Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?
medievalists.net
medievalists.net
This is reported by the Carolingians as brave but immoral, because Charlemagne had banned any such associations or militias, and military service was reserved for aristocrats only.
The response of the Frankish leadership was to come in and massacre the peasants who had defended their own land. Peasant autonomy and self-defense of any kind could not be tolerated.
The French translation from Latin http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/historiens/anonyme/annales.htm [859] says:
> Les Danois dévastent les pays au-delà de l'Escaut. Le commun peuple des pays entre Seine et Loire, conjuré entre soi, résiste courageusement aux Danois établis sur la Seine ; mais sa conjuration étant conduite sans prudence, il est facilement défait par nos grands.
Which I would translate (using some true-to-heart adaptation given author period) by:
Danes (norsemen) raid country further the Escaut (probably that river in the north). Commoners from between Seine et Loire (in the center so), which were seceding at the time (secede is way too modern but best bears the sense IMO), bravely resist to Danes camping by the Seine; this secession however being lead without much thought, is easily defeated by our rulers (kings or dukes I'd say, and probably over months).
These annals are telegraph styled, written by multiple authors, etc. They are kind of notes. Yet they are one of the best material over this period of French history :)
Dani loca ultra Scaldem populantur. Vulgus promiscuum inter Sequanam et Ligerum inter se coniurans adversus Danos in Sequana consistentes, fortiter resistit; sed quia incaute suscepta est eorum coniuratio, a potentioribus nostris facile interficiuntur.
Which translates roughly as follows. (I'm not a medieval Latin scholar so some meanings may be off.)
The Danes plunder the areas beyond the Scheldt River. The common people between the Seine and Loire, allying themselves [or: conspiring] against the Danes residing on the Seine, fight strongly; but because their alliance [or: conspiracy] was undertaken without care, they are easily killed by our more powerful [troops].
It does not say explicitly whom the commoners were fighting. The word used for their alliance also means conspiracy and can be quite negative. It's the same word used in the phrase "Conspiracy of Cataline."
p.s. It's mind-blowing what you can find on the Internet.
[1] https://www.dmgh.de/mgh_ss_1/index.htm#page/452/mode/1up
> I don't think these two events, the Danes raid and the rebellion crush are linked outside of one making the author remind itself about the second.
Sound's like the parent comment's description oversimplified things. I knew it sounded off.
I question your use of "seceding" for "conjuré". As far as I understand, the connotation of ~seperation from a whole~ is absent in the original french which I'd argue speaks more of the spontaneous and unsanctioned nature of this militia's constitution.
As in "le peuple ..., conjuré entre soi" could be adapted to "the people, having organised to take arms"
He does point out that the meaning of "incaute" is ambiguous here, but the salient point still stands: that military service was forbidden from the common people and that an organized common people was not allowed, and dangerous. It is speculative but he comments that these peasants may have felt they were following in the footsteps of their grandfathers who would have rightfully assembled for defense in time of need, and in fact that had formerly been the prerogative of free peasants.
So the point still pretty much stands regardless, the language speaks of free peasants self-organizing as a threat and an easily defeated one.
So the current nobility are really just the heirs of criminal associations. They shouldn't have a place in the modern world.
This continued all the way through the 20th century, where the disposable deplorables did the fighting while the aristocracy profited.
There were even strong links to drugs. Look up the history of the opium wars for details.
Most of the UK's country estates were built from the profits of slavery, drugs, and colonialism - which is just nation-scale feudal conquest painted over with flag-waving patriotism.
The upper classes volunteered enthusiastically for WW1 and died in vast numbers in the trenches along with the commoners. Perhaps because they had come to believe their own myths of honour and glory.
Kinda like a mobster turning their money into legit business, and eventually their heirs takes over and people forgetting about how it all started.
Based on this model, WW2 was probably peak democratic potential. Everyone had the same capacity to hold a rifle or work on an assembly line, and whatever country could mobilize the most workers/soldiers would be the strongest. With automation and computerization, a member of the technology elite that can program a robot to make widgets or shoot hostiles can roll that out to replace millions of humans instantly. The world is reverting back to the economic and technological setup that fostered feudalism, where someone trained from birth with the best equipment can outproduce and outfight a numerically superior force.
The big difference between old and neofeudalism I can see is that the technological elites in neofeudalism are more vulnerable than the old military elites because they individually also have lower bargaining power. For a medieval knight, their effectiveness is the same no matter which king they serve under, which gives them plenty of power to switch sides. For a member of the technological elite, you may be so hyperspecialized in your niche that if you leave the system that gives you the ecosystem and tools to do your work, your economic value plunges. An individual chip designer without a company that can pay thousands for monthly EDA software licenses or the millions needed to tape out a chip is as unproductive as any member of the unskilled labor pool. Even the average web developer is dependent on a surrounding national/international technological ecosystem far more than a medieval knight would be on his private estate. In neofeudalism, the real holders of power are the same as in older feudalism. They're propagandists, kings, clergymen, academics, populists, think tanks, revolutionaries, people with enough social acumen to get others to do things that coincide with what they want and make them like it at the same time.
> It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found generally true: that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon – so long as there is no answer to it – gives claws to the weak.
[1] https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
That being said, aside from the dubious principle, 21st century feudalism on Sark had little in common with its medieval cousin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_Feudal_Tenure_etc...
1. Peasants are often called up for military duty as levies (conscripts), to supplement the knights and men-at-arms. Especially when there wasn't a standing army.
2. Authority wasn't so centralized -- these local matters would be the authority of local lords, not the king.
It's available on Google Books, you have everything you need satisfy your own curiousity.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20171003-proof-that-peo...
In the United States, "gun control" (restrictions on gun rights) is universally classified as a liberal/left policy and the absence of "gun control" is classified as a conservative/right policy.
Without entering into a discussion of these politics I would like to point out that those classifications are completely backwards.
The US Second Amendment (and associated US gun rights, court interpretations, etc.) are extremely liberal, from an historical perspective.
Just because there's a right to bear arms in the US doesn't mean the public there has any effective resistance against state coercion or violence. History doesn't bear that out at all. Likewise over history in countries that have no right to bear arms there have been many instances of the population resisting state coercion.
Guns are fairly easily obtained in a licensed and registered manner here in Canada and in many other countries that have large rural areas, etc. for the purpose of hunting and sport. Sure, hand guns or assault weapons, no. And yes, there are no constitutional guarantees of this. But it's mostly irrelevant because the public is on the whole supportive of the notion that guns like cars and pesticides and other things are a fairly dangerous tool where the public as a whole gains from carefully watching them.
The Rawlsian veil of ignorance[1] that the modern American left is pretty much based on is largely an extension of Locke.
Sure, there are some economic ideas that the early liberals had that most modern liberals (and modern conservatives for that matter) would eschew, but to reduce their thinking to being purely libertarian does a disservice to the modern left, which needs all the historical support it can muster.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/21496/gun-ownership-higher-amon...
But this is way too reductive. There's lots of gun ownership in the US across all political affiliations. Additionally, gun ownership is independent of someone's views on guns. I know people with liberal views on gun ownership who don't own guns and people with restrictive views on gun ownership who do own guns.
