In the great expedition of William, Duke of Normandy, against the Anglo-Saxons (1066), he had no other auxiliaries than his Norman vassals and subjects. He conquered Harold and took possession of England with a numerous and trained army, furnished with terrible warlike machines and engines (Figs. 41 and 42). The Norman Conquest was, to a certain extent, a prelude to the Crusades, for those raids across the seas, repeated from time to time for more than two centuries, bore no resemblance to the barbarian invasions, either Saracen or Norman, which had been previously recorded in history. New measures, inspired by the circumstances of the times, were the consequence of the general crumbling to pieces of all the Eastern nations; among these may be mentioned the establishment of the communal militia, which set out for a campaign accompanied by its spiritual pastors, and received the last offices of religion at their hands on the field of battle; the regular pay allowed to those who were destitute of private resources (a knight received at first ten sous a day—equivalent to ten francs of modern money—and a squire received five); the chartering of ships intended for the transport of troops; the system of commissariat for armies in the field; and the supply of military equipments, arms, &c.
This communal militia, sprung from the freeing of the communes, and detachments of soudoyers, or paid troops, soon grew into a standing army, which was formally incorporated for the first time by Louis le Jeune about 1140, and increased by Philip Augustus, who added to it the affiliated knights. Under the latter sovereign, an army in the field presented three ranks of combatants—bannerets, knights, and squires, to whom were added the men-at-arms. A motley crew of varlets on foot, without officers or discipline, followed the troops, and hovered about them during an engagement, picking up the spoil of the conquered, and killing the wounded with clubs or battle-axes, called glaives de mercy.
The disasters of the Crusaders in the East, after two centuries of useless heroism and tremendous efforts, were principally due to the defects in their military administration, which foresaw nothing, and was incapable of adjusting itself to the difficulties inherent to a war in a distant and almost unknown land whither the enthusiastic crowds who wore the cross bent their adventurous steps. Famine, plague, leprosy, and fever destroyed the Christian armies on their journey to Palestine, and during their stay there; and these evils would have been greater still had it not been for the creation of the different military orders which sprang into existence under the pressure of these almost inevitable calamities, and which supplied hospital attendants, chaplains, and soldiers. The continuation of the feudal wars (Fig. 43) in Europe gave the last blow to the disorganization of the armies of Christ.
Fig. 43.—Richard Cœur-de-Lion, King of England and Duke of Normandy, mortally wounded by an arrow shot by Bertrand de Gourdon, at the Siege of the Castle of Chalus, in Limousin (1199).—“Chroniques de Normandie,” Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (Library of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot).
Fig. 44.—Soldier of the Time of Philippe le Bel.—Miniature in a Manuscript of the Period (National Library of Paris).
Fig. 45.—Man-at-arms with a pot de fer with nose-piece, a coat of mail over his leather tunic, and armed with a short broadsword.—From a Miniature in the “Dialogues de Saint Grégoire,” a Manuscript of the Eleventh Century, in the National Library of Paris.
While Philippe le Bel was destroying the Knights Templars, whom he held to be obstacles to his political plans, he was at the same time seeking in every way the means of restraining a haughty aristocracy, always under arms, whose systematic want of discipline was a danger both to the throne and to the country. As soon as he had obtained from the representatives of the nation, assembled together in States-General, the right to impose taxes according to the requirements of the sovereign, he set to work on the definitive organization of a permanent paid army (Fig. 44). He fixed the age of military service at eighteen, and decreed that none of his subjects, except the old and the sick, should be exempt from it, unless they paid a certain sum to the royal treasury, and supplied, according to their rank and means, one or more substitutes (decree of 1302, 1303, 1306) to serve under the flag of the ost of the king (Fig. 46). Till that time, military service had only been obligatory for forty consecutive days, or, at the most, for three months. This service was, indeed, often of less duration, according to the different degree of infeudation of any particular fief, and was hedged about, besides, with so many privileges and with so many exemptions, that if a feudal army did not succeed in bringing a short campaign to a prosperous issue, it generally met with a fatal collapse. In accordance with this design, Philippe le Bel, at the opening of the Flemish campaign, summoned “for four months to his standards, archbishops, bishops, abbots, dukes, counts, barons, and other nobles, all liable to the ban,” each of whom could claim pay at the rate of twelve deniers (about four francs) a day, besides a sum of thirty sous (about thirty francs) for their equipment.