"Renaissance Gendarmes" Topic

How would French Gendarmes be deployed during the early period of the Italian wars (1494-1515)? It appears that the Gendarmes themselves were in the first line with their "archers" behind. Logically the archers would be in two lines since there were two per lance? I'm assuming the other three members of the lance weren't in the line at all but just generally grouped in the rear. What about flags? I'm assuming one of the two archers carried the standard of the Gendarme he served, but would each GA have his own standard? Were minor nobles without standards grouped with more affluent nobles who would have a personal standard? Just trying to get an idea of what a company of these elite soldiers would look like when deployed on the battlefield.

I would recommend Sir Charles Oman's "The Art of War in the Sixteenth century" for a good start.

link

He does cover the composition, but not in the detail you are asking, i.e., flags/standards. Still, a very good and worthwhile read for the period.

Cheers,

My understanding matches yours. The Gendarmes would definitely be formed 'en haie', single ranked with the Archers behind. By the way, what figures are you using for the Archers. Many companies produce Gendarmes but Archers are seemingly much more rare.

I have seen some illustrations & paintings of Gens d'armes of the period (not necessarily French) and they are often festooned with banners and flags of various sorts.

I do not think that these would be carried into battle under normal circumstances except by commanders of companies and above – as rallying points.

Bear in mind that many French gens d'armes were effectively professional soldiers with very limited incomes from other sources, whatever their titles. Dragging along a few square metres of expensive cloth that was likley to get ruined or lost and also significantly reducing the effectiveness of 1/3 of your force while carrying it doesn't make much sense.

I don't know about the archers except that there were occasions when they are mentioned as serving separately – no idea if this was rare or commonplace.

In 1494-1515 there would be few if any Archers among the Gendarmes as the Archers dismounted to fight on foot with their longbows. The 2nd line of the "En Haye" formation would in theory be formed by the Coustilier who had been an important combatant 2nd in rank only to the Gendarme in the 15th Century.

Each company would have a standard which supposedly were based on the livery chosen by the captain rather than the coat of arms of the various nobles present. Some sources do suggest a move towards a form of national colours in the shape of the cross of St. Denis (white) on a diffrent coloured background but other images show classic livery style standards. Each Gendarme would have a pennon for his lance, again we do not know much about their colours. It certainly does not help that their is a certain amount of conflict between the various sources.

I know conventional wisdom is that they fought in long lines, but I've often wondered about that.

Many of the drawings from the period show them arrayed in tight blocks, that appear to be as deep as they are wide, which has always left me wondering if perhaps they attempted to either charge enemy formations en mass (probably not likely, since the rear, friendly troops would probably be as dangerous to their friends as their enemies, with those long pointy sticks), or if they maneuvered in tight groups, and then attacked sequentially, on a narrow front.

It seems to me that they might be able to have each successive front rank line perform a charge against a narrow portion of the enemy battle line, or block of troops, and then peel off, so the next line of gendarmes could repeat the process. If attacking on a small portion of an enemy's line, or against a single block of forces repeatedly, by fresh troops (subsequent lines of gendarmes from their block of cavalry), perhaps they would be more easily able to break them, schwerpunkt style.

The gendarmes that survived the initial battle contact could then regroup, and join their original formation at the rear, to rest and get ready for another charge.

Once they broke the enemy, they would then all be able to ride down the routing enemy troops, and pick them off individually, as desired.

Thoughts?

Daniel

Do you know of any battles during the Italian wars where the French deployed any unit(s) of longbows. I only seem to be able to find reference to the 'archers' specifically twice – and in both cases they have been assumed to be mounted by the author.

I know that, in theory, they were longbowmen but were they actually employed in that role as late as that ? I'd like to find some evidence if they were.

Good call by The Honeyed Cat. Oman is a really inspirational read, but is light on the relevant detail.

As for deploying your gensdarmes, most rules don't distinguish between what the actual ranks would have been. Some mixture of fully armoured Gensdarmes, lighter armoured Gensdarmes and retainers.
The archers/coustiliers didn't fight separately, unless dismounted as archers (and I suspect this didn't occur very much at all by 1494), so should probably be part of the numbers making up an individual gensdarme figures.
That's the approach I take, and it suits me. It's really up to you.

