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MEDIEVAL WARFARE Stirrup, Mounted Shock Combat, Feudalism, and Chivalry by Lynn White, Jr. Before the introduction of the stirrup, the seat of the rider was precarious. (3) Bit (4) and spurs (5) might help him to control his mount; the simple saddle (6) might confirm his seat; nevertheless, he was still much restricted in his methods of fighting. He was primarily a rapidly mobile bowman and hurler of javelins. Swordplay was limited because “without stirrups your slashing horseman, taking a good broadhanded swipe at his foe, had only to miss to find himself on the ground.” (7) As for the spear, before the invention of the stirrup it was wielded at the end of the arm and the blow was delivered with the strength of shoulder and biceps. (8) The stirrup made possible—although it did not demand—a vastly more effective mode of attack: now the rider could lay his lance at rest, held between the upper arm and the body, and make at his foe, delivering the blow not with his muscles but with the combined weight of himself and his charging stallion. The stirrup, by giving lateral support in addition to, the front and back support offered by pommel and cantle, effectively welded horse and rider into a single fighting unit capable of a violence without precedent. The fighter's hand no longer delivered the blow: it merely guided it. (9) The stirrup thus replaced human energy with animal power, and immensely increased the warrior's ability to damage his enemy. Immediately, without preparatory steps, it made possible mounted shock combat, a revolutionary new way of doing battle. What was the effect of the introduction of the stirrup in Europe? The historian of Frankish institutions too often recalls to the wearied mind Eliza on.the ice: hypothesis clutched to bosom, he leaps from suspect charter to ambiguous capitulary, the critics baying at his heels. So thin and so slippery of interpretation are the written remains from the Germanic kingdoms that one might expect that scholars exploring the sources of feudalism would have made every effort to supplernent the extant documents with the archaeological material which, in recent years, has begun so greatly to modify our view of the early Middle Ages. But this is not the case: the vast literature of ingenious controversy about feudal origins has been produced chiefly by legal and constitutional‑historians, and therefore is almost entirely a matter of textual exegesis. 'The first stage in the discussion culminated in 1887 with the publication of Heinrich Brunner's “Der Reiterdienst und die Anfange des Lehnwesens [Cavalry and the Beginnings of Feudalism].” (10) Brunner codified, synthesized, and extended the findings of his predecessors so brilliantly that his has become the classic theory of the inception of feudal society. According to Brunner, feudalism was essentially military (11), a type of social organization designed. to produce and support cavalry. The early Germans, including the Franks, had fought to some extent on horseback, but in proportion as agriculture displaced herding as the basis of their economy, the use of cavalry declined. The Franks in particular came to fight almost entirely on foot: indeed, their typical weapon, the francisca, was efficient only in the hands of infantry. Brunner believed that as late as 732 (12) Charles Martel's army which met the Saracens near Poitiers, was composed primarily of footmen who, in the famous words of the so‑called Isidorus Pacensis, “stand rigid as a wall and, like a belt of ice frozen solidly together, slay the Arabs, with the sword” (13) Yet in an account of the battle of the Dyle in 891, we are told that "the Franks are unused to fighting on foot.” (14) When did this change from infantry to cavalry take place among the Franks? Brunner worked back through the available evidence and concluded that the armies of Charlemagne and his successors were primarily mounted. In 758 Pipin changed the Saxon tribute from cattle to horses. (15) In 755 the Marchfield, the traditional muster of the Frankish army, was transferred to May, presumably because the number of cavalry had become so large that more forage was needed than was available in March., The military reform must therefore have occurred between the battle of Poitiers, dated by him in 732, and the year 755. Brunner then turned his,attention to the vast and ruthless confiscations of Church lands effected by Charles Martel. There is ample evidence that the great Mayor of the Palace seized these lands and distributed them to retainers in order to strengthen his armed forces. In 743 his son Carloman excused his own retention of these secularized estates “propter imminentia bella et persecutiones cetera rum gentium quae in circuitu nostro sunt...in adiutorium exercitus nostri,” (16) while Pope Zacharias accepted the deplorable situation “pro eo quod nunc tribulatio accidit Saracinorum, Saxonum vel Fresonum.” (17) Martel's diversion of a considerable part of the Church’s vast riches to military purposes therefore was contemporary with the shift of the focus of.the Frankish army from infantry to cavalry. No surviving document explicitly connects the two developments, (18) but in view of the great expense of maintaining war‑horses, Brunner concluded that they were in fact related. Martel had felt some urgent compulsion suddenly to increase the cavalry at his disposal. In the agricultural economy of eighth‑century Gaul, in which soil was the most important form of income‑bearing wealth and in which the tax‑collecting system was rudimentary, mounted warriors could only be maintained in large numbers by landed endowment. The estates of the Church were available for his purpose (19); these he seized and handed over to an enlarged body of followers on condition that they serve him on horseback. Failure to fulfil this military duty involved forfeiture of the endowment held under such obligation. The ancient custom of swearing allegiance to a leader (vassalage) was fused with the granting of an estate (benefice), and the result was feudalism. Protofeudal and. seigniorial elements had, of course, saturated the very fluid Celtic, Germanic, late Roman, and Merovingian societies; but it was the need for cavalry felt by the early Carolingians which precipitated and crystallized these anticipations to form medieval feudalism. Finally, Brunner tried to discover what military necessity, led to such sudden and drastic measures on Charles Martel's part. The northern enemies of the Frankish kingdom did not use cavalry extensively; the campaigns against the Avars were either too early or too late to account for the reform. But the Muslim invasion seemed to fit.the evidence.