The Story of the British Army

by Charles Cooper King

The history of knighthood is a part, and a very important part too, of the history of arms. To its institution can be traced many of the decorations and forms of the arms and armour of the Middle Ages. The honours it offered were so great and highly prized, that it increased martial enthusiasm and encouraged military exercises; and the part taken by women in rewarding the exertions of the knights both in the tournament and in battle, exercised an enormous influence over the warlike portion of mankind. Where the prizes were so great, attention to arms of offence and armour of defence became natural and right. The chivalric feeling engendered by knighthood and knightly exercises was not confined to joust and tournament in times of peace. It was a useful and valuable adjunct to personal bravery in war. “Oh that my lady could see me now!” said a knight as he successfully led his men to the storm of a well defended breach. The spirit thus aroused was due to the knightly customs of the times.

But this “chivalrous” and in a wide sense “cowardly” system was to receive two rude shocks. The first came from the Swiss mountaineers, who with the pike grievously routed the gorgeous knighthood of Charles of Burgundy, and the second from the results of the brain-thought of the peaceful chemist who rediscovered gunpowder.

That cavalry were useless against determined infantry was a new and lurid light to the iron-coated feudalist, and led to a considerable increase of foot-soldiers and the use of the half pike. As the firearms improved, so the unhappy knight tried to meet the bullet by thickening his armour of proof, until on foot he was helpless, and mounted not much better.

Complete Plate (Circa 1500).

Armour, therefore, had much changed since the Conquest, and was still changing. The Norman knight was chiefly clad in mail, composed at first of rings sewn side by side on quilted cotton or leather, rings overlapping (jazerant), scales overlapping (lorica), or square plates overlapping (tegulated); to be followed by rings set edgewise (as single mail); and finally regular double mail extending over the head and entire body. Over the mail coif was worn a conical helmet with a “nasal” or nose-piece, followed by a cylindrical flat-topped helmet over the coif; and finally the latter was replaced by a round topped helmet from which depended a mail cape or camail. Similarly as iron replaced mail for the headpiece, so were knee-pieces, elbow-guards and neck-guards of plate added. The foot-soldier wore an iron headpiece, and now and then a back and breast plate, but he was generally badly provided with defensive armour, and relied on the leather “buff” coat or clothing of quilted cloth. But the armour from the end of the fourteenth century to the beginning of the sixteenth century became more and more massive. At first mixed armour,—mail and plate,—then plate armour chiefly. In the former period more and more pieces of iron plate were used to cover weak parts, such as knees, elbows and shoulders, cuirasses, leg-pieces, thigh-pieces, gorgets (for the neck), shoes (sollerettes), and gauntlets for the hands, appear successively, until the only mail armour was that hung from the waist in front, between the plate cuisses that protected the outer part of the thighs. The helmet or headpiece also became gradually closer, with a visor that could be opened or closed at will, until it completely covered the face, so that by the fifteenth century, the whole of the armour was practically plate. Underneath the armour was generally worn a leather suit, and over it the “tabard,” which not only bore the wearer’s coat of arms, but protected him from the sun. Arms remained much the same—sword, lance and dagger chiefly for the mounted man, with at times the axe and mill-pick; on foot the two-handed sword, with halberts and partisans of various types, such as the glaive or byl, together with sword or dagger. The missile weapons, the longbow and crossbow, were still common, though giving way slowly but surely to the firearm; and the former was long more formidable than the latter. It could be discharged much more quickly, it was less liable to get out of order, it did not require heavy stores of powder and shot. The arrow missiles were twofold in character. “Flight” arrows had both heads and feathers small, and were used for ranges up to two hundred and forty yards. “Sheaf” arrows were shorter in the shaft, were heavily feathered and pointed, and were intended for close range. Even when this ammunition was expended, there was no lack of similar missiles to be found, either in the bodies of the slain or sticking in the ground. Moreover, the flight of the clothyard projectile could be directed over the heads of the men fighting in first line, and reach therefore the reinforcements hurrying up in rear. Still the firearm slowly gained ground, and the extensive use of body armour practically lasted until the end of the sixteenth century, though by that time leg-armour was generally falling into disuse.

