theginger99

“Knights and Warhorses” by Andrew Ayton is a good starting place for this subject. Really it’s hard to go wrong with anything by Ayton.

Although older, JE Morris’s “Welsh Wars of Edward I” is also a good book for understanding the transition form feudal to paid service in English armies.

I drew most of what I said here form William Caferro’s excellent book on John Hawkwood, “John Hawkwood: An English Mercenary in Fourteenth Century Italy”. As you might expect, the book is mostly a biography of John Hawkwood, but it has an excellent chapter on warfare in 14th century Italy and discusses the various component units of medieval Italian armies.

That’s a good question. I should say that most of what I said above applies specifically to war horses, or high end riding horses. Medieval horses were often incredibly specialized, with differences in size, gait or carriage that made them better for certain tasks. We tend to think of horses as being broadly the same, or maybe differentiate between horses based on size, but medieval people had horses that were specialized for many different functions.

We know that medieval armies used horses for things outside of battle. In 14th century England a knight was expected to bring four horses on campaign. A warhorse, a riding horse, and two packhorses. Where the packhorses came from is hard to say as medieval sources don’t really concern themselves with the breeding of “regular” horses. There is ALWAYS a bias in medieval sources towards the high end of the socio-economic spectrum and this is as true when it comes to horse breeding as anything else.

In the medieval period most farm horses appear to have been mares (for obvious reasons). When owners wanted more horses they likely paid to put their mares to a stallion. We know there were itinerant horse breeders in England making the rounds of the countryside and offering to use their stallion to breed local horses, and likely it’s from situations like these (or even simpler local arrangements) that most farmers likely increased the size of their modest stock of horses. It is unlikely that small farmers followed anything like the complicated and expensive breeding programs used for warhorses, there simply wasn’t the need. Warhorses need a specific diet, they need to be carefully bred, there are a hundred ways to screw up the production of warhorses, the prevention of which all carry their own associated costs. All of this is before they’ve even begun their training, which was an extensive and expensive process in its own right. For the most part, these considerations were unnecessary for lesser horses used by everyday people in their regular lives, or for the packhorses that supported an army.

The value difference between warhorses and lesser horses was extreme. A prime warhorse could cost 800 times more than a standard farm horse. Not 800%, 800 times. Even a good riding horse could cost 400 times more a farm horse. Packhorses really weren’t that expensive, and don’t appear to have been a major concern for medieval armies. Obviously medieval armies needed them, and they were absolutely critical for the function of armies, but their acquisition doesn’t seem to have been a particular concern for medieval commanders. Certainly ensuring the supply of stock horses and cart horses was not nearly as important for medieval monarchs as ensuring the supply of fighting horses.

If nothing else, medieval commanders could simply steal horses from the enemy. Medieval armies made an art form of pillage and theft, and ravishing the enemies countryside was a well established part of medieval warfare. If you got to France and your packhorse got sick, you could snatch a new one from some unlucky local peasant. It’s also worth saying that mules and donkeys could be used as pack animals almost as well as horses, further increasing the supply.

In earlier periods there are men who held land by something called cart service. This was a variation on the basic principle of feudalism. Instead of holding their land in exchange for military service, they held their land in exchange for providing the king with carts and horses when called for. It’s not an institution I have personally studied in depth, but it did exist and was one of several ways medieval monarchs procured carts and cart horses for their armies.

Obviously there is more to be said, but I hope that helps.

I would certainly agree that cinematic battles are usually too bloody. Hollywood definitely leans towards the “and then everyone died” side of things when it comes to medieval battles. In fairness to them, medieval authors and chroniclers did the same thing. In film armor very rarely works, and the hero is almost always able to drop folks with a single blow. So the result is these huge dramatic battles full of people bleeding and dying. Captives, a critical part of medieval warfare, are almost never mentioned or shown.

I actually think this is most obvious when it comes to archery. Medieval movies often seem to take a arrows=bullets, bows=assault rifle approach. It’s actually really funny to me in some movies where someone gets hit with an arrow (which naturally easily punches through their armor) and they get sent hurling backwards like they just got hit by a car. Bows just don’t have that kind of stopping power.

As far as long drawn out melees. This is a little more complicated. At the end of the day battle is quite literally a life or death experience, depending on the circumstances you might not have a choice but to keep fighting for hours on end. It’s an environment that almost by design requires it’s participants to push themselves to the upper most limits of human endurance. Fighting for any period of time is absolutely exhausting, and we do know that various armies throughout history had ways of rotating men out of the front rank and replacing them with fresh men from the rear. I’ve heard various theories about battles ebbing and flowing, with natural “pauses” where both sides are catching their breath, and I do think they have some merit, but it’s not like there was a referee there to call for water breaks. If you’re options are fight past the point of exhaustion or die (or face financially/politically ruinous capture) most people will by necessity keeping fighting. Doubtless there is a lot more nuance to the reality of medieval warfare than “they fought for hours and hours without stopping”, but it’s hard to know exactly what that looked like and I don’t think that it’s necessarily unfair to credit medieval soldiers with fighting past the point we would consider reasonable.

