Some questions about medieval knights

[Miles Sueborum]

Hello everybody - I got some questions about medieval knights

1st If a group of knights would have to fight dismounted for what reason ever - how would they have fought? Would have stood in something comparable to the early shieldwalls or would everybody have fought for himself or did they use some totally difrent tactics?
I guess this changed over time so I ask this for three diffrent periods: Round about 1100, round about 1250 and round about 1400.

2nd In battle and on tournament knights wore armor, during feasts their best clothes - but in every days life or on journies? What did they wear than?

Looking forward to answers ^^

[Watchman]

Dismounted knights would naturally enough have fought as any comparable armed heavy infantry did - ie. in as close order as their particular weapon selection permitted. Mind you, as they were very highly trained and well equipped fighters they weren't as dependent on such mutually supporting formation as humbler troops, as they had rather less shortcomings in the skill and gear departement to compensate for; but particularly when facing cavalry closed ranks would be very beneficial.

"Off duty" knights would of course wear whatever articles appropriate for their status they could afford, as everyone now did. It tended to be sort of de rigeur particularly for the upper classes to show off their standing as much as possible, not in the least as a badge of rank in a world quite bereft of any real kind of standardized and verifiable ID papers.

[Furious Mental]

Don't know about the rest of Europe, but when Anglo-Norman knights fought dismounted it was generally when they expected to face a cavalry charge and they were placed in the front ranks of the army in front of the fyrd. Since the fyrd presumably fought in a shield wall and this was already pretty good at stopping a cavalry charge, I'd expect dismounted knights to have fought in the same fashion. Since at that stage knights seem to have used a relatively light lance, and carried a big kite shield, it was easy enough. In the Hundred Years War English knights sometimes used their lances like pikes. One account of a battle referred to their formation as being like a "hedgehog", which would suggest something like a schiltron. Once fighting on foot became the rule they probably more as individuals since the sort of weapons used- two handed axes or swords, hammers, etc needed room to swing. More than likely they had a retinue to accompany them though; if they were just men-at-arms maybe not.

[Miles Sueborum]

Thank you for your good answers.

[Flavius Clemens]

I remember a TV documentary series about medieaval weapons, presented by Mike Loades

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Loades

(forget the show's name though) in which he gave the opinion that dismounted knights would fight in pairs to watch one another's backs, making up for the limited visibility allowed by their helmets.

[Furious Mental]

I wouldn't rely too heavily on conjecture by a television program. Not saying it is wrong- that is impossible to prove. But as far as I know it is conjecture. One could equally well conjecture that the need for an attendant could be fulfilled by a knight's retainer. More than likely they acted as was convenient in the circumstances.

For example, an account of a battle in the HYW between some free companies mreferred to the men-at-arms on one side advancing in a formation protected by large shields (pavises perhaps) to thwart the longbowmen on the other side. According to the account it worked. On a completely different note, like archers, one thing that English men-at-arms were very good at when they fought on foot was using things like trous de loup and abatis and natural obstacles to obstruct the approach of the enemy.

[The Stranger]

Hello everybody - I got some questions about medieval knights

1st If a group of knights would have to fight dismounted for what reason ever - how would they have fought? Would have stood in something comparable to the early shieldwalls or would everybody have fought for himself or did they use some totally difrent tactics?
I guess this changed over time so I ask this for three diffrent periods: Round about 1100, round about 1250 and round about 1400.

2nd In battle and on tournament knights wore armor, during feasts their best clothes - but in every days life or on journies? What did they wear than?

Looking forward to answers ^^

usually when knights dismounted they were mixed between ranks of common footsoldiers to stiffen their ranks... about formation.. watchman answered that...

[Furious Mental]

"AFAIK the standard tactical sub-unit of mounted knights was a "squad" of usually five men"

Well some claim that knights were organised in such a way but that's pretty dubious. In actuality their tactical organisation was probably exactly the same as their logistical organisation, i.e. that they fought with other knights from the same manor, military household, mercenary company or whatever. That might have been five knights or it might have been some other number depending on the particular case.

[Watchman]

"Knight" outside the social significance of the title is interchangeable with "man-at-arms", ie. a fully armed and trained cavalryman also capable of fighting on foot. A lot of these guys were of the "armed household retainer" status rather than estate-owners per ce. Heavy cavalry in particular only works worth a crap when properly trained in at least small-unit level group tactics, and obviously the warriors attached to the same lord (or whatever) mostly trained with each other. That forms a natural basis for a tactical sub-unit when feudal contingents are amalgamated into larger battlefield formations; but it doesn't really make much sense to use them "as is", as such individual contingents might well vary in size from a couple to dozens of men; in other words, they would need to be organized into smaller, more manageable "squads". The specific size and constituent of these would of course vary by time and place, tactical preference and any number of other onsiderations, but AFAIK about five horses has been a very common size the world over (as well as decimal multipliers, which have been particularly popular for infantry) presumably because it offers a reasonably optimal balance between numbers, flexibility and manageability - large enough to be an effective combat unit, but not too large to become clumsy and unmanageable in the typically rather confused and fluid circumstances where it becomes particularly important.

[Furious Mental]

Well five may have been the optimal number but to then go on and conclude that it was therefore standard is just conjecture. If we went over other military forces through history we could come up with all sorts of numbers. The only thing we know for sure is that tactical units have always been based on the chain of command and with medieval knights there was no chain of command akin to that which exists in modern armies. The chain of command was essentially the same as the chain of military obligations, that is, orders were taken from whoever the man served under. Take the English.

- A list of knights serving John in 1215, mostly foreign mercenaries, had them grouped into constabularies of 25.
- A document from Edward I's reign showed cavalry of the royal household grouped in 10 man constabularies led by the lord who provided them.
- In the fourteenth century there are a couple of references to ten man conrois, e.g. Froissart wrote that the Black Prince's marshal ordered the army to form into conrois for an assault, and In the same year Geoffrey of Harcourt's army broke up because they did not maintain their "conroi".
- The vast majority of references are simply to retinues, which could be any size. In 1300 Robert Clifford had a retinue of four knights and eighteen squires, John de la Mare one of two knights and eight squires, while Arnald de Gavaston had a mere four squires. Larger retinues were led by bannerets, which varied in size over time. The Histoire of William Marshal took his army to have about 200 men because he had 15 bannerets, which would suggest about 13 to each. The average size of bannerets in Edward I's army in Scotland was 13 to 15. Then bannerets got bigger and bigger and by the late fourteenth century there were about 200 to each. Presumably they had their own internal organisation, but how that was done was probably the discretion of the banneret.

For all we know five might have been the optimal number but all the evidence indicates that was not accepted wisdom, in fact that there was no accepted wisdom, hence the wide variation in numbers.

[Watchman]

Yet as you might note the above can also be described as "multiplies of five plus sundry". Decimal chains-of-command which neatly sub-divide into tens or, if necessary, further down to fives have also seemed to be inordinately common particularly among "horse peoples", such as various steppe nomads and the ancient Persians.

...although of course in practice the units would of course tend to be understrenght thanks to the usual suspects, but them's the breaks. Commanders fought their battles with what they had, not what they would have liked to have or what prevailing military theory regarded as preferable.