There is an old "Confucius Say…" joke that goes "There are two kinds of fools. One who say 'This is good because it is old', and the one who say 'This is better because it is new.'"

I'll be switched if I know why people reject Oman because he is "dated", and embrace the New Kids on the Block because they are "current". In 10 years, all the Smart People will believe the opposite of what the present Smart People think.

Mako11,
The reasons why it is "conventional wisdom" that the Gendarmes fought in lines ("En Haye") is that that is what the men who fought as French Gendarmes, against French Gendarmes or saw French Gendarmes in action say they did. It is a fact that is very well documented in the written sources.

That said there are still gaps in our knowledge of how the French Gendarmes fought as we know little of how the companies were deployed as part of a larger formation. Did they always deployed next to each other in a single line as some authors assume? Or were reserves retained which effectivly results in more layered formation? It is a classic case of all contemporaries knowing the important details and therefor not bothering to write down highly detailed descriptions.

Period images are not photographs and one has to be carefull to match them to other sources when interpreting them. Artists frequently wanted to paint images that looked good rather than being 100% factual representations of actual formations. Deep formations of lancers look better than thin lines, in the same way 17th Century artists tend to exaggerate the number of pikemen simply because massed pikes look good on a painting.

I totally agree with you, but in many of the drawings/paintings, they are shown as gendarmes, on horses, in squares, which is very different than long, thin lines of cavalry.

I can see some errors, and/or artistic license by artists, but to me, the two widely different views stretch credulity.

Why? The drawings & paintings are not the same as a photo. They are usually made by men who were not eyewitness to the events they depicted and who frequently only had limited or no experience of warfare. There are exceptions to this but even those artists could use a fair bit of artistic license.

You have to look at a lot of factors before using an image as a source. Who made it and when? Is it supported by written sources?
Where an image was made is also important, German cavalry tended to use deeper formations so it is no surprise that German artists show deep formations some of whom are huge, indeed far too large to have been formed given the number of cavalry present.

A classic example of the problem with using images as sources is the famous engraving of the battle of Lützen which shows Wallensteins infantry deployed as acouple of huge tercios. In fact written evidence from the men present in the battle reveals that the Imperial infantry was deployed in eight linear battalions. Another example is Vrancx who with great detail & accuracy depicted the clothing & equipment worn by early 17th Century soldiers but had little interest in showing detailed tactical formations.

GildasFacit,
We know that the Archers were armed with longbows thanks to the ordinnances describing the equipment of the Archers, even in 1515 & 1526 ordinnances the bow and the skill to use one was a requirement for an Archer. This is supported by independet sources such as eyewitnesses describing the larg bows carried by the Archers in 1494 and the written & pictorial sources showing dismounted archers fighting bow in hand at Fornovo 1494 and during the conquest of Genoa 1507.

While the Ravenna sources do not expressly mention the use of the bow we do know that the Archers dismounted to fight in that battle. I don't see any reason to doubt that they did so in order to use their bows.

"Renaissance France at War" mention other instances of the French use of archery but do not go into detail, for that one has to look up the original sources.

The evidence is there it is just a matter of investing the time to search for it. The interesting thing is that so far I have found no evidence for the classic Wargames "Archer" i.e a light lancer during the 1494-1515 period, firm evidence for the Archer being a lancer only appears decades later. Clearly their role and equipment did change but how and when this have yet to be documented, it could be that the evidence has been lost.

Well saying that Oman is "dated" is quicker, kinder and less inflamatory than going into details of his flaws as an author.

To being with he used a very narrow range of sources when writing as he made little or no use of secondary sources or administrative documents. His main sources are narrative souces such as Giovio & Monluc and others. These are certainly important but an overreliance on them will lead to factual errors.

Due to his lack of sources Oman often had to fill out the gaps in his text with more or less educated guesses, this notably affects his order of battles.

Oman had some pretty strong biases, notably agains the French & Germans. Evidence that the French were capable of more than wild charges tend to be overlooked or downplayed. The Germans are treated even worse with their presence and/or contribution to many battles being minimised or completly ignored. You also have the the dismisse treatment of the "Long War" in Hungary against the Ottomans as well as the ignorant treatment of the battle of Sievershausen.

