10 Reasons Knights Were Horrible Warriors
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- Опубліковано 3 лип 2024
- Were knight all that good on Medieval battle fields? Were they the powerful and effective fighting force we imagine them to be? What about scutage? What did Medieval kings think of knights as a special unit? How much were they paid? Were they actually effective? Or could they be easily defeated by infantry and archers?
Let's find out.
#medieval #mythbusting #knights
Link to my Gendarms video
• The Gendarms: Medieval...
Link to the article I'm responding to
listverse.com/2015/12/10/10-r... - Ігри
I think the biggest misunderstanding here by the author is that they think that medieval armies were similar to modern ones. They assume that knights were issued equipment rather than buying it themselves, they assume that knights taxed the logistical system rather than bringing their own support, and they assume that there could have been some kind of standardized training along the lines of basic training and AIT.
There probably was a kind of basic training. But knights would go on to learn advanced skills like modern officers.
Exactly this I believe is the reason why the author of the article seems to have done a superficialresearch. He hasn't, however he falls to the trap that many historians fall: judging the events by modern standards and not by the standards of the era they are talking about.
@@nikoszaxarias5200 Seems more like complete 8gnorance and lack of any awareness of the world. War is always a logistical nightmare. Logistics wins wars. That something takes supply and planning is part of its calculated cost. Sometimes it is worthwhile, sometimes it is now.
Yes exactly. A knight was expected to have an entire retinue on his payroll to support him, hence why they were paid if they had to serve outside their mandatory service. They would only really expect food, water, and feed to be provided to them by the quartermaster. Their equipment and animals are something they have and own already (or in the case of poorer knights the animals would be something they rent since a horse costs a lot to maintain even if you are not using it lol) so the army doesn't pay for that at all. Knights are logistically preferable for this reason since it removes some of the strain for logistics. Logistics has to arm and armor any men-at-arms that do not own their own kit or who's kit is insufficient, they are also responsible for the sheer volume of arrows required for an archer force since archers are not expected to provide their own arrows for the entire campaign.
Because there are people with what I call Hollywood brain.
They watched too much American media and understand the world in terms of what Hollywood taught them. In terms of military, they understand only a fictionalized version of the US military.
The knight didn't die if you didn't feed and water the horse, they reverted to Footmen. Then you had to go spend 80 wood and 100 stone at the Blacksmith to upgrade them to knights again. It was a logistical knightmare.
They're vulnerable to wololo?
Wait, we’re supposed to be watering our horses?
@@petestillplays9927 three times a week, in fact. They also need an area to play in with plenty of sunlight. If your horse starts to wilt, try adding nutrients to the soil.
Gold, not stone
ASTERIENDE
@@theuberhunter9698 Duly noted.
I like that you mentioned tanks when they said knights were terrible because they were expensive, because that is exactly where my mind went. Knights weren't invulnerable, but they trained constantly and had the best armor money could buy. They were well worth the investment and any difficulties that came with them. Unsurprisingly, tanks had many of the same logistical problems knights did, so they were an almost 1 to 1 comparison for their respective times.
God damn imagine being such a good warrior that you can compare to a tank
They are also both referred to as cavalry.
@@ScootrMan Imagine being such a good brew they refer to you as a potion
They were also a good deterrent against other armies especially if they had no knights in their army
@@justclayhead even in the USA?
The thing that kills me about number 4 is that he says it like we don't have rules of conduct today. In fact, modern rules of conduct are more restrictive in some ways. Also, as you pointed out, just because these rules of conduct exist doesn't mean that people don't flat-out ignore them. That's saying nothing about the rules seen on both sides of the timeline, from Ancient Egypt on up through World War Two. There's nothing unusual about having rules of war, they've been around for a very, *very* long
It’s like the writer forgot why there are things called War Crimes, those are in fact Rules of Conduct
"Hey! No shotguns America!"
@@Bladeofdeath311 US in the 1st WW: **J. Jonah Jameson laughter** "Wait, you're serious? Let me field eve more of them."
Imagine agreeing with someone that, whoever the oil belongs to, we *probably* shouldn't be dropping cluster bombs and deploying mines that indiscriminately blow up civilians. (Mines are obvious, but cluster bombs are bad because of how they work, only ~30-40% of the munitions actually go boom, meaning the rest are hanging from trees on their mini parachutes, or half-buried into the dirt ready to blow when the wind pushes it just right. Big nightmare)
Also, let's not shoot each others medical units, so that we can recover our wounded and *hopefully* lessen the impact of attrition in our respective countries' populations.
What kind of villain would make certain allowances for 'I disagree with you, but let's not nuke each other into the stone age over our little spat'?!?!
A great example of that was the Japanese going out of their way to target medics. American medics in WW2 fighting the Japanese would not wear the red cross because it was basically a bullseye.
Knight's Father: "Ok, you are 8 years old. That means your military training begins today."
Knight: "But father, this article says I don't get military training."
That is the neat part
Better to be a Welsh bowman, you don’t start training with a full bow until you’re 14
"Young man, IS that article your Father ?"
"No , Father."
"Your training begins today..."
@@cmanningdeal6228 Wife/Mother: **whispers** "They must never know".
8 seems kind of old...I imagine they were playing in the yard with wooden swords at 4-5 and getting some kind of instruction. My kids have some plastic swords and love to smack each other with them.
“Archers could easily penetrate armour”
Todd’s workshop: “am I a joke to you?”
Just watched the new one!
I guess it could depend on the timeframe to be fair
And what armor, ammunition, and bow is involved.
@@troypaton7087 wait. What new one?
Edit: OH FUCK YES!!!!
Chainmail is easily penetrated in his tests.
I would also mention that good longbow archers were probably not cheap either. You had to train them regularly, preferably from a young age, and you had to pick the ones with the most talent for wielding that weapon (strength, accuracy, resilience, etc.). They also needed armor, hand weapons and good war arrows, so I'm pretty sure that the top tier archers did not go campaigning for a loaf of bread and a pint of ale. Maybe one should say: Good soldiers in general were not cheap, regardless of their profession.
@@Dezkoi Very interesting indeed!
Longbow men had to be strong AF as well to consistently draw those longbows.
@@IIISWILIII Absolutely. Not a job for weaklings. Or female elves. :)
@@IIISWILIII They found bodies of archers with deformed spines because the bows they used were so powerful, constantly firing them actually messed with their spines.
Yeah, actually bowmen where more expensive especially if they had notes of record. Basically they had seals out right saying this guy served at this battle, a good archer could save many knights and everyone knew this and english long bows where known to drop armor.
BUT!!! Archers had a very difficult finding work despite this because of a funny fact, fakers. Records show archers where not often nobles so really it's a gamble, pay for this expensive unit who runs more then a knight as you have reasons to question their skills or a some peasant hunters who just have to aim and cost 1/4 the amount then run after they fire.
Gonna be a archery then hope your contracted otherwise work will be hit and miss.
I visited Carcassone, France recently and read up on the history - there was a battle where knights arrived and faced multiple lines of infantry. They broke through two lines and completely routed them. I think this is the rule of how knights fared in most cases - they came, broke through and won. As you say they focus on the rare exceptions.
I mean, imagine being a farmer who was called up by your local lord for service in the king's army as part of a levy. They take your pitchfork, hand you a spear and a leather jerkin, a couple days' rations, and send you off to probably die or at least get sick. *maybe* you get lucky and avoid being maimed or killed. And then the other team's rich boys show up decked out in pay-to-win bullshit gear, on horseback, with people to carry their food and drink. Morale can't be great to be on the receiving end of those knights thundering down on you, x.x
@@deleteman900 pay to win armor? I would be more concerned when you see your level is 13 and theirs is 500. Jokes aside even without the armor one on one being a peasant your boned. A knight was trained from the time he could walk how to fight and you being a peasant won a fight that one time at the pub but suffered a broken nose and a cracked rib fell ill from it for a week but hey you won right.
But that guy already has at least 60 Fatalities or more under his belt.
Obviously a single English longbowman with an half full quiver would have destroyed the entire army.
