Tell me about medieval armies!

[mmadsen]

Indeed. There was one period in which the Assassins were collecting protection money from the Holy Roman Emperor and the King and Patriarch of Jerusalem (among others), but paying protection to the Templars. Quite a substantial sum, too. In 1173 the Sheikh al-Gebel (it was Rashid el-Din Sinan) sent envoys to king Amalric, offering to convert to Christianity and bring over the Assassin strongholds and network, if the king would cancel the tribute the Assassins owed the Templars. Mediaeval kings were good at giving away other people's stuff, and accepted. So a Templar band (under Fra' Gautier de Mesnil) ambushed and murdered the Assassin envoys on their way home. So Amalric defied the Order's immunities, broke into a Templar stronghold, and illegally arrested and imrisoned the culprits.

I think it would surprise most D&D players to find that (a) there really was a cult of assassins with a charismatic leader and a stronghold hidden in the mountains, and (b) the templars (i.e., paladins) were on diplomatic terms with these assassins.

 

[txwad]

Anyone who wants different views of quasi-medieval armies should consider reading the General series by S.M. Stirling, David Drake and others. (http://www.baen.com/series_list.asp#RW) Each is a different tech level, ranging from roman legion to musketeer cavalry. They can be very, very harsh but it does hit the tone of those types of armies.

describe the series a bit more. is it fantasy? or reality-based historical novels. is it well written?

 

[txwad]

One thing to remember is they didnt have the vast array of weapons that D&D pc's have access too (spiked chain anyone?)"

And no real army would use a spiked chain! Think about the spatial density. You could pack four competent roman legionaires in a 15' wide space since they are wielding a 3' sword. You could probably only have one spike chain wielder. Spatially, as the column charges the fantasy spiked chain wielders those four legionaires are going to crush that 1 spiked chain guy and punch right through the enemy lines. Thats assuming that a spiked chain is even an effective weapon against a shield and helmet equipped soldier. Of course it is a fantasy game, so someone can pretend that a spiked chain is an effective infantry weapon

 

[txwad]

I think it would surprise most D&D players to find that (a) there really was a cult of assassins with a charismatic leader and a stronghold hidden in the mountains, and (b) the templars (i.e., paladins) were on diplomatic terms with these assassins.

Yeah they really scream out for fantasy rpg. Alamut by other names was addressed in a Conan short story and in an Al-Qadim module (Assasin Mountain?). The Conan story is pretty good and the module is mediocre IMHO

 

[txwad]

Note well!

My preceding post is a quote of material that I wrote as a prospectus for a campaign set in AD 1291..."

Damn Agemegos knows his medieval history! Its a pity you live on the wrong side of the earth, , I'd love to play in your campaign.

 

[txwad]

Look, the last thing I want is for you to feel like you are getting spat on, to use a carefully chosen term, by the PC crowd. A lot of the PC crowd is in my profession, but so's Prof. Keegan and I'm fairly certain he'd use the same terms given the right context."


Its not that, its the orwellian nature of academia's language usage. Its like that physicist who wrote the joke piece about gender in science or something and was published in PMLA or something. The point is, some of your arguments are fine, but the abstract, lofty sounding, turns of phrase are silly if someone has the vocabulary to penetrate their lofty recesses and ascertain that they have minimal relation to the concrete items they are supposed to pertain to.

My only point is that you look at the long term and you miss the big picture. The long term doesn't end here or begin here and extend backwards. The Arab world has had a longer history of Economic success than the Anglo-Dutch-American by about, let's see given a 1000 year long period such as the period we are discussing, oh, 750-800 years with the Anglo-Dutch-American sector only begining to become competitive in the last 300 or so. A lot of the time you're looking at the looser and it's just next weeks winner and vice versa.

Eeeks, you failed econ 101. The average english yeoman was better off materially than any of his counterparts anywhere in the islamic world. The same is true of the average theban or athenian centuries before. Like most academics who almost always lack real world financial experience, you equate the riches of a ruling caste or how grand palaces, etc. are with how prosperous a civilization is. In fact, there is an obvious inverse correlation between such, due to the "macroparasitism" described by McNeil

What's going to be more useful to a world creator the guy who won last week or the guy who won every week before that?

So in terms of the last question, what works in mideaval armies? It seems hard to deny that free infantry weren't the big winners.

So if you're going to answer the question it seems fair to emphasize cavalry, systems that encouraged you to build armies that didn't hurt either home defense or the economy, and that both of these were very much rational choices made by people who had a fair number of options over the course of their history.