(20) Brunner believed that the Saracenic horde was mounted. While their charges had broken against the glacial line of the shield‑wall of the Frankish footmen at Poitiers, Martel had been unable quickly to follow up his victory by means of his slow‑moving infantry. Therefore he determined to create an adequate mounted force to be financed by confiscation.of ecclesiastical property. Thus, Brunner concluded, the crisis which generated feudalism, the event which explains its almost explosive (21) development towards the middle of the eighth century, was the Arab incursion. Brunner's synthesis has been the focal point of. all subsequent discussion of European feudal origins. It has stood up remarkably well against assaults from all directions. The chief attack has come from military historians who deny that the second quarter of the eighth century witnessed any decisive change in methods of fighting. However, as a British scholar has remarked, their arguments “are not a little bewildering, and seem to some extent mutually destructive.” (22) One party holds that the transition from infantry to cavalry began with the disintegration of. the Roman legion and was a centuries‑long process which merely reached completion. under Charlemagne. (24) The opposite sect. insists that the armies of Charlemagne were made up far less of cavalry than of infantry levies of Frankish freemen. (25) This latter view may be correctas regards numbers: indeed, footmen were never eliminated from medieval armies. On the contrary, as mounted shock combat developed, they continued to be essential, particularly as archers. (26) But no evidence has been produced to undermine Brunner's conclusion that under the early Carolingians the striking force of the Frankish army came rapidly and increasingly to consist of mounted feudal knights. As the Aachen regulations of 807 show (27), in theory Charlemagne's army was composed of two parts: first, the holders of benefices and their retinues; second, those who served as freemen, and not by reason of tenure. Charlemagne's edicts often mention the military service owed by all freemen, most of whom, for economic reasons, must have fought on foot. But we do not know to what extent such levies were actually called up for personal service in the army, whereas it is clear that Charlemagne did his best to extract some cavalry even from this class of poorer landowners by organizing them into groups according to the size of their holdings, each group to share the expenses of one fighter sent mounted to the muster. (28) Since jus normally lags behind factum, one would not expect a shift of emphasis from infantry to cavalry under Martel to be reflected in any formal renunciation by his grandson of a right to service which rested on centuries of precedent and which might conceivably be useful upon occasion. As regards Charlemagne's practice, however, it may be significant that the only extant military summons sent by him to a magnate of his realm, that issued to Abbot Fulrad of Vermandois and Lobbes between 804 and 811, speaks in detail of horsemen but does not indicate, that the abbot was expected to produce any footmen for war. (29) Far more dangerous to Brunner's theories is the insistence, mentioned above, that the age of cavalry begins not in the eighth but in the fourth century, or even earlier. The battle of Adrianople (A.D. 378), in which the Germanic horse was decisive in defeating the Roman legionaries, has often been considered, the turning‑point in military history between ancient and medieval times. In the words of Sir Charles Oman: “The Goth found that his stout lance and his good steed would carry him through the serried ranks of the Imperial infantry. He had become the arbiter of war, the lineal ancestor of all the knights of the Middle Ages, the inaugurator of that ascendancy of the horseman which was to endure for a thousand years.” (30) Careful examination of the events at Adrianople does not confirm such:generalization. (31) It appears that no great portion of the Visigothic host was mounted: although the Roman army was known to be near, the barbarian horse was on a foraging expedition when the Imperial forces marched to attack the German wagon fortress; moreover, the Romans drew up their line of battle in complete disregard of the possibility that the enemy cavalry might return to take part in the fray. One can only conclude that neither the Emperor Valens nor Fritigern, the Gothic commander, considered the horsemen an important element in the barbarian army. Valens arranged his infantry in the centre with cavalry on each wing. The right wing was to have opened the attack, but the infantry, irritable because of an 8‑mile march in the August heat, impetuously opened the combat, thus destroying Valens's tactical plans. At just that moment the Gothic horsemen, recalled by Fritigern, appeared without warning and rushed upon the Roman right flank from the side or perhaps even from the rear, rolling it up in confusion. Then a portion of the German cavalry swung around the Roman rear to attack the Imperial left wing, and the process was repeated, while a horde of barbarian footmen poured from the circle of wagons shooting arrows and hurling javelins, as did the horsemen, into the crush of legionaries. Clearly, the catastrophe at Adrianople did not prove the superiority of cavalry over infantry, The Gothic horsemen routed the Romans, already confused by their own indiscipline, not because of superior strength, but rather by effecting a surprise attack which amounted almost to ambush. The use of cavalry in the early Christian centuries demands much more careful investigation than it has received. Two contemporary developments somewhat increased the effectiveness of the mounted warrior. The more important was the saddle, which arrived in the West as a barbarian innovation in the first century after Christ (32) and which gradually replaced the older horse‑blanket and riding cushions. The saddle, with its rigid frame, although it did not add to a rider's lateral stability (a presupposition of mounted shock combat), nevertheless helped to prevent him from falling over his horse's tail. Secondly, a new type of mount, the heavy horse, ancestor of the medieval destrier and of the draught horse, likewise appeared in the West during the first Christian century. (33) Such a beast could carry a heavily armed soldier and might even itself be armoured. Probably it was the saddle and the heavy horse which had stimulated among Central Asian peoples earlier experiments in novel methods of cavalry warfare. Excavations near the Aral Sea have shown that in the sixth century before Christ the Massagets were developing a heavy cavalry, with fairly massive armour for both horses and riders, the latter being normally armed with bows, but sometimes with long lances. (34) From pictures (35) we know that these lances were held in both hands at the charge, and Valerius Flaccus (36) may indicate that the thrust was delivered by both man and mount. While no