Medieval and Modern Command and Control

War & Society
ISSN: 0729-2473 (Print) 2042-4345 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ywar20
2
Medieval and Modern C : Command and Control
in the Field during Western Europe’s Long Twelfth
Century (1095–1225)
Laurence W. Marvin
2
To cite this article: Laurence W. Marvin (2016) Medieval and Modern C : Command and
Control in the Field during Western Europe’s Long Twelfth Century (1095–1225), War & Society,
35:3, 152-179, DOI: 10.1080/07292473.2016.1196921
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War & Society, Vol. 35 No. 3, August, 2016, 152–179
Medieval and Modern C2: Command

and Control in the Field during Western
Downloaded by [National Pingtung University of Science and Technology] at 12:56 15 July 2016
Europe’s Long Twelfth Century

(1095–1225)
Laurence W. Marvin
History Department, Evans School of Humanities, Berry College, Mt. Berry,
GA, USA
‘Command and control’ has become ever more important in the postmodern
military world even though there is no universal consensus among contemporary
militaries on what ‘command and control’ encompasses. Military histories,
manuals and handbooks of the Anglo-American world concede that classical
armies and leaders understood the concepts but dismiss eras like the long
twelfth century entirely or present them with a lack of understanding or
context. Why is this? This can be partially answered through the following
factors: (1) the nature of ancient vs. medieval source material; (2) perceived
lack of professionalism in medieval armies; (3) the existence of discrete tactical
formations in the ancient world but not medieval; (4) the perceived existence
of a professional officer class or political career in the ancient world but not the
medieval; and (5) the nature of ancient and medieval authority and strategic,
operational and tactical objectives. Twelfth-century commanders exhibited
command and control although they faced different challenges compared to
their ancient or modern counterparts.
KEYWORDS: command and control, twelfth century, professionalism, strategy,

authority, historiography.
The concept of ‘command and control’ has become ever more intricate since the 1980s
even though no universal consensus exists on what it really means. In the Anglo-American
world, the idea grew from ‘command’, to ‘command and control’, or ‘C2’, ‘command,
control and communications’, or ‘C3’, ‘command, control, communications, and com-
puters’, or ‘C4’, and ‘command, control, communications, computers, intelligence’ or
© 2016 School of Humanities & Social Sciences, DOI 10.1080/07292473.2016.1196921

The University of New South wales
MEDIEVAL AND MODERN C2 153
‘C4(I)’.1 One editor, underwhelmed by the way writers kept adding numbers and letters to
the ‘C’, wrote a tongue-in-cheek but accurate editorial coining the term C27E, suggesting
that the concept could be strung out ad infinitum.2 I propose to examine command and
control as ‘C2’, although ‘C’ by itself or the even more old-fashioned term ‘generalship’
would work equally well.3
The militaries of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia all define
‘command’ slightly differently.4 Other definitions include the ‘authoritative and respon-
sible expression of creative human will for the attainment of a mission’.5 Command and
leadership are related but defined slightly differently.6 Command is about managerial
decisions and the ‘effective use of military force’ while leadership concerns ‘inspiration
and motivation’.7 As for ‘control’, the concept appears to be much more recent, dating
1 K. F. A. Openchowski, ‘The Role and Location of the Commander,’ Military Review, 57 (1977), 12–19, esp.
12–13; R. A. Beaumont, ‘Command Method: A Gap in Military Historiography’, Naval War College Review (Winter,
1979), 61–73, esp. 61; G. D. Sheffield, ‘Introduction: Command, Leadership and the Anglo-American Experience’, in
Leadership and Command. The Anglo-American Military Experience Since 1861 (London: Brasseys, 1997), 1–25, esp.
1; G. D. Foster, ‘Contemporary C2 Theory and Research: The Failed Quest for a Philosophy of Command’, Defense
Analysis 4:3 (1988), 201–228, esp. 202–203; T. P. Coakley, Command and Control for War and Peace (Washington,
DC: National Defense University Press, 1992), 9–10; R. Pigeau and C. McCann, ‘Re-Conceptualizing Command and
Control’, Canadian Military Journal (Spring 2002), 53–64, esp. 53.
2 G. Todd, ‘C1 Catharsis,’ Army (Feb 1986), 14. The ‘E’ of C27E stands for ‘etc.’, indicating endless additional
concepts could be tacked on. This editorial excellently sums up how a useful concept can be rendered useless.
3 J. F. C. Fuller, Generalship. Its Diseases and Their Cure. A Study of the Personal Factor in Command (Harrisburg,
PA: Military Service Publishing, 1936); J. Beeler, ‘Towards A Re-Evaluation of Medieval English Generalship’, Journal
of British Studies 3 (1963), 1–10, esp. 2; J. Gillingham, ‘Richard I and the Science of War in the Middle Ages,’ in War
and Government in the Middle Ages, ed. J. Gillingham and J. C. Holt (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1984), 78–91, esp.
79; ‘William the Bastard at War’, in Studies in Medieval History presented to R. Allen Brown, ed. C. Harper-Bill et
al. (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1989), 41–158, esp. 142–143; M. C. Meigs, ‘Generalship: Qualities, Instincts,
and Character’, Parameters 31.2 (2001), 4–17.
4 Mission Command, ADP 6-0 (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, May 2012), 5; Mission Command, ADRP
6-0 (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, May 2012), 2–5. According to the most current US Army doctrinal
publications, command is an art defined as, ‘the authority that a commander in the armed forces lawfully exercises
over subordinates by virtue of rank or assignment’. The US Marine Corps defines ‘commander’ in its Marine Corps
Supplement to the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms MCRP 5–12C (Washington,
DC: Department of the Navy, 2011), 11–15, as ‘One who is properly appointed to command an organization, or who
under applicable provisions of laws, regulations, or orders succeeds to such command due to transfer, incapacity,
death, or absence of the previous commanding officer’. UK Army Doctrine Publications: Operations, (2010), 6–10;
Canadian Military Doctrine CFJP 01 (Ottawa, Ontario: Joint Doctrine Branch, 2009), 5–2 and Operations CFJP 3.0
(Ottawa, Ontario: Joint Doctrine Branch, 2010), 3–1; Australian Defence Doctrine Publication: Command and Control
ADDP 00.1 (Canberra: Australian Defence Headquarters, 2009), 1–2. The British: ‘Command is the authority vested
in an individual for the direction, coordination, and control of military forces’. Canadian: ‘… formally delegated
authority and is the authority vested in an individual of the armed forces for the direction, coordination, and control
of military forces’. Australian: ‘The authority which a commander in the military service lawfully exercises over
subordinates by virtue of rank or assignment.’
5 R. Pigeau and C. McCann, ‘Redefining Command and Control’, in The Human in Command: Exploring the
Modern Military Experience, ed. C. McCann and R. Pigeau (New York: Kluwer Academic, 2000), 163–184, esp.
164; ‘What is a Commander’, in Generalship and the Art of the Admiral. Perspectives on Canadian Senior Military
Leadership, ed. by B. Horn and S. J. Harris (St. Catherine’s, Ontario: Vanwell Publishing, 2001), 79–104, esp. 91.
These co-authors define ‘commander’ as ‘a position/person combination lying on the balanced command envelope
with special powers to (1) enforce discipline and (2) put military members in harm’s way’.
6 ADP 6-22 Army Leadership (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, August, 2012), 1, ADRP 6-22 Army
Leadership (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, August, 2012), 1. According to the US Army, leadership is
not an art but ‘the process of influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation to accomplish the
mission and improve the organization’.
7 Sheffield, ‘Introduction: Command, Leadership’, 1.
154 Laurence W. Marvin
only from the second half of the twentieth century.8 The US Army considers ‘control’
not an art like command but a ‘science’.9 Or, alternatively, control is ‘the application
of structure and process for the purpose of bounding the mission’s problem space’.10
The variety and quantity of writings on ‘command and control’ as a topic, title or
doctrine is immense. A recent study has divided this diverse field into three catego-
ries: (1) works on the ‘great captains’ which incorporate much historical material; (2)
‘social-science’ treatments centred around leadership and management studies that use
occasional historical material; and (3) technological discussions on ‘information gath-
ering, analysis, and dissemination’, which uses little historical material.11 This article
makes a contribution to the first category by examining reasons why authors continue
to mine the ancient world for exemplars of command and control in dealing with field
(as opposed to siege) warfare but overlook an era much better documented than the
classical world: a period of time increasingly referred to as the ‘long twelfth-century’.12
These can be divided into five observations: (1) the nature, not quantity of ancient vs.
medieval source material; (2) perceived lack of professionalism in medieval armies; (3)
the existence of discrete tactical formations in the ancient world but not medieval; (4)
the perceived existence of a professional officer class or political career in the ancient
world but not the medieval; and (5) the nature of ancient and medieval authority and
strategic, operational and tactical objectives.
Military histories, manuals and handbooks of the Anglo-American world spill a lot
of ink on the universal, timeless nature of command and leadership as well as touting
how ‘great captains’ throughout history commanded their armies. In a tradition stretch-
ing back at least into the nineteenth century, treatments on command or related topics
frequently misunderstand or dismiss the European Middle Ages entirely.13 These works
typically assume that some ancient leaders understood the concepts of command and
control even if they did not have formal definitions for them. Comparative studies in
command or leadership draw freely and reverently from ancient examples for the mod-
ern commander to ponder, emulate or imitate but either ignore the Middle Ages or only
8 Pigeau and McCann, ‘Re-Conceptualizing, 63 n1. The authors suggest that the idea of control only arose in the
computer era, i.e. from the 1960s.
9 ADP 6-0, 7, ADRP 6-0, 2–12. The US Army defines it as ‘the regulation of forces and warfighting functions to
accomplish the mission in accordance with the commander’s intent’. The Marine Corps Supplement, II 15 adds: ‘The
means by which a commander recognizes what needs to be done and see [sic] to it that appropriate actions are taken’.
10 Pigeau and McCann, ‘Redefining’, 164.
11 E. Shamir, Transforming Command. The Pursuit of Mission Command in the U.S., British, and Israeli Armies
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 9–10.
12 T. N. Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century. Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), ix; T. F. X. Noble and J. Van Engen (eds.), European Transformations.
The Long Twelfth Century (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2012), 1–9; J. D. Cotts, Europe’s Long Twelfth-
Century. Order, Anxiety, and Adaptation, 1095–1229 (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013), ix, 10–12.
13 T. A. Dodge, Great Captains. A Course of Six Lectures Showing the Influence on the art of War of the Campaigns of
Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick and Napoleon (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin,
1889), x, 108–109. Dodge said ‘Gustavus was the first to rescue methodical war from the oblivion of the Middle Ages’,
and ‘From the time of Caesar, there was a gradual decline in the conduct of war, which he had so highly illustrated,
and there is little, from his age, to the invention of gunpowder, which has any bearing of value on the art to-day’.
mention this 1000-year period tangentially.14 Long-view works on command or lists of

the ‘great captains’ written since the nineteenth century tend to exclude commanders
who lived after Constantine and before Maurice of Nassau beyond occasional nods to
Charlemagne and Genghis Khan.15 Even the most eloquently stated and useful ideas
about the historical context of command, Martin Van Creveld’s classic Command in
War and John Keegan’s influential The Mask of Command, understudy or ignore the
medieval period.16 Keegan, for example, includes one chapter on Alexander the Great
before racing ahead to the Duke of Wellington, then slowing down chronologically for
chapters on US Grant and Adolf Hitler. More recently, Victor Davis Hanson has done the
same thing as Keegan in his two examinations of command and commanders: bypassed
the Western Middle Ages.17
Many other scholars have observed the tradition. In a string of thoughtful volumes on
grand strategy, strategy, military effectiveness and the utility of history for modern mili-
tary commanders and policy-makers, Williamson Murray and his contributors avoided
talking about the Middle Ages from 1994 until 2014.18 Yet most of these works, including
14 Openchowski, ‘Role and Location’, 12–13; J. J. McGrath, Crossing the Line of Departure. Battle Command on the
Move. A Historical Perspective (Fort Leavenworth: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2006), 2–7; Beaumont, ‘Command
Method: A Gap in Military Historiography’, 61–73; C. Kolenda (ed.), Leadership: The Warrior’s Art (Carlisle: Army
War College Foundation Press, 2001), xi–xii, 3. Openchowski mentions the Greeks and Romans but writes as if the
Middle Ages never occurred. McGrath explains away both the ancient and medieval worlds in just a few pages to get
to Napoleon. The only example he mentions of command and control for the Middle Ages is Genghis Khan. Note
Beaumont’s unintentional but ironic title: there is indeed a chronological gap in military historiography! Kolenda’s
first chapter (3–25) explicitly mines the ancient world for modern day lessons. Its title says it all: ‘What is leadership?
Some Classical ideas’.
15 Dodge, Great Captains, x, 108–109. B. H. Liddell Hart, Great Captains Unveiled (1928; repr., Freeport: Books for
Libraries Press, 1967), 3; B. Alexander, How Great Generals Win: A Military historian appraises the world’s greatest
commanders, from Hannibal to MacArthur (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), 72–73; P. K. Davis, Masters of the
Battlefield. Great Commanders from the Classical Age to the Napoleonic Era (New York: Oxford University Press,
2013). Dodge skips from Caesar to Gustavus. Liddell Hart’s book begins in the thirteenth century with Genghis Khan
and one of his generals, Subutai. Alexander moves from the Roman commander Scipio Africanus (third century BC)
to Ghenghis Khan and Subutai. Davis discusses the Eastern Roman general Belisarius (sixth century) but then skips
to Genghis Khan and Subutai.
16 M. Van Creveld, Command in War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 25, 34, 48–51, 52; J. Keegan, The
Mask of Command (New York: Viking, 1987).
17 V. D. Hanson, The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars that Were Lost-From Ancient
Greece to Iraq (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013) and The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day,
How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny (New York: Free Press, 1999). Savior Generals includes a chapter
on Belisarius before jumping to William T. Sherman; the earlier Soul of Battle leaps from Epaminondas (fourth
century BC) directly to Sherman. In one of his many other works on Western military history but not specifically on
command, Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power (New York: Anchor Books, 2001),
5, 20, 22–23, 135–169, Hanson includes a chapter on the Battle of Poitiers (AD 732), as well as referencing the Middle
Ages in several other places.
18 W. Murray, M. Knox and A. Bernstein (eds.), The Making of Strategy. Rulers, States and War (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994); W. Murray and R. H. Sinnreich (eds.), The Past as Prologue. The Importance of
History to the Military Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); W. Murray, R. H. Sinnreich and
J. Lacey (eds.), The Shaping of Grand Strategy. Policy, Diplomacy and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2011); W. Murray, War, Strategy and Military Effectiveness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 84–86,
103–104; W. Murray and R. H. Sinnreich (eds.), Successful Strategies. Triumphing In War and Peace from Antiquity
to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), The medieval contribution in Successful Strategies is
C. J. Rogers, ‘Giraldus Cambrensis, Edward I, and the Conquest of Wales’, 65–99.
the latest one, contain a chapter or more on the ancient world.19 As late as 2011, Murray
essentially echoed the Victorian Theodore Ayrault Dodge about the Middle Ages:
Over the next thirteen centuries, the survivors of the collapse of the Roman Empire exhibited
great interest in the empire, whose roads and monuments underlined how far the current
crop of Europeans had regressed from the technological and military accomplishments of
their predecessors.20
In a recent article on command and control for senior members of the Canadian armed
forces, Hal Klepak states that:

