| Knights and serjeants |
| Written by Benedict Coffin |
| Wednesday, 28 January 2009 |
Professional soldiers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuriesThe medieval period is sometimes characterised as ‘knights and castles’, reflecting the importance placed on the pinnacle of the social order – the knight. However, important as knights were to medieval warfare, they certainly do not represent the whole story.The different languages of medieval Europe have different words for ‘knight’, all of which convey the same message about its meaning. The French ‘chevalier’ translates as ‘horseman’ (from ‘cheval’), while the German ‘Ritter’ means ‘rider’. ‘Knight’ itself comes from the Old English ‘cniht’ or ‘radcniht’, i.e. ‘mounted retainer’. Put simply, a knight was first and foremost a mounted warrior. One language was rather more nuanced. The Latin ‘miles’ simply meant ‘soldier’ and leaves us some interesting ambiguities about what a particular ‘soldier’ was (especially as the majority of central medieval documents are in Latin). This ambiguity is probably the most accurate description of soldier, who could come in many forms. It is true that knights dominate the scholarship of medieval warfare (both among modern writers and contemporary sources). This was inevitable as knights were by definition the most important people on a battlefield. In order to afford the expensive weapons, armour and warhorse – not to mention the retainers, hangers-on, travelling horses etc, as well as the lifestyle which enabled concentration on military pursuits of training, horsemanship, hunting, jousting and tournaments – you had to be exceptionally wealthy. Knights were by definition the social and political elite of any army. The style of mounted shock combat, breaking the enemy with the psychological force of a tight-packed charge, was frequently the decisive point of a battle. However, knights rarely fought on their own and were not the only professional soldiers. Members of the gentry and nearly-elite classes who lacked the resources to equip themselves as mounted knights fought as high-calibre infantry – serjeants (later called men-at-arms). This class could include trusted military retainers equipped, trained and housed by a knight or lord, stipendiary soldiers, minor landowners and mercenaries. Serjeants were generally armed and equipped in the same way as mounted knights, but with the obvious exception that they did not have warhorses. For campaign purposes serjeants may well have had riding and packhorses, but they did not expect to ride into battle. Establishing reliable numbers in the medieval period is notoriously difficult. However, it is clear from relative proportions that there would be far more infantry serjeants than mounted knights. To give one example, the late twelfth century De Expugatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum describes the forces gathered for the battle at Hattin in 1187: ‘the army was quite large – 1200 knights, innumerable Turcopoles, and 18000 or more infantry’. Regarding the same campaign, an anonymous letter to Archumbald, master of the Hospitallers in Italy, notes that there was a ‘huge army of at least 30,000 men’, but that ‘a thousand more of the better men were captured and killed, with the result that no more than 200 of the knights or foot soldiers escaped’. For re-enactment purposes, the majority of combatants should be serjeants – high status, well-armed, well-armoured infantry. Only a very small number should be knights, ideally mounted, but potentially dismounted commanders. In terms of costume and equipment there would be relatively little to distinguish a knight from a particularly well-equipped serjeant. Where arms and armour developed over time, it would be reasonable to expect knights to acquire the latest fashions first, and some serjeants might have older-style equipment. |
| Last Updated on Tuesday, 28 April 2009 |