It would even the playing field in some ways.
Also, if you murder someone, you won't be invited to parties anymore.
And yes, I remember not getting invited to parties is the ultimate sanction.
The situation is 'very high information entropy' in the sense of it is a combination of both requiring both high technology proliferation and prosperity at the same time as severe and sustained instability for it to become remotely acceptable as a status quo instead of "National Guard? We need artillery on this maniac going around with a death drone. How the hell did he get it in the first place?" Theoretically a dual use guardian drone could say work for digging someone out of a collapsed building quickly which could also be lethal if misapplied but that is getting into 'keeping rattlesnake anti-venom in your pocket all times in Canada in case you get bit by one escaped from the zoo or potentially illegal exotic pet trade' levels in terms of effort and expense vs returns in safety.
What happens if one goes off beside another one? Do you get a daisy chain effect?
In short, 2nd amendment militias don't seem a very realistic deterrent to a modern army.
"You cannot control an entire country and its people with tanks, jets, battleships and drone or any of these things you believe trump's citizen ownership of firearms.
A fighter jet, tank, drone, battleship or whatever cannot stand on street corners. And enforce "no assembly" edicts. A fighter jet cannot kick down your door at 3am and search your house for contraband.
None of these things can maintain the needed police state to completely subjugate and enslave the people of a nation. Those weapons are for decimating, flattening and glassing large areas and many people at once and fighting other state militaries. The government does not want to kill all of its people and blow up its own infrastructure. These are the very things they need to be tyrants in the first place. If they decided to turn everything outside of Washington DC into glowing green glass they would be the absolute rulers of a big, worthless, radioactive pile of [excrement].
Police are needed to maintain a police state, boots on the ground. And no matter how many police you have on the ground they will always be vastly outnumbered by civilians which is why is a police state it is vital that your police have automatic weapons while civilians are unarmed.
BUT when every random pedestrian could have a Glock in their waistband and every random homeowner an AR-15 all of that goes out of the window because now the police are outnumbered and face the reality of bullets coming back at them.
If you want living examples of this look at every insurgency that the US military has tried to destroy. They're all still kicking with nothing but AK-47s, pick-up trucks and improvised explosives because these big weapons you talk about are useless for dealing with them. ".
You would have a small percent of “full time” insurgents that would probably operate in rural areas of the US, in order to better hide larger equipment, but that would be the minority. Most of the time they would be avoiding conflict with military forces, only attacking vulnerable areas and forcing the military to guard everything. I remember reading that trying to surveil Afghanistan was already using the majority of the US’ aerial surveillance assets. The US is massive, with huge rural areas and tons of regular traffic to hide amongst.
A dictator would likely attempt to crush opposition with a heavy handed military response. That would likely serve in the insurgents favor, as it would turn the average citizen against the military strangers with tanks in the streets, checkpoints, and extra judiciary killings of civilians. Just look at the police protests and riots over the summer. The heavy police response stoked more anger and resolve and grew protests and people willing to provide support.
It is also worth noting that we don’t know how much of the military would fall in line with this. And even if they did, how many would secretly help the insurgency. How many insurgents would be tipped off to unguarded National Guard bases with military hardware? Do you really think the military would willingly use nukes on its own people? Bombers? Tanks? Just because the military has them, doesn’t mean they could be used effectively.
Others have replied to the other points.
The "but they have tanks and nukes" argument has been long debunked. To actually run an oppressive nation you need boots on the ground which requires very strong support from a very sizeable minority (e.g South Africa, Northern Ireland). The less firepower the peasants have the smaller the minority you need is. You can't fight a insurgency with tanks and bombs without destroying the things you seek to protect. If you're England crapping all over Ireland or if you're the US crapping all over Iraq you can kind of make it work as long as you have political will and keep the death tolls low because your supply lines and political support are isolated from the violence (notice how quickly the Troubles wrapped up once the bombs started going off in England). It's much harder to fight an insurgency when people are sabotaging your supply chains. See the 4chan copypasta someone else posted for other details.
At the end of the day, holding territory is hard. Look at how much trouble Americans have had subduing the Taliban in Afghanistan. The bombs, tanks, planes, etc., are largely useless in holding a city. Now, combine that with the fact that the US military is comprised of citizen soldiers, who would be in the position of fighting against their own communities.
It’s when a community is totally disarmed, and when the mere show of military force would force total capitulation without violence, that a citizen military could rationalize aiding tyranny.
It’s also worth pointing out that there are 50 governors who command national guards that have fighter planes and tanks and whatnot. In a real civil war, armed citizenry would likely be fighting alongside state forces.
The militias of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia would disagree.
It’s doable if you have the support of the majority of the population, such as Nazi occupation of France and later US/UK occupation of Germany.
Now imagine turning all that might against itself where much of the population has small arms of some sorts.
There is no similar right in any other part of the World, in every other part of the World there have been revolts, sometimes much larger than US has ever witnessed.
Many countries have also revolted against USA, that more often than not has been the tryrant.
edit: the armed right wing of the US could easily decide that they didn't like the outcome of the election, and change it. The volunteer military and national police forces entirely constructed to prosecute the drug war are overwhelmingly right wing. Second amendment warriors tend to own more guns than they have fingers and toes. That the civil service and the majority of patrician-generals at the top support the result of the election would be no hindrance.
The purpose of being armed is really to force the opposition to massacre you. A right-wing revolution as described above would probably have fewer than a couple of thousand casualties. It's very easy to still feel like the good guy if the only casualties of your revolution were a few of your most deeply committed archenemies (i.e. a few lefty militia types.) It's a lot more difficult when you're hurling artillery into normal civilian neighborhoods.
There were plenty of Northern Irish neighborhoods into which UK military and the police simply couldn't operate without negotiating with a representative of that neighborhood.
To be fair the US has a tendency to side with tyrants, dictators, oppressors, not exactly with the peasants, at least in the past 80 years.
To name one
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
But I see your point, my objections are to:
1 - you don't need to be armed, you nede to be able to, in case you;re going to need it (for example through external support)
2 - you prove my point, there is no armed revolt that succeeded only because people were armed, you need international support (at least from your neighbours)
> I'd like to see a citation of a single unarmed revolution that succeeded.
here's one for you, my friend.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Revolution
> The purpose of being armed is really to force the opposition to massacre you
exactly.
that's the point.
and that's why you don't point a gun to a policeman.
being armed has always been a disadvantage for regular people.
That's why the comment bringing up the 2nd amendment is completely off topic in this context, 10 centuries ago if you traveled armed you had to be ready to fight, because everyone armed like you was going to try to kill you: you represented a danger.
it's the same thing that happens today in US, a lot of people are armed, they have guns on them, the police patrolling is even more heavily armed that the gangsters, they take a look a round, see something fishy, they see a gun, they shoot.
No question asked.
So, to go back on topic, being unarmed for the peasants of the Carolingian era most of the time made the difference between being killed and being simply robbed.
there is no "the people" as a single entity and interests when there is a revolt.
if everybody is armed, the supporters of the tyrant are going to be armed as well.
