Medieval Warfare and Society

Nine in ten on foot

The picture of medieval war is a knight on a warhorse. The reality of a medieval army was nine men in ten on foot, most of them with a bow or a spear, most of them there because the law said they must be, and all of them fed by taking food from the villages they marched through. A warhorse alone could cost more than a farm labourer earned in twenty years. That is why the mounted knight was rare, and why it mattered so much when, in the fourteenth century, a yeoman with a six-foot bow of yew turned out to be able to kill him at two hundred yards. This is the first block of a study that runs to the present day, so the exam will ask you to compare it with what came later, to explain why it changed, and to judge how far. This module gives you the block with its dates and numbers, and then the three question shapes.

Five words the examiners use

Each definition ends with a date or a figure, because a term without support earns one mark where a supported one earns two.

Two and a half centuries, in order

Put these six events in the order they happened.

• The Statute of Winchester requires every man of fifteen to sixty to keep arms
• English longbows break the Scottish schiltrons at Falkirk
• Scottish schiltrons beat the English cavalry at Bannockburn
• The English use cannon for the first time in a major battle, at Crecy
• Edward III orders every able man to practise the bow on Sundays and holidays
• A third poll tax to pay for the war in France provokes the rising of 1381

Why the longbow changed the army

A trained archer could loose ten to twelve arrows a minute to about two hundred yards, and a village could produce a dozen such men. A knight needed a horse, armour, a squire and a lifetime of training. Which explanation best links the weapon to the change in how armies were made up?

• Because massed archers could stop a cavalry charge at a distance, a king could win with thousands of cheap commoners and a few hundred knights, so English armies came to be built around the bow, and the knight, still present, stopped being the decisive arm.
• The longbow made knights useless, so they were abolished.
• The longbow could not pierce plate armour, so it made no difference to the knight.
• The longbow was a foreign weapon that only mercenaries used.

Change and continuity: 1250 against 1500

The thematic study is about what changed and what did not. Put the two ends of the block side by side and the answer to any similarity or difference question is on the card.

The Statute of Winchester, 1285

From the Statute of Winchester, rendered into modern English for this module. Tap the TWO clauses that show arms were matched to wealth and that ordinary men were expected to have bows.

• It is commanded that every man between fifteen years of age and sixty years shall be assessed and sworn to keep arms according to the quantity of his lands and goods.
• That is to say, a man with fifteen pounds of land and forty marks of goods shall keep a hauberk of mail, a helmet of iron, a sword, a knife and a horse.
• A man with ten pounds of land and twenty marks of goods shall keep a hauberk, a helmet, a sword and a knife.
• And all others who are able shall have bows and arrows, and those who dwell in the forests shall have bows and bolts.
• And the constables shall view the arms twice in the year and present defaults to the justices.

How armies were raised

Select the THREE statements that are true of recruitment in the years c1250 to c1500.

• A knight owed his lord, and the lord owed the king, forty days of service a year, which was too short for a campaign in France.
• From 1285 every man of fifteen to sixty had to keep arms matched to his wealth, so that a county could be called out at need.
• By the wars of Edward III, captains contracted by indenture to bring a set number of men at set daily wages, a shilling for a man-at-arms and sixpence for a mounted archer.
• The king kept a standing army of twenty thousand men throughout the period.
• Every man was conscripted to fight abroad.
• Knights were never paid.

The three thematic question shapes

Paper 1 carries no source questions on the thematic study; those belong to the historic environment. What it asks about this block, and every block, is: Q3, 4 marks: Explain one way in which X in one period was similar to, or different from, X in another. One point of comparison, then a piece of detail from each period. Example: recruitment in the 1290s relied on the forty-day feudal levy, whereas by the 1340s captains raised men by indenture at a shilling a day. Q4, 12 marks: Explain why something changed, or stayed the same, across a stretch of the period. Three causes, each with dated evidence, each linked to the change with a phrase like this meant that. Q5 or Q6, 16 marks plus 4 for spelling: How far do you agree with a statement about the whole period. Evidence for and against from more than one block, then a judgement. A statement about the longbow will want the schiltron, the indenture and the cannon set against it. The commonest way to lose marks on this paper is to write a narrative of one battle when the question asked about change across two centuries.