@@redwithblackstripesis that… sarcasm?
"Medieval knights were terrible for several reasons, but the main reason is that I don't know much about them."
Wow, I'm convinced.
🤣
Imagine saying Tanks weren't effective in wars.
the amount of people not seeing the WEREN'T part is so sad.
Would depend upon the circumstances... sometimes tanks were not used very effectively despite the cost.
@@PewPewPlasmagun Obviously when I misapply military equipment, it won't be effective. But no one can tell me when I send a few tanks on an open battlefield or to bombard a city, that tanks would be terrible.
@@PewPewPlasmagun but then again anything can happen in warfare , the stupid amount of circumstances is mind boggling at times
One reason tanks were terrible is because they require gas. 🤣
@@Soapy-chan_old If your adversary has effective antitank weapons (ATGMs, guided artillery shells, mines along the way, etc.), these tanks could easily turn into armoured graves on tracks.
Sun Tzu I believe had an axiom that you should never corner a wounded animal. The ideals of Chivalry & ransoming enemies and accepting their surrender was smart. You're far more likely to fight your hardest if there's no escape, if you're allowed to simply give up - you won't fight tooth and nail.
Killing your enemy as your main goal is counterproductive.
Yeah. your main goal should be *winning the war.* You win wars by destroying your enemy's will to fight. And you don't need to kill your enemies to do that. You can just convince them that victory is impossible, then offer them a chance to back down without getting any important bits chopped off.
Hell, chivalry and ransom even has some applications today, in modern conflict. Militaries go to tremendous lengths to try and portray themselves as the good guys, waging war for just reasons in an ethical manner, even to their enemies. Because if you can convince the enemy's soldiers that they will not be mistreated if they surrender, they are FAR more likely to do so.
People also forget that knights were only about 10% of an army. The overwhelming majority were farmers. The land you are trying to conquer is worthless without them. As a result it was somewhat unusual to fuck with the peasants.
@@tbotalpha8133 There's plenty of after action reports in WW2 about how like 60 Germans surrendered to an American unit of like 10 men (numbers not fully accurate but to give a rough idea). One might wonder why people who outnumber their enemy would surrender to them, but then if you look at the German point of view in this scenario, the soldiers probably realize that if they surrender to the Americans, they get to be POWs - in America! And to most of them, that's a far better deal than dying in the mud in France or North Africa.
Of course there were fanatics who were completely loyal to the cause, but a lot of the time people are just trying to survive, and surrendering to a nation that is virtually untouched by the war is one of the best ways to guarantee that.
@@SomeBody-rm6hf "Fucking with the peasants" was extremely common in war. Look up the practise of "foraging". Soldiers in an army would be split off and sent to raid the countryside that an army was passing through. Their objective was to gather food from nearby villages, which usually involved stripping villages bare and leaving the locals to starve. Such parties also regularly looted and pillaged any other valuables that they could find, and tortured and raped any civilians they could get their hands on.
This practise was a necessity of pre-modern warfare. Without trains, overland resupply of food is exponentially expensive, and practically untenable for an army operating even slightly outside of friendly territory. An army on the march had no other option but to feed off the territory it passed through, like a mob of sword-wielding locusts. Foraging can be traced back almost to the beginnings of written evidence for war, and continued uncontested all the way up to the early modern period.
Another factor that I haven't seen mentioned yet is that while a war in itself may be a "zero sum game" (a situation where any benefit to one side equates to a proportionate penalty to the other), the overall geopolitical situation was not. There were always third parties looking for nations to bleed each other out and then move in on one, then the other. By keeping both sides relatively strong, rather than both sides being relatively weak by the end, this helped keep other realms looking for easy conquest at bay.
Imagine being an infantry unit who has been fighting for hours and seeing a group of knights routing your force and the guy who wrote this article says “all you have to do is hold your ground.” And then you look back at thousands of tons of force from those horses coming straight at you.
Imagine your in an infantry unit and you see a group of knights routing your force and the guy leading the army telling you to hold is Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn
Brave heart
@@joelbilly1355 lmfao
I feel like he took the principle that it's far better to be on the defense than the offense, which is a very true statement and is a core of military strategy all around the world even today, despite first being observed literally thousands of years ago. It's part of the concept behind paratroopers. He then misinterpreted that to mean that defending is easy, which it absolutely is not
Nothing butters my toast like a heavy cavalry charge, lances leveled and hooves thundering.
8:40 The blind bohemian king went into battle fully knowing he would die. Its actually said that his last words "Toho bohdá nebude aby král český z boje utíkal" which roughly translates to "never shall a czech king run from battle". He basically lead a suicide charge to inspire his knights and soldiers and wasnt just a bumbling fool like the article suggests
Yes, I thought that was very disrespectful.
That guy was a warrior and he went out as one
Well what do you expect? 21st century soys will never comprehend mediaeval Chad moves.
It's being analyzed by a forever alone in his bedroom. What do you expect ?
The charge was most likely to protect the retreating french forces and his own son who was wounded. He and his knights chained their horses together and charged directly into the advancing enemy lines. That much we know from history. To me this sounds like a textbook example of a blocking the enemy from advancing and buying times for your troops to withdraw in order. Not just incredibly honorable and brave, but tactically one of the smartest decisions in the battle.
7:20
Also, the knowledge that you might possibly be ransomed instead of being killed makes you more likely to surrender. If your enemy surrenders, you won, without having to costly and riskily fight him. Surrender should always be incentivised.
I've seen people in a full armor suit, how it would have been originally, and they were still pretty quick and quite nimble. A lot more so than most people would think8
Yeah but as metatron pointed out the knights trained extensively because they were privileged enough to have free time, I wouldn’t be fast wearing armor without that training.
@@charlescook5542 plus it was custom made in most cases i suppose.
@@biohazard8295for a knight, it was always custom made
They were shaped to a knight's body. They fit snugly, and knights were beasts of men who could easily haul it. I've seen videos of modern-day knights tumbling about in full-plate.
Knights were also notorious for their inability to tolerate the drinking of strong potions which severely limited their usefulness in battle.
Knights were also on less-than-desirable speaking terms with potion merchants due to views of knightly inadequacy
Knight's range of abilities were also known to be less or equivalent to that of potions, which made them disrespected among potion sellers.
It's the potion sellers' fault. They didn't want to sell their strongest potions thinking they are too strong for people.
I’ve heard it said that this particular shortcoming resulted in some seriously strained relations between alchemists and their prospective clients. One knight is held to have swapped alchemists THIRTY-SIX times over the course of a single military career, each time declaring his intention to “take my business elsewhere.”
Not totally correct; if the potion contains the right set of herbs and fungi and it's taken at young age, it can give to the knight superhuman speed and reflex, night vision and slow aging.
Side effects can be an head full of white, long, badass hairs and yellow, wolf-like eyes.
I agree that knights held a disdain for archers. I’m also inclined to think that everyone including archers - HATED enemy archers. Nobody wants to get shot and regardless of if your armour effectively protected you from enemy archers, you’re still going to hate their ability to massacre your own infantry… many of whom may even be your tenants.
Agreed.
true. I can hardly imagine something more frustating that watching your allies get killed by an ennemy you can't riposte against in any way.
As a Mount&Blade player, I totally agree
@@benjaminthibieroz4155 during ww2 snipers who would be the equivalent of archers were hated by everyone even other snipers and they rarely were captured alive.
They’re like rogues in WoW
You only like them when they’re making you win
As a Flemish Belgian, it put a smile on my face to hear the battle of the golden spurs being mentioned. No matter the context, always nice to hear people outside of Belgium know about this.
I love how most of these reasons talk about the resources required to maintain the knight. No mention of the difficulty in mustering longbowmen, who required consistent training to remain battle effective (and were not nobility, so they had to do it on their own time, while keeping self and family alive).
They were free though, as in some periods they were required by law to shoot longbows after sunday church, no less than 60 lbs and no less than 60 yards, under supervision.
That way you got a population that was actually worth something when levied.
