Later medieval warfare in transition

[Erpingham]

While discussing the 2014 battleday, a side interest began around whether Bosworth is a medieval or pike & shot battle.  Bosworth sits in a very interesting period, during which what everyone would instinctively recognise as medieval warfare changes to what they would instinctively see as pike & shot.  Can we draw a definite line to divide these two military systems firmly or do we have a "transitional era"?  What divides the two - technology, tactics, socio-cultural factors?  Should the Society of Ancients even be interested in these questions? 

[aligern]

We have to be interested because it defines the end of our period.  Frankly I don't think that a division is at all easy, What is an English army of 1340, but pike and shot by another name? 
Conversely, until shot can stand  on their own two feet the majority of the 16th century is more nediaeval than early modern. Bayard is really not a  fighting modern drilled, manoeuvreable warfare.
Roy

[Patrick Waterson]

English armies (admittedly mainly of the stay-at-home variety) were still incorporating bills and longbows in the reign of Elizabeth I (if I remember correctly she abolished the longbow in 1586) so we might consider 'proper' pike and shot as not being complete until the late 16th century.

While we can usually draw a somewhat fuzzy line of division for most armies somewhere in the 16th century, the basic criterion should perhaps be when an army is fielding missile infantry who are mainly or exclusively using gunpowder weapons.  Using this criterion, Henry VIII's 1544 army, with its prepondrance of longbows and polearms, would still be mediaeval rather than renaissance.

This site http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_armies_eng.html gives 1558 as the changeover point, at which contingents have equal numbers of 'mediaeval' and 'renaissance' weapons, and 1584 as the point where 'renaissance' weaponry is distinctly (2/3) in the majority.

England was something of a late-developer in this respect, but in view of the above Bosworth looks to be safely within the mediaeval period.

[Erpingham]

Roy has a good point about English HYW tactics, which combined a core of good close order infantry with effective distance weapons - the ancestor of pike and shot.  Although "pike" is fairly unambiguous, we should watch the term "shot" - 16th century English armies counted their longbows as part of their shot, so we may be looking more at a tactical function than a technology.  Most French "shot" were crossbowmen into the 1520s.

If we take pikes, the long pike as the primary weapon of the Swiss dates to about the 1440s.  By the 1470s they have a fairly mature tactical doctrine with them (which they keep well into the 16th century).  But their firepower side is rather undeveloped - forlorn hopes of skirmishers.  The Burgundians are better at "shot" - most of the ordnance infantry are shot - and they have a much more developed approach to artillery and gendarme style cavalry.  But they lack proper pikes. 

The melting pot for pike and shot seems to me the Italian Wars, which bring together French traditions (which have companies of crossbow and longbow shot), Swiss and Landsknecht pikes and Spanish combined arms infantry formations.  However, exactly how pike and shot comes out of that, I don't know enough about the period to state. 

So, I do think we a talking about quite an extensive transitional period.

[aligern]

Not only that, but we have fallen into the trap of defining a period as  Pike and Shot. This is itself meaningless.  I prefer a term for the period such as Early modern warfare because it is the style of warfare that is the important discriminator.   In the Orient it would have to be described as  bow and cannon ?
That sort of weapons based determinism is really dangerous, though inescapable to an extent.

I would much prefer to see  the next period to ours as defined by the introduction of battalion style warfare. Let us ignore the weaponry and suggest that the revolution in warfare is not a gunpowder revolution , but a command and control discontinuity.  For me the difference is between Turenne and whoever is in command at say Cerignola. between battalions that are fought by their commander and are mobile and huge blocks of pike with something armed with shot, gunpowder or crossbow nearby.
The Italian wars are Mediaeval, the Dutch of Maurice of Nassau are Early modern.   I would be happy to put the change between 1560 and 1600 so 1580 would fit.

However, we already have a huge period to cover and I would definitely not want what is an academic argument to become a territorial claim. There is already a perfectly good Society for 1485 - 1720 or so!!
Roy

Roy

[Mark G]

I struggle with the concept that the SoA should encompass all of this transitional period because the tech has not changed sufficiently fror the chronology to tick over.

its a bit like using the Great Northern War to include Marlborough in with the Pike and Shot period - or declaring that because Kalmuks were still using horse archery in the Napoleonic wars the wars themselves were not that different from the mongolial medieval era.

Extrapolating the presence of crossbows over handguns to therefore include the Italian wars just seems to be pushing things too far to fit into some shakey logic.

Its a sprocket based definition, not a sensible one.  A change in the leading tactics should be the marker, not a technological tipping point for a secondary weapon which becomes dominant much much later.