spear held at the end of the arms could have struck a blow comparable to that delivered by one held at rest under the upper arm, nevertheless for some circumstances the two‑handed lance was an improvement over the one‑handed spear: the evidence appears in pictures of two‑handed lances equipped with pennons. (37) The one-handed spear cou!d not often impale an enemy deeply enough to make extraction of the blade difficult; the two‑handed spear may occasionally have gone so deep as to resist withdrawal, thus disarming the successful warrior, to his own peril. The pennon, like the Mongol horsetail attached behind the blade of spears (38) was a device to prevent too deep penetration and ensure retraction. But those who imagine that the Sarmatian clibanarius was the model for the, medieval knight have overlooked two essential points, quite apart from the necessarily inferior impact of the two‑handed lance as compared with the lance held at rest. In the first place the two‑handed lance compelled the warrior to lay the reins on his horse's neck and to guide him solely by voice and pressure of the knees at the most critical moments of battle. Particularly if the horse were wounded, this must have been extraordinarily dangerous. In contrast, the medieval knight, with lance at rest, held the reins in his left hand (39) at the charge, and by means of a powerful and cruel bit he exerted a maximum of control over his mount. In the second place, the two‑handed lance could not be used in conjunction with a shield. This meant that while it was fairly effective against footmen, a battle between two groups of cavalry both armed with two‑handed lances would amount to general suicide. To the knight of feudal Europe, the shield on his left arm was as important as the lance under his right arm. Between them they provided the balance between offence and defence which was essential to mounted shockcombat and which is not found in the Central Asian experiments with the two‑handed lance. (40) What was going on in the heart of Asia doubtless stimulated the development, both in the Iranian and in the eastern Roman empires, of the heavy‑armed cataphract, but as Procopius's famous description of these warriors shows, they were essentially armoured bowmen, equipped likewise with swords, small shields, and at times with light one‑handed spears. (41) However, thus far none of Brunner's critics has produced adequate evidence of any comparable increase of mounted warfare in the Germanic kingdoms of the West before the middle of the eighth century. The retinues and bodyguards of kings and of great chieftains were habitually mounted, but even this, elite appears to have used the horse primarily for mobility and to have dismounted for combat. (42) So much emphasis has been. placed by Brunner's opponents (43) on the importance of cavalry in the Visigothic kingdom, that we are particularly fortunate to possess, from the pen of the eminent Spanish historian Claudio Sanchez‑Albornoz, a more detailed study of the question than is available for any other area in that age. He concludes that while there is ample evidence of a continuing tradition of military horsemanship in Spain from Celtiberian times onward, nevertheless there is no basis for believing that cavalry was the major arm of the Visigothic host. (44) Brunner's hypothesis, then, has survived the attacks of military historians regarding the use of cavalry by the Franks. But students of the history of institutions likewise tried to refute him, particularly in the early 1930s, by insisting that the union of benefice and vassalage is far older, than the eighth century, that the custom of requiring military service for the enjoyment of lands was not an innovation of the eighth century, and that, consequently, Charles Martel's secularization of Church lands played no decisive part in the development of feudalism. (45) However, the consensus in favour of Brunner eventually reached proportions rare in the world ofscholars. (46) As Carl Stephenson remarked: “Whether the military benefice was or was not an eighth‑century invention is a matter of secondary importance. Our chief interest is rather the wide extension of feudal tenure which came in the ensuing period.” (47) Even Sanchez‑Albornoz, who in his studies of Visigothic Spain has come closest to demonstrating an approximation of feudal relationships before the Carolingian era, is careful to call them 'proto‑feudal' and to insist that the real development of such institutions came in the Frankish realm of the eighth century. (48) Nor has the effort been successful to show (49), that the quantity of clerical lands seized and distributed to vassals by the early Carolingians was comparatively small. Lesnez judges them to have been very large; and indeed, Brunner may have, been too modest in asserting that the secularizations were less severe in Neustria than in Austria (50); vassals are found throughout Charlemagne's empire in considerable numbers. (51) By about 745 both monasteries and bishoprics were receiving a census in partial compensation for lost estates. (52) To carry through their great military reform, the early Carolingians needed vast tracts of lands. Their confiscations were so drastic as to redistribute a considerable portion of the wealth of their realm. Thus we arrive once more at the crucial problem in the study of feudal origins: why did Charles Martel and his immediate successors brave the wrath of the Church by seizing ecclesiastical properties to endow cavalry? What military circumstance impelled them to disregard the peril of clerical censure, the dictates of conventional morality? Brunner found his answer in the Saracenic invasion. He claimed that Martel realized that, despite the victory of Poitiers, the Franks would need an adequate cavalry to repel the mounted Muslim armies permanently. But was the battle of.Poitiers in fact so great a crisis? Were the Muslims considered by contemporaries to be the chief danger to the Frankish kingdom? One suspects that our present common judgement has been based less upon the records than upon the rhetoric with which Gibbon proposed to the horrified imagination of eighteenth‑century agnostics the spectacle of an Oxford engrossed in perusing the Koran, and of a Europe habituated to circumcision, had Charles's hammer struck less resoundingly. (53) Martel turned his attention to . Islam only after he had consolidated his realm. (54) The sole contemporary source connecting his military reforms with the Muslim incursions is Pope Zacharias's letter, already noted (55), referring to the “tribulatio Saracinorum, Saxonum vel Fresonum.” The opinions of immediate posterity as to the relative importance of these three foes is shown by the fact that when, under Louis the Pious, the walls of the palace at Ingelheim were decorated with murals of the deeds of great rulers, Charles