My understanding was that knights were absolutely dominant on the battlefield for a lot of the early middle ages. When Swiss Pikes showed they could defeat knights it was a huge deal. From there knights stopped being without question the best thing on the field and started to become a more situational unit. Their shock capability was still devastating and continued to be immensely useful at turning a wavering force into a routing one if used by skillful leaders correctly.
There's also something that counter Knight more than pikes, Discipline.
From what I know the Infantries during the Middle Ages are usually Levied freemen who would bolster a smaller Men-at-Arms force. These Levies or Volunteers would be very ill disciplined that a sight of a Group of Knights Charging at them could rout them.
However after a more semi-professional forces were made who wield pikes and at least know some plan to counter knights these Medieval Pikemen were much more willing to take a charge while the Knight's Warhorse would be facing a wall of sturdy pointy sticks.
However no matter how disciplined you're, seeing a thundering charge of Knights from behind will always deletes your Discipline.
Honestly they can't even hold off against viking. That is why Duchy of Normandy was created, to buy off one of the viking invader to fend off others, which lead the creation of Norman.And in hundred years war, Knights were slaughter by English LongBow infantry, which is group of elite soldiers who is both mastered longbow and close combat. They failed their job until Jeanne d'Arc manage to regroup and lead them into battle throw her military genius. So...yeah, knights were the important part of the medieval military, but they are not that all mighty.
@@NekoLilium2012 I think you misunderstood something buddy. First of all first proper heavy cavalry, namely Norman's, conquered England, Sicily, south Italy and defeated Byzantines. Force to be reckon with, it from that point on knights were main part of every medieval army untill Swiss and Hussites show up. Even then to defeat cavalry you need to have highly trained, specially equipped and well commanded force. English who won at Crecy and alike were victorious because of french knights pride that let them to charge without thinking. English weren't using as many knights as French not because they didn't want to, or because they were not so good, but because they were not so rich and developed and France. So yeah, knights were beasts, with flaws yeah but still main force of medieval battle field.
@@NekoLilium2012 Look into the Hundreds year war properly outside of the Great Major Plantagenets victory.
Even before Joan of Arc joined, the Valois had a lot of victories.
The Valois won the war with their Calvary and technology.
The Longbowman were cut down like flies in the later part of the war.
Don't generalize this much! Of course statements like heavy cavalry was more effective in the high middle ages, than in the late middle ages are generally true, but types of military equipment and types of units are situational. Yes things go obsolete, but dont think warfare is some hegelian straight line of progress, like you would research your tech tree in a video game. It is more like a back and forth, people trying out things and sometimes what is a huge deal in a particular situation, is a huge flop in another.
1:10 Has the author ever heard of the "tooth to tail" ratio in military personnel? Modern militaries have huge numbers of support and logistics personnel in comparision to the number of people in designated combat roles (for example, roughly 90% of the US Army acts to support the 10% intended to go directly into harm's way). A knight having a squire or two and some spare horses to handle his maintenance and logistics is a remarkably lean set-up by comparison.
Depending on the Knight's purse capacity he'd be bringing a staff of attendants and his squires would have underlings and some of the underlings would have their own.
A knight's logistical burden would be shouldered mostly by the knight himself. The writer probably does not understand that an army in of itself is a logistical burden for any state.
Especially for most of the medieval era when armies can only operate for a couple of months at most as funding a campaign would drain the coffers of any Kingdom and depriving the lands of working hands.
@@chocoman45 I think there's something to this one, actually. The problem is that the logistical burden of sustaining the Knight is on neither the state nor the knight; it's on the land. Sustaining a land army on campaign before railroads made shipping food to the front lines easier was largely a matter of getting food from local farms (often by plunder; in very well organized states you might negotiate with local leaders beforehand so they gather food and put it in a warehouse for your convenient collection). But there's only so much food to take along the route, meaning that no matter who is responsible for noncombat personnel, they're still counting towards the maximum number of people you can take.
Really, I think the weakness here is labeling squires as 'noncombatants,' since my impression is that in many cases they're essentially lower status knights.
I'm surprised he didn't mention Agincourt, he checked almost all the common boxes otherwise. Let's forget the fate of the English longbowmen toward to end of the 100 Years War.
Can you explain what you mean, regarding their fate? Or point me toward a video that details it? I'm curious
@@dingosiccunt2297 Basically the English were peppering the French with their longbow, but eventually the French cavalry was able to get to their line and cut down a large amount of them. It was a devastating loss that required England to be in a more passive role for many battles afterwards as they worked to restrengthen their bowmen.
@Alexander Malin Thank you. The logistics of keeping those archers well equipped with arrows must have been an enormous task.
@@dingosiccunt2297 Additionnally (and even if it wasn't thanks to the knights), I think the definitive end of the english longbows era and their particular strategy (which was very effective, impossible to copy), was gunpowder. Gunpowder totally canceled the tactical advantage of England, and since France invested more in gunpowder weapons (and had more ressources to begin with), defeat was inevitable at this point. That being said, England began to be on the defensive before gunpowder weapons really had an impact on open battlefield. Because of the events mentioned by Alexander above, in particular the battle of Patay. Lost longbowmen were hard to replace.
Agincourt showcased how effective english longbowmen could be but Agincourt is just one battle of countless others battles were medieval knights where present, more often than not knights performed well on the battlefields, the logic aslo dos not add up considering the fact that england also hade their own knights, if the longbowmen were so much better why did england waist time on knights. whoever made that top 10 list have a very flawed understanding of medieval warfare
I really would like to see someone with medieval knights equipment fight this writer. He obviously can also use equipment that was available in medieval times. He probably chooses to be archer as he hold them in so high regard. Can already see the knight colliding with the archer.
Instead of the vaguely and generalized title "10 reasons why knights were horrible warriors", the article could have been titled "10 weak spots of medieval knights", which still wouldn't be entirely true, given some weird claims in the article, but at least less pretentious.
Great video, Metatron!
Bearing in mind the point that several of his "weak points" were not weak points but merely misunderstandings on the part of the author.
But hey which one gives the most clicks
@@MortusVanDerHell yeah, the title might redeem a little but can't entirely save what started with the wrong foot. The whole text should be either rewritten or scrapped.
@@comradekenobi6908 you just have an obnoxious title like that and you make people record videos just to prove you wrong
The article fails to mention the military orders during the Crusade They where very disciplined after all they where a full time army not serving 40 to 60 days a year
When you come across something in history that you think, "that makes no sense, they must have been stupid to do that" 99 times out of 100 you are misunderstanding something.
Battle of the Somme. That was stupid. Heck pretty much the entirety of WW1 was stupidity in action.
@@Daves_Not_Here_Man_76 a good indicator you need to read more on the subject.
@@canadianeh4792 To employ infantry tacticts from 100 years ago was pretty stupid...and they knew that themselves. However they did that with a lack of better alternatives.
And they changed it rather quickly, so he is not completly wrong.
Besides, anything related to health befor like the....18th? was pretty bad. Not that they had the tools to understand and treat health and diseasees correctly.
However they did repeat things despite them not working
@@ithadtobeaname7327 well the officers were learning. There was no concept of modern infantry tactics at the time so it was understandable. of course no forgiving sending millions of men to die but it took time to develop tactics specially when warfare was changing so quickly
@@ithadtobeaname7327 what, 200 years from now, the health sector would look back at our modern practices on testing new medicine and call it stupid. But here's the thing - we can't come up with a better alternative yet.
Another view on point 7 about knight ransoming: It was good for the defeated knight' king or ruler too if that knight couldn't pay his ransom by himself he would need to ask his lord or king for the money, hence owing him a BIG favor or monetarial debt that could be used by that lord later on so he could sway the indebted knights into politically supporting him or into forced conscription out of those 40-60 days.
"you could equip 12 footsoldiers for the price of one knight"
Yeah... but one knight would have no trouble killing 12 footsoldiers in a battle, if only through sheer expertise with swords and other weapons. Especially the full plate armor knights who were more or less invulnerable to the most common weaponry. You needed specialised "tank busters" so to speak to fight them who in turn were vulnerable to other types of infantry. I like the tank comparison since knights were kinda doing the same thing. You had a unit on the battlefield wearing metal armor that made them quasi impervious to regular weapons. That's what happened when the first tanks rolled out into the battefields of WW1, you had this moving metal box with machine guns that could take small arms fire all day. You had to use something a bit punchier to defeat them, but those tank defeating weapons are terrible against regular infantry.
