Prof. Richard Abels HH381

 

Medieval Logistics

based on Michael Prestwich, Armies and Warfare (Yale U. Press, 1999); supplemented with material from Christopher Allmand, Hundred Years War (Cambridge U. Press, 1988); Philippe Contamine, War in the Middle Ages (Blackwell Publ., 1984);  Bachrach, “Logistics in Pre-Crusade Europe,” in Feeding Mars, ed. J. Lynn (Westview Press, 1993); and John H. Pryor, “Modelling Bohemond’s march to Thessalonike,” in Logistics of Warfare in the Ages of the Crusades, ed. J.H. Pryor (Ashgate Press, 2006)

 

Conventional view: not until end of Thirty Years War (1618-48) proper attention paid to question of supply. In 1640s French calculated needs of troops and established contracts with merchants and a system of magazines (supply depots). Well-organized baggage trains carried sufficient reserves for an army on the march. Soldiers assured regular supply of basic provisions.

 

Correction. Elements of a system of military victualling in place in England by 1300. This included: 1) nation-wide system for collecting foodstuffs. 2) victualling bases for supplying field armies and garrisons, 3) a planning system to assess needs. BUT this system collapsed in the 14th century, when English armies once more had to rely on foraging.

            Edward I had a well-developed supply system for his field armies and garrisons in Wales and Scotland. The English abandoned this in the Hundred Years War, returning to policy of living off land (as part of strategy of attrition).

 

GENERAL POINT: king/commanders did NOT supply free provisions for their troops. Required only to meet needs of own household and castle garrisons (as part payment of wages). Victuals collected by Crown were sold to soldiers (often at profit) or given in lieu of wages. Whether serving out of obligation (feudal service or communal service) or for wages, soldier was expected to provide himself twith food and drink. But commanders also realized that supply problems could become major sources of indiscipline and lead to starvation and defeat.

 

FOOD AND DRINK (QUANTITIES)

Food for medieval armies: bread (staple) supplemented by pottage from beans, peas, and oatmeal. Grain was poorly milled with handmills; grit left in flour, resulting in worndown teeth (seen in skeletal remains). Also fresh or more often salted/dried fish and meat.

 

Drink: wine and (for English) beer preferred. Local water sources could not be relied upon because of fear of dysentery.

 

Case 1: William, Duke of Normandy’s supply requirements, 4 Aug to 4 Sept 1066

(based on Bernard Bachrach, “Logistics in Pre-Crusade Europe,” in Feeding Mars, ed. John A. Lynn, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993, pp.72-73)

 

Force size in port of Dives (c. 280 acres) awaiting transport: approx. 14,000 persons, 2-3,000 horses

Food and drink requirements, per day:

            For men:        28 tons unmilled wheat grain for bread

                                    14,000 gallons of clean fresh water

            For horses:     12-18 tons of grain + 13-20 tons of hay + 4-5 tons straw

                                    20-30,000 gallons of gresh water

(horses produced approximately 3,000,000 pounds of horse manure in a month which needed to be carted away from camp)

 

 

Case 2: Edward I (Scottish wars, 1296-8)

Based on records of supplies for Edward I’s garrisons of Scottish castles: 20 men required one quarter of wheat a week (quarter=8 bushels=450 lbs in weight), two of malt, and quantities of meat and fish. Horses required a peck of oats every night [peck=2 gallons=quarter bushel=14lbs).

     Calorific value of garrison’s diet= approx 5000 calories.

Army of 30,000 men would require approx 4500-5000 quarters of grain a week (around 800 tons). 5000 horses about 2,000 quarters of grain a week (around 500 tons).

     Edward I demanded 100,000 quarters of wheat be gathered for his troops in Gascony in 1296. Exchequer showed that 63,200 quarters were actually collected.

 

Kings needed to have sufficient supplies at least for royal household. Edward I’s household during Scottish wars required 10 quarters of wheat a day and equal quality of malt to make ale. From April to Sept (six months) household troops consumed also 1500 oxen, 3000 sheet, 1200 pigs, and 400 bacons. Royal horses required 3000 quarters of oats.

 

Case 3: Edward III’s fleet in 1330s

1330s: needs of 4000 men in fleet for a four month period: 5400 quarters of wheat, 8250 quarters of barley, 2400 of beans and peas, 60 turns of ale, 1300 bacons, 45 lasts of herring, 32,000 stockfish, and 9000 stones of cheese.

