Before the Military Revolution: European Warfare and the Rise of the Early Modern State 1300–1490

By Alexander Querengässer

Before the Military Revolution examines European Warfare in the Late Middle Ages from 1300 to 1490. It is not restricted only to well-covered conflicts, like the Anglo-Scottish Wars or the Hundred Years War, but gives due weight to all regions of Europe, including the Empire, the Baltic, the Balkans and the Mediterranean, and considers developments in naval warfare. The Hussite Wars and the wars of the Teutonic Order and the Hanseatic League are covered, as is the expansion of Moscow, the Ottomans and Venice, and battles like Aussig (1426), Copenhagen (1428), Chojnice (1454) are discussed alongside Bannockburn and Agincourt.

This age witnesses fundamental change. The feudal system of the High Middle Ages crumbled everywhere in Europe due to climatic change, economic crisis and population decline. This triggered a fiscalization of the military organization, the establishment of taxes and representation of the estates. This book argues that these changes are the most fundamental ones in the military and political organization in Europe until the rise of the constitutional state around 1800 and so comes closer to the original concept of a Military Revolution. It also takes a critical look at other often discussed developments of this age, like the Infantry and Artillery Revolution or the decline of cavalry. Combining a chronological and regional narrative with deeper analysis of themes like chivalry, strategy, economic warfare or military publications makes this book an indispensable read for everyone interested in late medieval history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Aug 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781789256703

Alexander Querengässer

Alexander Querengässer studied history and archaeology at the University of Leipzig and later read for his PhD at the University of Potsdam with a work about the Saxon Army in the Great Northern War. He now works as a freelance historian and has published a number of books, dealing with military history from late medieval time to the 20th century. He also is the editor of the series “BeiträgezurGeschichte des Militärs in Sachsen”.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Medieval Warfare 1000–1300

In the popular image, but also to an alarming extent in much modern scholarship, medieval warfare is often reduced to knights and castles – yet this stereotype does not even hold true for the centres of European chivalric culture. However, to start this book, it seems worthwhile to recapitulate the work of Robert Bartlett, who divided the military cultures of Europe into three regions. The first one includes Northern France, England and Germany and was dominated by heavy cavalry. The second is Wales, Scotland and Scandinavia, which were shaped by foot warriors. The third is Ireland, the Western Slavic cultures and the Baltic regions, which were dominated by light cavalry. Interestingly, Bartlett gives no information about the Mediterranean.¹ Here, especially in Italy, there were forms of organisation that are usually more associated with later periods. For example, Italy during the 11th–14th centuries was densely urbanised, and the north of the country was involved with trying to shake off the rule of the Roman emperors. In these conflicts, urban militias, especially foot soldiers, played an important role, for example during the Battle of Legnano in 1176.² This fact alone demonstrates that however schematic Bartlett’s classification is, there was not just a single medieval military culture in Europe.

The reason that the culture of the first region – Northern France, England and Germany – seems to dominate our vision of the period is because it had certain obvious and iconic advantages: heavy armoured cavalry, the crossbow, siege artillery and stone castles. The last in particular was important during the time of expansion, for example the crusades into Palestine, the German eastern colonisation or the Baltic crusades of the Teutonic Order. Stone castles gave the Western and Central European knights a stronghold from which they could defend against enemy attacks, especially if the enemies lacked siege artillery. The latter, in turn, gave crusaders an advantage when attacking the wooden fortifications of the Lithuanians or Irish.

The tactic of a charge of armoured knights seems to be of lesser importance when compared with the advantages of castles. Of course, the use of knights could decide a battle and Saladin feared the Franconian knights of the Third Crusade and tried to avoid a full-fledged battle against them, but they were not invincible. For instance, in the Baltic regions, the heavily armed knights of the Sword Brothers or the Teutonic Order were repeatedly defeated by lighter-armed Lithuanian or Novgorod forces, as happened in the Battle of Saule in 1236 and at Lake Peipus in 1242. Moreover, in the densely forested areas of Lithuania, the heavy armament of the knights was no real advantage.

