Manpower

When a commander in chief wants to fight a war or defend the country, there’s one important question that must be answered: where are the troops going to come from?

In feudal Europe, a number of different sources were tried.

In the early feudal period, powerful people or institutions, like the crown, nobles and the church, who owned large amounts of land would “lease” allotments of this land to others in return for payment or service. This practice was called “benefice.” Initially, those granted benefice had to work the land and hand over to the landowner a portion of anything produced on that land. In 730, however, during the administration of the Frankish state by Charles Martel, military service began to be required of benefice holders in addition to other services and payments.

While accepting a benefice usually entailed some form of military service, sometimes the causality was reversed. For example, around 730 A.D., Charles Martel needed troops, and so began recruiting able warriors. If these warriors would swear absolute fidelity to him and become his vassal, Charles would grant them a benefice. This land would be held by the warriors and their family so long as they served Charles well in a military capacity. While this seemed like the ideal solution, there was a problem: the number of troops that could be acquired by this method was limited by the amount of land available for dispersal.

By the twelfth century, knights and others who owed military service were looking for ways to get out of it. Thus arose the practice of “scutage”: paying the liege lord an amount of money to avoid military service. This payment was theoretically enough to hire a mercenary for the length of time the payer would have had to serve. By the reign of Henry II, the role of the paid soldier grew more important than that of the feudal tenant, as more and more people paid scutage.

Knights paid scutage to escape castle duty, as well. These obligations ranged from thirty to ninety days per year. Castle duty was more inconvenient than dangerous, and rates of scutage were often accepted that were much lower than the cost of hiring replacements. Thus many castles--even in militarily sensitive areas--were left with skeleton garrisons in peacetime.

Other traditions arose that provided the state--in the person of the king or queen-- with troops. For example, each free household in the Frankish state owed the service of one man with complete arms and equipment. Other countries recognized this as a good idea, and made it their own. Military obligation became hereditary, providing the crown with a mass levy of free men in time of need. These free men would be obligated to serve their lord for tours of duty ranging from sixty days to six months out of a year, depending on the country and the period.

There was a problem, of course. Complete arms and equipment, even for an infantryman, didn’t come cheap. In the case of cavalry, acquiring a horse, lance, sword, shield and armor was well beyond the capabilities of a common free landholder. Also, the skills needed to fight from horseback didn’t come easy, and required more time to master than a farmer or craftsman--no matter how dedicated--could devote. If the state wanted a force of well-equipped, skilled cavalry, it would have to find some way of providing them with equipment and removing from them the obligation of working for a living.

Thus emerged the knights. Knights were quite different from the mass levy. They were elite warriors, maintained by the kings and great magnates, and they became the nucleus of the aristocracy in many European lands. In addition to serving in the field, they did duty as castle guards, in time of peace as well as war.

The system under which landholders owed the crown military service evolved further under Charlemagne. Every able-bodied man who possessed twelve mansi (a rather vague measure of land) had to own a mail shirt and, when called upon for active duty, must bring rations for three months and clothes for six.

At least one major problem was never satisfactorily solved-the problem of training. Pressing laborers into military service and giving them swords didn’t make them warriors. They just didn’t have the skills and instincts that could only be gained through months or years of experience. Thus these peasant “soldiers” were frequently little more than “cannon-fodder” when faced by tough, cynical, and competent mercenary troops.

It wasn’t only kings who could raise armies through the granting of benefice, of course. During the ninth and tenth centuries in Europe, many wealthy and powerful lords--both lay and ecclesiastical--raised and maintained their own private armies. Soon, the armies fielded by kings comprised mainly contingents of vassals commanded by powerful nobles.

In Anglo-Saxon England, the king used another source of manpower. “Thegns” made up the personal entourage of kings, or of powerful landed magnates (who were called “eorls”). These thegns, whether they owned land or not, owed their lords military service. This obligation arose from their position in society, not from their status as landowners, and so was different from the obligations owed due to benefice.

Kings and lords could--and did--also hire mercenaries (in England, these professional mercenary warriors were called “huscarles”). These mercenaries were paid wages, and were often allowed to supplement this income through looting.