Tell me about medieval armies!

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

What the english were famous for was putting thousands of archers together. If you have 6000 archers each shooting 12 shafts a minute that is 72000 shafts landing up on the enemy from up to 300 yards away.

They were also famous for mixing troops, knights and pike men, in with their archers. When they didn't do that the longbowmen would get overrun.

Someone also mentioned the development of the personal firearm as the end of the Swiss style pike formation.

Actually it stuck around for a good few centuries after massed firearm fire. The Spanish and Turks were the first to develop both massed firearm fire and pike formations that complemented it.

This type formation in turn doomed the governments that discovered how to use them as it's way too expensive for any reasonable or, rather, legal sort of government to really sustain very well.

The result is either tyranny or revolution and either way the death of local power or the development of empire.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

How did standing armies work from a soldier's point of view? I know how America's army works now, though I imagine it was much different long ago.

A few specific questions to get brains rolling. All of this assumes a feudal European setting, since that most closely resembles my D&D campaigns.

Lots of other posters have said bits and pieces of this, but here are my thoughts:

This following consists of a number of gross generalisations, but you can’t cover two millennia of European History in one post without generalising and simplifying.

Many people have mentioned Imperial Rome as a model for a standing army. It’s not a bad model. Troops (IIRC) served for 20 years and on mustering out (if they survived) they were granted land. (This means that the empire needs land to grant to them, and therefore must expand.) They were also organised into Centuries and had a formal command structure. You could check out some of the re-enactors’ sites such as http://www.esg.ndirect.co.uk/ for more information

Also the Roman army predated the Empire, Unfortunately for the Senators, the army got much to powerful and popular. Eventually some general called Julius Caesar took control of Rome. This undermined the republic and paved the way for a system of monarchy headed by Emperors (Caesar was not himself a Roman Emperor). After his death, his name was adopted as a title by all the Roman Emperors, as well as by later monarchs. (The Russian word 'Tsar' and the German 'Kaiser' are corruptions of the word Caesar).

So, you could have a pre-imperial or imperial standing army without to much trouble but this requires an aggressive and expanding kingdom. When expansion halted, the Roman Empire fell. (gross oversimplification)


The Feudal model is extremely complicated, but basically, the King owns everything and governs using a pyramid structure of rights and responsibilities.

GOM’s Feudalism for Dummies
Very simply, the King can’t run everything by himself. He gives bits of his kingdom away to others (this bit is very rough & ready).
‘Okay, you’re the Duke of Northland, all of Northland is yours to do what you want with, provided you send me 40 knights, 400 archers and 800 footmen for my army, you pay for them, oh, and I’ll have £50 in cash too, Oh, and I reserve the right to appoint the Sheriffs of West Northlandshire and East Northlandshire (and a bit of Eastland) to carry out Royal Justice on my behalf, After all, I’m still the boss.’

The Duke of Northland then gathers five of his men.
‘You’re now the Barons of Eastnorthland Westnorthland Northnorthland Southnorthland and Middlenorthland, Your Baronies are yours to do what you want with, provided you send me 10 knights, 100 archers and 200 footmen for my army, you pay for them, oh, and I’ll have £12 in cash too. So the Duke gets the men for the king (plus some for himself), plus some cash. The line continues down to the lords of individual manors who have to provide one (or more) knight(s). The men at arms are the Yeomen. Free men, not peasants (as has already been pointed out) They pay little (or no) rent on their land in return for providing military service. Bottom of the pile is the peasant militia, unarmoured poorly trained (if trained at all) and likely to bugger of home to harvest the crops or just because they don’t want to get killed (after all, who does?).

I’ve no idea how medieval a campaign you’re trying for, but for feudal background information I’ve never found anything better than HârnWorld from Columbia Games. Although Columbia Games also produce a rule system (HârnMaster) the HârnWorld module and kingdom modules are completely rules free and systemless and have a rich feudal background.

You could also ask your question on the http://www.harnforum.com/index.php as there are a huge number of medieval history buffs there! But, you might get to much information.

GOM

 

[CombatWombat51]

Wow, all of this is totally awesome. I hope there's a few more people who'll chime in. Even if nobody ever used any of this in a game, it's good reading!

 

[CombatWombat51]

Gah, I cursed it with my praise!! :bump:

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Well, some more chiming would be fine with me, I love this topic.

