"Did Nobles really fight in the Medieval times?" Topic

This is a question i wanted people with great understanding of the Era to give me an answer for the HYW.
I read quite a few books and from my understanding nobles where fighting nobles or they expected to be captured and ransomed.. also many nobles fought with an entourage of body guards!In Hundred Years war books i read somewhere that Lord..so and so..was killed by accident expected to be captured.
i am not saying that during those crazy battles in all this fighting they where safe..but i have the feeling that they had a few alternatives..
i would really like people who have knowledge of this period to tell me their opinion

Yes – absolutely and without question the nobility were expected to turn up with their retinue and actually fight. It was their obligation to their overlord, and it was fulfilment of this obligation that obliged the lower orders to in turn fight for them.

Combats are recorded in contemporary chronicles – and lists of the dead on battlefields generally confine themselves to the more notable dead.

They were 'safe' in the fact that yes, they were worth more alive than dead to their enemy and so could expect quarter to be given, unlike those poor peasant bastards. And they weren't like samurai where being captured alive was considered a massive dis-honer. BUT they were also a warrior class with a lot of pride and training; it was not at all unusual for some of them to fight to the death, and even in the cases were they weren't planning to fight to death, wounds meant to disable could easily become mortal.

-Will

Yes, the noble casualty lists after some battles makes for grim reading. Agincourt is an obvious example, but there are others.

The poor ordinary foot soldiers, who had no ransom monies or worth to the enemy, had it much tougher, however!

Agincourt is a prime example of major casualties among the nobility. Given the quality of armour at this time is was probably quite hard to kill a fully knight quickly, giving him time to surrender for ransom before he was overwhelmed. His armour and decoration would give him away as worth more alive than dead.
Henry ordering the prisoners killed due to a late attack by the French upped the casualty rate a little however.

That said a ransom could ruin a noble family.

And during the War of the Roses the English magnate class kinda exterminated each other.

But yes, nobles up to the 17th century were expected to fight, liked keeping independent armies, and were jealous of guarding them.

The increased cost of armies after the 16th century, and the upgrade in the quality and size of royal forces, made the nobility more willing to accept the loss of its independent military power in the west and prefer to pay for royal armies rather than furnish independent forces. (the process took longer in Eastern Europe were as late as the 18th century, Polish Magnates had large personal armies).

They were 'safe' in the fact that yes, they were worth more alive than dead to their enemy and so could expect quarter to be given, unlike those poor peasant bastards.

That is totally untrue in the Wars of the Roses! In those wars, a captured noble was far more likely to be summarily executed than offered for ransom.

That is totally untrue in the Wars of the Roses! In those wars, a captured noble was far more likely to be summarily executed than offered for ransom.

Civil wars would often be an exception, since there was a much greater chance of directly seizing another noble's lands in the chaos if he was offed. Different factors at play.

But the OP was asking about the HYW specifically. :)

-Will

Actually, fighting is likely to be the way their ancestors managed to obtain the noble status in the feudal times…

Some of them, like leaders today, even seemed to enjoy it a good deal. Bertrand du Guesclin comes to mind.

link

There was also no guarantee of ransom, you just had much better odds as a noble. But then that was true across all walks of life, not just warfare. And for that matter, it really still is that way.

Yes, Henry V was quite upset when the archers slaughtered the nobles they had brought down rather than save them for ransom. And I recall one rather important French noble who arrived late, took his underlings tunic?, was captured and then killed when Henry ordered the slaughter late in the battle because nobody recognized him as particularly valuable. It was such a hard life :o).

The combat of thirty was a specific, organized, meeting of Anglo-French nobles with the specific purpose of FIGHTING. Without their "bodyguards" or any of their troops. Just the naturally born commanders agreeing to meet and pound on each other. Tough boys….

By the end of the hundred years war the noble element in the armies of both sides had been seriously reduced with armies being led by experienced career soldiers often from the ranks of the gentry rather than the nobility. Du Gascelin was a very minor noble and Sir John Fastolf was a member of the gentry these are both good examples of how skill became more important than birth as the war progressed. Obviously the nobility remain the largest available pool of trained cavalry and heavy infantry but as the war dragged on it became increasingly difficult to get them to participate so in that way you could say the nobility are fighting less.

Did nobles fight? Emphatically yes.

Also as Green Tiger alludes to, this time period was marked by gradual change; it's definitely true that by the end nobles were swinging swords a lot less often, and traditional feudal levies were being replaced by forms of taxation to pay for mercenary troops more and more. Part of the transition to the types of army one sees in the early modern period, as KTravlos describes.

-Will