A German illustration from the 15th-century manual teaching fighting positions, the Codex Wallerstein, showing fighting knights wearing rondel daggers as back-up weapons. (Codex Wallerstein/Public Domain)
THE END OF THE KNIGHT
Knighthood is alive and well, though in a very different form from medieval times. Even through the 300 years covered by this book it had gone from a social rank held by hard-riding warriors to one held by men versed in court etiquette, many of whom never saw real action. The image portrayed by the literary figures of the time might be inspirational, but there were many who ignored chivalric ideals unless dealing with men of equal rank, and sometimes not even then.
The very ethos of the armoured man on horseback with his lance had, over the centuries, come crashing into ignominious failure time and again across Europe. The French were plagued by English arrows at numerous encounters and soon realized that charging longbowmen head on with mounted knights was madness. Ordinary Flemish footmen crushed mounted French knights at Courtrai with their fearful maces. The hedgehogs of Scottish and Flemish pikemen proved a formidable obstacle to mounted men but the latter could be a useful cover for their own horsemen. The Swiss had made a name for themselves with their pikes and lethal halberds, creating a form of warfare which was taken up by Germans and soon became widespread across Europe. Added to that, the technology of guns and gunpowder was improving and would prove a significant addition to the battlefield. The German knights were flayed by artillery and handguns during the Hussite Wars of the 15th century. Bulletproof armour could be worn, but it was heavier than normal armour as the metal had to be thickened or given extra layers.
The weight meant that it tended to be reserved for the protection of vital areas. Bullets might still punch through limb armour and cause severe wounds, while mobile field guns on the battlefield could do more damage: one such caused the Earl of Arundel to lose a foot and subsequently die. Moreover, the knightly lance could not get through the massed ranks of even longer pikes. Vulnerable to gunfire, ineffective against the massed pikeheads, the raison d’être of the knight on the battlefield was placed in question. By the 17th century the armoured knight also faced lighter, pistol-wielding cavalry. By the opening battle of the English Civil Wars the heavily armoured horsemen, not necessarily knights, were seen to be a relic of the past and bowed out from the scene. It was obvious that the title itself now meant little in warfare except to denote a man of breeding and training, usually one of the officers in the army. Already in the mid-15th century Jean de Bueil in Le Jouvencel saw that it was the training and efficiency of the soldier that was the key to military success, not some chivalric glory. The knight as the great armoured steam-roller scything through infantry was a memory.
Similarly, the knight’s traditional home, the castle, declined in importance during the 14th and 15th centuries. The defensive qualities of a fortress such as Bodiam in Sussex, for example, have been questioned and few castles played a major part in the Wars of the Roses. Even when gunpowder arrived in the 14th century, English castles showed little in the way of major development, unlike those seen in some Continental countries. The more stable conditions in England contributed to the decline of the castle in the later Middle Ages, with knights increasingly preferring to live most of the time in their private houses.
Cruelty and brutality were evident even among princes of chivalry, against those people who were not members of the ‘club’, the ordinary men, women and children of a defeated populace. Tempers frayed during long sieges, too. In the 15th century the older ideal of courtly love had essentially been replaced by the view that love prevented the knight from doing his job. When peace descended, knighting itself might be waived; the unrest of the Hundred Years’ War in France tempted knights to take advantage of the weak. In Germany many knights were poor and similarly turned to robbery, also citing their right to private war. Despite the best efforts of the church, chivalry was a concept that sat more easily on some shoulders than on others. Various writers strove to inspire the fighting elite with stirring tales such as Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, where the emphasis lay on moral values.
Increasingly men aspiring to knighthood might not have lineage going back generations, which in some areas of Europe had been a prerequisite. Some now hailed from free peasant stock, such as Sir John Paston, grandson of a peasant educated so well in law that he had become a justiciar. Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, published in 1528, was a study of the new gentleman, a man no longer interested in chivalry but who wanted to know how to make a good life for himself. Though Italian, Castiglione’s work was read widely. The new men learned about art and found a calling not on the battlefield but at court, working for the now rising state.
The rank of knight never died out, of course, any more than did that of esquire. The old connection with the ‘shield bearer’ (the literal translation of the latter) was long gone but the ‘country squire’ still denoted a man of standing in the community. The word itself, however, was increasingly debased until it became no more than a courtesy title given to all and sundry, as seen on personal correspondence today. By contrast, the title of knight retained its message of standing and service. It was Elizabeth I who ended the tradition that any knight could create another and made it solely the preserve of the monarch, which it has remained. Now the rank is awarded for service to one’s country, yet the ritual dubbing with a sword, which replaced the original buffet, must still be done to seal the contract. Ranks of knighthood vary, from the knight bachelor to the prestigious Orders such as the Garter, founded in 1348, or the Bath, which was revived under Queen Victoria. The bestowal of knighthood does not now rely on a person’s background status nor technically on his wealth; rather it is a public declamation of his achievements. The great horse may have gone but the rank still proclaims the man.
A German illustration from the 15th-century manual teaching fighting positions, the Codex Wallerstein, showing fighting knights wearing rondel daggers as back-up weapons. (Codex Wallerstein/Public Domain)