Later medieval warfare in transition

[Patrick Waterson]

Good points.  Mediaeval warfare seems to be about style as much as substance, and having a bit of temporal elastic for actions that have something of the flavour of the mediaeval even if a little out of period anno domini-wise is not a bad thing.

For those unfamiliar with Knockdoe, it is an action in Ireland in 1504 between the Justiciar and the western de Burghs, who were becoming overmighty subjects.  Both armies relied heavily on galloglaich warriors, and judging by the fact that contemporaries called it a 'slaughter', they got their money's worth.  The Justiciar won.

The Society was originally envisaged as encompassing the 'Ancient' period and spilling into the Dark Ages, but at least one of the founder members made a strong plea to include the mediaeval period in the remit.  And so it came to pass that knights, crossbows, peasants and occasional crakys of war joined the shining ranks of Biblical, classical and occasional Dark Ages warriors on the tabletops of the Society - often across the same table.  My goodness, there was even an ongoing fantasy campaign ... 

[Andreas Johansson]

I'd think the Americas is where the line may be drawn relatively unambigously - when the conquistadores turn up with steel and gunpowder.

On the other hand, it's not so much transitioning from "Medieval" - whatever that means, even just Europe is anything but monolithic ca 1400 - as passing directly from the Chalcolithic to Pike-and-Shot. But Chalcolithic warfare is ancients and therefore SoA turf, right?

[Patrick Waterson]

This brings up an interesting demarcation criterion: if one side is unambiguously 'ancients' material whereas the other is firmly 'pike and shot', then we have rules and army lists for only one of the contenders ...

This in itself can act as a natural brake on borderline choices: if one of the armies involved needs tercio-era rules for accurate representation, i.e. DBMM, FoG etc. have to give way to DBR etc. then it becomes a non-choice for Battle Day.  One can see the ultimate circular argument developing here: the mediaeval period ends when my rules set does, because my rules set is designed to cover armies up to this date. 

[Erpingham]

One can see the ultimate circular argument developing here: the mediaeval period ends when my rules set does, because my rules set is designed to cover armies up to this date. 

There is an interesting question in there about what rules do you use to cover transition period battles?  The old WRG Renaissance rules used to start in 1420, so all our transitions could be covered by that set of rules.  At the same time, their Ancients set went to 1485.  I've never seen a comparison of which handled the period better.  However, both were outside their design comfort zone on the fringes.  There are DB and FOG series rules for before and after which could be compared too.  Maximillian covers this period fairly specifically and I'm sure I've got a 1300-1500 Medieval set somewhere (Lance? Newbury Fast Play?).  But then, you don't actually have to start from something designed round a timeframe if there are other aspects from other period sets that make more sense to the game you want.  I recently read a series of games by a Swedish gamer set in the Wars of the Kalmar Union (i.e. our period of interest) which drew heavily on Dux Britanniorum.

[Andreas Johansson]

DBMM and DBR now overlap from 1494 to 1515. Having never played the later, I can't say how they compare for the Italian Wars however.

[Mark]

Well, one issue is that the transition happens in different places at different times. One convention is in England to draw a line between Richard III and Henry VII, for broader reasons involving changes to the nature of government (there's an interesting looking set of documentaries about to kick off on the period on I think the BBC, with one on the court of Henry VII). But it's not necessarily the same as elsewhere. I've always assumed 1500 as the Society's dividing line, 1515 or 1524 in a pinch. I've also assumed the dividing line was arbitrary, rather than something that was debated to death, but maybe I'm underestimating the Society's abilities in that regard.

[tadamson]

I've also assumed the dividing line was arbitrary, rather than something that was debated to death, but maybe I'm underestimating the Society's abilities in that regard.

Debating things to death has been a core element of the Society for as long as I can remember.
Though this is only my 40th year!