while some modern scholarship has shown that our scorn for Medieval military issues and
generalship is sometimes too extreme, when they are compared with the era before the fall of
Rome or that arriving with the Renaissance and after, this reaction is not entirely unfounded
and
Except in the Carolingian wars and the Crusades, Western Europe was largely a sorry sight
where military developments were concerned.21
In a study of command through the ages, John Laffin posits literal links from the mod-
ern age back to the Roman and Greeks, but his chain leaves out the Middle Ages. One
of his reasons for doing so is that the sources are so poor compared to before or after.22
Laffin speaks well of Charlemagne but as ‘an island of sanity in a sea of stupidity, for
the Middle Ages provide few examples of genuine art in war’.23 Solid tactical planning
was ‘beyond the imagination of medieval generals’.24
I shall begin by discussing why modern scholars remain so receptive to ancient military
history and then why they seem so indifferent or dismissive of the medieval world. Extant
historical accounts from the ancient world typically came from men heavily involved in
military and political events of their own day and their experience is clearly reflected
in the histories they composed. While the ‘father’ of history, Herodotus, had no actual
military or political experience as far as we know, most authors writing history in the
Greco-Roman world did.25 Thucydides set the bar high, being elected a strategos from
19 Murray et al., Making of Strategy, Chapters 2, 3; Murray et al., Past as Prologue, chapter 7; Murray, War, Strategy
and Military Effectiveness, Chapter 2; Murray et al., Successful Strategies, Chapters 1 and 2.
20 Murray, War, Strategy and Military Effectiveness, 86.
21 H. Klepak, ‘Some Reflections on Generalship through the Ages’, in Generalship and the Art of the Admiral,
17–36, esp. 23–24.
22 J. Laffin, High Command: The Genius of Generalship from Antiquity to Alamein (1966; repr., New York: Barnes
and Noble, 1995), 12, 79. Laffin’s remarks resemble B. H. Liddell Hart’s ideas about the Middle Ages in Strategy, 2nd
rev. ed. (1957; London: Faber and Faber, 1967), 55. Liddell Hart says, ‘the sources for knowledge of them [the Middle
Ages] are more exiguous and less reliable than in earlier or later times’.
23 Laffin, High Command, 91.
24 Laffin, High Command, 101.
25 J. A. S. Evans, Herodotus (Boston: G. K. Hall and Co., 1982), 3–12; J. Gould, Herodotus (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1989), 12–18. The young Herodotus may have participated in a coup in his home city but left after its failure
and never returned. Thus, Herodotus had limited political experience.
Athens.26 He was a man of considerable military experience who wrote military history
about events he knew very well, either as an eyewitness or simply having lived during
the era and having access to eyewitnesses.27
This trend continued throughout the ancient world. The most respected histories (or
the ones that have survived) tended to be written by men located high in the corridors of
power or who had some, if not extensive military experience or exposure. This includes
Xenophon of Anabasis fame,28 extant accounts of Alexander done by Curtius Rufus29
and Arrian,30 Polybius on the Roman mid-Republic,31 Julius Caesar, Sallust,32 Tacitus,
Dio Cassius33 and Ammianus Marcellinus34 for the principate and Late Roman Empire.
There are exceptions of course, such as the aforementioned Herodotus and Livy, the
latter writing during the early Roman Empire. Herodotus and Livy occasionally get
26 References to primary sources will be to English translations unless those do not exist. Thucydides, The
Peloponnesian War, vol. 2 Bk IV, ed. and trans. C. F. Smith (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1920), 391; D.
Kagan, Thucydides. The Reinvention of History (New York: Viking, 2009), 7–8; L. Canfora, ‘Biographical Obscurities
and Problems of Composition,’ in Brill’s Companion to Thucydides, ed. A. Rengakos and A. Tsakmakis (Leiden: E.
J. Brill, 2006), 3, 11; J. H. Finley Jr., Thucydides (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962), 8–15; D. Hamel,
Athenian Generals. Military Authority in the Classical Period (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998), 14–15, 94–99. While modern
historians translate the term strategos as ‘general’, the ancient office has no real modern day western equivalent.
27 Thucydides, Peloponnesian War vol. 1 Bk I, ed. and trans. C. F. Smith (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1919),
37–41; Thucydides, Peloponnesian War vol. 3 Bk V, ed. and trans. C. F. Smith (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1921), 51; D. Kagan, The Peloponnesian War (New York: Viking, 2003), 176–177. As strategos Thucydides botched
an important command for which he was recalled, turned out of office and exiled from Athens after which he wrote
his famous history.
28 Xenophon, The Expedition of Cyrus, trans. R. Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); G. Hutchinson,
Xenophon and the Art of Command (London: Greenhill Books, 2000), 41–45; N. Wood, ‘Xenophon’s Theory of
Leadership,’ Classica et Mediaevalia 25 (1964), 33–66.
29 Quintus Curtius Rufus, The History of Alexander, trans. J. Yardley (1984; repr., London: Penguin, 2001), 1–4,
254; E. Baynham, Alexander the Great. The Unique History of Quintus Curtius (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 1998), 216–219; J. E. Atkinson, A Commentary on Q. Curtius Rufus’ Historiae Alexandri Magni Books 3 and
4 (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1980), 50–57. Curtius Rufus’s identity and when he wrote is not definitively known, but
he may have been a Roman politician during the early empire, hence likely possessed both government and military
experience.
30 Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander, trans. A. de Sélincourt, rev. J. R. Hamilton (London: Penguin, 1958), 24; R.
Syme, ‘The Career of Arrian’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 86 (1982), 181–211, esp. 181, 189–190, 195, 206; P.
A. Stadter, Arrian of Nicomedia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 1, 5–14; P. A. Stadter, ‘Flavius
Arrianus: The New Xenophon’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies (1967), 155–161. As Syme notes, beginning
with Thucydides it became almost a pattern for unemployed or disgraced ex-public officials to turn to writing history.
31 Polybius, The Histories vols. V and VI, ed. and trans. W. R. Paton. rev. F. W. Walbank and C. Habicht (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2012), V: Bk XXIV, 505; VI: Bk XXVIII, 17; XXIX, 91–92; F. W. Walbank, A Historical
Commentary on Polybius (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 1: 1–6. Polybius wrote his Histories as a political internee
of Rome, after serving as an ambassador and Hipparch (cavalry leader) of the Achaean Confederacy.
32 Sallust, The Jugurthine War and the Conspiracy of Catiline, trans. S. A. Handford (London: Penguin, 1963); Dio
Cassius, Roman History vol. IV, ed. H. B. Foster, trans. E. Cary (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1916), Bk XLII,
197, Bk XLIII, 225; M. Paul, ‘Sallust,’ in Latin Historians, ed. T. A. Dorey (New York: Basic Books, 1966), 85–113.
Sallust had been both praetor and propraetor. Like Thucydides he wrote his works after his fall from political grace.
33 Dio Cassius, Roman History vol. IX, ed. H. B. Foster, trans. E. Cary (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927),
Bk LXXIII, 119, Bk LXXIV, 145, Bk LXXVII, 275, Bk LXXX, 455, 481; F. Millar, A Study of Cassius Dio (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1964), 5–27, 193–194. Dio served as consul and imperial legatus (governor).
34 See footnote 63 on Ammianus Marcellinus’ background.
pilloried for their perspective or lack of ‘men of affairs’ experience.35 Modern authors
favour accounts by those with military experience or public affairs rather than those
who did not have that on their resumes. Soldiers interested in history tend to respect the
experience of other old soldiers.36
Another reason why modern writers and formulators of military doctrine plumb the
ancient past is that the Greeks and Romans both understood the utility of permanent
tactical formations and the critical role of the subordinate leaders who commanded them.
In those two ideas, we see similarities to ourselves, even if the differences outweigh them.
The Athenian strategos was unlike a modern general in many of his duties, and Classical
Athens did not have a full-time professional, army.37 The Spartans were ‘an army with a
state,’ served as lifetime soldiers and eventually organized their army around permanent
tactical units and ranks though their numbers, composition and names shifted over time.38
The generation-long Peloponnesian War led states like Athens to keep men under arms for
extended periods of time, resulting in more professionally led and organized armies even
after the war ended, such as the mercenary, Pan-Hellenic army described in Xenophon’s
Anabasis.39 Alexander the Great’s army contained long-standing tactical units with high
cohesion and esprit-de-corps, especially since many of these units stayed in the Greco-
Macedonian army for the duration of Alexander’s twelve-year campaign. Near the end
of his life, Alexander quelled a mutiny partially by threatening to turn over Macedonian
units to Persian commanders, and draft Persians into and alongside Macedonians in old,
35 On Herodotus’ lack of public affairs experience or perspective as seen by modern historians, Evans, Herodotus,
4, 6–15; A. Momigliano, ‘The Place of Herodotus in the History of Historiography’, in Studies in Historiography
(New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1966), 127–142, esp. 128; G. F. Abbott, Thucydides. A Study in Historical Reality
(New York and London: George Routledge and Sons, 1925), 10–12, 21. On Livy’s lack of appropriate political and
military background, T. J. Luce, Livy. The Composition of His History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977),
39–40, 217; P. G. Walsh, ‘Livy’, in T. A. Dorey (ed.), Latin Historians, (New York: Basic Books, 1966), 115–142, esp.
133; P. G. Walsh, Livy. His Historical Aims and Methods (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), ix–x, 4, 9,
144, 157–168, 273, 284–286. As Walsh notes in his 1961 major work Livy ‘certainly had no military experience; he is
so ignorant of the practical aspects of soldiering that he can never have thrown a pilum in anger’.
36 W. Murray and R. H. Sinnreich, ‘Introduction’, in Murray and Seinreich, Past as Prologue, 5–6; P. K. Van Riper,
‘The relevance of history to the military profession: an American Marine’s view’, in Murray and Seinreich, Past as
Prologue, 42; J. Keegan, The Face of Battle (New York: Viking Press, 1976), 15, 17; Y. N. Harari, ‘Armchairs, Coffee,
and Authority: Eye-witnesses and Flesh-witnesses Speak about War, 1100–2000’, The Journal of Military History
74:1 (2010), 53–78, esp. 54, 66, 70. Van Riper, a retired US Marine lieutenant general, twice considered not finishing
the widely regarded Face of Battle because in its introduction John Keegan informs the reader that not only had he
never experienced combat, he never served in the military.
37 Hamel, Athenian Generals, 94–99. The Athenian strategos combined the roles of both military and civil official.
The assembly elected ten strategoi for one year to a sort of ‘board of generals’. Athenian strategoi acted as command-
ers of campaigns and in the field, but when they operated together they took turns serving as commander-in-chief.
38 Thucydides, III Bk V, 126–127; Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, in Scripta Minora vol. 7. trans
G. W. Bowersock (1925; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, rev. 1968), 170–175; J. F. Lazenby, The Spartan Army
(Chicago: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1985), 5–10, 13–15; J. K. Anderson, Military Theory and Practice in the Age
of Xenophon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 71.
39 Aristotle, The Athenian Constitution, trans. P. J. Rhodes (London: Penguin, 1984), 106–107; J. W. I. Lee, A Greek
Army on the March. Soldiers and Survival in Xenophon’s Anabasis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007),
44–48, 52–55, 80–96; R. Waterfield, Xenophon’s Retreat. Greece, Persia and the End of the Golden Age (Cambridge:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006), 72–77; M. Whitby, ‘Xenophon’s Ten Thousand as a Fighting
Force’, in, R. L. Fox (ed.), The Long March. Xenophon and the Ten Thousand (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2004), 215–242; M. Trundle, Greek Mercenaries. From the Late Archaic Period to Alexander (London and New York:
Routledge, 2004), 134–139.
established, combat-hardened units. Rather than losing their unit identity, the mutineers
submitted and allowed Alexander to arrest the ringleaders without incident.40
During the late Republic and early empire, the Romans developed an army that comes
closest to our notion of professionally led, fixed tactical units like the ones in modern
Western armies: centuries, maniples, cohorts and legions have their analogues to mod-
ern day companies, battalions, brigades and divisions.41 By the late republic, these units
had become permanent in the institutional structure of the Roman army just as their
analogues remain today in Western armies. The imperial Roman army provided its rank
and file with a bona fide career path, with retirement after sixteen or twenty years.42
The Roman army developed recognized ranks, their responsibilities and privileges best
represented by the famous rank of centurion, a sort of jack of all trades whose holders
commanded, on the basis of seniority, tactical units from the smallest, the century, up
to the largest, the legion.43
Finally, the ancient world seems so modern-friendly partially because of the nature of
the state, how authority was granted to commanders and how they were held accountable
for it. John Keegan notes in The Mask of Command that generals command through
several different means of authority: as monarch or religious figure; as a diplomat; or as
a ‘surrogate authority’ representing the executive, whether that executive be a monarch,
dictator or a popular assembly of some sort.44 In both Sparta and Athens the assembly
was the sovereign body of the state.45 The same was true for the Roman republic.46
Republican officials like consuls and praetors held imperium, ‘the power to get things
done’ granted to them by the assembly when they commanded troops outside Rome.47
This seems quite similar to our ideas about delegated authority given to commanders by
a wide swath of citizens who constitute the sovereign body of their society. During the
empire legates (as opposed to proconsuls) exercised their authority through the emper-
or’s imperium, not their own.48 This makes the parallels between imperial Rome and say,
the present-day United States equally striking, since American military officers swear a
commissioning oath to support and defend the US Constitution (instituted by the people
40 Arrian, Campaigns, 365–366; Curtius Rufus, History of Alexander, 244.