But with better equipment.
a thousand years before the 2nd amendment was conceived, peasant had other preoccupations than bearing expensive, heavy, difficult to handle arms.
What were they thinking?
Did they not love freedom?
It's so incredible that they did not copy the US Constitution, even though the first Constitution in the human history /, the Magna Charts, was written 4 centuries later than the Annales Bertiniani, in 1215.
The idea that the 2nd amendment protects the peasants is also wrong and it's one of the reasons people laugh at USA, when the 2nd amendment was approved, Grand Duchy of Tuscany had already abolished death penalty.
2nd amendment was introduced to permit people to shoot tax collectors (i.e. the British)
The 2nd Amendment was introduced because the states were afraid a standing national army would give too much power to the Federal government, so the plan was to have individual states field their own militias instead. Also because the principles of the right to self defense were established in British common law at the time - but that has more to do with keeping cougars and vandals away than any abstract fears of tyranny.
You're right that it didn't really protect "peasants" - it mostly protected the interests of rich landowners. Which is, ironically, what Ben Franklin was actually arguing against with his often repeated (and misinterpreted) quote about those who trade a little liberty for safety deserving neither.
He said stuff like that left and right. He was very much in favor of sticking to one's ideological guns even when personally inconvenient. He was arguing in favor of the federal government retaining the authority to tax in the instance everyone quotes.
The terms used are "conjurés/conjuration" (from Google: Middle English (also in the sense ‘oblige by oath’): from Old French conjurer ‘to plot or exorcise’, from Latin conjurare ‘band together by an oath, conspire’ (in medieval Latin ‘invoke’), from con- ‘together’ + jurare ‘swear’.). It seems to imply something more than just gather together for self-defence.
That varied by region.
Often English Lords were required to provide troops or arrows on demand, and those both came from the peasant class.
(Frankly, peasant men would have to be tough to work in the fields in the mid-day sun, so were ideal stock for battles.)
Otherwise what was the point in appointing nobility if they weren't contributing an army, but just collecting taxes?
-English Assize of Arms, 1181.
Knights, and freemen who owned more than a certain value of property, were required to own more and better weapons.
Later laws extended this obligation to all men not just freemen, and required ownership of bows.
Strange that the peasants could fight back a group of Vikings ("the toughest warriors ever" according to National Geographic[0]) but not a bunch of aristocrats.
[0] https://www.vikingmartialarts.com/vikingculture/2018/4/4/vik...
Besides, "toughest warriors ever" sounds more like popular colouring than an academic assessment. I don't know a lot about Vikings but as I understand they were principally raiders, which I would absolutely expect to perform worse than a Frankish aristocrat-led army.
Apples and oranges and all that.
Though this is prior to the switch to mounted knights
Yes, definitely. It's just that the raiding parties weren't just consisting of professional warriors. Many were simply farmers with axes, bows and spears, seeking plunder and glory like the others.
Very _very_ modern. This is basically the plot of The Jam's "The Eton Rifles"...
In a pitched battle, on a open terrain, in a nice weather with preferably not too soft soil.
Also if you want to find tough people you look them at the extremes - so high north, or up in the mountains or in the deserts.
I also don't think toughness is the right metric. We're not talking about brawls, we're talking about trained, well-equipped professionals doing their jobs.
It happens that prey can fight of the predator. The prey if fighting for its life. The predator might not want to risk even an injury rather than just finding the next opportunity.
However, what is often missed in the depictions of peasants is that they were much stronger than modern folk, they did kill animals quite often, they did fight other peasants quite often.
Free peasants were a different story from bound peasants, mountain peasants a different story from low lands.
I know because my grandparents were peasants from a mountainous region, you did not want to mess with those peasants.
I could go all they about the acts of aggression, strength and bravery I've witnessed (same on the contrary).
Such a peasant would not fight in pitch battle, but would simply burn their crops, take their cattle and sheep up the mountain and return in autumn when armies would go back home. They would setup ambushes, mostly targeting guides, but they were quite opportunistic.
It was remarkable reading Xenophon's account of fighting mountain people in ancient times -- while I did feel his disgust for them, the sense was that they could be quite dangerous when fighting on their home turf.
No extra muscle necessary.
Edit: This YouTube series shows it best I think: https://youtu.be/6KbroTkaey0
Here in Late Medieval Czechia we had a militant reformation movement called the Hussites. Of course, the rest of Catholic Europe sent in several crusades to crush the heretics, without much success.
One of the many reasons why the crusaders failed were so-called Wagenburgs [0]. Basically, the Hussite army would be underway with very heavy wagons and, if the scouts brought back information about an approaching enemy, would build a provisional fort out of them fairly quickly. Such a fort could not be swept away by a cavalry attack and if the defenders had enough guns (and by that time early firearms were already used in Europe), the knights tightly packed around the wagenburg would present a perfect target.
Plus, there were kids under the wagons with very sharp scythes, hacking at the unprotected horses' legs just in front of them, just as you mention.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagon_fort#Czechs_and_Hussites
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[1] https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/War_Wagon_(Age_of_Empir...
Knights did loose horses though. They all took multiple war horses with them to battle (a "lance" usually consisted of one knight, multiple warhorses and a regular horse for travel/supplies and several servants). When they lost their horse, they fought their way back to their own side and got on the next horse.
Oh interesting, so it was basically expected? Not a force majeure? I always thought losing a horse back then was a really big event for the knight, borderline tragic - a big financial loss, a highly increased likelihood of dying (getting stuck under the horse etc etc)
The most common reason for loosing a warhorse is probably not that it was killed. It was that it was wounded by archers. In that case you can ride back, swap horses and join the cavalry again. And tend to the wounded horse after the battle.
Oh please do tell us more. How and where do you do the re-enactments? I'd love to visit (once the pandemic is over)
So they would be vulnerable, but the horse itself has a vote.
They are not great counterexamples in the "Knight vs Peasant" argument because you're talking about an entire English army led by an English prince. In the slightly larger-scope argument of knights vs footmen in combat, sure, it's a very good example.
Second Lateran Council banned use of crossbow against Christians.
> And Western knights did not like it. Their armor protected them from most weapons they would face with the exception of the longbow, a weapon that took years to learn and decades to master. But crossbows could slice right through the armor at greater range than even a longbow, and shooters could be trained in hours or days.
https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/catholic-churc...
Not sure if this is actually true. The council (specifically Canon 29) refers to ballistarii and sagittarii. Ballistarii may mean either crossbowmen or slingers, while sagittarii means archers. So there is no way of reading this as referring to crossbowmen alone- the ban is either against both crossbowmen and archers, or it's against slingers and archers and doesn't mention crossbows at all.
Some commentators suggest that this canon is intending to prohibit archery contests- similarly, Canon 14 of the council condemns tournaments. Others point out that at the time of the council, the Pope was at war with King Roger of Sicily, whose armies employed large numbers of Muslim archers (not crossbowmen). The canon means that the Papal armies could shoot at Roger's Muslim soldiers, but Roger's Christian officers would be excommunicated if they ordered their men to shoot back...
