Civilians and recruitment in the medieval army
Recruitment by Duty, Not Choice
Between c1250 and c1500 the king did not pay a standing army. When he needed soldiers, he summoned them through the obligations of feudal society. The classic device was the feudal levy, sometimes called the feudal host. A great lord owed knight service to the king; a knight owed service to the lord; a tenant owed service to the knight on whose land he worked. War therefore travelled down through every level of medieval society, all the way to the village.
Within the village, men were summoned to a muster — a public assembly at which the local sheriff or steward inspected weapons, horses and physical fitness. The Assize of Arms (1252 and earlier versions) required every able-bodied freeman to keep arms appropriate to his wealth: a knight had to keep a war horse and full mail; a poor freeman might only owe a bow, knife and helmet. From the late thirteenth century, every village was expected to provide longbowmen for royal campaigns.
Medieval armies were raised by feudal duty, by the muster of armed freemen under the Assize of Arms, and (later) by indenture — written contracts in which lords promised to bring fixed numbers of men in return for cash.
Indentures and the Slow Move Towards Pay
By the fourteenth century, the simple feudal levy was creaking. Foreign campaigns — especially in France during the Hundred Years War — needed armies for far longer than the standard forty days. Edward III began to use the indenture — a written agreement in which a great lord promised to bring (say) 100 men-at-arms and 200 archers for six months at a fixed daily rate. Indentures were sealed in two halves, with each side keeping one as proof.
Indentured soldiers were often called ‘contract’ soldiers. They were not yet a standing army — they went home when the campaign ended — but they were paid, professional and used to fighting together. Henry V’s Agincourt army was raised this way: roughly 25 great captains contracted to bring fixed retinues. The indenture system also brought rougher elements into royal service: experienced veterans of earlier wars, foreign mercenaries and men attracted by pay rather than feudal loyalty.
Training: Sunday Archery and the Practice Field
Most medieval training was decentralised. Knights trained for years in their own households, learning sword, lance and horsemanship from boyhood. Men-at-arms trained in noble retinues. The longbow, however, required mass training across the kingdom — you could not raise 5,000 archers in a hurry.
Edward III therefore made longbow practice a legal duty. Sunday archery was compulsory in every village; football and other ‘wasteful’ games were banned by statute (1363) so that men spent their free time at the butts. Local bowyers and fletchers supplied bows and arrows. By the fifteenth century, England was unique in fielding tens of thousands of trained longbowmen drawn from the peasant and yeoman classes — a rare moment of large-scale, state-mandated training before the modern era.
Students often write that compulsion to serve in the British army began in 1916 with the Military Service Act. In fact, compulsory military service is much older. Feudal duty obliged tenants to serve when called; the Assize of Arms required freemen to keep weapons; later, county militia ballots and naval impressment kept compulsion alive into the nineteenth century. What changed in 1916 was the scale and the nationwide industrial-era machinery, not the principle. The strongest answers place 1916 on a long timeline of British military compulsion.
Civilians and the Cost of War
Medieval war pressed onto civilian life in three main ways. The first was purveyance — the king’s right to buy provisions for an army at fixed (often below market) prices. Royal officials descended on villages and seized grain, ale, livestock, carts and labour, leaving promises to pay later. In hard years this could starve a community.
The second was billeting. Soldiers on the march were quartered in private homes, ate the family’s food, slept in their beds and sometimes assaulted the householders. Towns near major campaign routes — Berwick on the Scottish border, Dover for the French wars — lived under almost permanent billeting. The unpopularity of billeting is one reason later kings worked to fund standing armies in barracks.
The third was chevauchée — mounted raids deep into enemy land, deliberately destroying farms, burning villages, slaughtering livestock and seizing valuables. English armies under Edward III and the Black Prince ran chevauchées across France. Civilians on the receiving end were ruined; soldiers and lords took home plunder that sometimes outpaced their pay.
Edward I’s Statute of Winchester (1285) tied military duty to local policing duty. Every freeman was required to keep arms by his wealth, and a parish constable was given the responsibility for raising the hue and cry. The same men who would form the muster for the king’s war were also expected to chase a thief through the village. Recruitment, training and law enforcement were therefore woven together. This is one reason the modern army and modern police force took so long to separate: in medieval England they were the same body of armed men, called out for different reasons.
Purveyance, billeting and the chevauchée show that medieval war squeezed civilians as much as soldiers. Royal officials seized grain, soldiers were quartered in private homes, and English raids across France enriched soldiers while ruining French villagers.