The feudal system of the Middle Ages classified as fighting men all physically fit males of gentle blood, which did not necessarily make them soldiers. The knight, considered a model of military efficiency if able to sit his charger while capably handling sword and lance, could not be restrained when the enemy came I sight - shield hastily shifted into position, lance dropped into rest, spurs plunged into charger to send the armored rider ponderously rolling forward. He accepted orders from none but the king, his only acknowledged superior, who needed to be a leader of uncommon skill if he was to control his rampaging nobles. Command was achieved by social status rather than professional experience and the novice nobleman with the largest following took precedence over the skilled veteran leading only a few lances.
Individual arrogance, stupidity and lack of tactical skill made a feudal army an incredible mixture of unsoldier-like qualities. Knowing little of even elementary tactics and strategy, encountering an enemy with the slightest awareness of such qualities brought inevitable defeat. As undisciplined feudal troops were incapable of cohesive action in small groups, they were collected together in a single conventional combat formation of three great masses or battles - Vawar (vanguard) at the head of the army; Main battle in the center (the most honorable command, usually reserved for the commander-in-chief); and Rearward, which was not an actual fighting rearguard to protect a retreating force. Arriving on the field, the army muddled through a prolonged and confused maneuver as they deployed from line-of-march into line-of-battle with the Vaward on the right, Main battle in the center, and Rearward on the left. Sometimes, the three battles split into smaller fighting units, but often became one great solid mass launched at the enemy with each petty commander leading his followers at their own speed until they made contact in scattered groups. During their blind and lumbering charge, no one bothered with what lay before them, so they dashed against stone walls, tumbled into ditches, desperately floundered in bogs, or surged futilely before a palisade.
With the enemy performing in the same way, they met with a fearful shock sending men and mounts tumbling in all directions, the survivors gathering themselves to form a chaotic melee surging in a vast sprawling scuffle of men and horses over a patch of bare ground or a hillside. After a while, both sides drew breathlessly away from each other and laboriously wheeled to the rear, briefly paused to allow blown horses to recover, before again rushing tumultuously upon each other. Sometimes lasting hours, in these innumerable detached uncoordinated cavalry combats the largest or least inefficient were victorious; finally, the sum total of small routs added up to total defeat, and the worsted side fled the field.
Such essentials as discipline and tactical skill were completely transcended by blind courage, causing a petty knight with a lust for personal glory to perform some act of reckless bravery that precipitated a battle or ruined a laboriously laid plan. Outstanding individual feats of arms replaced leadership, with such elementary military tactics as pre-selecting a battle position or detaching a force to take the enemy in flank or rear being regarded as exceptional military skills. As it was rarely possible to persuade a feudal chief to miss the hard fighting and possible booty, keeping a reserve in hand was a refinement practiced by few commanders.
The infantry arm was formed of an unwilling levy of poorly-armed undisciplined peasants and burghers, only present because every able-bodied man had to be; they carried out menial camp duties or hard manual labor at the numerous sieges of the period. Sometimes they ineffectually demonstrated at the opening of a battle in a bloody overture; incapable of withstanding a cavalry charge they were invariably crushed and scattered. On rare occasions they surpassed themselves when the presumptuous prolonging of their insignificant role so enraged the lordly knights, impatient to get at the enemy that they put spur to horse and rode them down. The sole infantry to command any respect were the few trained groups possessing uniform equipment and weapons; such as the Lowland Scots with their long spears who invariably put up a good performance, although lacking the benefit of high birth. Indeed, it was such soldiers who, by gaining the few exceptional infantry successes of the late feudal period, foreshadowed the new era of coordinated dismounted warfare.
England's wars against the Scots, the hereditary enemy, saw the evolution of a coherent military system that, in a single tactical scheme, used the distinctive power of archery, the defensive solidarity of dismounted men-at-arms, and the offensive power of mounted troops to break up immobile infantry formations. Standing firm, Scottish spearmen were decimated by archery until English men-at-arms came into the assault. If they attacked, the Scots were beaten by dismounted men-at-arms flanked by powerful groups of archers. Thus was born the tactics responsible for nearly two hundred years of military success. The Scots were the first unfortunate soldiers to feel the full weight of the effective English tactic of heavy firepower, strong defense, and final powerful cavalry counterattack. In their rigid formations (shiltrons) of packed pikemen, strongly resembling the Macedonian phalanx, they fought doggedly and with courage, displaying monumental stubbornness in repulsing violent cavalry charges before their own lack of missile power allowed them to invariably be broken by prolonged archery fire. Like the French, they took a long time to learn and, a century after the start of the war, were still fighting and being beaten in the same old fashion. Yet theirs was the format that, four hundred years later at Waterloo, was to be the basic style of infantry fighting, outlasting heavily-armored cavalry and long surviving the introduction of firearms.
