Okay, Clever Clogs: Medieval Combat the Trebian View

Picture (c) Mike Ingram

Having torn into Tom Lewis' book, I suppose I should pick up on his plea to talk about his conclusions not the mess that is the historical analysis. This really warrants a full post, rather than a protracted comments discussion. So, what does old clever-clogs Trebian think, having rubbished someone else? Put up or shut up time, I guess.

Firstly I'd have to say that the realities of medieval combat is a really hard subject to be specific about. Plus the "medieval period" is a long time. So lets stick to what I know best: The Wars of the Roses. 

Secondly, you'll have noted that I haven't written a book on the subject. There's some reasons for this. The main one is that I've got a colleague that really should write one and probably has the outline in his head already. If I was to do it, I'd be pinching his ideas, and that's not ideal. Then there's the lack of solid evidence that gets me out of "interesting article" territory to full blown book.

So what comes next will have pointers to why I think what I think, but it ain't footnoted, and it's mostly guess work.

I'll look at four things:

1. Archers & what they're for.
2. How main battle lines fight
3. How big Wars of the Roses armies are
4. Routs, and how many dead bodies we end up with (plus who they'll probably be)

Archery

Ah! The longbow! The weapon that has (or used to have) almost fetish status amongst the English as the most lethal missile weapon until the introduction of the MG42*. English archers made up about 50% of an English army, probably, and were in demand in Europe. Kings sign treaties guaranteeing to supply archers. Well, who wouldn't want one, seeing as you can drill a hole through 2" of case hardened steel at the range of half a mile? Or something like that.

Or not.

My view is that longbow men, in the opening stages of a battle, formed the front ranks of each side's main battle line. They open up with some long range, speculative shooting, designed to irritate and distract the enemy. It will also cause casualties amongst supporting troops, and possibly baggage animals and so on (this is described by others as "galling" shooting). Once the armies advance - and ideally you want to be standing still, having made your enemy advance towards you - you get down to direct, aimed shooting which can, if lucky, kill or wound a man in plate. As the melee troops close, the archers drop back behind or to the wings, and become more lightly armed melee troops. I'd call them medium infantry or light heavies in wargaming terms, as they're wearing sallets/helmets/jacks.

Why do I think this?

• I attended a talk by Toby Capwell that suggests this was the case.
• Videos of people shooting long bows at plate show it can't be penetrated at long range, but only by direct, flat trajectory shooting at up to 30 yards.
• My colleague, Phil Steele, has convincingly used contemporary art to show this type of deployment, in a couple of talks I have attended.
• It seems to be what is happening at Towton.
• At Edgcote, one side is provoked into attacking by archery, despite being well equipped as they don't have any bowmen.

I don't have enough to put together a chapter in a book to state this all with complete confidence (also I'm hoping Phil will do so at some point), but I do have enough to pull apart most other interpretations.

Main Battle Lines and How They Fight

Yes, the big unknown. Even more so than archery. Really confusing, isn't it. First we're told armour is really heavy and you have to be winched onto a horse, next minute there are videos of re-enactors doing forward rolls and completing assault courses. I think that the plated foot soldier was an efficient and effective fighting machine, and is probably the key to victory. They're the best equipped men, and they're the army's leaders. With them gone, no one is going to hang around for long. They most likely fought mainly with a poleaxe. Supporting infantry, other than archers, would have varying degrees of protective equipment - brigandine and helmet at least - and be equipped with a bill/halberd or a spear. Then everyone has a sword as a sidearm, and a decent dagger. Men may also, especially if they're the armoured guys, have some other sidearm of choice, like a short hafted hammer, or a mace, or an axe.

What they're not doing, once the battle proper starts, is mostly fighting on horseback. Mounted combat does happen at the start of several battles, - Northampton and Towton for sure, and Edgcote the night before. There may be others. You have to have horses around or the other side can act as if you haven't, and so get greater tactical opportunities and flexibility. The threat of cavalry means that infantry, unless in defences (very few stakes in the WotR) must close up to avoid being ridden down, regardless of how many archers there are about.

So I reckon we have plated guys in the front rank or two of a deployment that is, at most, eight ranks deep and wants to be as wide as possible, so its flanks aren't turned. Depth of formations and reserves aren't a big deal, and aren't planned for (more "turning up late" than careful deployment of reserves, in my view, as deciding factors). The men are standing shoulder to shoulder, and are fighting with the points of any weapons they've got, mostly. The cutting, bladed part of the poleaxe is what is needed when formations break down and open up. What you need - hence the high number of spears in the Royal Armoury - is a pointy stick to keep people at a distance. What makes a real difference is big, powerful, men capable of making a big impact. Like Sir Richard Herbert, cutting his way through the enemy twice. Or great, big, 6' 4"  Edward IV wielding his poleaxe over his head like a Viking berserker intimidating his opponents, splitting helmets, and encouraging his colleagues.

