Tag: Europeans

The military hierarchy of ranks still used in the twenty-first century was already in place by 1600 [C.E.]. A colonel was assisted by a lieutenant-colonel who commanded in his absence. A major supervised training and administration and could command part of the regiment if it became detached from the rest of it. These three ‘staff officers’ were supplemented by secretaries, chaplains, doctors and a provost in charge of punishment. The same pattern was repeated in each company, with the captain assisted by one or two lieutenants, together with an ensign (called a cornet in the cavalry) responsible for the flag. There was generally also a company scribe, a barber surgeon and a number of non-commissioned officers (NCOs). Together, these senior ranks were known as the prima plana, or ‘first page’, on account of their names being listed before all the others in the muster register. The overall size of foot companies fell from three to four hundred, to two to three hundred over the sixteenth century, with cavalry companies averaging around half these sizes. The number of officers remained the same throughout, reflecting the growing emphasis on hierarchical order and enabling more complicated manoeuvres to be carried out….

The officer-to-men ratio remained relatively static after 1590, because of the technical limitations of the available weapons that required them to be used en masse. Around one officer or NCO could supervise about fifteen soldiers, but captains found it hard to command more than three hundred, as the smoke and noise of battle limited their ability to see what was happening and to shout instructions. This was another reason why infantrymen were packed close together in large formations, since it kept them within the sight of their mounted colonel. The flags and drums would be grouped in the centre and used to signal commands to the rest of the unit. Command problems also placed a premium on experienced men and it was reckoned at least a third of the strength had to be veterans to provide cohesion and sufficient old soldiers to teach new recruits the rudiments of drill and how to survive the rigours of campaign….

— The Thirty Years War, pp. 94-95

The composition of the baggage train varied greatly, depending on the time and place and the structure of the army to which it was attached. In [medieval] Iberia, for example, few wagons were used. Instead, each man-at-arms would have a mule carrying four to eight days’ provisions for himself and his servants, and the townsmen would have their own mules in smaller proportion. In England, France, and Germany, large wagon trains were the norm. A provision of one wagon for ten horsemen seems to have been fairly typical. Municipal militia contingents as well as lords had their carts, wagons, or mules. These might be numerous or few, depending on the anticipated duration, range, and purpose of the expedition, as well as the expectations of dearth or plenty in the campaign theater and the wealth of the community from which the force was drawn. One Swiss force of 440 men going to help break a siege marched with only two carts (though they were large, five-horse models): one packed with bacon, dried beef, oatmeal, barley, butter, and salt and the other with cooking gear, dishes, and tools, including scythes and sickles, as it was late June, time for the wheat harvest. A much higher ratio of wagons, around one per twenty or thirty men, was not uncommon, especially when tents had to be carried. The contingent sent by Arras to the French royal host in 1340 had six wagons drawn by nineteen horses for 200 footmen and two mounted constables, for example. Horsemen, especially nobles, required more baggage, both to support their more luxurious lifestyle and because of the need to carry a rolling reserve of bulky fodder and oats for the horses. Hence, considered as a whole, a mixed army, especially one with a large proportion of mounted men, might have as many as one baggage wagon per ten combatants, or even more.

— Soldiers’ Lives Through History, pp. 74-75

At the bottom of the scale is the small fief of a single knight. As a rough estimate, it takes the labor of fifteen to thirty peasant families, working a holding of forty to one hundred hectares, to support one knight, his family, and his warhorse. (A hectare is 10,000 square kilometers, or about 2½ acres.) On such a small manor, the knight lives little better than his peasants.

— Who Lives In That Castle?, Dragon Magazine #80

To talk about the night watch, we first have to talk about night itself. In a pre-industrial world, artificial light was expensive. Candles of tallow and beeswax are animal products, so can be produced only in limited amounts. Firewood, peat, and dried dung are labor-intensive to gather and prepare. So too is olive oil or flaxseed oil for lamps. Before gas and kerosene, you could light the night if you really wanted—but it would cost you. Consequently, nights stayed dark. Most Europeans were home by twilight, barred their doors, and stayed indoors. In the Middle Ages, many cities imposed curfews: only a select few were permitted out after dark. This cut down both on burglaries and people breaking their necks falling into open cellars.