However, focusing on knights and their battles is an approach that tends to ignore the complexity of high medieval warfare and army organisation.³ Infantry, which was of increasing importance in the 14th and 15th centuries, had been more than just an auxiliary force earlier. A military history that is focused on battles easily misses this point. Medieval warfare – in the 11th as in the 15th century – was dominated by siege operations, not field battles. And during a siege, a mounted knight was of no use to an attacker. This is borne out by the statistics: for the siege of Jerusalem in 1099 during the First Crusade, the Christian army had about 12,000 foot soldiers, compared to 1,500 mounted knights;⁴ for the siege of Wexford in 1169, the first Norman attempt to invade Ireland, Norman forces consisted of 100 knights and men-at-arms, but 360 bowmen and 500 foot soldiers. Thus, despite the fact that for most sieges of the high medieval period we lack specific numbers and if we have some, they are only totals, it is clear that mounted knights were of low value for attacking fortifications during sieges. Furthermore, even battles were not solely cavalry affairs. For instance, although the fight itself was dominated by cavalry, the majority of the French army at the Battle of Bouvines (1214) comprised infantry from the militias from Picardy, while the allied army relied on Brabançon mercenaries.

The latter were another important aspect of high medieval warfare. Men who earned their income by offering their services as mercenaries during wartime have long existed, probably due to the fact that in cultivated societies there was always a portion of the population who could not secure employment on the land or were even unable to work at all, and for whom military service offered an alternative way of living. Whether or not actually joining the service was easy in the Middle Ages, when mercenaries had to arm and equip themselves, is a matter of debate, because it required starter cash – something that was often lacked by those hoping to join.

Nevertheless, initial fiscal difficulties aside, mercenaries were widely used throughout Europe. King John I of England, for example, hired them during the First Barons’ War and used them successfully during the siege of Rochester Castle in 1215.⁵ Earlier, Flemish mercenaries formed a part of the invasion force of William the Conqueror in 1066 and were also hired later by the Plantagenets. Another famous body of mercenaries was the Varangian Guard, recruited by Viking warriors and maintained by the Byzantine emperors,⁶ whose army had a long tradition of recruiting mercenaries. From time to time, mercenary forces even formed the majority of an empire’s army, and in the High Middle Ages, the Varangian Guards were recognised as the elite of the basileus’ forces. Their use was also an expression of his wealth – something that was lacked by many European rulers at the time, rendering them unable to employ mercenaries in large numbers or for a longer period.⁷

The backbone of the military organisation between about 1000 and 1300 was what Philippe Contamine described as a feudo-vassalic system.⁸ This was far from a uniform pattern. In fact, the feudo-vassalic relationship varied from region to region and with each lord-vassal relationship. In the Holy Land, for example, military service within this relationship was for life and throughout the entire year, probably due to the perpetual threat of infidels. In the Holy Roman Empire, by comparison, service was often restricted to a couple of days here and there and in some cases only for the defence of the lord’s territory, making effective warfare very complicated.

1 Bartlett, R., The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cutural Change 950–1350 (London: Penguin 1993), pp. 70–71.

2 Settia, A., Infantry and Cavalry in Lombardy (11th–12th Centuries), in: Journal of Medieval Military History 6 (2008), pp. 58–78.

3 As a good reconsideration see: Morillo, S., The Age of Cavalry revisited, in: Kagay, D. J./Villalon, L. J., (eds), The circle of war in the Middle Ages. Essays on Medieval Military and Naval History (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press 1999), pp. 45–58.

4 Kostick, C., The siege of Jerusalem. Crusade and conquest in 1099 (London: Continuum 2009); Peters, E., The First Crusade. The chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and other source materials (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1998).

5 Seel, G. E., King John. An Underrated King (London: Anthem Press 2012), pp. 159–162.

6 Blondal, S., Varangians of Byzantium: An Aspect of Byzantine Military History (New York: Cambridge University Press 1978).

7 A good overview is presented by: France, J. (ed.), Mercenaries and Paid Men. The Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages (Leiden – Boston: Brill 2008).

8 Contamine, P., War in the Middle Ages (Hoboken: Wiley 1986), p. 77.

Chapter 2

War in Europe 1300–1400

The 13th century is generally regarded as a period of European economic and social expansion and prosperity, which caused the population to grow. However, the pace of this development and population increase slackened and even came to standstill at the end of the century, and the 14th century was shaped by its reversal. This was in part caused by the fact that the years between 1315 and 1317 were exceptionally wet. Long periods of rain destroyed crops and also led to shortages of salt (saline production needs long periods of sun), and the rains were followed by epidemics of murrain (an infectious disease) among sheep and cattle. All of this led to death. In many regions of Europe, the years 1321 and 1322 were similarly bad. Then, beginning in around 1348, the Black Death (which was probably a virus epidemic rather than the bubonic plague it has long been held to be) led to extremely high death rates across the whole of Europe: up to 60 per cent in some regions.