Martel was depicted not at Poitiers but rather conquering the Frisians. (56) Indeed, having defeated the Muslims, Martel made little effort for several years to follow up his victory. This would indicate that the Islamic invasion was not an adequate motive for the reorganization of Frankish society to secure cavalry. Moreover, Brunner believed that the battle of Poitiers was fought in 732: not until 1955 did we learn that the correct date is 733. (57) But the first seizures of Church properties for distribution to vassals occurred in fact in 732 when Charles Martel took lands of the Bishop of Orleans and others so that 'honores eorum quosdam propriis usibus annecteret, quosdam vero suis satellitibus cumulare.” (58) Poitiers, therefore, cannot have inspired Charles's policy of confiscations for the improvement of his cavalry. His military reforms had begun a year earlier, although doubtless they had not yet greatly modified the structure of the Frankish forces when he met the Muslim invaders. And finally, was Brunner correct in assuming that the Spanish Saracens at Poitiers were fighting chiefly on horseback? Certainly by the early ninth century the Franks thought of them as "Mauri celeres gens equo fidens.” (59) But here again the exhaustive researches of Sanchez‑Albornoz into the Arabic sources have clarified the matter. He has shown that even twenty years after Martel's death the Spanish Muslims used cavalry only in small numbers: it was not until the second half of the eighth century that they too shifted the weight of their armies from footmen to mounted fighters. (60) Can it have been the Sons of the Prophet who imitated the Franks rather than the reverse? In any case it is now clear that the Muslim peril did not provoke Charles Martel's military reform and thus establish feudalism in Europe. Only one alternative explanation, of the seizure and distributionof the Church lands has been widely discussed. Roloff (61) suggests that the great Major palatii, himself a bastard and usurper, was trying to strengthen his political situation by largesse which would attract to his retinue most of the magnates of the realm. But Mangoldt‑Gaudlitz (62) cogently objects, first, that such drastic action, while undoubtedly it would build up Charles's secular following, would likewise risk the dangerous emnity of the Church, the one authority which might consent—and eventually did consent—to legitimatize the rule of his dynasty; second, that Martel, an experienced warrior—Isidorus Pacensis calls him “'ab ineunte actate belligerum et rei militaris expertum” (63)—would more probably be moved by military than by political considerations; and third, that the political situation of Martel's sons Carloman and Pipin was so firm that their immense new confiscations of clerical estates can best be explained on military grounds. But if, unlike Mangoldt‑Gaudlitz, we cannot accept Brunner's hypothesis of the Muslim invasion, what military development, or crisis in the 730s is adequate to account for such momentous events? The whole of Brunner's magnificent structure of hypotheses stands, save its keystone. We are faced, in the reigns of Martel, Carloman, and Pepin, with, an extraordinary drama which lacks motivation. A sudden and urgent demand for cavalry led the early Carolingians to reorganize their realm along feudal lines to enable it to support mounted fighters in much greater numbers than ever before. Yet the nature of the military exigency which brought about this, social revolution has eluded us. The answer to the puzzle is to be found not in the documents but in archaeology. It was first offered in 1913, at the end of a rambling footnote by a master of Germanic antiquities. Speaking of the social cleavages which resulted when the new and expensive method of fighting, on horseback led to the growth of a specialized aristocracy of mounted warriors, Friedrich Kaufmann remarked, almost as an afterthought: 'The new age is heralded in the eighth century by excavations of stirrups." The Origin and Diffusion of the Stirrup [The opening of this section, consisting in a highly technical discussion of evidence for the movement of the stirrup westward from its home the Far East, has been drastically reduced from more than ten pages of text to a few key passages. Those who wish to consider fully White’s careful argument on the should consult chapter 1 of Technology and Social Change in the Middle Ages.] Stirrups were unknown not only to the ancient Near East but to the Greeks and Romans as well. Literature is silent about them; the innumerable antique representations of riders lack them (64) and the objects presented by archaeologists as classical stirrups are either of doubtful identification or of questionable provenance. (65) Towards the end of the fourth century Vegetius, the last classical author to leave us a discussion of mounting horses, says nothing of them. (66) The rudimentary idea of the stirrup appeared in India in the late second century before Christ, as shown in sculpture at Sanchi, Pathaora, Bhaja, and Mathura: a loose surcingle behind which the rider's feet were tucked, and later a tiny stirrup for the big toe alone. (67) Since the big‑toe stirrup could not be used by shod riders, its diffusion was blocked towards the colder, climates of the north. The foot‑stirrup presumably is a Chinese invention. It appears in.China as a result of the great wave of Buddhist missionary activity which swept through Afghanistan and Turkestan to the Middle Kingdom, carrying so many elements of Indic culture. (68) It was known in Hunan by the first decades of the fifth century at latest, and the earliest mention of the stirrup in Chinese literature, in A.D. 477, indicates that it was then in common use. (69) Chinese representations of stirrups are extant from A.D. 523 (70), 529 (71), 551 (72),554 (73), 636 (74), and 683 (75), while others, which cannot be so exactly dated may be ascribed to the same period. (76) From China the stirrup spread to Korea by the fifth century (77), and to Japan where it was known by the middle of the sixth century at latest. (78) Since we know that by the fifth century of our era the idea of the stirrup had spread from India through the Khyber Pass to China along the ancient road of the silk trade, we might assume that some of the Central Asian peoples would have begun to use it. Iran, with all of its Central Asian connexions, was not familiar with the stirrup until the end of the seventh century...Unfortunately, the Muslim aversion towards depicting men and animals descended on Iran in A.D. 641 and deprived us of visual records for many generations thereafter. Philology and literature, however, offer pertinent evidence. Pelliot has pointed out, that since the Persians use the Arabic word rikab for stirrup, the stirrup probably reached Persia in the later seventh or early eighth centuries when the ruling.and fighting class in Iran was Arabic‑speaking. Muslim authors have left us an exact and consistent account of the stirrup's introduction, at least in metallic form, thirty‑three years after 'Ali's assassination [661 A.D.]