Tanks also travel with infantry whenever humanly possible, because they're vulnerable to certain kinds of attacks and the two types of forces complement each other. Knights and footmen are basically medieval combined arms.
A video about Roman Legions' logistics would be highly appreciated.
And the different camp styles
True statement
I'd also like to here about the feudal system itself, specifically how the feudal economy worked. I'm not interested in King Arthur's quest for the Holy Grail, I want to here about how he financed that venture.
Invicta did one or two videos about that if it interests you
Especially the marius mule loadout....
As someone who has literally just finished his MA in Medieval history, this article gives me conniptions
Unless you're going to be a museum curator, or a professor, that's a wasted lot of money in a degree you can't earn an income off of.
@@xenxander 🤡
@@xenxander 🤡
Congratulations, man!
Gives you conniptions..?
...Prithee be careful.
I don't wanna see me work squandered.
He he hee.
Scutage does sound interesting, I for one am interested. Thank you for you wonderful discourse on older times. BTW, love that blue brigandine, looks great.
As someone who lives in the mountains north of Frankfurt (Germany) laughed at "knights have ideals". The knights in this mountains lived from robbing merchants, raiding the villages in the valleys.
When the cities (mainly Frankfurt) tried to get rid of them, the knights humiliated the city milicia in battle (formed by pikemen and infantry with crosbows). Only in the 16th century the knights were crushed, after Frankfurt formed an alliance with other states and used canons.
Another reason for wanting to capture and ransom the opposing knights is that the political situation in the medieval period was quite fluid, next month you could be allies so crushing them entirely is pretty redundant depending on the purpose of the fighting, they could also be your cousins, in laws and or friends. You do what you need to for victory and for the crown but you're generally under no illusion that the gentleman opposite you is exactly the same as you are. Unless its a civil war. In which case things get more messy and spiteful.
Plus, it's probable that if you get a reputation of killing knights, the next time it's your turn to surrender, you won't be walking far before the ~200 friends and relatives of the knights you killed the previous wars want to take you to the side and show you what you look like without arms or legs.
next thing is, you could ruin the enemy nation if you manage to capture enough high nobility. the ransom would cause massive economical problems
@@Ackalan yes, bannerlord taught that executing captured nobles arent exactly the stuff that makes you likable as a potential marriage partner among the nobility.
Civil Wars are the least civil, got it.
Yes, thats because civil wars are typically fought for ideological or religious reasons rather than political ones, needless to say that the former two generate far more animosity amoung those involved than the latter.
Hello. Czech person here. I have something to add to this: 8:40 part of video. This wasn't really a poor leadership. We have to understand that John Luxemburg was a man of sword and he knew at the time of his death that he is fighting a lost battle. We know that not only from the writen documents where he was qouted to say "Absit, ut rex Boemie fugeret, sed illuc me ducite, ubi maior strepitus certaminis vigeret, Dominus sit nobiscum, nil timeamus, tantum filium meum diligenter custodite. ("Far be it that the King of Bohemia should run away. Instead, take me to the place where the noise of the battle is the loudest. The Lord will be with us. Nothing to fear. Just take good care of my son.")" but also from the fact that he ordered his son to go back to Bohemia so he would be sure to survive and take over a leadership over the lands of Bohemian crown. This wasn't a poor judgment this was a dying mans wish of heroic death.
Thank you for adding this, I enjoyed this gem of information
Pravda kamo
Was just about to write this, glad to see you were faster.
fucking epic, thanks for your input
Good video. I would be interested in seeing a whole video on the various camps Romans used for different seasons.
I like the comparison of a heavy knight to a modern battletank, both have a great value as a shock force but neither are invulnerable to countermeasures. Knights could still be shot by a lucky arrow strike or dismounted with polearms, tanks can be shot by armor piercing rounds, rockets or hit a mine.
Both work a lot better in a formation and by striking at the best possible moment.
And also combined with infantry
they work the best with combined arms warfare well almost everything works the best with that doctrine but combined arms is perhaps the most difficult or at least on of the most difficult doctrint to pull of and use constantly in every battle, this is for multiple reasons, if you artillery is low on ammo or you tanks being out of gas but done right in the ideal circumstances it extremely difficult to counter because your enemy have do deal with everything at the same time, if your enemy make the slightest mistake it can be game over for him in that battle.
Fun fact, gendarms is short for gent d'armes, which literally means man at arms. And men at arms were a thing as well in the medieval period. Many of these heavily armoured mounted cavalrymen did not have a title.
Nitty picky: Gens d'armes
A simple way to put it is all knights in the period were men-at-arms, but not all men-at-arms were knights.
Gends d'armes means "people of weapons" literally
so as heavily armoured mounted cavalry they were mobile suited gendarms?
@@Posaydal Yes.
Imagine saying "rules of engagement" and ideas of "sparing and taking prisoners" are horrible things.
Right? Sounds like they're in favor of committing war crimes, then!
@@TaoScribble he just played to much total war
You can ransom nobles and use the commoners for grunt work.
Geneva convention? That has to be a silly medieval kingth thing.
I've always loved how you can tell a story through history
1:52 The structure here is [plural possessive]+[gerund] so the English here is fine despite the content of the article being unrefined garbage. "The horses' need" vs "The horses needed".
I love your videos, Metatron! I've been a long-time viewer and I'm glad to see you still going strong.
In my experience as a freelance writer, you will very often sacrifice research to meet deadlines and word counts. If it feels like the author only skimmed Wikipedia, oftentimes that's really what happened. I've never made one of these trivia articles though and would love to keep things that way (I focus on corporate descriptions).
Exactly. A copywriter will be given a subject, keywords + wordcount. Nobody picks people based on a field of expertise.
These are not academic articles where the author needs to prove or disprove a statement. An article which starts with a number in the title is normally a clickbait...
It's a youtube video. That's what these assholes do.
Write as scrimply as possible, so your rage inducing bumblering articles gonna get a lot of clicks and ad spaces gonna generate money
You don't have much experience as a freelance writer then. As the term implies, freelance writers are exactly that. They write an article and hope that someone picks it up/has an interest in the topic.
@@evanroberts2771 One, I never said I had a lot of experience. I am on the dawn of my 2nd year doing this.
Two, not everyone pitches ideas to random media outlets and then waits for someone to bite. It's just as likely that you'll be selected out of a long list of writers listed on Upwork or some other site and then be given a topic. I am aware that established authors eventually get the right to write what they want. Most aren't at that point.
If you're at the point where you can actually propose your own articles, more power to you. You're where a lot of writers want to be. I am not there yet. If you were trying to discredit me by implying my statement was flawed due to a lack of experience, read the statement again because I never claimed to be an infallible authority on the matter. I just said what I experienced so far. Did my switching between the first and third person throw you off? Pardon the infelicitous use of grammar then. Now you know what my intention was.
Yes, need video on scutage... honestly, a whole video on feudal military service would be pretty sweet
Hell yeah!!! I second that!
Yes! I'd adapt that information into my D&D campaigns
There is a channel called Invictus who make cool videos about rhe subject you should watch the video about the call at arms of a medieval army
Awesome video, really breaking down the article with historical facts.
As a former military combatant i can say that the medievals were so good at battle there are still aspects of the tactics & methods they invented that we use for training & fighting on battlefields today. Yes they are more advanced nowadays naturally but those ancient tactics are the granite foundations our modern fighting systems were built on & w/o a strong foundation no structure can stand.
AFAIK police shield walls for riots are pretty much the same as our ancestors used for war. Sure they were more primitive but they definately weren't stupid.
@@DarkZodiacZZ Goes all the way back to the roman legions
@@ericosborne4122 It propably was a thing even before romans.
J.C Owens, For example?
@@DarkZodiacZZ At the very least the Greek hoplites.
