Dan Howard wrote: | ||
Was it? We only have two Carolingian sources. Abbott Furad's letter mentions bows but the Capitulare missorum doesn't. It requires these men to possess horse, armour, shield, lance, sword, and shortsword. Nothing else. They were required to bring archers with them but not to have bows themselves. |
How should we reconcile both? In other stance: do you agree all the foot had to had bows alonside other weapons? An article suggests this:
Quote: |
Ganshof proposed that the discrepancy between the late eight-century Capitulare misrorum, which did not list the bow among cavalry weapons,211 and the letter to Fulrad of 806, which did, indicates that archery was only widely adopted by the Franks as a result of experience gained fighting the Avars and Slavs in the late eighth century.212 However, arrows were common in Merovingian graves of the sixth and seventh centuries,213 and it seems unlikely that the omission from the capitulary is significant. The passage referring to armament appears to have been a sort of means test (“qui . . . caballos, arma et scuto et lancea spata et senespasio habere possunt”), so that bow and arrows may have been omitted simply because they were among the cheapest of Frankish weapons: wood was readily available and manufacture presumably inexpensive. The fact that bows and arrows were not listed in the Lex Ribuaria may similarly reflect their low value rather than their rarity. |
------------
Michael P. Smith wrote: |
I certainly agree with that, Dan. But it does speak to their interest in the subject and practice. We know Richard I had an avid interest in the crossbow, and is alleged to have used one in combat at Joffa, which may, or may not, be true, but his interest and use of it as a sporting weapon is not in doubt, and we know he considered it an important battlefield weapon. |
According to the historians, he was unable to fight and was brought to the field in a litter with the crossbow. I guess this was an exception situation instead of a normal one. In another source I know he was fighting in normal conditions, but with a Dane Axe.
---------
Jean Henri Chandler wrote: |
All medieval estates participated in hunting but the nobles tried to restrict hunting territories (sometimes called a 'chase') for their own private use. |
I thought medieval law actually forbade commoners to hunt, as the woods were feudal property of the local noblemen and only them, with their hunting parties, could hunt. I know there were exceptions in Scandinavia, but it was the case for France, England and Portugal, at least. There is even a Portuguese thesis proposing the estabilishment of royal woods being the an unconscious precedent to our modern preservation forests.
Quote: |
And raiding, especially during feuds, was a kind of ritualized form of war heavily engaged in by nobles, in which the aim was usually to capture a rival and do certain types of property damage, but with limitations imposed by princely and later urban authorities. |
So raiding and feuding engagements were necessarily engaged by small parties of a lord's retainers and other professional and well armoured soldiers? I'm writting a French medieval adventure using the context of a local feud between barons and was searching for how knightly or feudal the activity was.