Some complications:

First, the Feudal model works very differently depending on where and when you are. This isn't just a question of national differences. The model is constantly being renegotiated in most of the places where it exists.

#1

The king owning all of the land is very much an English model. Based on the particular exigencies of William conquering all of England. Even that model didn't work very well.

You do generally owe allegiance to some sort of King or Emperor, possibly both, no matter where you were but that was a result of a set of legal arguments and political/cultural realities that had very little to do with the various Feudal systems.

The most basic premise of the Feudal system is that you owe service, also possibly specie, and some degree of obedience to someone else in return for which you get rights and services and enter into a more or less universal network of larger relationships that enable to more or less get things done no matter where you are and what you are doing.

#2

It's much more problematic to call the Roman legion system modern than most people think. Certainly we would like to call it modern and professional and the three things do have a lot in common, but from the basic viewpoint of pay and national and institutional organization the Roman Legion doesn't work very well.

It's not so much that the Legion was older than the senate or vice versa so much as the institutions developed independently of each other. How does a military system grow up independently of the government that created/creates it you ask?

Well, good point. I don't know if you have been following the whole Warlords of the Accordlands fictions but they come pretty close to modelling legions.

The legions, by the time you hit the empire, are basicly independent societies hired by the Emperor to work for the Roman People. It used to be that the Senate would 'hire' - note a most crude term - individuals to go out and work with them to hire and organize legions. These armies would then be sent out to do the business of the empire.

This system got crazy because the legions and the people who hired them got crazy. They reached the War of the Roses level, the Senate - which was never really that stable an entity - got paranoid, and the equitable end of the solution was that a whole seperate political structure, the emperor and his slave beauracracy and governors, got set up to act as the specific liason between the legions and the rest of the society.

The relationship between the emperor and the legions went back and forth a number of times.

Meantime the legions, who are really a more or less seperate series of societies, get crazier and less and less useful. Eventually they're just too obsolete and the Western Empire falls apart for a variety of reasons, a few legions actually survived its fall which is an awesome story, and the Eastern Empire puts together better systems.

The important thing to remember about the Imperial legions, and that's what most people mean when they say Roman and Legion together, is that those guys were in those units for 20 years.

That's the standard stint, there were periods when it was a lot longer, and that's a crazy long time for anybody to do anything much less be in active service. This during a time period where people simply didn't live as long as we do now, despite being otherwise nearly indestructible. It's certainly not the way any modern or contemporary army is organized and creates odd situations. It's a tremendous advantage, and it's also nothing you can do if you want the military to actually be a part of your society.

The pay records for the empire are a pretty good indication of why the system of legions is so different from what anyone knows today. Not too mention the criminal procedures developed to deal with them.

In Warlords legions are basically the functioning organizational system of the Orcish tribes and that's a lot closer to the truth than most people are comfortable with.

Don't get me wrong Legions were certainly cool and we are right to emulate many of their charecteristics, but I sincerely doubt that any recreational society could capture their larger and more fundamental social reality.

Another hella cool thing to look at are Turkish Janissaries and Egyptian Mamelukes. Now those guys were professional military.

 

[S'mon]

Well, some more chiming would be fine with me, I love this topic.

Some complications:

First, the Feudal model works very differently depending on where and when you are. This isn't just a question of national differences. The model is constantly being renegotiated in most of the places where it exists.

#1

The king owning all of the land is very much an English model. Based on the particular exigencies of William conquering all of England. Even that model didn't work very well.

I think this is a very good point when trying to model feudal societies in-game. One way D&D, esp 3e, varies from the medieval feudal model is that in D&D towns/cities tend to be very important; going by Monte's down-design system in the DMG they're the location of most of the wealth & nearly all the high-level NPCs. Using Monte's system as written will create a setting that looks more like 15th-century Germany, with powerful city-states as the domimant political entity. I'm using this as the model for my current Borderlands campaign - there's an Empire, but it's a distant and remote entity; most power operates at the city-state level, cities may be ruled by nobles, councils of nobles, oligarchic groups of merchants, etc, who may in turn be subordinate to a more powerful noble ruling several cities. Available troops are a mix of town guards & urban levies, nobles, knights & peasant levies from the manors of the gentry within the town's demesne, some yeomen farmers from the counryside (mostly the longbowmen), and possibly mercenary companies.

