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

by P. L. Jacob

The death of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, slain in the battle of Nancy (1477), completed the downfall of the feudal chivalry, whose last and most martial representative he was (Fig. 48). Louis XI., who had gathered around him a devoted army, composed of mercenaries from all countries, and who could entirely rely upon the fidelity of his Scottish guard, began attacking the great fiefs, which were in reality the rivals of his throne, and succeeded in destroying them, having no further need of them and their haughty vassalage. Little by little the seigniorial standards disappeared, and their war-cries ceased to resound; a fief held under the obligation to carry arms no longer forced the vassal, its occupier, under the pain of felony and bodily confiscation, to equip and arm himself at the first appeal of his suzerain, and to follow the royal ost with a definite number of fighting men. The principle of purchasing exemption from military service being henceforward admitted, all, whether nobles or villains, were at liberty either to serve or to purchase their exemption. Some few feudal gendarmes still remained, but most were free. Of the squires-at-arms, some were feudal, others free or even plain varlets. Canons, abbots, and prelates whom feudal laws had forced to contribute their personal military service, had long since found substitutes in the persons of the attorneys or bailiffs, who superintended the ban and arrière-ban of the land-owning nobles. Some of the clergy, however, preferred to be individually present with the armies of their sovereign; many a prelate or abbot was delighted to add to his coat-of-arms a cuirass, a sword, a helmet, or some other warlike emblem. In 1356, the bishops of Châlons, of Sens, and of Melun distinguished themselves by feats of personal bravery at the bloody engagement of Poitiers; in 1359, the Bishop of Rheims, by a few vigorous sorties, was the means of saving that city when the English were besieging it; the Archbishop of Sens, William of Montaigu, fell sword in hand on the field of Agincourt; in 1455, a simple monk successfully defended Belgrade; while at the siege of Plaisance, Philip of Savoy, Bishop of Valence, was knighted for his prowess in the breach itself. It is true that many of these ecclesiastical dignitaries had never been solemnly invested; but the example they followed was a lofty one, for several popes, John X., Leo IX., Urban II., Innocent II., and Julius II. (who had first distinguished himself as an able leader under the name of Julien de la Rovère) had personally commanded the troops of the Holy See.

The fire-stick, that is to say the arquebuse, which was then called hequebutte, with difficulty took the place of the bow, and with still greater difficulty that of the cross-bow. In 1481, Louis XI. deprived his sergeants-at-arms of both the latter weapons, not to arm them with fire-sticks, but in order to give them the pike, the halbert, and the broadsword, of which the Swiss in the recent wars had made such formidable use. Louis XI., however, increased the number of his mounted archers, and placed them later under the orders of the colonel of a company of free-lances known as Albanais or Scouts. These combined bodies formed the French national light cavalry till Francis I. replaced them by the light horse, a body chiefly composed of mercenaries of different nations. In England, ever since the thirteenth century, the mounted archers formed a considerable portion of the national forces. An army of fifteen hundred complete lances, which represented a total of six or seven thousand horsemen, required a complement of at least five thousand mounted archers, who were all skilful marksmen. In the time of Henry VIII., an English bowman could discharge as many as twelve arrows in a minute, and he would have considered himself disgraced if he had let fly a single shaft which failed to kill, wound, or at least strike an enemy.

Fig. 49.—German Foot-soldiers fighting.—From a Drawing by Holbein preserved in the Museum at Basle (Sixteenth Century).

Fig. 50.—Italian Warriors of the Fifteenth Century.—From a Bas-relief on the Triumphal Arch of Castel Nuovo, Naples, erected in 1470 by Ferdinand of Aragon, to celebrate his Victories over John of Calabria, Son of René d’Anjou.

The desperate mêlée of Fornoue (July 6th, 1495), which forced Charles VIII. to retrace his steps after his successful Italian expedition, was nearly the last of the confused and sanguinary struggles of the Middle Ages. The sword and the bow contributed more than the cannon and the fire-stick to the terrible result of the day. From that time the infantry regained its old pre-eminence over the cavalry, and cannon were employed preferably to all other projectile weapons. A complete revolution was also about to ensue, as well in the tactics of an army in the field as in the attack and defence of fortresses. Louis XII. and Francis I., in their Italian campaigns, in which, they wasted so much of the resources and treasures of France, had to contend with German and Spanish mercenaries, at that time the best soldiers in the world; they opposed to them bodies of foreign infantry, sometimes lansquenets (Fig. 49), sometimes Swiss, who made a trade of war, and who, to earn their pay, did not hesitate to fight against their own countrymen. There was one drawback, however, to the acceptance of their services, and that was that they frequently changed sides on the eve of an engagement, or refused to fight on the slightest pretext. More than once the knights of France saw themselves suddenly abandoned by the infantry whose duty it was to support them, and who allowed them to be cut to pieces before their eyes without stirring to assist them (Fig. 50). This happened at the fatal battle of Pavia, when the king and his nobles struggled on foot in hand-to-hand desperation till they fell or were taken prisoners.

In the ordinary arrangement, at this period, of any army giving battle in the open field, the free archers, the men-at-arms, and the knights were posted either in the centre or at the wings, while the infantry, properly so called, divided into little groups of five, termed cinquains, was either thrown forward to skirmish, or sent behind to cover the rearguard, or detached at intervals on the flanks in order to harass the enemy and to protect the baggage. During the engagement, all the knights, clad entirely in armour, dismounted in order to fight, and left their horses to the care of the infantry. In these days horses were only used to carry their riders on the march, which the weight of their armour would not have allowed them to perform on foot.

A horseman, when disabled by long service or by age, was no longer employed in the cavalry, but retired into the infantry, where he enjoyed, under the title of anspessade (from the Italian spezzate, broken), the privileges that were at a later period granted to veterans.

No troops, until the time of the Crusades, had any distinguishing mark among themselves, except the difference of their arms, and the idea of a military uniform had not then arisen. But with the emblazoned arms, the standards, and the pennants, there came into use scarves, worn as baldricks or sashes, over the cuirass, and of which the colour, which generally matched that of the standard of the feudal seignior of the wearer, became as much a rallying signal as the standards themselves (Fig. 51). The necessity of distinguishing friends from foes at a distance naturally also brought about more or less marked distinctions of dress.