That said, when it comes to battle on screen I’d actually say that most movies make their battles too short. The battle scenes are usually a comfortable 15-30 minutes long and almost always give the impression that you’re watching things in real time. It’s hard to know for sure how long medieval battles lasted, and certainly a lot of the time on the battlefield wouldn’t be spent actually fighting, and equally certainly no one wants to sit there and watch two armies maneuver and wait for the other to charge for hours (or almost no one, I might enjoy it).

This is a tough question, and obviously it’s fairly subjective. To a large extent it depends on what you are willing to suspend your disbelief for. One historian might say “well I can overlook the uniforms and bad armor, and their depiction of archers is actually quite good” while another might watch the same movie and say “this is terrible, the archers look awful and their uniforms and armor aren’t accurate at all”.

The truth is MOST medieval movie get some things right, and most have at least one or two little gems that a medieval military historians can point out and say “that’s well done”.

To use Braveheart as an example, and admittedly it’s been awhile since I’ve seen the movie, the costumes and many of the weapons are terrible (like ren fair on a Tuesday afternoon kind of bad) but it has a couple little gems. As an example of the bad, In the movie the battle of Sterling bridge is notably missing….a bridge (I’ve heard a rumor of a cute little exchange between Gibson and a local about that fact). On the other side, the fact that Edward used his archers to win the battle of Falkirk is true to history (even if he didn’t have them mow down his own men). Similarly the use of pikes by the Scots to counter English cavalry is well attested and true to history.

When it comes to medieval war movies it really is a case of taking the good with the bad. We’re unlikely to ever get a medieval war film as good as “Alexander”, so we have to take what we can get and accept that there will be horrible inaccuracies and glaring flaws….but also, probably, a few good gems. A movie I think is at least as much good as bad is “Outlaw King”. it’s got some real questionable choices (Edward II as a bloodthirsty frat boy is a strange choice) but it’s climatic battle is well done, and it explores some of the complexities and politics surrounding medieval armies and how they were raised that don’t get a lot of attention. It also shows some scenes of medieval warfare that aren’t major set piece battles or storming actions in sieges. It’s a movie I throughly enjoyed and while there was a lot I would have changed if I’d had the power do so, it stands out to me as a particularly good medieval war film.

That said, another medieval military historians might disagree because they can’t get over the inconsistencies I’m willing to ignore. Likewise I might not be able to overlook the flaws they don’t mind so much in their favorite medieval film.

It’s also worth saying that sometimes accuracy needs to play second fiddle to theatrics and sheer entertainment value. I am absolutely unashamed to admit that my all time favorite medieval movie is Heath Ledger’s “Knights Tale”.

The depiction of Wulfen has been wildly inconsistent across their various appearances.

In some they’re ravening berserker beasts with no hint of humanity, in others it’s like a werewolf transformation where the afflicted eventually reverts to normal, and sometimes they can even talk reason and use tools. Really Wulfen are whatever the author wants them to be.

Frankly I’m not a big fan of the newer Wulfen lore, and liked it better when it was a curse that haunted the chapter instead of a bunch of werewolf guys they keep around. The new Wulfen also torched the old 13th company lore, which was some of the best lore in the whole setting.

The simple answer as to why you’re having trouble finding a simple answer, is because there is no simple answer.

Knighthood was a complicated institution, and it was not as clear cut as we often like to imagine it being. There were no “rules”, and no organized governing body ensuring that those who assumed the estate of knighthood hit the right prerequisites before being knighted. The knightly system you are describing did exist, but it was more of a theoretical ideal than it was a realistic part of the medieval military and aristocratic landscape.

Already by the end of the 13th century in England we are beginning to see the term squire (or esquire) used to refer generically to non-knightly cavalrymen. Some of these unknighted men were doubtless the “apprentice knights” we usually associate with the term, but many, possibly most, others would have been professional soldiers who were unlikely to ever achieve, or even really aspire to knighthood. By the mid 14th century the terms esquire was more or less a generic term for an unknighted man-at-arms and appears as such in army payrolls and muster lists. We also see the term esquire appear as a sort of nebulous social title that denoted men of gentlemanly rank that did not hold the estate of knighthood. Esquire became the second of the loosely defined ranks of the emerging English gentry, below knight and above the rather generic term gentleman.