Text in Latin: http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/es/index3.htm
And in English: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/lateran2.asp
The main advantage of a crossbow is that it's easy to use. Richard Lionheart, the English king, was famously killed by a boy wielding a crossbow. You need no more than 2 weeks to be proficient with a crossbow. To do that with an English longbow you'd need 7 years.
There are various methods of drawing a crossbow that don't require great strength. Here's a (not exhaustive! Missing is for example latchet crossbow.) list of 9 ways to draw a crossbow:
Tod's Workshop
9 MEDIEVAL CROSSBOW DEVICES - How do they work?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IdfmaC_t-Q
In the video, Tod Cutler shows 9 mechanisms used to span a crossbow, some of them require a specially modified crossbow and some don't. Crucially, he shows the numbers for mechanical advantage. Keep in mind the input number will vary. Cranequin is an amazing mechanism, but you only use a single hand. A windlass doesn't have such an impressive ratio, but you can use both hands. A belt may let you use your back muscles as well.
Videos of Joe Gibbs, a 170lb man who can draw a 200lb longbow, show how much effort it is. In one of the videos - I can't locate which one it is - he explains it's no coincidence medieval illustrations show people bending forward when drawing a bow. He draws this way and it lets him put a little more extra into the arrow.
Crossbow can be kept loaded for a long time, and you can line up your shot. This is especially important in sieges. Also, they have a controlled release. My observation is that missile weapons evolved to have more and more controlled release over the ages. Slings and atlatls required lots of skill to use, bow is a bit more controlled, crossbow even more controlled (less things to mess up). Slings were even more powerful than bows but even more training was required.
======================
Now to the power issue. The myth is that they hit extra hard. A light crossbow (loaded by hands, or using a goat's foot lever) actually has power comparable to a short bow. Something like 60-80lbs. Witness a nominally 350lbs failing to penetrate a steel helmet:
Can a 350lb Medieval Crossbow Penetrate Steel Helmets? (16 / 14ga)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqGZl5MVFPg
Why? The answer is short power stroke. Just because a bow or crossbow can be drawn with a certain force doesn't mean they impart that force to the arrow! Power stroke is the distance between the end of the bowstring, when fully loaded, and between the front of the bow. Crossbows are inefficient when it comes to transferring energy, especially the ones made using medieval technology and metallurgy. Steel bows are nowhere near as flexible as good wood or modern alloys. This was proven time and again using a chronometer (projectile speed meter).
Heavy crossbows, meaning those loaded with a windlass, hit about as hard as a war longbow, which is 100-120lbs. My numbers are from Tod's Workshop youtube channel.
Both a longbow and a heavy crossbow are strong enough to pierce mail armor - piercing is actually its weakness. Mail is good against slashing blades and blunt objects. Even a light crossbow punctures mail. But they fail spectacularly at puncturing plate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej3qjUzUzQg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMT6hjwY8NQ
And a longbow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBxdTkddHaE
And here is the most powerful traditional crossbow I've ever found on youtube
Shooting a 1257 lb Great Horn Composite Crossbow - version 2.0
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA5M0QKXtWU
It is 14/15 century, so pretty late medieval tech (Swiss). Crossbows don't get bigger than that. It's practically a very mobile siege weapon.
Another downside of short power stroke is that the crossbow bolt (arrow) accelerates much more rapidly than a bow arrow. So it must be sturdier to withstand the forces, which is why bolts were so thick. A thick projectile has more air resistance and worse armor penetration.
So yes, crossbow is the RPG weapon, but in the sense of "Role Playing Games" and not "Rocked Propelled Grenade".
And here is how much of expertise you need to make crossbows the medieval way:
A Castle Fit For Fighting | Secrets of the Castle (2/5) | Absolute History
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https://youtu.be/u6v-3Ai88oM?t=1218
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I hope I've proved that power was not the advantage of crossbows. The weapon had many advantages, and the basic shape of the weapon and its trigger is used to this day in rifles because it's so good.
If power is what you're after, check out staff slings (Fustibalus). This thing is SCARY, it cracks coconuts at a distance.
Slingshot VS. Shepherds Staff Sling
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bFQYNfJqqY
This is a very solid video with measurements.
Formula: (mass * (velocity * velocity)) / 2
Weighting is simple, but for measuring velocity you need a chronometer.
The great composite crossbow I linked above had 1257lb draw weight, and it managed 420 Joule energy with a 320gram projectile.
By comparison, Tod Workshop's 1000lb windlass crossbow shot achieved 110 Joules https://youtu.be/kHnZo6ELEV0?t=591
This is to give you an idea that crossbows of similar draw weight can vary wildly with their projectile energy. Note the composite crossbow used wood / great horn and it had much longer bow arms.
The 160lb draw weight longbow in the Tod Cutler / Joe Gibbs mythbusting video managed 123 Joules (10m from target) and 109 Joules (25m from target). Arrow weight was 80gram.
And the staff sling I linked above managed 107 Joules with a 3000grain (194gram) stone.
I don't think that's true either, plate armor should give good protection against arrows and bolts.
The main benefit of the crossbow appears to not be penetration, but ease of use. Training a longbowman takes a lifetime (medieval English Archers had skeletal differences due to the constant training), and effectively requires handing out weapons to your peasants. This is not a good idea if your peasants are in fact, serfs. With a crossbow you can hand them out and train a soldier how to use it in a week or so, and then take the crossbows back later and not worry about them being used against you in a peasant revolt. You simply can't do this with a longbow due to the constant training they need to be effective.
> And Western knights did not like it. Their armor protected them from most weapons they would face with the exception of the longbow, a weapon that took years to learn and decades to master. But crossbows could slice right through the armor at greater range than even a longbow, and shooters could be trained in hours or days.
This description of crossbows trivially defeating armor is not true. Perhaps a crossbow could defeat cheap iron armor at close ranges, but the primary sections of high quality steel armor will be effectively immune to all projectiles; later examples were in fact actually capable of stopping bullets. The real risk was the thinner sections around the groin, shoulders, or face mask, where the armor was typically thin enough to be defeated by either bolt or arrow.
This historical account sounds a bit like a moral panic of the day, not an accurate description of the behavior of armor against crossbow bolts.
I can’t imagine how 10+ years of training could not give a knight an infinite advantage even if we equalize the combatants in terms of equipment.
Also knights were training to fight since they were children, so in our hypothetical bar fight the pro-fighter’s skills would be along the lines of those of Floyd Mayweather (who started training when he was 9). Surely the knight may be less gifted, but that matter should really concern other knights and not peasants :)
49 vs 9000 scenario described in the post seems grotesque but I think, limiting the number of slain civilians by knights’ stamina and assuming that any resistance is negligible is more than reasonable.
