sumner Willard and S.C.M.Southern. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1977.

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