"Dumb Newbie Question" Topic

I'm just starting to research the War of the Roses, and am unsure about how the two sides were able to tell their men from the enemy's--the pictures I've found thus far identify leaders of course, as well as some of the more prominent knights, but the lesser types are usually identified as simply "WotR infantry", which is not all that helpful. Some of the men have a red "x" on the front of their clothing or armor, but even this is not consistent.

Unless I'm missing the obvious, I would think confusion must have been rampant, not to mention it must have been fairly easy to change sides if the situation warranted it e.g. about to be overrun in a melee).

I realize this is REALLY elementary, but can you guys clarify this for me?

Thanks,

Chris Johnson

Ideally the noblemen would be identifiable by the heraldic devices painted on shields or on banners. I'm sure most warriors of the time had an encyclopedic knowledge of those symbols and could tell who was who. War was the business of these noblemen from cradle to grave after all. I can't help but think of the first episode of the TV show Black Adder.

As for the common soldier, if you killed some of your men by accident it was no great loss, just the fortunes of war.

Common soldiers usually belonged to the retinue of a nobleman and would wear their "livery",tunics in the colours of the nobleman's family and often with the family's badge sewn onto their tunics. For example the Tudor's livery was half green and half white. An internet search will find many examples of WOTR's liveries.

In medieval armies this was a perennial problem so they came up with many different ideas.

Livery was a relatively late idea and only worked to say which Lord's faction you had been outfitted by. That idea becomes the uniform of the professional soldier later in time but it wasn't the only one.

A coloured cloth tied around an arm (e.g. a blue cloth tied on the left arm) was used, a sprig of a plant in the hat (e.g. the oak leaves of Austrian armies) or just a coloured neck cloth.

Badges sewn onto clothing were in use by Italian factions very early in the medieval period and continued into the Crusades – whence came the distinctive coloured crosses. English armies up to the Tudor period used this method of cheaply outfitting a Royal army.

There are no dumb questions ( ;- ) ) .

I suggest you visit Vexillia
( link ) and look for "Standards, Badges & Livery Colours" by Freezywater.

And a nice book about the WOTR is The Military Campaigns of the Wars of the Roses by Philip A. Haigh. Haigh, a wargamer himself, offers lots of information ( including for instance the fact that in one of the battles one side was especially instructed not to attack a certain unit. During the battle that unit indeed changed sides ( ;- ) ) .

Many thanks to you all. I guess a critical factor was being able to remember which side a particular livery was allied to!

What led me to ask about this is the fact that a lot of the WotR pictures show no livery or any other sign on a lot of the commoners. This might just be oversight, but the armor and articles of clothing were otherwise universally worn, so I wondered how these guys kept things sorted out.

Again, thanks.

Chris

And a nice book about the WOTR is The Military Campaigns of the Wars of the Roses by Philip A. Haigh. Haigh, a wargamer himself, offers lots of information

But don't trust the maps in that book. Some of them are completely wrong.

This is where the idea of a 'field sign' comes in.

There would be many different retinues in an army with a similar number of liveries. Even if you could remember all the liveries involved, some of the enemy liveries would look similar to some of yours. And then of course, there were non-liveried followers who would be wearing their own kit!

A field sign was a temporary badge that every man in an army should wear for identification. As pointed out above, this could take the form of a strip of cloth in a particular colour or a sprig of some handy vegetation. So before a battle you might see thousands of men armed to the teeth picking flowers…

Regarding 'Field Signs' Cerdic, have you any information on what they may have been at any of the Battles, such as Barnet or Towton?

No idea! No one at the time thought it important to record them for posterity!

On the plus side, if you want to add them, make up your own because nobody can prove you wrong….