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Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

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Re: Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

#171

Post by romanoderoma »

jxramos wrote: post #96
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #17

In the Annals of St Bertin there's mention of an attack by the Danes (Vikings) on a region of Francia in 859 AD, where the peasants formed an association to defend themselves and fought off the Vikings, and drove them off without the assistance of the Carolingian rulers. This is reported by the Carolingians as brave but immoral, because Charlemagne had banned any such associations or militias, and military service wa…

Yeesh, sort of the exact opposite of a 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.

It's so ourageous isn't it?

a thousand years before the 2nd amendment was conceived, peasant had other preoccupations than bearing expensive, heavy, difficult to handle arms.

What were they thinking?

Did they not love freedom?

It's so incredible that they did not copy the US Constitution, even though the first Constitution in the human history /, the Magna Charts, was written 4 centuries later than the Annales Bertiniani, in 1215.

Re: Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

#172

Post by johannes1234321 »

jbay808 wrote: post #79
zrobotics wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the comparison to an APC (armored personnel carrier) is apt- knights were armored enough to be nearly invulnerable to the weaponry a peasant would have access to. To compare to something modern, I'm sure enough street protestors would be able to disable an APC and kill the soldiers inside at least some of the time, but the soldiers in the APC could likely win the 40:9000 battle cited in the article. Remember that…

Tiennanmen square would be a case in point. I believe that they brought in troops from other areas, because they were alienated enough from the citizens of the city, and the local garrison wouldn't have shot their own neighbours and families.

I might be wrong, but I believe the only soldiers hurt were not on tanks, but foot soldiers after leaving the transport vehicles.

However this doesn't fit the "A peasant vs. a Knight" comaprison. A huge mass can also easily stop and defeat a knight.

Re: Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

#173

Post by questionfor »

dodobirdlord wrote: post #44
treeman79 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working the field all day is going to make someone tough and lean. If it’s a particular lazy knight that enjoys too much food, well. Would be an interesting overlap of nutrition vs fitness vs indulgence.

Nutrition in childhood, especially early childhood, is extremely critical to development. The average person historically was remarkably short, generally because of childhood malnourishment. Simply being properly nourished in childhood would have led to a huge height and weight advantage (also probably considerable advantages in brain development). Even into the 18th century the average height of an officer in the Br…

Would the knight even have access to “bad” carbs / sugar in significant enough amounts to make them so fat that they’d be unfit for combat? It’s not like they can just get another carton of Pringles to finish off the dinner

Re: Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

#174

Post by watwut »

treeman79 wrote: post #11
randmeerkat wrote: post #8

It’s not just weaponry, most of fighting is nutrition, I’m surprised the article doesn’t discuss that. Given that the article says the knights and their weaponry were correlated to wealth and power, I would expect the knights to be better fed than the peasants as well.

Working the field all day is going to make someone tough and lean. If it’s a particular lazy knight that enjoys too much food, well. Would be an interesting overlap of nutrition vs fitness vs indulgence.

> Working the field all day is going to make someone tough and lean.

Working in the field all day is not the same as training specifically for combat whole day. And nutrition is massively important for muscle building.

Re: Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

#175

Post by Ichthypresbyter »

redis_mlc wrote: post #75
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #17

In the Annals of St Bertin there's mention of an attack by the Danes (Vikings) on a region of Francia in 859 AD, where the peasants formed an association to defend themselves and fought off the Vikings, and drove them off without the assistance of the Carolingian rulers. This is reported by the Carolingians as brave but immoral, because Charlemagne had banned any such associations or militias, and military service wa…

> military service was reserved for aristocrats only. That varied by region. Often English Lords were required to provide troops or arrows on demand, and those both came from the peasant class. (Frankly, peasant men would have to be tough to work in the fields in the mid-day sun, so were ideal stock for battles.) Otherwise what was the point in appointing nobility if they weren't contributing an army, but just collec…

"All burgesses and freemen shall have a gambeson, an iron cap and a lance"

-English Assize of Arms, 1181.

Knights, and freemen who owned more than a certain value of property, were required to own more and better weapons.

Later laws extended this obligation to all men not just freemen, and required ownership of bows.