During this same period there was a corresponding growth, in addition to the increasing appreciation of infantry already referred to, of permanently organised armies. Their origin as “Free Companies” from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries was probably largely due to the constant state of war and political contests that characterised the time. A numerous soldiery, disbanded after the termination of a campaign, were only too eager for further employment, however hazardous. Their mode of life had destroyed their peaceful instincts, and so as paid soldiers they served under the banner of any of the unscrupulous leaders, often of noble birth, that such a condition of affairs was likely to force to the front. Thus arose the mercenary soldier, the forerunner of the paid soldier; and from the continuous training the former perforce received also came the permanently embodied armies of later days. The system insensibly influenced the feudal levies, for among them served many others besides knights who made a profession of arms. Finally, the practical value of a permanent force was recognised in France, when “Compagnies d’ordonnance” were raised by paid officers and composed of paid men. So things and matters went, until the first of the great civil wars brought into the field English armies that fairly typify the final development of the feudal system that had been growing up. It differed much from what obtained elsewhere still. There were but few mercenaries in England, at least of foreign origin. The native independence of character had produced a splendid infantry as times were. And with the Wars of the Roses terminated mediæval tactics and its warfare, as with them finally came in the dire foe to feudal knight and iron-clad noble, that “villainous saltpetre” which was to revolutionise war and abolish armour altogether.

So when, on the 13th October 1453, a prince, Edward, was born to the feeble Henry VI. of Lancaster, the hope Edward of York cherished of peacefully succeeding to the throne was rudely destroyed. Before him lay the chance of a long minority under an imperious queen, Margaret of Anjou, a prospect that pleased neither the duke nor the people. Many who would have otherwise lived and died peaceful, unwarlike, citizens sided, half in apprehension, half in sympathy, with the “White Rose,” a feeling which acquired political importance by the temporary appointment of the Duke of York as Protector during the king’s mental feebleness and his son’s minority. “This Richard of York was a personage to be reckoned with.” And political excitement was soon followed by a political badge, as in later days the primrose became a party emblem. In the gardens of the Temple—so tradition has it—the white and red roses were plucked and worn by the spectators, the latter by those who followed the reigning house of Lancaster; and from this small beginning, from this outward and visible sign of internal disagreement, sprang an internecine contest that lasted for thirty years, brought about on English soil twelve pitched battles, more than decimated both branches of the royal family, all the noble houses, and for savage rancour and hideous cruelty is unequalled in the world’s history. Yet it is not a war as modern military historians would class it: there was little method, no “plan of campaign,” worthy the name. Where “armies”—or rather, bodies of armed men—gathered together, there a similar body went to fight them like two pugnacious cocks in a farmyard.

