Western Civilization - History Of European Society

222 Chapter 12

by mercenaries. Those townsmen who could afford to,

bought horse and armor and tried to fight like knights.

The majority served with pike or halberd (a long-

handled battle axe) and drilled on Sundays and holi-

days until they achieved a level of effectiveness far

superior to that of peasant levies. The victory of the

Flemish town militias over the chivalry of France at

Courtrai in 1302 was a promise of things to come.

By 1422 pike tactics had been adopted by the

Swiss Confederation, one of several peasant leagues

formed in the later thirteenth century to preserve their

independence from feudal demands. The successful de-

fense of their liberties earned them a formidable mili-

tary reputation, and after 1444 the Swiss were regularly

employed as mercenaries by the French and by the

pope. Their example was taken up by other poor peas-

ants in south Germany who emulated their system of

training and hired themselves out to the emperor and

other princes. Pike squares remained a feature of Euro-

pean armies for two hundred years, and mercenary con-

tracting became an important element in the Swiss and

south German economies.

The emergence of paid troops, new missile

weapons, and massed infantry tactics changed the char-

acter of European warfare. By the end of the fourteenth

century, armies were larger and cavalry was declining in

importance. The social consequences of these changes

were profound because they tended, among other

things, to monetarize the costs of war. In the simplest

form of feudal warfare, cash outlays were few. Men

served without pay and normally provided their own

food and equipment in the field. Feudal levies con-

sumed resources in kind, but these costs rarely involved

the state. This changed dramatically with the advent of

the soldier, because only a sovereign state could coin

money or raise taxes. As feudal nobles could rarely do

either, they gradually lost their preeminent role as the

organizers of war while the eclipse of cavalry reduced

their presence on the battlefield. During the fifteenth

century, many great feudal families began to withdraw

from the traditional function as protectors of society,

leaving the field to men who served the sovereign for

pay and privileges. In the process, the state, too, was

transformed. Where the feudal world had demanded

little more than justice and military leadership from its

kings, the new warfare demanded the collection and

distribution of resources on an unprecedented scale.

The monarchies of Europe were at first unprepared for

such a task, and the difficulties they faced were com-

pounded by a contemporary revolution in military

technology.

The development of Western technology is often

seen as a sporadic affair in which periods of innovation

were interspersed with longer intervals of slow, almost

IIllustration 12.2
Pikes in Action. This illustration of the opening of a battle
between formations of pikemen shows the “fall” of pikes as the

units come into action. It is a detail of The Terrible Swiss Warby Al-

brecht Altdorfer, c. 1515.