One, that isnt true. Last time I checked the romans and alexander and the normans conquered a lot of turf! By nature, most of the free yeoman armies had less interest in world conquest than say aggressive herders like mongols and turks and more to sacrifice by leaving their farms. Im not detracting from cavalry, Im just saying that cavalry was historically far less effective against certain social systems (ex-Mongols perhaps) -- check all of my statements, you wont find an assertion that cavalry is bad. My point is that when most people think of medieval warfare, they think of cavalry and that simply isnt true.

So it's also fair to emphasize the options and that you're right free, though I might put free in the same marks you put slave, infantry had some good days among the many days available.

This is a perfect example of academic ledgerdemain. Of course, there were gradations of freedom within and between the soldiers of the Roman Republic, Greek Hoplites, English Yeoman, etc. However, the simple fact is these soldiers were free. That is their distinguishing feature. While the greeks sat in council at salamis, xerxes sat on his throne overlooking the battle and issuing edicts. To emphasize nuances of difference rather than the obvious similarities and the defensive robustness of the social structure is silly.

All the best great conquering mideaval armies used a cavalry core. That or a really great and flexible naval force, nod to the Vikings.

Cavalry and naval forces are great for mobility and the former has great shock value versus disorganized troops. The point is that the aristocratic/social systems of the middle ages favored the production of a cavalry core. When you see infantry of the type that Im describing in medieval or earlier ages, greek hoplites, roman republican legions, swiss pikemen, flemish burghers, etc., they almost always won against aristocratic cavalry centric armies. My point in relation to the thread that we are supposed to be discussing, is that social systems produce armies that 'rhyme' (to use Twain's phrase) with the society. The portions of the medieval or premedieval world that were capable of producing high quality free infantry and could easily hold their own.

Combined arms was another great idea, but mostly for defensive nations, like the Byzantines, or very specific campaigns, as the English and Crusaders pulled off. The Turks and Spanish started to make it take off at the end of the period...

Absolutely, by definition, combined arms is the best. BUT, it is also very hard to pull off. Even the mongols never really pulled it off in their eastern campaigns. Actually, the best examples of such in the period in question are Alexander and much later the Ottomans (not earlier turks), both of whom represented a hybridized free western / 'eastern' aristocratic cavalry army and society.

And, the French topped them all, cept the Spanish but including the English, by developing field artillery and combined arms and also, coincedentally, much of the pattern of modern, if not contemporary, warfare.


No. The french did make some good use of cannons in expelling the english. But most military historians believe that Gustavus Adolphus was the father of field artillery while the ottomans were the fathers of the big mama siege guns.

Something that hasn't been discussed yet, but since Keegan has reared his hoary head, is Mideaval military ethics.

Yeah. Thats a good one. Think a broad mixture of motives with a much broader interest in personal enrichment (since the armies could plunder) than is typical nowadays.

 

[txwad]

that was an awesome take on the military orders.

One thing I know some historians have been remarking on is the importance of women to mideaval armies.

While there were certainly women who fought what I've found interesting is the emphasis they've put on war being a co-ed activity."


Youve got to be kidding me. Granted women are 51%+ of the population and appear from time to time in medieval warfare as queens, saints, princesses, healers, conspirators in harem politics, favorite slaves, etc., however, to argue that they merit top line discussion in this thread is simply silly and a sign only that academics are having to take up ever more esoteric topics in order to attain tenure. You could probably write as fruitful an essay about the motivational role (for men) of women as booty in medieval campaigns.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

that was an awesome take on the military orders.

One thing I know some historians have been remarking on is the importance of women to mideaval armies.

While there were certainly women who fought what I've found interesting is the emphasis they've put on war being a co-ed activity.

That women held a number of important, if not esteemed, roles with mideaval and early modern armies and the the efforts to make war an all male profession probably ratcheted up the casualties as the population that professionally took care of things was replaced by rank male amateurs.

I'd be interested to hear anything in that vein that isn't revisionist hogwash.

As far as I can tell, there were a few exceptional women involved in medieval warfare--Elanor of Aquitaine, Joan of Arc, et al--and medieval depictions of sieges regularly show women casting stones etc from the walls of cities (though my perception of this may be due to the fact that many medieval depictions of warfare are representations of biblical texts, several of which explicitly mention women casting millstones from the city walls rather than due to any incidence of such in actual medieval warfare). I know in the Icelandic sagas that I've read so far, women appear as goaders into warfare and violence, but their only participation in it is as prizes and encouragers to violence and vengeace. So I'd be interested to hear what the "effort to make war an all male profession" and "war as a co-ed activity" etc actually mean. (Though given the current biases of academia, it wouldn't surprise me if it's talking about initiatives to control disease by controlling camp followers).

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I'd be interested to hear anything in that vein that isn't revisionist hogwash.

