Quote Originally Posted by Aracnid
some were a mob of frightened peasants with knives, sharp sticks and the odd bow with a much smaller group of well trained and equipped knights.
Yes, although this would have been the case in the instances of armies and militias raised to defend landlocked countries, rather than the rather better organised and equipped forces that you would find conducting raids and full scale invasions.

Although you rarely would have seen a cohesive recognisable military structure as we may see today, I presume that it would have remained in some shape or form somewhere and somehow. I'm not an expert on Byzantine military organization (actually I barely know a thing) but even still this is where I'd expect it to remain.

In England, in raising his forces for the campaign of 1415, Henry V used the system of indenture that was tried and tested which involved individual contracts for soldier between themselves and individuals and those who they signed the contract with, each contract cut in a way we I suppose could describe as wavy in order that on occasion of dispute the two halves could be matched to confirm identity.
It is this that suggests an army based more on individual recruitment rather than in units, although lords of the land were still expected (and in many cases, got into severe debt in doing so) to raise proportionate numbers of soldiers from their lands. This was not the simple thoughtless obedience that it had been, however, and as mentioned the contracts were made on an individual basis and we can see this still in the names of some of the men recruited, bearing in mind that surnames at this time were often derived from occupation or place of birth/residence...Nicholas Armourer, for instance, or Henry Flettcher or William Blackburn, although individuality still seems to have been less preferred than efficiency, at least by every right thinking man's enemy, the clerk, who wanted to indenture the poorer soldiers, archers, in groups of at least four and preferably twelve.
The ratio of Men-at Arms to archers in Henry's army was about five to one at the beginning of the campaign and still about four to one at the end.

And I apologise but I have partaken of too much wine and I have forgotten exactly what it was I intended to conclude with.