You're also probably discounting what peasant style manual labor (and hobbies, which include beating the shit out of each other with fists, clubs, etc) does for your combat ability. Hand and wrist strength is a huge deal in pre-firearms days, and peasants were at least 3-4 standard deviations stronger in these ways than average people now (really: that much -I've fooled around with building hand strength and it's bonkers how strong people can get in this domain). People basically exerted their strength through simple hafted tools all day; makes them good at exerting their strength through simple hafted tools all day. Regarding group tactics; peasants had lots of games which could have helped them with this. For example, Hurling[0], and I'm sure there was lots of stuff like Calcio Storico[1].
The real advantage the knights had (beyond equipment, like horses and the morale of feeling superior to the peasant) was probably nutrition. They spent most of their downtime hunting, feasting and eating meat, and between wearing heavy armor and their strength oriented workouts, the knights were probably pretty jacked. 50 or 100lbs of muscle and fat and 6-8" of height helps a lot. I don't have references in front of me for this, but David Willoughby talks about some of this in his book, and I'm sure you can see it in skeletons of Nobles versus peasants (aka Nobles will have larger skeletons with 'deformities' at the muscle attachment points).
That would be the Melee [1]:
"Tournaments often contained a mêlée consisting of knights fighting one another on foot or mounted, either divided into two sides or fighting as a free-for-all. "
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournament_(medieval)#Melee
To sell you on it a bit: if you've lifted for ~10 years you've probably hit your biological peak on the big exercises, and you've gone into some kind of maintenance mode, or are concentrating more on strength endurance, or rotating through peak efforts on different kinds of strength, or working around inevitable injuries or whatever. Either way, a man gets bored, and a large part of the appeal of strength training is the feeling of making progress. Various forms of hand strength; there's basically infinite potential there. Leonardo used to bend horseshoes, and it's a seemingly impossible feat I think most men are capable of with some training. It's also something available to old people who might not be able or willing to pull 5 wheels on the deadlift any more. You can, of course, injure your hands or forearms, but your chances of being crippled by it are fairly low. The other thing about it; you can train a fair amount (unlike big lifts) without blowing out your cortisol, but you get that intense triumphant grrrrrrr ogre nerve energy from doing it that you do after a max effort lift. Also it looks cool and chicks and small children dig it when you do seemingly impossible feats.
Anyway, peasants who hoed their crops and lifted bricks all day were fucking STRONG in the hands. Probably stronger than most nobles in that regard.
[0] https://www.gripboard.com/index.php?/forum/7-workout-reports...
So without legs? Just pure hands?
This story is attributed to Jean de Maingre.
I guess they did train that movement specifically (in armor etc.), because it's not something you could just randomly do on a whim even if you are very strong. Definitely not something you would WANT to do on a whim if you can fall down to your death and also have to be in good enough shape after to fight (which makes this particularly crazy).
Damn, considering that they were also trained grapplers, those must have been one hell of sparring partners.
Seems like a not-unreasonable comparison today would be "could a civilian kill an armored vehicle?"
From my amateur research, this is one of the reasons the Romans were so effective- they weren't always better armed than their opponents, but their culture and training promoted better cohesion. Whereas in the scenario of a medieval peasant facing a knight, even negating the shock value of being charged by mounted troops the knight likely just has far more experience in battle and is less likely to rout. Every peasant revolt I've read about seemed to end with the nobles riding the fleeing peasants down and stabbing them in the backs. Makes one reconsider the modern connotation of the word 'noble', although maybe it was a bit of a euphemism even back then. I know chivalry was much more of an ideal than a creed people actually followed.
Feudal lords have pretty much always taken whatever liberties they like with the local people: rape, theft, property destruction, murder, torture, kidnapping, ...
Medieval knights were little different than the thug soldiers of any modern criminal gang, except less checked by state power.
Defense, research, some higher level medicine, engineering, etc...
They would get money from rents, but were expected to spend that money in weapons, equipment for their civilian profession if they had any (for example building a telescope) etc...
And of course it worked MOST of the time, but not ALL the time, sometimes you had people that became infamous, like that "vampire" lady that killed a ton of random people to bathe in their blood...
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2z7t3k/plate...
Even in the Napoleonic wars the best defence against cavalry was the square with soldiers using bayonets on their muskets.
So even my bad French can get the translation - it what does it mean? :-)
It smells like something out of Asterix - but what is the quote from?
Not very helpful in 1 vs 1 for the peasant, but in the chaos of the battlefield, very possible. And like others have mentioned: with a polearm and skill, much better chances for the peaseant.
A disciplined force of polearm carriers could have (and did) defeat full armored knights. But there is the greates difference: a peasant usually was not in the position to receive military training at all, while the knights were trained for war since being childs.
Individually, a knight on foot isn't catching anyone and can probably be poked until exhausted with any stick longer than whatever weapon he's carrying.
Mounted, someone in the ground has little to no chance at all if the horse is capable of moving. On clear ground, the horse is the weapon.
From the wiki page on Agincourt:
"Recent heavy rain made the battle field very muddy, proving very tiring to walk through in full plate armour. The French monk of St. Denis describes the French troops as "marching through the middle of the mud where they sank up to their knees. So they were already overcome with fatigue even before they advanced against the enemy". The deep, soft mud particularly favoured the English force because, once knocked to the ground, the heavily armoured French knights had a hard time getting back up to fight in the mêlée. Barker states that some knights, encumbered by their armour, actually drowned in their helmets.["
In that case, isn't the answer a definite yes?
Knowing how to destroy an armored vehicle is not a common knowledge around where I live.
It is given for granted however that around the world people are creative, can learn new things, and generally could figure out how to make explosives.
And I guess they still qualify as civilians.
The only thing that would hamper modern soldiers is that from everything I have read medieval knights weren't possessed with any qualms about killing; life in general was much more violent than we experience now.
For more reading about this mindset, acoup.blog [0] has an excellent review of Bertrand de Born's work. What struck me is just how casual violence is treated, and that war is a treated as the expected normal condition. The peasantry definitely did not hold these views, but given that the nobility had a vast armament advantage and copious experience in killing I doubt many modern soldiers would be quite so callous. The only modern exception I can think of is child soldiers; but they have been subjected to abuse specifically to train them to be able to commit horrific acts. Maybe I am wrong, but I don't think most soldiers in modern militaries would easily be able to slaughter their countrymen with quite the same abandon. This is speculation, but I suspect that the nobles were able to do this because they viewed the peasantry as semi-subhuman; see the American antebellum south for the types of atrocities that that mindset enables.
[0] https://acoup.blog/2020/04/16/collections-a-trip-through-ber...
However this doesn't fit the "A peasant vs. a Knight" comaprison. A huge mass can also easily stop and defeat a knight.
No. A knight prone on the ground was very easy to kill very quickly - just stick a dagger through the visor. There is nothing comparable a civilian today can do to an APC.
Additionally, a single knight on a horse was not that hard to take down using relatively easily-available polearms, at least to a group of peasants. It doesn't scale down linearly - 40:9000 is a very different matter than 1:200, because a charge of 40 mounted knights is still inescapable death to the part of the enemy force they're charging at. A single knight would be much less terrifying even to a relatively group of peasants.
Armour in built up areas is very risky with out infantry support and the APC's would not be just driving around with out having dismounts supporting them.