But having an entire city asleep posed its own problems. The biggest was fire! Medieval European cities were tinderboxes. Entire city blocks burned down every year. And if no one was awake at midnight when someone’s improperly-banked coals set their house on fire, the blaze might spread to multiple houses before anyone even noticed. Plus, you had the problem of crime: if no one else was about after dark, that gave thieves full run of the night. The solution to these problems (and honestly more the former than the latter) was the night watch.

Many night watches began as citizen’s brigades, with each able-bodied male resident assigned to patrol the streets so many nights a year. As early as 1150, the guilds of Paris were on the hook for providing the city’s watchmen. Sentinels sat in the tallest church steeple in town to watch for fires. (Amsterdam was big enough that the watch manned four separate steeples!) Other watchmen patrolled the streets alone or in pairs watching for fires and thieves. Your beat might cover the whole city or just your own neighborhood. If you saw a fire, you set up a cry so sleepers could awaken and help put it out. If you saw a burglar, you tried to grab him so he could appear before a magistrate in the morning. For worse crimes, you also started the ‘hue and cry’ to summon your sleeping neighbors to help. This watch system, while practical, was unpopular. No one much liked being a watchman. If you could afford it, you hired a substitute to take your place….

— Tangling With the Night Watch – Molten Sulfur Blog

Author’s emphases.

Southern Spain is one of the most famous horse-breeding regions of the world. The area from Seville to Jerez de la Frontera is renowned for its breeding farms. In addition to the area’s private breeding farms, monks also bred horses, concentrating their efforts on one of the finest lines of Andalusian horses. This order of Carthusian monks (Catholic contemplatives) began pursing their passion for horse breeding when Don Alvaro Obertus de Valeto gave the fathers of Cartuja a sizable piece of ranchland in 1476 [C.E.]. They continued this horse-breeding endeavor until approximately 1835. The monks not only significantly contributed to breeding Andalusian horses but also preserved a coveted bloodline within the breed called the Cartujano, which has a strong resemblance to the Baroque horse. The Cartujano was bred for its concentration of genes from the early Barb, which came to the Iberian Peninsula before the birth of Christ.

Achieving harmony with all of creation was one of the main goals of these monks. They not only bred magnificent horses, but they lived, learned, and prayed with their animals. One thing that makes this breed so sensitive to humans is that their specific job for centuries has been tending to the human soul—truly taking the role of the anam cara, or soul friend. On the walls of a Carthusian monk’s stable, an inscription about the horses reads, “Leap into Heaven.”

— Horses and the Mystical Path, Chapter 2

…Travelers had to depend on inns. The quality of accommodation and services varied greatly. As a profession, hoteliers had a bad reputation, and just like today there were upmarket and downmarket establishments. Many had names like The Crown or Lion or Black Horse or Three Kings and were situated wherever there was a constant stream of travelers and traders on the road. Accommodation was usually in dormitory-like rooms, often with a number of people in each bed. Everyone slept naked. Bed linen was not changed regularly, so these lodgings were often filthy, uncomfortable, and dangerous. Skin diseases and fevers spread rapidly, and body odors were omnipresent, although many would not have noticed them because they had smelled them since birth. Latrines were basic, with no sewerage, and…baths were few and far between. Available food was restricted to bread, cheese, and, perhaps, some soup.