. What shall we think of the insistence of both [Arab historians] al‑Jibiz and al Mubarrad that wooden or leather stirrups considerably antedated iron stirrups? Such a view still pervades the literature on the history of horsemanship (79), but it is merely logical or schematic, and has no adequate basis either in archaeology or in the extant representations of horse‑trappings...Unless they were stoutly reinforced, wooden stirrups made by techniques available to the ancients would have been insufficiently strong. It is as hard to believe that metalworking peoples would for long or generally use rope, leather, or wooden stirrups without making the substitution of bronze or iron as it would be to hold that non‑metallic stirrups never existed merely because they have not survived to be excavated....The Arabs [probably] entered Iran [in 641 A.D.]without the stirrup for their horses. We may conclude that the Muslims first appropriated it in A.D. 694 in Persia, whither it must recently have come from Turkestan, since it had been unknown in the Sassanian realm. 0ne must conclude that the stirrup was diffused to the West through Central Asia. In view of the constant contact of the Byzantines with the peoples of the steppes and the considerable influence of these latter upon Byzantine military methods (80), it is probable that Constantinople received the stirrup shortly after it spread across the great plains of Asia to the region north of the Black Sea. The first Byzantine indication of it appears in a Strategikon traditionally ascribed to the Emperor Maurice (582‑602), which twice speaks of “iron stirrups.” (83) Even if the attribution of this military treatise had never been challenged on other grounds, the evidence of the introduction of the stirrup to Iran would make us suspicious of it. Considering the perpetual struggles of the Eastern Empire first with the Sassanians and then with the Caliphate, is it imaginable that these latter would have remained ignorant of the stirrup, for a century if in fact it had been standard.equipment for the Byzantine cataphract since about 6oo? [There is a] tendency is to push the arrival of the stirrup in the Danubian basin later and later into the seventh century. (84) For the Merovingian period, literary sources are silent about stirrups. (85) Evidence that the Germans...did not have stirrups in the second half of the seventh century is provided by their absence from the very complete horse equipment coming from the grave of an Alemanic chieftain of that period found in Alsace. (86) Stirrups first appeared in the West some time in the early eighth century. (87) Neither in Byzantium nor in the West does art provide us with significant material on the diffusion of the stirrup.. Throughout the early Middle Ages the artists of all Christendom, with rare exceptions, were little concerned with depicting the observable objects of the world around them. Naturalism had small place in the conscious methods of the craftsmen of that day‑they ‑were dedicated to elaborating traditional, and ‑often inherited classical, patterns having symbolic value. (88) As a result, iconography lagged behind actuality, and innovations were seldom reflected in objects of art until their novelty had worn off and they were taken for granted. From the writings of the Emperor Leo V1 (886‑911), we know that by that time stirrups were standard equipment in the Byzantine cavalry, as indeed they had been some five generations earlier if we accept the very probable ascription of the Strategikon of the Pseudo-Maurice to the early eighth century. (89) [End of the highly abbreviated section.] It is archaeology...and not art history which is decisive for the dating of the arrival of the stirrup in western Europe. And that date may be placed in the first part of the eighth century that is, in the time of Charles Martel. However, even if the Benedictine missionaries had worked a bit faster in extinguishing horse‑burials, and had thus‑deprived us of the Spade's testimony of the arrival of the stirrup in Germanic lands, we could have discovered by other means that it must have reached the Franks in the early eighth century by other means. At that moment the verbs insilire and desilire, formerly used for getting on and off horses (90) began to be replaced by scandere equos and descender (91) showing that leaping was replaced by stepping when one mounted or dismounted. But a more explicit indication of the drastic shift from infantry to the new mode of mounted shock combat is the complete change in Frankish: weapon's which took place at that time. The francisca, the distinctively Frankish battle‑axe, and the ango, or barbed javefin, both infantry weapons, disappear in the eighth century, while the old spatha lengthens into a longsword for horsemen. (92) Moreover, from the ninth century onward, these Germanic longswords were greatly prized by both Byzantines and Saracens. (93) But above all, in the early decades of the eighth century there comes into wide,use a spear having a heavy stock and spurs below the blade (94) to prevent too deep‑penetration of the victim which might result in difficulty in withdrawing the weapon. This quickly developed into the typical Carolingian wing‑spear, with a prominent cross‑piece. (95) Such lances were used, if we may believe the miniatures, both by infantry and cavalry. But their novel design is intelligible in terms of the new style of mounted shock combat with lance at rest. As we have already noted (96), a footman or an unstirrupped rider wielding the lance at the end of his arm could ‑seldom have impaled an adversary so deeply that his weapon would get stuck. On the other hand, a stirrupped horseman with lance at rest delivering the stroke with the full momentum of his own body and that of his horse must often have done so, unless his spear were fitted, with some baffle behind the blade. The generalization of the wing‑spear in itself is evidence that under CharlesMartel and his sons the meaning of the stirrup for shock combat was being realized. (97) The historical record is replete with inventions which have remained dormant in a society (98) until at last—usually for reasons which remain mysterious—they 'awaken' and become active elements in the shaping of a culture to which they are not entirely novel. It is conceivable that Charles Martel, or his military advisers, may have realized the potential of the stirrup after it had been known to the Franks for some decades. However, the present state of our information indicates that it was in fact a new arrival when he used it as the technological basis of his military reforms.