Well, I'll tell you what I know.

The important thing to remember is that while women in the period weren't treated much better than we think of them as a whole, they actually enjoyed more legal protection than women in later periods.

With some glaring exceptions like Norman law regarding rape. Which said you should marry the guy. Which can be defended in its own right but is nonetheless odd and the church eventually comes down on it.

Despite Txwad's frustration with me, medieval studies has a hard time doing revisionist work in its own context. There's only so much material to go around, so it's pretty hard to find something that's really obscure enough or weird enough to change the orthodox perspective. Barbara Tuchman, who wrote the Guns of August, encountered this when trying to discover the truth about chastity belts. She asked around and the people working in the field were basically only able to tell her that there's evidence for and against. We have artifacts, but they could have been used for other purposes, and the texts that seem to indicate they exist are really weird.

So no way you can confidently say that chastity belts are either a sign of medieval male oppression or the fantasy of a corrupt later period. Though both things are said with a lot of vigor, if not much truth.

Now, it is very easy to do revisionist work if you are looking at medieval work in a larger context. Much of our modern literary history and many of our modern histories have concentrated on the middle ages as the source or alternative to our modern world. The scholars who've written them have been frustrated by the lack of evidence and basically gone with what fit their political motives and ignored the rest. Which is why, perhaps unfairly, I'm frustrated with Txwad.

We're basically both calling each other PC thugs. We just come from different sides of the non-PC spectrum. So that he might accuse me of failing econ 101 and I might accuse his econ 101 professor of failing Wes Civ I. Just the state of the field. Though we are also both scholarly enough to be granting each other points along the way.

So I'll try to give you the women in war argument from a very in the middle ages perspective and avoid the whole revisionist mess.

First of all, most of what you said in your post is accurate. There were more than a few exceptional women and they had exceptional roles.

The only thing I have to say about that is that it's awesome to study a period where exceptions occur so frequently and are so lauded.

It's not that I'm arguing Eleanor of Aquitane isn't an exception. It's just that it's pretty cool that there are exceptions when the modern period doesn't seem to have any. The 18th-19th century has enough trouble getting non-aristocratic generals in anywhere let alone recognizing that someone like Joan could be really good for your war.

Which is another important point, in the Middle Ages warfare was important means to social mobility. It certainly doesn't happen to everyone, but I can't imagine that a 'rags to riches' story like that of William Marshall (might be John but Henry II's major general who was peasant born and made it to upper nobility through war) didn't have a major influence on who studied war and who wanted to be a part of it.

Right, back to the argument:

So first, exceptions. We have lots of solid texts on these and a lot of us have either read them or seen the movie.

Second, property rights. The middle ages had exceptional protections for property rights. For both men and women, there's a lot of historical/economic theory that says you couldn't get the industrial revolution until those rights had been weakened. Certainly there's a lot of feminist theory about property rights that says the same thing about taking most of those rights away from women. Thus Lucy Stoners.

What this meant in military terms were:

A.) makes them a new sort of valuable booty. As in you go into town and defend the first wealthy widow, you might have widowed her, you see, romance her, marry her, and live happily till she outlives you. You might also pillage them but that's a very short term profit non-medieval point of view. Much more appropriate to the vagabonds of the early modern period.

B.) you might be offering women military contracts to make armor and weapons for you. Guilds were violently in favor of simply letting women keep the shop and business rather than disturb power within the guild. Women had a better reputation for being honest and sharp in business dealings. If certainly, wrong as a generaly principle. See Wife of Bath. We have records of such women. They're hard to comeby outside of great libraries or revisionist work, but they are there.

Again, not Amazons, but they're not there in later periods and you can argue about what it meant for European economic and industrial development.

C.) If you are a junior officer, and I simply mean not the king John (William) Marshall would qualify, and your lord dies or is captured in battle, you are often better off obeying his wife than your lord's brother. If there are questions over the succession you've committed a value neutral act, since the woman probably won't directly succeed, and who knows whether your Lord's brother or son will come out on top. Plus wives probably knows more about where the money is (they spend it), who the allies are (they met them), and how to get to them (noble women write a lot and know who to write to). Brothers are dangerous, most wives are safe. Effectively this means that while women fought in sieges on the walls (who wouldn't you don't survive or surrender and everyone, by law, may be killed) they also stood a pretty good chance of commanding the garrison during a siege.

Probably only making strategic decisions, but Anna Comnena knows a disturbing amount about siege warfare so who knows how people were trained.

Mind you, not true of Eleanor who got her troops out of the castle as soon as possible and had William Marshall with her, thus she and Marshall effectively conquered the South of France with somewhere around a 100 knights once her husband finally kicked it.

