The Sword Arm of Chivalry

This is the history of an era dominated by militancy: both warlike and religious, if the two can be separated. The true interest in the centuries of the early Middle Ages lies with the gradual evolution of new forms of military efficiency, which ended in the establishment of a military caste (knights) as the chief power in war and the human mechanism of government. The existence of feudalism and its association with the Christian Church is one of the most important factors concerning the Middle Ages. In the medieval period, the individual mounted warrior seemingly held sway for an extended time - generally from the 6th to 15th centuries. The feudal knight established his superiority over all descriptions of troops pitted against him. The defining institutions of classic knighthood were well established in the first half of this period. The passing of the first millennium oversaw the rise of a newly landed class of largely mounted warriors that became both a governing power and a defense against invasion from outside the abandoned frontiers of the old Roman Empire. The celebrated fight at Hastings in 1066 was the last notable attempt of unaided infantry to withstand cavalry in Western Europe for two hundred years. However, the supposedly complete dominance of the mounted knight in the 12th and 13th centuries may be grossly exaggerated, as integrated cavalry and infantry tactics were nearly always the key to success. As technology advanced, the crossbow, arbalest, and firearms were developed and a relatively untrained foot soldier could kill a knight with a single shot canceling out a lifetime of mounted discipline. From the 15th to 17th centuries the art of being a knight developed from just fighting ability to living by a code of chivalric conduct. A knight became an example of courtly behavior, and it was his duty to be versed in writing, music, dance, land management, law, justice, and romance. There were three types of chivalry. These included duties to a liege lord, duties to God, and duties to women, children, and the vulnerable. These romanticized chivalric duties often intertwined and were sometimes hard to distinguish from the actual feudal obligations of knighthood. Medieval society was actually extremely rough and brutal, and the truly vulnerable were often ignored or victimized. As individuals, knights were often cruel, duplicitous, and avaricious. The most famous among them were cunning politicians - a set of characteristics that should never be ignored or dismissed. Yet through it all there remained the ideals of how a noble knight should act. All of knightly chivalry was based on facing strenuous, traumatic, and possibly deadly situations on the battlefield shoulder-to-shoulder and stirrup-to-stirrup with other warriors and coming out of it bonded together by the experience. Collectively, a number of damaging myths concerning medieval warfare have emerged from the work of novelists, artists, cinematographers, and otherwise competent historians and observers. Knights have become inextricably associated with mounted service and body-encasing plates of armor. These misconceptions need to be addressed before a competent military assessment of the period can be made. In the Early Medieval Period any well-equipped horseman could be loosely described as a knight. Many were mounted men at arms or mercenaries who, for a price, filled the military role of heavy and light cavalry. Others were archers and light infantry who used horses for transportation, not for combat. For a variety of reasons, there were also a large number of cadets (younger sons of noble families) and landless knights in Medieval Europe looking for employment as warriors but often too poor to purchase extensive armor or an appropriate mount. These pauper knights, cadets, and mercenaries played an important role in the advancement of European history and culture.