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Thread: How many knights in a kingdom?
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2011-11-02, 12:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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How many knights in a kingdom?
How many knights would there be in a circa 12th century kingdom? And how many higher nobles (barons, counts, dukes, etc.)? I don’t need precise numbers, a rough estimate of ratios between social classes will do.
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2011-11-02, 12:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many knights in a kingdom?
The ratios vary wildly. If you have one noble knight for every thousand ordinary footmen, I'd say you're doing OK.
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2011-11-02, 12:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many knights in a kingdom?
The biggest question is how many knights can your King support. Do you have fiefs for all of those knights? Well, then you can have that many knights. According to http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/206138/fief You would need between 15-30 peasants families to support a knight's household. I'm guessing that would be a good place to start for the sake of realism.
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2011-11-02, 12:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many knights in a kingdom?
This is pretty tricky to answer in general, as being knight didn't by any means mean that one had a fief, or any land, servants or source of income in general.
There were very poor knights as well.
But as far as general nobility understood as folk owning actual land with serf etc. single percents of overall population would be fair guess, for 12th century France for example.
Including higher nobility, of course.Avatar by KwarkpuddingThe subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs—I was a man before I was a king.
Whoever makes shoddy beer, shall be thrown into manure - town law from Gdańsk, XIth century.
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2011-11-02, 01:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many knights in a kingdom?
Well, it also depends what you mean by "knight". If you want to know how many men armed and trained in knightly fashion say the HRE in 1189 (third cursade) could muster under ideal circumstances (which were NEVER met, espacialy for the political mudpit that was known as the HRE), you will get wildly different numbers than if you want to know the number of Feudal Lords.
And if you want to know, how many knights a king could realisticly muster, the answer is dependend on so many things its not funny.
Say if Henry II wanted to wage war in France (as he did - a lot) and say to his knights: "To arms! Lets kick some behinds!" a good number of them would be like "Uhmm, no?" and another part would be like "I'll just pay scutage and call it a day".
So even if we got some detailed figures about the number of feudal lords in the territory, that made up the Kingdom of England/Angevine Empire in some point in the 12th century, it would still be hard to estimate the number of men-at-arms that could be fielded.Last edited by Zombimode; 2011-11-02 at 01:06 PM.
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2011-11-02, 01:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many knights in a kingdom?
There's only one exception that I can think of where a knight wouldn't really have a fief. That's if he had joined part of a monastic order. For example, the Knights Templar required anyone joining to give up all of their worldly possessions, but they're still sort of considered knights. The problem is that they aren't really secular knights, they're religious knights... which is a little bit different.
If you're talking about a knight in the usual definition, he is the vassal of a higher powered noble who in turn grants him access to lands, serfs, and protection in time of war in exchange for military service. That's pretty generally true of all secular knights (as far as I know). The closest you come to having a "poor" secular knight is if his fief is a swamp somewhere with a couple of hermits serving as serfs.Meddle ye not in the affairs of dragons my friend. For you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
The way to a dwarf's heart is through his liver.
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2011-11-02, 01:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many knights in a kingdom?
The "knight" is a guy that knighted, in general.
That doesn't mean that anyone would actually give him land, or anything.
Plenty of youngest sons of knights and other nobles would be left without land.
Plenty of knights were in fact serving military in other knights retinues - as man at arms, cavalry, or whoever.
A lot of them were living pretty much as "lower" born people - although in those cases they were pretty much only 'formally' knights.
I'm not really well versed in it, and mostly in later period anyway, but simple fact is that knight=fief.
In most cases, knight would probably indeed be someone's vassal with some property etc. but not in all cases at all.Last edited by Spiryt; 2011-11-02 at 01:17 PM.
Avatar by KwarkpuddingThe subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs—I was a man before I was a king.
Whoever makes shoddy beer, shall be thrown into manure - town law from Gdańsk, XIth century.
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2011-11-02, 01:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many knights in a kingdom?
And with a little more advanced irrigation techniques and better-bred crops and livestock, you may need only as few as 5-9.
But in such cases the rest of the country is likely also more advanced, meaning there still would be as many knights as with the 15-30 farmer families ratio, while the other leftover people are scholars, merchants, craftsmen and bureaucrats.Homebrewer's Signature | Avatar by Strawberries
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2011-11-02, 01:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many knights in a kingdom?
Usually when a knight knights his son, it means that he is going to inherit his father's fief.