— The Birth of the West, Chapter 1

…[Nobles] brought with them to war a variety of noncombatants, including heralds, musicians, clerks, chaplains, cooks, body servants, smiths, carpenters, miners, barber-surgeons, physicians, and so on. In addition to these members of royal and magnate households, armies would usually have with them very substantial numbers of unattached camp followers—prostitutes, butchers, women selling provisions, shield merchants (shields being prone to demolition in combat), cobblers, and washerwomen, among other groups. Guillaume Guiart gives a nice picture of them in a French army camp of 1304 [C.E.], crying their cheeses and breads, dispensing wine from casks, baking tarts and pasties, and getting into trouble of various sorts. The number of noncombatants marching with the baggage was always large and could in fact be greater than the total number of fighters, though the army of the Free Companies in 1368, with 20,000 pillagers and women for 4,000 combatants, was doubtless an extreme case. Because all these people added as much as fighters to the logistical burdens of the army, and because some of them tended to cause disorder in the host, commanders often tried to keep them to a minimum, and it is interesting to note what that minimum was considered to be. The Crusaders against the Hussites ordained that no one below the rank of knight should have more than one servant and that no women should be permitted in the army. Charles the Bold ordered that no soldier in his ordinance companies should keep a woman privately in his quarters; instead, there were to be a maximum of 30 women “in common” for each company of 700 men. Richard I, for one difficult march, ordered all women to be left behind the army, except for 300 elderly women, considered necessary for washing clothes and heads and removing lice from the soldiers, at which task they were as skilled as monkeys.

Along with carts, wagons, and camp followers, the army would typically also be accompanied by large quantities of food on the hoof. For the start of his Murcia campaign, for example, James the Conqueror provided himself with 1,000 mule loads of wheat, 2,000 of barley, 3,000 cows, and 20,000 sheep. This would, of course, require large numbers of drovers and muleteers. The sources offer little clue as to how exactly these vast herds and flocks were managed, but they can hardly have been allowed to separate the rear guard from the main body; that would have been begging for defeat in detail. Most likely, the livestock, and often also the noncombatants who were not attached to the households of particular soldiers or contingents, were left to trail behind the army proper. This would have left them very vulnerable to attack by enemy cavalry, but they were probably usually given some protection by small escorts of men-at-arms detached from the army, and of course, despite being so-called noncombatants, wagoners, sutlers, and muleteers were normally armed and would fight to defend themselves, with some advantages provided by their wagons themselves.

— Soldiers’ Lives Through History, pp. 75-76

Balian:

…It seems I have lost my religion.

The Hospitaller:

I put no stock in religion. By the word “religion,” I’ve seen the lunacy of fanatics of every denomination be called the Will of God. I’ve seen too much religion in the eyes of too many murderers.

Holiness is in right action and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves. And goodness. What God desires is here and here…

[points to Balian’s head then heart]

…And what you decide to do every day, you will be a good man. Or not.

— “Kingdom of Heaven” (2005)

Firearms upset the balance between offense and defense. More mobile versions of the cannon that had proven their worth in France in the mid-1400s entered Italy with a bang in 1494 [C.E.]. Charles VIII of France swept down the length of the peninsula to Naples in a matter of weeks with an army of 18,000 and a horse-drawn siege train of 40 or more cannon. Fortresses that were expected to resist for months were taken in a matter of days. Strategic planning changed overnight. Everything now depended on stopping the enemy in battle before he reached the walls of the city.

— Firearms: A Global History to 1700, p. 62

The sky paled to silver and rose as [Sarissa] came down to the river. She bent to lave her face, to drink of the cold clean water. When she had had her fill, she knelt there for a while, breathing damp cool air, watching the sun spread light across the horizon.

The river caught the flame of it. She trailed her fingers in water as bright as fire. It was clear here, and filling with light. Fishes darted; weeds swayed in the current. Farther out, where the river was deeper, the water darkened to black beneath the sun’s brilliance.

Sarissa pulled off her boots and waded out into the icy river. The shock of the cold made her gasp, but she steeled herself to bear it. The current tugged at her. She rooted herself in the earth. The water flowed over her but could not move her. When it lapped her chin, she filled her lungs with every scrap of air that they could hold, and slipped into a strange dark-bright world.

