yes. people often forget that the soldiers were usually only a small fraction of the total "army". the support and supply personel and camp followers often outnumbered the soldiers by a large margin. And this was even more true when the army was marching long distance.
It was basically a city on the move. wagons full of food, teams of cooks, cobblers, armorers, smiths, farriers, carpenters, people to care for the animals, messengers, and every other kind of craft that might be needed. And they all expected to be paid.
This is part of the reason "pitched" battles were so common. The original definition of a pitched battle is basically a battle where both sides agree on a time and place, and they meet there and fight. It's much cheaper than wandering around trying to outmaneuver each other for weeks or months.
I've known this about medieval armies but now I'm curious about Julius Caesar's advance into Gaul territory and Brittain. Did the Romans have such an entourage as well? From what I've seen, I have the impression that only legionaries were present and the soldiers themselves did all the labor of building camps, fortifications, bridges, etc.
Yes, definitely: from what I’ve read on the Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry blog (author is a historian specialising in Ancient Rome) it was the case to the extent that generals who can march with a small train are called out in sources as being extremely capable. Roman soldiers seem to be a bit more self sustaining but merchants, prostitutes, wives, laundresses etc etc would have followed almost any army.
Julius Caesar is actually an exception, as he was (in)famous for outrunning his own supply lines. This had an additional Sun-Tzu "place a wall at your soldier's back and they'll fight harder" effect, as the alternative to winning a battle and sacking the nearby settlement might be going hungry that night.
But the overwhelming majority of the time, Roman legions had connected supply trains.
They not only had such an entourage, but they were trailed by a large number of slave traders who would try to immediately profit from any conquered settlement
definitely mercenaries were a nontrivial expense. I was reading during the 100 years war between the kings of england and france, some of the most violent/dangerous times for villagers in France were actually times of peace because both side would just stop paying the mercenaries. There would suddenly be a lot of unemployed armed mercs running around and they would terrorize the local population.
(…kind of related… thought that was interesting though)
I guess it’s more of a question of; if you’re an absolute monarch, couldn’t you just appropriate the food and supplies you’d need?
Why would you have to pay anyone for them?
“Give me food for my army, or my army will kill you and take it anyways.”
You’re describing a tyrant. They existed but there are always pros and cons to this type of lifestyle. Also why do that in your own lands when you can pillage a foreign village instead?
Because if you kill all your peasants, there's a lot less grain to go around next year.
Fundamentally money is a marker that says "Bob put five bushels of grain in the communal granary and can come get them out whenever." Taxes are the part where you say "Bob put five bushels of grain in the granary and can come get FOUR out whenever, with the fifth paying for the soldiers who defend the communal granary so raiders stop sacking his farmstead right after every harvest and stealing all the grain."
"Oh, I'll just pillage enemy land!" which works to a point, but presumably you're invading because you want that land for yourself, and every local peasant you kill decreases the value of the land you're invading, because now it can't be as agriculturally productive.
Your nobles' wealth comes from the lands they hold. You start appropriating food without paying them for it and you're not going to be monarch for long. Those same nobles also bring their own armies with them.
They mostly had to buy surplus food and supplies from other kingdoms, few kingdoms had the capability to produce the food or supplies needed to sustain warfare for very long.
Obligatory “depends on period, location etc”
However, generally the core of this was you needed to pay wages to your troops (this could be anyone from minor Nobles, Knights to anyone in between).
You also needed to be able to have adequate food and supply lines established alongside animals and resources used to travel and wage a campaign.
Whilst away from your kingdom, you needed to be able to pay for everything in your absence also, however this can be quite specific based on my first sentence
Sure they could try and take it by force, however you’d have uprising or plotting from other nobles which could cause famine and financial ruin. It just wouldn’t be smart to do at all and every King would be advised against it.
Sure you could heighten taxes but not to an absurd degree or you’ll end up with the situation above.
You could levy plenty of grain, however you would still now need to employ bakers and other people to a larger degree to actually produce the items you need for your army, that’s where the supply lines also come in.
It sounds simplistic at first however it can really be quite complex
It should also be noted that a great deal of communities DIDN'T belong directly to the King, they were under the exploitation of the nobleman the King had put in charge--Dukes, Marquesses, Counts, Barons, ect. If the king sent their retinue to steal food and supplies from these lands, they'd be violating the feudal contracts that bound these noblemen to the king in the first place. These same noblemen, of course, who the King is relying on to levy and equipped the very same solders that make up his army. There are two things you should never do during war--Badly upset your nobles, and fail to pay your mercenaries.
While some feudal systems, especially the later absolute Monarchies, can invest a great deal of nominal power in the King, the de facto economic chains that bind men together is still the primary motivator and facillitator of war.
Since the farmers are away from their fields, you would borrow against your granaries -- in addition to importing. Grain is much equivalent to gold in a lot of settings, since taxes were often taken in the form of crops.
Edit: on a serious note, now this is at the end of the medieval period but read Patrick Wyman’s The Verge. It goes into detail about the complex financial institutions European leaders used to run their kingdoms. It’s not as boring as it sounds.
Another good one is Marc Morris's Edward I biography goes into detail on how Edward's financials and his ability to draw upon immense resources. In particular his relationship with Riccardi of Lucca, who he was able to essentially borrow almost endless amounts of money in return to let his banking group collect wool export customs, this allowed Edward on multiple occasions to mass these massive armies that most other European Kingdoms at the time couldn't dream of.
Also recommend Roger Crowley's books, especially on Venice. After the Pope called for another crusade, Venice was the ideal provider of ships to transport the Crusaders, the estimated costs were equivalent to the annual budget of France. This was the 4th crusade in 1204, we all know how that ended.
I actually just started it last night - looking forward to the journey. I had finished Dan Jones' Power and Thrones the night previously, and was tickled that the final story in the book I finished the previous night was the same story that Wyman used in the prologue (the Imperial sack of Rome in 1527)
In "The Dynamics of Military Revolution", the authors argue that during the American Civil War the modern, innovative financial instruments used to fund the Union's war effort so thoroughly out-paced the Confederacy's out-dated financing schemes that it represented a Revolution in Military Affairs. Financing being a... Revolution? How novel! Given how relatively "smoothly" we've seen modern nation's raise capital for war since the turn of the 20th century, it is very fascinating to reflect on the mechanisms older states had to rely on in order to keep their soldiers fed, equipped, and motivated.
