Forgotten Heroes of the Middle Ages

When I bestride him, I soar,

I am a hawk;

he trots the air; 

the earth sings when he touches it...

He is pure air and fire
 (Henry V, Act III, Scene 7)

If any one image is associated in the popular mind with the Middle Ages then it is the knight in shining armor on a (usually) white horse. 

 

Nor is the image entirely misleading.  Throughout the age of chivalry, the mounted knight dominated both the battlefield and popular culture. Yet, as I will explain, it was not the warhorse (destrier) alone that made the horse the true hero of the Middle Ages.

A 13th-century encyclopedia of animals written by the Dominican scholar and bishop Albertus Magnus lists four kinds of horses: warhorses (destriers), riding horses (palfreys), racehorses, and workhorses. Of these, riding horses and racehorses can be said to vary little from the horses of today, at least in terms of function, with the caveat that "riding horses" of the Middle Ages had to travel long distances in often difficult terrain and all weathers. Their role in medieval society and economy were not exceptional, however, being the same as it had been for thousands of years before and hundreds yet to come. Warhorses and draft horses, on the other hand, were fundamental in shaping medieval society in unique ways.

Starting with the more obvious, a knight could not fulfill his military function without a warhorse.  From Hastings to Bannockburn, the charge of heavy cavalry (knights) was the dominant offensive tactic of the age. Although a cavalry charge could rarely lift a siege and never secure a castle, when enemies confronted one another across a battlefield, knights clashed on horseback. Furthermore, a  well-timed, well-led charge was almost invincible.

In order to be able to deliver such a knock-out blow, however, knights trained for years to master horsemanship, mounted combat, and fighting in teams/units. So did their horses.

Not every horse could cope with the noise, the sudden movements, the flash of sunlight on metal, the blows, the crush of horses, and the smell of blood. Not every horse had the strength or stamina to carry an armored knight for hours, or the agility to respond to sudden changes of direction, the need to spin about or sidestep. This meant that warhorses had to be carefully selected -- and trained. Ultimately, man and horse had to respond as one being if they were to be an effective fighting machine with a chance of survival. 

It was to train for mounted combat -- particularly in small units as teams -- that tournaments developed. Historian Andrea Hopkins in her excellent work Knights [London: Collins & Brown, 1990] notes: “it is hardly possible to overestimate the importance of the tournament to the culture of medieval knights.” She notes that in addition to being “a crucial training ground in which young knights could practice the handling of their horses and weapons, tactics of attack and defence, and of co-ordinating their actions with a team of companions," the tournament also: 

  ...provided an arena for the display of all important knightly virtues: prouesse in combat, courtoisie to the watching and judging ladies, largesse to crowds of minstrels, heralds, armourers, squires and other assorted hangers on, and qualities such as the franchise and debonairete with which a knight should conduct himself in triumph and disaster (the qualities which later developed into the European gentleman's sense of fair play), and the pite which he should exercise to his defeated opponents. (p. 108) 

Indeed, over the centuries, tournaments were transformed from training events very similar to genuine combat into sporting and social events quite divorced from the reality of war. By the 16th and 17th century they were little more than pageants  -- but that was after the end of the Middle Ages. In the High Middle Ages, they retained their value as training while also providing entertainment.

In the world of the tournament, a knight's destrier was not only a tool of war in training with him but a part of his persona. Like his armor, his coat of arms, and his crest, his horse formed a component part of his image and identity. A beautiful horse made a good impression on the ladies, but an exceptionally responsive, fast or determined horse might make the difference between victory and defeat. The death or injury to a good mount, on the other hand, could destroy a knight's prospects -- and his financial position as well because warhorses were extremely expensive. 

It was a measure of just how important good warhorses were that a knight forfeit his destrier along with his armor in a tournament defeat. Successful tournament champions could opt to retain a captured mount -- or sell it back to the owner at a handsome fee. (Or, if inclined, show pity and largess by restoring it without charge or for only a nominal fee.) Likewise, inadequate reserves of good warhorses could have an impact on the outcome of battles. One can only imagine what might have happened at Jaffa, for example, if Richard the Lionheart had disembarked with his warhorses!