:-)

[barry carter]

Within the English context..................Flodden has the feel of being a "Medieval" battle for all the cannon, pikes etc. The battles of 1549 however feel completely different despite the fact that the Rebel forces are almost all bow and billmen and the Royal armies also have  bow and bill county levies fighting alongside Landsknechts, Italian arquebusiers, Spanish Gendarmes, Stradiots etc.
Perhaps the real problem is that we need to draw a line somewhere and are trying to use Military Technology where it is not really that helpful. One could argue that it is the invention of smokeless powder that makes a real difference and so we might rather use what the soldiers cover their backsides with ( breeches, rather than hose?) as a good guide to where one period ends and another starts!

BC.

[Mark G]

I certainly agree that looking for a technological tipping point is a waste of time - albeit an interesting one for debating purposes.

hence my picking a significant tactical change.

but a change in trouser styles works just as well as either in the end.

its a bit like arguing where Napoleonics starts - with the revolution, or when he gains first command, or becomes consul, or emperor, or just on the dot of 1800, or when the french first win a battle, or use a certain tactical formation, etc - and thats an argument about at most two decades of change.

[barry carter]

Alright, I admit that I wasn't being entirely serious about the pants! The impact of developments in command and control is also an interesting field of study but of course suffers from a lack of clear detail - so much has to be guessed at, based on the snippets we can glean from what little surviving evidence there is. It also means stretching the field of study into the realms of, say Household accounts, to see if we can pick up hints and leads which may just lead to a little more enlightenment.

[yesthatphil]

This discussion started in a spin off from the discussion of Bosworth under the prospective BattleDay topic.   

I had mentioned incidentally that in his archaeological report which covers the recent Bosworth project (BCA Research Report 168 'The Archaeology of English Battlefields') Glenn Foard puts Bosworth and the Wars of the Roses in the gunpowder period (finishing the medieval period at 1454) ...

The archaeological reasons are obvious enough - gunpowder not only changes the what may be found in the ground it also changes how artifacts need to be interpreted (and what they may tell you about what happened).   I have to admit, as someone who reads a lot of this sort of material, it does seem to me a science in its infancy at this point (for every 100 more battlefields surveyed, the meaning of any given shot pattern will become much clearer I think) ...

But there is more to say, perhaps, about not being a (typical, English) Medieval battle (whatever you think that is).

Both armies comprise large number of mercenaries, professional soldiers armed with 'pikes' and halberds (probably in the Swiss style ... and in Richard's army, 1000 billmen 'empaled' with 2000 pikes).   Traditional retinue and commission soldiers might have been a majority of the Royal army (though many did not fight) but the mercenaries were the bulk of the rebel force.

Artillery formed a significant force in Richard's army, and governed the tactics of the battle.  Although many have been sceptical over the years (wanting to see Bosworth as a Medieval battle fought by retinue archer contingents) the sources are clear that Richard took more than '7 score' guns, and canon balls are what have survived to help us identify the battlefield securely.   Henry attacked with the marsh to his right to deaden the effect of these guns ... the outflanking deployment of Henry's mercenary pike contingents ('in a field a quarter league away' - Molinet) was to avoid the kings guns (but outflanks Norfolk's Vanward battle as Percy doesn't draw up in support of it) ...

Richard issued letters banning signs and recognisances instructing that only Royal livery should be worn ...

None of these clues is decisive, and they don't make Bosworth analogous to an ECW style battle (though what that style is might be just as contentious) but they are all pointers away from a medieval style of battle ... towards armies increasingly reliant on professional rather than indentured soldiers, uniformed rather than liveried, pike and shot (guns and handguns) armed rather than bows and bills, using the battlefield tactically in response to the enemy's firepower and field of fire.

The crescendo of battle, of course, is a moment of warfare in transition: seeing his van outflanked by the mercenaries, and with gaps in the lines giving sight of the Earl of Richmond, Richard charges forward to engage Henry in personal combat (the one sure way he has left of settling the issue) - Henry clearly avoids become entangled and his bodyguards are able to beat the king back.  The rest, as they say ....