All of these catastrophes resulted in a decline in agricultural production, which affected the whole of society because prices for grain and meat rose. Inevitably, this caused more and more people to fall into poverty. These crises also stirred up a more violent and belligerent mood among the populace, while economic decline and poverty resulted in there being a large number of people who were ready and prepared to earn money as mercenaries. This created a perfect storm: on the one hand, the mood was ripe for war and on the other, people were willing to fight in it – if nothing else, simply in order to make a living. This complex situation reflects that military history, especially during this period, has to be regarded in the more general terms of a history of violence, of which war was just a part.

Towards the end of the century, the already violent mood was exacerbated by the Western Schism. Starting in 1378, this was a split within the Catholic Church that saw two popes existing simultaneously – one living in the traditional fashion in Rome, the other backed by the French in Avignon. The palatial living style of the high ecclesial nobility and the fact that indulgence sellers, begging monks and other preachers wandered the countryside collecting money for two separate but pompous papal courts provoked much criticism of the Church. In England, for instance, John Wycliffe launched an attack on ecclesial pomp and even challenged papal authority. When English King Richard II married a Bohemian princess in 1382, students of Prague University came to England, acquainted themselves with Wycliffe’s ideas and took them back to Bohemia, where, in the 15th century, they strongly influenced the ideas of the reformer Jan Hus. Wycliffe’s and Hus’ criticism of the Church added fuel to the fire caused by the social problems of wide sections of the population, triggering off a serious revolt in Bohemia in 1419. The fact that in many German sources the Bohemian heretics in the following war were called "Wyclyffen" is ample proof that his ideas were not just discussed in academic circles, but were mainstream.

Arms and weapons technology

There is a tendency, especially among Anglo-American historians, to overemphasise the effect of technological developments on tactics and military structures. Of course, tactics were always shaped to make best use of the available men and weapons and there is also a propensity to produce better-quality weapons than those used by the enemy. Quality, however, is difficult to define. It could mean killing effectiveness, but also how easily they can be mass-produced – and in effect it was a mix of both. The English longbow, for example, represented a good combination of effectiveness and ease of manufacture. Nevertheless, especially on the Continent, the bow and later the crossbow were replaced during the 15th and 16th century by handheld guns. This is the reminder of a third important requirement of weapons technology: it must be easy to use. Archery was an art that needed to be taught and practised. Indeed, there are many examples of English kings abolishing every other kind of sport in favour of archery, so that there was always a sufficient pool of skilled men.¹ By contrast, the handling of a gun could be taught within a few hours or days – depending on the man – enabling commanders to raise and exercise troops within a very short time.

However, despite considerable advancements in weapons technology, namely the invention of gunpowder weapons, it is important to remember that there are other, less sophisticated weapons that also shaped military systems. One of these was the pike, which was used to great effect by the Scots in the 14th century, the Swiss in the 15th century and the Germans in the 16th century, and yet was far from being a technological milestone; the Macedonians had used it in the 4th century BC. Simple to make and use and deadly effective, it was adopted successively in the Late Middle Ages by societies that lacked a horse culture but were able to provide huge quantities of foot soldiers to face cavalry forces. The circumstances of both the men using the weapon and the enemy they faced defined the adoption of the pike, and this fact was more important than the weapon defining the overall tactical system. This prominent example thus proves that technological developments, while certainly not unimportant, are less significant than is often presented. In short, the appearance of guns would ultimately change the art of war, but their effect on 14th-century warfare was limited.

Guns are reported to have first been used at the Battle of Crécy (1346) and after that their use spread quickly over the whole of Europe, being first recorded in Muscovy in 1382, when they were used for the defence of Moscow against a Tartar attack. Handguns also appear during the 1370s and 1380s in British sources, but not in considerable numbers. While the real effectiveness of gunpowder weapons was limited in terms of their killing ability, they proved popular with rulers because of the noise they made and the fact that they were an expression of economic wealth. Furthermore – and this is an aspect that is rarely considered for a time that’s often presented as conservative and backward-looking – there were an expression of modernity.