While the warhorse was not a specific breed as we know today, it was the product of centuries of horse breeding in the Early Middle Ages that had systematically produced larger horses than those of previous centuries and other regions, i.e. the horses of the Greeks and Romans or contemporary Mongols and the Arabs. Significantly, medieval horses were strong enough to carry a fully armored knight, but that does not mean that they were similar to draft horses in other ways. 

Furthermore, what defined them was not size and strength alone, but rather temperament and character. For a start, in order to keep them aggressive and spirited, they were not castrated. Albertus Magnus further claims: "It is a trait of these [war]horses to delight in musical sounds, to be excited by the sounds of arms, and to gather together with other chargers. They also leap and burst into battle lines by biting and striking with their hooves." (On Animals: A Medieval Summa Zoologica, translated by Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr. and Irven Michael Resnick [Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1999]) 

Shakespeare captured this aspect of warhorse character in the opening of Henry V, Act IV, when he writes: "Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs."

It is hardly surprising given how much time a knight spent training with his destrier -- and how dependent he was on the horse for his success and survival -- that strong bonds often developed between a knight and his charger. There is one recorded incident of a horse defending his unseated knight during judicial combat, preventing the opposing knight from delivering the coup de grace by repeatedly imposing his equine body between the human combatants. 

Albertus Magnus also writes:  "They sometimes care so much about their masters and grooms that, if [the latter] are killed, they grow sad and pine away, even to the point of death." The grief of knights for a good horse was also recorded in various texts. The images below of knights sleeping beside their grazing horses seem a lovely tribute to this close and trustful relationship.

 

Yet it was arguably the medieval workhorse that made the greater contribution to medieval society. The evolution of larger, stronger horses was critical to the agricultural revolution that greatly increased production and improved the nutritional intake of the common people dramatically. The stronger horses and tack designed to harness them to advanced plows enabled medieval peasants to not only scratch the soil but to turn it over, turning up more nutrients. The horses were faster too, plowing roughly twice as much in a day as the alternative draft animal, oxen -- much less human drawn plows. 

With more land under cultivation and greater productivity per acre, peasants could afford to leave one-third of their land fallow -- rotating crops and leaving land fallow to regenerate every third year. This further increased productivity and so diet as well. It has been argued that this agricultural revolution enabled human beings to reach their full genetic potential for size and strength for the first time in human history. Certainly, it resulted in human beings who were on average taller and stronger than people in other parts of the world in the same period.

Nor was it the plow horse alone who made such a dramatic contribution to the medieval economy. More powerful draft horses could also be employed in transport. The ability to transport heavy materials such as timber and stone was crucial to construction and ship-building. The more powerful draft horses could also be used to transport other commodities and finished products in larger quantities, thereby contributing to commerce and overall economic growth particularly inland, away from the waterways that had been the lifelines in the past. Unfortunately, the mundane, if essential work, of transport horses rarely captured the imagination or attention of medieval artists. The best I can do is a medieval "carriage."

Last but not least, draft horses also played a role in war, transporting heavy siege equipment, baggage and the wounded.  The ability to transport heavy equipment was cited by crusade historian John France as one of the West's significant advantages vis-a-vis their Saracen opponents.

 Horses play a role -- with names and personalities -- in all my crusades era novels:

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Dr. Helena P. Schrader holds a PhD in History.

She is the Chief Editor of the Real Crusades History Blog.

She is an award-winning novelist and author of numerous books both fiction and non-fiction. Her three-part biography of Balian d'Ibelin won a total of 14 literary accolades. Her current series describes the civil war in Outremer between Emperor Frederick and the barons led by John d'Ibelin the Lord of Beirut. Dr. Schrader is also working on a non-fiction book describing the crusader kingdoms. You can find out more at: http://crusaderkingdoms.com

Crusader Horses

Horses were an absolutely essential — indeed defining — component of a knight’s equipment. The German word for knight (ritter) derives directly from the word for rider (reiter), while the French and Spanish terms, chevalier and caballero, derive from the word for horse (cheval and caballo respectively). While a knight might temporarily be without a mount, without a horse a knight could not fulfill his fundamental function as a cavalryman. Indeed, the symbol of knighthood was not the sword (infantrymen had those as well) or even the lance (they were throw away pieces of equipment), but the (golden) spurs tied to a knight's heels during the dubbing ceremony. Richard Barber notes in his seminal work The Knight and Chivalry that being financially in a position to outfit oneself with arms and horses was crucial to knightly status. David Edge and John Miles Paddock argue in their comprehensive work Arms and Armour of the Medieval Knight that “[a knight’s horse] was the most effective and significant weapon the knight had; the basis of his pre-eminent position in society and on the battlefield.”