Another note about ransoming knights, common soldiers were also ransomed, just usually in batches rather than as individuals like knights. War is expensive and armies were always looking for ways to save money or make more of it. It would often be cheaper to ransom back some of your captured men than to equip and train completely new ones. It might not even be possible to rebuild your forces to full strength, depending on how bad your casualties were in a battle and how many people you had available to conscript. Therefore, it was beneficial to both sides to sell back prisoners of all ranks
It's kinda silly selling back the people that will soon attack back at them. Maybe they need some kind of peace agreement or some sort for it to make sense for both party. Or maybe they were confident that they will NOT try to attack them back because they have tried that before and lost (and captured).
@@xdragon2k Given that most wars back then were very short, the odds were that the war would be over before those men managed to reach the front lines again
@@xdragon2k The system "we will return their prisoners to them and they will return ours to us" works here. Everyone understood that it was very easy to lose a battle and sooner or later your people would be captured. And those who returned from captivity were usually unable to fight for a long time, if not forever.
@@alecseusalec3418 So, it's not "I will pay the ransom so I can put them back in battle" more so that you need to do that so the remaining soldiers will be willing to go to battle for you.
@@xdragon2k you are not taking into account the cost of keeping prisoners. you need to give them food and water, which you would rather have your army use, and you have to leave people watching the prisoners instead of doing something more useful. depending on how many men and prisoners you have, you are better off ransoming them back
Great video, as usual. Being from the middle of Brazil I like to think of the connection between the 'vaqueros,' 'gauchos' and the knight-errands. Mostly a literary connection, I believe, but something I like to think about. I wonder what you would say about the better documented indians x cowboys stories, the Rangers or US vs Mexico conflicts. A metatronic spaghetti western special, maybe?
I thought this was a serious title, I'm glad you had the Padme face at the beginning to reassure me!!
I laughed so hard at “yeah exactly he brought a squire it’s not like it’s the duke’s problem”
A famous portuguese historian, called José Hermano Saraiva, once said on TV that battles were never fought during the winter, but according to him, it was not only because of the cold, but also because most people had to be ready for harvesting the wheat or else there would be starvation.
He debunked some popular "Lusitanian" tale with that notion, among others. May he rest in peace. He was much loved.
That's mostly the case for Antiquity and not as much for the Middle Ages.
Hence why the month March is named after the Roman god of war and fertility, Mars.
Too bad he was a fascist, though. Supported the dictatorship, refuse to talk on the carnation revolution.
@@fabioribeiro4627 zzzzzz
@@fabioribeiro4627 fascists are good though.
@@alphawolfgang173 live and labour under Salazar, then. You'll change your tune quickly.
Sweet content brutha!
Even in chivalric stories of the time, the knights aren't as obsessive about the honor code as to screw themselves over in combat. Most of their honor deals with their behavior and discipline.
For instance, in Orlando Furioso there is a scene where Bradamant dehorses Marfisa using a magic lance and she continues to fight the unhorsed warrior because Marfisa is still showing hostility. She doesn't let Marfisa get back onto her horse and continue to joust on even ground.
Even their idealized fictional knights weren't as honor bound as the article seems to believe.
"Victory and cost of victory are the only two things worth caring in warfare. All the rest is optional self-gratification that we generally like to boast about when all is well in times of peace"
Orlando Furioso! I still haven't gotten around to reading it (despite wanting to since the 70s), but I've read several stories very indirectly and loosely based on it. While I'm thinking about it, I'd better see if my memory serves...I think I have a copy somewhere.
** Turns out I didn't, but I do now. I somehow hadn't learned that it's basically a sequel to Matteo Maria Boiardo's poem, Orlando Innamorato: or Orlando in Love. Had to spend $3 for an ebook of it--I want to read it before I read Orlando Furioso. Then, I'll sit down with Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queen. After that, time to figure out which modern fantasy stories are based on one or more of these.
Although the behavior of Bradamante would be perfectly sensible in reality, "Orlando furioso" is not a good example, since it was meant as a satire of the chivalric poems genre and of the nobility of the author's time.
The honor code didn't exist for most of the time chivalry was a thing anyway. It's just horse fighting, right?
It's worth noting that the most mentions of "chivalric honor" from that period come from romantic writers and not from earlier historians, who had less problem writing about the corrupt nature of nobles, the brutality of war and sometimes the atrocities committed. So while medieval knights certainly didn't come from Warhammer fantasy, they weren't lawful stupid either, and "chivalric honor" was more about staying loyal to your lord or lady, being a good Christian and not run away from battle than about fighting only equal opponents or getting yourself killed.
It's genuinely impressive, and depressing, how that article got so much of the information right but drew the worst, most nonsensical conclusions from it.
That is atually pretty damn genuise as it would trick a lot of people to think it is right
very often that's the case; what one wishes to read out of data/information can lead to radically diverging views.
The goal isn't to be correct but to draw clicks.
@@skepticalextraterrestrial2971 good point.They achieved that, I'd say...
It does bring up some important aspects of knighthood. The horse. Feeding and care is important and having the fodder and grain for your horse could be an issue. How was that handled? ANd the squier is something that could be a good post. THe care feeding and training of your suier, especially since they are being trained to become a knight someday.
Beautiful art deco electric kettle in the background!
The knights ONLY trained for 14 years as squires so they didn't know what they were doing... ... ... I've never trained anything for 14 years in my entire life. My military training was 10 months which the swedish army deemed enough to send me to war should that occur. I don't know exactly how much training he expects people to need. 14 years as squires is way more than legionaires, which he agrees is an elite force, trained before they went into battle.
It’s a matter of months to be proficient enough to kill a professional. However it takes much more time to be proficient enough to be a professional.
@@tricksterjoy9740 A professional in the battlefield is MORE than just a matter of being good at riding horses & wielding weapons. hell, a lot more about professionalism in the battlefield has to do with things OUTSIDE of combat than things having direct correlation to combat. a squire has to stick to his knight almost AT ALL TIMES, which means the guy would see blood & a lotta fighting, would learn about planning & shit while his knight goes about his business, getting acquainted with people both in & out of battlefields, maintaining equipment of any kind that his knight would need & the list goes on. being so close to the battlefield just about all the time so long as his knight is deployed, chances are that said squire will know a good deal about fighting as well. not as good & professional as the knight, but definitely not defenseless. if a squire does get trained for 14 years, he would have pretty covered ALL of the bases needed to fight in actual battlefields. the months needed to make him a true soldier, is simply 'leveling up' the basics he already has, instead of actually training the guy from scratch.
@@FalconWindblader basically what I said but not oversimplified
I think you missed a point on number 7, it's super valuable that you can have your men randomed back when the world is as violent as it often was, for either side winning or losing was a relatively minor concern in most battles when compared to conserving their forces simply because if they do become weak they become vulnerable to every other nearby nation
And in later wars it is also frequent to capture enemies as PoW. Today it's a war crime to kill soldiers who have been defeated and it would have been regarded similarly already in earlier times.
@@bartolo498 The medieval Chivalrous Warrior Code was one predecessor for modern rules of war. Middle Ages were certainly violent compared to Modern developed world, but even back then unnecessary cruelty or arbitary killing of innocents (what's unnecessary or who's innocent is another matter) was frowned upon. In many ways the state control and justice systems of Early Modern era were much more cruel and violent.
@@andeluvianspeeddemon4528 To be clear the medieval chivalrous warrior code was more along the line of suggestions about profitmaking/efficiency than any kindof law/morality; killing serfs meant you lowered the value of the land you conquered and would have to bring in your own serfs to replace them which would in turn mean potentially lowering the productivity of your own land. Stealing or otherwise victimising landed peasents was also a generally unwise idea if you wanted to be there for any length of time - that was true even in the Napoleonic era where Napoleon's reliance on foraging for his troops directly contributed to him loosing the Penninsula war as the otherwise unbothered Spaniards became enraged by the plunder and rape by French soldiers - somewhat mirroring the French opposition to the Angevin empire during the hundred years war which only increased as the French citizens gradually transformed the terror of being plundered into contempt for the raiders.