The armored vehicle analogy is apt.
Back to the analogy, a peasant (in the modern sense) is unlikely going to be as able to obtain an anti-tank or armor piercing rounds as easily as a peasant (medieval sense) could pick up a pike.
I'm certain that more than one knight died locked inside a burning barn back in the days.
Far from being mowed down by longbowmen (although they absolutely would have taken a toll, especially on horses), the French cavalry was turned back by the stakes the archers planted in their positions. The stakes were likely mingled with the archers in a kind of thicket, rather than the fence you see in movies or video games, preventing the french knights from seeing the danger until the archers fell back and it was too late.
The French second wave, armored foot, was essentially invulnerable to arrows. But the French piled into dense columns to attack the English men-at-arms (they had no interest in fighting peasant archers, there’s no glory or loot in it). So the front of the column is in big trouble and is being pushed into the English spears by the men behind them, and those in the rear have no idea what’s happening up front so they keep pushing forward. This is how people die at rock concerts or on black friday.
Mostly out of ammo at this point, the English archers come out to gang up on stragglers at the edges of the columns. This is the “flank attack” that eye witnesses report. The peasants certainly didn’t charge the flanks of the columns en masse, they would have been slaughtered. But they could definitely pick off those who tried to escape the press out the sides. Without an escape route, the French columns turn into a panicked rout. This is where most of the French losses happen, either stampeded by their own or cut down or captured by the pursuing English knights.
The English don’t chase them far, however, because there’s still a second line of French men-at-arms which hasn’t been committed to the battle, and the English have a large number of captives to keep an eye on. In the event, the French don’t renew the attack, and send out their heralds to parley.
So yes, the English won a major victory and the peasants played a big role, but the popular version misses the actual mechanics of the battle. “Conquest of France” is also rather strong. Immediately after the battle Henry turned around and went home to London. His later advantage is more down to the long term consequences of the sheer amount of the French aristocracy killed in the battle rather than any immediate gains.
As horrifying as the incident is, Keegan at least finds it unlikely that the prisoners were actually massacred wholesale. When you look at the actual mechanics of how such a thing would work, especially with the rest of the French army still on the field and watching, a slaughter of 6000 prisoners becomes really implausible.
For space I won’t quote Keegan’s reasoning, but here’s an excerpt from his conclusion:
> “What seems altogether more likely, therefore, is that Henry’s order, rather than bring about the prisoners’ massacre, was intended by its threat to terrorize them into abject inactivity ... Some would have been killed in the process, and quite deliberately, but we need not reckon their number in thousands, perhaps not even in hundreds.”
The English army was arranged in a single line, with large groups of archers alternating with small groups of men at arms. For the men at arms (on both sides), combat was primarily about winning personal glory, secondarily about scoring some loot. The only way to get either is by attacking the enemy men at arms. No personal upside in attacking yeoman archers (other than, uh, maybe winning the battle. Whoops.)
So you naturally funnel towards the enemy you want to fight. Remember these guys aren’t marching in formation like Romans or early modern pikemen. It’s a loosely organized mass of individuals.
On top of that, the survivors of the cavalry attack on the flanks retreat through the infantry, throwing them into disorder. This also helps condense the infantry as they try to make way for the cavalry.
On top of that, getting shot at by clouds of arrows sucks even if realistically you’re not in a lot of danger. Getting out from in front of the archers would feel safer.
Plus, even if you’re a smart knight who knows you should be attacking the archers, that doesn’t do you any good unless everyone else comes too. Getting caught our on your own is how you get ganged up on, knocked down into the mud, and stabbed through the visor by some dirt farmer with a dagger. Which is exactly what happened to the guys on the edges of the columns. So you stick with the crowd. Once you’re in the crowd, it becomes packed too tightly for you to change your mind.
At the front of the columns, witnesses report the English stepping back at the last moment, causing the leading french to wrong foot their attack and stumble. So it’s chaotic, they haven’t smashed through the English line, but the guys further back have no way of knowing that and keep pressing forwards.
As an aside, I didn’t mean to make it sound like the spears were a particularly English thing. Most on both sides would’ve had some kind of polearm. In mass combat a sword is often a backup weapon.
Though it's certainly true that the historical English longbowman wasn't the usual 'peasant' stereotype, given that they were generally landowners (rather than tenant farmers) and were actually legally required to take a certain amount of regular practice weekly with the bow.
Interestingly there's no information on where the bows were to come from but it sounds like the typical longbowman would have the income to buy it himself.
Can you elaborate. I thought serfdom was still around in 1415 in England.
Admittedly, the Flemish side wasn't exactly peasantry but largely townspeople in guilds, although in terms of the classic three-tier model (nobility, clergy, peasantry), they would have fallen into the last class.
Ugh, camping snipers.
This is true, but one should note that the Battle of Crécy 70 years earlier had shown the same pattern.
(Although of course there were many other battles in the 100 year war where bowmen were not as decisive).
Peasants had cloth boots which didn't get stuck into the mud as much so they didn't get as tired.
Among other things.
It takes more than shoes to get such a one sided outcome.
If you make them out of cardboard and try to cross the Carpathian Mountains perhaps not.
An English longbowman was paid more in real terms than a Squaddie is today
If it’s a particular lazy knight that enjoys too much food, well.
Would be an interesting overlap of nutrition vs fitness vs indulgence.
That might be possible, but is it likely? A knight is basically a medieval super-soldier: an individual with a huge amount of ongoing personal+state investment going into their ability to project power on the field.
Even if they're also a feudal lord who lives within their own holdings (and therefore someone who's not beholden to anyone around them, only to a distant king) everyone working for them is putting a lot of work into keeping the knight's equipment, their horse, etc. maintained and ready to go.
Wouldn't those same people push the knight themselves — for their own sakes! — to stay fit, as another kind of "maintenance"? Wouldn't there be mass resentment within a lazy knight's power structure, that would lead to said power structure toppling or mutiny-ing?
As for incompetent knights, I'm genuinely confused: how did they survive in the role for any length of time? (Especially when the only talent pool they would have to recruit underlings from are the very same people they're oppressing. I always figured competence at protecting the outlying villages—where everyone's families live—during invasion, was kinda the reason anyone bothered to work for them at all, rather than towns responding to recruitment attempts exactly the same as invasion attempts, with stoning, boiling oil from the rooftops, etc.)
More interesting questions are:
Was the average knight fat?
How common were the?
How effective were fat/incompetent knights on the battlefield?
This isn't really correct. Most knights didn't have a huge incomes (if they did they would become Lords).
A Knight wasn't a military position - it was primarily a class and status designation, which came with some military obligations. These could be met by supplying another person to your lord to do the fighting for you.
Often a Knight would supply their lord with their younger son for example, since their older son would be the heir.
To become a knight in the medieval times in the UK you needed an income of 40 pounds a year[1] which converts to around 30,000 pounds/year these days.[2]
> Wouldn't there be mass resentment within a lazy knight's power structure, that would lead to said power structure toppling or mutiny-ing?