In short, knights needed horses — significantly not just one horse but several.  This short post provides a overview of a knight's equine needs.

The warhorse or destrier, is the most obvious of a knight’s horses. This was the horse a knight rode into battle, joust or tournament. This horse was his fighting platform. It was trained to endure the shock and noise of combat. In later years, destriers were sometimes also trained to lash out at enemies with teeth and hooves thereby becoming, as Edge and Paddock note, a weapon as well as a fighting platform. Knights rode stallions, not mares or geldings. This was in part because stallions were considered more aggressive, but also because riding a mare or a gelding detracted from a knight’s image as a virile warrior.

Destriers had to be strong because they needed to support a fully armored knight and because they had to withstand the press of horseflesh in a charge and endure uninjured the impact of charges by other horses. They particularly had to have powerful haunches to absorb the shock of frontal collisions with enemy cavalry or in a joust. This does not mean, however, that destriers were massive, heavy horses similar to modern draught horses.  Archeological and artistic evidence suggests that the warhorses of crusader knights were no more than 14-15 hands high (a hand is four inches and horses are measured at the withers, the bone over the shoulders at the base of the neck).  Furthermore, they had to be very responsive to their riders, and that means sensitive and agile. They can best be compared to modern quarter horses.

Destriers were not a specific breed of horse, so arguably the defining characteristic of a destrier was simply its function — and price. If a knight thought a horse had what it took to be a fine destrier, he was willing to pay a large premium for that — and anyone in possession of a horse with the necessary qualities was going to ask a commensurate price for it as well.  In short, destriers were outrageously expensive. They cost 4 to 8 times the price of lesser or ordinary horses. They cost as much as the armor a knight wore. They could cost as much as the annual knight’s fee — in short roughly the annual income of the gentry.  The equivalent is the price of a top-line BMW or Mercedes today.

Like any horse, destriers were vulnerable to colic and injury, however, which meant a knight was well advised to have more than one destrier — if he could afford it.  Even if he could and did, however, he was likely to have a favorite. The destriers of knights in contemporary romance and legend all have names: Baucent, Folatise, Babieca etc., but perhaps no description is more famous that the Dauphin’s praise for his horse before Agincourt in Shakespeare’s Henry V. “When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots on air; the earth sings when he touches it…. It is a beast for Perseus: he is pure air and fire….”

For all their value and importance, however, a knight spent far less time mounted on his prized destrier than on his palfrey(s). Palfreys were riding horses, transportation not weapons, the means of getting from point A to point B. Since medieval knights rode everywhere -- to oversea their estates, to visit neighbors, when hunting or hawking, to attend court or to go courting. In short, a knight spent literally countless hours with his palfrey(s). Palfreys were bred not for strength and fierceness but for smooth gates, endurance and common sense. They were probably much the same size as destriers, but lighter — marathon runners rather than sprinters, wrestlers more than boxers. 

Since these horses were just as likely to get colic or injured, the need for more than one palfrey was just as compelling as with destriers, but given the substantially lower price of palfreys the possession of more than one was considerably more common. Knights would normally have possessed at least two and wealthy nobles likely had stables of horses at their disposal for transport purposes.

The last and lowliest of a knight’s horses was his sumpter or packhorse. These were essential for transporting equipment, notably armor when it wasn't being worn.  A knight did not travel light. He needed a tent for camping out, a bedroll for sleeping on, basic utensils for cleaning, grooming and cooking, a change or two of clothes, supplies of food and — in more arid climates — water as well. Depending on the purpose and duration of travel, a knight might even take with him simple furnishings to ensure comfort while on campaign or traveling long distances. All that was carried on pack animals, either sumpter horses, mules or donkeys. We know little about these poor beasts of burden beyond that they were common and cheap. They were “hacks” largely interchangeable, nameless, and unloved. 

Dr. Helena P. Schrader holds a PhD in History.

She is the Chief Editor of the Real Crusades History Blog.