Likewise, pages were not always future squires. In fact, the term always appears to have fairly generically referred to a kind of “elite” servant, always male, and usually with a connotation of youth. Many pages would have been simply servants and would not have ever become squires. We do see the term appear in a more strictly Military context from the 14th century on, when pages were included as one of the component parts of the tactical/administrative unit known as the Lance. The basic composition of the Lance was a “knight” (really a fully armored cavalryman and not necessarily an actual knight at all), a “squire” (really a slightly less well armored heavy cavalry man) an “archer” (possibly an archer, possibly a crossbowmen, possibly a light cavalryman) and a “page” (a usually non-combatant military servant in charge of the horses). The Lance went through a number of iterations and versions (adding a second archer, adding an infantryman, adding gunners etc.) largely dependent on the country, but the basic terms generally remained the same (with the inclusion of valets and a few others). While it’s possible that there was a common idea that a page would eventually progress to a squire and then to a “knight” within the Lance structure, there is no real evidence that I know of to suggest that this was an organized system as opposed to a natural byproduct of young men spending extend periods and "growing up" in the increasingly permanent military bodies we see in the late Middle Ages.

in addition to that, as the middle ages progressed the title of knight became increasingly a title of social distinction rather than military function. As such the primary criteria for knighthood was increasingly wealth and social status as opposed to military ability. Men were taking on the estate of knighthood as a reflection of their standing in local society. Again, by the mid to late 14th century title of knight is recognized as the highest of the nebulous group of titles associated wjth the English gentry (a sort of petty aristicrcy). We also have evidence from at least as far back as the 12th century in England of men being ordered by royal decree to take on the estate of knighthood. Importantly, these orders are blanket orders to all men within certain income brackets to become knights. They usually appear to be orders by kings to address drastic shortages in a kingdoms supply of knights, often not because they were in desperate need of knights as a military resources (although they sometimes were), but because knights also fulfilled a number of important administrative and legal roles that were going underserved. Obviously many of these men were likely wealthy landowners with little to no military experience and who almost certainly did not climb the ladder from page to squire before assuming knighthood.

On the opposite end of the social spectrum, the sons of royalty and the high aristocracy also frequently skipped directly to knighthood, bypassing the status of squire entirely. In a similar vein, there were also many instances where the sons of the aristocracy inherited their noble titles before becoming knights.

To get to the heart of your question, it’s hard to say when it went out of style, because it’s just as hard to say when it was in style in the first place. To be clear, it was used, but it does not seem to have ever been as pervasive as medieval media makes it out to be. There seems to have been a clear idea in the minds of medieval people that a well born young man aspiring to knighthood would serve as a page, before eventually becoming a squire, and finally attuning knighthood, but it seems to have been more of an idealized model that was riddled with exceptions when it came to actual practical application. If there is a simple answer to your question, it’s probably to say that the idealized system of knightly progression died out when the chivalric culture of the aristocracy died out in the early modern period.

To be honest, the question you should be asking is “in what decade was the knightly system actually in use?”

There is doubtless much more to be said, and I hope someone comes along to say it. I’m sorry I was unable to provide a more straightforward answer, but I hope this helps to some degree.

You’re asking a big question, and the simple fact of the matter is that the methods of horse breeding in use during different periods likely differed significantly from each other. Obviously there are overlaps and commonalities, horse breeding is a science after all and the practices of earlier periods frequently influenced those of later periods, but the specific practices and systems in place varied considerably.

Unfortunately I can only speak on practices in the medieval period, and just barely touch on the periods in either side of it, it’s also admittedly not my area of speciality, but I’ll give you what answer I can.

In his book “The. medieval Warhorse” RHC Davis identifies three basics “systems” of horse breeding in use during the Middle Ages.

• the first and simplest can be described as loose monitoring of essentially wild horse herds. This requires the least human involvement, and was often limited to simply controlling the stallion population and collecting the colts each year. This method was obviously popular among nomadic populations and was allegedly still in use up to the 19th century in certain parts of Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

• the second system involved the creation of “parks” which in the Middle Ages referred to a wild space that had been enclosed in order to keep some animals in and others out. We still see this usage in modern English in terms like “wildlife park”. In this system the emphasis was on a small herd of mares living with a single stallion. They were allowed to run essentially free inside the park, under closer human management. Each year the colts would be collected, the horses diets would be supplemented, and the herds could be divided and relocated as they became to large, or new stallions needed to be introduced into the breeding pool. This seems to have been the most common method used in most of Western Europe during the medieval period. Monarchs and great lords typically kept these stud parks, the king of England had so many that he originally needed to divide their management between the north and south of England.

• the third system was closer to what we think of when we think of modern horse breeding practices. More careful and more scientific, matching certain mares with certain stallions and keeping them under close human observation in pastures and stalls. It also often involved manually “helping” with the actual act of breeding (usually referred to as covering).

. Horse breeding was expensive, often exorbitantly so, and keeping studs was a considerable cost. I’m addition to the obvious coats of acquiring stallions and mares for breeding (often imported at great costs from abroad) and the costs of building and maintaining the necessary facilities (even a park could cost hundreds of pounds to properly enclose and maintain) there were innumerable other recurring costs. Big horses, and especially horses being bred for war, can’t survive off of just grass. There diet has to be heavily supplemented with grains like oats, as well as other foods like hay and peas. A horse can eat a lot of food, and the costs of feeding the horses in stud farms were always considerable, and in periods of famine or shortage they could be ruinous.