Along with arms, armour improved greatly during the 14th century. During the High Middle Ages it was primarily the design of helmets and shields that changed, while body protection was made up of chain armour. This was improved at the end of the 13th century by brigandines, for which small steel plates were riveted on the fabric or leather of a coat. This technique was first developed in the late 12th century in Asia and started to spread in Eastern Europe following the Mongol invasion in the middle of the 13th century, demonstrating the wide-ranging cultural interlocking of both continents. The Mongols also brought siege engines, such as the trebuchet, with them, which they in turn had taken over from the Chinese. While the brigandine was originally a form of body armour, protection of a similar design for arms and elbows was developed within Europe in the 14th century, the end of which saw the first forms of plate armour. As this provided better protection for the knight, shields became smaller, leading to the evolution of the heater shield, which was popular with knights and foot soldiers in the 14th century and eventually superceded the longer kite shield of earlier centuries. For the head, bascinets started to replace the great helmet. Due to their design, they provided better protection from sword thrusts, which could slide off the streamlined helmet.²

Plate armour was expensive and was therefore only used by knights. Ordinary foot soldiers still used gambesons or captured brigandines and mail armour. The iron hat was popular with many men because it provided protection from sword thrusts. Archers preferred bassinets without visors, because these could hinder the bowstring.

There is a problem – present in contemporary sources – when it comes to the terminology used for polearms. There are basically three types: 1) javelins, which were distance weapons that could be thrown at the enemy; 2) lances, which were short polearms; 3) pikes, which were longer polearms. The English term spear could be used interchangeably for both javelins and pikes, whereas the German term "Speer just means a javelin, and Spieß is the German term for the French-originated pike (German Pike from the French piquer = stabbing). The French distinguish between pique and javelot, which are close to the English terms, as are the Italian pica and giavelotto, while asta could have as diverse a meaning as the English spear. Not surprisingly, then, there is often confusion, especially when translating primary or secondary sources. Thus German translators often erroneously translate the English spear with the similar sounding Speer", but mean a pike, which does not fall under the definition of the German term.

The Teutonic Order

On the southern Baltic coast during the 13th and especially the 14th century the Teutonic Order built up a huge territory, which in terms of state structure and culture was much more highly developed than that of most other the surrounding countries. After the fall of Accra in 1291 and a short intermezzo in Venice and the Balkans, the Order shifted its main seat to Marienburg in Prussia in 1309. The knights had conquered this part of Europe in the first half of the 13th century and soon also took over Livonia from the Brothers of the Sword. In this part of Europe, the crusading image was still alive and provided the Brothers with additional military potential, although the Teutonic Order itself was also very well organised.³

Warfare on the Prussian and Livonian border was characterised more by raids than fully fledged campaigns.⁴ Twice a year, the Order invited the nobility of Europe to support these raids, of which there were two kinds: summertime building raids and wintertime devastation raids. Water transportation along rivers was essential for both. During the summer months, the Order progressed its zone of influence and built new fortifications, initially made of timber but in many cases later rebuilt in brick. No state or other military order created such a unique pattern for its castles as did the Order.⁵

The winter raids focused mostly on small villages; larger fortified places were rarely targets. River transportation was vital to transport some supplies, with the remainder being taken through plundering. Because Livonia was a poor region, it seems that grain, textile products and slaves were the main booty of these campaigns.⁶

Both the Lithuanians and the Order tried to avoid large-scale battles – the former because they feared the heavily armed knights, the latter because the Lithuanians enjoyed greater numbers and mobility and could lure them into an ambush. However, at the end of the century, the Lithuanians also started to build stone castles and their cavalry became more and more important. For their part, after the Order had strengthened its hold over Prussia it formed a feudal levy system based on taxing the free. Apart from the Order knights, no nobility could exist in the Order state, so instead of levying the nobility, all free landholders had to supply armed horsemen. These were equipped in the traditional Prussian style, which was comparable to the Lithuanian light horse.

This impressively demonstrates how in this zone of cultural contact all parties improved their military capability by adopting that which they considered to be useful: the Lithuanians appropriated stone castles and cavalry and the Order acquired light cavalry and river boats. In this way, the allegedly more modern Order had to adopt aspects of the regional military traditions, while the supposedly backward Lithuanians had no problem adopting more modern techniques from the Order. This case thus demonstrates that the terms modern and backward should be used with care, because both parties showed the need and the ability to adapt to the new necessities created by the meeting of two different military cultures, which affected the regional requirements for effective war making.