Rather than looking at the missile component - which is tactically pretty insignificant as a development tool, its the pike that for me indicates a real change from Medieval to Renaissance.

and by that, I mean specifically the introduction of massed pike blocks as the dominant infantry tactical formation.

therefore, swiss using blocks but mostly halberds etc are still medieval, but the swiss change to the pike block - Nancy, 1477 - and the sucess there against the most well equipped charging armourd knights, marks the beginning of a new tactical system and therefore makes the change of period.  A simple definition, with a simple date cut off.

That this was not seen in the British Isles for a long time later is of no more relevance than the GnW still using pikes, or that the Turks were still using horse archers in the east.  No one would argue that in 1940 one side should still be using use ww1 rules, would they.

Because we are are mostly an English speaking hobby, and because we are so poorly served by rules for the renaissance period, its common to still use ancmed rules for the WoTR and even later - which is fine, but is not evidence or proof.

But really, the later WoTR (after Tewskesbury - there is a nice fat gap in fighting there too) should be gamed by a decent set of P and S rules as archaic armies within that period - in the same way that using ottomans in the 18th century are still played by rules written for the seven years war despite having nothing in common with their Austrian or Russian co temporal opponents.

Otherwise we are letting British backwardness lead our interpretation.

As for the length of the transition period, I suspect thats rather the reason that the rules options are soo much poorer, but we shouldn't let that guide us to continually extending the period which is more straightforward to creap ever onward.

Trying to fit the transitional amries into a sensible gamable whole is the real challenge, and if someone ever cracks it, will be the real fun - a period where tactical differences actually determine the difference between armies, not just the figures and a couple of key troop types.

[Erpingham]

Extrapolating the presence of crossbows over handguns to therefore include the Italian wars just seems to be pushing things too far to fit into some shakey logic.

Its a sprocket based definition, not a sensible one.  A change in the leading tactics should be the marker, not a technological tipping point for a secondary weapon which becomes dominant much much later.

Rather than looking at the missile component - which is tactically pretty insignificant as a development tool, its the pike that for me indicates a real change from Medieval to Renaissance.

It seems to me to condemn technological determinism about shot but stick to it for pike is a bit of shaky logic too.  Personally, I agree with you we should be looking for shifts in military art rather than weaponry.  Roy makes the case that it is the change of command and control later in the 16th century that is the clincher.  I'm not sure.  But, to me, the Swiss in 1477 haven't really done anything tactically revolutionary - they've just adapted their previous tactics to a new weapon.  Their use of combined arms (one theoretical marker of Early Modern warfare) is limited - the "old fashioned " English are better at this.  I would still hold that the Italian Wars are the crucible for change.  Armies at the beginning of that conflict are still recognisably Medieval.  By the later stages they have changed to something I would identify as Pike and Shot (while recognising that is a technologically deterministic title and therefore Early Modern might be better, it is a familiar one). 

[Mark G]

a pike is not new technology, and even if it were, its not the key to my argument, which is that it is the massed pike blocks as a combination, not the pikes or the infantry blocks on their own, that si the significant change.

all of mainstream western europe reacted to the swiss pike blocks quickly - they did not do this directly to the swiss when they came with halberds, and they certainly did not with the first hand guns.

The italian wars are not a cucible for change, ans a series of wars making use of the change - everyone wants the swiss in those wars because they win the battles.  that tells us that something significant changed with Nancy.

[Patrick Waterson]

Actually not everyone wanted the Swiss, as the development of landsknechts attests ... 

Since the modus operandi of warfare is usually in transition to a greater or lesser degree, pinning down an exact transition point between systems can be problematical, particularly when weapon technology and battlefield organisation and technique do not march in step.  The Swiss actually introduced the keil (block of polearm troops) well ahead of the pike, bringing the pike into use to supplement and then replace the halberd as their operations moved from mountainous into clear terrain (actually it was not quite that simple but one can see a pattern).

When Carmagnola used his crossbowmen to shoot up the Swiss and his cavalry to go in against them on foot at Arbedo in 1422, he was certainly reacting to the Swiss system, but not to copy it!

Perhaps the best index of the transition from mediaeval to renaissance armies is the various ordonnances passed by different rulers, notably in France and Burgundy.  Charles the Bold/Rash's army, the quintessential ordonnance army, is still a mediaeval army but one with many elements looking forward to the renaissance.

If we wish to draw up a set of criteria for the end of the mediaeval period, we may wish to look at the following:

1) The affirmation of royal authority - the king no longer has to depend upon his nobles to raise an army, though he can still use them to command one.

2) The existence of 'permanent' units, e.g. the Spanish tercios.

3) Royal livery replacing noble livery throughout the army (ties in with 1) above).

