Medieval chroniclers were often marvelously casual with numbers when they wrote about battles and armies, and the problem of numerical accuracy is a perpetual challenge in the study of medieval warfare. Sometimes these inaccuracies were deliberate cases of propaganda or exaggeration, but more often writers of the day simply did not know how many men an army fielded in a particular battle and either went with their best guess, or just accepted the going figure. One medieval source, however, is remarkable for the detailed accuracy of its records—the Soldier Rolls of the English Exchequer.
In their modern digitized version, the Rolls contain 94,962 individual service records—list after list of names, dates and other information covering a period of eighty-four years from 1369 to 1453. At first glance they might seem little more than old accounting documents and interminable muster lists. On deeper scrutiny, however, the dry, repetitious figures on those pages contain a wealth of information about the structure of the medieval English army and an insight into the details of military service at the height of the Hundred Years War.
The Soldier Rolls list soldiers by their first name, last name, titled status (if any), the military rank under which they enlisted (because a man’s rank determined his pay), the captain whose muster they filled, the commander of the expedition or garrison in which they served, the years of their service, and the type of military activity (such as an expedition in France, a garrison at Southampton, or campaigns in Ireland or Scotland). Unfortunately, the timespan covered by the Rolls omits the pivotal battles of Crecy and Poitiers, which were fought in 1346 and 1356, respectively. But the Rolls reveal fascinating details about the most famous campaign in all of the Hundred Years War—Henry V’s expedition to France in 1415
