The Battlefield: Tactics and Weapons

Sources

Dominant Arm . As the individual most representative of medieval warfare, the mounted knight became the dominant arm on the battlefield, while the infantryman was held in contempt for his social inferiority. The infantry, armed mostly with sword, battle-ax, spear, javelin, and short bow, usually acted in a supportive role, while opposing cavalry clashed with sword, mace, and lance. The tactic of the day was to close with the enemy as quickly as possible and to decide the contest with hand-to-hand combat. Poorly equipped and organized, most medieval infantry could not withstand the shock of a full-scale cavalry charge, although at Bouvines in 1214, the infantry of Boulogne repelled several assaults made by French horsemen before succumbing. When geographic conditions dictated, knights would fight on foot, such as occurred at the Battle of Tinchebrai in 1106.

Armor . During this period most knights wore chain-mail armor, with plate armor restricted to helmets. However, with the increasing effectiveness of infantry missile weapons, knights began to don more and more plate armor because of the protection it afforded; by the fifteenth century this type of armor predominated. Two weapons in particular accelerated the trend toward greater armor protection: the crossbow and the longbow.

Crossbow. A medieval form of the ancient ballista, the crossbow was small enough to be operated by a single soldier. Made with an iron bow and a wooden stock, the crossbow was cocked with either a foot stirrup or a windlass.

Its projectile, the bolt or quarrel, could penetrate chain mail up to fifty yards and was deadly to unarmored men at twice that range. At the instigation of the nobility, the Second Lateran Council in 1139 attempted to ban the use of this weapon between Christian opponents. Although greatly feared (a crossbow bolt mortally wounded Richard I in 1199), the crossbow did have a major disadvantage: its slow rate of fire meant that the operator was vulnerable to enemy attack.

Longbow . A more devastating and ultimately decisive weapon on the battlefield of the Middle Ages was the longbow. Originally a hunting weapon, the longbow was the preferred weapon of the English yeomanry, a class of peasant freeholders. Six feet in length, the longbow was usually made of yew, elm, hazel, or basil wood. A skilled archer could accurately fire a “broadcloth” (a unit of measurement equal to thirty-seven inches) arrow up to three hundred yards. The longbow had a greater rate of fire than the crossbow (up to six arrows per minute), but like the crossbowman, the longbowman was vulnerable to enemy forces if they could get close enough. The English victories at Crecy (1346) and Poitiers (1356) can in part be attributed to archers armed with longbows.

Swiss . A mountainous and isolated country, Switzerland never developed a powerful noble class for its military and instead relied heavily on a citizenry armed with pole arms such as pikes and halberds. The basic Swiss formation was a company of 250 pikemen arrayed in a square of sixteen ranks with 50 halberdiers and crossbowmen in support. The strength of such a tactical formation made the Swiss into formidable foes, and by the 1400s foreign rulers sought to hire them as mercenaries.

Siege Artillery . The construction of stone castles and walled cities during the High Middle Ages (1000–1300) increased the difficultly of armies to lay siege to them. In response to this predicament, medieval armies used the catapult, a siege weapon of antiquity, and a new device, the trebuchet or mangonel. While the catapult used tension or torsion for its propelling force, the trebuchet used a counterweight for kinetic energy. A trebuchet with a fifty-foot-long arm and a ten-ton counterweight could hurl a three-hundred-pound stone three hundred yards. Several of these weapons firing at a stone wall could eventually reduce it to rubble.

Naval Engagements . Medieval states did not maintain war fleets as nations do today. Many times their war vessels were actually converted merchantmen (warships were too expensive to build and to maintain in peacetime). Naval tactics and weapons during the era were the same as the ones used on land: the melee with edged weapons. Warships were basically floating castles in which wooden structures were erected on the bows and sterns to shelter archers while men-at-arms waited in the waist (middle) of the ship. Ships would close with each other, firing projectiles until they could grapple together. Boarding parties then decided the issue by hand-to-hand fighting, as occurred at

the Battle of Sluys (1340). Sometimes, innovations could help tip the balance. At the Battle of Dover (1217) thirty-six English warships defeated a French force of eighty vessels. The English sailed downwind, their sailors firing crossbows and throwing lime to blind the enemy.

Sources

John Beeler, Warfare in Feudal Europe, 730–1200 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1971).

Jim Bradbury, The Medieval Siege (Woodbridge, U.K. & Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell Press, 1992).

Philippe Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, translated by Michael Jones (Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, 1984).

Kelly De Vries, Medieval Military Technology (Peterborough, Canada: Broadview Press, 1992).

Nicholas Hooper and Matthew Bennett, The Cambridge Illustrated Atlas of Warfare: The Middle Ages (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

Maurice Keen, ed., Medieval Warfare: A History (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

David Nicolle, Medieval Warfare Source Book, volume one, Warfare in Western Christendom (London: Arms & Armour, 1995).

Nicolle, Medieval Warfare Source Book, volume two, Christian Europe and its Neighbors (London: Arms & Armour, 1995).

Michael Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: The English Experience (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).

Malcolm Vale, War and Chivalry: Warfare and Aristocratic Culture in England, France, and Burgundy at the End of the Middle Ages (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1981; London: Duckworth, 1981).

J. F. Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare in Western Europe During the Middle Ages: From the Eighth Century to 1340, translated by Sumner Willard and R. W. Southern (Woodbridge, U.K. & Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell Press, 1997).