Raising an army for France, 1346

You are Edward III in the spring of 1346, and you mean to land in Normandy in July. Four problems. Choose what was actually done, and notice why the old way would not serve.

• You need some 15,000 men, most of them archers, for a campaign that will last months. The feudal levy owes you forty days. How do you raise them?
• Wages for 15,000 men come to thousands of pounds a month. Where does it come from?
• The army must be fed while it gathers at Portsmouth, and the ships must be found. What happens to the villages of Hampshire?
• You want your archers to arrive able to shoot ten arrows a minute. How do you make sure the countryside produces them?

From cause to consequence

Because a knight owed only _____ days, a war in France could not be fought with the feudal levy, and the crown turned to contracts and wages. Because the Statute of _____ made every man of fifteen to sixty keep arms, the countryside was already half an army. Because massed archers could kill horses at two hundred yards, the _____ stopped being the decisive arm. Because wars overseas cost wages, the crown needed _____ to grant taxes, and a third poll tax in 1381 brought a _____.

Compare the rates of fire

A trained longbowman could shoot about 12 arrows a minute; a crossbowman about 2. In one minute, how many more arrows would 100 longbowmen loose than 100 crossbowmen?

Question 3: similarity or difference

Question 3 reads: Explain one way in which the recruitment of armies in the 1290s was different from recruitment in the 1340s. It is marked one point of comparison plus detail from each period. Which answer scores all four marks?

• In the 1290s armies still depended on the feudal levy, under which a lord brought his knights to the king for forty days as a duty of landholding, whereas by the 1340s Edward III raised his armies by indenture, contracts under which captains supplied men for the whole campaign at daily wages of a shilling for a man-at-arms and sixpence for an archer.
• By the 1340s armies were raised by indenture, which meant captains contracted to supply men at wages, and this was much more reliable than before.
• Recruitment changed a lot between the 1290s and the 1340s because warfare was developing.
• At Falkirk in 1298 Edward I used longbows to break the schiltrons, and at Crecy in 1346 Edward III did the same to the French.

A 12-mark paragraph, marked

Question 4: Explain why the mounted knight became less important in warfare in the years c1250 to c1500. One reason the knight became less important was the rise of the longbow. By the 1330s the English crown could put thousands of archers into the field, each able to loose ten or twelve arrows a minute to two hundred yards, and at Crecy in 1346 and Agincourt in 1415 those volleys killed horses and broke charges before the French knights could close. This meant that the arm which had decided medieval battles could be stopped by men who cost sixpence a day, and a king who could win with archers had less reason to pay for knights: the English man-at-arms of the fifteenth century fought on foot beside the bowmen rather than charging ahead of them. The knight did not vanish, but the weapon that made a commoner his equal on the field changed what an army was for, and what it was made of. What earned the marks: a cause named in the first sentence; specific support (the rate of fire and range, the two battles with dates, the sixpence); the link phrase this meant that; and a closing sentence that returns to the question and qualifies the change. Two more paragraphs, on the schiltron and on gunpowder, and the answer reaches the top level.

Write the 12-mark answer

Explain why the composition of armies changed in the years c1250 to c1500. You may use the following in your answer: the longbow; the indenture system. You must also use information of your own.

• Support that counts: a date, a battle, a law, a wage or a figure
• Causes of your own: the schiltron, the cost of the knight, gunpowder, or the wars in France

Question 5: how far do you agree?

Question 5 might read: "The longbow was the main reason for change in warfare in the years c1250 to c1500." How far do you agree? A student has written the case FOR. Which is the strongest point to set AGAINST it?

• The deeper change was in how armies were raised and paid: the move from the forty-day feudal levy to indenture and parliamentary taxation made long campaigns overseas possible at all, and the longbow was the weapon that this new kind of army chose, not the cause of the army.
• The crossbow was a better weapon than the longbow.
• Castles were still built throughout the period.
• The English won at Agincourt in 1415.