As our understanding of the history of
technology increases, it becomes clear that a new device merely opens a
door; it does not compel one to enter. The acceptance or rejection of an
invention, or the extent to which its implications are realized if it is
accepted, depends quite as much upon the condition of a society, and
upon the imagination of its leaders, as upon the nature of the
technological item itself. As we shall. see, the Anglo‑Saxons used the
stirrup, but did not comprehend it; and for this they paid a fearful
price. While semi‑feudal relationships and institutions had long been
scattered thickly over the civilized world, it was the Franks
alone—presumably led by Charles Martel's genius—who fully grasped the
possibilities inherent in the stirrup and created in terms of it a new
type of warfare supported by a novel structure of society which we call
feudalism. Mounted Shock Combat and the Temper of Feudal Life The feudal class of the European Middle Ages existed to be armed horsemen, cavaliers fighting in a particular manner which was made possible by the stirrup. This élite created a secular culture closely related to its style of fighting and vigorously paralleling the ecclesiastical culture of the Church. (99) Feudal institutions, the knightly class, and chivalric culture altered, waxed and waned; but for a thousand years they bore the marks of their birth from the new military technology of the eighth century. While money had by no means gone out of circulation in the Frankish realm, the West of the eighth century was closer to a barter economy than was either contemporary Byzantium or Islam. (100) Moreover, the bureaucracy of the Carolingian kingdom was so slender that the collection of taxes by, the central government was difficult. Land was the fundamental form of riches. When they decided that it was essential to secure cavalry to fight in the new and very expensive manner, Charles Martel and his heirs took the only possible action in seizing Church lands, and distributing them to vassals on condition of knight's service in the Frankish host. (101) Fighting in the new manner involved large expenditures. Horses were costly, and, armour was growing heavier to meet the new violence of mounted shock combat. In 761, a certain Isanhard sold his ancestral lands and a slave for a horse and a sword. (102) In general, military equiprnent for one man seems to have cost about twenty oxen (103) or the plough‑teams of at least ten peasant families. But horses get killed: a knight needed remounts to be effective; and his squire should be adequately mounted. And horses eat large quantities of grain, an important matter in an age of more slender agricultural production than ours. Although in the Frankish realm the right and duty to bear arms rested on all free men regardless of economic conditions (104), naturally the great majority could afford to come to muster only on foot; equipped with relatively inexpensive weapons and armour. (105) As has been mentioned, even from this group Charlemagne tried to raise horsemen (106) by commanding that the less prosperous freemen should band together, according to the size of their lands, to equip one of their number and send him to the wars.(106) Such an arrangement would be hard to administer, and it did not survive the confusion of the later ninth century. (107) But inherent in this device was the recognition that if the new technology of warfare were to be developed consistently, military service must become a matter of class. Those economically unable to fight on horseback suffered from a social infirmity which shortly became a legal inferiority. In 808 the infelicitous wording of a capitulary De exercitu promovendo distinguishes “liber” from “pauperes” 108): the expression is legally inexact, but it points to the time when freedom was to become largely a matter of property. Two capitularies of 825 show how rapidly concepts were moving. One separates “liberi” from “mediocres quippe liberi qui non possunt per se hostem facere”; while the other refers to those latter as “liberi secundi ordinis.” (109) With the collapse of the Frankish empire, the feudality which the Carolingians had deliberately created, in terms of the new military method of mounted shock combat, to be the backbone of their army became the governing as well as the fighting élite. The old levy of freemen (although not all infantry) vanished, and a gulf appeared between a warrior aristocracy and the mass of peasants. By about the year 1000, miles had ceased to mean “soldier” and had become “knight.” (110) The feudal aristocrat might, indeed, be a ruler, but this was incidental to his being a warrior. A student of medieval poetry has remarked that the “essential note of true knighthood is to put down wrong‑doers‑not a magistracy but a substitute or supplement for magistracy.” (111) The image of the cavalier reflected in his literature shows that his self‑respect was based primarily on two ideal virtues; loyalty to his liege (after the troubadours had done their work, to his lady as well), and prowess in combat. Both loiautee [loyalty] and proesce [prowess] were integral to feudal origins. The members of the feudal class held their lands and enjoyed their status by reason of loyalty in regard to their obligation of knight’s service. Gradually the concept was broadened to include other “aids”, notably assisting at the court of one's liege lord. But the original and basic knight’s service was mounted shock combat. When the central royal authority evaporated during the later ninth century, subinfeudation assured that the concept of feudal loyalty remained vigorous. Feudal tenures quickly became hereditary, but they could be inherited only by one able to fulfil the duty of knight’s service. Elaborate rules for the wardship of minors, and regulations requiring widows and heiresses to marry, guarded this essential requirement for enfiefment. The chivalric class never repudiated the original condition of its existence: that it was endowed to fight, and that anyone who could not or would not meet his military obligations forfeited his endowment. The duty of knight's service is the key to feudal institutions. It is “the touch stone of feudalism, for through it all else was drawn into