"Footmen" based 'Knights' and 'Knighthood'?
- Thread starter The Ubbergeek
- Start date
Wrong thread? I am not sure where pre-colonial Africa's thing come form.. Byzance?
Yes, maybe you say there is a certain form of knighthood there, but...
No need to be a bit rough, you know, you should tell us more instead.
Flocculencio
Donor
Ah, but that's expensive and takes a level of organisation most feudal states didn't have
Now, for the money.. I heard horses are actually a big part of it...
Foot 'knights' may be cheaper actually, maybe...
Foot 'knights' may be cheaper actually, maybe...
They would be, but how does this help with having footmanry as the elite?
Well, cheaper first can help fund them well - money is a part of everything in life...
Right, but it being easier makes it harder for this group to stand out from the rest.
Then, it's other things. Maybe someone, thinking antiquity and what they know of Greece states, and Rome, imagine things like... the drill of Prussia and England, centuries earlier, adapted to medieval weaponry.
And the men are picked one way or other for quality, 'birth', etc...
Okay, here's my opinion on why cavalry developed. Even before Rome fell the Romans were relying more on horses. Why?
Movement: They move much faster than footmen, can carry stuff, and if they die you still have your soldier at least and maybe a little meat. If you have a big border to police or you need to move a bunch of men to spot X fast to be decisive you want horses. For post Roman states, you have more problems with footmen. You need to maintain the Roman roads or build new ones. Horses reduce that problem. Related: If you're expanding east into areas that are pretty wild, you need horses even more. Or how about if your enemies are horse riders themselves, you need horses to catch up to them.
Tactical advantages. A man on a horse vs. guys on the ground as long as they aren't that well trained or even if they are but aren't used to fighting as a unit has an advantage. Not just the mass and strength of the horse that can knock you down, but it's a lot easier to bring more force to beat if you swing both down (direction) and bracing yourself on the horse (more applicable after stirrups but still useful before). Try it yourself, stab/swing up, or swing down. Which feels more natural?
Strategic advantages: If you have tactical advantages thanks to cavalry, then your enemies do not want to face you in the field. What do they do? They retreat to fortifications! Field battles are unpredictable, sieges while boring and miserable are also easier to control. Why wouldn't you prefer from a strategic point a situation where your worries are food/water and not keeping enough men around vs. a field battle that you can lose in an instant due to luck? Take the surer thing!
Population: Small numbers of well trained cavalry can defeat more loosely trained numbers of infantry. So not only can they respond faster than footmen in most cases, you don't have to field as many. You can armor them heavily (relatively more than foot) and being on a horse increases rate of survival by itself. Basically they are easier to organize and hard to kill off.
I think the big things though, are organizational. If you have the money, population and administration to organize, train and take enough men from the fields to fight, you can keep footmen. I still don't see how you can get elite knights out of that absent lack of horses or terrain that made horses more trouble than they were worth to use. It should be noted that in the early modern period, a lot of knights did fight on foot. But it was never like the classic knights whose mystique was bound up in their duties as rulers as well.
Movement: They move much faster than footmen, can carry stuff, and if they die you still have your soldier at least and maybe a little meat. If you have a big border to police or you need to move a bunch of men to spot X fast to be decisive you want horses. For post Roman states, you have more problems with footmen. You need to maintain the Roman roads or build new ones. Horses reduce that problem. Related: If you're expanding east into areas that are pretty wild, you need horses even more. Or how about if your enemies are horse riders themselves, you need horses to catch up to them.
Tactical advantages. A man on a horse vs. guys on the ground as long as they aren't that well trained or even if they are but aren't used to fighting as a unit has an advantage. Not just the mass and strength of the horse that can knock you down, but it's a lot easier to bring more force to beat if you swing both down (direction) and bracing yourself on the horse (more applicable after stirrups but still useful before). Try it yourself, stab/swing up, or swing down. Which feels more natural?
Strategic advantages: If you have tactical advantages thanks to cavalry, then your enemies do not want to face you in the field. What do they do? They retreat to fortifications! Field battles are unpredictable, sieges while boring and miserable are also easier to control. Why wouldn't you prefer from a strategic point a situation where your worries are food/water and not keeping enough men around vs. a field battle that you can lose in an instant due to luck? Take the surer thing!
Population: Small numbers of well trained cavalry can defeat more loosely trained numbers of infantry. So not only can they respond faster than footmen in most cases, you don't have to field as many. You can armor them heavily (relatively more than foot) and being on a horse increases rate of survival by itself. Basically they are easier to organize and hard to kill off.
I think the big things though, are organizational. If you have the money, population and administration to organize, train and take enough men from the fields to fight, you can keep footmen. I still don't see how you can get elite knights out of that absent lack of horses or terrain that made horses more trouble than they were worth to use. It should be noted that in the early modern period, a lot of knights did fight on foot. But it was never like the classic knights whose mystique was bound up in their duties as rulers as well.
Well, knighthood first appeared in Western civilisation on the form of non-noble infantry. If i remember well, it's fishers/soldiers in Occitania that first develloped this new form of military organisation because of the absence of aristocratic military organisation (as the region was an alleu, a without-lord land).
As the Church searched a way to have an importance in the medieval society, it quickly "sanctified" this way of life, men ready to take arms to defend a land, etc.
It's because Church 1)Promoted knighthood 2)Gained influence in the post-carolingian nobilty (a noblitly fixed on the lands, as hereditary possessions) that the nobles searched to have knighthood.
It's because of the recuperation of the higher classes that knighthood was a cavalry-based warfare.