These conclusions all draw upon the archaeological and historical research project conducted 2005 to 2010 (published 2012 in the BCA report, and accessed by Mike Ingram in his 2012 'Battle Story' volume ... with more to come form Foard and Curry this year).   I have no doubts at all that Foard et al have securely identified the battlefield, and in terms of the battle, made much of what has been published over the years redundant.   Their methodology relates the archaeology and sources to the landscape and military realities - hence it is the speculative waffle that falls, and the contemporary accounts that emerge ...

As for wargaming the battle, I have found the latest versions of DBA (V3) give very satisfactory resolutions for a quick reconstruction.  Side support and deep formations make the combat feel more plausible, and the revised move distances make the tactical evolution easy to depict (Bosworth is a tactical battle not a bun-fight) ... I wouldn't expect it to work to an uber-detail system like, say, FoG, but it might suit an event-led mechanism like HC (I ought to say Pike and Shotte, re the arguments above - but I saw nothing in Pike & Shotte that led me to imagine it doing any historical battles well ... it is more a 'games between toy armies' type of game) ...

Conclusion: we are probably back where we started.   Bosworth is definitely not a 'Medieval' battle.   Nor is it entirely 'Pike & Shot' in character.   It is much closer to a Renaissance battle - but that is a category which, somehow, seems to have been squeezed out of the middle.

Phil

[Patrick Waterson]

The essential problem is that we are looking for a clear divide in an interconnected mesh of related and mutually influencing factors.  It is a bit like trying to determine at what point the Salamian trireme preserved at Athens, which over the years had deteriorating timbers progressively replaced by new, could be considered a new ship rather than the original vessel (a question which considerably exercised Athenian philosophers in their spare time).

It is much easier to take a point in, say, the 14th century and affirm that matters are clearly mediaeval, with organisation, procedures and tactics that we would recognise as mediaeval even if pinpoint definition of such is hard to agree.  Then we take a point in the late 16th century and say that what we have is, recognisably, Renaissance.  Now we get out our graph and compasses and draw intersecting semicircles, take the midpoint and behold! - the time when one can be considered to end and the other begin.

The basic problem with picking a specific criterion is that it will vary between contemporaries, so that if we look at, for example, the methods and legal status of duelling, we can obtain a cut-off point when duels cease to be fought in full armour on horseback and are instead fought on foot, unarmoured.  We can initiate a whole system of civilisation measured by duelling customs and delineate periods by this simple measure, except that customs vary between nations and although trending towards the same essential outcome (blades and pistols are eventually replaced by lawyers, except in 18th century Ireland where lawyers typically fight duels during a case) any attempt to delineate a specific 'sword period', 'pistol period' and 'lawyer period' runs up against variable and fuzzy demarcation.

And so it is whether one examines weaponry, organisation, tactical procedures, command or even underwear.  My own imperfect definition would be to consider the period to have shifted once one recognisably has a preponderance of the new rather than the first glimmerings of same.

So what of Bosworth?  It does indeed have the new elements Phil astutely notes, but it also has mediaeval retinues, plenty of mediaeval weaponry and a mediaeval lord deciding the day by shifting or expressing his allegiance.  In my judgement, such as it is, while one can see clear beginnings of what will become Renaissance style, they are beginnings only, superimposed on what is still a largely mediaeval framework.

[Duncan Head]

Conclusion: we are probably back where we started.   Bosworth is definitely not a 'Medieval' battle.   Nor is it entirely 'Pike & Shot' in character.   It is much closer to a Renaissance battle - but that is a category which, somehow, seems to have been squeezed out of the middle.

Indeed: perhaps we need more "periods" - and more military revolutions? - rather than fewer. With Mark G suggesting that Swiss pike-blocks may mark "the beginning of a new tactical system" and others arguing that Bosworth and even Flodden feel mediaeval rather than early-modern, I am inclining to see a distinct period that is neither classically mediaeval nor really "pike and shot", running from Morat (at least - possibly earlier in the Low Countries?) to Marignano. The massive pike-blocks of the later Flemings, the Swiss and the Flodden Scots then denote an ultimately abortive "tactical revolution", the pike-and-shot era's 1905 rather than its 1917.