Many battles are short - Northampton is 30 minutes, supposedly - or are made up of many linked shorter actions. In some way armies separate and re-attack. We can see that at Edgcote. This is easier to do if you are fighting shoulder to shoulder with spear/pole point, when you can step back in relative safety. It is then possible to perform passage of lines, of a sort, or have men rotate and rest. I do not think that there are wide gaps in the lines between men, with people performing Tom Lewis' re-enactors two-step. I do not think men fought at top intensity for 2 hours in full kit, or even in a jack**. You only have to watch a physical sport, such as Rugby, to realise what a toll that takes on men. It simply can't happen.

Why do I think this?

• The close up formations are what we see in contemporary pictures, as are lots of spears
• Based on what happens in later periods to open order formations when attacked by cavalry, I see no reason for it not to apply here***. I don't think a single arrow brings down a horse. Cavalry aren't charging blocks of infantry because they'll get "galled" by archery, and they won't be able to break into dense infantry formations. Standing apart to wave a poleaxe from side to side is asking for trouble.
• There are drawings by Holbein, of landsknechts fighting (see below). Okay, it isn't exactly the same, but the guys with halberds are embedded in the fray, they're all close up and they're stabbing or cutting over head.
• I've been and watched re-enactments with all that's going on, and I'm not convinced (I said why on the previous post, mainly because no one is getting killed).
• The source evidence we have - such as it is - points this way.

Again, not enough to make a proper book out of, but that's where my head is at.

How Big Are Armies in the Wars of the Roses?

Simple answer, not as big as commonly thought, and not as big as the chroniclers say. I had a lot to say on this subject in the Edgcote book, as I tried to work out the sizes of the armies there. Basically there are constraints caused by the way the armies are raised, how they are supplied, how quickly they are formed and the fact that a single countries resources are being split. Looking at the ratio of armies to population size and so on means they're not likely to be bigger than 10,000 on either side (looking later, at battles in the Jacobite risings with much bigger population sizes and resources campaigns are resolved by armies of 6-9,000 at most, same with the ECW). The numbers for Towton are absolute garbage, and the constant recycling of the "biggest and bloodiest battle" myth only insults the intelligence and indicates the complete lack of critical faculties in this respect. Tom Lewis is right on this, and he makes a whole range of comparisons that I'd say are valid, when looking at the Towton numbers.

Why do I think this?

• See comments in above paragraph re population
• Get a copy of "Edgcote 1469 - Re-evaluating the evidence" so I don't have to repeat myself
• The big armies don't fit in the landscape where we know the fighting takes place.

There's not enough here to make a full book, without also doing a full battles in Britain book, and i'm not up for that.

Routs and Dead Bodies

Tom Lewis makes a lot of de-bunking the casualty numbers at Towton, and his commentary is workmanlike and helpful. Killing lots of people in the days pre automated weaponry is really hard (there's a terrible story about the executions after the siege of Nanking in the Taiping Rebellion where they had to organise the captives and give executioners time outs, and replace weapons because they got blunt if you want to know how hard it is to kill 10s of thousands of people with swords and axes).

I think that we have hard fought battles until one side caves then runs. I don't think anyone would dispute that. The routing side will probably see the rears ranks of more lightly armoured men break off and flee first because they know things are going badly and will want to make the most of their opportunities to escape. Armoured men will be trapped at the front and whether for this reason or reasons of honour, or the encumbrance of the armour will find it hard to flee. They will be forced to the ground and hacked up or made to surrender. At Edgcote we have high levels of casualties amongst Welsh nobility either because they couldn't get away, or because they fought a rear guard action to protect the rest of the army. Generally in battles many we know are captured, because we know they are executed afterwards, which you can only really do to a prisoner.

Most casualties occur in the mounted pursuit, and at any choke points. Fleeing men with throw away weapons and anything else that can chuck like helmets. Taking off armour is harder. That means you move faster, but of course you can't really fight back (Lewis disputes this). That's not a problem as all you need to do is run faster than the man next to you. Pursuit may go on for miles, but being caught in pursuit may only mean injury not death.

Even so, I don't see how there's thousands of dead. Towton, it is claimed, saw 20%+ casualties. That's a lot of men and quite hard to do, even on horseback chasing unarmed men. Plus, where are the bodies? We don't have them anywhere. The Towton "mass graves" don't contain hundreds of bodies.

Why do I think this?

• See comments above!
• I've tried to run in a reproduction steel helmet with a pole weapon. It's really annoying. The helmet bounces around and is really heavy, literally making it awkward to put your head down and run. I'd chuck it away at the earliest opportunity if fleeing.
• There just isn't any evidence for anything else that makes sense.

Again, as with numbers, the opportunities to write a book about this will run into problems of evidence. You just have to look at the landscape and think critically about what is being said, whilst all the time not chucking out evidence because you don't understand it.

Anyway, that's what I think.

*I may be exaggerating a bit

** Tom Lewis' numbers for fighting at top intensity are meaningless, as he's only talking to people in plate. What if his 13 minute average only goes up to 20 minutes for a man in a jack? There's no control sample in his data set.

*** Another thing re-enactors really can't do is work out what happens in the infantry/cavalry interface. We don't have enough horses, and the horses are too damn expensive to shoot a musket at or stick with a pike. Don't quote police horses at me - again no one is trying to kill anybody, in the main.