Keep knighthood at least a trans-class warfare and you'll have a mix between cavalry and infantry. Most probably a mix between a heavy cavalry and light infantry.
Now, if you want to change the codes, you need to change A LOT on the feudal society of the XII. At this time the nobles knighs, supposed to help their suzrain, became to prefer pay the statutory fine rather than actually fight. (By the way it helped greatly to develop semi-professional armies). So, the logical answer was to re-extand the knighthood to other class.
The knights order dates from the era were bourgeois were accepted as knights, and were nobles decided to make a more select club of "real knights". I'm really simplifying here, but you need to remove the monetarisation of feudal economy to change the knights codes.
Allow me to disagree a little here. The roman roads were far less used since the VII for two reasons.
1 - The modification of trade transport and new techniques. The roman roads became more and more difficult to use for transports as the average carriage was heavier. Granted it damaged the roads but it damaged the vehicle too. It is why dusk roads were preferred since this era.
2 - Since the merovingians probably (but sure thing since the peppininds) royal decrees were taken to limit the usage of roman roads, unless for armies; with obligation of maintain for local nobles. Thanks to the roads, infantry armies could be carried quickly. Remember that frankish infantry in former roman territory often (if not almost always) defeated cavalry-based army (the Battle of Tours being sort of paradigm)
Now, i agree with this statement
That i think it's one of the major reasons of the greater use of cavalry after the Peppinids, with the social reason and, but that's a personal tought, the predominance of plain nobilty in Italy, Germany and Francia (even in Aquitania, where the Vascon cavalry was one, if not the, basis of the army)
Huh, I didn't know either of those things. It makes a lot of sense if the dirt roads were more useful and low maintenance as well as easier on the transports. When was the Frankish (Germanic) switch to cavalry? By Lechfeld surely.
Depends, i think it was always useful for attacks against Alamans, Bavarians, Saxons or even Frisons; to resume all attacks in open field with germans. As the Franks had the economic infradtructure and the social structure to maintain a cavalry among their free-men based warfare, it wouldn't be so hard.
Plus, the cavalry is a wonderful tool for raids : if you want just to plunder cities or monasteries, you do not need an heavy and slow infantry (remember Roncevalles), you need fast and quick cavalry.
I think the Aquitaino-Franks war are a good exemple of that.
Horses offer two advantages: mobility, both from the faster speed of the horse and from the lessened demands on the rider, and shock, in that the horse-rider combination offers more striking power than either alone. Given that, if horses are available and the terrain does not preclude their use, they will be used in warfare. (Even today, with all our vehicles and aircraft, we still use horses; see the photos of our troops in Afghanistan on horseback for confirmation of this.)
The only examples of 'foot knights' from post-Roman times are from cultures where the supply of horses was limited or non-existent (Amerindians, Polynesians, Africans) or the terrain was unfavorable for horses (Switzerland, Scandinavia, Nepal).
The only examples of 'foot knights' from post-Roman times are from cultures where the supply of horses was limited or non-existent (Amerindians, Polynesians, Africans) or the terrain was unfavorable for horses (Switzerland, Scandinavia, Nepal).
Have the majority of European horses wiped out by a plague. No horses, no horse-riders, no horse based warriors that wiould go on to compose the military and social elite.
Of course, a world without horses would be a very different world in many ways outside the whole horse back warrior angle.
Of course, a world without horses would be a very different world in many ways outside the whole horse back warrior angle.
Well, a cavalry need first that someone have the possibilities to maintain it. A strategic advantage can't create a military warfare, only economical infrastructure can.
Or you make the carolingian decrees about mobilisation disappear (The ones that says that if 5 people are too poor to maintain individually a horse for each one, they had to share the cost for having one and give a weapon for one guy), or by another way you keep the free-men based military system much longer.
I think that i both way, you'll have a non-noble knighthood appear (called miles) first (as OTL) but with more numerical and geographical importance.
Then, get rid of the Church renew of influence for avoiding a benediction of the non-noble knighthood : you'll have poor knights at foot, and noble non-knights mounted-infantry (as in the Battle of Tours era).
You need to get rid of the Carolingian Empire anyway. More invasions -> More need of local population to arm itself -> More fighting in Frankish Gaul -> Less usage of cavalry because of terrain (against raiders or in mountainous terrain, infantry is better; except in the case of horsebacked raiders as Magyars of course)
You mean, sort of super-equine influenza? It could indeed work.
I don't know much about horse diseases and epidemology, is a radical modification in the contagion and dangerosity of this virus possible?
whitecrow
Banned
Aren't Eagle/Jaguar Warrior of Aztecs exactly what the OP is asking for? Maybe Europe and New World come in contact few hundred years earlier and establish diplomatic/trade relations; Aztecs than take up aspects of European culture & technology, making Eagle/Jaguar Warrior even more like knight analogs?
You're missing the point.
Besides the fact it would be quite ASB, Aztec warfare appearead after that knighthood did in Europe. I mean, knighthood is a produce of Carolingian Empire, and Aztec culture and warfare really emerge two or three centuries laters.
And, not regarding that, you need high middle-ages transatlantic contact.
Finally, horse is really really useful in war. If contacts were established in 700's, it would be more probable that precolumbian people would adopt quickly horses.
But even without that, you're talking about elite units. Granted knighthood is an elite unit/class,(issued from the mix between frankish cavalry or mounted infantry, and new economical situation among the poor) but it's not about replacing it with Aztec warfare : it's about changing what knighthood was military speaking, but by keeping the "knight" aura, the codes and the orders.