Osprey - General Military - Knight - The Warrior and ... - Brego-weard

n 11 July 1302, outside of the Flemish city
of Courtrai, an army of weavers, dyers,
fishermen and carpenters defeated the
finest knightly army in Western Europe.
It was Philippe the Fair's arrest of his vassal Guy
de Dampierre, Count of Flanders, and the poor
leadership of his governor Count Jacques of St Pol,
that sparked the revolt known as the Bruges Matins
where the commoners massacred 120 French
soldiers. Philippe sent an army to punish the rebels
whilst the count's son and grandson, Guy de Namur
and Willem van Julich, gathered their own forces.
The two armies came together outside the
strategically important town and castle of Courtrai.
Both armies were about the same size, roughly
9,000 strong, but were very different in composition.
The Flemish force was almost entirely comprised of
footsoldiers drawn from the town militias. Lightly
armoured - a steel cap or chapeau de fer, a padded
gambeson, maybe a mail shirt and arm and leg
defences for the wealthiest-they carried either pikes
(long spears of about 12 feet rather than the 16-foot
weapon of the 16th and 17th centuries) or the typical
goedendag (also referred to as the gepinde stat), a
stout club bound at its head with an iron band and
a steel pin projecting from the end. Some 900
crossbowmen protected by pavisiers, men carrying
large shields, formed a separate, elite company.
The French army, under Count Robert of Artois,
had about 5,000 to 6,000 thousand footsoldiers,
about a third of whom were crossbowmen and
bidauts, skirmishers armed with javelins and
slingshots; they were the only French footsoldiers
to take part in the battle. The rest, some 3,000, were
the knights and squires, all fully armoured and on
caparisoned warhorses. Professional warriors, widely
and rightly regarded as the finest in Europe, they had
a qualitative superiority over the amateur force of
artisans, tradesmen and peasants.
The Flemish forces deployed themselves well, on
level ground to the east with one flank protected by
the marshy bank of the river Lys, the other resting on
the town wall. In front of the deep formations
of heavy infantry and lined by the corps of
crossbowmen were two streams, the Groeninge
Bek and the Grote Bek. The French formed opposite
them, initiating their attack with their crossbows
and the bidauts. Their superior numbers drove the
Flemings back from the stream's edge, giving space
for the French knights to cross and reorganize for
the charge.
The two main battles charged simultaneously,
3,000 horsemen bearing down on the militia's line.
Such a charge usually drove all before it, smashing
the opposition's cohesion, breaking their morale and
putting them to flight.
The Flemish militias held. Their camaraderie and
esprit de corps, as they stood shoulder to shoulder
with workmates and family in their livery and
beneath the emblems of their guilds, kept them in
place whilst the forest of pikes blunted the knights'
charge. The charge could not be completely stopped
however, and the knights fought their way into the
Flemish ranks. As they did so the Flemish numbers
began to tell, surrounding the knights and negating
their advantage in height and skill.
The French were steadily forced back into the
streams they had crossed and some knights drowned.
The French reserve attempted to engage but had not
space to launch an effective charge, were held, broke