41 L. K. Born, ‘Roman and Modern Military Science. Some Suggestions for Teaching’, The Classical Journal 29:1
(Oct 1933), 13–22, esp. 15–17; Hanson, Carnage, 13. Born explicitly calls these units equivalents; Hanson believes the
modern forms are ‘the successors to Roman military practice’.
42 Dio Cassius, Roman History vol. VI. ed. H. B. Foster, trans. E. Cary (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1917),
Bk LV, 453; G. R. Watson, The Roman Soldier (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969), 147. Under Augustus in the late
first century BC, the legionaries got a retirement sum after twenty years; praetorian guards after sixteen.
43 Watson, Roman Soldier, 86–88; B. Dobson, ‘The Centurionate and Social Mobility During the Principate’,
Recherches sur les structures socials dans l’Antiquité (1970), 99–116 and ‘The Significance of the Centurion and
“Primipilaris” in the Roman Army and Administration’, in H. Temporini (ed.), Aufsteig und Niedergang des Römischen
Welt II (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1974), 392–424. Though the legate technically commanded the legion, the primus
pilatus actually gave the tactical commands and ensured the legion did what its commander intended.
44 Keegan, Mask of Command, 1–2.
45 Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, 161, 163; Aristotle, Athenian Constitution, 50.
46 Polybius, The Histories vol. III, ed. and trans. W. R. Paton. rev. F. W. Walbank and C. Habicht (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2011), Bk VI, 335, 337; A. Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999), 40–41.
47 Res Gestae Divi Augusti, ed. and trans. P. A. Brunt and J. M. Moore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967),
appendix, 83; Lintott, Constitution of Roman Republic, 96.
48 A. Lintott, Imperium Romanum. Politics and Administration (London: Routledge, 1993), 121–122.
in the Preamble), which means they must also obey the president as commander-in-chief
under the Constitution.49
Nature of the western European source material during the long

twelfth century
By the First Crusade (1095–1099), the amount of material written in Western Europe
began to dwarf in quantity all that remained from the ancient world. In spite of increas-
ingly abundant source material composed during the long twelfth century, one of the
reasons why this period and in fact the entire Middle Ages appear to be ignored in
discussions of command and control has to do with the people who wrote it. There are
simply few Western European medieval equivalents to the classical man of affairs relat-
ing events based on his own extensive military experience. The vast majority of Latin
writing (as opposed to vernacular prose, poetry or literature) between AD 400 and 1300
was written by churchmen, very often monks.50 There were rare exceptions.51 The almost
exclusive monopoly of historical writing in Latin by clerics lasted until the thirteenth
century. Even as vernacular historical writing took off in that century, however, it tended
to be dominated by churchmen.52
Just because those with a formal affiliation to the church wrote most of the histories
of the Middle Ages does not mean that they ignored warfare, since warfare was one of
the centerpieces of medieval annals, chronicles, histories and other historical materials
from 400 to 1300.53 Even if clerics and monks did not directly participate in fighting,
they certainly had the capacity to accurately report warfare or offer cogent analyses
of military events.54 As Christopher Allmand notes, monks and soldiers have more in
common than we moderns tend to allow: after all, they both shared two cardinal virtues
of their respective occupations: obedience and discipline.55 Obedience and discipline of
course, are basic virtues all monks agreed to, another being poverty, ironically something
49 United States Code Title 5-Government Organization and Employees § 3331. Oath of Office (Washington, DC:
United States Government Printing Office, 2013) 254; The Constitution of the United States of America (Washington,
DC: United States Government Printing Office, 2007), 1, 6–7, Article II, §§ 1, 2; The Army Profession ADRP 1
(Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2015), 4–2. This is emphasized specifically in US Army doctrine: ‘Our
military responsibility is conferred by the American people … Military authority is delegated by elected and appointed
public officials to the Soldiers … entrusted with executing their orders’.
50 L. Shopkow, History and Community. Norman Historical Writing in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1997), x; P. Ainsworth, ‘Contemporary and ‘Eyewitness’ History’,
in D. M. Deliyannis (ed.), Historiography in the Middle Ages, (Boston and Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003), 249–276.
51 Carolingian Chronicles. Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, trans. B. W. Scholz with B. Rogers (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), 22, 172. Nithard, an important source for the ninth-century Carolingian
world, was a layman, a noble, soldier, diplomat and Charlemagne’s grandson.
52 G. M. Spiegel, Romancing the Past. The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 6.
53 G. Halsall, Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West, 450–900 (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 3–6;
D. S. Bachrach, Warfare in Tenth-Century Germany (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012), 6–9.
54 Harari, ‘Armchairs, Coffee and Authority’, 75–76. Harari believes otherwise, that a non-combatant reporting
warfare is fundamentally not the same as a combatant.
55 C. Allmand, The De Re Miltari of Vegetius. The Reception, Transmission and Legacy of a Roman Text in the
Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 13.
else soldiers and monks often shared. Religious authors then could certainly appreci-
ate aspects of the martial life from both lifestyle and their own direct experience. The
young Cistercian monk Peter les Vaux-de-Cernay, for example, accompanied his uncle,
an abbot, several times on the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) in Southern France
during the early thirteenth century. Peter interacted extensively with the commander of
the crusaders, Simon of Montfort, and experienced warfare at first hand. At the siege of
Moissac in 1212, one of many Peter witnessed, someone on the walls shot at him with
a crossbow bolt which stuck fast in the saddle of his horse.56 Though strongly partisan
in favour of what the crusaders were doing in Southern France, as an eyewitness with
access to other eyewitnesses Peter generally offered an informed, accurate recounting of
military events.57 He was typical of many clerical and monastic chroniclers and writers
of his day: not a soldier but one who lived among them and observed warfare. Still, the
fact remains that most clerics did not have a formal military background or expertise
even though many participated in military events.
Thus, there exist many detailed or first person accounts on warfare by churchmen,
especially those on crusade such as the Anonymous’ Gesta Francorum, but none by
commanders themselves until the later thirteenth century.58 The crusades, however, seem
to have stimulated the first lay writers of the High Middle Ages to leave accounts, albeit
only a handful. Caffaro, local lord, consul and diplomat for Genoa, participated in
crusade activity in the twelfth century, including the crusade of 1101.59 Among other
writings, he left a Latin history of recent Genoese affairs which discussed military aspects
extensively.60 The Fourth Crusade (1201–1204) provided the backdrop for Geoffrey of
Villehardouin’s Old French account, sometimes considered the first vernacular prose his-
tory in the western world.61 Like Caffaro, Villehardouin was an experienced, high ranking
secular official (the marshal of Champagne) and one of the leaders of the crusade.62 The
Fourth Crusade inspired another account in Old French by a knight of modest means,
56 Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, The History of the Albigensian Crusade, trans. W. A. Sibly and M. D. Sibly
(Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998), 163.
57 Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, History, 5. Peter claimed, like Thucydides, that he wrote nothing down unless he had
witnessed it or received his information from good sources. A close reading of his work does not entirely support the
sentiment but as an eyewitness of military events Peter was a good reporter.
58 Gesta Francorum, ed. and trans. R. Hill (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1962); C. Morris, ‘The Gesta
Francorum as Narrative History’, Reading Medieval Studies 19 (1993), 55–71, esp. 66–67; C. Kostick, The Social
Structure of the First Crusade (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2008), 12–14; ‘A Further Discussion on the Authorship of the
Gesta Francorum’, Reading Medieval Studies XXXV (2009), 1–14; ‘Courage and Cowardice on the First Crusade,
1096–1099’, War in History 20:1 (2013), 32–49, esp. 33. Some believe the Anonymous was a knight. If this was the
case, his Latin account predates Robert of Clari’s vernacular ‘rankers’ perspective (discussed below) by a century.
Morris maintains that the Anonymous was a clerk; Kostick supports the thesis that the Anonymous was a knight.
The evidence is not definitive so Robert of Clari remains the earliest secular, rank-and-file person to leave an account
about which we have sure support.
59 Caffaro, Genoa and the Twelfth-Century Crusades, trans. M. Hall and J. Phillips (Burlington: Ashgate, 2013),
2–3, 49, 59, 61, 63, 67, 89–90, 92–93, 132.
60 ‘Annals’ of Genoa, 1099–1163 in Caffaro, Genoa and the Twelfth-Century Crusades, 49–101.
61 Geoffrey of Villehardouin, The Conquest of Constantinople, in Chronicles of the Crusades, trans. C. Smith
(London: Penguin, 2008); A. J. Andrea, ‘Essay on Primary Sources’, in D. E. Queller and T. F. Madden, The Fourth
Crusade. The Conquest of Constantinople, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 299–302;
C. Urbanski, Writing History for the King. Henry II and the Politics of Vernacular Historiography (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2013), 23. Verse vernacular histories written in Old French first appeared around 1135.
62 Villehardouin, Conquest, xxiii.
Robert of Clari, which could be the first ever written in the European world by a secular
person who was neither a commander nor man of affairs, but of the rank and file, though
perhaps the fourth-century Roman staff officer Ammianus Marcellinus might deserve
that distinction.63 As a knight in helmet and hauberk, privileged to ride a horse in battle,
Robert was perhaps not really a common soldier. When it came time for the division of
spoils after the sack and capture of Constantinople in 1204, as a knight Robert received
four times what each footman got. Robert’s brother, a clerk who had accompanied him,
also claimed a knight’s share by right of his armor and horse.64 Robert’s account though,
certainly reflects a more humble view on military affairs than any from the ancient world.
The first secular ruler or commander of the highest rank in the vein of say, Julius
Caesar to leave an account or memoir was James I of Aragon in the later thirteenth cen-
tury, who wrote in Catalan, not Latin.65 Records such as his are rare long after, though
soldiers’ memoirs became more common after 1450 according to Y. N. Harari.66 The
general’s memoir or dissertations on the art of war on the order of Maurice de Saxe or
Frederick the Great only became commonplace in the eighteenth century.67 For military
affairs in quantity and quality, however, the material from the long twelfth century is
far richer and plentiful compared to the ancient world but because of the profession of
the men who wrote it, it does not resonate in the same way that the daring deeds of the
ancient world do.
Perceived lack of professionalism in medieval armies