So - would this leave us free to refight Bosworth if we really wanted?  I think so: English retinues were still an essential part of the army (were they not, Mr Stanley?) and it was Henry VII who directed that no noble should have a retinue greater than 200 men and began reconfiguring the army (and navy) as his own.

Could we refight Flodden and still remain within period, or at least period flavour?  Again, probably yes (not that many seem to want to).  We might even stretch as far as Pinkie Cleugh in 1547.  A mediaeval battle starts losing its feel when much of the shot is provided by 'vile gunpowder', and while my own feeling is that while 1485 is a good terminal date for our purposes there is a further 'handshake period' lasting until 1550 or so during which England's and some European military systems keep something of a mediaeval flavour.  And flavour rather than dry print definitions seems to me what it is ultimately all about. 

[gavindbm]

To go back to the original post...this society should be interested to the degree that it helps define our end stop. 
The tricky bit with an end stop based on military system (or social/economic/political system) change is these are not uniform across the world in our period (or even now)...so we need to deal with (and accept a degree of) fuzziness   

Partly we seem to revisiting debates about Revolutions in Military Affairs (RMA) which were popular several years ago (perhaps ten?).  I would suggest we have definitely had a RMA when the main actors/groups all adopt the change and those who do not are unable to face those who have changed in a "stand up" (western way of war) battle.

Thus I would tend to agree with Roy that the RMA is completed with the introduction of battalion sized units predominately armed with firearms - as everyone else eventually adopts this.

However, before then there is a lot of trial and adaption going on with armies where a large proportion of troops are equipped with gunpowder weapons.  And currently we seem to aim to draw a line at about the start of this period of experimentation, change and adaption (where a lot of gunpowder weapons are in use). Which, as noted by Patrick, occurs at the same time as socio-political changes associated with the rise of absolute monarchy. 

However, it is a fuzzy boundary...

[Erpingham]

I don't think you can draw a line after one battle and say "before was x, after was Y".  Tactics, technology, social attitudes take time to change.  In the Middle Ages (or the Rennaissance), they don't change over night.  So, I would hold that a transitional period is fairly essential to understand things.  I also don't think you can pin the change on one technology. Like Patrick I would suggest out that the Swiss in the Burgundian Wars are perfecting an old tactical idea with a new weapon and , while I don't think you can ignore gunpowder weaponry, the change isn't really about when you re-equip your shot with handguns, nor how much artillery you field.  And, again as Patrick and Roy have pointed out, we need to look at the change in which armies are raised and commanded.

Where would I put my transition period?  I think I would start roughly around 1450, when the French reorganise themselves and the English tactical paradigm is waning.  After this (except in England), men-at-arms see themselves more naturally back on their horses and the search is on for effective close order infantry.  The development of battlefield gunpowder weapons is evolving (though for quite while, the most effective use is dug in defensively ).  I'd probably bring it to an end around 1515 -20.  Marignano reads quite like a medieval battle, but the French succeed through an effective combined arms approach of heavy cavalry, pike block and artillery against an old fashioned Swiss combination of pikes and guts.  The English haven't made this adjustment yet but you can see them reaching for it - increased native pikemen, mercenary landsknechts and heavy cavalry, investment in artillery, pike-and-bill blocks with mixed shot sleeves.

I believe the Italian Wars are the place where the change speeds up, because it is the most active theatre of war at a crucial time and it brings together Imperial, French, Italian and Spanish traditions.

[aligern]

I'd also plump for the Italian wars , though the French Wars of religion are more mediaeval than modern.  The Italian Wars show strong evidence of rational experimentation in the combination of shock and firepower (perhaps more useful terms than pike and shot). This is clearly starting in the late fifteenth century and of course it is happening earlier but slower.

There is an analogy that I like to use  which demonstrates the rate of change. It is to take a picture of a Turk or Mamluk  warrior's equipment and armour in the tenth century and  that of an Ottonian miles. then produce the same picture every century through  to 1450 for both traditions. What is apparent is that in the tenth century the European is rather crudely equipped, certainly crudely armoured. By the fifteenth century the Oriental armour has really changed very little, whereas the European armour is not only very different but has  a much more scientific (really its about engineering and prototyping)  way of covering vulnerable parts and deflecting missiles. We could do the same for tactics and see the same slow but steady change as the West gradually overhauls the East for all sorts of reasons. A similar story too for gunpowder weapons, invented by the Chinese and they  have them from the 11th century onwards, but by the sixteenth century Westerners are better at it. These changes are speeded by the Renaissance, but they were already in train. 
Generalship takes time to catch up. In the fifteenth century the Hungarians and Crusaders 9cannot put it together at Varna, in the seventeenth century they have largely achieved superiority over the Near East.

