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

the raising of a royal field army to oppose Henry did take some time. Even after the
lords had raised their retinues there was some delay in bringing the army together,
primarily because the French commanders were unsure as to Henry's route of march
and they waited to be certarn of rt before deciding on a route to cut him off.
Unsurprisingly, Henry's own army took longer to raise, as all of the supplies and
logistical support had to be arranged as well. Even so the indentures instructing lords
on what retinues they were to bring were signed in late April and the army sailed for
the continent in late July. The organization of Edward Ill's Crecy campaign in 1346
took a similar length of time.
Invariably, the knightly contingents of medieval armies were formed out of the
conroid, coiutabula.ru or lances described in the previous chapter, the tactical building
blocks that made up the retinues of the noble and royal households. The larger of
these would themselves be made up of smaller households, thefamiLiae of lesser nobles
and bannerets. These retinues were then combined into a number of formations,
commonly called 'battles' but in the sources also referred to as acies (literally 'wing':
a classical Latin organization), or 'divisions' or 'wards'. The norm was for there to be
three: the vanguard or fore-ward, main ward and rearguard or rear-ward, the names
reflecting their position in the line of march. On the field the vanguard normally
formed the right and the rear guard the left of the line. However, since these divisions
f ormed the manoeuvre units of medieval armies, the actual number and ordering of the
battles varied according to the strategic and tactical situation.
Similarly, the way in which the retinues were divided up depended upon the nature
of the army and of the campaign it intended to pursue. In armies with retinues
drawn from different regions or nationalities, then the obvious way was to structure
the battles around those identities. At Hastings William's force took the field with the
Breton and French knights in battles on either flank, whilst the Normans formed a
third division in the centre. In similar fashion, the French army at Courtrai in 1302 was
divided into ten divisions based upon the region of France from which they came.
The commander of the army, the Count of Artois, drew these together into three
battles once they reached the field and he had seen the deployment of the Flemish
defenders. Crusading armies, unsurprisingly given their multi-national nature, also
formed up like this, forming along regional and national lines with the military orders
forming their own divisions. In the Third Crusade each group was identified by crosses
of a different colour, red for French, white for English and green for Flemish: a
practice that was to spill over into the wars in Europe.
The division of the English army for the Crecy campaign reveals a different
structuring. The fore-ward was made up of a few large retinues, that of the young
Prince of Wales (who was nominally in command), the experienced earls of
CAMPAIGN AND BATTLE •*}*•
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