Killing Nobles was even worse, as not only were your own leaders probably related to their enemies (making for awkward family reunions) but also the ransom you could gain in keeping them alive would often play a major part in funding your millitary campaigns and making them profitable - what value is one dead enemy aristocrat compared to full bellies for your men and more money in your pocket? This likewise was true even in the Napoleonic era, where commisioned officers had certain privalleges - for example often even being allowed to keep their sword after their surrender as long as they swore not to escape or fight back until after they were exchanged. This too was obviously with the expection of reciprocity should your own leaders be captured.
You notice how none of this applies to regular soldiers? Yeah. The one bright side is that the enemy would usually think it not worth the effort to hunt you down after their victory and it's in their interest to give an avenue of escape so your army will crumble rather than fight to the last man, but if you were captured then all bets are off on how you'll be treated - though if you're lucky you'll be traded in bulk to your country either as an exchange for their men or for resources (but probably not before your enemies vent some of their grief/sadism on you).
Seriously. Suddenly every medieval war is world war 2 in everything nowadays. Total war where every village, every man, woman and child, every farm and forest is put to the torch and all the nations resources are pooled into a war economy with a dozen nations of the continent involved in every battle of which there are 4 … wtf people.
Not for the Chinese tho, its all out war every time
I was shocked when I read this title. For a moment I thought The Metatron had fallen.
Awesome video!
I started screaming at the first point, and didn't stop:
10. The logistical issues would indeed be unbeatable, if everyone went around in a single massive clump like a video game Doomstack. As it turns out though, it isn't hard to figure out how to send out foragers, and build bases of supply where they may be needed.
9. Even if one doesn't technically have a base obligation to serve in an army, there are always other considerations: honor, former promises from the knight or his lord, a need to obtain wealth from campaigning, and the practical issues of trying to leave an ongoing war. A bad or unlucky king may have a great deal of difficulty compelling the service of fighting men, but that's also an issue incompetent governments of today face as well.
8. You generally get what you pay for: if you leave a group of cheaper archers and infantry on their own, and they come under attack, the results are generally disastrous. While we all know about Agincourt and Crecy, the Battle of Formigny saw the English Longbows forced from their defensive position, and the English forces were slaughtered...by knights.
7. Chivalry was a thing, but it was more a late medieval re-invention of knights at a time when warfare was clearly changing around the increased availability of gun powder.
6. Bad leaders cause disasters in EVERY war, and today is no exception.
5. No formal, standard system? You mean, BESIDES hunting, which was considered so important to the training of young warriors that Christian knights and Pagans actually signed treaties with each-other forbidding the ambush of hunters?
4. Teamwork is always subjective: they didn't use the kinds of horseback formations which we see in war manuals, but then again, there's very little evidence ANYONE used such maneuvers in actual battle.
3. Bad terrain is always going to get people killed: when Magyar nomads invaded Germany, they used exactly the same kinds of tactics the Mongols did, and they were slaughtered because their enemy held the river crossings, with the survivors fleeing home with little to their names. Does this mean the Mongols are also terrible warriors by extension?
2. Archers are indeed great on the field of battle, if the enemy decides to directly attack instead of starting a siege, or bringing in cannon. If the enemy is smart, well...see Formigny, or all the siege battles in France that England lost.
1. Yes, cavalry were always less important than well trained, well armed infantry. That's always been true, which is why even the tanks of today are expected to work with well trained infantry. Despite that, Germany seemed to have far more success in World War 2 than World War 1, and as one might guess, it isn't because the German infantry of World War 2 were far better than their earlier counterparts, but because something fast and strong could act as a force multiplier.
While I don't disagree with 90% of your points (literally), many people argue that Germany was, in relative terms (relatively to the global situation at the time) stronger during WW1 than during WW2 (while in absolute terms, WW2 Germany was stronger than WW1 Germany - technological advancements and all that).
to be fair the Mongols didn't fare that much better in Europe once they got past the steppes of Eastern Europe and into the heartlands lol
The mongols were powerful but they were very much a one trick pony (heh), albeit a trick that worked very very very well in 8/10 cases, but in those other 2 cases (heavily fortified decentralized forest nations and naval warfare) they were absolutely dreadful and poorly adapted. Even for siege warfare they had to rely almost entirely on foreign auxiliaries from conquered nations.
point 1. Infantry was, since the introduction of lancers during antiquity, not the important factor in victory (exept for mountain tribes like the greeks or samnites). The makedonian army had it's infantry, the famous pike phalanx, for covering ground and holding the enemy in place or pushing them back, while the cavalry charged and brought victory. Infantry on it's own is often lost. Horsemen can scout, horsemen can defend a marching army from enemy skirmishers, horsemen can ride down enemy archers, ect...
Germany did so much better in WW2 than WW1 due largely to preparation. Hitler was elected in 33 with the goal of conquering Poland and the Soviet Union and planned accordingly. Britain and France didn't start any type of serious reamement program until well after the Munich Agreement (38) while the USSR was a dysfunctional mess that thought it was much better than it really was up until getting their teeth kick in by the Finns.
In contrast with WW1 where everyone in Europe knew that a war was likely and had been prepping for it for years
@@jarlnils435 I mean that's not entirely true, horsemen can't actually hold territory, which was the key reason the Mongol empire evaporated after Kublai Khan died, since it relied exclusively on non-Mongol troops to garrison anything they conquered.
In the modern day, cavalry is of far less importance, in fact I'd say by far the two most important are Air superiority in all cases, and naval superiority when applicable, then cavalry after those. But in all cases infantry are required for actually holding any kind of territory or mounting a real defense anywhere, especially with the advent of man portable anti-air/tank/sea weapons.
So in this sense, infantry is always the backbone of an armed force. Even if it's not the most powerful part, it is the most versatile and most useful.
The topic of ransom for knights reminds me of Julius Caesar's kidnapping by pirates. He laughed at their ransom amount and said he was worth much more. Of course, he eventually had all of them crucified.
No, he had them killed and their dead bodies crucified out of gratefulness for their good company.
@@MrCmon113 what a nice guy.
@@ProfessorShnacktimeJulius Caesar. Just a really great guy spreading his love to the continent. 😇
@MrDibara might not like him but he is a big part of our worlds cultures.
@@chuckd9007 Oh, absolutely. Never denying that.
I though this video was going to be unironic and it would talk about knights slowly becoming far more ceremonial rather than active warriors, kind of like what happened to samurai during the Edo Period.
That would be a fun video.
This is how I feel when someone who has the basic snopes summary on a subject wants to act like they actually know more than someone like us who is dedicated to the subject
A flanking attack into the unprotected sides or rear of an infantry unit regardless of what they are armed with is pretty effective. Especially if the opposing side lacks any mounted troops
not entirely necessary if the knights were wielding the large two-handed swords (zweihander), considering it was designed to chop pikes, but yes mounted calvary is always a go-to option in dealing with infantries
@@thecommentguy9380 They wouldn't have had two handers on horseback though.
@@rafox66 they can dismount
@@thecommentguy9380 But wouldn't it be a burden when riding into combat?
@@rafox66 put it on the horse
Hold up... Last time I checked, Knights were self funded in terms of arms and equipment. Whatever squires, horses and so on the knight would use in terms of logistics were paid out of his own pocket.
Sure, some of them fought for monetary rewards. But even when employed as a mercenary, they had to equip themselves first.
How is a self-funded knight a logistical burden?
It is when I haven't read up on the subject and just assume things.
Every person in an army on the move is a logistical burden. You can't bring food for months with you and all the money in the world can't buy something that is simply not available, because the population fled from the area surrounding your camp. The more people you have, the more difficult it gets to organize foraging parties and supply lines.
That being said, horses are easy to feed, because they eat grass. So that's hardly ever a burden, especially since people didn't go to war in winter, generally speaking.
Fielding the large mercenary armies on foot from the late 15th century onwards was much more difficult than the relatively small mounted armies of the high middle ages.
@@Nickname-hier-einfuegen The general of a medieval army doesn't bring food for knights. They barely brought food for the men at arms.
