Author | Leng Yan Author Team - Weiman Tobacco Leaf
Word count: 4894, Reading time: about 13 minutes
Editor's note: Speaking of the Middle Ages in Europe, the first symbol that people think of is undoubtedly the majestic knight. There are countless literary works about knights in ancient and modern times, and Europe to describe them. So how powerful were knights in the medieval times? For example, how many farmers can a knight fight?
This article "according to the Western historical staging method, the medieval history from 500 to 1500 AD, as three cuts in the early (500 to 1050 AD) (1050 to 1300 AD) and the late (1300 to 1500 AD)" respectively, and talks about the equipment training and battle examples of early, mid- and late knights.
Early medieval knights
Before talking about knights, we must have a clear understanding of knights. In the medieval cavalry did not equal knights. For example, in the Battle of Bouven, French King Philip " successfully summoned a huge army composed of earls, nobles, knights, infantry and cavalry sergeants, as well as commune militias ".
▲Battle of Hastings
In the battle, Philip " gave the order, and lined up neatly and fully armed knights and auxiliary troops, and prepared for the battle at an extremely fast speed. The auxiliary troops tightened the reins of the horses ". Regarding these cavalry, they are generally called man at arms. They are no different from knights in military terms. They may be mercenaries , fief escorts, or escorts in the palace.
And the knights do not necessarily own land and can also be hired. For example, in the Battle of Hastings, William hired the knights, and then after he ruled the UK, he often hired the knights. The biggest difference between the two sides is that they have been sealed or not.
There is also, people may have always had the impression that the medieval knights were stronger than the Roman cavalry . However, there is not much difference between the early knights and the late cavalry of the Roman Empire . The early knights had two sources that were likely to follow in their training, one was Vegettius and the other was Arian. For other to equipment, we can see from the records of the Frank "Ripal Code" that the financial resources required to equip a cavalry are as follows:
helmet (6 Sorida), scabbard (3 Sorida), breastplate (12 Sorida), spear and shield (2 Sorida), leg guards (6 Sorida), horses (12 Sorida), swords and scabbards (7 Sorida)
Moreover, although some people like to say the advantages of stirrup and gun charge, the popularity of stirrups was not fast. Stirrups were not popularized in Europe until the 9th century, and stirrups were not popularized in the Middle East in the early Sassanian Persia and Arabia. The specific reason may be due to the pride of cavalry. For example, in the early cavalry of Middle East, , using stirrups would be ridiculed as bad riding skills. As for gun charges, it probably appeared in the 12th century. For a long time, medieval knights did not make much progress compared to the cavalry of the Roman period.
The most classic example of early knights is undoubtedly the Battle of Hastings in 1066 AD. Although this battle is more than ten years later than the early Middle Ages, it does not affect its investigation of the combat effectiveness of early knights. At this time, there were two types of military forces in England. The first was the army dominated by militia, which was divided into the large militia system and the selection militia system.
The biggest difference between the former and the latter is that the former has no clear combat duration, but as long as you leave the local county, the king will pay his salary even if it takes more than one day. The latter provides one soldier from every five Haide lands, of which 4 shillings are given to each Haide land and serves only about 2 months. The second is the imperial guards composed of a small number of elite troops.
This is the force Harold used to resist Norman conquer , but due to the storm. William's army had not landed in England for a long time, which forced Harold to disband the army by "on Christmas Day, people were exhausted and no one could stay there anymore."On the other hand, when William really stepped into England, he began to ravage the English lands, forcing Harold to fight in Heyens.
Here we have to talk about the medieval war rules at that time. " is different from the imagination in popular culture. Medieval military commanders rarely take the initiative to start wars. They often only take this risk when their lives are hanging on the line (as William encountered in 1047); and in general, they mostly adopt a war of attrition (as William often implies that the practice of siege wars). The invading army did not extend from the rear to the supply line on the front line; during the march, they often supplement military supplies by plundering local residents. This inevitably means killing many civilians, but no law can stop this atrocities. The reason why
is that there were many castles in Europe at that time. For example, according to statistics, there are still 20,000 castles in Germany today. In the early Middle Ages, the financial resources of the Roman period were lacking, and it was impossible to establish a huge siege force, so it was difficult to conquer the castle. As long as the defense party is stationed in the castle, it can resist the enemy's attack, but the attacking party is difficult to deal with.
▲European castles are numerous
So the attacking party often ravages the enemy's land to force the defense party to go out of the city to fight. And Conqueror William adopted this tactic, and it did force Harold, who was far away in London to rush to Hastings to fight the Conqueror. At this time, Harold had only recruited the militias of York and Sussex, except for the imperial guards composed of major nobles.