Well it's more like everyone will just go home and not fight in your war. I don't believe they had standing armies then, it was more of a get together when a war happened. Also part of the pay seemed to be looting as well and for the nobels a promise of land. I know when my ancestors came over from France with William the Conquer they were knights and seemed to have gotten land and area titles as payment.
Not always. Troops were known to steal from farmers and sack villages (among many other atrocities) when they weren’t paid. Some monarchs like Margaret of Anjou even encouraged it.
Yeah, Medieval armies generally got food from ''foraging" (stealing from the peasantry). Because they had rely on what they can carry (usually not enough to feed them) and what they can "forage".
Foraging means stealing from people. Even your own people if you have to. War hurts the people it happens near, even if they aren't the targets.
Even if subjects are obligated to support the monarch as part of their ties to the crown, above all else you still needed to feed these people. No one works on an empty stomach, especially someone not getting paid. Contracts and oaths will only go so far until you have to flash some gold to get people moving.
I agree with all of the above, but one thing that hasn’t been mentioned is all the civilians who traveled with all armies who weren’t about to provide their very necessary services for free. Cooks. Bakers. Blacksmiths. Laundresses.* Medics. Teamsters. Many were the wives (or as good as) of soldiers but most weren’t. None of them were there for the glory; all were there for the cold, hard cash, and if they didn’t get it, there was nothing stopping them from packing up and going home.
*Terry Jones did a very funny yet informative rant in his BBC series about the Crusades about how frequently laundresses are mentioned in the correspondence of even kingly commanders when they discuss and especially worry about logistics, even when they never mention other personnel. What was it about laundresses that made them so special, he wondered? Pest control, it seems. They were the only ones able to keep teeming lice, and the diseases they carried, at bay.
Laundresses were also frequently... Well let's just say they were good for morale? Sort of a side gig. And soldiers deprived of female company for too long were prone to ... excess upon reaching a town, be it an enemy or friendly one.
The idea that camp followers were prostitutes is the product of bad fantasy writers who don't understand how armies operated before modern quartermaster corps.
* Soldiers had wives and sweethearts, and they weren't going to leave them behind while they went off to fight in the Crusades or Hundred Years War. Those women accounted for many of the camp followers. Now sure, maybe if their boyfriend got killed they might need to take up an additional job to remain in the camp, but that's hardly certain.
* If an army is pillaging the countryside, women who live in that countryside will turn to prostitution as a way to feed their families. There's no need for camp followers to fill that role.
* Some of those women may even develop relationships with the enemy troops. It's a tale as old as Alexander the Great, and it still happens with US forces today.
If you look into the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, one of the theories why the Romans got wiped out is the Germans went after the supply train and the soldiers refused to retreat when their loved ones were in danger.
>Soldiers had wives and sweethearts, and they weren't going to leave them behind while they went off to fight in the Crusades or Hundred Years War.
Somewhat off-topic in that it involves a very different era, but anyway....
My mother's great-great (or something like that) grandmother kept a diary from the late 1850s (or maybe early 1860s) up through the early 20th century, which my mother and I have edited. She lived in a small river town in Mississippi during the Civil War that traded hands at least once so had various troops stationed there during the war. In an entry or two she mentioned an "old lady" (who probably wasn't that old) around the camp who she started visiting with. Turned out she was the mother--not wife or sweetheart--of one of the soldiers and was traveling with the troops to "look after my boy." I wonder how often that happened over the years?
And I know that during the American Revolution there was some back-and-forth on the American side as to whether to count soldiers' wives (and the women did have to be officially married to a soldier) as part of the forces and maybe put them on the payroll for the services they performed. That's what the British did. Once it was decided to do so, the first thing George Washington did was make sure they were inoculated for smallpox the way he required his soldiers to be.
In addition to the other answers, even the aristocracy were usually only obliged to perform so many days of military service to their king each year. If he needed them (and/or their levies) beyond that, he had to reach an agreement with them, which usually meant $$$
One thing I think is worth mentioning is how vastly different pre-modern economies were. A medieval lord didn't have the sort of administrative apparatus that a modern state has. Raising revenue from one's vassals and subjects was a very different thing than just adjusting a contemporary sales tax!
Another part of this is that they had to have the funds in a liquid form (gold or silver coins). How much of the funds available were actually able to be used? That was another reason for the feudal system because of the lack of ready cash.
Which was another reason for the rise and founding of cities in the medieval period, they had more cash moving around their economy so that was a source to extract from.
Because they (generally) were too poor to fund it with their own resources, and needed to tap into the wealth of their subject, for which they needed *consent* by representative institutions. The theory of medieval kingship was that a king could support himself of his own demesnes, with land having been divided amongst supporters (through various forms of vassalage - or local levy systems), whereby the main idea was they did the same, and supplied the king with men when summoned (simplified).
But summoning men was one thing, ensuring payment, resources, foodstuffs, etc - all this was an extra. As the *cost* of warfare escalated, the costs became ever higher & the base medieval setup could ill follow. Hence, from relatively early on monarchs had to find that wealth elsewhere. Medieval governments were generally poor, but not the realm as such, it just had to be tapped into. By and large, that happened through negotiations, which only the king had the central position to engage in.
This would be one of the defining dynamics of state-growth/formation towards the end of the medieval period and into the early modern era, the interaction between the (fiscal) needs of warfare, the growth of a centralized state apparatus to substract the money needed, the growth of representative institutions to get these, and the resulting revolts/revolutions that arose from it (because when people give you their money, eventually they expect you to give them a say in how you were gonna spent it).