The knights brought their own.
@@sevenproxies4255 Not sure what you mean with "generals", because there was no such thing as an institutionalized officer corps.
But no. You simply can't bring food for months or even years with you. That's physically impossible. An medieval or early modern army usually had to live from the land, meaning they had to buy supplies from locals, loot, or aquire them by other means.
Supply lines are possible, if you're close to allied territory, but you can never just bring enough food for the entire campaign with you.
@@Nickname-hier-einfuegen I never said they brought food for months.
Any other strawmen in store for us?
Bro, it's the middle ages, EVERYTHING is a logistical nightmare. EVERYTHING. You can't wipe your own ass without facing a logistical nightmare.
The lack of standardized training got me because who do they expect the knights to be fighting? A lot of the normal soldiers were conscripted from the peasantry from what I remember and they didn’t get near the training that a knight would receive. I would think that even a poorly trained knight would fair decently against a bunch of farmers with nonstandard weapons.
In general, you could say that armour on a knight worked. And the longbow worked. As demonstrated by Tod's Workshop in his (and his friends) gigant project as late as today. No one has ever used a method, weapon, armour or style of fighting for generations that did not work.
People tend to forget that few things reach "perfect" but most widely used things reach "good enough".
Logistically knights made a lot of sense for the limited systems they had, since it concentrated military power in a limited population to mobilize and campaign with. You simply could not keep a mass army on campaign for very long.
I also find the idea that a knight + entourage is somehow more a logistical burden then 30+ peasant levies pressed into service and with low morale... who also never set foot outside their village farther then the next bigger settlement... like twice in their life.
the writer forgot or didnt know that knight families paid for their own supplies
@@riptors9777 The author of the article seems to have this weird idea that peasant levies and archers didn't require any logistical support. In the most uncharitable review, the knight at least didn't run out of arrows...
@@sigreid8011 And a knight and his entourage didnt eat as much as 30+ guys... even if you count the horse in.. but he easaly is worth these 30+ peasant levies in equipment, training and effectiveness on the battlefield alone
Cool vid, very interesting
The thing to understand about these "ridiculous" medieval laws and customs and codes of honor that people tend to scoff at is that they were made in a time when the lord/king still had final say on how that law was actually executed. In a lot of cases, I suspect that they would purposely make the supposed punishment worse just to scare people into following the law, even when they didn't intend to always punish that severely (although they definitely did, at times, as well).
God, metatron, when i find myself actually clicking on your videos im always astonished at how well you articulate and digest the content for us, great communicator and great video, i ABSOLUTELY dreaded history and geography in school, it felt so bland but youtube really highlights the power of a good speaker
My very pleasure friend.
If Metatron taught at schools, that entire generation of students would become Grade A historians. Sadly it probably wouldn't be permitted since public schools are about indoctrination, not information.
400 years from now:
"10 reasons why jet pilots were terrible warriors"
reason one:
"they were expensive to maintain"
Hey Raff,
If you ever felt like it, you could show off some of your stuff in your background there.
I can't be the only one who would love a closeup of some of that Bretonnia set and the other stuff too.
By the way, you were great on Shads stream the other night.
Anyway, hope you're well! ^_^
A lot of people do actually make arguments that tanks are too expensive when they can be taken out by handheld rockets by individual troops, but I guess in a lot of ways you could compare that to when firearms started to become more common and plate armor became less effective against firearms.
This list reminds me on some magazine I saw recently at a CVS. It was titled something along the lines of: "Warriors Throughout History." The section on knights in the middle ages, samurai, and ninja really got me.
Edit: It was titled Warriors of the Ancient World. A360 Media.
Do you have the link?
The main thing the article did for me was convince me that the knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade fed and watered enough horses to achieve immortality and concocted the whole Grail/False Grail bit, as well as developing all those traps, to both conceal his secret and pass the time. All of which would've been very expensive.
Not going to lie... I saw the video title and for a split second I was like "what betrayal has set up us!?! What heresy is this!?" But then I remember who's channel it is, great video!! Also this guy is pointing out a lot of broad strokes and sweeping issues that will effect ANY army in history. Like fighting in winter, even to this day. The Russians and Ukrainians are currently digging in for the winter because who the fuck wants to try and mount a winter campaign. Even for the greatest commanders in history operations in the winter are extremely risky and hard.
That brigandine armour you are wearing in this video looks pretty awesome. It looks alot the brigandine that Shad wears from SteelMastery.
Ever since I learned that both Bushido and Chivalry were codified AFTER the respective times they were meant to represent, and did so in a romanticized light, fact #7 has become a pet peeve of mine. I even had to correct one of my friends and let him know that Bushido was codified after the age of the Samurai... we had been talking about Legend of the Five Rings (L5R) at the time, which is a wonderful game to try out if you happen to be interested in taking a break from medieval fantasy.
Correct me if I'm mistaken... but as I understand it, both the Bushido and the Code of Chivalry served as guidelines for the knights and samurai to behave.
Strong armies needed good warriors... violent, ruthless men made good warriors... but you do NOT want these men to turn against you OR your population!
Likewise, you wanted your people to support these men because without the support of the people you cannot sustain armies.
Which is what the bushido and code of chivalry was for.
@@mariobenedicto3582 the people weren’t seen as your people or rather citizens they were seen as a resource almost that you own in a way. You didn’t need to provide for them to maintain their loyalty you as a king or ruler a duke etc were owed these things by right.
@@mariobenedicto3582 there were codes of conduct, just like we have nowadays, but they were more about how to do your job than they were etiquette practice.
Chevalrie was the code of conduct for fighting on horseback, it was only after the majority of the time of the knight was done that Chivalry was codified, written by someone who had not lived in the time
Bushido was similar, with Japan it wasn't out of place for a samurai to test out a new blade on a Heimin (non-person) because there was no penalty for killing them. They were the people who were ostracized by society for their jobs, generally something that had to handle bodies or tanning animal flesh. Their services were necessary but they were seen as impure. Japan had a caste system, but Bushido was codified in the era after the Sengoku Jidai to keep the population subservient in an era where it was now illegal to own a katana and all of the noble families were now jobless
There were attempts at codifying chivalry during the period in question, but the code of chivalry was more like guidelines than actual rules.
Also, the rules of chivalry weren't what a lot of people think they were. For instance, you weren't supposed to abuse women as a knight ... unless you'd fought another warrior who was escorting her, or had to fight to capture the town or fortification she was in, then she was part of the spoils of war and you could do with her as you liked as far as chivalry was concerned.
You can find plenty of example of both Bushido and Chivalry in their respective eras. And also Hagakure was written right after the Sengoku Jidai and is a book made up of real world examples of Bushido including examples from the past.
there were cases where a hundred or so european knights defeated massive hosts of infantry and cavalry, the crusader states relied mainly on armored knights and infantry and unlike what many today seem to think (looking back and knowing these crusader states did dissapear) they did survive for centuries, they were always at a numerical disadvantage and yet they held on for generations,
It should be noted that the Muslim realms surrounding the Crusader states were equally small, and they didn't form an unified front against the Christian realms. Far from it, they fought with one another and often allied with a Christian lord, and a Christian lord would seek local Muslim allies if they had a beef with a Christian lord. Crusades are often given much focus in Western historiography, but weren't such a shock in the Medieval Muslim world.
Of course there was religious tensions and violence in the area during that time, but contemporary Muslim sources would often just say something in the lines of "oh btw, Franks have established some princedoms in Palestine and Syria"
The author should have realized that knights weren't invulnerable. He went on a listicle about how knights were terrible, but what he was really doing was listing the weaknesses of knights. Which every fighting unit had a strength and a weakness.
You are really well spoke
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Oof. That article...
Btw. The fairy tale of the bloody battle of the middle ages, where every man and mouse mouse was killed, still lingers.
It was a deadly sin to kill another Christian, if you didn't have a very, very good reason and even then, it was very problematic to safe your soul for the afterlife. Normally, battles had 10% casualties maximum. Like the metatron stated, only a very few battles were excessively bloody.