Lots of good texts for this, I recommend Joinville's Life of St. Louis which has some amazing battle and political scenes and an incredible description of how well King Louis's wife runs the siege and why that may have been bad for her.

Third camp followers, you mentioned the modern attempt to control disease by eliminating the camp followers. A noble and good thing, though with some arguable costs, given the modern appearance of syphillis.

But before you have syphillis, camp followers are a much more regular institution than we think of them from the modern period. Medieval attitudes on who gets to be a camp follower vary a great deal, but the bottom line is most warrior cultures did it because it preserved the division of tasks. Women know how to cook and clean and make a variety of important and useful household items, there's also plenty of evidence that they're the people who do a lot of the doctoring and most of the nursing.

Right, we know that's true, but what does it do for your army to have a regular set of camp followers?

Cause when they got rid of them, there was a period where they had to run to catch up to put together institutional nursing, cooking, and cleaning. The Marine who keeps the meat from poisoning the rest of the Marines is an important guy, but it takes a little bit before you start training those guys as their own profession of the army. Which in history of medicine and science circles is thought to have been a major contributor to diseases following armies around.

I don't know how much I believe that. Disease does seem to have been an off and on problem before, but the fact remains that even with a good and regular set of wives, concubines, and maids following you around disease was still a problem. On the other hand if that Marine is important than surely the woman he replaced was too, or so goes the argument.

So what good it did is a big debate right now. Some of which is fueled by political revisionists and much of which is fueled by history of science types. I won't go into it except to say that it seems pretty cool to me, since I like that type of debate.

The important thing is that if you are a mideaval soldier you're going to have a lot of strong relationships with women who are effectively within in the army.

That is going to be true of the middle ages and not as true of later periods.

Though I've heard from Vietnam veterans who relied on their Vietnamese, Mama-san was the word this guy used but it's Japanese and I think the English equivalent would be 'house mothers' or house keepers, to tell them where bombs had been hidden inside base.

And this thread was about the organization and grunt's perspective. So I think the presence of women is an important point to have around.

Finally, and this is where the revionist stuff comes in:

There is a body, not a lot but they are there and probably more prominent than they should be, of women who actually fought on the front lines.

They exist, or are at least lauded in various sources, up until the civil war. Though I imagine the Napoleanic armies made things difficult

In the later periods most of them are disguised and cross dressing. The civil war and later armies made that difficult by regularizing military private life. Early modern armies didn't care as much about barracks and such, or even who their troops were and where they came, so they could probably pull it off for a while in regular armies and for a good long time in irregular ones, the line was very fine during the period.

There is some debate over whether or not such cross-dressing tactics were even necessary during the middle ages. Joan is a major part of this. She was killed for cross-dressing, but everyone knew she was a women and followed her anyways.

Now, what that means to you that these women existed, probably depends on your politics. I don't doubt that these women existed, but I also don't doubt that many of their exploits are made up and that it was always an act of either desperation or perversity on their part and good press on the part of the chroniclers.

For the mideaval period, however, I think the evidence is stronger and women were obviously capable of far larger posts than they might have been in later or earlier periods. Still don't know that it's enough to make a huge deal out of.

It is, however, a very very cool idea for a role-playing game or character.

So that's it:

Exceptions

Property

Camp-followers

Cross-dressers, weirdoes, or heroic feminine patriots risking virtue and sex for the Father or Mother land or church or whatever.

Women at war who weren't at war no more by the time the industrial revolution came around, with all the revisionist cases pointed out.

Though by WWII they were largely back. And that's a whole nother can o worms.

 

[S'mon]

Re women warriors - there certainly seems to be a huge amount of folkloric "little drummer girl" type evidence of women crossdressing soldiers from the early modern period up to the late 19th century - recruitment medicals (that determined gender) put an end to this. I read some piece that gave a huge figure for the number of dead Union(?) soldiers in the American Civil War who turned out to be women when the bodies were prepared for burial.
One thought that occurs to me is that gunpowder must have made it much easier for a woman to be an effective combat soldier. Men's main advantage (other than testosterone fuelled aggression) in combat is their greater muscle strength; making a male soldier a much better sword swinger on average than a woman. Gunpowder eliminated this relative advantage, I suspect therefore that the incidence of (undercover) female soldiers in the 17th-19th century was much higher than in the preceding era of melee-based or strength-archery based fighting.

While there is plenty of evidence of female medieval commanders (Eleanor, Joan, Black Agnes etc) there seems very little evidence of professional female fighters as a D&Der would understand it. Partly because women couldn't be knighted, I guess. Partly the records are simply lacking. But we _do_ have evidence of infamous openly-female pirates from 17c onward, as well as undercover soldiers.