> >IMO the biggest advantage of Crecy period English armies was
not
> >that they had the longbow, but that they had become an army of
> >soldiers that had discipline rather than a collection of individual
> >warriors that had courage. The French would never have used the archers
> >supported by dismounted knights, it just wasn't done. Ergo the French
> >didn't have effective infantry (despite having hired some of the best
> >Genoese merc's).
Peter Metcalfe responded:
> The French did use dismounted knights and they did have archery.
I thought that the dismounted french knight was relatively rare before the stunning lesson of Crecy(though I seem to recall the English used the tactic against the Scots not long previously). I don't dispute that after that the French did start using knights on foot, but that they were still used without much regard for "tactics" or else Agincourt would not have been the success it was.
> In most medieval battles, the knights fought dismounted rather
> than indulged in a cavalry charge. Furthermore infantry were
> mostly trained men and not peasant levies.
I would dispute your use of the claim "In most medieval battles". I would have said that the medieval period was drawing to a close by the late 14thC, and prior to that the knights fought mounted the majority of the time, except as dictated by circumstances like a siege.
As I understand it, at Crecy the French arrived on the battle field at about 4pm, with a long train (many miles long) behind them of troops and equipment. The king of France was advised to wait till the following morning to attack, and agreed. The knights near the front ignored this and someone ordered in their Genoese mercenaries to attack with their crossbows. The genoese normally reloaded behind pavisses (large shields) but these were still on carts many miles behind.
When the genose got shot to pieces and ran, the french slaughtered the genoese (perhaps for cowardice, though there are some claims that perhaps the genoese red and yellow livery resembled the english red and white in the setting sun.) Hardly effective use of infantry or archers.
Once the sound of fighting came from the front, the troops at the back rushed forward to be part of the fighting. There was very little large unit effective control on the French side.
The French then made continued cavalry charges up a hill into the setting sun at emplaced English, and got slaughtered in large numbers. The French continued this till quite late at night making perhaps 15 assaults.
The next morning the English sent out scouting parties to see what was going on (scouting parties of thousands of troops I might add) who came across French troops heading for the site of the battle, expecting it to be starting that morning. Because of the mist no one had much idea what was going on, but the English knew that whoever else was out there was not friendly. One historian I read claimed that there may have been more french troops slaughtered on the Misty day following Crecy, than the previous evening.
I seem to recall that the English use of _knights_ on Foot was considered to be unusual.
10 years later at Poitiers the English had another _very_ defensible position, and the French decided that to ride up the narrow lane, with hedgerows they probably couldn't ride over, with archers on each side was stupid, so they had the majority of their knights assault on foot. Partially I believe as a response to the English use of knights on foot at Crecy. During the ten years between Crecy and Poitiers, and over the following twenty, armour had improved a lot, going from mostly chain with some joint protection of plate, to mostly plate limb armour with "coat of plates" style body armour. I'm not sure to what extent this was a direct result of the scaryness factor of longbows against mail, and to what extent it was merely improved metal working techniques.
> In support of this, the most frequently copied, translated and
> consulted secular prose work in the early medieval times was
> Vegetius's 'Concerning Military Matters': This is almost entirely
> about training infantry and contains very little about cavalry.
I find this unconvincing. The Crecy battle example suggests that although there were indeed people who read tactical manuals, perhaps even Edward III, that they were by no means in the majority in the french fighting forces. My claim was not about the medieval armies in general, but specifically contrasted the English with the French at Crecy, using the French as an example of an army that did not respect their infantry, and as a result did not have effective infantry.
Steve Rennell
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