Yes, indeed peasant revolts were a thing. And a lot of most knights "fighting" involved hunting down rebellious peasants armed with sticks.
[1] https://www.quora.com/Were-Medieval-English-knights-wealthy-...
[2] https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/#curr...
On top of that a knight would have eaten a lot more fat, meat, and vegetables than a peasant, who would have lived almost entirely on bread. This wouldn’t have left the peasant totally protein-starved because it was bread made from whole grains, but a knight would have been getting much better returns on their exercise throughout life due to their more varied diet.
I believe the average member of the House of Commons was visibly shorter than the members of the House of Lords at least through WWII. Certainly Americans were obviously taller than Europeans until after WWII. Even American slaves were taller and children were generally malnourished until about seven when they became capable of working. Adult height seems to have been unaffected reflecting just how rich the US was comparatively. Complete unfeeling bastards didn’t malnourish children enough to do permanent damage.
The below article makes mention of a fact that may complicate things though - big strong slaves were worth more. Presumably slave owners had this in mind so had an ulterior motive for feeding slaves better.
It’s one bleak subject.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11718681_The_Height...
Very bleak, but slave owners had a large economic incentive to make sure their slaves were fit for work (although that didn't cause qualms on other, more brutal forms of mistreatment). The only way they treated them well was in providing food, but that wasn't due to kindness but more from the same motivation to feed a team of draft horses well. It's tough reading, but some of the ledgers kept by plantation owners really drive the point home that they viewed slaves more akin to livestock than people. And they somehow justified what they were doing as christian and moral.
I found this interesting article while looking:
Heights across the Last 2,000 Years in England: https://oro.open.ac.uk/53774/3/53774.pdf
> Floud et al. also showed that men who grew up in urban areas were shorter than men who grew up in rural areas, and that there were significant differences in the heights of men and boys from different socioeconomic backgrounds. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, 14-year-old boys attending the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst were nearly six inches taller than their counterparts in the Marine Society
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/6876106.pdf (bottom of page 101).
"no penny, pullets for to buy,
Nor neither geese nor pigs · but two green cheeses,
A few curds and cream · and an oaten cake"
Working in the field all day is not the same as training specifically for combat whole day. And nutrition is massively important for muscle building.
Salmon were considered peasant food, a peasant would go by the river and fish one up for lunch. Then probably eat some kind of pottage, and bread. Maybe eggs.
I'd wager peasants can be tough as fuck, it's only question of how well trained and equipped they are for fighting.
Sure, 'artisinal'... have you ever chipped a tooth from poorly ground flour or rock inclusions? The bread was more wholesome than what is avaliable in the supermarket now, but how many people outside of developing countries eat a majority grain diet? Bread was the main foodstuff simply because grain stores much more easily than anything else. Salt-curing was only avaliable to the rich, since even salt was tremendously expensive.
If one doesn't care about the health of their workers, actually, one doesn't really need to feed them much.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_Middle_Ages...
Not without the permission of whoever owns the stream they wouldn't.
Here's a bit about the Battle of Roosebeke:
>As French lances pierced and axes hacked at the solid mass of bodies, many of whom lacked helmet or cuirass, the dead piled up in heaps. French foot soldiers, penetrating between the men-at-arms, finished off the fallen with their knives, “with no more mercy than if they had been dogs.” Under the attack of the Bourbon-Coucy wing, the Flemish rear turned and fled, throwing away their weapons as they ran. Philip van Artevelde, fighting in the front ranks, tried to rally them, but from his position could exercise no effective command. He lacked the assurance of the Black Prince at Poitiers to retain control from a hilltop above the battle. Borne backward by the mass as the rout spread, he was trampled and killed under the feet of his own forces, as was his banner-bearer, a woman named Big Margot.
But the situation is not like that in any real life instance, as the described situation in France depicts.
What the peasants are lacking isn’t so much arms and equipment, as discipline and organisation.
Yes, we have street fights / protests between "soldiers" and pedestrians. Each equipped with their standard tools - lopsided as they may be. The question becomes more of a matter of context for a modern battle.
What is a modern knight and what is a modern peasant in 2020 and also, what locale?
(We could also use a booklist for this discussion - I keep bringing back scenes from Pillars of the Earth)
You can't own a knife in many countries without a license let alone a gun. It's all tracked. There are targeted missiles, drones, autonomous guns, surveillance, radar, bombs, tear gas, tasers, tanks, bullet and knife proof clothing, exoskeleton, etc available to the knights. Knights are many times more organized than they have ever been in history.
Recent incident in Nigeria where military massacred the protestors: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54630592
How do you protect yourself as a peasant against the Knights?
What kind of bullshit propaganda is that? There isn't a single country in the world that requires a license to "own a knife".
> let alone a gun. It's all tracked. There are targeted missiles, drones, autonomous guns, surveillance, radar, bombs, tear gas, tasers, tanks, bullet and knife proof clothing, exoskeleton, etc available to the knights.
However, there's a lots of things relatively freely available to peasants that can be turned into a bomb capable of killing any knight who's not in a tank. And even a tank can have a bad time in a city full of hostile peasants.
> Knights are many times more organized than they have ever been in history.
This is a the big one. Organization really matters to make the technological advantage count. And it ivolves knowing in what situations that advantage wouldn't work well, and avoiding them.
"A scrimmage in a Border Station- A canter down some dark defile Two thousand pounds of education Drops to a ten-rupee jezail. The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride, Shot like a rabbit in a ride! "
You'd just change "ten-rupee jezail" to a second hand AK
And plenty of "third" world civilians have guns
There's a reason why they used hammers in battle. Was more ffective to bash the armour than try to cut between the plates
Also the guys doing the videos are re enactment pros and yes what they do is a bit theatrical, but other YouTubers specialising in this area have said it's quite legit. I'll link to video when I have a chance
Several people knock or drag the victim to the ground while the rest take turns beating him. In the movies when the hero goes to fight 20 dudes, at any given time 18 are standing around doing nothing while he lays waste to them two at a time with flawlessly executed martial arts moves. That's pure theatrics, and no amount of armor or training or general badassery can make it a reality.
Here we are talking about a fully trained knight in his peak condition with really good armor and sword. The bandits/peasants in the video are not very well protected and don't seem to take advantage of their numbers due to inexperience/fear factor. Also in the video he does fight 3 or 4 people at once and they do try and make him fall to the ground, but again he is trained and knows how to keep his distance and stay upright and he also takes damage.
You could argue that it might be not 100% realistic, but I think it does show the effectiveness of knights. I mean think about it, if a knight could be taken down by a bunch of peasants, why did invest so much time and money on knights and armour.
Here is the video review by Skallagrim
Taking advantage of their numbers doesn't require experience. Kindergarteners gang up on each other. It's instinct.
> if a knight could be taken down by a bunch of peasants, why did invest so much time and money on knights and armour.
For the same reason we invest in soldiers today. As a group, they can be a formidable force. But if a single one gets mobbed by 20 enemies up close, chances are he's going down no matter how elite or well trained he is.
