Feudal Troop Types

Historical References on Medieval Europe

The Assize of Arms (1181) - Henry II

Freemen:

• "And every free layman possessing chattels or rents to the value of 10 marks shall have a hauberk, an iron cap, and a lance."

Urban Militias:

• "Item, all burgesses and the whole community of freemen shall have [each] a gambeson, an iron cap, and a lance.;"
• "Any burgess who has more arms than he ought to have by this assize shall sell them, or give them away, or in some way alienate them to such a man as will keep them for the service of the lord king of England. And none of them shall keep more arms than he ought to have by this assize."

The Assize of Arms (1242) - Henry III

Freemen:

• "For land worth £ 10, a hauberk, an iron cap, a sword, and a knife."
• "For land worth 100s., a purpoint, an iron cap, a sword, a lance, and a knife."
• "Whatever persons have less than 40s. value of land are to be sworn to falchions (falces), halberds, knives, and other small arms."

Urban Militias:

• "For chattels worth 40m., a hauberk, an iron cap, a sword, and a knife.;"
• "For chattels worth 20m., a purpoint, an iron cap, a sword, and a knife."
• "For chattels worth 40s. or more, up to a value of 10m., falchions, knives, halberds, and other small arms."

Command Structure:

• "And in the various cities and boroughs all men sworn to arms shall be obedient to their mayors, or to their reeves and bailiffs where there are no mayors.;"
• "In each of the other vills, moreover, there shall be established one or two constables, according to the number of the inhabitants and the decision of the aforesaid [officials]."
• "Besides, in each hundred there shall be established a chief constable, at whose command all men sworn to arms in his hundred shall be assembled; and to him they shall be obedient in carrying out necessary measures for the conservation of our peace."
• "The chief constables of the various hundreds, moreover, shall be obedient to the sheriff and the two knights aforesaid, in coming at their command and in carrying out necessary measures for the conservation of our peace."

Contamine, Philippe. War in the Middle Ages. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1989

Freemen:

• "The idea of the arrière-ban, which developed vigorously and on a widescale, was not, however, a novelty. The term, probably as semantic deformation of the Carolingian 'heriban' (a kind of military tax on those whose service did not come up to scratch), appears from time to time in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries."
• "In John Lackland's day there are allusions to the arrière-ban of Normandy (retrobannum Normandie), meaning either the summons of all free men, or that of fief-holders who had escaped from proper host service."
• "It was in England that the principle of general military obligation gave rise to the most precocious, developed and effective results. The English lead in this sphere may be explained both by the survival of the old Anglo-Saxon traditions, by the presence from the twelfth century of an organized state and a remarkable administration and by the existence of a sense of community in the realm at large which was more widespread and better rooted than in other regions of the west." (The above assizes being a good example.)
• "It appeared that the monarchy was hardly interested in arming the poor, intentionally excluding the non-free from this series of measures."

Urban Militias:

• "Many infantry, moreover, were now either armed with long pikes in order to stop cavalry charges or with weapons for hand-to-hand combat: gisarmes (battle-axes or halberds), flails, slashing hooks, clubs (goedendags), swords and so on." (mid 13th century Italian states)
• "A large number of the infantry were now at least lightly protected with iron caps, bascinets, cervellières and gorgets. The shield was fairly widely used as well as the haubergeon, which was sometimes replaced by the more rustic and cheaper gambeson. Other infantry fought without any armor when they lacked the means. Urban contingents often appeared to be 'poorly armed and naked'."
• "Whatever their dimensions, urban centers provided important military vantage points because of their fortified walls (although there was always a number of them which were never provided with these), for the castles with which they were frequently associated and because of their resources of men, money and arms. Nor did kings and princes fail to use their often decisive aid, by inviting them to ensure their own defense and to provide men, war supplies and foodstuffs."
• "Many towns had at their own command their own military organization, controlled by municipal authorities. The inhabitants were grouped militarily, either by quarter or by craft. They had permanent control of military equipment appropriate to their social position and fortune, to e nsure public order within a certain district and to share in the construction, upkeep and guard of the ramparts. In London, for example, there were 24 wards. If in peacetime they were content with a perfunctory watch, in time of war each of them, under the direction of its alderman, had to defend a sector of the walls. On campaign, command of the urban contingent was traditionally assumed by the captain of Baynard's Castle, a fortress situated within the city, near to the Thames."

