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

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KNIGHT
the incomes to afford to maintain themselves with full armour and horses, but they
were now tied to the particular lord to whom they owed service rather than directly
to the king. Armies were no longer recruited and organized directly by royal officials;
instead they were made up of the aristocratic elite and their bands of followers, coming
together to serve in royal armies at the behest of the court. As long as the Carolingian
monarchs pursued aggressive campaigns - pushing the borders of their lands into
Saxony, Bavaria and down into Lombardy as well as westwards over the Pyrenees -
then these noble households were willing and eager to serve, as there was loot and
more land to be gained. When the limits of that expansionist policy had been reached,
however, and the focus switched instead to defensive campaigns against the invading
Viking armies, it became much more difficult to persuade the aristocratic class to
respond to calls to serve. The benefits of campaigning were simply not enough of an
incentive for them to muster. It is at this point that we start to see monarchs trying to
regulate the terms of the military service they were to receive, with the imposition of
penalties for failure to appear at musters.
In spite of the dominant position of the aristocracy in the way in which armies were
raised and structured in this period, the Carolingian monarchs were still able to use the
household troops that we saw some two centuries before. Scarae continued to be used
by monarchs as a quick reaction force, and the bands of pueri continued to serve out
their apprenticeships within the royal household, before moving on to marry and take
land of their own. The kings were not above employing mercenary forces, including
Viking raiders, who could be turned against other Viking bands or indeed rebel lords.
The Duchy of Normandy was founded in this way, created from land already colonized
by the Viking leader Rollo, who was confirmed as duke of Normandy by the Frankish
king Charles the Simple in 912.
The fragmentation of the Carolingian Empire after the death of Charles the Fat in
888 ensured that the aristocratic elite continued to grow in power at the expense of
royal government. By the time Hugh Capet succeeded to the throne of France in 939,
the French kings were little different from the aristocratic elite; indeed they were less
powerful than many aristocrats (it would take nearly three hundred years for them to
be able to fully assert their regal authority). In effect the counts and dukes of the various
French provinces were monarchs in all but name, raising their own armies and fighting
internecine wars against each other with scant regard for royal authority. Such conflict
encouraged the support and maintenance of small numbers of heavily armed and
armoured professional soldiers, mounted so as to be able to raid swiftly into an enemy's
territory, or to respond to such raids themselves. The lords recruited these men from
amongst the peasant population, adding them to their aristocratic households under
the title of vcuhnut ('vassal') or, more commonly miles-, the knight had come of age.