Oman also seems to be suffering from the effects of old age by this time, he contradicts himself at times in the chapters about the French Wars or Religion and in the Italian Wars chapters he forgets the fact that a lance was a small unit of men rather than a single armed man.

Daniel

Thanks for that. At least some concrete evidence does exist then for them being used as bowmen in open field battles.

I'd never really thought of them as light cavalry but had wondered if they had developed into a less well armed and armoured gens d'arme (similar to English demi-lancer) by then. In French terminology of the time I think they would still be classed as 'legere' – which seems to refer to anything lighter than a gens d'arme. I hadn't realised that the evidence for that only shows up later.

Sadly lack of access and poor foreign language skills mean that most original sources are very difficult to use for me – added to the lack of time, which is the big difficulty as always.

Thanks for the help.

Tony

What an excellent thread, informative and engaging. I've said it before but you should definitely put your knowledge on paper Daniel – or a site or blog.

There are so many pitfalls and misleading sources relating to renaissance warfare that a little guidance would really help both new and current gamers when poring over an army list or on an endless quest to try and better understand the subject. Your thoughts are always informed, patient, in depth and never patronising.

Stuart

Indeed, Daniel seems to be knowing the actual sources second to none, to the point of being a (secondary) source himself – with the minor problem that he is only available in direct interactions, not in print :-)
If that ever changes, let me know.

Regarding the deployment of Gensdarmes, and not demanding verified historical proof" for our wargame usage, we can add another "educated guess" into the equation: the people back then were not stupid.
We may assume that Gensdarmes will be deployed to assault at the dept that makes military sense, not less or more due to "it is done this way" thinking (I know, there are exceptions due to human nature). When a broad approach is called for, they would not skirt from moving "En Haye" in a single line, and due to their largely professional nature (its not 1415 anymore) they would form up in several lines if called for. Indeed most historical depictions show them is several lines. We can also assume (just another educated guess) that any division will be done along the line of companies, who are around 30-200 with most being 50-100 strong.

That said, there is no detailed reference on the deployment of Gensdarmes in an actual battle that I know of, especially not on the deployment of individual companies in a larger battle. Daniel will perhaps have one.

I'm enjoying this thread so here's my thoughts. I read somewhere several years ago that Charles viii did not take Francs archers with him on his invasion to Italy as he considered them poor troops. I've tried to re-find this source but have never been able too.

Archers are depicted several times in contemporary sources eg the two well known prints of Fornovo, the siege of Genoa and there's even pics of Louis xii's guards carrying their longbows when leaving France and when going into battle. So for my money longbowmen were used in Italy at least until Francis came to the throne, however these may only have been the kings bodyguard. Nevertheless archers were attached to the lances and if it was good enough for the king it would likely be good enough for the nobility and the gendarmes.

Also I doubt if all Gascons were crossbowmen, skirmishers or otherwise. I reckon shot units were mixed and made from handgunners, crossbowmen and archers. In addition at least during the earlty part of the wars a sizeable proportion of French troops were armed with some form of polearm and that's why the Picard pikeman were made such a fuss of at Ravenna. I can't prove this 'hypothesis'but hope somebody can, cheers Pete

Pete17, Montluc describes the first company of Gascon foot he commanded as being primarily crossbowmen but with some arquebusiers mixed in.

Pete17,
The Francs Archers are a diffren type of unit made up of men serving as part time soldiers in exchange for not having to pay certain taxes. They had been abolished in their original form in 1481 but soon reemerged as a territorial force for local defence.
They were by the 1490's a a pretty useless bunch so it is understandable that the King did not what to take the trouble of draging them to Italy when he could raise more serviceable troops such as the "Aventuriers".

The Archers of a Compagnie d'ordonnance were professional soldiers who were an integral part of the lance which was the basic unit making up the company. Their number and equipment was regulated by Royal Ordinnances some of which have survived to this day.

I've added some pics depicting Italian and French archers from the late 15th and early 16th century to my blog, here's the link if anyone's interested:

link

Daniel S have you anymore information regarding the composition of the French Comagnie d'ordonnace?

cheers Pete

Love that Fornovo woodcut, especially the little details such as the rabbits. You see that a lot in woodcuts, a metaphor perhaps?

They represent blood, or more specifically 'sanguine'; one of the four medieval humours