[yesthatphil]

The Stanleys' role at Bosworth has been the subject of much spin (a lot of it 'Ricardian').  Sir William Stanley had joined the Earl of Richmond and this was confirmed to Richard by Lord Strange in Nottingham more than a week before the battle (Crowland Chronicle) ... Lord Thomas Stanley did not declare for Richmond, but did decline the King's summons.  Richard's response was to take Lord Strange (Thomas Stanley's son) hostage and oblige him to write, urging his father to come to the King's aid.   

At Stafford, on the 19th August, Sir William Stanley's contingent fell in as the Vanguard of Richmond's army.

Thus ... Richard knows William Stanley has joined the rebels, and has good reason to believe Lord Thomas has, also - but has leverage over the later (maybe the wider family) by holding Lord Strange hostage.

In the battle, Sir William fights for the Earl of Richmond, Lord Thomas does not engage at all.   There is no 'betrayal' or 'switching sides' in this (it is the position exactly as known to Richard and responded to by him over the previous weeks).   The extent to which the Stanleys 'betray' Richard is the same as the extent to which any rebels who join Richmond's army betray their King.

Of course, Ricardians insist on blaming the Stanleys rather than blaming Richard for his defeat ... and delight in imagining the 'what if' of the Stanleys siding with the King and thereby destroying the rebel army (which was never going to happen as sir William was already fully aligned with Richmond as was entirely understood at the time by all parties).

As historians, of course, we as much obliged to see through Ricardian fictions as Tudor ones ...

If there is a case against the Stanleys, it would be a Tudor one: Polydore Vergil recounts that at dawn Richmond asked Thomas to take the van, and set out his men.   Stanley declined, and stayed on the sidelines.  Sir William, of course, had sent Sir John savage and others to bolster Richmond's line, but did not, himself, engage til late in the day.  Brackenbury had also visited the Stanley camp commanding them to join the King on pain of Lord Strange's execution (Beaumont) ... so we can imagine that may explain the Stanleys' initial reluctance to take their place in Richmond's army.

Given it was a near run thing, Richmond would have good cause to bemoan the Stanleys letting him down.

With regard to the debate over periods, cut offs, rules and such, I think it is to be expected: this all came out of a discussion of suitabilities for the 2014 BattleDay ... so it seems to me how battles fit the presumptions of our period/do or don't fall out well under prevailing multi-period wargame systems etc. is just the right discussion to have.

For my part, I wish I had an appropriate pinch of salt: really, I'd rather we were discussing Bosworth _after the Foard/Curry book has been digested ...

[Mark]

So what of Bosworth?  It does indeed have the new elements Phil astutely notes, but it also has mediaeval retinues, plenty of mediaeval weaponry and a mediaeval lord deciding the day by shifting or expressing his allegiance.  In my judgement, such as it is, while one can see clear beginnings of what will become Renaissance style, they are beginnings only, superimposed on what is still a largely mediaeval framework.

But which bits are new:
- Successful use of Pike vs Heavy cavalry (seems to have been French pike in this instance, according to the Michael Jones book a few years ago) - Arbedo 1422 (as an example)
- Battlefield use of cannon - used by French
- Handguns - well, used by Chinese for about a century by this point, matchlocks used by the Ottomans in the first half of the 15th century, Ballad of Bosworth quotes 140 serpentines, but the "handguns" were not particularly mobile and not quick enough for reload, or safe enough to fire, for some time, to be effective - is there the implication of the same "combined arms" tactics in use as in the Italian Wars (I don't know, it's a genuine question)
- End of the longbow/crossbow - no evidence of the latter but it wasn't widely used beforehand in England in the WotR. The latter of course continues to be used into the Civil War period

I think, per my comment on the other forum (or per the implication it contained), that Richard's attempt to charge pike with heavy cavalry implied that he thought the medieval rules were still in play

To the more general argument, there's rarely a complete step change, which implies that any significant battle with a discernible outcome may contain some kind of innovation whereby one could draw a line. It would be as easy to draw one (as an example) in 1453 with the fall of Constantinople.