focus; and its acceptance as the determining principle of land tenure involved a social revolution.” (112) The feudal sense that the enjoyment of wealth is inseparable from public responsibility chiefly distinguishes medieval ideas of ownership from both classical and modern. The vassal class created by the military mutation of the eighth century became for generations the ruling element of European society, but through all subsequent chaos, and despite abuses, it never lost completely its sense of noblesse oblige, even when a new and rival class of burghers revived the Roman notion, of the unconditional and socially irresponsible possession of property. The second element in a knight's pride, prowess, was inherent in the adequate performance of his service. Quite apart from the cost of arms and horses, the new mode of fighting necessarily destroyed the old Germanic idea that every freeman was a soldier. Mounted shock combat was not a business for part‑time warriors: one had to be a skilled professional, the product of a long technical training, and in excellent physical condition. Towards the middle of the ninth century Hrabanus Maurus quotes a Frankish,:proverb that to learn to fight like a knight one must start at puberty. Even more significant is Hrabanus's indication that in his time the households of great lords had already become schools in which boys were trained in the chivalric arts, probably including practice in the tilt‑yard. (113) Stenton has remarked that “the apprenticeship which preceded knighthood is the. most significant fact in the organization of feudal society.” (114) It welded together a self‑conscious, cosmopolitan military caste, aware of its solidarity and proud of its traditions, an essential part of which was great rivalry among knights in feats of arms. When a youth was at last admitted to the guild of knights (115), he was. professionally committed to slaying dragons. The new mode of combat, with its high mobility and fearful impact, opened fresh fields for deeds of individual prowess. The old days were gone of standing in, formation in the shield‑wall and thrusting and hacking. While in the feudal age major battles were often planned carefully, and executed with admirable discipline by squadrons of knights (116), the emotional life of the chivalric warrior was highly individualized. Long passages of the chansons de geste are devoted to blow‑by‑blow accounts of mighty encounters which can be appreciated only if one pictures the technical interests of the feudal audience. And, at last, in Froissart's Chronicle, the chivalric world produced a philosophy of history which announced the recording of great feats of arms for the edification of posterity to be the chief duty of Clio. (117) Keeping physically fit and dexterous in the use, of arms in shock combat were.the presuppositions of ability to display both loyalty to the liege and prowess in battle. To that end the chivalric stratum developed and elaborated a deadly and completely realistic game of war‑the tournament. In 842 there was a formidable passage at arms near Strassburg in the presence of Charles the Bald. and Louis the German, and:evidently at that time such events were not exceptional. (118) However, concrete evidence about such knightly free‑for‑alls is scanty until the twelfth century. Thereafter they “formed the pastime of the higher class up to the Thirty Years War.” (119) As the violence of shock combat increased, the armourer's skill tried to meet it by building heavier and heavier defences for the knight. Increasingly he became unrecognizable beneath his carapace, and means of identification had to be developed. (120) In the Bayeux Tapestry of the late eleventh century the pennons are more individualized than the shields. (121) By the early twelfth century, however, not only armorial devices but hereditary arm were coming into use in France, England, and Germany. (122) It is not playing tricks with semantics to insist that the feudal knight himself, and his society, knew who he was in terms of his arms. The exigencies of mounted shock combat, as invented by the Franks of the eighth century, had formed both his personality and his world. Wherever the Carolingian realm extended its vast borders, it took its mode of fighting, its feudal institutions, and the seeds of chivalry. In Italy, for example, although anticipations of feudal relationships can be discovered in the Lombard kingdom, the feudal combination of vassalage and benefice was introduced by Charlemagne's conquests of the late eighth century. But even where Frankish institutions and attitudes did not penetrate, their mode of fighting could not be disregarded. In Byzantium, the new military technology of the Franks was making itself felt by the time of Nicephoras II Phocas (963‑69) who, because of the great increase in the cost, of arms, felt compelled to raise the value of the inalienable minimum of a military holding from four to twelve pounds of gold. (123) Here, as in the West, military change on such.a. scale involved profound social change. As Ostrogorsky remarks, it “'must certainly have meant that theByzantine army would 'henceforth be composed of a different social class. The, heavily armed soldiers of Nicephoras ... could no longer be the old peasant militia.” (124) Like their Germanic neighbours, the Greeks increased their emphasis on cavalry to the point where, in the tenth century, the garrison of. Constantinople consisted of four regiments of horse as compared with one of infantry. (125) Even the forms and uses of Byzantine arms came to be copied from the West. The earliest Frankish pictures of the lance held at rest come from the end of the ninth century (126); the first Byzantine representations are of the tenth to eleventh centuries (127) By about the year 1000 the demands of mounted shock combat had led the Franks to modify the older circular or oval shield by lengthening it to a pointed kite shape which gave greater, protection to the knight's left leg. (128) A century later this is found in Constantinople. (129) Moreover, the cross‑bow, which the West had invented, or revived, or borrowed from China in the later tenth century as an “anti‑tank gun” to penetrate the massive new armour (130), was a complete novelty to