Scandinavia

At the beginning of the 14th century, the political map of Scandinavia did not look very different from today, being defined by the three kingdoms of Norway, Denmark and Sweden. However, there was also a fourth power in the area: the Hanseatic League. This was a trade union founded by north German towns and German communities abroad to protect their interests. It comprised some 200 cities in Northern, Western and Central Europe, and meant that effectively politics in the Baltic Sea area at the time was dominated by the German town of Lübeck and perhaps the less important Stralsund.⁷

Scandinavia throughout the Middle Ages saw tremendous warfare, but after the era of the Vikings it became less interesting to medieval military historians. This is a pity, because warfare in Northern Europe was in many ways different from that seen in the Mediterranean, France or Britain. Apart from the German territories on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea, the northern lands were much less densely populated. Most of the bigger settlements, especially in Norway and Sweden, were concentrated at the coast. Coastal shipping was more important than overland routes and this fact explains why naval warfare played a much bigger role in Northern Europe than in other parts of the Continent, except for the Mediterranean.

At the beginning of the 14th century, Denmark was the dominant of the three northern kingdoms and tried to expand its influence. However, in all three kingdoms, the influence of the nobility was strong, so the rule of king was often challenged. In 1319, for example, the Swedish noble opposition elected Magnus Eriksson of Norway as the new king, but separated his lands in 1355 between his sons Håkon and Erik. Håkon duly married Margrethe I of Denmark in 1363 and so created a new union.

Denmark at this time was involved in a series of wars with the mighty Hanseatic League. In 1360, King Valdemar IV of Denmark conquered Scania, the southern part of modern Sweden. The next year, he attacked and sacked Visby of Gotland and withdrew a couple of the Hanseatic League’s privileges in Denmark. The League declared war on Denmark in September 1368, assembled a fleet of 48 ships and about 2,250 men-at-arms and attacked Helsingborg. However, although the Teutonic Order, Norway and Sweden guaranteed support, no additional troops came and the siege was broken by Valdemar. An armistice was signed, followed by the Peace of Vordingborg in 1365. Despite this, the League immediately prepared for a new war, because Valdemar was still restricting their privileges. Their actions involved signing in 1367 the Confederation of Cologne – an alliance with a couple of Dutch cities, such as Amsterdam and Brielle – and a treaty with Albrecht III of Sweden in 1368. This having been done, they declared war on Valdemar in the same year and a Hanseatic fleet of 37 ships and more than 2,000 men attacked and burned Copenhagen.

After that, an army of Hanseatic mercenaries and Swedish soldiers reconquered Scania, followed by Southern Jutland and parts of Norway. Helsingborg withstood a siege for several months but was taken in summer 1369, forcing Valdemar to sign the Treaty of Stralsund in 1370. Under the terms of the treaty, the Hanseatic League regained its privileges and acquired a couple of castles and the Sound Dues, while Denmark regained Scania and Gotland.⁸

This was the situation, then, when Håkon took over the throne of Norway in 1370. His brother, Erik of Sweden, had died in 1359 and had been succeeded by his still-living father Magnus, who in turn was captured and succeeded by Håkon. Both came to a mutual agreement in 1362 and ruled Sweden together. When Håkon married Margrethe in 1363, the riksdag in Sweden feared a union in which Sweden would be subdued by Denmark and so they elected Albrecht of Mecklenburg as their new king. Albrecht defeated Magnus and his son and captured the old king in 1365 in the Battle off Cape Gata. It took Håkon five years to assemble a new army, and then the campaign was hindered in 1370 when the plague broke out in southern Norway. The following year, a rebellion hit Albrecht’s rule in Sweden. Now Håkon was able to lead his army to Stockholm. However, instead of unifying the three northern kingdoms, he signed a contract to free his father in return for a ransom and his abdication of the Swedish crown. Magnus died on a sea voyage in 1374, and Håkon followed him in 1380.