What is fascinating is that a switch to offensive weapons seem to have helped with bringing about a society with more equal opportunities as compared to feudalism: there was no point to maintain feudalism, when a few mounted and armored warriors could no longer defeat huge crowds of peasants. There were other factors as shortage of working hands due to the great plague, so that they had to pay for labor instead of the usual practice, but i guess you can't reduce anything that big to a single factor, as usual.
In ancient history you had a similar theme: The bronze age came with small elite armies and expensive charriots, later larger crowds of warriors with cheaper arms made of iron defeated them, and that also came with opportunities for more people and more egalitarian religions, more accessible syllabic writing system - lots of things became more inclusive.
The Battle of Loudon Hill (1307) is a good example - look at the map:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Loudoun_Hill
'Crossing the T' in a land battle!
This battle was included at the end of the Netflix movie 'Outlaw King', which although it includes a fair number of inaccuracies is perhaps better than most and at least is reasonably close to what happened (which is more than I can say for some comparable more famous movies):
Flemish myself, in schools we learn about Battle of the Golden Spurs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Golden_Spurs). It's probably the battle we are most proud of, because us peasants stood up against a fancy French army.
As it was taught to me, we drove the enemy cavalry into a swamp, and were able to use our goedendag (accurate picture here: https://www.liebaart.org/figuren/goedendr.jpg) to push them off their horses and pierce through the chain mail.
1) Use disguises to approach in circumstances where a knight is vulnerable
2) Surprise arson in the middle of the night
3) Pit trap
4) Deadfall trap
With outside resources from wealthy parties interested in influencing the land in which the peasants live, a guerilla war can be sustained for several years.
The Hussite War Wagons had great success against knights, but it was in the era of early firearms.
Hussite Wagon Forts - A Challenge To Heavy Cavalry In The Late Middle Ages | Late Medieval Warfare
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Republican_Army_(1919%...
We actually had a drill called the "villains blow"[0] designed to deal with an untrained assailant attempting an overly strong top down blow. The basic story is that a peasant (villain basically means "poor" back in the day) has gotten their hands on a sword and would like to express their displeasure about how their life is going on you. It's scary how effective the drill is, during slow speed training you have to actually fight to slow the weapon down. At speed it'll end an engagement with one blow; someone chopped in the neck tends to stop fighting very quickly. In a sword fight between a trained person and an untrained person, the trained combatant will win convincingly the vast majority of the time.
Beyond that there were fairly complex drills about fighting multiple opponents when unarmored, which we never practiced because it's a logistical nightmare. It can be done, but it's going to be very hard to pull off; you effectively have to move in a way to make your opponents interfere with each other. Doable, but since unarmored longsword fencing is a very high stakes game, chances are even if it works you're leaving with an interesting scar and perhaps fewer fingers than you started with.
One manuscript (I forget which) had some section that basically said this "if you find yourself set upon by five or more peasants while in harness (hard plate), stand as you will and cut them down one by one". It is extremely hard to kill someone wearing full plate armor if they're standing and prepared. You either need overwhelming numbers, specialized weapons designed to defeat hard armor, or they need to be knocked down onto the ground first (there's a reason "he fell" was a euphemism for death in combat). Ideally (if you're not the knight), you'd like to see all three. This is what happened in Agincourt, where freaked out English archers (who wouldn't be ransomed if they lost) swarmed and drowned the exhausted French knights in the mud while beating them to death with hammers for good measure.
As an aside, the difficulty of getting up in armor is vastly overstated[1]. Yes, plate armor is heavy, but any armor that you can't move in is a death trap, plus the vast majority of this stuff was worn by men who would be in fantastic shape, since fighting was their only job. The problem with plate armor isn't that it's impossible to get up in, the problem with plate armor is that it's impossible to get up when you're being opposed. Think less "I can't get up" and more "I can't get up with another guy on top of me trying to kill me". Plus while armor is heavy (50-60lbs isn't unusual), it's not that heavy; for comparison a typical Marine might carry 100-200lbs into Afghanistan.
Also, AKs kill you when a shot hits your head/torso. A stick won't kill you on-hit. Being a knight also meant having proper armor and training.
Of course a kid could kill a knight, say, in their sleep, but in that case being a knight would be irrelevant, and the most appropriate description would be: a kid killed a sleeping person.
> Confidence and determination and unusual resources also made it possible for groups of commoners to assert themselves during the post-plague period. In the 1300s, the Flemish cities organized themselves as disciplined forces and defeated noble-led armies. Bruges, for instance, had several advantages: it was a populous, rich trading city that could afford to resist the traditional ruling class if the right circumstances occurred; and indeed many citizens were willing to put their lives on the line to achieve their own vision of self-government. The townsmen of Flanders even adopted a scary and non-standard weapon, the goedendag – a combination of a short spear and long club. These commoners (many of whom by this time were more prosperous than earlier generations) had distinctive weaponry and a tactical protocol which made them an effective military and political factor.
This refers to the 1302 Battle of the Golden Spurs where an army of footmen prevailed over a French army of knights. That victory was re-appropriated and romanticized in the 19th century as part of the national mythology of the young Belgian nation.
The reality is far more complex and less rosy then how it is put here by the author.
14th century Flanders saw several uprising and rebellions. The count was also a feudal vazal to the French Crown. As such, the King sent several armies to appease the unruly county between 1302 and 1400, each time crushing those same footmen. Mons-en-Pévele, Roosebeke, Cassel are less known names for good reasons.
As far as the French Crown was concerned, the county of Flanders and it's cities were a strategic pawn in a larger European feudal realm dominated by the conflict with England (Hundred's Years War). The wealth of the cities themselves came from the wool trade with England, and the trade with Southern Europe, later on, in particular, with Lombardy. For instance, the French Crown revoking trade with England was a direct cause of the Artevelde rebellion in 1339.
Moreover, the cities themselves were semi-autonomous, held their own local political and economical interests, and were very much feuding with each other, or their liege lord, the Count of Flanders to preserve their own local autonomy, expand their economic interests and the ability to trade without getting excessively taxed by established feudal elites. In reality, those "disciplined forces" were militia's and warbands which were held together by tenuous alliances when facing the French Army; and would openly fight each other when push comes to shove. The Battle of Beverhoutsveld saw the cities of Bruges and Ghent facing each other off, whereas just 40 years prior, those same cities were allies in that same Artevelde rebellion against the French Crown. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Beverhoutsveld
The wealth and political power was truly concentrated with the city's patrician elites whereas the majority of citizens were illiterate menial workers with little say in governance of their city. They lived in precarious circumstances and any awareness of the wider political context was limited to their own personal social and economic situation. At best, they would support popular leaders who's interests were perceived as aligned with theirs. While Jacob van Artevelde was seen as a popular hero, he very much belonged to a wealthy urban economic elite who had, equally, every interest to reinstate the English wool trade.
Finally, the Plague happened in the 1350's. Those same Flemish cities were already quite powerful in the late 13th century.
And all of that is just barely scratching the surface of the historical complexity which gets skimped in this article. It's never a good idea to single sidedly focus on the military aspect and try to explain history from that point of view.