Anna Comnena in Byzantium at the time of the First Cxusade. (131) Nor was Islam exempt, even before the First Crusade, from the contagion of Frankish military ideas,. In 1087, when Armenian architects built the Bab an‑Nasr, one of the three great gates of Cairo, it was decorated with a frieze of shields, some round, but some rounded above and pointed below such as we see the:Normans carrying in the Bayeux Tapestry. (132) The Arabic word for such pointed shields, tariqa, is derived from the French targe. (133) By Saladin's day, the Muslims were using several kinds of cross‑bows (134); they employed the new method of shock combat (134); and their word for the heavy lance, quntariya, was either of Greek or Romanic derivation. (135) They much admired the brilliance of the Christian painted shields (136), and there can be little doubt that the basic concept of Saracenic heraldry is a reflection of the Frankish. By the later thirteenth century the tournament: on the Western pattern was practised by the Muslim chivalry of Syria and Egypt. (137) Perhaps most significant is the admiration with which al‑Herewi (d. A.D. 1211) describes the carefully coordinated battle tactics of the Franks, and the way cavalry and infantry gave mutual support. (138) If such was the situation in the Levant, we should expect even greater Frankish influence upon Spanish Islam. We have already noted (139) that the Moors developed their emphasis on cavalry a generation after Charles Martel's reform, and were possibly inspired by it. In any case by the thirteenth century the knights of the Reconquista were setting the styles for their Saracenic adversaries. Ibn Sa'id tells us that “Very often the Andalusian princes and warriors take the neighbouring Christians as models for their equipment. Their arms are identical, likewise their surcoats of scarlet or other stuff, their pennons, their saddles. Similar also is their mode of fighting with bucklers and long lances for the charge. They use neither the mace nor the.bow of the Arabs, but they employ Frankish crossbows for sieges and arm infantry with them for their encounters with the enemy.” (140) Since the Berbers across the Strait of Gibraltar were not so often in contact with Christian arms, Ibn Sa’id notes that they could use light equipment, whereas the Christian peril compelled the Spanish Muslim warriors to be “weighed down by the burden of buckler, long thick lance and coat of mail, and they cannot move easily. Consequently, their one aim is to stick solidly to the saddle and to form with the horse a veritable iron‑clad whole. (141) The most spectacular extension, however, of the Frankish military technology, together with all its social and cultural concomitants, was the Norman conquest of England. The Anglo~Saxons were acquainted with the stirrup but did not sufficiently modify their methods of warfare in terms of it. In Anglo‑Saxon England there were seigniorial elements, as there had been in Merovingian Gaul; but there was little tendency towards feudalism or the development of an élite of mounted warriors. (142) Harold, his thegns and housecarls, rode stirrupped horses: at the battle of Stamford Bridge King Harold Hardrada of Norway said of him 'That was a little man, but he sat firmly in his stirrups.” (143) However, when they reached Hastings they dismounted, to do battle on foot, in the old Germanic shieldwall (144), with which Charles Martel had defeated the Saracens at Poitiers. At Hastings (145) the Anglo‑Saxons had the advantage of position on the hill of Senlac; they probably outnumbered the Normans; they had the psychological strength of fighting to repel invaders of their homeland., Yet the outcome was certain: this was a conflict between the military methods of the seventh century and those of the eleventh century. Harold fought without cavalry and had few archers. Even the English shields were obsolete: the Bayeux Tapestry shows us that while the royal bodyguard fought with kite‑shaped shields—probably a result of Edward the Confessor's continental education—most of the Anglo‑Saxons were equipped with round or oval shields. (146) From the beginning William held. the initiative with his bowmen and cavalry, and the English could do nothing but stand and resist a mobile striking power which at last proved irresistible. When William had won his.victory and the crown of England, he rapidly modernized, i.e. feudalized, his new kingdom. Naturally he preserved and incorporated into the Anglo‑Norman order whatever institutions of the Anglo‑Saxon régime suited his purpose; but innovation was more evident than continuity. Just as the Carolingians 300 years earlier had deliberately systematized and disciplined the long‑established tendencies towards seigniority in Frankish society in order to strengthen their position, so William the Conqueror used the fully developed feudal organization of the eleventh century to establish the most powerfiil European state of his generation. (147) Indeed, the England of the later eleventh century furnishes the classic example in European history of the disruption of a social order by the sudden introduction of an alien military technology. The Norman Conquest is likewise the Norman Revolution. But it was merely the spread across the Channel of a revolution which had been accomplished by stages on the Continent during the preceding ten generations. Few inventions have been so simple as the stirrup, but few have had so catalytic an influence on history. The requirements of the new mode of warfare which it made possible found expression in a new form of western European society dominated by an aristocracy of warriors endowed with land so that they might fight in a new and highly specialized way. Inevitably this nobility developed cultural forms and patterns of thought and emotion in harmony with its style of mounted shock combat and its social posture; as Denholm‑Young has said “it is impossible to be chivalrous without a horse.” (148) The Man on Horseback, as we have known him during the past millennium, was made possible by the stirrup, which joined man and steed into a fighting organism. Antiquity imagined the Centaur; the early Middle Ages made him the master of Europe.
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