MEDIEVAL WARFARE Volume 2.3 June 2012

1-962023

Theme: Pikes, Bows, and War Wagons: The Rebirth of Infantry.

* Intro: The infantry's tactical revolution of the fourteenth and fifteenth century.
* The Last Knight: Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519). The death of this last knight in 1519, at the dawn of the early modern period, marked the beginning of the 'military revolution' of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The changes caused by the artillery revolution, both on the battlefield and in the construction of fortifications, are undeniable. While the psychological and lethal effects of artillery in battle are still being discussed, the fall of Constantinople in 1453 revealed that old-style fortifications, which had protected that city for centuries, could no longer withstand modern artillery.

* The French Knight Defeated: The Battle of Courtrai. The battle is recorded by numerous sources on both sides is the Battle of Courtrai (or Kortrijk, as it is known in Dutch), which was fought between French and Flemish forces in the early hours of 11 July 1302. Fortunately, the presence of numerous sources allows us to compare and clearly understand how the result came about and in what way the battle proved to herald the infantry revival of the fourteenth century.

* Negating English Archery on the Late Medieval Battlefield. A number of well-known battles in the Late Middle Ages proved that a well-trained yeoman armed with a war-bow was a cheap and effective response to a knight on horseback, whose training, warhorse and equipment cost a fortune. This is fine when the investment is almost guaranteed to pay off, but disadvantageous if and when all this finery turns out to be quite vulnerable. So, to an extent, the yeoman archers paved the way towards the rebirth of infantry by invalidating the norm that equated cavalry with victory.