Medieval History Questions

That depends. There were professional soldiers kicking about, both household troops and mercenaries, but a good chunk of any army would be pole-arm wielding peasants obliged to fight by their 'social contract', as it were, with their lord.

edited 29th Mar '14 5:34:05 PM by InverurieJones

The saying goes that, if you wished to train a longbowman, you started with his grandfather.

In fact, "Soldier" itself original only referred to those who were "professionals"- basically mercenaries, fighting for pay, loyal to a contract rather than a lord. The most famous of which were the Swiss whose still remain the source of the Papal guard. This is more late middle ages, I think, I learned some about them after reading Candide.

Otherwise, the requirements to serve were not just "social contract" but i think more specific and ties to the granting of land. That generally is the social structure all the way down. The king may grant land to an Earl to rule but the Earl must provide men and collect the taxes, the Earl provides land to knights but they must fight for him, to a Sheriff but he must collect the taxes, they may lease out the land to farmers to do the actual work but they must be willing to serve as retainers. Depending on the era, the actual distinction between a knight and not a knight was more about the resources you had to commit to being full time and being fully equipped- at one point being a knight was all about the horse. You actually get a similar issue with Japanese samurai- samurai refers to their servile status, they start off as masses of pole armed part timers and some who can afford horses, eventually you get much more of a social system constructed about the role.

Anyway, so "how" is- you have access to a source of income and are told that you will be expected to use some of that income to purchase equipment to serve in a levy.

Then there were the slave armies- that's for middle eastern warfare. The Mamluks, the Janissaries, the Unsullied... conquer a place, take some children as a tribute, train them to be your soldiers, become incredibly reliant upon them, have them take political control of your empire. Ooops.

edited 30th Mar '14 8:19:11 AM by SomeSortOfTroper

Posting in this thread...

The question of medieval soldiery: professional soldiery wasn't really a thing in Medieval Europe. The closest you got were mercenaries, who were expensive, and hard to control. In addition, their lack of ties to the country for which they fought made them unreliable, at times. Your average medieval soldier was probably a peasant; a tenant of a lord, knight, or landowner, contracted to fight in times of war in return for lodgings, work, and a share of the profits from the manor's farm. Standing armies were not common until the very end, and raising an army in peace time pretty much screamed, "This guy is going to launch a rebellion." War was a constant aspect of medieval life, but few countries actually had a deep enough economy to wage war constantly fielding professional armies, so battles would be followed by truces or months, and even years of minor skirmishing.

Armor was constantly evolving during the period. Plate armor was exceedingly expensive, even when it was common (1500-1600). If a suit of it was worn, it was worn by a nobleman, a very wealthy knight, or an uncommonly successful mercenary. In lieu of plate, chainmail and scaled armor were employed, and boiled leather was common for light infantry and skirmishers. Armament was tied to social class — soldiers in a feudal levy mostly equipped themselves, rather than their lord outfitting them, and one of the responsibilities of a knight was being able to afford to care for arms, armor, and a horse, and men could be degraded from high rank for poverty.

edited 30th May '14 6:53:17 AM by CrimsonZephyr

So, I've been doing some research on Vikings and have come across two (seemingly conflicting) facts. The first is that the Vikings were fond of passing their weapons and armor down to their family and that the older a weapon was, the more valuable it was to the Vikings.

However, Vikings also set their dead out to sea in a boat surrounded with THEIR WEAPONS and burned the boat. So how did they manage to pass along their weapons if their weapons kept getting burned up?

I imagine most of the weapons would have been ceremonial weapons like those of Celtic chariot burials, while the actual heirloom would be handed down.

Just to note, not every Norse warrior was cremated on a ship. Obviously, not enough ships for that.

edited 2nd Oct '14 2:06:07 AM by Lemurian

Did vikings ever wear plate armor?

No - plate armor had been used by the Greeks and Romans, but due to cost stopped being used and replaced with other forms, and most vikings used leather, or chain. Plate hadn't become popular until the early 1400s again in the west, and 1420 was when the development of full suits of plate armor had come around.

Even if they could have made it, plate armor would also probably not appeal to raiders who preferred to fight at sea as pirates. The Viking way of war doesn't lend itself to heavy armor.

Wow, thanks for answering, that was quick :D My question was kinda inspired by seeing one viking using an old muscle cuirass in a surprisingly accurate manga called vinland saga.

The 1500s is the peak of plate armor (the best example being the black "gothic armor" among knights), and by then the development of better guns eventually led to their decline too.

edited 17th Nov '14 7:55:41 PM by Zulus

What happened to a medieval soldier after he was severely wounded in combat? Like if you were missing a limb or an eye kind of thing? Did they resume their military life, go back home, or were they forced to become beggars or something?

To be honest, that's the kind of question people write P Hd theses about. It depends, basically, on how bad the injury was, and if it became infected. Since there were no anti-biotics, if your injury became infected you stood a very high risk of death. If you recovered then you were expected to work in a lot of cases. People who lost a leg weren't really too disadvantaged if they spent most of their lives on horseback - if they were footsoldiers, that was a different story.

There were a few knights I've read about who lost one of their eyes in tournaments and survived the process of recovery who then went back into combat and tournaments - albeit with a disadvantage in depth perception and so on.

Also keep in mind that "soldier" was a profession for relatively few people in the medieval time period. Standing armies were vanishingly rare. Most of the men in armies were levies —- someone with another trade or job, who was called up for a specified period of time, then at the end of that time, released from service to go back to their normal life. What options they would have following an injury would depend on the injury and what its impact would be in their normal work.

edited 21st Dec '14 8:48:26 AM by Madrugada

What happened to princes who were the younger siblings and, thus, could not become king? Did they just kind of remain princes or did they become knights or earls or something?

That depends on the relationship between the brothers, how land was handed out and what the older brother had in mind.

Gavelkind-style systems would have the younger brother get some land, at the very least.

In some cases the younger brother might be trained up to become the chancellor for the older one, or if not viewed as good for that become a priest. Becoming a priest would be mostly done in the hopes of them becoming a cardinal or even the pope, which happened a few times and allowed the older brother as king to call in a few favours from the pope.

Sometimes if the older brother was more amicable, he'd give his younger brother some sort of title - this was sometimes done by those brothers who were often sick and wanted the line of succession to be safe, especially if they felt that their brother was the best to rule after they'd gone.

edited 17th Apr '15 11:36:28 AM by RatherRandomRachel

Besides what was detailed above, it was not uncommon for more war-minded brothers to become generals of their brother's army. Becoming adventurous sorts was not uncommon, and all of the Crusades contain, to some extent, younger brothers fighting in the Crusades in the name of Christianity/greed/bloodlust/responsability while their older brothers ruled.

For a demonstrative example, the Knights Templars had grandmasters such as Robert de Craon, a younger brother of a noble family, André de Montbard, also a younger brother who didn't rule, Bertrand de Blanchefort, another youngest brother of a noble family.

The famous Godfrey of Boullion, leader of the first Crusade, was also a younger son of a Lord, as was basically every single relevant crusader in history is a younger son.

And I stop at the third crusade because that should suffice.

edited 17th Apr '15 6:01:13 PM by Gaon