She swam as a fish swims, supple and swift, down and down into that realm of dim green shapes and rippling weeds, lit with sudden flashes of light: sun rising, fish leaping. She passed out of the sun’s light, but there was light below her, a gleam in the river’s darkness.

Just as she knew that her breath must fail her, her outstretched hand touched the thing that lay on the river’s bottom. It was hard, colder than the water, and caught fast in a tangle of weeds and clay. She grasped the end of it and thrust against the current. Her lungs had begun to burn. But she would not let go.

The earth fought for the victory, but the water in its current caught Sarissa and swirled her suddenly upward. Blind, half-unconscious, lungs afire, she burst into the light.

She fell on the green bank with her prize caught beneath her. Out of the water it was a massive, icy-cold thing, but its heart was fire.

She lifted herself to her knees. A sword lay in the grass. It gleamed as if it had come new from the forge, grey rippled steel like the water that had begotten it. Its hilt was plain silver without adornment, but for a white stone set in the pommel.

As she knelt in front of it. Tarik flowed out of the river, licking cat-whiskers, flicking a fish’s tail that flowed and stretched and transmuted into a cat’s. He inspected the sword with approval. The water had done well, his glance said, and the sun’s fire, forging a blade for a champion’s hand. If indeed there was a champion in the world, and if, once chosen, he would do what he had been sought out to do.

Tarik, when he was a cat, had a cat’s irony. But it was a fine sword, as solid as earth, and as palpably real. Sarissa trusted that the same would be true of the man for whom it had been wrought.

— Kingdom of the Grail, Chapter 3

Seventeenth century muskets typically had a misfire rate of one round in six, and one in four in foul weather.

— Al Nofi’s CIC #88 – Strategy Page

On the material side the life of the feudal class was rough and uncomfortable. The castles were cold and drafty. If a castle was of wood, you had no fire, and if a stone castle allowed you to have one, you smothered in the smoke. Until the thirteenth century no one except a few great feudal princes had a castle providing more than two rooms. In the hall the lord did his business: received his officials and vassals, held his court, and entertained ordinary guests. There the family and retainers ate on trestle tables that at night served as beds for the servants and guests. The chamber was the private abode of the lord and his family. The lord and lady slept in a great bed, their children had smaller beds, and their personal servants slept on the floor. Distinguished visitors were entertained in the chamber. When the lord of the castle wanted a private talk with a guest, they sat on the bed. The lord and his family could have all the food they could eat, but it was limited in variety. Great platters of game, both birds and beasts, were the chief stand-by, reinforced with bread and vast quantities of wine. They also had plenty of clothing, but the quality was largely limited by the capacity of the servant girls who made it. In short, in the tenth and eleventh centuries the noble had two resources, land and labor. But the labor was magnificently inefficient and by our standards the land was badly tilled. Not until the revival of trade could the feudal class begin to live in anything approaching luxury.

— Mediaeval Society, pp. 30-31

Although the process is obscure, the result is quite clear. By 987 [C.E.] the soldiers of the West Frankish state were arranged in a feudal hierarchy bound together by oaths of vassalage. The king was at the top of the feudal pyramid: the suzerain of the land. A few dukes and counts were his direct vassals. They in turn had their vassals, rear vassals, and rear rear vassals. At the bottom of the pyramid was the simple knight with just enough land and peasant labor to support him, his family, and his horses. Now this structure was not all embracing by 987; in fact, it never was. As late as the latter part of the twelfth century the count of Dreux surrendered large allodial holdings to the count of Champagne and received them back as fiefs. A recent study has shown that large allodial estates persisted throughout the Middle Ages in the region around Bordeaux. But in comparison with the total area of the country these exceptions were of slight importance, and the principle beloved by feudal lawyers—no land without a lord—became essentially true. Thus all land was someone’s fief and every landholder except the king was someone’s vassal. The soldiers, the knights, held the land of France, and they were bound together by the feudal system.