It is useful to note in what ways the twelfth century received and inherited things from the
ancient and Late Antique world on command and professionalism, as well as what the era
produced on its own. Two strains of thought exist about what the Romans bequeathed
directly to the Middle Ages for military affairs. One school asserts that Roman ways,
63 Robert of Clari, The Conquest of Constantinople, trans. E. H. McNeal (1936; repr., Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1996); Andrea, ‘Essay on Primary Sources’, 302–303. As a military figure, Ammianus falls between someone
like Robert of Clari and Villehardouin: not a commander of troops or at the top circle of command, not a line officer,
but by no means a common soldier. He was a protector domesticus, with no direct modern equivalents in duties or
functions. The corps to which he belonged performed a variety of duties, including quasi-staff work, security, escort,
delivery of messages, etc. On Ammianus’s position in the army: J. Matthews, The Roman Empire of Ammianus (Ann
Arbor: Michigan Classical Press, 2007), 74–80; K. Kagan, The Eye of Command (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2006), 25–26; P. Southern and K. R. Dixon, The Late Roman Army (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1996), 14–15, 39; H. Elton, Warfare in Roman Europe AD 350–425 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 101; A.
H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire 284–602. A Social Economic and Administrative Survey (Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1964), 1, 636–640.
64 Robert of Clari, Conquest, 34, 97–98, 117–118, 128; Villehardouin, Conquest, 68. Robert’s brother received a
knight’s share not because of his armor or horse but because of his bravery.
65 The Book of Deeds of James I of Aragon. A Translation of the Medieval Catalan Llibre dels Fets, trans. D. J. Smith
and H. Buffery (Surrey: Ashgate, 2003); D. J. Kagay, ‘The Line between Memoir and History: James I of Aragon and
the Llibre del Feyts’, Mediterranean Historical Review 11 (1996), 165–176 and ‘Jaime I of Aragon: Child and Master
of the Spanish Reconquest’, The Journal of Medieval Military History 8 (2010), 69–108, esp. 90–103.
66 Y. N. Harari, Renaissance Military Memoirs. War, History and Identity, 1450–1600 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press,
2004), 4–5, 187–193, 196–202. Harari notes that almost all the authors of memoirs from the era he studies came from
noble backgrounds.
67 Maurice de Saxe, Reveries on the Art of War, trans. and ed. T. R. Philips (1944; repr., Mineola: Dover Publications,
2007); Frederick the Great, Instructions for His Generals, trans. T. R. Philips (1944; repr., Mineola: Dover Publications,
2005); Frederick the Great on the Art of War, ed. and trans. J. Luvaas (New York: Free Press, 1966).
tactics and fighting styles were not transmitted or continued over the long Middle Ages.68
The other, led by Bernard S. Bachrach, maintains that medieval people incorporated
or kept much of the Roman past and its professionalism in their armies in one form or
another.69 Given his consistently argued position of continuity with the ancient world,
Bachrach has suggested that medieval people understood the idea of general staffs and
the control they offered, plus the command that would entail.70 Currently no consensus
exists about either of these interpretations.71
During the long twelfth century, the educated had access to most of the major Roman
writers and historians who wrote in Latin besides Tacitus, so manuscripts of authors like
Caesar and Sallust showed up in a fair number of copies throughout the Middle Ages.72
Medieval authors of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries deeply admired the Romans
to the point of not simply using Roman works as exemplars of how to write about
military affairs, but extensively lifting material from them and thus complicating the
veracity of their own accounts. The twelfth-century English chronicler John of Worcester
constructed his account of two eleventh-century battles, Sherston and Ashingdon, from
Sallust’s description of Roman battles in the first century BC.73 Christopher Allmand
suggests that parts of one of the essential chronicles of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century
French monarch Philip Augustus’ reign, William the Breton’s Gesta Philippi Augusti,
‘contains strong echoes’ and ‘may have been inspired’ by Vegetius, although no direct
link exists through language or mention of Vegetius’ name in the account.74
Military manuals existed from the Roman world in the twelfth century, from which
theoretically medieval commanders might have read or heard. By far the most famous is
68 R. Abels and S. Morillo, ‘A Lying Legacy? A Preliminary Discussion of Images of Antiquity and Altered Reality
in Medieval Military History’, The Journal of Medieval Military History 3 (2005), 1–13; Allmand, De Re Militari,
68; Halsall, Warfare and Society, 44, 145, 245 n13, 276 n62.
69 B. S. Bachrach, ‘On Roman Ramparts’, in G. Parker (ed.), The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare. The Triumph
of the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 64–91, esp. 64; ‘Medieval Military Historiography’, in M.
Bentley (ed.), Companion to Historiography (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 203–220, esp. 206; ‘“A Lying
Legacy” Revisited: The Abels-Morillo Defense of Discontinuity’, The Journal of Medieval Military History 5 (2007),
153–193; Charlemagne’s Early Campaigns (768–777). A Diplomatic and Military Analysis (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2013),
102; L. I. R. Petersen, Siege Warfare and Military Organization in the Successor States (400–800 AD). Byzantium, the
West and Islam (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2013), 2–4, 93, 174–175, 235–238, 363, 366.
70 B. S. Bachrach, ‘Charlemagne and the Carolingian General Staff’, The Journal of Military History 66:2 (Apr
2002), 313–357; Early Carolingian Warfare. Prelude to Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001),
202–204; Charlemagne’s Early Campaigns, 30–31, 60, 650, 653.
71 The most succinct explication of this ongoing debate is T. S. Burns, ‘Roman Heritage, Maximilist Interpretation’,
and J. France, ‘Roman Heritage, Minimalist Interpretation’, in C. J. Rogers (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval
Warfare and Military Technology 3 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 3: 188–191.
72 L. D. Reynolds, ed., Text and Transmission. A Survey of Latin Classics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 35–36,
341–347, 406–411; B. Smalley, ‘Sallust in the Middle Ages’, in R. R. Bolgar (ed.), Classical Influences on European
Culture A. D. 500–1500, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 165–175, esp. 171; R. Mellor, Tacitus (New
York: Routledge, 1993), 138–139. Based on the small number of manuscripts produced in the Latin West prior to the
fourteenth century, knowledge of Tacitus was quite limited.
73 Abels and Morillo, ‘A Lying Legacy’, 1–2; John of Worcester, The Chronicles of John of Worcester, ed. R. R.
Darlington and P. McGurk, trans. J. Bray and P. McGurk (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 487, 490; Sallust, The War
with Catiline, trans. J. C. Rolfe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1921), 123, 125.
74 Allmand, De Re Militari, 92, 94.
Vegetius’ Latin treatise De Re Militari.75 A bureaucrat with no obvious military experi-