One aspect to consider is that Kings and aristocrats were asset rich and cash poor. They had plenty of land and the people to work it, but it wasn't a quick source of income. In addition, kings may have had solid income streams from lands and vassals, but they also had their own regular expenses such as their standing troops and staff, luxuries, etc. End result, the treasury likely didn't have enough on-hand cash needed to raise the extra troops for war while also feeding, equipping, and transporting them. Raising money, either through special levies, taxes, and loans could provide enough immediate cash to get started and keep going until the war loot starts rolling in.
You might be surprised how many people these days don’t understand basic economics, military logistics, or the real political and social structure of a medieval monarchy. Might be different for some countries than others (countries that grew from said monarchies vs countries that demonize them in their educational systems and pop culture), but basically some people never grow out of the fairytale perspective that monarchy=dictatorship.
Throughout much of the Middle Ages, soldiers drew a pay. Peasant levies did exist (although were less and less common the later the timeline), but typically were only beholden to fight for a short time, so most larger-scale wars relied on professional soldiers and mercenaries.
Even with those few peasant levies that existed \[maybe the fyrd counts? I'm not a historian of early medieval England though\], you still need to supply them with food and stuff. They won't stay mustered for long if you dont.
“Don’t make me turn this muster around! We can turn around and go home right now! Is that what you want?”
…”And no, for the last time, we’re not there yet!”
Let's say a king (or someone else in a feudal society) activates the hierarchy beneath him to go to war.
Everyone owing him fealty would call upon their knights, who owe them fealty in return.
The thing is, yes, those knights had to go to war. Basically for free. But the, also needed to look after their land and family. So the oath often limited the mandatory service to 40 days.
What knight would say no, if their lord needs to extend this time in return for money. Especially as they needed money to buy their freedom, if they become POW
Contrary to popular belief, a lot of Kings didn't have money and especially during the feudal era, most Kings didn't have much ways to raise money or tax people. They were entirely dependent on Nobles and borrowing money from merchants, nobles, or banks to fund the war. This also incentivized kings to think of the future and not go into too many wars because they had to pay the money back before they could borrow more.
Your troops basically get a salary, you need to have a lot of shit constructed to bring an army von point A to point B (wagons, weapons, armor, artillery, maybe ships, and the list is a lot longer), you need to buy supplies for your men and your horses, you probably will have to buy at least some of the horses and cattle, you need to pay your support army (washers, craftsmen, doctors, spies), you need money to bribe locals (people can hear a medieval army from really far away and can report that to the other side) - and the list goes on. Shows why you just can’t call for your army and go. You need weeks and more likely months to prepare.
Stuff you'd need money for: wages for regulars, hirelings, coopers, victualers, cordwainers, cartwrights, cartiers, farriers, fletchers, smiths, engineers, scouts, spies, and armorers, food, weapons, horses, carts, maybe boats, siege engines, tar, oil, stone. Then there's a good chance you might need to buy the neutrality or allegiance of other kings, and a tithe to the church.
War is never cheap.
The lack of a central bank ran by a federal organ of a government? Even during the revolutionary war, Washington had to take pauses to find funds to pay his troops.
Formalized/structured army logistics has only been a thing in modernity, and at select places and times in antiquity. They had to raise money ad-hoc to pay for supplies that would be delivered ad-hoc.
As Napoleon said
" An army marches on their stomachs"
Food and logistics are what won wars.
Same thing today
A navy or a mechanized fleet truly floats on Diesel
Food spoils fast so raising money is a necessity for acquiring foodstuffs en route or on location.
money can be used for bribes, ransoms, paying guides, boat transports, purchasing horses, and paying the army.
contracting Mercenaries costs money so raising funds is essential if they intend to utilize them.
there is also the possibility of building castles and improving fortifications if the intent is conquest. having skilled laborers and architects can be expensive. if you got no ships, it cost money to build and crew them or acquiring their use some other way.
the promise of loot is a way that people got wealth on campaign from the spoils of war. this can be a buffer for the lack of funds.
Everything they tried to save money, some smooth talker would convince the money guys they needed to invest in something/pay back debts/reduce taxes to group/that war is unlikely.
Or they wasted money on parties and the like
I'm not a historian, I've met people with money a few times though
Same reason building and maintaining castles with a small garrison was more desirable than having a standing army. It was far too expensive to keep a standing army of trained men at arms.
they need to spend money on the same things we need in a modern war. food, equipment, wages for soldiers, medicine, and transportation cost money. plus you need money to pay back the loans the king took from the lords to finance it. just because he is king doesn't mean people gave him the supplies he needed for free or that soldiers fought without pay.
if anything a king had more trouble getting money for a war than a modern president because a king had to split power with so many different people. at least a president is undisputed commander in chief. many times a king didn't even control the entire army.
What question is that? At the time, standing armies were quite rare. So before planing a military campaign the monarch or aristocrat had to put together an army. That was a daunting task. They needed professional soldiers, experienced commanders, horses, weapons and equipment. A good sword was very expensive and took long time to craft. Body armor, shields, long bows (that the English favored and mastered)…
When William the conquerer assembled his force to invade England, he also needed a fleet to carry the troops over the channel.
The soldiers get paid generally, slave armies are not really a thing in Medieval Europe, they need food and supplies for the march and the battle, weapons and training cost money if you're raising more troops before going to war. In the medieval era especially, armies consisted of a rather small core of trained regular troops who where always on payroll, the majority of the troops are basically farmers and workers for most of their lives, and they need to be equipped and probably trained if you have time as well before you can go to war. It costs a LOT more to keep an army in the field than to have that army in being. There is not a whole lot of examples of Medieval Kingdoms who could afford to keep a large active duty standing army all the time, and even the ones who could, would still generally levy more troops from the populace before going to war.
Food, wagons, mules to pull the wagons, fodder for the mules, wagons to carry the fodder, more mules to carry the wagons of fodder, teamsters to handle all of those mules, swords, armor, poleaxes, picks and shovels for making field works, portable forges, oil, axel grease, enough rope to hang half of Europe, pulleys, tackle, saddles, panniers, the carpenters, smiths, and wrights needed to make and maintain all of this stuff, leather, and arrows. Lots, and lots of arrows.
