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

It was the Swiss, with their combination of pike, halberd and firepower, at first the
crossbow but very quickly handguns, who became the template for the organization
of armies in Western Europe throughout the last decade of the 15th and first quarter
of the 16th centuries, although it would be the Landsknechte from southern Germany
- the German mercenary pikeman initially considered the poor man's Swiss warrior
- who would come to be the dominant force. The 16th-centuiy battlefield was
dominated by massive blocks of pikemen, 3,000 to 4,000 strong, who launched
themselves at each other with great fury. There was little that the companies of
gendarmes, a tenth of the size, could do against such behemoths.
Gunpowder weaponry put the final nail in the coffin. By the middle of the 15th
century gunpowder artillery had already reduced the length of sieges from months to
weeks and even days, and traditional medieval fortification was more or less obsolete.
The new fortifications that grew up in their stead, with thick, low and mathematically
angled walls, slowed the process of the siege back down again, lengthening campaigns
and leaving the expensive-to-maintain gendarmes with little to do. The 16th-century
campaigns in Italy and the Low Countries with their emphasis on siege reduced the
perceived need for men in full armour and heavy horses.
Cannon were also finding their way onto the battlefield. There had been artillery
at Crecy and at Agincourt, but their effects seem to have been negligible. Substantial
numbers of artillery pieces were included in Charles the Bold's Ordnnance armies but,
again, at both Grandson and Morat there was little opportunity to use these slow-
firing weapons against the swift advance of the Swiss.
It was not the cannon but the handgun that impacted most heavily on the knight.
These were far more powerful than either the crossbow or longbow and, with the
development of the musket in the 1570s, it was impossible to produce armour thick
enough to stop them. Under the protection of the pikemen, behind fortifications or,
as at Pavia, under the cover of woods and broken ground, they were able to kill the
knight with relative ease. The 15th-century condottiere Paolo Vitelli would have
captured gunners mutilated and blinded, 'because he held it unworthy that a gallant,
and it might be noble knight, should be wounded and laid low by a common,
despicable footsoldier'. It did not stop him from employing such men in his own forces,
however. Practical as ever, the nobleman adopted and adapted.
With foot combat dominated by the pikeman and handgunner, and the lance-armed
charge futile in the face of their firepower and sheer mass, the gendarmes began to
eschew the lance for the pistol and cavalry became a mobile gun platform, utilizing the
infantry's own firepower against it. Such tactics required mobility and the amount of
armour, unnecessarily heavy and cumbersome for the protection it offered, was reduced
to a helmet, back- and breastplate, cuisses and vambraces. Full armour was retained
THE DEATH OF KNIGHTHOOD? -3*-
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