The tactics, organization, and military conditions that brought success in the Hundred Years War were polished and perfected in these Scots Wars - the overwhelming English victory at Halidon Hill in 1333 forming the prototype for Morlaix, the first pitched land battle of the war, and for all the other great battles of that lengthy conflict, except its last years when artillery began its long reign. When the Earl of Northampton was victorious at Morlaix against odds of four-to-one, his tactics became the pattern for English commanders throughout the war - a defensive position on a ridge, a trench in front forming an obstacle (it was a marsh at Halidon), and the skillful use of the archer's fire power in cooperation with supporting men-at-arms fighting on foot.
Up to 1346 when Edward III led his invading army into France, the longbow had bee employed principally in defensive warfare against the Scots, and enemy numerically inferior in cavalry, but now the conditions of war had changed and the English were up against an enemy invariably numerically superior in cavalry. Never-the-less, the yeoman with his longbow soon found charging squadrons even better marks for his shafts than the stationary infantry masses of the Scottish schiltron. Confident English commanders allied their belief that dismounted men-at-arms could hold their own against impetuous French knights to the knowledge that such a cavalry attack could be weakened almost to annihilation by volleys of arrows. At a time when cavalry were considered to hold absolute supremacy in war, such knowledge was of immense value and laid the foundations of England's future military power.
Crecy
So, in a manner new and without precedent, in his opening battle at Crecy, King Edward dismounted his men-at-arms. These men with knightly armor and weapons rested lance butts on the ground and repulsed charges of French knights. It was a successful maneuver to be imitated for at least two centuries, notably by the French at Poitiers ten years later. Here they showed such incomprehension of the English tactics as to reverse both Edward's motive and course of action; at Crecy the English army formed in a defensive position to receive an impetuous and disorderly attack, whereas at Poitiers the dismounted French men-at-arms, in full armor, were forced to trudge a considerable distance under heavy fire to be finally channeled into 'killing lanes' by the terrain while attacking the heavily defended position. It was the same disastrous mistake made by the French four years earlier at Mauron; seemingly they learned nothing from it.
It was most marked that every English victory during the Hundred Years War saw the English quietly waiting in their strong, carefully chosen defensive positions, perfectly fresh for combat when the exhausted Frenchmen came to grips with them after trudging as much as a mile uphill, over plough or through long grass and scrub under repeated hails of deadly arrows; as at Mauron in 1352 and Poitiers in 1356. Plate armor was flexibly jointed and not much heavier than mail, but it was not intended for marching in until arriving exhausted for a desperate fight for life. The French knight and man-at-arms found it as devastating as having his horse shot from under him - more often than not he died in either case.
The result of this opening battle at Crecy was much influenced by the respective qualities of the opposing armies - the well-armed English benefiting from the highest standards of training, leadership, discipline and experience; whereas the French, a moderately trained force hastily collected from a number of countries lacked cohesion, knowing nothing of, nor trusting or respecting adjoining units, they formed an army almost bound to disintegrate when exposed to ordered blows.
Crecy proved what the continental military world ignored - that it was almost hopeless for even the most determined cavalry to try to frontally force a defensive position held by infantry supported by archers. For generations the French persisted in the delusion that they were defeated in 1346 by the stability of dismounted English men-at-arms; true only in that the English tactical innovation depended upon men-atarms fighting dismounted and in mutual support of archers. By introducing such auxiliaries as the English archer against a military caste too hidebound and blind to alter its losing methods throughout almost the whole of a hundred-year period, the English commanders could hardly fail to bring to earth the flower of French chivalry. They were aided by French distain for any form of cooperation between aristocratic cavalry and other despised arms - it took the French nearly a century to discard such outmoded precepts.
Tactics
For most of the war French cavalry attacks followed a consistent pattern with men-at-arms packed into a tight solid mass, rank and files closed-up to maintain a compact array. A man-at-arms was not a headlong galloping cavalier, to maintain close formation he had to move slowly and the best that could be achieved was the shock action of a ponderous column moving at a very moderate rate. Not always able to prevent the French attack striking home, the archer could decimate its ranks so that it was weak and disordered when it reached the English position. If the arrows could not always penetrate armor, their effect was much as though they had for the very presence of archers in the field eventually compelled the French to advance on foot.