ence, Vegetius, writing between 380 and 450 — the work’s date is uncertain — sought
to reinvigorate the army of his day by using the Roman army of several centuries before
as his model.76 Vegetius’ work survived in hundreds of medieval manuscripts but despite
its ubiquity this does not prove that twelfth- and thirteenth-century commanders or
those who might eventually command ever read it.77 Sometimes its usefulness has been
overstated. Sydney Anglo has correctly called Vegetius ‘derivative, patchy, inconsistent
and repetitious’.78 The same sense of ambiguous usefulness underlies an earlier, first-cen-
tury work by the Roman politician and legionary commander Frontinus, whose extant
collection of stratagems sometimes reads like a digest of pithy sayings rather than a
thoughtful treatment explicating strategy, the art of command, or useful practices for
potential commanders. To be fair, The Stratagems was intended to serve as a series of
exempla for a far larger book on the art of war that Frontinus wrote but which did not
survive for medieval commanders to read.79
There were other military manuals from the Classical and Hellenistic eras as well as
Byzantine military manuals written in the early medieval period, some of them quite
detailed and sophisticated. Western Europeans remained unaware of them during the
twelfth century since the Greek language, never strong in the Western half of the Roman
Empire, had essentially died off by the fifth century except for small parts of Italy.80
Historians who wrote in Greek like Polybius were not generally read in the West until
75 Vegetius, Epitome of Military Science, 2nd ed., trans. N.P. Milner (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996).
Vegetius was especially popular throughout the Middle Ages. See Allmand, De Re Militari; C. T. Allmand, ‘Vegetius’
De re militari: Military Theory in Medieval and Modern Conception’, History Compass 9/5 (2011), 397–409; D.
Whetham, Just Wars and Moral Victories: Surprise, Deception and the Normative Framework of European War in
the Later Middle Ages (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2009), 120–122; H. Nicholson, Medieval Warfare. Theory and Practice of
War in Europe 300–1500 (New York, Palgrave, 2004), 13–19; C. J. Rogers, ‘The Vegetian “Science of Warfare” in the
Middle Ages’, The Journal of Medieval Military History 1 (2002), 1–19; P. Richardot, Végèce et La Culture Militaire
au Moyen Âge (Paris: Economica, 1998), 19, 23–25, 45–48; B. Campbell, ‘Teach Yourself How to be a General’, Journal
of Roman Studies 77 (1987), 13–29, esp. 16–17; B. S. Bachrach, ‘The Practical Use of Vegetius’ De Re Militari During
the Early Middle Ages’, The Historian 47:2 (1985), 239–255; W. Goffart, ‘The Date and Purpose of Vegetius’ De Re
Militari’, Traditio 33 (1977), 65–100; C. R. Shrader, ‘The Influence of Vegetius’ De re militari’, Military Affairs 45:4
(1981), 167–172 and ‘A Handlist of Extant Manuscripts Containing the De Re Militari of Flavius Vegetius Renatus’,
Scriptorium 33:2 (1979), 280–305.
76 Vegetius, Epitome, 1–2; E. N. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2009), 239–240. Luttwak calls Vegetius an ‘antiquarian’.
77 Halsall, Warfare and Society, 145; Bachrach, Charlemagne’s Early Campaigns, 104–107; Gillingham, ‘Richard I
and Science of War’, 82; Allmand, De Re Militari, 3, 13–14, 26–27, 47–55; G. Hays, review of The De Re Militari of
Vegetius. The Reception, Transmission and Legacy of a Roman Text in the Middle Ages, by Christopher Allmand,
Speculum 87:4 (2012), 1156–1157; D. S. Bachrach, Warfare in Tenth Century Germany, 10, 120–123, 134, 197. B. S.
Bachrach asserts that Charlemagne was familiar with Vegetius’ and Frontinus’ writings although the evidence is not
strong. D. S. Bachrach believes Ottonian commanders had ready access to Vegetius and Frontinus but again there is
little direct evidence to demonstrate this. Gillingham maintains that Vegetius was widely read by medieval commanders.
While Allmand has proven that Vegetius impacted political thought, especially in the fourteenth century and later,
to what degree actual soldiers used Vegetius remains very difficult to know, as Allmand, Halsall and Hays suggest.
78 S. Anglo, ‘Vegetius’ ‘De Re Militari’: The Triumph of Mediocrity’, The Antiquaries Journal 82 (September 2002),
247–267, esp. 247.
79 Frontinus, The Stratagems, trans. C. E. Bennett (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925); Campbell, ‘Teach
Yourself’, 14–15; C. T. Allmand, ‘A Roman Text on War: The Strategemata of Frontinus in the Middle Ages’, in P.
Coss and C. Tyerman (eds.), Soldiers, Nobles and Gentlemen. Essays in Honour of Maurice Keen, (Woodbridge:
Boydell Press, 2009), 153–168, esp. 153.
80 L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson. Scribes & Scholars. A Guide to the Transmission of Greek & Latin Literature
3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 118–119.
the fourteenth century or later except in incomplete Latin translations.81 The linguistic
and cultural differences between the Latin-speaking West and the Greek-speaking East
remained a largely impermeable barrier even in actual warfare. On crusade, Westerners
appeared to have absorbed little from Byzantine practitioners with whom they interacted,
let alone from military manuals written in Greek.82
By the twelfth century, some Western thinkers had composed their own ‘mirrors
for princes’, essentially instruction books or advice on how to be an effective ruler.83
Machiavelli’s The Prince of the sixteenth century is undoubtedly the most famous of this
genre. These pieces of literature, like Vegetius’s De Re Militari, often reflect a Utopian
bent or looked nostalgically at the ancient past as a means to shape the future. Most
prescribe ideal solutions, rather than reflecting reality or reasonable ways of carrying
their prescriptions out, which is why their influence on contemporary behaviour is hard to
judge. Among the most noteworthy for the long twelfth century was John of Salisbury’s
Policraticus of the mid-twelfth century. John, who had no military experience himself,
used both Vegetius and Frontinus (in addition to much else) to compose his book of
general political philosophy and instruction of princes.84 A few sections of this work,
especially Book VI, explicitly discuss military affairs.85 Like Vegetius, we are unsure if
any soldier or anyone at all in a position of military command of John’s day ever read
the Policraticus, let alone the ancient works from which he drew. John dedicated the work
to Thomas Becket, a man of limited military experience but we have no direct evidence
that Becket or anyone else in his household read it.86 The same holds true for other
mirrors like the early thirteenth century Recreation for an Emperor, which has many
81 A. Momigliano, ‘Polybius’ Reappearance in Western Europe’, reprinted in Essays in Ancient and Modern
Historiography (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977), 79–98, esp. 79, 82–83; B. McGing, Polybius’ Histories (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2010), 212. Polybius was probably first used by Leonardo Bruni in the early fifteenth century.
Authors who wrote manuals in Greek in the Classical, Hellenistic, or Roman periods include Aeneas, Asclepiodotus,
Onasander and Aelian. The first three can be found in Aeneas Tacitus, Asclepiodotus, Onasander, trans. Illinois Greek
Club (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), 1928. The most famous Byzantine manual is the sixth-century emperor
Maurice’s Srategikon. Handbook of Byzantine Military Strategy, trans. G. T. Dennis (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1984) but there were others such as Three Byzantine Military Treatises, trans. G. T. Dennis (1985,
repr.; Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2008); and the early tenth century compilation of Leo VI, The Taktika of
Leo VI, ed. and trans. G. Dennis (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2010). See also Luttwak, Grand Strategy of
Byzantine Empire, 235–337.
82 R. C. Smail, Crusading Warfare, 1097–1193, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 121–124;
M. Bennett, ‘The Crusaders’ Fighting March Revisited’, War in History 8:1 (2001), 1–18, esp. 7–8. Bennett notes that
it is not always evident that the Byzantines followed their own manuals, especially during the twelfth century when
they were fighting centuries removed from when the manuals were written.
83 G. Koziol, ‘Leadership. Why we have mirrors for princes but none for presidents’, in C. Chazelle et al. (eds.), Why
the Middle Ages Matter. Medieval Light on Modern Injustice, (London: Routledge, 2012), 183–198; W. Ullmann,
Law and Politics in the Middle Ages. An Introduction to the Sources of Medieval Political Ideas (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1975), 255–260.
84 J. D. Hosler, John of Salisbury. Military Authority of the Twefth Century Renaissance (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2013),
11, 173; Richardot, Végèce, 78–79; J. Martin, ‘John of Salisbury as Classical Scholar’, in M. Wilks (ed.), The World
of John of Salisbury, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 179–201.
85 John of Salisbury, Policraticus, ed. and trans. C. J. Nederman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990),
77–78, 104–105, 109–124, 230; Hosler, John of Salisbury, 6; Allmand, De Re Militari, 84–91.
86 Hosler, John of Salisbury, 176–177; J. D. Hosler, Henry II. A Medieval Soldier at War, 1147–1189 (Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 2007), 27, 126–127; M. Strickland, ‘On the Instruction of a Prince: The Upbringing of Henry, the Young King’,
in C. Harper-Bill and N. Vincent (eds.), Henry II. New Interpretations, (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), 184–214,
esp. 191; J. D. Hosler, ‘The Brief Military Career of Thomas Becket’, Haskins Society Journal 15 (2004), 88–100, esp.
94, 96. Hosler admits there is no way to tell if Becket read the Polycraticus.
interesting anecdotes and bits of advice but little to say of practical military value about
warfare. Even at that, according to the editors, ‘We have no evidence’ that its recipient,
the Emperor Otto IV of Germany (r. 1208–1215), ever heard or read its contents.87
Beyond mirrors for princes, the age itself produced no manuals dedicated to strategy,
tactics or military affairs. Vernacular writing like poems, epics and other works of lit-
erature during the period did not have much value for the commander either; they rep-
resented a fantastic ideal, and as to what, if anything rulers or commanders drew from
them is difficult to know.88 The closest work to a manual was the Old French Rule of the
Knights Templar, dating from the 1160s.89 The Templar Rule is not a military manual
or handbook in the Vegetian sense but primarily covered the work-a-day organization,
daily administration and religious practices of a religious order. The Rule was intended
for and applied only to this small religious-military order, which at its largest could put
around 300 knights and several hundred other kinds of soldiers in the field in the Latin
Kingdom of Jerusalem.90 By the mid-twelfth century, just a few decades after its founding,
the Temple had evolved into an effective, albeit small, military organization. Within two
decades of the Second Crusade, (1145–1149) the Templars codified extensive rules about
martial discipline in the hierarchical rule of their order though they probably already
used a form of them long before.91 What separates the Templar Rule from other writings
and certainly increases its value is that, as Matthew Bennett notes, it did not draw from
ancient examples, not even Vegetius, hence seemed to have reflected actual practice, not
a Utopian ideal or nostalgic golden age.92 This might be because the Templars and other
military orders like the Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights were a unique phenomenon
of the European Middle Ages, and had no counterpart in the Greco-Roman world. From
their beginning, the Knights of the Temple were specifically viewed as a ‘new’ kind of
warrior never seen before.93
87 Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, ed. and trans. S. E. Banks and J. W. Binns (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002),
xxxix; xlviii–lv.
88 P. Noble, ‘Military Leadership in the Old French Epic’, in M. Ailes, P. E. Bennett and K. Pratt (eds.), Reading Around
the Epic: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Wolfgang Van Emden, (London: Kings College London Centre for Late
Antique and Medieval Studies, 1998), 171–191, esp. 174–175, 191. Twelfth-century poets viewed military leadership
as idealized courage and personal prowess rather than as practical tactics and strategy.
89 The Rule of the Templars: The French Text of the Rule of the Order of the Knights Templar, trans. J. M. Upton-
Ward (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1992), 13.
90 S. Schein, ‘The Templars: The Regular Army of the Holy Land and the Spearhead of the Army of its Reconquest’,
I Templari; mito estoria; atti del Convegno Internazionale de studi alla Magione Templare de Poggibonsi (1987),
15–25, esp. 16–17; A. Forey, The Military Orders. From the Twelfth to the Early Fourteenth Centuries (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1992), 79; M. Barber, The New Knighthood. A History of the Order of the Temple
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 230–236; J. France, ‘Warfare in the Mediterranean Region in the
Age of the Crusades, 1095–1291: A Clash of Contrasts’, in Conor Kostick (ed.), The Crusades and the Near East.
Cultural Histories, (London: Routledge, 2011), 9–26, esp. 21. The Temple garrisoned military fortifications all over
the Latin East as well as possessing large outside military commitments, most notably on the Iberian Peninsula. As a
religious organization, the Temple’s network of houses resembled other monastic orders of the time, so it devoted a fair
amount of its manpower into administrating these houses. The other major military orders, those of the Hospital and
Teutonic Knights, could produce similar numbers of combat troops as the Templars for service in the Latin Kingdom.
91 Rule of the Templars, 13, 39–63; M. Bennett, ‘La Règle du Temple as a military manual or How to deliver a cavalry
charge’, in C. Harper-Bill et al. (eds.), Studies in Medieval History presented to R. Allen Brown (Woodbridge, UK:
Boydell and Brewer, 1989), 7–19; Bennett, ‘Crusaders’ ‘Fighting March’, 12–14.
92 Bennett, ‘La Règle Du Temple’, 8–9.
93 Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘In Praise of the New Knighthood’, in Treatises III, trans. Conrad Greenia (Kalamazoo,
MI: Cistercian Publications, 1977), 127–167.
Parts of the Rule say much about command, chain-of-command, military organization,
order, control and military discipline even though this was not its primary focus. In its
reflection of actual practice, however, the Templars’ Rule rivals the imperial Roman army,
Vegetius or indeed even modern military doctrine in its brief but detailed prescriptions.
The Rule carefully spells out the roles of all the major figures of the order, including the
more strictly military functionaries like the Master, the Marshal, the Commander of the
Land of Jerusalem and the Commander of the Knights.94 The Rule also contains specific
instructions about making camp, forming up for battle and March discipline. The marshal
was the tactical commander for the Templars in the field. According to the Rule, the
marshal had overall command when the troops mounted, and no Templar could break
ranks for any reason while marching or forming up for battle unless the marshal granted
permission.95 While it is quite valuable to know how this one order’s chain-of-command
was organized and supposed to function, the Templars were a small, close-knit military
force and their Rule did not impact or even reflect military practice European-wide.
At times, the Templars influenced command and control beyond their order through
informal, localized practice. During the Second Crusade (1145–1149), many members
of Louis VII’s army and the king himself came close to physical and mental collapse in
Anatolia after an exhausting march and multiple frightening encounters with Turks.96
Observing the example set by Everard of Barres, Grand Master of the Templars and the
Templars’ exemplary discipline during these hardships, King Louis turned over command
of the army to the Templars. As the main chronicler, the eyewitness Odo of Deuil, a monk
and Louis’ chaplain, pointed out, the Templars had not only kept better discipline the
entire march but managed to hold onto their supplies, unlike the rest of the army where
most of the baggage train had been abandoned or destroyed.97 Alone among the army,
these Templars probably had real experience in fighting Turks at close quarters. Odo of
Deuil says everyone by ‘common consent’ placed themselves under Templar discipline.
King Louis actually tried to place himself under Templar orders, although that was so
awkward it made the arrangement somewhat inefficient and confusing. As Odo relates,
the king was the ‘lord of laws’, and no one would give him direct orders except in the
broadest way.98
Nonetheless, the Templars re-established discipline and rearranged the marching order.
A Templar knight named Gilbert divided those who still had their mounts into units
of fifty, each under the command of a Templar. Everyone took an oath to obey the
Templar assigned to lead them. The men of each unit had to stay with their Templar
commander, regardless of whether they were attacked or ordered to retreat.99 The infantry
94 Rule of the Templars, 39–44, 44–49, 53; La Règle Des Templiers, ed. and trans. L. Dailliez (Nice: Alpes-Méditerranée
Éditions, 1977), 152–158, 160–166, 174. Barber, New Knighthood, 186, 188–189; Bennett, ‘La Règle Du Temple’, 10–11.
The Rule of the Templars can be confusing in its repetitive use of ‘commander’ (comandeor in Old French) which it
applied to any position of responsibility over goods or people. The Master, the Marshal, Commander of the Land of
Jerusalem and Commander of the Knights had the most direct military functions.
95 Rule of the Templars, 58–60; Barber, New Knighthood, 193.
96 William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, trans. E. A. Babcock and A. C. Krey (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1941), 2, 175–179.
97 Odo of Deuil, De Profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, ed. and trans. V. G. Berry (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1948), 123, 125; Barber, New Knighthood, 67.
98 Odo of Deuil, 125, 127.
99 Odo of Deuil, 125. We know nothing about Gilbert the Templar other than his name.
and horseless knights were ordered to the rear where they formed one large body. During
the next few days, the army, under Templar command and control, marched and fought its
way to the coast, enduring poor weather (it was January) and several Turkish attacks.100
To a great degree, the Master of the Temple and the Templar knight Gilbert exercised
effective command and control over the entire Frankish army and its thousands of men
and were primarily responsible for ensuring that the army survived intact to the coast.
On the one hand in this modest way the Templars demonstrated some command
and control sophistication that belies the idea that generalship and professionalism did
not exist or was poorly observed or executed in the long twelfth century. On the other
hand, even the Templars’ command and control occasionally broke down. According
to the clerical writer William of Tyre, in 1153 at the siege of Ascalon, after a section of
the wall fell, the Templars were among the first to make it to the hole. The Master of
the Templars, Bernard de Tremelay, allowed no one but Templars to enter the breach,
creating a bottleneck. The citizens of Ascalon cut off the forty Templars who had entered
and killed them all, including Bernard of Tremelay. Not only did this delay the fall of
the city but it stood as a mark against the Templars’ ability to cooperate with the rest of
the army.101 In the end we can use this incident as typical of the lack of command and
control in medieval armies during the long twelfth century or we can acknowledge that
even the best commanded and professional armies across time and place have occasionally
disobeyed orders and paid the price.
Lack of permanent tactical units

