Saxon Huscarl
Anglo-Saxon England relied on the fryd to raise men for armies and navies alike. The Normans replaced this system with enfeoffed feudal military obligations, although the idea of fryd-style “national” service and collective obligation survived beneath the Norman surface to influence later attitudes and ease the transition to pay-for-service and large infantry formations. Still, the medieval English army was principally comprised of heavy cavalry recruited on a feudal basis, supplemented with mercenary infantry from as early as the 11th century. Most often, armies were led personally by the king, whatever his military competence. The cavalry was organized into bannerets, with larger knightly armies wrapped around a core of housecarls. England made the earliest and most successful transition to paid military service, in part because it had a strong monarchy sooner than most other European countries. In 1181, Henry II passed the Assize of Arms requiring “national” service of all knights (“free and honourable men”). In 1230 “unfree” English were added. By 1264 each village was assigned a quota of foot soldiers it had to raise and equip. Units of 100 village infantry were organized, led by mounted constables. These troops supplemented the royal housecarls and noble horse of the servitium debitum. More noble cavalry and men-at-arms were raised through the feudal levy, last called in 1327. More often, they were paid for with scutage.
Early in the Scottish Wars, Edward I demanded service even from lower propertied orders not bound by vassalage, but who had a specified and substantial annual income. These “distrained” men rode to battle as men-at-arms. All told, England could put about 5 percent of its male population under arms by 1300, at least in theory. The use of scutage and the rise of “bastard feudalism,” in which the switch to a system of land tenure made it necessary to create new ties of quasi-vassalage to replace lost real ones, along with massive reliance on the nonfeudal levies with skill in the longbow, meant that England was first to abandon the old idea of reliance on unpaid military service by the landed nobility. The infantry that fought for Edward II at Bannockburn (1314) was mostly recruited by “commissions of array,” in which the sheriffs and clerks of two counties were paired in order to muster a quota of adult freemen. After the Shameful Peace of 1328 even most nobles served for pay. By 1334 all of Edward III’s men were paid. Scutage slowly faded from use, and was not demanded to raise troops after 1385. Instead, a system of indentures, or fee contracts paid to recruiting officers, was employed that lasted into the 15th century. Scholars estimate that as many as 10-12 percent of English armies at this time were outlaws, recruited to fight in the king’s wars in return for a royal pardon in lieu of wages. With defeat in the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453), English armies ceased to be a factor in land warfare in Europe. England also lost its lead at sea, lagging badly behind several continental navies.
Michael Roberts excluded English armies from his consideration of the revolution in military affairs, suggesting that there was virtually no progress made toward military modernization during the Wars of the Roses, which saw little to no adoption of continental weapons or tactical advances. More recently, Mark Fissel argued that the English military system actually showed high levels of flexibility and absorbed numerous foreign military ideas, though giving them a unique English character in practice. A major difference from the continent was that military development in England relied far more on private interests than the state, and was more closely tied to naval warfare. From 1588 to the start of the English Civil Wars (1639-1651) most English soldiers were raised through conscription. For the first years of the Civil Wars men joined up to fight for pay, or for reasons of religious or constitutional conviction, personal honor, or class or ethnic hatred. While the Civil Wars saw major advances, notably in the New Model Army, men had to be conscripted by levy to fight in Ireland. After 1660, the smaller army England retained relied on volunteers. It was not until 1689 that England formally established a standing army.
Henry V, of England (1387-1422).
King of England, 1413-1422. While still Prince of Wales he began to collect warships. He was the only English king to own a true Mediterranean galley. He also spent royal revenues to build a fleet that included the usual English oared vessels, balingers, and barges, but also Great Ships that modified and advanced the design of carracks. Henry tried to enforce the idea of England as safeguard of the sea with only limited effectiveness. He was more successful in his larger effort to exploit the strategic advantages of mobility provided by sea power to wage the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453) in a way that prior English kings had not. Where Edward III and his successors struck overland from distant but friendly bases, rarely achieving sustainable successes, Henry used sea power to invade and occupy nearby Normandy. This was the start of the great quest of his reign: the attempt to conquer France, to which end he reasserted England’s old claim to the French crown in 1414 and revived major fighting in France after a period of dormancy. He used his fleet not just to escort armies across the Channel or to Gascony, but to destroy French seapower in the Atlantic as a prelude to stripping France of its Atlantic ports and establishing permanent English naval dominance in the Channel. He invaded in August 1415, taking Harfleur on September 22 after battering its walls with his artillery. A month later he won a spectacular victory at Agincourt. His fleet won at Harfleur (August 15, 1416), and again at the Bay of Seine (July 25, 1417). In 1417 he invaded France again, conquering Normandy by the end of 1418. In the Treaty of Troyes (1420) he appeared to achieve complete victory: he was recognized as “heir of France” and secured the title by dynastic marriage to a daughter of the House of Valois, even though his claim was rejected in fact by many Frenchmen. Henry died at age 35, leaving an expanded but unconsolidated empire to an infant son. The long war with France thus intensified after his death as the French rejected the inheritance provision of the “perpetual peace” of Troyes. The regents and Henry’s successor lost most of his conquests during the 1430s and 1440s. English seapower also dissipated upon his death as most of his royal ships were sold off by the regency.
Thomas Fairfax, (1612-1671).
Parliamentary general. He first experienced war in the Netherlands and Germany. He next led a regiment of dragoons for Charles I in the bloodless First Bishops’ War (1639). He raised a Yorkshire army for Parliament when the English Civil Wars broke out. Although a solid cavalry commander, he lost two small skirmishes in 1643 to more skilled Cavaliers, at Seacroft Moor (April 13) and Adwalton Moor (June 30). Fairfax was joined by Oliver Cromwell and defeated the Royalists in a sharp cavalry action at Winceby (October 11, 1643). He relieved the siege of Nantwich on January 24, 1644, taking 1,500 prisoners. He commanded on the right at Marston Moor (July 2, 1644). Fairfax pushed hard for professionalization in the military and was key to setting up the New Model Army, which he led to a brilliant victory at Naseby (June 14, 1645). To his shame, after the battle he lost control of his men, who murdered hundreds of women taken with the baggage. He later took the lead in pressuring Parliament to meet pay arrears, quartering, and other obligations to the troops. From 1648 to 1649, Fairfax fought in the southeast against Royalist holdouts. United with Cromwell over dealing with Parliament on issues of quartering and payment of arrears to the Army, Fairfax ordered troops to occupy London on August 6, 1647. They marched through the city with swords drawn and matches lighted. Fairfax broke with Cromwell over the great matter of whether to execute the king and on the matter of repressing the Scots. In 1650 he left the military and politics.
