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?
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
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 (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.
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.
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
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.
Quote from: Mark G on May 02, 2013, 09:15:48 AM
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).
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.
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. :)
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... :)
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.
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.
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).
Quote from: Mark G on May 03, 2013, 10:54:35 AM(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.
Quote from: Duncan Head on May 03, 2013, 12:03:36 PM
Quote from: Mark G on May 03, 2013, 10:54:35 AM(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 .......
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 ... ;)
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?
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. :D
Quote from: Patrick Waterson on May 04, 2013, 10:23:26 AM
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. :D
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.
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.
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.
Quote from: Mark on May 07, 2013, 02:58:40 PM
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!
:-)
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Quote from: yesthatphil on May 09, 2013, 12:46:13 PM
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.
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 ...
Quote from: Patrick Waterson on May 09, 2013, 12:56:28 PM
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.
1453 would be my second choice date for ending medieval, coincidentally enough.
Quote from: Mark G on May 09, 2013, 03:48:27 PM
1453 would be my second choice date for ending medieval, coincidentally enough.
I think single date is convenient but hard to rationalise over a wide area. 1453 - end of Roman Empire. A psychological point but a significant change in the way warfare was conducted in Europe?
I think, from a military point of view, you've got to be looking at the way warfare happened. We've condemned technological determinism but we can't ignore new weapons and tactics as an element. Social changes and their impact on command and control are significant too - we see an increasing professionalism and the rise of permanent armies. Logistics and financial control in states improves, which facilitates professional standing armies and larger forces. There is an increasing body of literature on waging war (as opposed, say, to behaving as a knight). As I and others have said earlier, it is difficult to give a single date where everything changes, easier to map a period of change from one "Way of War" to another (although doesn't Hanson claim a Western Way of War that stretches from Hoplites to GIs?) - so I'd prefer a transitional or intermediate period.
There are sub-questions about a Society cut off point (could be a convenient date, could be a fuzzy edge) and how to best game this intermediate period. Phil has done quite a bit of work recently showing DBA 3 works, at least for Bosworth. I'd be interested to hear other opinions on suitable rules.
Quote from: Mark on May 09, 2013, 03:30:03 PM
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
If so, Francis thought the same at Marignano, and seemingly was right.
I just ignore that bit of Hanson
- it is the sort of silly thing you put on the back of a book to sell it to chat show interviewers - "look, shock and awe is as
intrinsic a part of democracy now as it was for the Greeks, lets beat back those nasty undemocratic eastern hordes with a single cataclysimic battle and get back to jabbering about pork belly futures in the market again".
it doesn't hold up to much scrutiny, there are plenty of sucessful western examples of conquering by playing a long war strategy, and equally good examples of eastern sucess via a single decisive day of battle approach.
its quite a good theory for the Greek cities in the earlier period, but not as an overarching super narrative of west vs east.
mind you, you probably guessed I don't think much of these eastern vs western super narratives narratives anyway, by now...
Quote from: Andreas Johansson on May 10, 2013, 07:19:29 AM
Quote from: Mark on May 09, 2013, 03:30:03 PM
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
If so, Francis thought the same at Marignano, and seemingly was right.
The French at Marignano also deployed in the traditional mediaeval three 'battles': vanguard under the Constable of France, main battle under the King and rearguard under the Duc d'Alencon. Francis I seems to have been operating with the mediaeval rulebook with a rules supplement for pikes and massed cannon. :)
(Sorry I am late to this debate having asked for it - been battlefield walking at Flodden...)
I believe that (as usual) Duncan has succinctly summarised it
'
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.
'
I think that it is about a style of warfare that the technology allows.
The Ancient warfare ends when Pike and Shot (meaning gunpowder firearms requiring minimal training beyond the rote learning of the loading sequence) are being deployed on the same side in a battle but without integration into a combined arms construct. Anything before that is an ancient battle with newer toys... Infantry can SOMETIMES defeat fully mounted opponents but only in a limited set of circumstances.
You then have a transitional period where Pike and Shot are deployed on the same side but where the Shot are not a formed body intergrated into a tactical system with the Pike. This CAN be part of the society remit IM(nv)HO. Here the Infantry have the full range of options to defeat the mounted provided the combined arms holds together but because it is not an integrated combined arms construct it has many limitations. It starts approximately the middle of the 15th C and ends with the introduction of Spanish Colunela and Esquadron (Tercio) system. Flodden falls into the earlier period, Bosworth fits here (and thanks to Phil for the steer).
After that you are into Pike and Shot warfare, which reaches its logical conclusion with the socket bayonet where the Pike and Shot become one.
It is not about the technology but about what the technology allows you to do with combined arms.
Quote from: Tim on May 11, 2013, 03:26:59 PM
(Sorry I am late to this debate having asked for it - been battlefield walking at Flodden...)
Worth the wait . I suppose that's because I largely agree with your analysis :) Hope the weather was good for Flodden.
Antony
The weather was superb, and walking the battlefield REALLY aids understanding of what occurred.
(As a side benefit I also got to meet up with a member of a 1513 battle group, so perhaps more to come...)