She is an award-winning novelist and author of numerous books both fiction and non-fiction. Her three-part biography of Balian d'Ibelin won a total of 14 literary accolades. Her most recent release is a novel about the founding of the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus. You can find out more at: http://crusaderkingdoms.com 

Horses play a role in the award-winning Jerusalem Trilogy, where "Gladiator" and "Centurion" are both important characters:

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The Duties of Kings to their Subjects and Vassals

When we think of feudalism, we tend to think of a hierarchical state with a king at the top enjoying all the benefits. In my entry on The Ideal Feudal State, I pointed out that feudalism was in fact more decentralized and consensual than is commonly thought. Today I want to draw attention to some of the duties of kings.

At the most elementary level, of course, kings owed their subjects what all governments owe their citizens: security and justice.  The security component consisted (then as now) of protection against foreign enemies (invasions, Viking raids or terrorism etc.) and protection against lawlessness and crime. Then as now that first duty bled into the second as fighting crime entails administering justice, but justice is and was not confined to fighting crime alone. Justice also includes a just administration of property, labor, scarce resources such as water, and more. 

The parallel to modern society is imperfect, however, because feudal society was both more personal (men took oaths to individuals not to abstract ideas) and more stratified. Feudal society was not based on the principle that “all men are equal before the law” but rather on the notion that rights and duties depended on one’s social position or class.

Fundamentally, society was divided into three classes or estates: 1) those who worked, 2) those who prayed, and 3) those who ruled/administered (not those who fought, as I’ll explain below). While this stratification oversimplifies both the society itself and attitudes of the time, it is nevertheless a useful structure for understanding feudal society and with it the duties of kings.  

The workers were responsible for the production of (first and foremost) food, other necessities and luxuries. The more sophisticated the society, the more complex this class was, so that it came to include everything from serfs working the land to great merchants and craftsmen commanding fortunes and ruling over armies of tradesmen, apprentices, servants and laborers. Being a member of the “Third Estate” was not the same thing as being poor! But the Third Estate was viewed as subordinate to the other two: in spiritual matters to the Second Estate and in secular matters to the First Estate.

The men who prayed (the Second Estate) were the clergy, and again this segment of society included poor (e.g. parish priests who lived little better than the peasants they served) and “princes of the church” with vast estates and fortunes. Unlike the Third Estate, which was fragmented into different professions with their own hierarchical structures, before the Reformation all members of the Second Estate belonged to one, universal (“Catholic”) church. All members of the Second Estate thus operated in a single, well-defined hierarchy headed by the pope. Since the Catholic Church required celibacy of its members, churchmen could not bequeath their lands, fortunes or offices to their offspring (even if, as we know, they often had them!) On the other hand, because members of the Second Estate were drawn from the other two, and the Church as an institution often provided a means for the children of poor parents to rise to positions of power, wealth and influence.  

The First Estate is often described confusingly as a class of warriors or “those who fight.” While even contemporary sources refer to the First Estate in this way, the description is misleading. On the one hand, 50% of this class, the women, did not fight — but they were still members of the First Estate and often wielded great power, including power over men and fighting forces.  On the other hand, the bulk of fighting men in any host were not drawn from the First Estate, but rather from the Third; they were men engaged in the profession of arms as mercenaries or feudal levies called up for a set period of time. 

It is more useful to look at the First Estate as the secular ruling class, the people who exercised for and in the name of the king his fundamental duties of providing protection and administering justice. Because one man (or woman) could not alone perform either function, the king depended upon the First Estate to provide military capability, enforce the law of the land, and administer local justice. The First Estate was effectively the executive branch, and as such it had a special relationship with the king. Members of the First Estate were not mere subjects of the king, they were also his deputies. Understanding this helps explain why the king and his nobles had a special relationship, a relationship founded on an exchange of oaths. 

To be precise, the exchange of oaths was only with the upper strata of the First Estate, with the barons or tenants-in-chief. They were called tenants-in-chiefs because in feudal theory all land belonged to the king and he merely loaned it to his designated deputies, albeit on a hereditary basis. This meant the land passed from the original recipient to his heirs in perpetuity — until the line of the original recipient died out or he or his descendants failed to fulfill the feudal duties associated with the loan of land (the enfeoffment). In either case the land was forfeit to the crown.