Professional/Mercenary Troops:

• "One type of fief was nevertheless for a long time better suited than others to provide free service. This was the fief-rent, also termed money fief or fief de chambre. In this case, in effect, payment in cash of a type of annual pension (for the fief-rent was the true precursor of those royal and princely pensions which assume such importance, above all from the end of the fourteenth century) to a particular person appears as an advance for eventual future services, the more so, despite the clauses contained in many charters creating fief-rents, since this latter was in practice neither transmissible to heirs nor even held for life. Very often the beneficiary received it for some years then for one reason or another the contract lapsed."
• "Paid service not only had the advantage of allowing mobilization in a few days; it also facilitated the spread of orders for an assembly, wither by means of individual letters addressed to the most important men or through public announcements asking for specialized personnel who could be set to work and controlled by baillis, sheriffs, provosts, justiciars and other local administrators."
• "Nor can one call every soldier a mercenary from the moment he received payment in one form or another. It is better to adapt to medieval circumstances a definition recently proposed by the classicist Y. Garland, who writes: 'The mercenary is a professional soldier whose conduct is dictated not by his membership of a political community but above all by his desire for gain.' In short, the mercenary is defined by three qualities: being a specialist, stateless and paid."
• "Even when they came from more varied geographical regions and had uprooted themselves chiefly in order to pursue a career, the knights who permanently staffed royal and princely households were in no sense proper mercenaries. On the other hand, those esquires, knights and sergeants who attached themselves to Charles of Anjou in his great Transalpine adventure were mercenaries, as were those Saracens employed by Frederick II."
• "Recourse to different types of mercenaries on the part of states may be explained by several reasons. The first is purely military – The worth and reputation of a group of fighters whose equivalent it was impossible to find locally amongst vassals, subjects or fellow-citizens... But it is equally necessary to see the other side of the coin. Authorities could only use mercenaries because there existed a potential market or supply. The presence of this market can be explained in turn by demographic factors, fluctuations in economic conditions or even by successful practices."

Light Troops:

• "Some infantry of high quality did, however, disdain the use of all protection out of choice in order to retain their agility, as did the English and Welsh archers and pikemen and the Almogavars of the kingdom of Aragon, whose name derives from the Arabic mugâwir meaning runner, the incensor of Latin texts. These troops, who came from the mountains of Aragon and Catalonia, had very limited equipment in which the use of leather recalled their pastoral origins: a tunic called a gonella, cassot or camisa, leather gaiters, sandals with leather soles, a leather bonnet, sometimes reinforced with a kind of steel framework, and a leather knapsack containing food supplies."
• "In some regions at least, in the Iberian peninsula, Ireland, Scotland and Switzerland, there were also popular forces of peasants or pastoralists who in certain historical circumstances might be transformed, despite the rustic character of their arms, into formidable fighters, successfully using their knowledge of the terrain, their local clan or tribal unity and the solidarity of their way of life or language, against 'regular' armies technically better equipped."

Nicolle, David. Medieval Warfare Source Book Warfare in Western Christendom. London: Brockhampton Press, 1999

Freemen:

• "By the begriming of the 12th century rural levies may already have been refusing to operate outside their own immediate territory; yet they remained important for local defense well into the 13th century."

Urban Militias:

• "Urban militias were, meanwhile, rising in importance and here even the town's women were sometimes involved. For example they were on a number of occasions described as pulling the ropes of 'man'-powered mangonels. Northern French urban militias seem, in fact, to have been the French king's main source of infantry during the 12th century. Towns which had won the status of communes generally had to accept quite significant military obligations in return for these privileges. For instance they supplied the king's army with a specified number of infantry sergeants as well as transport wagons."
• "The available evidence suggests that urban bourgeois militias were even more important in the south."
• "Within the cities, towns and even rural districts of the southern half of France, there was clearly a very strong sense of communal identity. Here each social class accepted its own specific military duties without apparent resentment."
• " Meanwhile the powerful and highly effective urban militias were recruited on a similar basis; though here an individual's military obligation was owed to the city and only indirectly to some distant imperial overlord."

Professional/Mercenary Troops:

• " The reputation of mercenary infantry was, in almost complete contrast, generally very bad at this time – at least among the ordinary people and the clerical chroniclers. A great many came from Brabant in what is now Belgium and the Netherlands. In addition to these Brabancons there were Triaverdins, who perhaps came from the Trier region farther east, and the fearsome Cottereaux whose name is still not fully understood. All were highly effective though ruthless foot soldiers." (France)
• "Mercenary infantry were recruited from an even wider area: ranging from Wales and Scotland, both of which were under English suzerainty, from the English-ruled regions of France, from among the spear-armed infantry of Flemish cities, from Spanish Navarese, Aragonese and Basque spear or javelin troops; perhaps even from among the Muslims of the Norman kingdom of Sicily." (England)
• "It would similarly be wrong to regard those non-élite, largely infantry troops who carried out the process of ravaging and devastation merely as a destructive rapacious rabble. On the contrary, they seem to have included men with recognized specific skills, such as foragers, incendiaries and heavier infantry to guard the supply train."
• The very obvious increase in the importance of infantry throughout most of western Europe was not a consequence of lessons learned during the crusades. In fact the role of such infantry was basically a development of what had been the case during the preceding 11th century." (See the missile weapon's section.)
• "There was a less clear-cut difference between heavy and light infantry during the 12th and 13th centuries than would be the case in the 14th century. Even so, well armored men would presumably have been netter suited to static tasks such as defending river crossings and fixed positions, or in providing a defensive shield for lighter equipped foragers."

Light Troops:

• "Other light infantry stilled used javelins; particularly the dardiers of Gascony and several other parts of southern France. Light infantry axes appear to have been characteristic of the Lithuanians, while many Irish foot soldiers still used slings to good effect, particularly against Anglo-Norman cavalry horses."