— Mediaeval Society, pp. 16-17

The origins of feudal institutions may be found in both Roman and German life. According to Tacitus, when a German war chief planned a campaign, he gathered about him a group of picked warriors which was called his comitatus. These men swore absolute fidelity and obedience to the chief in return for arms, food, clothing, and a share in the plunder. The German chieftains who set themselves up as kings in the Roman Empire had similar bands of sworn followers. The Frankish kings called the comitatus a truste and its members antrustiones. The Saxon kings were surrounded by bands of thanes. Thus the practice of a warrior binding himself by an oath to follow a chief in war was well established among the Germanic peoples. The Romans had a somewhat similar institution, the clientela. When a Roman freed a slave, the freedman usually remained a dependent of his former master, a cliens. Poor freemen might seek the protection of a senator by becoming his clients. In the latter years of the Roman Empire in the West the comitatus and the clientele tended to become merged into one institution. The great Roman nobles hired bands of German warriors to serve as their bodyguards. These warriors were known as bucellarii. Now the Roman senator may well have thought of his bucellarii as soldier-clients, but the Germans were more likely to consider themselves members of a comitatus. The bucellarii played an extremely important part in the wars of the fifth century [C.E.]: a large part of Belisarius‘ army was composed of his bucellarii. It seems clear that we have in these various Roman, German, and Romano-German institutions the prototype of the relationship between lord and vassal.

— Mediaeval Society, pp. 12-13

The great limitation on the equipment of the Army of Flanders in the sixteenth century [C.E.] was financial: a pike and body-armour (the corselete) cost 30 florins in the 1590s, a musket cost 10 florins, a 24-pounder cannon cost 1,000 florins. With prices like this, there was never enough money to arm all of the soldiers all of the time. There was only limited concern about this: sixteenth-century strategists believed that wars should be fought with men, not material…and faced with a choice between feeding their men or equipping them, they always chose food. Eight hundred men could be fed for a month with the money required to cast one cannon; a pike-man could be given bread for two years with the price of his corselet.

Only gradually did the Army systematize the supply of weapons to its men, deducting the cost of arms, powder and shot by [installments] from their future wages….

Arms and armour were…provided on credit to the troops by contractors engaged by the government. This was essential since few men could afford to purchase their own firearms (a musket cost 10 florins in the 1590s, more than a musketeer’s wage for a month), but it was perhaps shortsighted to charge the powder and shot used by each man against his account—it was hardly an encouragement for a marksman to use his weapon! In their defence the government argued that the musketeers and arquebusiers already drew a slightly higher wage to cover the cost of using their guns, but of course this was only effective when wages were actually paid….

— The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1567-1659, pp. 48-49, 165

The culmination of selective breeding was the destrier, the “great horse” or warhorse which by the late Middle Ages could reach eighteen hands in size and astonishing prices. The warhorse was suited for combat and was the symbol of the aristocracy; its value and rarity meant that not too many soldiers could afford one. Most soldiers seem to have ridden more humble animals, or rounceys. The use of a different horse may have been dictated by other reasons. For instance, the favorite English horse in the chevauchées in France during the Hundred Years War was the courser, which combined stamina and mobility. In reality every heavy cavalryman would need several horses: the warhorse, which the knight’s squire would lead with his right hand, a more modest horse for the squire himself, and a horse to carry the knight’s armor to the battlefield. It was only when confrontation became inevitable that the knight would wear his armor and ride his warhorse into battle.

— Barbarians, Marauders, and Infidels, p. 132

Emphasis mine.

Magic comes in a great range of forms of participation, which it is helpful to break down further. Three forms of participation can be distinguished: transcendence, transformation and transactions. Transcendent relations exist where the universe is influencing people but is beyond their ability to affect it. A classic example of transcendence is astrology, where astral bodies shape human lives, but people do not influence the movement of the stars or planets. The Medieval and Early Modern European maxim concerning astrology was ‘as above, so below’, a clear one-way set of influences. People can understand, navigate and respond appropriately to transcendent effects, but there is nothing they can do to change them.