Not that Richard of York began with any certain idea of kingship, though his son, afterwards to be Edward IV., was less scrupulous. After the first battle of St. Albans,[8] matters went quite mildly to begin with. Henry VI. was made prisoner, but was treated with courtesy, and but for his determined queen, whose influence on his weak character was as that of Jezebel on Ahab, the end of his reign may yet have been peace. She was naturally despotic, and a conspiracy to seize the Yorkist leaders drove them again into open revolt, and gave them a victory at Blackheath in 1459, but much panic and some treachery led to the dispersion of the Yorkist soldiery at Ludlow the next month; to be followed in February 1460 by a complete victory at Northampton, in which Richard’s son Edward, Earl of March, with Warwick the Kingmaker, led the hosts of the White Rose, and Henry became a prisoner once more. This led to a second temporary compromise, whereby the Yorkists were promised the succession on the death of King Henry. But it availed little. The war-spirit and the blood feud were aroused. Wakefield Green witnessed the defeat and death of Richard of York, and the cruel murder of his twelve-years old son, Edmund of Rutland, by Lord Clifford. The cruelties of the Lancastrian party, the systematic pillaging which their soldiery—recruited often from the ruder North—so often indulged in, alienated the sympathy of the London men; while the more commercial spirit of Edward of York also tended to strengthen the party of the White Rose, to keep alive and embitter the strife, and postpone the long-looked-for peace. The country had practically subdivided itself into geographical as well as political factions. The North and Midlands sympathised with Henry, who had there the support of the landowners, the nobles, and their retainers; the south more or less with Edward, with whom the great towns, such as London, Bristol, and Norwich sided. Hence, after the latter had been proclaimed king, there was still a powerful army of some sixty thousand Lancastrians at York that had to be dealt with. And dealt with it was, by the new king and Warwick his Kingmaker, who at Towton won one of the most decisive and bloody battles during the struggle, and drove Margaret first to Scotland, and then to exile. Much as her character may be disliked,—and she was after all only a type of the imperious feudal “divinely-appointed” ruler,—her dauntless energy and courage cannot but meet with sympathy. So exile meant with her but reculer pour sauter le mieux, and in France such poor supplies as she could raise enabled her to make one despairing effort for her son’s sake, and she landed in Northumberland in 1462; but nothing came of it except dispersion again and despair. Unhappy queen! unhappy more by her own faults than aught else. The legal claim of her branch to the kingdom was never seriously contested. Her method of asserting that claim was contested, and with results fatal to her and her line, together with fateful results to her people. Commercial Edward was more likely to develop English handicraft and English trade than pious Henry. As later the divine right of Tudor, and still more of Stuart, had to give way to the rising spirit of freedom from autocratic control, whether of king or pope, so out of the Wars of the Roses began to sprout, from the soil of feudalism, broken by many a sword, manured by the best of English blood, the plant of English liberty. Yet one more great contest between rulers and ruled, and that plant was to spring into full and vigorous life, of which we now see the matured and widespreading tree. The nation hardened under the troubles of that stormy time; and, hardening, grew to stout manhood. In thinking this we see that Margaret unknowingly helped to make it. For “God fulfils Himself in many ways”; and by many means, often seemingly of the meanest, do great things come. Not that Edward was faultless, it was rather the other way. His private conduct was not beyond reproach; his marriage with Elizabeth Woodville, and the rise of that lady’s family, alienated many of the leading nobles, Warwick among the number. So the smouldering embers of civil war broke out again into flame, and now Margaret had to help her the mighty power of Warwick, with and by whose direction her next descent on England was to be made. But this, too, availed nothing. Though first so successful that Edward fled, later on, he too returned, but, unlike Margaret, to conquer. For at Barnet the great earl fell, and with him the last hope of Lancaster.

This remarkable battle is instructive as showing how slow was the change in tactics during feudal days. There was still the feeling of personal chieftaincy, so strongly held, that the result of the battle depended largely on the life of one of its leaders. With the death of Warwick the battle became a rout, and the feudal retainers fled when the head of their house fell. Again, to deal with the special political details which brought about the great fight would be foreign to the object of this book. The battle of Barnet must be taken as a type of the progress, such as it was, that had been made in the art of war since Crecy and Poitiers had been won. It began thus. Edward, after a five months’ exile, had landed at Ravenspur, and by the time he reached Nottingham he had raised an army of about ten thousand men, with, it is said, three hundred Flemings armed with handguns, and apparently some other artillery. On the other side, the Lancastrians, about equal in strength, had also some artillery, and had taken up a position on Gladmore, or Hadley Heath, north of Chipping Barnet, and awaited the approach of the Yorkists. The night preceding the battle was dark and gloomy, and the morning broke in heavy mists and rain; notwithstanding which the troops engaged between four and five o’clock on the morning of Easter Day, the 14th of April 1471.