Military and religious life in the Middle Ages and at the period of the Renaissance

by P. L. Jacob

In all probability the establishment of the arrière-ban, or the ban-fieffe, dates from the sixth century. It was a call to arms of the vassals that the suzerain alone had a right to command. A century later, feudalism, which was beginning to establish itself in Gaul as in Italy, as a consequence of the successful invasion of the Franks, was nearly stamped out by the Mahometan invasion of the Spanish Moors, who had been led by their chief, Abderamus, as far as the banks of the Loire, where they were stopped by Charles Martel, who routed them with great slaughter.

After the brilliant victory of Poitiers (732), where the repulse of Arab civilisation left the field open to the defenders of the Christian faith, and to the originators of the feudal régime, the victorious army underwent a sudden change. The Frankish knights adopted as an inheritance of conquest the rich Saracen armour (Figs. 37, 38, 39, 40); the feudal troopers donned a coat of mail, and, henceforward, a full suit of armour became a necessary accessory to a warrior of high rank. The bow, which had long been thrown aside, was once more taken into favour, and became the special arm of the footmen. But we have exhaustively treated of the armament and equipment of the soldiery of the period (see the chapter on Armoury in “Art in the Middle Ages”), and we can only here deal with military tactics and organization; in a word, with the theoretical part of the art of war.

The reign of Charlemagne, which was one long series of expeditions and conquests, was naturally favourable to the progress and development of this art. The Emperor of the Franks, like a man of genius, understood how to profit by the inventions and creations of his predecessors. To the warlike traditions of Greece and Rome he added, step by step, the improvements that were rendered necessary by the nature of the enemies with whom he had to contend, namely, the Lombards, the Saxons, &c. He kept up the feudal service of the ban; he established permanent orders of militia, composed of his own serfs and vassals; but, as soon as he undertook a distant expedition, his auxiliaries, ten times as numerous as his vassals, rendered his army rather a German than a French one. He caused a number of fortresses to be constructed everywhere throughout his vast empire, but he never allowed his subjects to build any on their own account. Yet he never seems to have attached any importance, as a protection to his territory, to the larger enclosed towns, in which he might have held in reserve considerable depôts of troops. He himself usually resided in rural residences and in open and unprotected villages, barely guarded by a few military pickets. At the slightest signal, it is true, a whole army of fidèles and servitors would have arisen as one man to defend him; but under no circumstances would he have consented to await his enemy under the shelter of fortifications; he was always the true primeval German, seeking for his field of battle the open plain rather than the hillside, preferring cavalry to infantry, and a direct struggle, a hand-to-hand fight, to encounters at a distance, waged and won by the missiles of the slinger and the shafts of the bowmen. His principal victories were gained in the open country, where he was enabled to deploy his masses of mailed horsemen; he never willingly sat down before a stronghold, a circumstance which shows that he was aware of his want of skill in the conduct of a siege; and he was never fortunate in mountain warfare, as was evidenced in the disastrous day of Roncevaux (778), which cast a shadow over the last years of his life.

Thirty years after the death of the great emperor, the treaty of Mersen (847) freed the great vassals from the obligation of answering the summonses of the sovereign, and of rushing to arms at his appeal, unless for the purpose of defending the State, and substituted the practice of furnishing armed contingents, whose services were to be rendered for a fixed period, settled beforehand. Infeudation—a kind of political and pecuniary contract, in virtue of which a fief was subdivided into several smaller ones—perpetuated the feudal régime, each man becoming the man of another man, bound to place himself at his disposal in time of war, and to be ready to start on any expedition at his command, and according to the wishes of his immediate seignior.

Fig. 41.—Bishop Eudes, holding his baton of office, encouraging the young soldiers of the Duke of Normandy at the Battle of Hastings.—Military Costumes of the Eleventh Century, from the Bayeux Tapestry.

During the tenth century this régime grew stronger and stronger. The oath of infeudation, or the act of homage, remained a sacred tie between the seignior and the vassal. This homage involved the rendering of numerous feudal services, such as those of the ban, and of the arrière-ban, those rendered by the servitors of different ranks, known as bachelors, clients, esquires, bannerets, men-at-arms, barons, &c., names already ancient, but whose rank and place in battle were only determined on the day when they were all grouped and posted, each under his special banner or gonfanon, a distinction that implied a separate kind of equipment for each.

Thus the vassals were in the power of the seignior, who, having the right to dispose of their military services, enjoyed the right of reize—a right that gave him the power of assembling and leading to battle a certain number of feudal groups. “Obey my summons, or I will burn you!”[2] were the words of the seignior in the ban published by the crier, and, at the second summons, the sound of the trumpet rang out in the cross roads, in the streets, and in the country places, calling the men to arms. To fail to answer the call of the ban was to commit a crime of the worst character.

Fig. 42.—After the Battle of Hastings (14th October, 1066), the relatives of the vanquished came to carry away their dead. The body of the Saxon King, Harold, is taken to Waltham by the monks of that monastery. In the background is seen Battle Abbey, founded by Duke William on the site of the battle.—Fac-simile of a Miniature in the “Chroniques de Normandie.” Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the possession of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.