The English Army

Well it's been a while since I've done a blog post and this is mainly due to me not doing much in the way of modelling lately for various reasons. To remedy this instead of waiting to finish off my current unit, which is taking a slightly different tack on my 100yw theme, I decided instead to do a retrospective look at my English force as it currently stands. 

It's still quite small, but I do have an equivalent force with the French as well, so I've not done too badly. These are all Perry Miniatures both plastic and metal and constitutes most of my current English force. There are several guns as well, but I'll do it all together another day.

There were no such things at this point as dedicated units of billman or such like, it was just a straight split between archers and men at arms. The English men at arms did of course have mounts, but would typically dismount in this period to fight. This may at first seems counter intuitive, but the English had worked out that a well defended infantry position could successfully defeat a seemingly superior force with Cavalry. This was demonstrated most famously at Agincourt, but was the same principle used in Crecy, Poitiers and Verneuil. When the English didn’t follow this doctrine or were unable to they suffered defeats as at Bauge and Patay.

It’s easy to see the English in this period as superior to the French, which in some ways they were, but this is a simplistic way of looking at it. Henry the V and in some ways Edward III were taking advantage of a country that either had serious political faultlines that could be used against it, or with Henry V France was in a state of outright civil war. It’s interesting that when the country unified  the tide against the English inevitably turned. This can be seen with Charles V in the earlier part of the war or post Orleans with Joan de Arc.

This is not to take away from the prowess that the English demonstrated in the above battles however, they did win out against often very superior armies so it was obviously a successful and novel tactic.  

The full English force - archers, men at arms in the centre and further mounted archers to the rear. There's also a mounted herald.

Close up of the English right, with archers and the herald in the rear.

Some of the men at arms. You'll notice that my Men at arms are done in the English style. There aren't many stylistic differences to what the French would have worn, but the Orle (a ring of crushed velvet around the helmet, as seen on the chap on the bottom right of the picture with the red polearm) for example was almost exclusively used by the English. They also tended to wear more plain or 'white armour', which would have typically been polished to a high shine at great expense (think 80% of the cost of the armour!).

The other men at arms, the banner is the Duke of Salisbury's in this instance.

The English left, which I've depicted as the Duke of Suffolk.

That will be it for now, next time I'll put my French up in their entirety if I haven't finished my current project.