The problem that I see with your argument is that you're overlooking how feudalism works. Feudalism is a system of give and take. The Overlord needs military service, so he knights someone. There are expectations between these two stations. The overlord owes his knight and the knight owes his overlord. The knight owes military service to his overlord and the overlord owes protection and property (you may be right that property doesn't necessarily mean land, but that seems like something that would be rather unusual to me - maybe other arrangements were made or his fief was captured by an opposing army). What property usually means is serfs, lands, weapons, armor, or at least some form of income.
The problem I see with a knight serving indefinitely in another knight's army as a man-at-arms is that a Knight only owed about a month of service to overlord throughout the course of a year. Beyond that the knight and his retainers would need to be paid.
What I'm seeing that needs to be taken away from this argument is that if a DM wants to tweak how feudalism works in his setting, let him do it. It doesn't necessarily hurt the setting as long as there is some sort of nod to the middle ages.Meddle ye not in the affairs of dragons my friend. For you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
The way to a dwarf's heart is through his liver.
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2011-11-02, 01:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many knights in a kingdom?
And sometimes not even that. Look at the situation in the HRE: there were plenty of "squires" who could mop the floor with any freshman knight. They choosed to stay squires because it was so damn expensive to be a proper knight. But on the battlefield, you wont know the difference.
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2011-11-02, 01:42 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many knights in a kingdom?
I'm not really overlooking anything.
The thing is that aside from how system "ideally" worked there was 'life' so many different social structures and dependancies. People were being knighted from many different reasons, for merit, quite often, but it didn't mean that someone had a fief for them, necessarily. There's limited amount of capital, after all.
The problem I see with a knight serving indefinitely in another knight's army as a man-at-arms is that a Knight only owed about a month of service to overlord throughout the course of a year. Beyond that the knight and his retainers would need to be paid.
There were, in fact, unfree knights up to 13th century in HRE - ministerialis - after 13th century generally gradually turning into poor, but free knights.
So, in short, many knights didn't really have fiefs at all. They could be pretty wealthy even, with money they collected from their "superiors" or as loot in wars. But could very well don't have any property they were 'renting' on feudal terms.Last edited by Spiryt; 2011-11-02 at 01:48 PM.
Avatar by KwarkpuddingThe subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs—I was a man before I was a king.
Whoever makes shoddy beer, shall be thrown into manure - town law from Gdańsk, XIth century.
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2011-11-02, 01:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many knights in a kingdom?
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2011-11-02, 01:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many knights in a kingdom?
And sometimes not even that. Look at the situation in the HRE: there were plenty of "squires" who could mop the floor with any freshman knight. They choosed to stay squires because it was so damn expensive to be a proper knight. But on the battlefield, you wont know the difference.
Indeed, save for poorer knights, retinues of feudal lords, would be composed out of pages, squires, and other serfs from different social classes and upbringing.
Moreover, mayors, vogts, and other wealthy townfolk or generally non knights could have very well have their own retinues with knights serving in them, simply from the fact of their wealth.
Of course, since they usually had no feudal obligations, they usually would military serve the kingdom on other terms.Avatar by KwarkpuddingThe subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs—I was a man before I was a king.
Whoever makes shoddy beer, shall be thrown into manure - town law from Gdańsk, XIth century.
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2011-11-02, 01:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many knights in a kingdom?
If you want to get ~ realistic calculation of population to see how many knights it could support, this site is really helpful http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm
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2011-11-02, 01:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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2011-11-02, 02:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many knights in a kingdom?
Basically, there could be a knight for every 150-200 persons.
You have to take intoa ccount that not every knight was a lord or had a fief (a good number were affiliated to another one), or even was a fully plated dreadnought riding a warhorse of doom.
Only counting the VERY heavy cav you can expect a ratio of 1 for 1000+, something ike that.
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2011-11-02, 02:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many knights in a kingdom?
To be fair, NO ONE was fully plated dreadnought in 12th century, from the lack of full plate.
There would be quite a lot of fully mailed dreadnoughts though.
As far as ratio of actual combatants in army, not knights in society goes, it's even more individual case. Depending on who was exactly raised for particular military action, and what for.
Sometimes there would be no heavy cavalry, from the lack of such available, sometimes they would form significant part of army.
Im aware. I was refering to the modern image of knights which tend to focus on the "warrior" aspect. Could have been more clear on that
Bah, sons of poor knights could very well be sent to be squire far away, very young just for the hope of better future for them.Avatar by KwarkpuddingThe subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs—I was a man before I was a king.
Whoever makes shoddy beer, shall be thrown into manure - town law from Gdańsk, XIth century.
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2011-11-02, 02:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many knights in a kingdom?
Originally Posted by SpirytMeddle ye not in the affairs of dragons my friend. For you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
The way to a dwarf's heart is through his liver.
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2011-11-02, 02:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: How many knights in a kingdom?