Transformation is an aspect of participation: for example, alchemical practices might turn lead into gold, or unremarkable chemicals into an elixir of eternal youth. Magic often also surrounds and informs strong transformations: such is the case with metalworking, where, in many African instances, the smith prepares himself by magical means for his work…. People also transform themselves. Shamans on the Eurasian Steppe can inhabit another creature, such as a reindeer or bear, or become a spirit to enter the spirit world. The process of initiation as a shaman often involves the person being taken apart and put back together in a new form, with novel powers. For Australian Aboriginal people the landscape was transformed during the Dreamtime by the actions of ancestral spirits, such as the Rainbow Serpent, to give the land a set of powers and dangers that people need to attend to through ceremonies.

Here transformations blend into transactions. In many forms of magic people make bargains with the universe in its many forms. In China the ancestors were given feasts and offerings to ensure their good will towards their living descendants and could be contacted through divination. Divination was common in many other instances, such as in Ancient Greece, when the gods responded to questions put to them at oracles. In some cultures, especially monotheisms, a host of lesser beings, such as demons, angels or saints, received forms of supplication or more aggressive attacks to influence their behaviour in favour of humans. Across prehistoric Europe we will see how carefully placed deposits of important objects and bodies were made to the spirits of the place and the social group over many thousands of years in continuing cosmic bargaining.

Transcendence, transformation and transactions were often all found together in mutual interaction. In Medieval Europe, for example, people believed in astrology, with the influence of the planets paramount, experimented with alchemy in the hope of getting rich and gave offerings to saints to gain their favour. But when transcendent relations were predominant, people could feel alienated and fearful of the universe, lacking control over it. More mutual relations existed through transformation and transaction, in which a moral relationship was often important, motivating people to act with due respect and care.

— Magic: A History, pp. 9-10

During the Fourteenth Century [C.E.] an area of approximately 1,050 square kilometers just south of the forest of Fontainebleau near Paris had twelve forts, 28 fortified churches, five towers, four fortified manor houses, and six full-fledged castles, for a total of 55 fortified places, or roughly one for every 19 square kilometers, so that few people were more than six kilometers from a place of refuge.

— Al Nofi’s CIC, Issue #137 – Strategy Page

…While local peasantry, paid or pillaged, usually furnished food and horses’ forage, a major expedition or siege or fleet at sea required organized supply of biscuit, smoked or salted meat and fish, wine, oil, and oats and hay for the horses. Ordinarily knights ate white bread made from wheat, meat in the form of beef, pork, and mutton, and drank wine daily. The common soldier received wine only on feast days or in active combat; otherwise he drank beer, ale, or cider, and ate rye bread, peas, and beans. Fish, cheese, olive oil, occasionally butter, salt, vinegar, onions, and garlic also figured in the rations. Poultry was so widely consumed and easily obtained that it was not recorded. Sugar, honey, mustard, spices, and almonds were kept for the wounded and sick and the privileged. On active duty, soldiers did not fast but were allotted fish as substitute for meat on the twelve “thin” days a month. The more continuous war became, as it did in the 14th century [C.E.], the more organization and money it required.

— A Distant Mirror, Chapter 6

But whatever his antecedents, the feudal knight was an important cog in the military machinery of the eleventh and twelfth centuries [C.E.]; and although Sidney Painter may have been guilty of some exaggeration in his summary of the achievements of European military feudalism, his opinion is worth quoting:

Feudal military organization was on the whole highly effective. The knights of Europe conquered vast territories from the Slavs, pressed the Moslems steadily back in Spain and drove them from Sicily, and established themselves at least temporarily in Palestine, Syria, the Byzantine lands, and Greece. As a defensive system feudalism was almost perfect. No organization ever devised could so quickly produce an effective military force wherever it was needed. The feudal army was essentially a militia, but a militia composed of the best soldiers of the day.

Perhaps so strong an assertion was needed to put the accomplishments of the feudal knight in proper perspective.

— Warfare in England: 1066-1189, Chapter 10