One of the key differences that appear to make the medieval period anomalous to the
modern world is that Western European armies never seemed to contain the discrete
tactical units that the ancient world developed or that were instituted in the early mod-
ern period. Twelfth-century European armies did not use drill to manoeuver on the
battlefield, so dividing men into small, permanent tactical units might seem to have
served no real purpose. Without drill of course, armies might lack cohesion if they had
to move quickly in battle, therefore breaking apart more easily under its pressures, as
older scholarship suggested.102 That may support an untrue stereotype of twelfth-century
armies as nothing more than armed mobs. Actually medieval commanders had some
sense of tactical formations, but not the way the modern world does or the Romans did.
As mentioned in many accounts, in battle armies very often stood in lines (acies) or were
100
Odo of Deuil, 128–129.
101
William of Tyre, Deeds, 2: 226–228; Barber, New Knighthood, 74–75; H. Nicholson, ‘Before William of Tyre:
European Reports on the Military Orders’ Deeds in the East, 1150–1185’, in H. Nicholson (ed.), The Military Orders
II: Welfare and Warfare (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 111–118, esp. 112–114. William reports the master did this to ensure
the Templars got a larger share of the plunder when the city fell. Nicholson challenges William of Tyre’s version based
on other, less well-known sources but ones perhaps closer to the event. She suggests that the Templars were first into
the city but penetrated too far, became separated from the rest of the army, were cut off and killed. William of Tyre’s
depiction of the Templars as greedy glory-hounds at Ascalon came via embarrassed nobles of the Latin Kingdom
seeking to cover up their failure to support the Templars during the assault adequately.
102
S. Morillo, Warfare Under the Anglo-Norman Kings, 1066–1135 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994), 145–149;
W. H. McNeill, Keeping Together in Time. Dancing and Drill in Human History (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1995), 122–123. McNeill suggests that the Italian urban infantry militias which defeated Frederick Barbarossa
at Legnano in 1176 were drilled.
divided into units called ‘battles’, (batailles). Mounted men sometimes went into combat
organized in ‘conrois’ or ‘squadrons’.103 By the second half of the twelfth century, sources
frequently mention conrois consisting of around five to twenty horsemen but sometimes
up to thirty or forty, each of which was led by a knight banneret, a knight who carried
his own standard.104 The Templars had recognized squadrons (eschieles) of mounted
men and their leaders.105 For certain campaigns King John of England (r. 1199–1216)
divided portions of his household knights into twenty-five man constabularia, headed
by a constable.106 Municipal affiliation was a logical way to organize and muster civic
militias since a town militia could be easily subdivided by ward or occupation.107 The
natural commanders of these units were the town consuls or mayor; in Italian city-re-
publics like Parma or Florence the podestà, a sort of city manager selected or hired from
outside the city led the town forces.108 Medieval mercenary units were often formed
by ‘companies’, from which we derive the tactical unit still standard in the American
103
Aelred of Rievalux, The Battle of the Standard, in The Historical Works, ed. M. L. Dutton and trans. J. P. Freeland
(Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2005), 258–260; Robert of Clari, Conquest, 71–72; L’Estoire de Eracles empereur,
in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, II: Historiens Occidentaux (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1859), 340; J. Beeler,
Warfare in England, 1066–1189 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966), 88–91; J. F. Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare
in Western Europe During the Middle Ages from the Eighth Century to 1340, 2nd ed. trans. S. Willard and Mrs. R.
W. Southern (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1997), 73–76, 209–211, 230; D. Showalter, ‘Caste, Skill, and Training: The
Evolution of Cohesion in European Armies from the Middle Ages to the Sixteenth Century’, The Journal of Military
History 57 (1993), 407–430, esp. 410.
104
Robert of Clari, Conquest, 33; Joinville, Life, 174, 179; J. W. Baldwin, F. Gasparri, M. Nortier and E. Lalou (eds.),
Les Registres de Philippe Auguste. Recueil des Historiens de la France Documents Financiers et Administratifs.
Tome VII. (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale and De Boccard, 1992), 1: 308–324; Verbruggen, Art of Warfare, 75–76; J. F.
Verbruggen, ‘La Tactique Militaire Des Armées de Chevaliers’, Revue du Nord 29 (1947): 161–180, esp. 163–165; M.
Keen, Chivalry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 168–169; M. Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle
Ages. The English Experience (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 13–15; J. W. Baldwin, The Government of
Philip Augustus. Foundations of French Royal Power in the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1986), 282. The list of bannerets who served Philip Augustus in the early thirteenth century contains 566 names,
though it does not mention their duties or responsibilities.
105
Rule of the Templars, 59–60; Dailliez, La Règle, 184, 186.
106
S. D. Church, ‘The Earliest English Muster Roll, 18/19 December 1215’, Historical Research LXVII.162 (1994):
1–17, esp. 2; The Household Knights of King John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 114.
107
Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, trans. J. L. Baird, G. Baglivi and J. R. Kane (Binghamton: Center for Medieval
and Early Renaissance Studies, 1986), 181; D. Waley, ‘The Army of the Florentine Republic from the Twelfth to
the Fourteenth Century’, in N. Rubinstein (ed.), Florentine Studies: Politics and Society In Renaissance Florence,
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 70–108; D. Waley and T. Dean, The Italian City-Republics, 4th
ed. (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2010), 50–51; Powers, Society Organized for War, 96, 100–104; Verbruggen, Art of
Warfare, 173–174; Beeler, Warfare in England, 316; C. J. Rogers, Soldiers’ Lives Through History: The Middle Ages
(Westport: Greenwood, 2007), 12.
108
Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, 179, 185, 195, 332, 472, 480, 494, 500, 517, 519; ‘The Charter of Rouen’, in The
Medieval World and its Transformations 800–1650, in G. M. Straka (ed.), (New York: McGraw Hill, 1967), 75–76;
J. H. Mundy and P. Riesenberg, The Medieval Town (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand, 1958), 109–110; E. Boutaric,
Institutions Milìtaires del France avant les Armées Permanentes (Paris: Henri Plon, 1863), 156–159; Waley and Dean,
Italian City-Republics, 40–44; Waley, ‘Army of Florentine Republic’, 74–75; C. Petit-Dutaillis, The French Communes
in the Middle Ages, trans. J. Vickers (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing, 1978), 66.
military today, but there was no standard number for these; each could range from fifty
to several thousand men.109
Even under adverse conditions tactical units were capable of executing orders on the
battlefield, suggesting cohesive and organized command structures.110 At the battle of
Bouvines in 1214, one Flemish infantry unit of mercenaries under Renaud of Boulogne, a
Flemish nobleman, formed itself in a two-rank circle on the battlefield, its spears turned
outward like a hedgehog. As knights grew tired or sought protection during the battle,
this unit opened its ranks repeatedly to allow friendly horsemen in and out.111 C. W. C.
Oman, writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries held this example
up of how limited infantry was in this period, insisting that they were capable of only
rudimentary manoeuvers and were not trained well enough to operate in an offensive
capacity.112 In fact, the opposite was true in this case: this was a well-organized unit of
700 (comparable in size to a modern American or British infantry battalion) that func-
tioned extremely well under harrowing circumstances for most of the battle. As its own
side crumbled and coalition forces began fleeing, this unit stood its ground until vastly
superior numbers of French horsemen and infantry isolated, surrounded and eventually
destroyed it.113 This unit and its commander clearly exercised effective tactical command
and control functions. Its eventual destruction derived from the misfortunes of the bat-
tlefield, not poor or non-existent tactical command.
109
Waley and Dean, Italian City-republics, 94–97; Showalter, ‘Caste, Skill, Training’, 418. The classic articles on
mercenaries in this era remain H. Géraud, ‘Les routiers au XII siècle’, Bibliothèque de l’ École des Chartes II (1841),
123–147; H. Géraud, ‘Mercadier. Les Routiers au Treizième Siècle’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes III (1841–
1842), 417–443; H. Grundmann, ‘Rotten und Brabanzonen. Söldner-heere im 12. Jahrhundert’, Deutsches archiv für
Erforschung des Mittelalters (1942), 419–492; J. Boussard, ‘Les Mercenaires au XIIe Siècle. Henri II Plantegenet Les
Origines de L’Armée de Métier’, Bibliotheque de l’École des Chartes 106 (1945–1946), 188–224. More recent work
includes S. Isaac, ‘Down Upon the Fold: Mercenaries in the Twelfth Century’, (PhD diss., Louisiana State University,
1998); and many valuable essays in J. France (ed.), Mercenaries and Paid Men: The Mercenary Identity in the Middle
Ages (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2008).
110
C. J. Rogers, ‘The Practice of War’, in C. Lansing and E. D. English (eds.), A Companion to the Medieval World,
(Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 435–454, esp. 445.
111
William the Breton, Gesta Philippi Augusti, in Oeuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton ed. François Delaborde
(Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1882), 285, 289; Lambert of St. Omer, Genealogiae Comitum Flandriae Continuato, in
Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores vol. 9. ed. L. C. Bethmann (Hanover and Leipzig, 1851), 333; G. Duby,
The Legend of Bouvines, trans. C. Tihanyi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 46, 48–49. The two sources
differ as to the unit’s size. William the Breton says 700; the Continuator of Lambert of St. Omer says 400. Possibly
the unit began with 700 but was reduced throughout the battle to 400.
112
C. W. C. Oman, A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages (New York: Burt Franklin, 1924), 1: 357–358,
377, 489.
113
William the Breton, Gesta, 289–290 and Philippidos. in Oeuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton ed. François
Delaborde (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1885), 342–344; Lambert of St. Omer, Genealogiae Comitum Flandriae, 333;
Duby, Legend, 201–202; J. France, ‘The Battle of Bouvines 27 July 1214’, in, G. I. Halfond (ed.), The Medieval Way
of War. Studies in Medieval Military History in Honor of Bernard S. Bachrach (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015),
251–271, esp. 269; S. Isaac, ‘The Role of Towns in the Battle of Bouvines (1214)’, The Journal of Military History
79:2 (2015), 317–344, esp. 338–339.
Development of a professional officer class or political career

In his edited volume on the development of professionalism in warfare, D. J. B. Trim has
identified seven ‘qualities’ that mark out all modern professions.114 Few of them could
be applied unequivocally to the long twelfth century.115 A career path did not exist for
‘officers’, commanders or generals in the twelfth century nor was there a corresponding
professional ‘officer class’.116 Holders of the posts of ‘constable’ and ‘marshal’ that
existed at most Western European courts could be used on an ad hoc basis to command
armies or subordinate groups within armies though the post itself was sometimes a
hereditary honorific with no real responsibilities.117 Knights did not normally command
tactical units of infantry or archers though small units of knights might be led by the
aforementioned bannerets.118
We should be careful of suggesting that ‘feudalism’ was used for military command
and control in this era but command in the twelfth century was often a very personal
thing as opposed to a public responsibility. 119 Medieval commanders of the long twelfth
century had to persuade as much as command.120 Therefore, except for communal armies
with a military obligation reinforced by charter, or paid mercenary units, subordinates
followed their commander because of their personal ties or reputation rather than as a
sovereign duty or because of their allegiance to a nation or people. In this sort of com-
mand relationship, to some degree military leaders could not order their subcommanders
in the same way that a Roman legate could order a centurion. Exceptions exist of course,
but persuasion and personal reputation were more important than the legal authority
114
D. J. B.Trim, ‘Introduction’, in D. J. B. Trim (ed.), The Chivalric Ethos and the Development of Military
Professionalism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003), 6–11, 20–21. Trim’s seven ‘markers’ are: ‘(1) a discrete occupational iden-
tity, (2) formal hierarchy, (3) permanence, (4) a formal pay system, (5) a distinctive expertise and means of education
therein, (6) efficiency in execution of expertise and (7) a distinctive self-conceptualisation’.
115
K. DeVries, ‘The Question of Military Professionalism’, in M. S. Neiberg (ed.), Arms and the Man. Military History
Essays in Honor of Dennis Showalter (Leiden: E. J.Brill, 2011), 113–130, esp. 123–129. DeVries suggests otherwise.
Using the battle of Hastings as a case study, he believes that the commanders and armies of both sides exhibited all
seven of Trim’s markers and that other medieval battles could be used to show the same.
116
Despite its sexist language, a classic definition of what it means to be a ‘professional’ officer remains S. P. Huntington,
The Soldier and the State. The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1957), 7–18. Bachrach, Warfare in Tenth Century Germany, 93, 255 infers an officer-like career in tenth century
Ottonian armies though there is not much direct evidence for it. D. S. Bachrach, ‘Edward I’s Centurions’, 111–112,
118, 121, shows that by the end of the thirteenth century there was a small core of professionals employed year after
year, suggestive of a profession.
117
D. Crouch, William Marshall. Knighthood, War and Chivalry, 1147–1219 (London: Pearson, 2002), 13, 226–228;
Church, Household Knights, 11–14; Baldwin, Government, 113.
118
Registres de Philippe Auguste. Tome VII, 308–324; Baldwin, Government, 262, 285; Keen, Chivalry, 240–243; M.
Van Creveld, The Training of Officers. From Military Professionalism to Irrelevance (New York: The Free Press, 1990),
11–13; Morillo, Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings, 42–47.
119
P. Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, trans. M. Jones (London: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 77–82. The now classic
statement against use of the term is E. A. R. Brown, ‘The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of
Medieval Europe’, American Historical Review 79:4 (Oct 1974), 1063–1088 but also see S. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals.
The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), who dedicated this book to Brown. R. Abels,
‘The Historiography of a Construct: “Feudalism” and the Medieval Historian’, History Compass 7/3 (2009), 1008–1031
suggests the term can still be used in a limited way.
120
K-F. Krieger, ‘Obligatory Military Service and the Use of Mercenaries in Imperial Military Campaigns under the
Hohenstaufen Emperors’, in A. Haverkamp and H. Vollrath (eds.), England and Germany in the High Middle Ages: in
honour of Karl J. Leyser (London: German Historical Institute, 1996), 151–168, esp. 155; J. France, Western Warfare
in the Age of the Crusades 1000–1300 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 139, 145.
one had. A good example of this occurred during the Albigensian Crusade. Simon of
Montfort was the acknowledged military and political leader of crusading activity in
Southern France, but had trouble asserting his authority, especially since men who joined
the crusade were only obligated to serve forty days to receive the papal indulgence, the
‘reward’ for their service.121 Many times Montfort failed to persuade those who had done
their time to stay any longer, even in the middle of active operations. He simply did not
have the authority to order them to stay.122
At times, when there was no obvious commander, as occasionally occurred on cru-
sades, magnates in the army often elected a leader but commanders selected in this
way commonly had their authority questioned. During the First Crusade there was no
titular military commander until the surviving magnates elected one, Steven of Blois,
in 1098 after two years of campaigning. He eventually deserted the army.123 There was
no commander of the Albigensian Crusade until after its initial sieges when the upper
ranks of the army realized they needed a commander to continue the war against heresy.
After three prominent nobles refused to take the job, a committee of seven was chosen
from the army; four knights and three clerics, including the papal legate (the pope’s
representative) who had acted as de facto commander up until then. The committee’s
selection, Simon of Montfort, led the crusade for almost nine years although successive
papal legates occasionally contested his authority.124 About a decade later on the Fifth
Crusade, the leading nobles elected the titular King of Jerusalem, John of Brienne, as
commander partially because he was the only crowned head present in the army at that
time. John had even more trouble managing affairs than Simon of Montfort because of
the interference of the papal legate Pelagius.125 When a Western European monarch went
on crusade they commanded whether they wished to or not, as did Louis VII during the
121
J. A. Brundage. Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1969), 145–153; L. W.
Marvin, ‘Thirty-Nine Days and a Wake-Up: The Impact of the Indulgence and Forty Days Service on the Albigensian
Crusade, 1209–1218’, The Historian 65.1 (2002), 75–94.
122
Peter les Vaux-de-Cernay, History, 96, 158; William of Puylaurens, The Chronicle of William of Puylaurens, trans.
W. A. Sibley and M. D. Sibly (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003), 41.
123
Gesta Francorum, 63; Raymond of Aguilers, Liber, eds. J. and L. Hill (Paris: Libraire Orientalist, 1969), 77; Albert
of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana , ed. and trans. S. B. Edgington (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), 96–97, 266–269;
J. France, Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994),
255–256; Kostick, Social Structure, 253–254.
124
Peter les Vaux-de-Cernay, History, 55.
125
Oliver of Paderborn, The Capture of Damietta, trans. J. F. Gavigan, in J. Bird, E. Peters and J. M. Powell (eds.),
Crusade and Christendom. Annotated Documents in Translation from Innocent III to the Fall of Acre, 1187–1291,
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2013), 158–225, esp. 199–200; G. Perry, John of Brienne. King of Jerusalem,
Emperor of Constantinople c. 1175–1237 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 101–104; J. M. Powell,
Anatomy of a Crusade 1213–1221 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 114–116, 141. John of
Brienne was titular King of Jerusalem by marriage. John and Pelagius bickered over the course of the crusade, and
its command difficulties were one of the major causes of its failure.
Second Crusade or his son Philip Augustus on the Third Crusade. Neither really wanted
the job (for different reasons) but they could never quite escape its responsibilities.126
Nature of political authority and military objectives