Re: Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

#176

Post by pjmlp »

zrobotics wrote: post #72
dimitrios1 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't a more apt comparison be someone armed with a 9mm pistol trying to take on a trained soldier with advanced anti-ballstic armor and plating, and an accurate rifle?

No, the comparison to an APC (armored personnel carrier) is apt- knights were armored enough to be nearly invulnerable to the weaponry a peasant would have access to. To compare to something modern, I'm sure enough street protestors would be able to disable an APC and kill the soldiers inside at least some of the time, but the soldiers in the APC could likely win the 40:9000 battle cited in the article. Remember that…

I guess that in the days that most jobs were either be being a soldier working for the local lord or a peasant in some random village had naturally a profound effect about life and death.

Re: Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

#177

Post by arethuza »

As with so many things I suspect it comes down to leadership and tactics - if you get to choose and prepare the ground a small lightly armed force could definitely defeat a much larger force of heavily armed mounted knights.

The Battle of Loudon Hill (1307) is a good example - look at the map:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Loudoun_Hill

'Crossing the T' in a land battle!

This battle was included at the end of the Netflix movie 'Outlaw King', which although it includes a fair number of inaccuracies is perhaps better than most and at least is reasonably close to what happened (which is more than I can say for some comparable more famous movies):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3G-n_t_JE8

Re: Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

#178

Post by questionfor »

Sander_Marechal wrote: post #170
questionfor wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wonder how much a liability a horse was during medieval combat. Sure speed and maneuverability are great but up close it seems that horse is quite vulnerable to attacks on the legs for example with long bladed weapons. You can’t really protect horse’s legs with armor

Being the target of a cavalry charge is absolutely terrifying even for hardened soldiers. There is very little chance of fighting effectively when everyone around you is fleeing or being pressed together. And you're being charged by a 2-ton armored war machine. Or dozens of them. I'm a reenactor. It's even terrifying when you know it's fake and you know you're safe. Knights did loose horses though. They all took mult…

> When they lost their horse, they fought their way back to their own side and got on the next horse.

Oh interesting, so it was basically expected? Not a force majeure? I always thought losing a horse back then was a really big event for the knight, borderline tragic - a big financial loss, a highly increased likelihood of dying (getting stuck under the horse etc etc)

Re: Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

#179

Post by koonsolo »

Nice that they mention the brave Flemish peasants ;). Although the picture of the goedendag (=good day) is incorrect!

Flemish myself, in schools we learn about Battle of the Golden Spurs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Golden_Spurs). It's probably the battle we are most proud of, because us peasants stood up against a fancy French army.

As it was taught to me, we drove the enemy cavalry into a swamp, and were able to use our goedendag (accurate picture here: https://www.liebaart.org/figuren/goedendr.jpg) to push them off their horses and pierce through the chain mail.

Re: Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

#180

Post by Ichthypresbyter »

chewz wrote: post #134

Crossbow - armor-piercing weapon was the RPG of Middle Ages. There were constant attempts to ban crossbows. Second Lateran Council banned use of crossbow against Christians. > And Western knights did not like it. Their armor protected them from most weapons they would face with the exception of the longbow, a weapon that took years to learn and decades to master. But crossbows could slice right through the armor at g…

>Second Lateran Council banned use of crossbow against Christians.

Not sure if this is actually true. The council (specifically Canon 29) refers to ballistarii and sagittarii. Ballistarii may mean either crossbowmen or slingers, while sagittarii means archers. So there is no way of reading this as referring to crossbowmen alone- the ban is either against both crossbowmen and archers, or it's against slingers and archers and doesn't mention crossbows at all.

Some commentators suggest that this canon is intending to prohibit archery contests- similarly, Canon 14 of the council condemns tournaments. Others point out that at the time of the council, the Pope was at war with King Roger of Sicily, whose armies employed large numbers of Muslim archers (not crossbowmen). The canon means that the Papal armies could shoot at Roger's Muslim soldiers, but Roger's Christian officers would be excommunicated if they ordered their men to shoot back...

Text in Latin: http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/es/index3.htm

And in English: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/lateran2.asp

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