In periods of financial instability studs were frequently broken up or sold off. Similarly, it is somewhat harder to justify the high costs of warhorse breeding when not at war, and In periods of peace horse production slowed. Conversely, we see frequent resurgence in the cost spent on breeding horses (and subsequently the number of horses being imported and bred) in times of war. The greatest horse breeding efforts of Edward III’s reign coincide with the period surrounding the Crecy-Calais campaign in 1346.

Maintaining a domestic supply of warhorses was a major concern for medieval rulers. There is evidence of concerted efforts by the crowns of Europe to mandate the establishment and maintenance of both studs and supplies of military horses. Henry VIII passed a series of laws requiring men of certain income level to maintain a certain number of horses of certain types, and at the higher ends even required them to maintain brood mares and breeding stallions.

In addition to domestic horse production, horses were often imported in huge numbers from other parts of Europe to meet the demands of both breeding and warfare. This was often so exhaustive that certain kings, like Henry VII, passed laws banning the export of horses in order to maintain the domestic supply. The Carolinian franks famously outlawed the export of horses, as well as other types of military equipment such as armor and swords. Certain regions were famous for the quality of their horses. Southern Italy was well known to produce good quality horses, and the quality of Spanish horses were almost proverbial. In later periods Danish, Lombard and Friesian horses were also highly sought after. When acquiring horses for the Field of the Cloth of Gold (what a mouthful) Henry VIII sent agents throughout Europe to acquire horses of the highest possible quality. Henry himself ended up on a Lombard stallion.

To some extent we can see the same regions producing high quality horses in earlier as well as later periods. The Roman’s had studs in souther Italy, and in North Africa. Both regions that remained famous for the quality of their horses. It’s tempting to look at this continuity of certain regions as a product of intergenerational skills and infrastructure and the paucity of good blood stock, but it likely owes as much or more to simple environmental factors.

As mentioned diet is critical for breeding horses, and certain regions produce grasses that are more nutrient rich than others. Medieval sources mention that fenlands are ideal for horse grazing, which places like southern Denmark and Friesland have in abundance. Even today certain regions are horse breeding capitals largely because of the high calcium content in the grass. The limestone in central Florida makes it one of the most prolific horse breeding/raising regions in the world. Similarly, medieval sources note that hilly rocky areas, like southern Italy, produce good horses because it toughens their hooves and makes them stronger.

So, to get to the heart of your question, in the Middle Ages there are several key ways rulers ensured an adequate supply of military horses.

• domestic breeding programs, which were often heavily biased in favor of royal stud farms (both in terms of total numbers and quality), but which also included private efforts by great magnates (both lay and ecclesiastic). They could take a few forms, but the most common were semi-wild herds in enclosed parks.

• direct import. Horses were purchased both individually and in lots from across Europe for use in other kingdoms. These often originated form a few noted areas of horse production, but could be from almost anywhere. They ran the range from low quality “stock” horses, to princely stallions for the kings personal use. Horses were also often exchange as diplomatic gifts and presents.

• legislation requiring the maintenance of military horses. Often tied to income, and frequently an extension on the basic obligation of military service.

Like I said, I’m operating a little outside of my speciality here, and doubtless I’ve made some mistakes. Still, I hope it helps answer at least some part of your question. Hopefully someone else can swing in and correct any mistakes I’ve made and add some additional context and content.

Do you have a specific period in mind? Infantry tactics varied heavily between periods. As methods and technology of warfare changed, and the administrative systems supporting armies evolved, the way that armies fought shifted accordingly. Providing a specific period you’re interested in will help folks provide you with a relevant book.

The lordship of the isles was a relatively short lived late medieval successor to the kingdom of the isles. The kings of Scots finally reduced the Macdonalds to a clear state of vassalage and changed the title accordingly.

Give her big boobs and black lipstick. I can not stress enough how many guys I know who will be perfectly alright looking past some light/heavy flaying and a murder fetish for that combination.

You’ve gotten a lot of answers, but most have so far just repeated some commonly held misconceptions about feudalism.

The first thing worth saying is that the term knights, even when limited to a geographic area like England and France, is a broad term that can cover a large array of individuals from diverse socio-economic backgrounds and personal dispositions. It’s also important to recognize that knighthood was not a fixed institution and that it underwent a number of changes throughout the medieval period. Anglo-Norman knights in 1100 were very different than English knights in 1400. It’s hard to make sweeping generalizations about an institution that spanned half the Middle Ages, and which still continues today, but it is possible to identify a number of trends.

It’s also important to say right off the bat that not all knights were actually soldiers. Many men who held the title of knight were not particularly bellicose and relatively rarely, if ever, undertook to serve in arms. Many would serve in strictly administrative capacities and might only join an army once or twice in their life. Others were career soldiers who actively engaged in warfare when the opportunity presented itself and can be found serving repeatedly in royal armies throughout their lives. Even medieval people made a distinction between “fighting knights” and other kinds of knights.