Who medieval commanders were accountable to is also at variance with the modern
world or the Greco-Roman one. The ultimate accountability of an army commander
in the High Middle Ages in theory or practice was simply not defined. This goes back
farther than Gelasius, who as Bishop of Rome in the late fifth century tried to deline-
ate the separate authority of church and state through the ‘two swords theory’. Many
thinkers echoed aspects of Gelasius’s ideas, such as the twelfth-century Bishop Otto of
Freising and the thirteenth-century clerk Gervase of Tilbury.127 Who was a commander
responsible to? A sovereign commander, Otto suggested, was responsible to God for
defence of the poor and the church against ‘evil men’.128 His near contemporary John
of Salisbury also maintained that kings had a responsibility to God for their actions.129
Abbot Suger, who wrote the deeds of his friend and sovereign, Louis VI (r. 1108–1137),
believed that a monarch had a responsibility to his subjects and humanity in general and
therefore could intervene in any territory against anyone who instigated wars, destroyed
property or harmed the innocent.130 Suger used Louis’ sense of duty to justify why the
king so often interfered in the territories of others.
The nature of the tasks that medieval commanders pursued seems different and less
relevant to the modern world. Since Edward Luttwak’s pioneering yet controversial The
Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire some historians accept that Rome had a grand
strategy. Although Luttwak’s thesis has been widely challenged and Susan Mattern has
further nuanced the idea, there does seem to have been some sense of long-term, strategic
126
In Louis VII’s case: Odo of Deuil, 114–115, 124–127 and A. Graboïs, ‘The Crusade of Louis VII: a Reconsideration’,
in P. W. Edbury (ed.), Crusade and Settlement. Papers read at the First Conference of the Society for the Study of
the Crusades and the Latin East and presented to R. C. Smail, (Cardiff, UK: University College Cardiff Press, 1985),
94–104, esp. 98–99. As pointed out earlier, during the march to the coast Louis tried to put himself under command of
the Templars. For Philip II: Rigord, Histoire de Philippe Augusti, eds. and trans. É. Carpentier, G. Pon et Y. Chauvin
(Paris: CNRS, 2006), 306–307; The Chronicle of the Third Crusade, trans. H. J. Nicholson (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate,
1997), 223–225; Ambroise, The History of the Holy War. Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, 2 vols., eds. M. Ailes
and M. Barber, trans. M. Ailes (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2003), I: 85–86 , II: 104–106; Ralph of Diceto, Ymagines
Historiarum, Rolls Series 68. 2, ed. W. Stubbs (London: H. M. Stationary office, 1876), 95; Baldwin, Government,
79–80. Contemporary sources roundly criticized Philip for giving up command and leaving the crusade just after the
fall of Acre in 1191.
127
Otto of Freising, The Two Cities: A Chronicle of Universal History to the Year 1146 A.D., rev. ed. and trans. C.
C. Mierow (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 271–273, 404; Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, 1–15.
128
Otto of Freising, Two Cities, 272–273.
129
John of Salisbury, Policraticus, 28–29, 114–115; Allmand, De Re Militari, 87.
130
Suger, The Deeds of Louis the Fat, trans. R. C. Cusimano and J. Moorhead (Washington, DC: Catholic University
of America Press, 1992), 106, 109.
thinking even if the Romans themselves did not articulate it in an explicit way.131 Bernard
S. Bachrach has contended that Carolingian rulers, especially Charlemagne may have
thought in grand strategic terms.132 Critics have argued that grand strategy was uncom-
mon until the nineteenth or twentieth century or at the very least the difference between
strategy and tactics was not always understood by people in the pre-modern world.133
It is not that medieval commanders during the long twelfth century lacked a sense of
grand strategy but the objectives monarchs sought to achieve were different than for
Rome or the modern era. One big difference, perhaps, between the Classical world, the
High Middle Ages and the modern age is that the strategic vision of twelfth-century
monarchs frequently settled for influence or suzerainty rather than direct control or
sovereignty. For example, the German kings and emperors of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries often had trouble gathering armies for imperial service outside their realms
to assert sovereignty, since German lords received few gains for doing so.134 Kings like
Frederick I who insisted on it often saw their ambitions thwarted by reluctant nobles
and communal cities.
The concept of a contiguous realm with recognized, immovable borders under one
ruler, or the idea of expanding the state permanently by military conquest was not well
expressed and would not be for many centuries except in the case of the Reconquista
on the Iberian Peninsula. Yet by no means did twelfth-century rulers and commanders
lack strategic thinking. As John France notes, even the Papacy had a grand strategy,
part of which encompassed military movements like the crusades.135 A good example
131
E. N. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century A. D. to the Third (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976); B. Isaac, The Limits of Empire. The Roman Army in the East, rev. ed. (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1990), 377, 416, 419; A. Ferrill, ‘The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire’, in P. Kennedy (ed.),
Grand Strategies in War and Peace (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991), 71–85, esp. 74–76; E. L.
Wheeler, ‘Methodological Limits and the Mirage of Roman Strategy’, The Journal of Military History 57:1 and
57:2 (January, April 1993), 7–41; 215–240; S. P. Mattern, Rome and the Enemy. Imperial Strategy in the Principate
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 21–23, 171–172, 209–210, 221–222; K. Kagan, ‘Redefining Roman
Grand Strategy’, The Journal of Military History 70:2 (April 2006), 333–362. Ferrill and Kagan endorse the idea
that the Roman Empire had a grand strategy although they do not agree with Luttwak’s conception of it. The others
challenge Luttwak’s ideas. In his latest work, Grand Strategy of Byzantine Empire, 409, 416–417, Luttwak argues that,
‘All states have a grand strategy, whether they know it or not’ and ‘Obviously governments or rulers do not always
articulate them’ and ‘not all grand strategies are equal’.
132
Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare, 1–5, 48–50, 243–246; Charlemagne’s Early Campaigns, 98, 632–634; ‘Grand
Strategy in the Germanic Kingdoms: Recruitment of the Rank and File’, in M. Kazanski and F. Vallet (eds.), L’Armée
Romaine et Les Barbares du IIIe au VIIe Siècle, (Association Française d’Archéologie Mérovingienne et la Société des
Amis du Musée des Antiquités Nationales, 1993), 55–63, esp. 55, 61. He also suggests that Germanic successor states
between 400 and 700 understood some aspects of grand strategy.
133
P. Kennedy, ‘Grand Strategy in War and Peace: Toward a Broader Definition’, in Grand Strategies, 1–7, esp. 1, 6; W.
Murray, ‘Thoughts on grand strategy’, in Shaping of Grand Strategy, 1–33, esp. 1, 6 n17, 21, 29. Kennedy and Murray
believe grand strategy can only come from ‘grand’ states. Though they do not define what ‘grand’ might mean relative
to ‘medium’ or ‘small’, most Western European twelfth-century states would probably not qualify as ‘grand’, at least
in geographical size. Yet Murray believes that Athens in the fifth century BC had a grand strategy.
134
Otto of Freising and Rahwin, The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, trans. C. C. Mierow (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1953), 128; Arnold, ‘Western Empire’, 417; G. Raccagni, The Lombard League 1167–1225 (Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 2010), 28; Krieger, ‘Obligatory Military Service’, 159–160, 167–168. The same held true
for France; see R. Fawtier, The Capetian Kings of France. Monarchy and Nation (987–1328), (London: MacMillan,
1962), 162, 167.
135
J. France, ‘Thinking About Crusader Strategy’, in N. Christie and M. Yazigi (eds.), Noble Ideals and Bloody
Realities, (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 2006), 75–96, esp. 79–82, 93.
of strategic thinking would be Henry II’s assemblage of what historians commonly call
the ‘Angevin Empire’.136 Henry II did things in a grand strategic manner especially if we
accept that, among other things, grand strategy combines political, diplomatic, social,
economic and military policies.137
Below strategy, on the operational or ‘grand’ tactical levels, kings and commanders
of the long twelfth century were certainly capable of operational planning and execu-
tion in spite of daunting challenges.138 Every monarch and great noble had a familia, or
personal retinue they could use as the core around which they could plan strategy and
operations. Members of a familia numbered in the dozens typically and thus besides
planning were used for security and small tasks.139 One of the ways some twelfth-century
rulers consistently fielded armies was by commuting military service of their aristocratic
vassals for money, sometimes called scutage or ‘shield’ money in England. Henry II of
England gradually began doing this, and so did the French kings by the thirteenth century.
German emperors used a similar practice of commuting service for money in the twelfth
century.140 Commutation of service for money allowed rulers to hire who they wanted,
and as long as the money flowed in they had an army, albeit a small one, to assist them
at all times. Philip Augustus for example, employed a small army paid from commuted
service which helped him maintain a five-month blockade and prosecute a five-week siege
of Château Gaillard in 1204.141
Like his English counterparts, Philip Augustus granted charters of customs, liber-
ties or commune status to many towns and cities of Northern France during his reign,
essentially freeing them in exchange for ultimate obedience and some sort of military
obligation to the crown.142 This prudent, long-term strategy of building loyalty through
concession paid big dividends in 1214, when Philip won at Bouvines partially through the
assistance of his communal forces. Philip Augustus delineated what military obligations
each town owed to the crown on a case by case basis which varied a great deal. Each town
typically negotiated separately with the king, although the king occasionally granted
what amounted to boiler-plate charters if both sides agreed. Military obligations ranged
136
M. Powicke, The Loss of Normandy 1189–1204. Studies in the History of the Angevin Empire, 2nd. ed. (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1960); J. Gillingham, The Angevin Empire, 2nd ed. (London: Arnold, 2001); R. V. Turner,
‘The Problem of Survival for the Angevin “Empire”’, American Historical Review 100:1 (1995), 78–96.
137
Murray, ‘Thoughts on Grand Strategy’, 5; E. N. Luttwak, Strategy. The Logic of War and Peace, rev. ed. (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 209–211; Liddell Hart, Strategy, 322. Hosler, Henry II, 125–127, 130, 147,
148–157.
138
Gillingham, ‘Richard I and the Science of War’, 78. Gillingham suggests that commanders in the High Middle
Ages like Richard I had a well-developed sense of operational strategy. M. R. Gabriel’s entry, ‘Strategy’, in the Oxford
Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology III, 316–320 contains a useful overview.
139
M. Chibnall, ‘Mercenaries and the Familia Regis under Henry I’, History n.s., 62:204 (Feb, 1977), 15–23; J. O.
Prestwich, ‘The Military Household of the Norman Kings’, The English Historical Review 96 (Jan 1981), 1–35;
Church, Household Knights, 14–15; B. Arnold, German Knighthood 1050–1300 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985),
100–101, 110–112; ‘The Western Empire’, in D. L. and J. Riley-Smith (eds.), The New Cambridge Medieval History IV
c. 1024-c. 1198 Part II (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 384–422, esp. 407; L. Macé, Les Comtes de
Toulouse et leur entourage. Rivalités, alliances et jeux de pouvoir XII e-XIIIe siècles (Toulouse: Privat, 2000), 108–110.
140
Krieger, ‘Obligatory Military Service’, 157.
141
Rigord, Histoire de Philippe Auguste, 387; William the Breton, Gesta Philippi, 218–219; E. Audouin, Essai L’Armée
Royale au Temps de Philippe Auguste (Paris: Librairie Ancienne, 1913), 120–121; Baldwin, Government, 168.
142
Baldwin, Government, 60–64; Luchaire, French Communes, 51.
tremendously based on region, population and the perceived military importance of the
town. The citizens of one town, Lorris, whose charter eventually served as a template for
other towns, did not have to serve the king beyond one day’s March from Lorris.143 The
townspeople of the large and strategically important town of Tournai, however, had to
send 300 well-equipped infantrymen whenever and wherever the king wished them.144
Eventually Philip commuted some towns’ military obligations to a money payment anal-
ogous to scutage.145 The government kept careful records of each town’s military or
financial obligation so that operational planning could be done yearly. By the terms of
the conditions their charters specified, urban militias had only to adhere to the letter of
their obligations. Yet working within the confines of this system Philip the commander
planned and carried out the conquest of Normandy from the English crown in 1204, a
major strategic victory, and a decade later defeated a Flemish–German–English coalition
raised against him at Bouvines, a decisive tactical victory with strategic implications.
At the tactical level, one thing both ancient and medieval historians agree on is that
once battle was joined there typically was not much an individual commander could
do to influence the outcome or stabilize a situation except to show himself to inspire