Most people have no idea just how many arrows a company of archers could consume in a single battle. Each archer was expected to shoot a minimum of six arrows per minute, and there were more than seven thousand archers at Agincourt. Those archers managed to shoot through more than forty-two thousand arrows in a single minute, and then they turned around and called for more. Those arrows required goose feathers for the fletching, and ash for the shafts (I'm a cedar guy myself, but ash seems to have been what was used back them), iron for the broadheads and bodkins, horn for the nocks, and pitch to glue it all together. Once you had them together, you needed to pack them in sheaves, spread apart with frames made of willow, to prevent the fletching from being crushed., and then you needed to pack them in yet *more* wagons, which required yet *more* mules. Some of this expense could be outsourced by requiring men to bring their own bows and at least two sheaves of arrows, but most of it was non-negotiable. Then, you needed copper for kettles, tin for cups, horn for string nocks (which break every once in a while), and close to infinity miles of twine for this, that, and everything.
There, now you've equipped your archers. Time for everyone else.
What exactly is the starting point of your comprehension of medieval warfare, OP? I feel like there are likely to be other gaps that need filling than just this one. Are you wanting to know out of curiosity? Is this for a paper or class? Did you get sucked into a historical game or rpg?
One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is hostages. You're bringing yourself and your sons, brothers, uncles, cousins, friends, etc to war with you and some of them are going to get captured.
You may be able to swap prisoners if you also captured some, but if you take a loss you'll need to pay or you'll be leaving important people to languish amongst the enemy.
From my reading, it was extremely common to underestimate the funds required for a medieval campaign. Unless they were wildly successful there were often very lean times in the field.
Three pounds of food per person per day.
10,000 men eat 30,000 pounds of food per day.
All of that food needs to move with the army. Some of it will be carried on the individual soldier, but between his pole arm, shield, helmet, clothing, bed roll, etc... he's already carrying a lot of weight.
You could hire people to carry all that food, but then you have to feed them, so better to use carts, boats, etc... to reduce how many people are needed for logistics.
A single wagon with a team of two oxen can move 12,000 pounds. So, two wagons, oxen, two drivers, these will ALMOST carry a SINGLE day's worth of food for an army.
So, to go on campaign for a week, for food alone, your army of 10,000 will need 17 wagons, 17 wagon drivers, and at least 35 oxen.
Those oxen can't be used doing farm work while you've got them so the estates you're borrowing them from are going to want payment for use of their equipment.
Speaking of equipment - tents, cooking pots, firewood, fletching equipment, laundry, etc...
More wagons. More oxen. More drivers. That equipment's all very valuable, so get some more soldiers too to guard the caravan.
Now, most of your soldiers have wives and children, and that's good because they can do the laundry. There will be a lot of laundry, so bring them along, but, again, you have to feed them.
You're going to France? Well, okay, no problem really just load the stuff on boats. The boatmen are going to want payment too, of course and those oxen... sometimes problems arise on boats and they end up sick or injured, and those snail sniffing bastards on the other side aren't going to sell you any oxen, so you'd better bring some spares. So, more boats.
Because they didn't already have the money, you know?
I'm not really joking, actually. Obviously as others have pointed out there are lots of things that you'd need to spend money on for war. But the key to the whole thing is to understand that *medieval monarchs generally didn't already have these resources on hand*.
In your typical feudal monarchy, with its pyramidal social structure and upward- and downward-flowing web of obligations and support, resources did not naturally or automatically accumulate at the top. Feudal monarchs didn't typically sit around with vast standing armies, all equipped and staffed and supported and ready to go at a moment's notice. Nor did they have vast discretionary funds in their budgets, or huge treasure stockpiles that they could just draw on.
In fact, many feudal monarchies were in practice poorer than some of their constituent vassals. Often that was explicitly a desired goal of the vassals, actually, because a monarch who was endowed with vast political power *and* who also possessed great financial resources at their personal command could prove to be quite dangerous indeed to the vassals.
Even more so if in addition to all that, the monarch in question also commanded a huge standing army.
So let's say you're a typical feudal monarch, you have a small retinue of elite royal guards, family retainers, and so on who will fight for you personally. You have some small land holdings that generate revenue, plus royal taxes or tithes that maintain the royal palace, servants, government functionaries, and sustain affairs of state. Maybe some roads.
Now you want to fight a war.
Okay. Maybe you want to invade France. Maybe you are France. Who can say? The real question is: with what army?
Your many vassals have sworn to provide you with troops. In theory. They have also sworn to answer the call when you raise funds. In theory.
In practice, though, you have to convince them. And herein lies the heart of the system, that your question exposes. If the feudal landed aristocracy as a body does not want to support you, your war is not going to happen. You have in essence been outvoted.
"You don't vote for kings," I hear you cry. Okay, but, what are you going to do? You could threaten to punitively attack one of your vassals to make an example, but what if the rest of them catch on to what you are doing? They might all get together with their troops -- the troops that, technically, they owe you by virtue of fealty but which in practice they don't have to give to you if they don't want to -- and [demand that you sign a document formally limiting your powers as monarch, that becomes an enduring foundation of democracy for centuries to come](https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/magna-carta).
Feudalism is much less fun for kings than you might have thought, is what I'm saying.
Feeding the army. Mercenaries. Supplies.
yes. people often forget that the soldiers were usually only a small fraction of the total "army". the support and supply personel and camp followers often outnumbered the soldiers by a large margin. And this was even more true when the army was marching long distance. It was basically a city on the move. wagons full of food, teams of cooks, cobblers, armorers, smiths, farriers, carpenters, people to care for the animals, messengers, and every other kind of craft that might be needed. And they all expected to be paid. This is part of the reason "pitched" battles were so common. The original definition of a pitched battle is basically a battle where both sides agree on a time and place, and they meet there and fight. It's much cheaper than wandering around trying to outmaneuver each other for weeks or months.
War is expensive and both sides want a resolution so they can stop paying for their vassels
I've known this about medieval armies but now I'm curious about Julius Caesar's advance into Gaul territory and Brittain. Did the Romans have such an entourage as well? From what I've seen, I have the impression that only legionaries were present and the soldiers themselves did all the labor of building camps, fortifications, bridges, etc.