The tenants-in-chief generally controlled far more land than they could possibly manage and owed many more fighting men to the crown than they could personally equip and provide (often in the hundreds), so they in turn lent out their lands (again on a hereditary basis) to other men, who owed them — the barons, not the king — fealty. The lowest tier in the First Estate were simple “knights” holding a “simple” knight’s fief, meaning a fief whose annual income was sufficient to support only a single knight (which was not one individual but a fighting unit, as I explained in an earlier post.) If a fief became too small or poor to support the expenses of a knight, the owner slipped out of the First Estate and down into the Third, becoming nothing but a tenant farmer. (This was to become a problem in the latter Middle Ages.) The landowners holding land from a baron or bishop were called “rear tenants” and belonged to the First Estate, but not to the baronage. 

However, often lost beneath the customs, ceremony, romance and idealism of chivalry is the fact that the relationship between a king and his barons (and between lords and their rear-tenants) was fundamentally one of fee (fief) for service. The Kingdom of Jerusalem shines light on this relationship because many of the fiefs in the Kingdom of Jerusalem were “money fiefs,” highlighting the monetary component of feudal service.  Whereas elsewhere it was more common for a king (or lord) to bestow land that was expected to produce enough income to support a set number of knights, in Jerusalem the king frequently paid a set amount of money outright in exchange for the service of a set number of fighting men. Significantly, La Monte points out in Feudal Monarchy in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem 1100 to 1291, many money fiefs were granted with the provision that “if the revenues specifically granted [were] not forthcoming, the amount promised [would] be made up from...the general revenues of the kingdom.” The distinction between a fief and wages in these circumstances is approaching minimal, albeit a fief could be bequeathed, while wages could not. The more common practice of granting land deemed to be worth a certain income, of course, obscured and weakened this monetary component of the king’s duties to his vassals because the value of land could vary over time based on many factors from acts of God (draught, flood, fire etc.) and through good or poor management.

Regardless of the nature of the fief, the relationship between the king and his barons/tenants-in-chief was a direct and personal one. It requiring the renewal of the oath each time a monarch died and was succeeded. The oath of a vassal was furthermore, neither unconditional nor unlimited. For example, in Jerusalem the king could not command feudal service outside the borders of the kingdom, either for offensive operations (e.g. against Cairo or Damascus) or even in the defense of the neighboring states of Tripoli, Antioch and Edessa. Another important limit on service was that no man was required to personally render knight's service after he reached the age of 60. Critically — and often overlooked nowadays — is that the oath of fealty was a two-way bond. Not only did the vassal swear loyalty to the king, but vice versa. Thus, Richard I of England, as the liege lord of the Lords of Lusignan, was obligated by feudal custom to support Guy de Lusignan’s claims to the throne of Jerusalem.

While the case of a vassal being anointed king elsewhere and then needing support is a rare one, a far more frequent occurrence were attacks on a vassal's lands — by brigands, raiders, enemy troops.  Attacks might come from a common enemy like the Saracens or Vikings, or simply from a neighbor, who owed allegiance to a different king (think of the situation in France during the long wars between the Plantagenets and Capets, or the Hundred Years War).  Simply put, if a vassal did not have the military strength to defend his own territory, he could call upon the king to come to his aid. In the Kingdom of Jerusalem, where the threat of Saracen invasion was ever-present, the constitution explicitly stated that failure on the part of the king to protect the lands of a vassal automatically absolved the vassal of his oath. 

In general terms, then, the duties of a king to his barons was payment and protection, but in the Kingdom of Jerusalem there was (at least) one more duty — one that particularly appeals to me, that of “restor.”  Restor was the duty of the king to replace or reimburse any knight or noble whose horse was mutilated or killed in battle while serving the king. Indeed, it was one of the most important duties of the Marshal of Jerusalem to assess the value of all knights’ and noble’s horses before any campaign/engagement, to assess the value of horses captured during an engagement, then then either replace horses injured or killed with captured horses of equivalent value or reimburse the knight/noble the monetary value of the lost stallion.  This custom highlights the importance horses had to the military establishment and social status in the feudal age; see my entry on crusader horses.

Balian d’Ibelin’s stallions are important characters in all three parts of my biographical novel about Balian, and the duties of kings and vassals is natural a fundamental component of the historical developments.

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