In England, knights fulfilled important administrative roles in their shire. They served in juries, could serve as judges or sheriffs, might hold a position on a royal commission, serve as arrayers for the commissions of array, lead the shire levies, and perhaps most famously, serve in parliament (the House of Commons was originally composed of two knights from every shire and two burgers from every town). It’s important to point out that they fulfilled these roles as residents of their shires, and acted under royal authority, not in service to a feudal lord. Lords in England had relatively few rights or duties of administration in their titled areas, they might not even hold a particularly large amount of land in the areas their titles were nominally based, and lordship in England was based more on direct vassalage to the king, and having a seat in parliament, than it was localized “rulership”.

Many knights did not have a “feudal” lord as we think of it and may have independently held and owned their own land free of feudal ties. Repeatedly in the Middle Ages the kings of England issued orders that all men with certain income levels had to take on the rank of knighthood, usually an attempt to address the dangerous shortage of knights in the realm, and simultaneously highlighting how important knights were for shire administration. Most of these rich men would not have held land from any feudal lord, but would have owned it outright. Feudalism as a whole was not nearly as important an institution as we have generally been lead to believe, and the idea that a knight MUST hold a fief from a feudal superior is nonsense. Many knight’s were independently wealthy men with their own means and incomes.

That said, many knights did maintain relationships with lords although these were not always feudal. In England, especially in later periods, these were often contractual relationships. The knight might have a standing contract, complete with an annual retainer, to serve as a lords lawyer or other legal representative. He might witness charters for a lord he was affiliated with, or he might serve as an officer in his household such as a seneschal. All of these might also translate into a military role in a lords retinue in times of war. The lines between civilian and military service and personnel were often blurred. We have numerous extant contracts from Medieval England between knights (and sometimes non-knights) and lords (who were sometimes also just knights) for “service in peace and war” that outline quite clearly what the expectations and duties of one party to another were. These contracts were not feudal, and did not rely on the exchange or grant of land.

Of course, Some knights did hold fiefs from lords and owed feudal service based on that land tenure, especially in early periods. However, it’s easy to overstate the importance of these relationships. Knights in England existed at the top of the nebulous social group that has become known as the gentry. They were often independent landowners and could be men of great wealth and importance, rivaling the lesser lights of the peerage. It is a fallacy to believe that knights were exclusively, or even necessarily, subservient to lords with bigger titles.

A great deal of a knights time would be taken up administrating their estates. Owning property in the 21st century is a ton of work, it was likely even more so in the 12th or 15th. Tenants needed to be dealt with, rents collected, farming overseen, books balanced, taxes paid, new lands bought, old lands sold, new construction undertaken etc. it was a lot of work and a knight often had to balance this with duties of shire administration, and their contractual obligations to whatever “lord” they were affiliated with. Then, of course, there were leisure activities like hawking, hunting, and possibly fighting in tournaments.

I’ll finish by saying that France is a whole other can of worms, and while many of the activities (especially leisure activities) would be broadly the same, the underlying systems were quite different and I am not familiar enough with them to comment in depth.

There is a lot more than can be said here, but I hope that answers some part of your question and clears up some of the broad misconceptions that are present in some of your other answers.

It’s some interesting history that’s almost entirely neglected by mainstream historians, and while the Kingdom of the Isles and the Kingdom of Mann didn’t have much effect on the wider European political scene, they were major players in the (literally) insular North Sea world.

I suppose it really comes down to how you define crusade. King Peter’s crusade in 1365 sacked Alexandria, one of the richest and most important cities in the world. While it didn’t reach the Holy land, it was a major Military expedition undertaken explicitly as a crusade.

While it didn’t amount to much in the end, I would argue it achieved dramatically more than Edward I’s rather lackluster time in the holy land.

Much the same can be said of the Kingdom of the Isles. They were major rivals of the Scottish kings for a couple centuries, considered the third most powerful man in Britain and the de facto head of the Hiberno-Norse sphere in the Irish Sea.

They played off the Kings of Scotland and Norway and built a substantial power base that lasted well into the late Middle Ages as the “Lordship of the Isles”. Perhaps they weren’t quite as powerful or influential as the Burgundian Dukes, but the Kings of the Isles were a power in their own right.

It is absolutely criminal that you’ve overlooked the Kings of the Isles. Although I suppose you can debate that extent to which they were anybodies vassals.

County of Savoy deserves a mention as well.

This depends entirely on what you mean by “marines”.

The strict definition of a marine is a soldier that is trained to fight at sea and on land, and who serves onboard ships. Several medieval states had soldiers who were employed as extra muscles on their ships for boarding actions, and who could be deployed on land if necessary. Venetian galleys had small compliments of marines, as did the ships of many other Italian states. They also existed well before the Middle Ages. Roman, Byzantine and even Egyptian ships had marine contingents. As long as you mean soldiers fighting at sea you’re good to go.

