Philippe le Long (1314) and Philippe de Valois 1337–1340) continued and improved the work of Philippe le Bel. Thenceforward, the ost or army of the king was regularly established; the cross-bowmen and the men-at-arms were the first corps who received a permanent organization and a fixed rate of pay.
Fig. 46.—Messenger bringing a Letter to the King’s Army.—From a Manuscript in the National Library of Paris (Thirteenth Century).
In the fourteenth century, the French infantry, composed merely of more or less badly-armed archers, inspired its leaders with no great confidence. Its want of skill and its cowardice too often compromised the issue of an engagement. It was necessary, in order to support those combatants always ready to take to flight, to employ foreign mercenaries, English, Italian, or German, who fought well when they were liberally paid. These mercenaries, more practised in war and more courageous than the soldiers of the ban, were entrusted with the management of the cannon, which at this time were first employed, and which were carried by the camp followers. We may here repeat what we have spoken of elsewhere, viz., that the imperfections of the earliest cannons, the difficulty which attended their use, and the danger incurred by those who discharged them, caused the old arms to be long preferred to these new ones. In fact, long after the new artillery had made considerable progress, it was employed simultaneously with the ancient style of projectiles. The long period during which this important transition in projectile weapons was slowly taking place, was one of the most wretched in the annals of military art. All the great battles of the fourteenth century present us with striking examples of an entire absence of skill in tactics. Mons-en-Puelle (1304), where King Philippe le Bel was all but surprised in his camp; Cassel (1328), where Philippe de Valois escaped half naked from his enemies’ hands; Crecy (1346), where the English used cannon for the first time; Poitiers (1356), where King John was taken prisoner on the battle-field; Nicopolis (1393), where knighthood covered itself with disgrace; Agincourt, where the flower of the French nobility perished—are all examples of the most shameful confusion during the struggle, of the most disgraceful butchery after the defeat. It is not too much to say, that during the whole of this long epoch of bloody contests, true knights and staunch soldiers were very rare, and that good leaders were even rarer still.
In Italy, the condottieri, whose principal commander was the Englishman, John Hawkwood, and in France, the free companies, commanded by the renowned Armand de Cervoles, and even those bands of routiers, Brabançons, and tard-venus, who pillaged and plundered the realm to such an extent, says an old chronicler, “that not even a cock was heard to crow in it,” were the only troops who showed any acquaintance with the resources of military warfare or the slightest knowledge of strategic science. It was amongst the ranks of these indefatigable soldiers that the celebrated Bertrand du Guesclin made his first campaign (Fig. 47).
Fig. 47.—Battle of Auray (Sept. 29, 1364), between John de Montfort and Charles de Blois, in which Bertrand du Guesclin was made prisoner by Chandos.—Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Chroniques de Bretagne,” by Alain Bouchard: 4to, Galliot du Pré, 1514.
The paid gendarmery, a mixture of heavy and light cavalry, committed, in the reign of Charles VI., many breaches of discipline, without atoning for them by lending any really efficacious aid to French chivalry, which was almost entirely cut to pieces in the bloody disaster of Agincourt (October 25th, 1415). Charles VII., replaced on the throne of his ancestors by his nobles after he had driven out the English, “by the help of God and Joan the Virgin,” determined therefore to disband the gendarmery. From the picked men of the body he formed the framework of fifteen new companies of artillery, numbering nine thousand combatants, amongst whom were incorporated all the regular cavalry of the kingdom. Each gendarme, thoroughly equipped, was attended by two archers and two followers on horseback; this group of five mounted men was called a lance fully equipped. In 1447, a sixth man and horse were added to it. A little later, Charles VII. raised several paid bands, recruited by voluntary enlistment and commanded by responsible captains, who were paid by the war treasurers, according to the number of men on the monthly muster-roll. This creation of mercenary troops diminished still further the importance of the ban, which was no longer anything but a badly-equipped secondary militia, though still armed with bows and pikes, and still obliged to wear a uniform. On the actual field of battle the pikemen were always posted in the van; behind them came the foot archers, wearing salades, or helmets without vizors, the brigandine or short coat of mail, and armed with cross-bows. But this reorganization of the troops had no invigorating effect on the infantry of the communes, and the franc-archer remained the type of the cowardly soldier.
Fig. 48.—Great Seal of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. The Legend, in Latin, enumerates his titles and feudal possessions.—National Archives of France (Fifteenth Century).