In 1376, four years before his father died, Håkon and Margrethe’s five-year-old son Olaf was crowned king of Denmark. In 1381, Olaf was made king in Norway, too. However, because he was underage, his mother led the government. Olaf never made it to adulthood, dying at the age of 17, in 1387. Since Albrecht’s rule in Sweden was still unpopular, in 1389 a new noble opposition elected Margrethe regent of both Denmark and Norway. Albrecht was beaten at Falköping that year and captured together with his son Eric. Only Stockholm was able to withstand the army of Denmark, Norway and the rebels, because it was supplied by sea from Mecklenburg; Albrecht’s hereditary lands hired privateers, who brought supplies to Stockholm and were called Victual Brothers.⁹ These privateers also started to raid Danish merchants.

While the Hanseatic League in general supported Margrethe, several leading cities, such as Rostock and Wismar, provided bases for the Victual Brothers. They quickly became a problem, because they not only supplied the Swedish capital but also became actively involved in piracy. In 1393, for instance, a huge fleet sailed into the North Sea and raided Bergen. This caused the mighty Lübeck to act. In 1395, the Treaty of Skanör and Falsterbö was signed, putting Stockholm under the governance of the Hanseatic League and ending the war between Margrethe and Albrecht, the latter abdicating his throne. Wismar and Rostock were encouraged to withdraw their support for the Victual Brothers, who had, in the meantime, captured Gotland, from where they continued their raids. Then, in 1398, a fleet of the Teutonic Order landed near Visby with 4,000 men and dispersed the pirates, who now shifted their base to Frisia and the North Sea, from where they raided the trade of Hamburg and Bremen. In 1401, a fleet from Hamburg was able to defeat the majority of the pirates near Helgoland and capture their leaders, Godeke Michels and Klaus Störtebeker (who is perhaps a fictitious character – the sources are not clear). Both were beheaded in Hamburg.¹⁰

The short intermezzo of the Victual Brothers supports the notion that military history can and must be seen in the bigger context of a history of violence. Their band formed a classic example of what modern German scholarship defined as Gewaltgemeinschaften (communities of violence).¹¹ As privateers – in fact mercenaries of the seas – they were a welcome force multiplier for the comparably weak Duchy of Mecklenburg. But it was this weakness – in terms of political weight, and economic and financial power – that caused a loss of control. It was always easy to hire mercenaries and privateers with the promise of booty. Stopping this kind of war machine, however, was much more difficult, because the men, which lived for plunder, had to be reintegrated into civilian life. Since the rulers – never mind any form of state aid – offered no help with this lengthy process, it was much easier for the mercenaries to continue a life based on violence. Thus the process of social disintegration did not start with the decision to recruit such forces, but with the failure to effectively demobilise them and reintegrate them into society.

It should be noted, though, that however excluded, pirates did need some kind of attachment to the rest of society, especially an economic one, because their booty was of no value if it could not be turned into cash and this cash then used to buy durables. Further, there was a social need for a link with land-dwellers: pirates needed a safe haven. These were offered to them first by Wismar and Rostock, since they used the privateers for their own advantage, and later, Gotland was turned over to them by Erik of Mecklenburg, son of Albrecht, who conquered the island in 1396 but died a year later. When the Order conquered the island, the Victual Brothers moved to the Northern Sea, where the chieftains of Frisia offered them their harbours, because they had been at strife with the regional cities of the Hanseatic League, especially Hamburg. So, in fact there was a fine line between pirates acting on their own account and serving as sea mercenaries by fighting for a regular war party, and bands like the Victual Brothers had a foot on either side of the line. To understand their role in history, the perspective of a military historian is insufficient.

In 1398, Gotland was finally – thanks to pressure by the Hanseatic League – returned to Denmark. A year before, on 17 June 1397, members of the divine and profane nobility signed a treaty for a union of the three northern kingdoms at Kalmar. It was never ratified, but the so-called Kalmar Union would exist for another one-and-a-half centuries.¹²