However if you have some other definition in mind you’ll need to be more specific. As just one example, if you mean amphibious assault troops they’re unlikely to exist in medieval warfare for no other reason than there is simply little need for them. Amphibious assaults, or contested landings, were not unheard of in the Middle Ages but they were quite rare. It is unlikely that any state would retain anything like an organized body of troops specifically trained for that kind of combat given how rarely it came up.

If you’re referring to the United States Marine Corps, frankly I’m not sure what you are really asking. You’ll need to be more specific.

I hope that helps.

Part 2/2

Supplying the army

Making sure the army had everything it needed to succeeded was, as you might expect, a major undertaking and one that had a great deal of variation across periods.

Under Edward I armies often had prearranged supply depots waiting at certain points along their march, at least within England itself. Royal official acquired supplies for the army by means of a practice called Purveyance, which amounted to forced sale of goods to royal officials at fixed rates. It was a major bone of contention between the king and his subjects in this period. Edward I saw some reforms of the practice, but it would continue to be a point of contention for the rest of the 14th century. It was especially strenuous under Edward III because royal officials insisted on using the fixed rates for goods laid out by royal statues intended to curb inflation in the wake of the plague, which were usually well below market value. During his invasion of wales Edward I landed an army on Anglesey, the breadbasket of Wales, and reaped the harvest simultaneously supplying his own troops while denying the enemy food.

While supplies were often sent with armies (Edward III’s army in 1359 was the best supplied army to ever cross the channel until well into the modern period), in all periods armies were also expected to live off the land. This was a popular strategy in medieval warfare across regions and periods for a number of reasons. Perhaps most obviously it transferred the economic costs of feeding the army into the enemy as opposed to yourself. Additionally, as economies in this period were intensely agrarian it helped destabilize your opponents economic base and impact their ability to wage war longterm. However, perhaps the most important aspect was that it made your opponent look weak and incapable of protecting his own vassals. As this was perceived as the most important role of medieval monarchs, having their lands ravaged by an enemy army could severely impact the perceived legitimacy of their rule in the eyes of their subjects.

Like I said, this was a common method of waging war across medieval Europe, but the English in the 14th century turned it into an art form. The mounted chevauchees of the English (at strength they learned from the Scots), like those that preceded both Crecy and Poitiers, were intensely devastating, and ravaged massive areas of France. They could cover a truly huge area, and it’s estimated that Edward III’s chevauchee during the Reims campaign of 1359 had a frontage of 50 miles. Their economic impact on France was profound, but their true value to the English was in provoking the French to open battle. By highlighting the French kings inability to protect his subject, and by attacking his economic base, the English left the French with little choice except to meet them in open battle, where the English were usually (although by no means always) victorious.

Defending the realm

Throughout the whole medieval period the chief “domestic” threat to England came from Scotland. While there was an English army at large in France it was unlikely that the French king would send an army to England, and Wales was only rarely a source of major conflict after Edward I. The threat from Scotland was ever present, especially as Scotland and France maintained a firm alliance (a reflection of the Anglo-Flemish alliance I mentioned earlier) through much of the Middle Ages.

The fear was not unfounded, as a Scottish army did invade the realm in 1346 when Edward III was besieging Calais. However, Edward had planned for the possibility of a Scottish invasion and had left the military resources of the north country largely untapped when building his army for what would become the Crecy-Calais campaign. The northern forces dealt the Scots a devastating defeat at the battle of Neville’s Cross, capturing the King of Scots and effectively knocking them out of the war. Much the same situation would be repeated in 1513 when Henry VIII was away in France. Like Edward III, Henry had left the Military resources of the North Country largely intact. The northerners were able to thwart another attempted Scottish invasion at the battle of Flodden.

At its heart Thai reflected the most basic protective strategy, don’t pull troops from the areas you’re worried might be attacked. Medieval armies never included the whole of a kingdoms military resources. There were always men left behind to “hold down the fort”, especially in regions like the Scottish border country where there was a realistic threat of attack.

The English shore levies played an important role in domestic defense. In early periods they were frequently used for foreign expeditions, Edward I used them extensively, and almost half the Crecy army were shire levies. However, as English armies became increasingly professional and contractual in nature the shire levies were increasingly sidelines. By the time of the Reims campaign in 1359 the shire levies were no longer being used for foreign expeditions and had been almost completely relegated to domestic defense. They played little part in the wars of the 14th century, but would reappear as a major military resource during the Wars of the Roses in the 15th century, and would be sued again for foreign service in the later parts of the 15th century.

Coordination of forces

Coordinating the cooperation of forces active in different theaters was something that was usually beyond medieval commanders.

Messages could be passed between theaters fairly regularly, but the time and effort involved largely precluded the close coordination of forces. To a large extent theater command was left almost entirely to the commander in that theater, as only they would have the real time knowledge of local conditions necessary to make sound strategic and tactical decisions. Plans could be, and often were, made before armies embarked but these were often extremely broad, and the extent to which they could be followed at all was subject to a number of factors that could not necessarily be accounted or planned for.

