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

I
F THE KNIGHT LEARNT HIS TRADE AT TOURNAMENT HE PERFECTED
it on the battlefield. It was his rauton d'etre and the stage upon
-JL- which he could win his greatest renown. Such grand events were
rare, however, and much of the knight's experience of war — the raids,
skirmishes and sieges — was far more mundane. However, the risks of
defeat — capture, ransom, wounding and death — were no less.
vary, from a purely feudal obligation to a wholly monetarized and mercenary' one, the
process by which the knights came to form an army remained unchanged throughout
medieval Europe. When Heniy I learnt of Fulk of Anjou's invasion of Normandy in
II17, he marched against him with the members of his royal household, his familia
regit, and, as Orderic Vitalis tells us, 'dispatching riders he collected the forces of
all Normandy for the fight'. Similarly, when the French learned of Henry V's intent
to invade in 1415, Charles VI of France issued a demonce de nobles in Normandy,
Picardy and Brittany, a summons instructing all of the military elite of those regions
to prepare to defend against Henry's army and rendezvous in the Norman capital
Rouen. At the same time his son, the dauphin, was sent to that city with forces drawn
from his own and the king's military households. Henry's own army had been created
in much the same way. When he had made the decision to go to war, he informed his
nobles and delivered to them indentures agreeing the number of troops that each of
the captains would bring to muster at Southampton. In 1455 the Yorkist faction
precipitated what would become known as the Wars of the Roses, sending messengers
to gather their retainers, adherents and well-wishers to their seats at the castles of
Sandal, Middleham and Warwick, from where they marched towards St Albans.
Armies might be raised very quickly indeed. In emergencies small parties of
household troops would be immediately available. The Anglo-Norman familia regit,
or king's household, routinely fulfilled this role during the unsettled years following the
death of the Conqueror, being the only troops who could respond quickly enough to
the sudden rebellions and raids common to the French-Norman border region. The
raising of French forces in response to Henry V's landing at Harfleur in 1415 took
around a month. Although local forces were warned that the English invasion was
imminent, towns and castles being instructed to make the necessary preparations,