![]() ![]() Most were armed with cheap weapons such as spears and clubs or even farm tools such as sharpened pitchforks. They wore little to no armor as it was too expensive to pay for themselves. These conscripts would have had received little to no military training before the battle. The effective, highly disciplined legions of Rome had been replaced by ill-equipped light infantry of feudal peasants. With dissolution of the professional army, the new system placed political power in the control of the nation’s ruling officials who ultimately owed military service to the king.įeudalism brought with a new set of military tactics and strategy. The Franks reorganized their military system. ![]() With the outrageously poor quality of available infantry, the remnants of the empire began to rely on heavy cavalry both against each other and the invading barbarian tribes from the east. He even began confiscating church lands in order to graze horses for his cavalry. From this point on, Martel makes it a point to build up a heavy cavalry force. Using only infantry at the battle, Martel was unable to completely rundown and destroy the enemy because he had little to no cavalry units. When Charles Martel, also known as “Charles the Hammer”, united the Franks in light of the Arab threat, he won a great victory at the Battle of Torres. Since the collapse of the Roman Empire, the lands that were once protected by highly trained Roman legionary garrisons were left with mobs of barely capable units of infantry. William the Conqueror also used the promise of land as a tool to recruit knights for his invasion of England in 1066 A.D. Viking chiefs also began to accept bribes of land in exchange for their loyalty and military service. Soon, the more powerful warlords claimed lands and recruited weaker barbarians as vassals. Over time, more and more barbarians penetrated into Western Europe. In theory, Feudalism was both a social system and a war machine to provide troops for the king and his lords. (Baumgartner) This provision of military force was followed all the way to the king. Lords’ main obligations concerning his vassals was to the fief and the protection of his vassals. Unlike the plains of France and Germany the mountainous areas of Switzerland and Scandinavia were not hospitable to a serious use of heavy cavalry. This is one of the main reasons why feudalism did little to spread with to other nations such as Switzerland and Scandinavia. Women were not allowed to inherit land because they could not provide military service. (Baumgartner) This was also a reason why it was most nobles who made up the cavalry forces of the feudal period. Boys would start training around six years old and at about fifteen would become a squire and help a knight prepare for battle. As part of this, all nobles and their sons would be trained to be knights, allowing for their service to maintain the family’s ownership of the fief. So to be a noble knight for the king meant owning land, which in turn means having power over others. In exchange for providing military service, vassals were issued land by their lords. During the campaign season of warfare, vassals were only required to participate in the campaign for a mere forty days. Vassals had an obligation to pay taxes to their lords towards the defense of the land. ![]() These knights were given smaller fiefs and had peasants as their vassals. (Baumgartner) The lords had their own vassals in the form of their knights. The lord would also kneel before the king, take the king’s hand, and swear his ultimate loyalty to the king. This would most likely have been done with a formal ceremony in which the king would bestow upon the lord or title and give him “the king’s authority” to rule over that fief and its inhabitants. The king delegated his authority to these lords and they were his vassals and were granted lands, called fiefs. Though the king ruled over the entire kingdom, most of lands in the kingdom belonged to his lords. This system found its supposed highest authority in the king in order to equip both he and his lords with armies to fight off barbarian invasions and other feudal kingdoms. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, feudalism was by far the most prevalent of social systems during the ninth and fifteenth centuries throughout Western Europe. ![]()
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