The recreation of early medieval arms and armour by numerous re-enactment groups has allowed the testing of medieval combat tactics. Dan Shadrake of Britannia has found the experience illuminating, confirming several truths of medieval warfare but also shattering a few illusions. ‘What was no surprise to us,’ says Shadrake, ‘was that armoured footsoldiers in disciplined close formations on open ground were virtually unstoppable by more lightly armoured opponents. They would just plough through them.’ This explains the success of Roman legionaries as well as later Roman-style armoured warriors and dismounted knights in the medieval period. ‘In a forest or rough ground, which breaks up formations, armoured men are at a distinct disadvantage. Less aware of what is going on around them, they are far slower to react to more agile lightly armoured troops using spears rather than swords. Panic sets in and soon armoured groups collapse and run.’
Shadrake remembers a particular occasion when they practised with a rival group who they invited to join them on ground of their own choosing in a forest. ‘Early that morning we dug some shallow pits in the ground before our position and then covered these with brushwood. When our rivals advanced, the first rows plunged into the pits and tumbled forward, tripping up the warriors behind them. From being a terrifying, slowly advancing horde, they turned into a surprised muddle and we counter-attacked with our spears to great success.’
Saxon and Viking clash during a Viking raid, recreated by members of Regia Anglorum. Both sides wore similar arms and armour, including short mail shirts and large round shields. [Regia Anglorum]
One of the great myths of medieval warfare is the power of horsemen over footsoldiers. Armoured knights are supposed to have been able to crash into groups of footsoldiers like tanks, shattering the defenders on impact. In reality, horses do not act like this. They try to avoid collisions and when confronted with a wall of shields and spears, prefer to veer away from it or just stop. ‘We had one very fierce horse, used to police work and loud noises,’ recalls Shadrake, ‘but even he just halted at our shield wall, reared up on two legs and showed us his hooves, nothing more effective than that. Just so long as we stood tight behind our shields we were safe.’ What horsemen hoped for was that their mere appearance would unnerve footsoldiers sufficiently to make them run, thus enabling horsemen to outpace and slash down at them from their mounts.
English bowman draws an ash arrow across his yew bow. Archers carried several kinds of arrow with different heads, some long and pointed intended to punch through mail, others broad and curved intended to inflict crippling flesh wounds. [Wolfshead Bowmen]
In Medieval Britain victory in battle was regarded as a sign of divine endorsement. War itself was the pursuit of justice by other means, and kings, noblemen and the common people were prepared to fight for their rights.
The history of medieval Britain is peppered with campaigns, battles and sieges. Kings were repeatedly challenged by powerful nobles. On the battlefield the mounted knight was challenged by the humble, but deadly footsoldier armed with bow and arrows. Kings and barons, knights and archers, were the political and military checks and balances that operated throughout this period. It is perhaps no surprise therefore that the most enduring hero of this period is Robin Hood. Neither a noble or king but a yeoman, a member of the free class of ordinary Englishmen of no great wealth or power, Robin Hood is presented through numerous ballads and legends as a good outlaw. With his band of followers, he battles against corrupt officials; he is not opposed to the good king Richard, but violently resentful of bad government. The money he steals from the rich, he gives to the poor, thus establishing a check on bad power. And the base for his actions was the forest.
Ever since William the Conqueror won the English crown at Hastings, the forest has been viewed in Britain as a home for freedom fighters and righteous outlaws. This may stem from the fact that William and the succeeding Norman kings brought in new laws which sought to turn the forests of England into private estates, reserved for the hunting of game by the king and his loyal knights. The New Forest in Hampshire in southern England is the most well known of these newly established royal estates, being brought under direct royal rule in 1079. Strict laws punished the unauthorised harvesting of the forest’s resources by people who had previously considered it their natural right. A sense of this new Norman tyranny of noble huntsmen is conveyed in the Laud Chronicle:
Gatehouse of Carisbrooke Castle.
Early 13th century knight of the type involved in the murder of St Thomas à Becket at Canterbury. He wears a new form offlat-topped helm with visor. His kite-shaped shield is a later, shorter version of that used by the Normans at Hastings. [John Cole/Conquest]
‘Many men both saw and heard a great number of huntsmen hunting. The huntsmen were black, huge and hideous, and rode on black horses and on black he-goats and their hounds were jet black, with eyes like saucers and horrible.’
Earlier, in 1086, the same chronicle sums up the rule of William in a poem:
‘He caused castles to be built
Which were a sore burden to the poor.
A hard man was the king
And took from his subjects many marks …
He set apart a vast deer preserve and imposed
laws concerning it.
Whoever slew a hart or a hind
Was to be blinded.
He forbade the killing of boars
Even as the killing of harts.
For he loved the stags as dearly
As though he had been their father …’
[translation by G.N. Garmonsway,
Everyman, 1953]
It is little wonder then that when Robin Hood killed a deer for his followers to eat, it was an act of defiance which made him a hugely popular hero. Finally, and perhaps most importantly for British military history, Robin Hood had as his main weapon not a sword or a lance but a bow. Until the popularity of Robin Hood in tales from the 14th century onwards, the bow had always been the sign of a bad sort in medieval literature. ‘Cursed be the first man who became an archer,’ wrote the 13th century poet Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube. ‘He was afraid and did not dare approach.’ As far as knights were concerned, the only manly way of fighting was with sword and lance. If treachery was suspected in a death, then it was usually claimed to have been delivered by an arrow. In a drawing by Matthew Paris, the king of France is shown unhorsed at Bouvines in 1214 by an arrow, while William Rufus, son of William the Conqueror, was assassinated by an arrow in the head while hunting in the New Forest in 1100.
Previously considered the weapon of the coward, in the hands of Robin Hood the bow became a weapon of freedom, an equaliser against the armoured knight, and it is no surprise that the reputation of this greatest hero of archery should flower in the minds of the English people just at the time of their greatest victories against the French at Crécy (1346), Poitiers