The thing which really separates a noble from a villein is the former's superiority in arms. True, God has made the average cavalier more honorable, courteous, and sage than the peasant; but, after all, his great advantage is material. The villeins, poor churls, spend their days with shovel, mattock, or in mechanic toil. Doubtless, they can grow wheat, raise pigs, weave cloth, or build houses better than their masters, but in the use of arms how utterly are they inferior. How can a plowman, though you give him weapons, hold his own against a man of gentility who has been trained in arms from early boyhood. As for the peasants with their ordinary weapons—flails, boar spears, great knives, scythes set on poles, bows and arrows—suppose ten of them meet one experienced cavalier in full panoply upon a reliable charger. His armor will turn their puny blows. He will, perhaps, have brained or pinked through four of them before the other six can run into the woods. No wonder nobles give the law to villeins!
The noble is almost always a horseman. It is the great war steed that gives him much of his advantage, and a large part of the remainder comes from his magnificent armor, which enables him often to go through desperate contests unscathed, and which is so expensive that most non-nobles can never afford it. A good cavalier despises missile weapons, he loves to come to grips. Bowmen are despised as being always villeins. Says a poet, "Coward was he who was the first archer; he was a weakling and dared not come close to his foe." And many armies are reckoned by cavalry alone, even as sang another minstrel of a legendary host, "there were in it sixty thousand knights, not counting foot soldiers of whom no account is taken."
A KNIGHT AT THE END OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
Restored by Viollet-Le-Duc, from a manuscript in the Bibliothèque nationale. He wears on his shoulders small metal plaques called "ailettes."
Old warriors dislike arbalists, those terrible crossbows, wound up with a winch, which enable base-born infantrymen to send heavy bolts clear through shirts of mail. They are most unknightly things. In 1139 a Lateran Council actually forbade their use against Christians. Arbalists certainly are useful in sieges for clearing ramparts or repelling attack; but they take so long to wind up after every shot that their value in open battles is limited. Crossbowmen, unless carefully protected, can be ridden down by cavalry. So for another hundred years the mailed knight will hold his own. Then may come the English long-bow (far more rapid in its fire than the arbalist), and the day of the infantry will return.
Training to Fight in Armor
Knights are continually fighting, or at least are exercising most violently in tourneys; yet the proportion of contestants slain is not very great. This is because their armor makes them almost invulnerable. After a battle, if you count the dead, you find they are usually all from the poor villein infantry or the luckless camp followers. Yet this harness has inconveniences. It is so heavy that the knight is the prisoner of his own armor. He can hardly mount his horse unassisted. Once flung from the saddle, he can scarcely rise without help. The lightest suit of armor in common use weighs at least fifty-five pounds. Powerful knights often wear much heavier. Yet to be able to move about with reasonable freedom, to swing one's shield, to control one's horse, and finally to handle lance or sword with great strength and precision, doing it all in this ponderous clothing of metal, are what squires like Aimery must learn to a nicety ere claiming knighthood. Wearing such armor, it is not remarkable that noblemen always prefer horseback, and fight on foot only in emergencies.
The prime unit in a suit of armor is the hauberk. He who has a fine hauberk, light (considering the material), pliable, and of such finely tempered steel as to be all but impenetrable, has something worth a small manor land. On this hauberk will often depend his life.