Download PDF | Michael Prestwich - Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages_ The English Experience-Yale University Press (1996).
405 Pages
Preface The history of the medieval army is very different from that of more modern forces. The absence of regiments, the fact that there was no career path for army officers, nor indeed anything approaching a standing army, alone makes it distinct. Yet in other respects there were striking similarities, for many of the problems of fighting with cavalry and footsoldiers remained much the same until the advent of mechanisation. Ideas that the middle ages were somehow characterised by something called 'feudal warfare' in which concepts of strategy, military intelligence, and even tactics had no place are the product of prejudice, not of evidence.
Military history is often written, with some considerable success, by military men. I have to confess that as a British citizen in the second half of the twentieth century I have no military experience. I do not count Tuesday afternoons in the school cadet force, for they taught me little. Poking the barrel of a dismantled Bren gun out of a bush while waving a football rattle, bore, I believe, little resemblance to the reality of soldiering. I do not even have experience in the skills which were vital to medieval soldiers; I have not sat on a horse since the age of twelve, and cannot hit a target with bow and arrow at any appreciable range. There is a view that it is only women who should write women's history; I hope that military history can be written by a civilian.
The aim of this book is to examine the ways in which soldiers were recruited, commanded and supplied in medieval England, together with the way they fought. The reasons why men fought were complex. In part, the answer lies in systems of obligation, but the question of the material rewards of pay and plunder was at least as important. There was no simple progression from a world in which men served in return for holding land, to one in which they fought in return for pay. The importance of food to armies hardly needs emphasis, and the means by which men were provided with the very considerable quantities of grain, meat, fish and drink they required need to be investigated. Both strategy and tactics are examined, as are the setpiece military occasions of siege and battle.
The selection of commanders was important, as was the quality of information provided for them. Although this is a book about armies, it would not be complete without some consideration of shipping, for the transport of men and supplies presented its own challenges. It is not easy to reconstruct the mentality of the past, but the question of how far, and in what ways, chivalry affected the reality of warfare is one which cannot be ignored, even if all the questions cannot be fully answered. I hope that by drawing these various elements together a picture may emerge of the way in which medieval English armies functioned.
There are no clear starting and finishing dates for this study, but readers will rapidly discover that there is a concentration on the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. There is no consideration of the relative obscurity of the centuries before the eleventh, and little of the fifteenth beyond the reign of Henry V. The Wars of the Roses are not within the book's scope. One justification for this chronological emphasis is that the documentation is especially full for the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; another is that it was then that highly important developments were taking place. If there was a medieval military revolution, it was perhaps in that period that it happened. One of the themes of the study is to determine whether the concept of such a revolution, which has been applied with enthusiasm to their period by historians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is applicable to an earlier age. Some disclaimers are needed.
This is a study of English armies, and there is therefore little discussion of the armies that the English raised in Gascony to fight during the Hundred Years War. The English contribution to crusading warfare is another element which is not extensively considered. It is not the intention to explore the financial aspects of warfare in any detail. It was of course the case that it was only because the state found ways of extracting substantial sums of money from its subjects that it was possible to recruit large armies and sustain expensive wars. This is a vital part of the background to the themes which are taken forward in the following chapters, but to examine financial policy and administration in detail would be to move too far away from the central subject matter, though these matters are briefly raised in the final chapter.
My thanks are due to various colleagues and friends for their advice and help. John Gillingham and Mark Ormrod read a complete draft of the book; their comments have done much to improve it. Anne Curry has generously provided me with advance copies of her work, as has Matthew Strickland with some of his. I have had fruitful conversations with Robin Frame. Ann Hyland has been generous in her visits to Durham, when she has tried to remedy my ignorance about horses. I have learned much from teaching both undergraduate and graduate students, and should acknowledge in particular Michael Haskell, Ruth Ingamells and Andrew Fisher.
Myfather has of course done much over manyyears to inspire my interest in matters medieval and military;I hope it will please him that Geoffrey de Mandeville makes an entrance in a small way in this book.
I amgrateful to him for his constructive comments on draft chapters. Historians always depend on the work of their predecessors, and this is especially the case in a wideranging study such as this; I hope that my debts to the many previous scholars who have worked on this field have been sufficiently acknowledged in the notes. The faults in the book are, of course, all my own. My thanks are also due to all those involved in the university administration at Durham, for making it possible for me to continue to write while engaged in other duties.
The History department has been generous with its support, both in providing travel grants for work in the Public Record Office and in other ways. Steven Allan of the Geography Department kindly drew the sketch maps. I am very grateful to Robert Baldock and Sheila Lee at Yale University Press for all their assistance, and to my excellent copyeditor, Margaret Wallace. My main thanks naturally go to my wife Maggie, who has read many drafts, corrected proofs and provided invaluable encouragement.
MICHAEL PRESTWICH DURHAM, MARCH 1995
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