Edit: The 1e DMG is a good source for an alternative model - from its scanty generation systems, most cities will have mid-high NPCs there (up to ca 12th level), but the most powerful NPCs will likely be found ruling rural castles & fortresses, maintaing large numbers of men-at-arms and a coterie of Cohorts & followers.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

Strangemonkey & S’mon are correct, the basic pyramid I described does not AFAIK actually exist, but it’s a lot simpler than reality It was not meant to be a full description of the feudal system, however, as a method of figuring out who in a kingdom has troops, and where they have come from, it’s a fairly easy system to use.

Other complicating factors in England were, the power and independence of the church, and the separation of the landholding nobility from the justice system. The Sheriffs were in charge of tax collection, and the dispensation of the Kings justice within their shires. This could make them as powerful as a Baron or Earl, but, at least in theory, they were political appointees and could be sacked. The nobility could not. (This again is a gross oversimplification.)

Even in England the Feudal system did not work in some cities. London was run by ‘elected’ aldermen, these men had a lot of power. Cities need a lot of support services, they import huge amounts of food and require trade to survive. World-builders take note, most English cities are coastal, or at least on a river at a point where sea-going vessels can dock. (Inland cities are modern (industrial revolution) era.) Cities are always surrounded by smaller towns, villages and farms. AFAIK all major European cities are also on major trade routes. Las Vegas could not exist in a medieval world.

What all of this boils down to, is that societies are complex things and modelling them is complicated. The model is only made more complicated by multiple religions and pantheons and by the existence of magic. In a fantasy world if there’s a rip space/time leading to the gods plane and every so often magic items fall from the sky into a barren desert, you can bet that there will be a settlement there.

CombatWombat51, the fact that you’re thinking about these things means that you’ll be thinking of the whys for the above, too.

GOM

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Someone earlier mentioned the urban flavor of DnD and that's a very good point.

Cities and towns were very important in the middle ages, but, with a few notable exceptions, not more so than a really good system of manors and villages.

In a lot of ways the middle ages represent a sort of return to the country after the collapse of Roman urbanization.

The population ended up much more evenly settled across the land and wealth was in well tended, settled, and protected provinces rather than in urban structures of merchants.

GrumpyOldMan is right that the pyramid system is a good way to think of where the military power is going to be even if it's not so great a desciption of what that power is like or what supports it.

The best way to think about how that pyramid is complicated is that...
...we tend to organize things into systems. You need social security. You create the system, integrate some existing things, and then create whatever other things you need.

...in the middle ages they organized systems around things. You need a social safety net. You have some Bishops who are doing that already, you integrate some new charitable orders, and then you have a system.

Modern: You need an army. You create a military, you integrate the local militias as reservists, and then you build West Point, some federal troops, and buy a good navy. At the end of it you have armies

Medieval: You need an army. There's some guys have some troops, you hire them, add on some institutions that will support them, and then call it the marche system. At the end of it you have a system to support the troops.

 

[Sarellion]

The rise of the cities in the later middle ages was one of the first steps in the decline of the lesser nobles. The nobles were strong in a system with a weak infrastructure in terms of communication and transportation. This strengthened tendencies to monopolize the power in the hands of higher nobles who could now monitor the affairs of their vassals more efficiently. Also trade strengthened the cities and led to an accumulation of power in the hands of the residents, who were able to gain some degree of autonomy from the local nobles.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

The Great Charter of King John (Magna Carta)

A few extracts from Magna Carta, the first has bearing on military service, the other two on the justice system. The last, I think should be engraved in the parliament or legislature of ever country, even if it is approaching 800 years old, it still applies.

No Constable shall compel any Knight to give money for castle-guard, if he be willing to perform it in his own person, or by another able man, if he cannot perform it himself, for a reasonable cause: and if we have carried or sent him into the army, he shall be excused from castle-guard, according to the time that he shall be in the army by our command.

No freeman shall be seized, or imprisoned, or dispossessed, or outlawed, or in any way destroyed; nor will we condemn him, nor will we commit him to prison, excepting by the legal judgement of his peers, or by the laws of the land.

To none will we sell, to none will we deny, to none will we delay right or justice.

GOM