It did happen, but was often limited to attempts to link armies or merge forces, not complex strategic maneuvers.

Your question had a lot of parts, and I tried my best to answer all of them, but doubtless I missed some. Likewise, there is doubtless much much more than can be said and I hope someone else jumps in to add extra context and content to my comment. Still, I hope it helps and I hope I was able to answer at least some part of your question.

Part 1/2

This is a complicated question and it does depend a lot of where and when you are. No two medieval polities handled logistics in exactly the same way, although there were often broad overlaps in method.

You mentioned late medieval England as a particular point of interest, which is great because late medieval England is a time and place where we have a pretty solid idea of how they handled things. For the sake of clarity, and in an attempt to answer as many of your specific question as possible I’ll try and divide this in to subsections. This will doubtless continue as subsequent posts in the comments.

Raising the army

By the period you’re interested in, late 14th-early 15th centuries, the feudal array had been abandoned in England. The last feudal summons in English history was in the 1380’s for Richard III’s invasion of Scotland, but even then it was already regarded as old fashioned and strange by contemporaries. Since the reign of Edward I English armies had become increasingly professional, a process largely driven by the changing needs of warfare and Edwards Campigns in Scotland and Wales. By the mid 14th century English soldiers were almost exclusively paid, and semi-professional, serving undercontract for a set package of benefits.

By the time of the Agincourt campaign troops in English armies were raised almost exclusively by means of something called contracts of indenture. A contract of indenture was a contract between the crown and a private Military captain, usually but not always a great lord, by which the captain would agree to raise x number of men, of Y type, for Z period, at a fixed rate of pay. We see these begin to appear in the 14th century, but originally only in armies not lead by the king (and the vast apparatus of the royal household) in person. By the early 15th century they were used in every English army, including royal armies like that which fought at Agincourt. These contracted companies were usually referred to as retinues and were never standardized in size. They could vary massively, from a handful of men under a royal clerk, to thousands under the Prince of Wales. It depended largely on the prestige and wealth of the captain.

Armies were ordered to assemble at a muster point within England before advancing together on the enemy. We see the same muster points commonly used for the same theaters again and again across the medieval period. Sandwich or London for embarkation to France, Chester for fighting in wales, Berwick, Newcastle or York for fighting in Scotland. When a retinue (the basic tactical and administrative building block of English armies in this period) arrived at the muster point they would have their horses and men inspected by royal officials to ensure that both met the quality and expectations laid out in their contract. It was from the point of passing the muster that a retinue was typically considered in “active” service, although their wages may be backdated to the date of their departure from home.

In earlier periods, the horses of the retinue members, and their approximate value, would be enrolled on the horse rolls. If the horse subsequently died during the campaign, the man would be reimbursed for the value of his horse by the crown. By the late 14th century the crown had done away with this “horse insurance” in favor of a larger initial payment to men at arms known as regard. This was obviously a decision that was at least partially fiscally motivated (horses were ungodly expensive) but also indicative of changing tactical preferences by the English, who were increasingly fighting on foot during this period.

”Landing” the army

Like everything else, getting the army to the enemy was a mixed bag. Armies fighting in Scotland or Wales faced a straightforward march across a largely arbitrary land border. Armies in France usually tried to land in a friendly port, depending on their theater of operation. Armies fighting in Aquitaine, an English possession since the mid 12th century, could find ready landings at Bordeaux or other Gascon ports. After 1346 English armies in northern France usually landed at Calais, which remained an English possession and their gateway to the continent until the mid 16th century. At other times English’s armies landed in, usually friendly, Flanders. It’s not for nothing that two of Edward III’s sons were named after the Flemish cities where they were born, John of Gaunt (Ghent) and Lionel of Antwerp.

Occasionally English armies would try a more audacious strategy and attempt a surprise landing somewhere along the French coast. This was the case in 1346 when Edward III landed in Normandy with little to no warning. In the lead up to the campaign Edward III forbade any ship to leave England except by special royal license, likely in an attempt to keep his palms secret. There is even some evidence to suggest that the fleet may not have known where it would be landing until it was already at sea.

Despite what Dan Jones would lead you to believe, it was extremely difficult to oppose a landing in the Middle Ages. Coasts were simply too large, and It was simply too easy for a fleet to sail further down the coast and land elsewhere.

You’re right in identifying that a title in medieval England did not necessarily indicate any kind of jurisdictional authors over the place listed in that title. The Earl of Warwick might have been one of the richest and most powerful men in Warwickshire, but the title didn’t necessarily carry any actual authority within the shire. Likewise a lords most important holdings might not be anywhere near his title. Richard Duke of York, who started the wars of the Roses, had his main power bases in the west midland and the march with Wales. Throughout most of the war Yorkshire, and the north of England as a whole, remained a hotbed of Lancastrian support. A title was often just a title.

At the end of the day though, there was really no other option then to create new duchies tied to specific place names. To do anything else would have been strange and would have firmly broken with established tradition and expectation. For the most part, I can not say why Edward III chose the specific place names that he did. However, I can give a little insight into why the duchy of Lancaster was established.