or rally demoralized soldiers. By doing so, however, a commander-in-chief ceased to
command the entire army in favour of directing a small part of the battle. Ancient
commanders regularly entered the tactical fray. At Issus in 333 BC Alexander the Great
led his companion cavalry to save the day but did so only by abandoning his role as
commander-in-chief and exposing himself to danger and death, and was wounded for
his trouble.146 Julius Caesar admitted that he could do little once a battle began unless
he personally intervened. When he did so against the Nervii in 53 BC he gambled that
his immediate presence would help at a critical point but he lost control over the rest of
his forces when he did.147
Commanders in the long twelfth century who did the same thing faced identical dan-
gers and potential consequences. The chronicler Ralph of Caen chastised Tancred, one
of the leaders of the First Crusade, for seeking glory in fighting personally as opposed to
planning and deploying his men.148 As both a young man and a corpulent middle-aged
monarch, Louis VI of France regularly led from the front and fought in close combat.149
As his biographer notes in one incident, Louis did, ‘something which little befitted the
royal majesty, this veteran warrior fought hand-to-hand, fulfilling the office of a simple
143
‘Charter of the Liberties of Lorris’, in B. D. Lyon (ed.), The High Middle Ages, (New York: Free Press, 1964), 58;
Recueil des Actes de Louis VI roi de France, ed. M. R.-H. Bautier (Paris: L’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres,
1992–1994), 2: 356–357. The Charter of Lorris was first composed in Louis VI’s reign, confirmed by his son Louis
VII, and reconfirmed by his grandson Philip in 1187.
144
H.-Fr. Delaborde, C. Petit-Dutaillis et al. (eds.), Recueil des Actes de Philippe Auguste roi de France, (Paris:
L’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1916–1966), 1: 273–274; Luchaire, French Communes, 72–73.
145
Registres de Philippe Auguste, ed. Baldwin, 1: 259–262.
146
Arrian, Campaigns of Alexander, 118–121; Plutarch, ‘Alexander’, in Lives trans. B. Perrin (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1919), 7: 281.
147
Kagan, Eye of Command, 182–184; Julius Caesar, The Gallic War, ed. and trans. H. J. Edwards (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1917), 122, 124; Caesar, The Gallic War, trans. C. Hammond (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1996), 48–49.
148
Ralph of Caen, The Gesta Tancredi of Ralph of Caen. A History of the Normans on the First Crusade, trans. B.
S. and D. S. Bachrach (Burlington: Ashgate, 2010), 57.
149
Suger, Deeds, 30, 56, 60, 90, 98–100, 135, 145; Bisson, Crisis of Power, 230. Bisson notes that between 1101 and
1132 Louis participated in or ordered twenty-five military operations, and he took or besieged twenty-three castles.
knight, not that of a king’.150 Louis’ impetuosity cost him the battle of Brémule in 1119
against Henry I of England, when the French monarch rushed into battle without prior
planning, and was forced to retreat, even getting separated from the rest of the army for
a time.151 John de Courcy, a leading Norman noble in the late twelfth century conquest
of Ireland, often threw himself into combat, forgetting he was commanding troops and
thus throwing away his ability to make decisions or modify orders.152 At St. Martin-la-
Lande in Southern France in 1211, Simon of Montfort abandoned his position under
siege in Castelnaudary to lead a mere sixty troops to assist a beleaguered supply train,
abrogating his position as overall commander and placing the town in jeopardy.153
Despite an almost certain loss of control over the entire battlefield, medieval generals
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries actively participated in battles, frequently from
the front.154 Sometimes the commander-in-chief led the third line, using it as a tactical
reserve although this was not always observed.155 In 1128 at Thielt in Flanders, both
William of Clito and Thierry of Flanders, commanding only mounted men, organized
their forces into three lines. William and Thierry both went into battle in their first lines,
though William hid a unit of horsemen behind a hill. When William’s first two lines gave
way after fierce close combat, and were being pursued in retreat, his reserve line emerged
from their hill and routed Thierry’s men.156 At Brémule, Louis VI rode in the second
rank as did his English counterpart.157 At the battle of Lincoln in 1141, King Stephen
stood on foot in a unit of dismounted knights flailing away with an ax until it broke, and
then drew his sword to great effect until it too snapped and he was captured.158 Simon of
Montfort rode in the third rank at the battle of Muret in 1213 but eventually committed
this reserve and himself to the combat, in the process breaking a stirrup leather and
engaging in fisticuffs with an enemy knight. At the same battle, King Peter II of Aragon
stood in the second rank of his horsemen and was killed.159 In his memoirs written more
than fifty years after Muret, Peter’s son James I said that, ‘in battle the king ought to
be in the rearguard’, perhaps ever mindful of what had happened to his father.160 At the
battle of Bouvines in 1214, Philip Augustus stood mounted in the centre of his army
with a small bodyguard of knights but almost died when his communal militia retreated
through his lines, followed by Flemish infantrymen who knocked him from his horse.
150
Suger, Deeds, 99–100.
151
Suger, Deeds, 117–118; Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, 6: 235–243; Matthew Strickland, ‘Henry I and the
Battle of the Two Kings: Brémule, 1119’, in D. Crouch and K. Thompson (eds.), Normandy and its Neighbours,
900–1250: Essays for David Bates. (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2011), 77–116, esp. 102–103.
152
Gerald of Wales, Expugnatio Hibernica, ed. and trans. A. B. Scott and F. X. Martin (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy,
1978), 178–181; Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, 182.
153
Peter les Vaux-de-Cernay, History, 136–137; William of Puylaurens, Chronicle, 42.
154
Rogers, Soldiers’ Lives, 186–188.
155
Verbruggen, Art of Warfare, 217–221.
156
Galbert of Bruges, The Murder, Betrayal, and Slaughter of the Glorious Charles, Count of Flanders, trans. J. Rider
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 174–175; Verbruggen, Art of Warfare, 229–231.
157
Henry of Huntingdon, The History of the English People 1000–1154, trans. D. Greenway (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1996), 54–55; Strickland, ‘Henry I and the Battle of the Two Kings’, 106–108.
158
Henry of Huntingdon, History of the English People, 78, 80; Hosler, Henry II, 230.
159
Peter les Vaux-de-Cernay, History, 211–212; William of Tudela and an Anonymous Successor, Song of the Cathar
Wars, trans. J. Shirley (Brookfield: Ashgate, 1996), 70; William of Puylaurens, Chronicle, 48.
160
James I, Book of Deeds, 314. James believed that kings ought to be first to set up camp at sieges, but sieges typically
took time to resolve, unlike the immediacy of combat.
They tried to punch or find a hole in his armour but his bodyguard regrouped and saved
him.161 His counterpart on the allied side, the emperor Otto, commanded the third line
of troops and not only lost his mount but was also nearly killed during the combat.162
No firm rules prevailed about where the commander should place himself; only weak
custom that the king or commander-in-chief ought not to be in the initial line. Since
commanders often disregarded that custom, in the fluidity and uncertainty of combat
they automatically risked life and limb.
By the fourteenth century, a theory evolved suggesting that perhaps the sovereign ought
not to expose himself in direct combat even though kings like Henry V and John of
France continued to do so during the Hundred Years’ War.163 The fifteenth-century writer
Christine de Pizan explicitly stated that a sovereign should refrain from participating in
warfare directly unless quelling a rebellion.164 The expectation that a king should lead
from the front continued as late as the seventeenth century, when Gustavus Adolphus
was killed leading his cavalry against imperial forces at Lützen during the Thirty Years’
War. While sovereigns participated less and less in warfare by the early modern period,
the necessity to provide the occasional morale boost by the commander-in-chief (the
sovereign’s deputy, in other words) personally engaging in combat persisted long into
the nineteenth century, when communications like the telegraph and the sheer size of
armies eventually mandated that the farther up the chain a commander stood, the less
he could participate in direct combat.
Could the commander-in-chief change the course of a battle once committed? At
the aforementioned battle of Muret, by not putting himself in the front line, Simon of
Montfort directed his reserve against the Aragonese flank, finishing its collapse, but he
accomplished this only by keeping his distance from the fray in the last line until the last
possible moment.165 Perhaps more famously, during the Third Crusade, King Richard I
maintained extraordinary unit discipline under harrowing conditions during the march
to Jaffa. The king managed to keep his remaining mounted knights inside their protective
infantry square under the roasting sun even as all came under incessant missile fire from
Muslim horse archers. The Master of the Hospitallers demanded that they be allowed to
attack. Richard delayed as long as he could until his rearguard could take no more and
charged, before he wished them to, but they caught Saladin’s horse archers by surprise
and partially routed the Muslim army on the field. The king himself felt obliged to ride
back to the rear guard to participate.166 In the end, Richard earned a significant tactical
victory even though his command and control had broken temporarily.
161
William the Breton, Gesta, 282–283; Roger of Wendover, The Flowers of History, ed. H. G. Hewlett (London:
Rolls Series #84, 1886–1889), 2: 108.
162
Roger of Wendover, Flowers, 2: 107–108; William the Breton, Gesta, 283–284.
163
E. R. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies. A Study in Medieval Political Theology (1957, repr.; Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1985), 263–265; Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, 161; Allmand, De Re Militari, 230.
164
Christine de Pizan, The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry, trans. S. Willard. ed. C. C. Willard (University
Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 21–23.
165
Peter les Vaux-de-Cernay, History, 211.
166
Bahā’ al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin, trans. D. S. Richards (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2002), 174–175; Chronicle of the Third Crusade, 250–254; Ambroise, History of the Holy War, 1: 102–104, 2: 118–119;
Benjamin Z. Kedar, ‘King Richard’s Plan for the Battle of Arsūf/Arsur, 1191’, in Medieval Way of War, 117–132,
esp. 122–123.
Conclusion
Though ‘command and control’ as a concept is largely a twentieth-century product, twen-
ty-first century scholarship still easily finds it in the ancient world. The medieval world,
especially eras like the long twelfth century, remain largely irrelevant to us even though
the quantity and quality of the source material composed during it shows contemporary
commanders exhibited aspects of command and control to one degree or another. If the
gaps between the medieval world and our own remain chasms across which at best we
must shout to try and understand the echoes on their own terms, different, yet equally
insurmountable ravines separate the ancient world from us even as we all too frequently
plunge into them. Attempting to use the ancient world, medieval period or the last
century for lessons on influencing the present or predicting the future is rather naïve.167
Acknowledgements
I thank Jonathan M. Atkins, John Dotson, Robert Lang, Kaitlyn Pierce, Matthew G.
Stanard and Jeffrey Grey for their suggestions and encouragement.
Notes on contributor
Laurence Marvin is a professor of history at Berry College, Georgia in the United States.
He has published widely in the field of medieval European military history and is the
author of The Occitan War: A Military and Political History of the Albigensian Crusade,
1209–1218 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
Correspondence to: Laurence W.Marvin.: lmarvin@berry.edu
167
M. Howard, ‘The Use and Abuse of Military History’, in The Causes of Wars, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1983), 188–197; J. Luvaas, ‘Military History: an Academic Historian’s Point of View’, in, R. F.
Weigley (ed.), New Dimensions in Military History. An Anthology (San Rafae: Presidio Press, 1975), 19–36, esp.
24–25, 34–36; J. Gooch, ‘Clio and Mars: The Use and Abuse of History’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 3 (December
1980), 21–36, esp. 1, 31–33.

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Medieval and Modern C2: Command

Europe’s Long Twelfth Century

KEYWORDS: command and control, twelfth century, professionalism, strategy,

© 2016 School of Humanities & Social Sciences, DOI 10.1080/07292473.2016.1196921

mention this 1000-year period tangentially.14 Long-view works on command or lists of

forces, Hal Klepak states that:

40 Arrian, Campaigns, 365–366; Curtius Rufus, History of Alexander, 244.

Nature of the western European source material during the long

Perceived lack of professionalism in medieval armies

Vegetius’ Latin treatise De Re Militari.75 A bureaucrat with no obvious military experi-

Lack of permanent tactical units

Development of a professional officer class or political career

Nature of political authority and military objectives

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© 2016 School of Humanities & Social Sciences, DOI 10.1080/07292473.2016.1196921