Another neglected part of North European medieval history is the conquest of Finland, which at the beginning of the 14th century was not yet fully Christianised. While northern Finland, like the northern parts of Sweden and Norway, was too inhospitable for major settlements, the coastal regions in the south were of interest to both Sweden and Novgorod. In the 12th century, Sweden successfully expanded along the southern coast of Finland and officially Christianised the local pagan tribes. In 1293, Viborg was founded as a fortified settlement with a castle, which a year later successfully resisted an attack from Novgorod. This provoked a Swedish counter-attack, which was able to capture Kexholm in 1295. The next major encounter in 1321/22 between Novgorod and Sweden led to the Peace of Nöteburg, between Yuri I Danilowitsch of Moscow and Erik Magnusson of Sweden – or rather, because Erik was underage, his regency government. Yuri negotiated this peace in the name of the Republic of Novgorod. Karelia was separated between Sweden and Novgorod and both promised not to construct any new border fortifications. The treaty proved very stable and the border did not change again until 1595, when it was pushed eastwards. However, when in 1337 an anti-Novgorodian rebellion broke out in eastern Karelia, Sweden sent an army into Ingermanland in 1338, which was decisively beaten. The treaty of 1323 was then reinstated.¹³

Due to continuing clashes on the border, in 1347 Magnus II prepared for a new campaign. In the following year, the Swedish landed an army at the Neva – where in 1240 they had been beaten in battle by Alexander Yaroslavich, later called Nevski. This time they were able to defeat an army from Novgorod and advanced on Nöteburg, which was taken after a short siege. An army of relief soldiers made up of Novgorod and Muscovite forces came too late, but in 1349 the Swedish garrison was starved into surrender. Magnus immediately sent a new army, which was unable to retake the city. Novgorod than invaded Karelia and burned the city of Viborg, but was not able to take it.

Sweden in the meantime integrated Finland into its realm by allowing a delegation of 13 men in 1362 to take part in the new election to be the next Swedish king. Border raids into eastern Karelia continued throughout the rest of the century.

Britain

The events that took place around England’s northern frontier at the end of the 13th and beginning of the 14th centuries have aroused the interest of modern scholars and the public alike. However, they have seldom been put in the right context. Contemporary historians probably recognised the importance in the changes of warfare in this area – the outer periphery of Europe – even less. Even modern scholars mostly focus on the development and importance of the Scottish schiltron and less on its influence on English tactics.

After the royal dynasty died out in 1290, Scotland was annexed by English King Edward I, who forced the new Scottish King John de Balliol to abdicate the throne in 1296.¹⁴ However, there was soon resistance to the English rule and forces were raised by several nobles. The most important of these was William Wallace, whose origins are not clear. Nevertheless, he defeated an English army in 1297 at the Battle of Stirling Bridge. Contrary to what is suggested by the Mel Gibson film Braveheart, this was not a fight of half-barbarian Scottish Highlanders against English knights on an open field. The Scottish forces, while poor, were well equipped. Their backbone comprised pikemen, who were formed in dense formations called schiltrons. At Stirling, the English army had to pass a bridge to cross the River Forth. On the northern side, the English troops had no time to deploy in the swampy area, where they were attacked by the Scots. The English heavy cavalry could make no use of its mobility and charging attacks and was beaten back by the Scottish infantry. The English commander John de Warenne duly panicked, ordered the bridge to be destroyed and retreated, leaving about half of his army cut off and free to be slaughtered by the still outnumbered Scots. However, the year after, Wallace was decisively beaten at Falkirk, when English and Irish archers broke up his schiltrons, which were then overrun by the English cavalry. Both Wallace’s forces and his influence were broken. He was chased by the English, betrayed by one of his compatriots and executed in 1305.¹⁵

In the meantime, Robert the Bruce became the leading figure in the Scottish fight for independence. He was crowned king in 1306, one year after Wallace’s dead. The following years were characterised by small-scale warfare. Edward I of England died in 1307 and his son lacked the capabilities of his father, so Bruce won vital time to build up his forces. An attempt to capture Perth in 1306 was beaten back at the Battle of Methven but Bruce was able to escape and to build up a new, but small, force, which he used in small warfare. On 10 May 1307, he won a first, and remarkable, victory at the Battle of Loudoun Hill. His army only numbered between 500 and 600 men, while the English army under the Earl of Pembroke probably had about 3,000. Bruce positioned his men on the top of a hill, his flanks covered by morasses, thereby denying the enemy its numerical advantage. In order to force the English cavalry to attack them from the front, the Scots dug parallel trenches running from the marches to their flanks – a tactic that was similar to the one the Flemish had used at the Battle of the Golden Spurs in Courtrai in 1302. The English knights ran directly into the pikes of the Scots. After they had been stopped, the Scots started to press them downhill, which caused the rear rank men to flee the