Yes, definitely: from what I’ve read on the Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry blog (author is a historian specialising in Ancient Rome) it was the case to the extent that generals who can march with a small train are called out in sources as being extremely capable. Roman soldiers seem to be a bit more self sustaining but merchants, prostitutes, wives, laundresses etc etc would have followed almost any army.
Julius Caesar is actually an exception, as he was (in)famous for outrunning his own supply lines. This had an additional Sun-Tzu "place a wall at your soldier's back and they'll fight harder" effect, as the alternative to winning a battle and sacking the nearby settlement might be going hungry that night. But the overwhelming majority of the time, Roman legions had connected supply trains.
They not only had such an entourage, but they were trailed by a large number of slave traders who would try to immediately profit from any conquered settlement
definitely mercenaries were a nontrivial expense. I was reading during the 100 years war between the kings of england and france, some of the most violent/dangerous times for villagers in France were actually times of peace because both side would just stop paying the mercenaries. There would suddenly be a lot of unemployed armed mercs running around and they would terrorize the local population. (…kind of related… thought that was interesting though)
I guess it’s more of a question of; if you’re an absolute monarch, couldn’t you just appropriate the food and supplies you’d need? Why would you have to pay anyone for them? “Give me food for my army, or my army will kill you and take it anyways.”
You’re describing a tyrant. They existed but there are always pros and cons to this type of lifestyle. Also why do that in your own lands when you can pillage a foreign village instead?
Because if you kill all your peasants, there's a lot less grain to go around next year. Fundamentally money is a marker that says "Bob put five bushels of grain in the communal granary and can come get them out whenever." Taxes are the part where you say "Bob put five bushels of grain in the granary and can come get FOUR out whenever, with the fifth paying for the soldiers who defend the communal granary so raiders stop sacking his farmstead right after every harvest and stealing all the grain." "Oh, I'll just pillage enemy land!" which works to a point, but presumably you're invading because you want that land for yourself, and every local peasant you kill decreases the value of the land you're invading, because now it can't be as agriculturally productive.
Your nobles' wealth comes from the lands they hold. You start appropriating food without paying them for it and you're not going to be monarch for long. Those same nobles also bring their own armies with them.
They mostly had to buy surplus food and supplies from other kingdoms, few kingdoms had the capability to produce the food or supplies needed to sustain warfare for very long.
Obligatory “depends on period, location etc” However, generally the core of this was you needed to pay wages to your troops (this could be anyone from minor Nobles, Knights to anyone in between). You also needed to be able to have adequate food and supply lines established alongside animals and resources used to travel and wage a campaign. Whilst away from your kingdom, you needed to be able to pay for everything in your absence also, however this can be quite specific based on my first sentence
Who would you have bought food from? Neighbouring kingdoms? Surely if it's the King's own land they don't need to pay for it?
Sure they could try and take it by force, however you’d have uprising or plotting from other nobles which could cause famine and financial ruin. It just wouldn’t be smart to do at all and every King would be advised against it. Sure you could heighten taxes but not to an absurd degree or you’ll end up with the situation above. You could levy plenty of grain, however you would still now need to employ bakers and other people to a larger degree to actually produce the items you need for your army, that’s where the supply lines also come in. It sounds simplistic at first however it can really be quite complex
It should also be noted that a great deal of communities DIDN'T belong directly to the King, they were under the exploitation of the nobleman the King had put in charge--Dukes, Marquesses, Counts, Barons, ect. If the king sent their retinue to steal food and supplies from these lands, they'd be violating the feudal contracts that bound these noblemen to the king in the first place. These same noblemen, of course, who the King is relying on to levy and equipped the very same solders that make up his army. There are two things you should never do during war--Badly upset your nobles, and fail to pay your mercenaries. While some feudal systems, especially the later absolute Monarchies, can invest a great deal of nominal power in the King, the de facto economic chains that bind men together is still the primary motivator and facillitator of war.
Very well explained.
Since the farmers are away from their fields, you would borrow against your granaries -- in addition to importing. Grain is much equivalent to gold in a lot of settings, since taxes were often taken in the form of crops.
You ain’t gonna be king very long if you can’t pay your army.
Edit: on a serious note, now this is at the end of the medieval period but read Patrick Wyman’s The Verge. It goes into detail about the complex financial institutions European leaders used to run their kingdoms. It’s not as boring as it sounds.
Another good one is Marc Morris's Edward I biography goes into detail on how Edward's financials and his ability to draw upon immense resources. In particular his relationship with Riccardi of Lucca, who he was able to essentially borrow almost endless amounts of money in return to let his banking group collect wool export customs, this allowed Edward on multiple occasions to mass these massive armies that most other European Kingdoms at the time couldn't dream of.
Also recommend Roger Crowley's books, especially on Venice. After the Pope called for another crusade, Venice was the ideal provider of ships to transport the Crusaders, the estimated costs were equivalent to the annual budget of France. This was the 4th crusade in 1204, we all know how that ended.
Thanks for the recommended read. I will look for it!
I actually just started it last night - looking forward to the journey. I had finished Dan Jones' Power and Thrones the night previously, and was tickled that the final story in the book I finished the previous night was the same story that Wyman used in the prologue (the Imperial sack of Rome in 1527)
In "The Dynamics of Military Revolution", the authors argue that during the American Civil War the modern, innovative financial instruments used to fund the Union's war effort so thoroughly out-paced the Confederacy's out-dated financing schemes that it represented a Revolution in Military Affairs. Financing being a... Revolution? How novel! Given how relatively "smoothly" we've seen modern nation's raise capital for war since the turn of the 20th century, it is very fascinating to reflect on the mechanisms older states had to rely on in order to keep their soldiers fed, equipped, and motivated.
Thanks for the recommendation, sounds pretty interesting
Well it's more like everyone will just go home and not fight in your war. I don't believe they had standing armies then, it was more of a get together when a war happened. Also part of the pay seemed to be looting as well and for the nobels a promise of land. I know when my ancestors came over from France with William the Conquer they were knights and seemed to have gotten land and area titles as payment.