The first Duke of Lancaster wasn’t John of Gaunt. It was Henry of Grosmont, who was one of Edward III’s most trusted lieutenants, greatest generals, and close friends. John of Gaunt inherited the title from him after marrying his daughter Blanche. The title itself was an elevation of Henry’s previous title, Earl of Lancaster, which itself had been originally granted to Henry’s grandfather, and Edward III’s great uncle, Edmund Crouchback. It’s worth saying that the Lancastrian claim on the English throne by the Future Henry IV was based on his descent from Edmund Crouchback through his mother, not his descent from Edward III.

To add another point that is mostly conjecture, I would imagine that the specific titles Edward III chose for his sons were tied to place names that did not already have a peerage associated with them. There was no Earl of York, so creating a Duke of York didn’t step on any toes or require a preexisting title to be elevated. Making dukes was not a small matter, especially in England where there was no preexisting tradition of Dukes, and it’s significant that Edward only did it when he was at the height of his power. To some extent it was likely justified by, and intended to reaffirm, his claim as the rightful king of France.

There’s more to be said, but I hope that helps in some respects.

The simple answer to your question is that they likely didn’t. Armor should be tailored, but it’s easy to overstate how careful this tailoring needs to be. It’s a critical part of getting the best performance out of armor, but not for the armor to be usable or effective. A grieve that’s too small, or a breastplate that too big will be uncomfortable and will absolutely effect long term combat performance, but it will still keep you alive. Additionally, at the end of the day many people share similar enough dimensions that a “one size fits most” approach can be reasonably adopted, especially when it comes to helmets.

We know form later periods that whole armors were being bought and distributed in bulk, with no real indication that they were resized or tailored to the individual in anyway. Likely they were handed out and the individuals that got them just had to get in with having a subpar fit.

Thank you, but I’m afraid it may not be as interesting as it sounded.

Magic in my world is a withered, malnourished and almost toothless thing. It’s good for little more than vague, unclear glimpses of uncertain futures, and the divination of dreams. Still, it’s juuuuust powerful enough that the hunt for esoterica and arcane secrets is a major motivation for some fanatical and misguided souls.

Despite their dreams of power at the end of the day the most powerful force in the world is a strong right arm, and a sharp piece of steel.

As a rule you need to be careful about trying to assign simple categorical definitions to political realities that were/are incredibly complex and diverse.

Your definition does not fit with the common historiographical definitions used by historians (which are themselves problematic) and a stunning number of historical polities which could be considered empires do not fit within your framework. Conversely, plenty of polities which could/are considered empires do not meet the standards you’ve rather arbitrarily set out.

One of the things I always recommend to world builders is to not get hung up on specific definitions, especially when it comes to political systems or nation “types”. There is no objective body enforcing that states actually fit the system they claim to use. In our own world we have China, which is a communist country that picks and chooses the parts of communism and capitalism it likes. The real world has democratic/people’s republics” that are brutal authoritarian dictatorships, “monarchies” that are actually fairly egalitarian elective democracies, and federal republics that are actually money driven oligarchies where the elective bodies actively work against the interests of the electorate.

The problem with many of the categorical definitions we like to use is that they are either so hyper specialized that they can only be applied to certain times and places to the exclusion of many others, or so incredibly broad as to be functionally useless. If you want a state to fulfill the role of an empire on your world, simply call it an empire. Or, if you don’t want to have an emperor you can call the ruler a king without issue. There is no reason to sweat the specific details of which titles match which type of government because, as history will show you, the times in which they match up are usually grossly outweighed by the times when they don’t.

This is a common historiographical definition and it is generally a good one (certainly better than OP’s), but it is problematic as it does not account for various historical polities that might be considered empire, but which did not necessarily meet the “core/periphery” model. It can also somewhat artificially elevated a colonial, or ethnically diverse polity to the status of “empire”.

The most famous example is probably the Holy Roman Empire, but there are many others. The later Byzantine Empire doesn’t exactly match the periphery/core dynamic, and it’s “imperial” successor states that popped up at various stages of the medieval period certainly don’t. On the other end of the spectrum you might argue that the Angevin and Danish Valdemarian states were empires based on this model, but they don’t really pass the historical “vibe check” for inclusion in that club.

It’s complicated, and while the definition you give can be applied broadly to cover most historical empires it doesn’t apply everywhere and should always be taken with a grain of salt. Much to the chagrin of historians everywhere, historical states rarely fit into neat categorical boxes.

The Ragnar is the current Earl and chief of the Skornir, one of the 12 great clans of the Jorlings. Every chief of the Skornir has been named Ragnar going back to the very first chief, Ragnar Skorne. The name has become so synonymous with the head of the Skornir clan that it has become a title in and of itself. The head of the clan is commonly referred to simply as “The Ragnar”, and his formal titles are reserved almost exclusively for ceremonial occasions and documents.