After the defeat at Poitiers, the French faced up to the fact that old chivalrous methods of warfare were outmoded, that some effective innovation had to be devised to minimize the superiority of the English archer. Reasoning that the longbow could keep heavier-armed men at a distance, if cavalry or men-at-arms could get among the archers and their supporting infantry, weight of numbers might well decide the resulting melee -- and the French could usually put more men in the field. Aware of having little or no chance of defeating an English army in a good defensive position, there was nothing to be gained by thrusting forward large bodies of troops as a target to be riddled with English arrows -- so, when the English were found drawn up in a favorable defensive position, the French refused to attack.
Under the capable leadership of such soldiers as Bertrand du Guesclin, Constable of France, by the end of the 14th century much lost by two earlier French kings had been won back, only to be thrown away again at Agincourt in 1415, a disaster even more shameful than Crecy or Poitiers.
After Henry V and the Regent Bedford had gone, the French led by a new breed of hard professional commanders - Dunois, La Hire, Xaintrailles plus the mystical backing of loan of Arc and supported by new concepts of artillery firepower, began to turn the tide. Victories were won by attacking the English when they were on the march or in camp and towns, where it was impossible to rapidly forma n order of battle on ground specifically chosen for its defensive qualities. Inevitably, this reversal in the monotonous run of victories led to a lowering of English confidence, leading to caution that stifled initiative; plans could not be made with the former certainty of success. The traditions of Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt and a host of smaller battles died hard and English commanders disliked taking the offensive. Gradually the French began to dictate the course of the war; no longer making gross blunders as they sought conflicts where they were able to hit the English before could form up defensively.
After nearly a century the French discovered a counter to tactics based on a deadly English longbow when Charles VII of France accepted sound military advice that established the basis of a disciplined standing army backed by the first historical example of an efficient scientific artillery organization.
For more than 100 years the tactical employment of the English archer had brought success, each battle favorably influencing that which followed - Crecy had been won because of the experience gained against the Scots at Halidon Hill; Agincourt was influenced by Crecy and Poitiers. But now the side that had always won began to lose because their opponents no longer played the game to the heavily loaded English rules. For generations the French had been continuously beaten through a rigid adherence to outmoded tactics. Now English commanders were being defeated through a similar persistence in slavishly applying the defensive methods of Edward II, the Black Prince, and Henry V.
The pattern of eventual English defeat was seen at Patay in 1429 and the penultimate battle of the war, Formigny in 1450. Here the English commander, Sir Thomas Kyriell refused to depart from the tactics that had been successful at Agincourt and his defeat in this relatively small-scale engagement decided the fate of all Normandy. In a good defensive position, although being galled by prolonged bombardment of two French culverines, the archers charged out from their defenses to engage in a fierce hand-to-hand conflict around the guns. The unsupported archers were gradually forced back until they masked the fire of their comrades still behind wooden stakes. The battle was ended by the arrival of French reinforcements on the English flank and rear. Four-fifths of the English force was killed in this major disaster, which, by the use of intelligent offensive tactics could have been won before it even began, and then won again halfway through its course.
Castillon in 1453, the last battle of the Hundred Years War was Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt and all the other English victories in reverse, beginning when the legendary John Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury led an army to raise the siege of Bordeaux, under attack by Jean Bureau, French master of artillery. With 100 guns sitting behind a wellentrenched position, the French refused to attack, so Talbot flung his army forward in a powerful attacking column. Torn to pieces by fire from the French guns, the column ground to a halt and was then smashed by a counterattack in which Talbot was killed.
It took the French nearly a century to discover a counter to tactics based on the deadly longbow. Fittingly, their eventual success had its roots in the same doctrine that had won all previous battles for the English - the superiority of good infantry on the defensive, well supported by missile fire - with the French substituting artillery for the longbow.
100 Years War Campaign
Related
100 Years War Campaign by Don Featherstone
- The Bowmen of England Tactics of Military Efficiency
Battlefields of the Hundred Years War Visiting Yesterday
Reconstructing Agincourt A Wargame
Back to MWAN # 126 Table of Contents
Back to MWAN List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Magazine List
© Copyright 2004 Hal Thinglum
This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com