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

1469-77
The Burgundian wars. A conflict between the Duchy of Burgundy, the kingdom of France
and, eventually, the Swiss confederacy. It sees the defeat of the Burgundian Ordnnance armies
by Swiss pike blocks at Grandson and Morat in 1476, and at Nancy in 1477, where the
Burgundian Duke Charles the Bold is killed.
THE ORIGINS OF THE MEDIEVAL
KNIGHT
It is the nature of historical study that the subject gets compartmentalized and divided
into periods usually based upon some key event. In England the traditional view was
that the middle ages began with 1066 and the Norman victory at Hastings and ended
with the accession of Henry VII following Richard Ill's death at Bosworth in 1485.
This is no longer the case: for example, those who study the kingdoms that developed
after the fall of Rome have made the case for their own studies to be incorporated as
the early middle ages. Even so, it may seem that the knight appeared out of thin air
in the 11th century, being something entirely new; but this is far from the true state
of affairs.
As far as medieval writers were concerned, there had always been knights. King
Arthur had surrounded himself with knights in his fight against the Saxons in that
semi-mythical period after the fall of Rome. Julius Caesar was described as a knight,
whilst Alexander the Great was perceived as a great knightly hero, with epic stories
created about his deeds. A 14th-century writer, describing the origins of heraldiy,
explained that the noble warriors of Troy had painted individual designs on shields
so that their mothers, wives and children could better witness their deeds of valour
from the city walls. Almost all of the nascent nations of medieval Western Europe saw
themselves as in some way descended from warrior heroes fleeing the sack of Troy.
Just as Rome had Aeneas so Britain had Brutus, and the French Francio, descended
from the Trojan King Priam and his brother Antenor. In fact, knighthood was
perceived to be older still; Judas Maccabeus and his Old Testament warriors had been
knights, as had King David.
The knightly ordo (order) could boast a heritage older than the clergy, the second
body that made up medieval society, and more exalted than the peasants and workers
who comprised the third. Whilst these origins were quite fanciful (but no less
significant to the knights' understanding of themselves, as we shall see when we come
to look at chivalry), one can see some connections between the knight and classical
Greece and Rome.
INTRODUCTION -
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