He immediately arranged the army in an uneven place on the high ground to form the so-called shield wall. On the other hand, William divided the troops into three parts, with the archers at the front, followed by the heavy infantry called the armored soldiers, and the third part is the heavy cavalry . The battle was first started by archers, who fired rains of arrows at the enemy.
Then the second team of heavy infantry launched a charge, but they failed to open up the situation like the archers. Then there are heavy cavalry. They set up a dense formation and charged slowly, but Harold's highland advantage should not be underestimated, and the heavy cavalry, like the infantry, still did not open up the situation. At this time, Norman began to pretend to retreat. It successfully attracted a large number of English troops to pursue, and then the Normans took the opportunity to fight back and kill the pursuers.
continued like this several times, and the shield wall was completely broken. In the end, William personally led the army to kill Harold, and the battle ended with the victory of the Normans. From the above we can see that the knights or cavalry of this period are no different from the cavalry of the early and middle Roman period, and they do not have much advantage over infantry.
Cavalry in the middle of the Middle Medieval
However, as the times entered the 12th century, the knights at this time had obvious qualitative improvements, the first thing was to strengthen protection. As Guillaume said, "Every knight in is covered with several layers of iron armor, and his chest is also firmly wrapped in breastplate, leather and other types of breastplate. Compared with the old days, warriors now attach more importance to self-protection ."
is not only the knight itself, but even the horses were strengthened. " was almost the end of the 11th century, and the protection of horses was gradually introduced to Western European cavalry. Many references record the existence of horses using chain mail by the end of the 12th century. For example, chronicler Shadda recorded that during the siege of Akure (1189-91), a knight in Crusader was riding "a horse wrapped in chains ".
reportedly, in 119 In an eight-year battle with Gisors in France, British King Richard I captured 200 horses, of which 140 were wrapped in iron clothes. Finally, the popularity of gun charges was popular. It can be said that the cavalry during this period completely surpassed the cavalry during the Roman period.
The cavalry tactics during this period were also different from those in the early days. Because of the strengthening of the cavalry's charge ability, cavalry was often placed on the front line after the archers during combat. Here we have to mention the supporting infantry of the medieval era.First of all, the infantry provided by the feudal system was all professional army, but in the Middle Ages, it was not Rome, so militias were often added to the battlefield (England accepted the feudal system relatively late, so it was not considered a feudal state until after the Norman conquest).
There are many wars during this period. The author uses the Battle of Bouwen on July 27, 1214 to describe the battle during this period. This battle took place on Sunday, and according to the laws of the Christian world at that time, it was impossible to fight on this day. Therefore, the significance of the Battle of Bouwen is extraordinary. Before the battle of
began, French King Philip had concerns about fighting with the coalition forces of the British and the Holy Roman Empire on Sunday, so he decided to march to Bouvin first. If the other party agrees to delay the delay for one day, the battle will be suspended first, but if the other party does not want to delay, the other party will fight the other party that day. On the other hand, after the coalition learned that the King of Dharma arrived in Bouvin, it was divided into two factions of whether to fight. One faction was mainly Emperor Otto. They believed that even if they fought on this sacred day, there would be no honor to win.
But the other faction had the opposite opinions. Both sides were at odds, and the opinions of the faction in the end had the upper hand. They divided the " coalition into three units: the first commander was Ferdinand, Boulogne Reno, and Salisbury Earl of William: the second unit was commanded by Guillaume of the Netherlands and Bouvo, and Yuge was also responsible for commanding the Brabant: the third unit was composed of German soldiers, led by Roman Emperor Otto. They kept this formation slowly towards the enemy until they came to the French.
At this time, the defender of the French troops was instantly attacked by the coalition forces as soon as he stepped onto the land on the other side of the bridge. After learning that the rear guard troops were attacked, the King of Dharma led the army to the battlefield on the one hand, and destroyed the bridges connecting the two sides of the straits to fight back. The attacked defender composed of the Champagne, facing the charge of the army led by Ferdinand, began to suffer a defeat in the domino effect. Soon, the Flanders people rushed to the front of the Dharma King and knocked the Dharma King off.
At this critical moment, the Dharma King was re-mounted under the rescue of the knights around him, and the Earl of Saint Pole also successfully walked around the back. The Flanders were defeated by attacks on both sides. After defeating the Flanders, the knights continued to attack the infantry units of Reno, the Earl of Boulogne. However, since the knights may not bring the spears on the battlefield, the first wave of attack did not work. At this time, the King of France sent 3,000 spear cavalry to charge and instantly defeated the enemy's infantry. After that, the Champagne returned to the battlefield and together with the other troops, they defeated the remaining two parts of the coalition forces.
