Plague, War, and Social Change in the “Long”Fourteenth Century 221to subjugate the Welsh and Scots could not be aban-
doned every autumn when his feudal levies went home.
He therefore contracted with certain knights on a long-
term basis, paying their wages from the proceeds of
knight’s fees and from the nine great levies on moveable
property that he collected between 1297 and 1302.
The need for long-service troops and the superior
professionalism of those who fought year in and year out
for their livelihood were decisive. By 1340 unpaid feudal
service was becoming rare in western Europe, though
the crown was not yet the sole paymaster of its armies.
Men from the great estates were still paid by the lords
who employed them. Townsmen were paid by the
towns. This changed by the mid-fifteenth century in
England and France and by 1480 in Spain, though towns
and nobles could be called upon to provide equipment.
In Italy, the mercenary was dominant by 1300.
The major exceptions to this state of affairs were
found in eastern Europe. In Poland a numerous class of
small and middling gentry continued to perform unpaid
military service throughout the fifteenth century. Those
who account for this by pointing to the frontier charac-
ter of Polish society would be wrong. In Hungary, Eu-
rope’s most exposed frontier, even the banderia,a heavy
cavalry unit composed of noblemen, was paid in cash
at an early date, and the armies of János Hunyadi
(c. 1407–56) and his son, Matthias I, were composed
largely of mercenaries. Aside from such quasitribal sur-
vivals as the szechelyof eastern Transylvania, the deci-
sion to pay or not to pay seems everywhere to have
been governed by the availability of cash.
The first soldiers were probably poor knights or
younger sons whose only inheritance was a sword, a
horse, and a sound training in the profession of arms.
They were soon joined by paid infantry, most of whom
came from different social worlds. The fourteenth
century also saw the evolution of infantry tactics that
required either specialized skills or exceptional disci-
pline and cohesion in battle. As those who possessed
such training were rarely part of traditional feudal
society, they, too, had to be paid in cash.
The skills were largely associated with the develop-
ment of new or improved missile weapons. Archery had
always been a factor in medieval warfare, but its effec-
tiveness was diminished by improvements in personal
armor. The introduction of the crossbow therefore
marked the beginning of a major change. This weapon
offered great accuracy and powers of penetration,
though at a relatively slow rate of fire. Originating in
the Mediterranean, it was first used as a naval weapon
and found special favor among the shipmasters of
Genoa and Barcelona as a defense against pirates. Men
selected and trained for this purpose had become nu-
merous in the port cities of the western Mediterranean
by 1300 and were willing to transfer their skills to land
when the volume of maritime trade declined. The Ge-
noese were especially noted for their service to France
during the Hundred Years’ War; natives of Barcelona
and Marseilles were not far behind.
The advent of the crossbowmen marked an alien
intrusion into the world of feudal warfare and was re-
sented by many knights. Their world held little place
for the urban poor. However, the involvement of mar-
ginal people with deviant forms of social organization
was only beginning. The famous longbow was another
case in point. Basically a poacher’s weapon, it evolved
beyond the edges of the feudal world in Wales and the
English forests. Edward III introduced it in the Hundred
Years’ War with devastating effect. The longbow com-
bined a high rate of fire with penetration and accuracy
superior to that of early firearms. It required many years
of training to be properly employed. As most of those
who were expert in its use were marginal men in an
economic and social sense they were usually happy to
serve as mercenaries.
Handguns followed a similar pattern. First seen in
Italy during the 1390s, they achieved importance in Bo-
hemia during the Hussite wars.When peace returned,
companies of handgun men found employment in
Hungary and in the west.
All of these categories were overshadowed in the
fifteenth century by the emergence of the pike as a pri-
mary battle weapon (see illustration 12.2). The pike
was a spear, twelve to sixteen feet in length. It was used
in a square formation similar to the Macedonian pha-
lanx and could, if the pikemen stood their ground, stop
a cavalry charge or clear the field of opposing infantry.
Massed infantry formations of this kind had been ne-
glected during most of the Middle Ages because such
tactics were incompatible with feudalism as a social sys-
tem. Infantry had to be highly motivated and carefully
trained to meet a cavalry charge without flinching.
In medieval Europe, two main forms of social orga-
nization could meet this requirement: the city and the
peasant league. Medieval towns were surrounded by
enemies. In those areas where princely authority was
weak (Italy, the Low Countries, and parts of Germany),
they were forced to develop effective armies at a rela-
tively early date. As most towns lacked either extensive
territory or a large native nobility trained in the profes-
sion of arms, this meant that they had to rely on the
creation of citizen militias supplemented on occasion