In the fifteenth century there is a really interesting development in artillery useage with artillery camps  The French do this at Castillon, Charles the bold does it, so does Matthias Corvinus and before them the Hussites. In fact the Hussites do what the Moghuls and Turks do with artillery and do so 50 years before them!
The military revolution has IMHO been going on for 500 years before the Italian Wars, but slowly.
OK, let us see if it can plausibly be pushed back earliers still. I think that there is a rational case that the revolution in thought comes late to the art of war, and actually starts with the Fall of the Western Roman Empire. Empires do not encourage innovation or change. They dominate their geography so that there are no serious competitors. Rome, Sasanian Persia and China were never going to dominate each other. When secure in a Geography the empire has no competitive desire for change. The winners have won, things evolve, but change is about coups at the top. Absent a great environmental challenge there is no pressing need for change. Splitting Europe into a number of competing states established the competitive frame whereby eventually  science and engineering offered enough advantage that states began to sponsor advances in order to win wars. They needed more people, more guns, better means of deploying and fighting because they were competing with similar sized entities.
That's an argument for  continuum. The argument for a discontinuity is that there comes a time  when the  experimentation is done and the new world has come and people concentrate on refinement. That occurs in the eighteenth century. The means of war, tactics, drill and organisation  in the 1840s are palpably the same as those in the 1660s... they are refined and faster, but the same.
That puts the change or revolution at a point culminating in the late seventeenth century but that is just the tipping point. The period of advance is from about 1000 AD to then with the pace quickening from about 1450. It takes then two hundred years to adapt to the new technology which is gunpowder.

As several have said before me there is a menu of dates when one could say that gunpowder had reached the point where it made a major impact. That might be the Hussites, it might be that battle in th Italian Wars which the Swiss get shot down, as sort of European Sekigahara.

[Mark G]

I really struggle with the idea that battles featuring pistol armed cavalry come under the medieval category, Roy - the FWoR just do not fit for me as medieval warfare.

rather than trying to define when we are properly into modern warfare - which is going to be a very late date, as Roy says - with batallions and lack of feudal obligated troops and what not, I think it much more sensible to start the other way, when are we looking at something not clearly medieval?

and for me, that must be before the Italian wars.

showing that the italian wars had lots of everything in them, medieval, modern, experiemental, change - all this further re-enforces the point that they are NOT medieval enough - they are wars of experimentation, and that experimentation is itself the basis for the renaissance - the basis for the change in period boundary.

The ordinances are still medieval, only just, but enough - so I'm looking for something between 1450 and 1490.

so the traditional date we used to use, of the end of the wars of the roses fits - but it has the problem that it is based on the archaic practices of the british isles - which miss the changes on the continent, and when you pick that date, and then look across the water, it looks a bit fuzzy - which is why this whole argument started (I'd bet none of the original founders of the SoA had any doubt it ended with 1485)

anyway, I look at the differences between the two ends of 1450 and 1490, and the biggest thing separating them is organised pike blocks, which everyone starts reacting to, buying or copying (i.e. experimenting in response ot the change they produced - its interesting to also note that the places which did not have contact with the swiss Keills were the ones which changed the least from medieval - like Britain, like the Muslim east).

so medieval warfare ends (because we want to give it a cut off) for me with Nancy, and while modern warfare does not really arrive until much later, the very fact that there are all these developments and experimentations demands that we are in something different from medieval - which I always thought we should just call renaissance warfare - and which has sub periods in it just like any other.

hence, thats the logic behind my call. (which has nothing whatsoever to do with a change in technology).

[Duncan Head]

(I'd bet none of the original founders of the SoA had any doubt it ended with 1485)

I don't go back to the original founding, only 1972 or so, but I seem to recall 1500 being the date usually cited - probably just because it was a round number than for any more profound reason.

[Erpingham]

(I'd bet none of the original founders of the SoA had any doubt it ended with 1485)

I don't go back to the original founding, only 1972 or so, but I seem to recall 1500 being the date usually cited - probably just because it was a round number than for any more profound reason.

I think I agree with the round number theory but it is quite a Eurocentric round number, as Mark is hinting.  I do quite like having the fuzzyness, though, not just because it helps reconcile whether we can play Flodden or Knockdoe and still be in Society territory but also because it helps with not-Europe.  I think, from my limited knowledge, that there are battles in Meso and South America, Africa and Japan in the 16th century we might think might interest us (maybe China, India, Russia - sorry my history isn't up to it) - so we need to have a broad mind.  But, back to the end of medieval warfare .......