I do love all the dramatic stories of how the armies mauled each other and most of the loser's side are dead and the victor counts their number and find out half of them are dead. That would be such a HUGE loss, almost unimaginable to someone before gunpowder.
Infections caused by fleshwounds after a battle might have killed more soldiers back then, then where actually killed on the field of battle. Heck.. metatron said it himselfe.. disaease was a huge issue for everyone
@@riptors9777 indeed. But people knew how to treat wounds back in the day. They did no know what an anti biotic or a germ was but they knew that they needed to use clean cloth, boiled whine and certain herbs to cure wounds.
With disease, I dare say he was talking about dissentry...
@@I_Willenbrock_I Still, the amount of and speed of care a wounded person got differed wildly and was less then optimal in most cases, also it was an absolute gamble if you where under the care of someone who really knew what they where doing... or some quack that just dumped a bunch of leeches on you. Also considering that you could not vaccinate against tetanus... it was a real killer since even slight injuries could be fatal. Heck it was a huge issue up to the american civil war. Shows haw far we have come in terms of medical technology
@@riptors9777 and it's still a huge difference. Yes. People died of illnesses, diseases and their wounds but it's simply false that it was common to kill every single man of an enemy army.
Remember. Lots of the nobility was related as well and once a dispute was cleared, they had to get along again. This doubles for times when their kings called both noblemen into their service and they had to fight in the same conflict, side by side.
It's simply wrong that Christians, killed each other to the last man - at least in the majority of cases. People back then were very religious and were very concerned about what happened to them in their afterlife.
13:35 Thats the same as saying "All you have to do to win is not lose ." The author of this article has a unique perspective about knights , thats for sure .
There's now the part 2 of "arrows vs. armour" of tod''s workshop. it's really amazing
Wait... didn't Agincourt present the same problem as Crécy with waterlogged ground reducing horse speed and manoeuvering ability, which is why the archers could pepper the knights enough to kill so many of them?
Agincourt was more due to knights getting dehorsed & stuck in the mud, and then having the archers & others kill them by stabbing them through gaps in their armor. The French nobles through the English king & knights were more important than the rest of the English & charged up the middle instead of working their way around to the sides as the French Marshall had ordered.
you are forgetting english men at arms who did the killing. Archers severely softened french up. And there is a lot of miscommunication among french leaders and their egos to blame.
Probably someone got frustrated by getting wrekted by French Royal Knights in AoE4
The first point reminds me of the Drachinifel video about naval logistics. Naval warships were a real pain in the ass to build, maintain, and when coal and diesel replaced sails, fuel. Worth it to have something that would have been near indestructible against ships of the previous generation.
Maybe they were talking specifically about British Knights, but a couple of other points (possibly more relevant to continental knights where I've done more reading)...
1) Knights were also required to provide a specific number of infantry for their liege from their district. So they were recruiting and training resources for their superiors. No knights, no infantry. In some cases these infantry could provide mutual support to the mounted knight, much like infantry support tanks (and vice-versa) in a modern battlefield.
2) Through-out history, warfare is a constant "game" of Paper/scissors/stone. The thing that knights had which infantry didn't was battlefield mobility. For example, a mounted unit could quickly move to attack an uncovered flank. Mounted knights could get there and do significant damage while infantry were still trying to move into position. That being said, having the right types of troops (cross-bowman or soldiers trained and equipped with long pikes) could defeat knights if used properly and if they were in the right location. But as you mention, if those troops were used improperly or were out of position -- knights could defeat them.
3) Also charging knights used a concept of "shock action" against unmounted troops. This was a combination of intimidation (Oh my - I'm about to be run over by a charging knight!) and physical inertia (1200 lbs of horse and rider travelling at 20mph = 6.0432 watt hours of energy) to break a line of unmounted troops. Once they had penetrated an opponent' lines, they could move laterally to "roll-up" the defenders, continue forward to attack the opponent's rear areas and support resources, or else turn around and make another attack from the rear.
Many of these concepts still applied even into the 20th century.
Omw to Banner Lord... Might not be totally accurate, but grew up with a place called Higgins armory (only medieval museum in the USA) near me and love this stuff...so interesting!
Tod's workshop just released a new arrow versus armor video that was very interesting.
A series of them!
Those are the type of people that write for Disney. Netflix, and Amazon.
I never saw your channel before. I saw the title and was about to be big mad. Glad I clicked it lol
I was hoping theyd talk about knights maybe being arrogant or their combat effectiveness suffering over time because of the ptsd and stuff like that
Agreed! I don't think I've ever seen a video talking about the potential for PTSD in medieval knights, particularly if they'd undergone something like an extended siege...? (I imagine the literature of the time may reference behavioral changes that could align with our modern understanding of the condition, but I haven't read any of the originals yet...?)
@@anna_in_aotearoa3166 what if those very behaviour changes might be part of the reason for such strict and extensive rules of conduct
like without a proper understanding of mental illnesses theyd probably consider it a disciplinary matter right
and more rules = more discipline
plus probably easier for someone suffering to contorl their behaviour if they have an extensive list of ways to behave and are used to following said rules
@@CaptainPrincess That's a very interesting suggestion! Perhaps particularly in the civilian context, developing stricter notions of chivalric behaviour not just to help manage the hair-trigger tempers and reactions of battle-traumatised combatants, but also to try and curb the age-old problem of "power corrupts", given the already very steep differential of power and weaponry between the nobles and everyone else...?
I'm familiar with the origins of the "courtly love" craze, but not so up on details of why specific rules of chivalry became a thing, so looks like I need to do some extra reading! 😏
Yours are the only "rants" I appreciate on UA-cam...!
Interesting video title to see from Metatron... was half expecting to see DEBUNKED in the title lol. Quite excited to give this a watch!
The thumbnail is lacking red circles and arrows, I didn't get any urge to click.
Regarding the topic of ransom, another reason for the practice would have been that it gave your opponents more incentive to surrender rather than to continue fighting to the death. Would you rather convince your opponent to surrender and get a bunch of money, or would you rather keep fighting a longer, more desperate fight where you kill your opponent but lose more men? Most people would rather take option one.
yea, nothing makes men fight to the death like knowing they will die anyway
I think the battle in The King (Netflix) seems like a pretty accurate Medievel battle, a few hundred men who fight incredibly brutally in the mud.
noooooo, that movie was awful
I love how the guy rests an argument on the crusades, which were rather exceptional, rather than on the fact the medieval warfare was most commonly short range (of course, that's defined by domain, size, it's not computed the same if it's the lord of chinon vs the lord of brouilly than if it's the King of France vs such neighbours as the King of England or the Flemish cities or the duchies of Northern Italy)
I find it funny how he mentions how in the late Middle Ages armies were composed entirely of mercenaries. Most knights were essentially mercenaries lol
Yeah true but ITS also true that multiple wars showed that two idiots with a spear Work better than 1 knight in many cases. Theres a reason why in later stages Knights came Out of Fashion and they Just used pointy sticks
@@flyingpumpkin6124 knights became obsolete because of guns being able to easily pierce armour not because of pointy sticks. If they became obsolete because of pointy sticks they would have been obsolete since the stone age
@@yaboy821 ever Heard about the "Bauern kriege" thats what we call IT in Germany. And there we're nö firearms and Knights still sucked balls
@@flyingpumpkin6124 from what i can find (wikipedia) cannons and guns where used in the conflict and in most of the battles the peasants who had no cavalry and were poorly armed where slaughtered with minimal casualties on the other side
@@yaboy821 Knights of the 15th and 16th century were well trained in handling firearms. It wasn't the weapons that made them obsolete but the style of warfare changing that did, as pikemen and pike formations became more and more common and the popular form of warfare in Western Europe. So while the pointed stick didn't make the knight fall out of favor, lots of men with lots of long pointy sticks did.
The author seems to be under the impression that knights were "kitted" by their lords, when, in fact, knights, much like mercenaries, outfitted their men and themselves and, until they were on the field of battle, usually managed their own logistics. But there are issues with every single one of the author's "points".