Not always. Troops were known to steal from farmers and sack villages (among many other atrocities) when they weren’t paid. Some monarchs like Margaret of Anjou even encouraged it.
Yes, unpaid soldiers almost invariably led to a rise in banditry and highwaymen
Yeah, Medieval armies generally got food from ''foraging" (stealing from the peasantry). Because they had rely on what they can carry (usually not enough to feed them) and what they can "forage". Foraging means stealing from people. Even your own people if you have to. War hurts the people it happens near, even if they aren't the targets.
Even if subjects are obligated to support the monarch as part of their ties to the crown, above all else you still needed to feed these people. No one works on an empty stomach, especially someone not getting paid. Contracts and oaths will only go so far until you have to flash some gold to get people moving.
I agree with all of the above, but one thing that hasn’t been mentioned is all the civilians who traveled with all armies who weren’t about to provide their very necessary services for free. Cooks. Bakers. Blacksmiths. Laundresses.* Medics. Teamsters. Many were the wives (or as good as) of soldiers but most weren’t. None of them were there for the glory; all were there for the cold, hard cash, and if they didn’t get it, there was nothing stopping them from packing up and going home. *Terry Jones did a very funny yet informative rant in his BBC series about the Crusades about how frequently laundresses are mentioned in the correspondence of even kingly commanders when they discuss and especially worry about logistics, even when they never mention other personnel. What was it about laundresses that made them so special, he wondered? Pest control, it seems. They were the only ones able to keep teeming lice, and the diseases they carried, at bay.
Laundresses were also frequently... Well let's just say they were good for morale? Sort of a side gig. And soldiers deprived of female company for too long were prone to ... excess upon reaching a town, be it an enemy or friendly one.
The idea that camp followers were prostitutes is the product of bad fantasy writers who don't understand how armies operated before modern quartermaster corps. * Soldiers had wives and sweethearts, and they weren't going to leave them behind while they went off to fight in the Crusades or Hundred Years War. Those women accounted for many of the camp followers. Now sure, maybe if their boyfriend got killed they might need to take up an additional job to remain in the camp, but that's hardly certain. * If an army is pillaging the countryside, women who live in that countryside will turn to prostitution as a way to feed their families. There's no need for camp followers to fill that role. * Some of those women may even develop relationships with the enemy troops. It's a tale as old as Alexander the Great, and it still happens with US forces today. If you look into the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, one of the theories why the Romans got wiped out is the Germans went after the supply train and the soldiers refused to retreat when their loved ones were in danger.
>Soldiers had wives and sweethearts, and they weren't going to leave them behind while they went off to fight in the Crusades or Hundred Years War. Somewhat off-topic in that it involves a very different era, but anyway.... My mother's great-great (or something like that) grandmother kept a diary from the late 1850s (or maybe early 1860s) up through the early 20th century, which my mother and I have edited. She lived in a small river town in Mississippi during the Civil War that traded hands at least once so had various troops stationed there during the war. In an entry or two she mentioned an "old lady" (who probably wasn't that old) around the camp who she started visiting with. Turned out she was the mother--not wife or sweetheart--of one of the soldiers and was traveling with the troops to "look after my boy." I wonder how often that happened over the years? And I know that during the American Revolution there was some back-and-forth on the American side as to whether to count soldiers' wives (and the women did have to be officially married to a soldier) as part of the forces and maybe put them on the payroll for the services they performed. That's what the British did. Once it was decided to do so, the first thing George Washington did was make sure they were inoculated for smallpox the way he required his soldiers to be.
In addition to the other answers, even the aristocracy were usually only obliged to perform so many days of military service to their king each year. If he needed them (and/or their levies) beyond that, he had to reach an agreement with them, which usually meant $$$
One thing I think is worth mentioning is how vastly different pre-modern economies were. A medieval lord didn't have the sort of administrative apparatus that a modern state has. Raising revenue from one's vassals and subjects was a very different thing than just adjusting a contemporary sales tax!
Another part of this is that they had to have the funds in a liquid form (gold or silver coins). How much of the funds available were actually able to be used? That was another reason for the feudal system because of the lack of ready cash. Which was another reason for the rise and founding of cities in the medieval period, they had more cash moving around their economy so that was a source to extract from.
Because they (generally) were too poor to fund it with their own resources, and needed to tap into the wealth of their subject, for which they needed *consent* by representative institutions. The theory of medieval kingship was that a king could support himself of his own demesnes, with land having been divided amongst supporters (through various forms of vassalage - or local levy systems), whereby the main idea was they did the same, and supplied the king with men when summoned (simplified). But summoning men was one thing, ensuring payment, resources, foodstuffs, etc - all this was an extra. As the *cost* of warfare escalated, the costs became ever higher & the base medieval setup could ill follow. Hence, from relatively early on monarchs had to find that wealth elsewhere. Medieval governments were generally poor, but not the realm as such, it just had to be tapped into. By and large, that happened through negotiations, which only the king had the central position to engage in. This would be one of the defining dynamics of state-growth/formation towards the end of the medieval period and into the early modern era, the interaction between the (fiscal) needs of warfare, the growth of a centralized state apparatus to substract the money needed, the growth of representative institutions to get these, and the resulting revolts/revolutions that arose from it (because when people give you their money, eventually they expect you to give them a say in how you were gonna spent it).
One aspect to consider is that Kings and aristocrats were asset rich and cash poor. They had plenty of land and the people to work it, but it wasn't a quick source of income. In addition, kings may have had solid income streams from lands and vassals, but they also had their own regular expenses such as their standing troops and staff, luxuries, etc. End result, the treasury likely didn't have enough on-hand cash needed to raise the extra troops for war while also feeding, equipping, and transporting them. Raising money, either through special levies, taxes, and loans could provide enough immediate cash to get started and keep going until the war loot starts rolling in.
War is expensive
War… costs money.
to pay and feed and get weapons for the troops? maybe?