In the end, 15,000 French troops (11,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry) defeated 25,000 coalition forces (the proportion of infantry is higher than that of French troops), and the casualties ratio is 1,000 French troops vs. 1,000 coalition forces, but the coalition forces were captured 9,000. Among them, it is said that only 2 knights died in the French army, while 169 knights died in the coalition. These figures can illustrate the knights' dominance on the battlefield at that time. It is definitely exaggerating to fight a hundred peasants, but in terms of combat effectiveness, it is dozens of times that of militia recruiting.
The late knights of Zhongshan
entered the late stage, and the knights did not change much in equipment. However, with the weakening of 's martial spirit , the number of knights on the battlefield began to decline on a large scale compared with the previous two periods, and finally the knight became a glorious title. At the same time, as the European economy began to develop, more and more professional infantry began to join the battle, and the most famous of them were undoubtedly the Swiss. The Swiss's greatest victory came from defeating the reckless Charlie's "modern" army in three wars.
1476, Charlie occupied the town of Grandesen in Ruitu and hanged the defenders. The Swiss vanguard, who arrived early, did not wait for the gathering of troops, but walked out of the forest, but found that Charlie's entire army was waiting for them. Charlie carried out two cavalry attacks, and the knights rode war horses in armor to stop the Swiss attack.The main unit of Burgundy was ordered to retreat in order to cause the Swiss to lose their targets.
Charlie began to deploy his innovative field guns to destroy the spear formation and surrounded them with spear and longbow . During this complex operation, the main force and rear guards of Switzerland arrived at the battlefield, and a large number of spearmen arrived and stopped Charlie's army from marching to the top of the hill slope. In the case of imbalance in the scene, perhaps the retreat of the central main force was misunderstood, and the Burgundian army began to flee, and the Swiss, who lacked cavalry, could not pursue it.
Charlie has since recruited, trained and armed a larger force and began to provoke the Swiss again. He camped and besieged Murten on the way to Bern , thinking that the Swiss would come to rescue him. Charlie attempted to build a fortification in front of his camp and equipped it with artillery to stop the Swiss from acting. The Swiss had 25,000 Allied troops, and their ally Lorraine Rene also had hundreds of well-equipped cavalry.
They judged the situation and chose to attack while the French army was having a meal. When the Swiss arrived at the fortifications, these fortifications were almost unguarded, and Charlie's flank was surrounded by the Lorraines. Those artillery could not be fired quickly in order to stop the Swiss, and Charles defenders in the fortifications were too few to resist, and the Swiss spearmen rushed into the fortifications and entered the camp. Here the Swiss met some returned chaotic Burgundians and defeated them one by one, squeezing them near the lake behind the camp. This is another victory with a clear comparison of simple tactics and morale.
Charlie was unwilling to give up, so he attacked Rene of Lorraine and surrounded Nansin in the cold winter of 1476-1477 until a Swiss rescue force arrived in January. Charlie had only 5,000 people, while Lorraine had 12,000 people and 10,000 Swiss, so he had to choose to defend. On the left wing is the Murt River, a stream ahead, and on the right wing is the forest, but this is useless, the Swiss vanguard surrounded them from the side of the forest, while the main and rear guards launched an attack from the front.
The Burgundian army collapsed, and Charlie was killed on his way back. The Swiss also gained an invincible reputation throughout Europe, and the spearmen became the essence of infantry. Flanders and infantry from German towns underwent upgrades to imitate, and even the French tried to recruit mercenaries from Switzerland. Obviously, the knight's combat power was no longer able to fight against well-trained infantry at this time.
Conclusion
The development of medieval knights is a long-term topic, from the initial learning of Roman cavalry to the end of surpassing Roman cavalry, and then finally exiting the battlefield and becoming a glorious title. After nearly a thousand years, it can be said that the development of knights has a lot to do with the form of war and the development of society. As for the question of whether a knight is strong, objectively speaking, as a force that has existed for thousands of years, its strength is naturally unquestionable, but it cannot be denied that the knight can exist for so long and often it is accomplished with the help of those neglected existences - infantry.
Reference
① "A Brief History of the Middle Ages in Europe"
② "Saddle, Lance and Stirrup: An Examination of the Mechanics of Shock Combat and the Development of Shock Tactics"
③ "THE HORSEIN PREMODERN EUROPEAN CULTURE》
④《Norman Conquest》
⑤《Illustrated War Medieval"
⑥《Sunday in Buwen》
⑦《Medieval Part of World Military Logistics History》
》This article is an original manuscript of the Cold Weapon Research Institute, editor-in-chief Yuan Kuo and author Weiman Tobacco. No media may reproduce without written authorization, and violators will be held legally responsible. Some pictures are from the Internet. If you have any copyright issues, please contact us.
