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

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

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•*FR KNIGHT<br />

Opposite: In spite of his<br />

impressive artillery train,<br />

st<strong>and</strong>ing army <strong>and</strong><br />

complex battle strategy,<br />

Charles the Bold of<br />

Burgundy found that he<br />

could not counter the elan<br />

<strong>and</strong> ferocity of the Swiss<br />

pikemen, being defeated<br />

twice, at Gr<strong>and</strong>son <strong>and</strong><br />

Morat. (<strong>The</strong> Art Archive)<br />

214<br />

administration. Whereas before the majority of clerks would have come from an<br />

ecclesiastical background, now they were laity. Equally the complexity <strong>and</strong> extensive<br />

mechanism of local <strong>and</strong> national government meant that duties which had once been<br />

the preserve of the knight, service on juries <strong>and</strong> in commissions, were opened up to<br />

those of lesser stock. Men of gentry rank, who once would have been considered too<br />

lacking in honour for the role <strong>and</strong>, a generation or so earlier, would have been donning<br />

the harness of a man-at-arms, now put on the robes of the clerk <strong>and</strong> lawyer <strong>and</strong> in<br />

doing so acquired noble status. In France this showed itself in the distinction between<br />

the nobl&fde de I'epe'e, the 'nobility of the sword' who attained their rank through military<br />

service, <strong>and</strong> the nobledde ()e robe, those whose nobility came from service in<br />

administrative <strong>and</strong> legal office. By the 16th century, then, nobility <strong>and</strong> the status that<br />

one might have once termed 'knightly' might come from legal, administrative or<br />

domestic service — all duties once shared by the knight. Mihtaiy service was no longer<br />

an essential qualification.<br />

As we discussed in the Introduction, however, the social status of the knight is only<br />

one way of defining him. <strong>The</strong> main interest in this book has been in the knight on the<br />

battlefield. What happened to him here?<br />

For many the 14th century witnessed the end of the knight as a military figure.<br />

Talking of a 'military revolution' it is argued that in this period the balance shifted firmly<br />

in favour of the infantry. Pointing to battles such as Courtrai, Bannockburn, Crecy <strong>and</strong><br />

Poiters, <strong>and</strong> the 15th-century victories of the Swiss over Charles the Bold's Burgundian<br />

Ordnnance army at Gr<strong>and</strong>son <strong>and</strong> Morat, they argue that the quality of infantry had<br />

now improved so tar that it was no longer cowed by the charge of the knight. St<strong>and</strong>ing<br />

firm behind a wall of pike or using weight of fire from missile weapons, <strong>and</strong> in particular<br />

the longbow, the common infantryman was now able to hold his own against the knight.<br />

It might be argued that by the end of the 15th century, the fully armoured cavalryman<br />

was, if not wholly supplanted, then more or less defunct.<br />

<strong>The</strong> knight was far from irrelevant at this period, <strong>and</strong> to suggest his demise here<br />

is somewhat premature. Whilst a battle which saw the foot well prepared <strong>and</strong> in sound<br />

defensive positions might indeed defeat the mounted knight, particularly if, as at<br />

Courtrai <strong>and</strong> Bannockburn, he showed impatience <strong>and</strong> rashness, if the infantry was<br />

caught unprepared, failed to st<strong>and</strong> firm or, worse still, went on the offensive then it<br />

could be routed. <strong>The</strong> Flemings at Roosebeke in 1382 <strong>and</strong> the English at Castillon in<br />

1453 both suffered defeat while attacking their French foes. <strong>The</strong> great 'longbow'<br />

victories of the Hundred Years War were matched by a greater number of occasions<br />

where the longbow was not able to stop the French cavaliy. At Pontvallain in 1370 <strong>and</strong><br />

at Patay in 1429 French knights were able to catch the English ill prepared <strong>and</strong> break<br />

them. Similarly the Lombard cavalry serving with the French at Verneuil, five years

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