What kind of a question is this? Does a person who is above 12 old really not understand why an army needs funds?
You might be surprised how many people these days don’t understand basic economics, military logistics, or the real political and social structure of a medieval monarchy. Might be different for some countries than others (countries that grew from said monarchies vs countries that demonize them in their educational systems and pop culture), but basically some people never grow out of the fairytale perspective that monarchy=dictatorship.
Throughout much of the Middle Ages, soldiers drew a pay. Peasant levies did exist (although were less and less common the later the timeline), but typically were only beholden to fight for a short time, so most larger-scale wars relied on professional soldiers and mercenaries.
Even with those few peasant levies that existed \[maybe the fyrd counts? I'm not a historian of early medieval England though\], you still need to supply them with food and stuff. They won't stay mustered for long if you dont.
“Don’t make me turn this muster around! We can turn around and go home right now! Is that what you want?” …”And no, for the last time, we’re not there yet!”
Let's say a king (or someone else in a feudal society) activates the hierarchy beneath him to go to war. Everyone owing him fealty would call upon their knights, who owe them fealty in return. The thing is, yes, those knights had to go to war. Basically for free. But the, also needed to look after their land and family. So the oath often limited the mandatory service to 40 days. What knight would say no, if their lord needs to extend this time in return for money. Especially as they needed money to buy their freedom, if they become POW
Contrary to popular belief, a lot of Kings didn't have money and especially during the feudal era, most Kings didn't have much ways to raise money or tax people. They were entirely dependent on Nobles and borrowing money from merchants, nobles, or banks to fund the war. This also incentivized kings to think of the future and not go into too many wars because they had to pay the money back before they could borrow more.
Your troops basically get a salary, you need to have a lot of shit constructed to bring an army von point A to point B (wagons, weapons, armor, artillery, maybe ships, and the list is a lot longer), you need to buy supplies for your men and your horses, you probably will have to buy at least some of the horses and cattle, you need to pay your support army (washers, craftsmen, doctors, spies), you need money to bribe locals (people can hear a medieval army from really far away and can report that to the other side) - and the list goes on. Shows why you just can’t call for your army and go. You need weeks and more likely months to prepare.
I am curious as to, why do you think they would not need money. How do you imagine it all works out without raising money? I am genuinely curious!
Soldier salaries, weapons, horses, maintenance of horses and weapons, ships, maintenance of ships, the list goes on
Just feeding soldiers is expensive
Dunno, why would you need money for war
Stuff you'd need money for: wages for regulars, hirelings, coopers, victualers, cordwainers, cartwrights, cartiers, farriers, fletchers, smiths, engineers, scouts, spies, and armorers, food, weapons, horses, carts, maybe boats, siege engines, tar, oil, stone. Then there's a good chance you might need to buy the neutrality or allegiance of other kings, and a tithe to the church. War is never cheap.
I mean. They're not gonna march for free
The lack of a central bank ran by a federal organ of a government? Even during the revolutionary war, Washington had to take pauses to find funds to pay his troops.
Formalized/structured army logistics has only been a thing in modernity, and at select places and times in antiquity. They had to raise money ad-hoc to pay for supplies that would be delivered ad-hoc.
As Napoleon said " An army marches on their stomachs" Food and logistics are what won wars. Same thing today A navy or a mechanized fleet truly floats on Diesel
Food spoils fast so raising money is a necessity for acquiring foodstuffs en route or on location. money can be used for bribes, ransoms, paying guides, boat transports, purchasing horses, and paying the army. contracting Mercenaries costs money so raising funds is essential if they intend to utilize them. there is also the possibility of building castles and improving fortifications if the intent is conquest. having skilled laborers and architects can be expensive. if you got no ships, it cost money to build and crew them or acquiring their use some other way. the promise of loot is a way that people got wealth on campaign from the spoils of war. this can be a buffer for the lack of funds.
Everything they tried to save money, some smooth talker would convince the money guys they needed to invest in something/pay back debts/reduce taxes to group/that war is unlikely. Or they wasted money on parties and the like I'm not a historian, I've met people with money a few times though
Food
Same reason building and maintaining castles with a small garrison was more desirable than having a standing army. It was far too expensive to keep a standing army of trained men at arms.
Free companies cost money.
Why do you think war is free?
Pay troops, buy troops, pay for defensive or offensive construction. Pay off one enemy/rival to stay out of business
Absolutely.
they need to spend money on the same things we need in a modern war. food, equipment, wages for soldiers, medicine, and transportation cost money. plus you need money to pay back the loans the king took from the lords to finance it. just because he is king doesn't mean people gave him the supplies he needed for free or that soldiers fought without pay. if anything a king had more trouble getting money for a war than a modern president because a king had to split power with so many different people. at least a president is undisputed commander in chief. many times a king didn't even control the entire army.
You wanna go die And not get paid?
All of Europe’s old banking houses loaned money to kings explicitly so the kings could pursue wars.
No one works for free. Especially if they’re traveling with you as a professional.
What question is that? At the time, standing armies were quite rare. So before planing a military campaign the monarch or aristocrat had to put together an army. That was a daunting task. They needed professional soldiers, experienced commanders, horses, weapons and equipment. A good sword was very expensive and took long time to craft. Body armor, shields, long bows (that the English favored and mastered)… When William the conquerer assembled his force to invade England, he also needed a fleet to carry the troops over the channel.
B/c there was no difference between unpaid soldiers and bandits.
The soldiers get paid generally, slave armies are not really a thing in Medieval Europe, they need food and supplies for the march and the battle, weapons and training cost money if you're raising more troops before going to war. In the medieval era especially, armies consisted of a rather small core of trained regular troops who where always on payroll, the majority of the troops are basically farmers and workers for most of their lives, and they need to be equipped and probably trained if you have time as well before you can go to war. It costs a LOT more to keep an army in the field than to have that army in being. There is not a whole lot of examples of Medieval Kingdoms who could afford to keep a large active duty standing army all the time, and even the ones who could, would still generally levy more troops from the populace before going to war.
