Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXII

[Clistenes]

There wasn't "knights" three centuries earlier.... The knighthood was in Scandinavia just forming around 1200, thus during the 12th century (three centuries before the 15th century) you wouldn't really have knights.

I was speaking of European knights in general there.

This might be true (at least partially) of the very late 15th and 16th century, but during the Hundred Years War noble armies was still prominent. At Agincourt both the English (the men-at-arms on foot as well as the longbowmen) and the French (knights on horses) consisted of traditional feudal armies (granted buffed up by mercenaries for specific roles). Agincourt is in the 15th century.. .

Wasn’t the English army mostly made of professional soldiers/mercenaries at that point? I have read somewhere that the bulk of the English troops (notably the famous archers) were professionals paid by the king…

I guess it depends what importance, effectiveness, etc. mean. Cavalry still played a key role in Western European armies 1526-1630. The infantry was more important overall for battles and for many skirmishes, in part because they were so much more numerous. But heavy cavalry could turn the tide of battle and lighter cavalry was essential for scouting and skirmishing. Just look at the French Wars of Religion for an example of the prominence of heavy cavalry during that period. Part of that was cultural, but I doubt that was all of it.

Mmm… I think it could be due to the Wars of Religion being mostly an internal conflict between powerful noble houses… The truth is, when the Habsburg armies intervened to support the Catholics, they had greater success against those armies than against the professional national French armies fighting under their king… Of course, the fact that the French were divided and had been trouncing each other for some time had a lot to do with that too…

While perhaps true that heavy cavalry was less important than infantry: that is exactly a reason for the nobles to employ crossbowmen, men with pole weapons and handgunners!

Both for defence of their land, but also for taking to war against the peasants OR the king (and quite often the king AND the peasants). Nobles gathering together to challenge the King happened routinely. Sometimes they lost to a mix of mercenaries and other nobles, sometimes they won. But they definately made up the bulk of many wars. This is not unique to Danmark during the 15th century, both French and English nobles where still very much a central part of the army.

As far as I can tell nobles (with their retinues, men-at-arms and other local troops such as levied peasants, yeoman farmers etc) made up quite a bit of the troops during the War of the Roses (though certainly mercenaries played a role). War of the Roses is very much 15th century!

You are right that I was making a generalization, applying the standards of the most advanced armies in Western Europe at the end of the XV century to all the armies of the century. England had a reputation of having fallen behind in the development of modern professional armies during the XV-XVI centuries. And the War of the Roses was an internal conflict among noble houses, so it’s normal that it was fought mostly by nobility’s private armies…

Yes, but not during the 15th century (or at least not before the end of it, star forts is only becoming popular during the 15th century, and is not widespread before the end 15th/early 16th century as far as I can see the various constructing times).

That may be, but it doesn't seem that it was due to cannons making walls obsolete.

I was specifically speaking of the importance of manorial castles staffed by a knight, his family and his retinue, not of walls in general.

The idea of a Military revolution centered around Gustavus Adolphus has been repeatedly revised over the years, since many of the things he supposedly invented were really based on earlier trends. Tactics for defeating heavy lancers with pistoleirs such as reserving fire until after the melee is joined and attacking in column rather than in thin lines for example were described by La Noue all the way back in the 16th century…

… It's worth remembering that the whole reason Gustav started instituting his reforms in the first place was the result of battles like Kirchholm where Polish heavy cavalry completely wiped away the Swedish infantry.

In other regions (such as Italy) knights with their own troops might have had a quicker decline, and armies had a faster transition to mercenaries (I don't know enough of southern European history during that period to tell). But in northern Europe nobles still participated, for example: mercenaries did play a vital role in the conflict between the Hanse and Danish king, both burgher armies consisting of militias and noble armies formed by knights and their soldiers formed the backbone of many of the armies. It is true however than in the late 14th and 15th century peasant musters became mnuch rarer and less important; they where replaced by a COMBINATION of knights (professional soldiers) with their household men (also professinal soldiers) and mercenaries (also professional soldiers).

…The whole Gustaf II Adolf thing is largely a myth too, incidentally the Swedes didn't really have heavy cavalry as other Europeans understood it. They were less well armed with regards to pistols (and horses and armour!) so where for obvious reasons forced to engage more heavily into melee. Gustaf Adolf didn't invent or introduce even a fraction of what he's credited with, but he was the most visible, and successful, commander to pull together many threads of development present in military science at this point.

And is also location based. Eg the Polish would employ the oldfashioned melee against the modern Swedish army of 1605 at Kirkholm to devastating effect. Not too long after that a much better trained Swedish army decimated the Polish cavalry….

…In the 1620s in Poland the Swedish army was for a time essentially bottled up in towns and other static positions due to lack of cavalry compared to the Polish opponents. That'd be before Gustaf II Adolf invented the heavy cavalry charge in 1630...

You are probably right. I have studied mostly the Italian Wars and the Spanish Habsburgs’s wars, and I don’t know much about tactics in Eastern and Northern Europe.

Makes sense that heavy cavalry retained its protagonism in Poland, since the kept the finest armoured lancers in Europe up to the Napoleonic Wars…

That's just not correct. It's largely a transitional phase though with developments in weapons, armour and tactics. The caracole, reiters etc etc are all iterations of the development process.

All I know is that I have read many texts both from contemporary sources and from modern authors pointing how inefficient was the caracole, and how heavy cavalry charges were almost abandoned during the big battles in Western Europe. Of course, I have studied mostly the Trastamaras and the Habsburgs and their foes, and everything probably was very different in other places.

I would say the supposed unimportance of cavalry is equally fallacious as the supposed prominence of cavalry in the high medieval period. And that the truth lies somewhere in between where you need both an infantry anvil and cavalry hammer. At least up to somewhere in the vicinity of the ACW where the firepower finally got so murderous trying to charge infantry really became almost impossible.

I dunno. I don’t think I can remember many examples of the combined use of “infantry anvil and cavalry hammer” in the big battles in Western Europe during that period, at least not when well equipped and trained infantry had formed their pike and shot squares…