I'm always a bit surprised by these royal armies with a few hundred or so riders, since I am used to Hellenistic armies where the 'cavalry hammer' is anywhere from 3,500 to 7,000 cavalry, which has, to my mind, real implications for the ability to turn back such a charge with arrows.
I suspect the evolution of French tactics and their use of only a small elite largely comes from the kinds of defensive terrain adopted by opponents once the French monarchy was able to muster high thousands of men-at-arms. They'd have loved to have brought 16 000 mounted men-at-arms to face
their opponents, but when terrain is selected or shaped to prevent those charges, their best bet was to limit the size of the force to manageable one that had a chance of breaking through and then supporting it with superior numbers of well armoured and motivated infantry.
Do we think the French monarchy could really field such a large force of cavalry? My sense is that a lot of 'mounted infantry' rode mounts not fit for battle and that the resources of the French king in the 15th century were more limited than this.
Yep. Philippe brought an estimated 8000 knights, Squires and men-at-arms and 4000 "other" men-at-arms to Crécy, while a similar number were with his son at Aiguillon. At Bouvines in 1340, he had over 22 000 men-at-arms. Proper men-at-arms, in French service, required at least one proper war horse
I should add that there were another 5325 men-at-arms in Languedoc, along with nearly 14000 foot soldiers.
in addition to a second (the English required three horses total). Jean II's regulations requires that the French warhorses be slightly more expensive than English (roughly £6 Sterling vs £5), so these weren't just multi-purpose horses. Even their armed valets were supposed to ride horses in the
£2-3 (Sterling) range, which many Scottish knights would consider appropriate mounts. As for numbers, based on the records for the 1340 muster at Bouvines, the Count of Alençon alone probably had almost 1300 men-at-arms at Crécy, and Philippe as many as 1500.
My own take on Crécy is that 2500-3000 men-at-arms alone made up the first attack on the English, about half under Alençon's command (the remainder probably dismounted and attacked on foot under the Count of Blois' command). This alone would be more that Philippe Augustus had at Bouvines in 1214
I haven't seen any work on when this tipping point was reached, but it must have happened some time in the 1320s or 1330s, coincidentally about the same time Edward III was consolidating the developments of his father and grandfather and adding his own twist to it.
Strange to me that, given the depth of resources this implies, that a defeat like Agincourt could be so decisive. But I suppose the issue is that, on a horse or on foot, these are the same *men* so if they're lost in a battle, they're lost regardless?
Yeah, that's part of it, along with the economic impact of the ransoms and lost weapons, armour and horses. Another thing that does need to be factored in is the ongoing civil war that had only temporarily been set aside and the lingering effects of the routiers and English chevauchees.
I expect the black death slashed a large chunk of these numbers between the mid 14th century and early 15th
It was their bad luck to face an opponent in England that had shifted to a somewhat unique system of well supplied, reasonably wealthy massed archers who - coincidentally - also drew moderately powerful bows. The English could still have had a similar success with crossbows, for instance, but
the real advantage the English had was in both the quality and quantity of their missile arm.