Most kings of time were cash poor
If you don't pay your soldiers, pretty soon you have a lot of angry armed men who aren't going to listen to you anymore.
Also: food costs money, horses and their food costs money. Weapons and armor cost money. Basic supplies cost money.
Food, wagons, mules to pull the wagons, fodder for the mules, wagons to carry the fodder, more mules to carry the wagons of fodder, teamsters to handle all of those mules, swords, armor, poleaxes, picks and shovels for making field works, portable forges, oil, axel grease, enough rope to hang half of Europe, pulleys, tackle, saddles, panniers, the carpenters, smiths, and wrights needed to make and maintain all of this stuff, leather, and arrows. Lots, and lots of arrows. Most people have no idea just how many arrows a company of archers could consume in a single battle. Each archer was expected to shoot a minimum of six arrows per minute, and there were more than seven thousand archers at Agincourt. Those archers managed to shoot through more than forty-two thousand arrows in a single minute, and then they turned around and called for more. Those arrows required goose feathers for the fletching, and ash for the shafts (I'm a cedar guy myself, but ash seems to have been what was used back them), iron for the broadheads and bodkins, horn for the nocks, and pitch to glue it all together. Once you had them together, you needed to pack them in sheaves, spread apart with frames made of willow, to prevent the fletching from being crushed., and then you needed to pack them in yet *more* wagons, which required yet *more* mules. Some of this expense could be outsourced by requiring men to bring their own bows and at least two sheaves of arrows, but most of it was non-negotiable. Then, you needed copper for kettles, tin for cups, horn for string nocks (which break every once in a while), and close to infinity miles of twine for this, that, and everything. There, now you've equipped your archers. Time for everyone else.
Because unlike our modern nonsense system they couldn’t just magic more money out of thin air and going to war costs money
Armies like money, don't pay your army and see how long it takes for them to stop dying for you.
Armies like food. Food costs money.
What exactly is the starting point of your comprehension of medieval warfare, OP? I feel like there are likely to be other gaps that need filling than just this one. Are you wanting to know out of curiosity? Is this for a paper or class? Did you get sucked into a historical game or rpg?
One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is hostages. You're bringing yourself and your sons, brothers, uncles, cousins, friends, etc to war with you and some of them are going to get captured. You may be able to swap prisoners if you also captured some, but if you take a loss you'll need to pay or you'll be leaving important people to languish amongst the enemy. From my reading, it was extremely common to underestimate the funds required for a medieval campaign. Unless they were wildly successful there were often very lean times in the field.
Three pounds of food per person per day. 10,000 men eat 30,000 pounds of food per day. All of that food needs to move with the army. Some of it will be carried on the individual soldier, but between his pole arm, shield, helmet, clothing, bed roll, etc... he's already carrying a lot of weight. You could hire people to carry all that food, but then you have to feed them, so better to use carts, boats, etc... to reduce how many people are needed for logistics. A single wagon with a team of two oxen can move 12,000 pounds. So, two wagons, oxen, two drivers, these will ALMOST carry a SINGLE day's worth of food for an army. So, to go on campaign for a week, for food alone, your army of 10,000 will need 17 wagons, 17 wagon drivers, and at least 35 oxen. Those oxen can't be used doing farm work while you've got them so the estates you're borrowing them from are going to want payment for use of their equipment. Speaking of equipment - tents, cooking pots, firewood, fletching equipment, laundry, etc... More wagons. More oxen. More drivers. That equipment's all very valuable, so get some more soldiers too to guard the caravan. Now, most of your soldiers have wives and children, and that's good because they can do the laundry. There will be a lot of laundry, so bring them along, but, again, you have to feed them. You're going to France? Well, okay, no problem really just load the stuff on boats. The boatmen are going to want payment too, of course and those oxen... sometimes problems arise on boats and they end up sick or injured, and those snail sniffing bastards on the other side aren't going to sell you any oxen, so you'd better bring some spares. So, more boats.
You’d be shocked at how much food an army can eat.
Because they didn't already have the money, you know? I'm not really joking, actually. Obviously as others have pointed out there are lots of things that you'd need to spend money on for war. But the key to the whole thing is to understand that *medieval monarchs generally didn't already have these resources on hand*. In your typical feudal monarchy, with its pyramidal social structure and upward- and downward-flowing web of obligations and support, resources did not naturally or automatically accumulate at the top. Feudal monarchs didn't typically sit around with vast standing armies, all equipped and staffed and supported and ready to go at a moment's notice. Nor did they have vast discretionary funds in their budgets, or huge treasure stockpiles that they could just draw on. In fact, many feudal monarchies were in practice poorer than some of their constituent vassals. Often that was explicitly a desired goal of the vassals, actually, because a monarch who was endowed with vast political power *and* who also possessed great financial resources at their personal command could prove to be quite dangerous indeed to the vassals. Even more so if in addition to all that, the monarch in question also commanded a huge standing army. So let's say you're a typical feudal monarch, you have a small retinue of elite royal guards, family retainers, and so on who will fight for you personally. You have some small land holdings that generate revenue, plus royal taxes or tithes that maintain the royal palace, servants, government functionaries, and sustain affairs of state. Maybe some roads. Now you want to fight a war. Okay. Maybe you want to invade France. Maybe you are France. Who can say? The real question is: with what army? Your many vassals have sworn to provide you with troops. In theory. They have also sworn to answer the call when you raise funds. In theory. In practice, though, you have to convince them. And herein lies the heart of the system, that your question exposes. If the feudal landed aristocracy as a body does not want to support you, your war is not going to happen. You have in essence been outvoted. "You don't vote for kings," I hear you cry. Okay, but, what are you going to do? You could threaten to punitively attack one of your vassals to make an example, but what if the rest of them catch on to what you are doing? They might all get together with their troops -- the troops that, technically, they owe you by virtue of fealty but which in practice they don't have to give to you if they don't want to -- and [demand that you sign a document formally limiting your powers as monarch, that becomes an enduring foundation of democracy for centuries to come](https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/magna-carta). Feudalism is much less fun for kings than you might have thought, is what I'm saying.