Abstract
Gregory, bishop of Tours 573–94, describes in his ‘History of the Franks’ how, in AD 585, the army of the Merovingian King Guntram of the Franks set out to attack the city of Poitiers, whose inhabitants had rebelled against him. Having captured Poitiers, the army marched south to crush the army of Gundovald, who claimed to be a son of King Lothar I (d. 561) and therefore Guntram’s brother and a contender for the throne. This army contained men on horseback and on foot. Gregory mentions that they were armed with javelins, or spears. The army had a large baggage train of wagons, which was left in the care of the less able-bodied when the army went to attack the church of St Vincent at Agen.
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Further reading
Andrew Ayton, Knights and Warhorses: Military Service and the English Aristocracy Under Edward III (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994)
Jim Bradbury, The Medieval Archer (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1985)
Peter Coss, The Knight in Medieval England, 1000–1400 (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1993)
Kelly DeVries, Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century: Discipline, Tactics and Technology (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1996)
Kelly DeVries, ‘Teenagers at War During the Middle Ages’, in The Premodern Teenager: Youth in Society, 1150–1650, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto: Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 2002), reprinted at: http://www.deremilitari.org/devries2.htm
Susan Edgington and Sarah Lambert, eds, Gendering the Crusades (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001).
Also contains a useful bibliography Stephen S. Evans, Lords of Battle: Image and Reality of the Comitatus in Dark-Age Britain (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997)
Kenneth Fowler, Medieval Mercenaries: Volume 1: The Great Companies (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001)
Michael E. Mallett, Mercenaries and their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1974)
Michael Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance Under Edward I (London: Faber and Faber, 1972)
Nicholas Wright, Knights and Peasants in the Hundred Years War in the French Countryside (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998)
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© 2004 Helen J. Nicholson
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Nicholson, H. (2004). Military personnel. In: Medieval Warfare. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-4386-6_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-4386-6_3
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