Proportion of footmen and soldiers to knights in battles
Upvote:4
The equipment for a knight was very expensive to create and maintain, it was therefore reserved for the rich, the nobility. Those were of course also the main group of people who could afford horses trained for riding as warhorses (which is quite different training from general riding and draft horses), so my guess is it would be unlikely to see a knight on foot if there were a need for cavalry in an engagement.
Now, as to ratios, that's probably hard to tell. But I'd venture a guess of each knight/nobleman bringing from several dozen to several hundred men at arms depending on time of year, length of expected campaign, wealth and size of his holdings, etc. etc.
Mind that these things were not constant. Over time the more powerful "countries" would start equipping standing armies, the overlord paying for equipment and training of regiments of knights who had themselves no land holdings and subservient people providing manpower for them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_warfare has information, without mentioning numbers (and I'm not sure I agree with all of it, it seems to put too much authority in romantic novels and over exaggerating the number of knights as a result).
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=200812 has interesting information as well
Upvote:6
At Agincourt (1415) the English reportedly had 1,500 men-at-arms (aka: Knights) and 7,000 longbowmen. That would be a ratio of nearly 5 longbowmen per knight.
The French side has a lot of conflicting estimates of size, but by all accounts was very heavily weighted toward men-at-arms. Estimates generally run north of 10,000, with only about 5,000 archers and crossbow. That would give us a ratio of somewhere between 1 or 2 knights per archer/bowman. (At least one other source numbers the total French army at 50,000 with the rearguard added in, but said that they wouldn't let the archers participate, for fear of friendly fire).
Of course this battle is rather famous as an example of how immense numbers of knights could be slaughtered by longbowmen if conditions are right. The French of this period were rather enamored of impulsive ill-advised mounted charges (see also Crecy, Poitiers, Nicopolis), while English knew how to use that against them, often chosing a very good defensive position with large numbers of men-at-arms fighting unmounted.
More post
- ð Is there convincing evidence that the language of Bulgars (proto-Bulgarians) was not Turkic, but Indo-European?
- ð What coin/token is this? Copper "1 1900" Rev: Austro-Hungarian arms
- ð What is the story behind the tall Northern offshoot on the West Virginia map?
- ð Who captured Kaifeng from the Jin during the war between Jin and the Sung Mongol alliance?
- ð What were Germany's long-term aims in World War I?
- ð Oldest Exercising Equipments
- ð Did Einstein really say this quote about time?
- ð Were mounted soldiers really an advancement during the Middle Ages?
- ð What organization/agency/unit wore this uniform?
- ð Are there any contemporary diaries about the Yugoslav Wars?
- ð What was the "Favorable result" that the German admiralty was expecting from the naval attack on the Royal Navy in 1918?
- ð Were sailing ships of the line understaffed with gunnery crews so that there were not enough for 2 broadsides?
- ð What were the incentives for joining the Roman army before the Marian reforms?
- ð Do NKVD files say that during WWII, Soviet leadership knew about the rape of Soviet women liberated from labour camps and did nothing to stop it?
- ð What did Richelieu mean by his "six lines" quote?
- ð Who said that Saddam Hussein had WMDs?
- ð Was the Granny Smith Apple the first green skinned apple widely propagated?
- ð What is the earliest reference to King Arthur being raised by Sir Ector?
- ð Why did the Protestants in Ireland in the 1800s not want Home Rule?
- ð Is "A state that is not able to feed itself...[is not]âĶa formidable foe" a quote by a historically known figure?
- ð 18th-century understanding of the word "colony?"
- ð Did Josephus question the date of the destruction of the First or Second Temple?
- ð Were ships effective for sieging cities?
- ð Identification of two leaders in Hungarian revolution
- ð What were the consequences of the bankruptcies of the Spanish Empire?
- ð Who is this, probably royal, teenager?
- ð Earlier U.S. law enforcement raids on lawyers' communications
- ð What are these 2 compartments next to these war chariots?
- ð What's the oldest treaty still being enforced?
- ð How accurate/realistic is the conception of 'the kindly slave owner'?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- ð Proportion of footmen and soldiers to knights in battles
- ð WW2: Did US marines and soldiers really go into action with unbuckled helmet chin straps?
- ð When did the Knights Templar dissolve and why?
- ð Was the Soviet Union in 1945 seeking to capture German soldiers and civilians, or drive them west?
- ð Are there any accounts of German junior enlisted soldiers surviving the siege of Stalingrad and subsequent captivity?
- ð Health precautions before going into Battle of Trafalgar and other battles
- ð Age of Finnish soldiers in Winter War and Continuation War
- ð What were the most used drugs in battles and wars?
- ð How "excellent" were relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people?
- ð What happened to the French soldiers evacuated at Dunkirk and elsewhere in 1940?
- ð Did any nation have a demonstrable qualitative advantage in their soldiers of the 18th century, and how did they achieve this?
- ð Where can I find documents on the 1992 fight between French soldiers and Somalian fighters?
- ð How did knights in full suits of armor eventually die in combat? What were the most common causes of death for soldiers in full-body plate armor?
- ð Why were Red Army Officers and soldiers not prosecuted for War Crimes in WWII?
- ð What proportion of US government revenue came from taxes on slaves, between 1790 and 1846?
- ð Was there a time when George Washington discovered some of his soldiers absolutely refused to swear loyalty and obedience to the Continental Congress?
- ð Knights relieving vows and deeds of arms
- ð Were repeating rifles pitted often against breach-loaders in American Civil War battles and what happened?
- ð The US and Soviet Soldiers story related to Normandy
- ð How do historians and linguists know how to pronounce the names from non-phonetic scripts?
- ð Has a sovereign Communist government ever run, and conceded loss, on a fair election?
- ð Why China was able to unify and not Europe?
- ð Why were old fortifications shaped like stars and not like circles?
- ð Why does the United States keep using "old" date representations and imperial system, while being in the minority?
- ð Why is the consensus that WW2 started on September 1, 1939 and not July 7, 1937?
- ð Why did North America economically prosper, and maintain stable government and South/Central America didn't?
- ð How accurate or supported is Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel"?
- ð Why exactly did telegraphs have to use "STOP" instead of a period and "QUOTE" instead of a quotation mark? (Or special codes.)
- ð Why didn't France and the UK invade Germany in September 1939?
- ð Why Were Madagascar and New Zealand Discovered So Late?