medieval warfare
Military Obligation
Feudal baronies were originally held of the King by military service. The baron was obliged to provide the specified number of soldiers for the specified period (normally 40 days) when summoned by the King to do so. The baron and the soldiers he trained and raised were usually under the command of the sheriff during military operations. In this way feudal society was hierarchical. The King, the ‘paramount superior’, had his own vassals, the earls, barons, and other tenants-in-chief, who would, in turn, be superiors of other vassals. A number of people would therefore have had an ‘interest’ in an area of land.
The Scots maintained no professional army, and armies of the day were typically led by members of the nobility. A constable was typically the general in charge of a field army. This was almost always a member of the nobility. Other members of the nobility, along with their knights, led lower formations. Formations of soldiers under those nobles and knights were usually led by serjeants and men-at-arms. Although there was no standing army nobles were required by law to routinely conduct inspections within their baronies to ensure citizens were armed and prepared for a mobilization. This was commonly known as a “wappenshaw”.
Warfare in scotland
By the High Middle Ages, the kings of Scotland could command forces of tens of thousands of men for short periods as part of the “common army”, mainly of poorly armored spearmen and bowmen. After the “Davidian Revolution” of the twelfth century, which introduced elements of feudalism to Scotland, these forces were augmented by small numbers of mounted and heavily armored knights. Feudalism also introduced castles into the country, originally simple wooden motte-and-bailey constructions, but these were replaced in the thirteenth century with more formidable stone castles.
Introduction of feudalism to Scotland, usually attributed to David, Saw the introduction of feudal soldiers. When David I acceded to the Scottish throne in 1124 after spending much of his life living as a baron in England, he brought with him a number of Anglo-Norman vassals, to whom he distributed lands and titles. These nobles brought “fundamental innovations in military organization”. These included the knight’s fee, homage and fealty, as well as castle-building and the regular use of professional cavalry, as barons held castles and estates in exchange for service and providing troops on a 40-day basis. David’s Norman followers and their retinues were able to provide a force of perhaps 200 mounted and armored knights, but the vast majority of his forces were the “common army” of poorly armed infantry, capable of performing well in raiding and guerrilla warfare, but only infrequently able to stand up to the English in the field, as they managed at Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn.
Scottish field armies rarely managed to stand up to the usually larger and more professional armies produced by England. They were, however, used to good effect by Robert I of Scotland to secure Scottish independence. In the Late Middle Ages, under the Stewart kings, these forces were further augmented by specialist troops, particularly men-at-arms and archers, hired by bonds of manrent, similar to English indentures of the same period.
Scottish victories in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries have been seen as part of a wider “infantry revolution”, that saw a decline in the primacy of the mounted knight on the battlefield. However, it has been pointed out that Scottish medieval armies had probably always been dependent on infantry forces. In the late medieval period Scottish men-at-arms, including mounted archers and spearmen, often dismounted to fight beside the infantry, with perhaps a small mounted-reserve. Like the English, the Scots deployed mounted archers, and even spearmen, who were particularly useful in the mobile raids that characterized border warfare.