 

Agricultural context

Data for crop yields for wheat in England from 1250-1650 suggest that in the late Middle Ages on average an acre of arable would produce 11-13 bushels of wheat or about 30 bushels of barley (a less desirable grain to eat, but used in the making of ale). The 63,200 quarters collected by order of Edward I in 1296 represents the total yield of approximately 42,000 acres of land. Similarly, 5,800 acres of land were needed to supply the wheat and barley for the 4,000 men in Edward III’s fleet during a four month period in the 1330s.

 

Carrying capacities (from John Pryor, “Modelling Bohemond’s march to Thessalonike,” in Logistics of Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, ed. Pryor, 2006)

A model knight’s troop in 12th century would have consisted of, at a minimum, the knight, his squire, a groom, and three footmen. The knight, squire, and groom would be on riding horses (each carrying about 40kg of supplies); the knight’s war horse (destrier) would be led by the knight, carrying around 40kg for its own consumption; there would also have been at least two pack horses to carry supplies (each carrying about 100 kgs) . The foot soldiers would have carried about 25 kgs each. A troop of this size would have had a carrying capacity of 395 kg, and the daily consumption rate would have been 6kg of human food and 16.8 kgs of dry fodder. The troops could not march more than 17-18 days without resupplying. The horses would have grazed rather than carrying all the hay they needed. Each horse would have needed 10-12 pounds per day of dried hay, or about 25 pounds of grass. 25 horses would have required about an acre of grassland to graze upon each day. In addition to pack animals, a noble retinue would have to have had wagons to carry armor, weapons, tent poles and canvas, tools, etc., as well as food. The maximum load capacity of a cart in the twelfth century was about 500-600 kilograms. Carts also required draught animals, usually two horse or oxen. The number of carts in an army is important because carts both slowed the rate of march and greatly extended the army’s line of march.  

 

 

 

METHODS OF COLLECTION OF SUPPLIES:

1) Crown could supply victuals through local officials collecting from localities; 2) magnates and men organize own provisioning systems; 3) merchants could be encouraged to support armies; 4) living off land.

 

1. Prise and purveyance (used from late twelfth century, culminating in national system under Edward I, c. 1295). Prise and purveyance were prerogative rights of Crown of compulsory purchase of goods. Tendency under Angevins to take goods without prompt payment led to inclusion of an article in Magna Carta against such practices.  Hated practice; rife with corruption. Most comment complaint was extortion of money or goods. Second, illegal seizure of foodstuffs and goods.

 

2. Soldiers’ required to bring supplies (used from the early Middle Ages on). A letter dated 806 from Charlemagne summoning Abbot Fulrad of Saint Wandrille for military service in Saxony sheds light on how Charlemagne supplied his armies. The abbot was required to bring his “full quota of men, well armed and equipped,” to the assembly point at Strassfurt on 18 June. Bernard Bachrach calculates that the Abbey of Saint Wandrille would have owed a contingent of 850 men from its 4,278 manses (on a basis of one man for each five manses). Charlemagne required that each soldier was to bring with him weapons, gear, food, and clothing. Each horseman was to be armed with a shield, lance, sword, dagger, bow, and quiver with arrows. The abbot was to bring in his carts sufficient supplies of food for three months of campaigning, dating from the muster at Strassfurt, and arms and clothing for a half year. In addition, the abbot was required to carry in his carts various tools “of which the army has need”: axes, planes, augers, boards, spades, and iron shovels. For the duration of the 800 kilometer march through Frankish lands from Saint Wandrille to Strassfurt, the abbot’s men were to take nothing but “fodder, food, and water,” from Charlemagne’s subjects. On the basis of a minimum caloric requirement of two kilograms of unmilled wheat per man, the stipulated three months of food supplies would have amounted to about 75 tons of grain, which would have required about 150 ox carts, drawn by 300 oxen. An additional 15 carts would have been needed to haul the other supplies. The line of march would have extended at least two kilometers and more likely five or six kilometers.  Given that the march between Saint Wandrille and Strassfurt would have taken two months, the abbot was actually required to supply his troops with seven months of provisions. Most likely, the abbot and his men consumed what they brought from Saint Wandrille on the journey and purchased supplies along the way so that they would arrive with the required food for three months of campaigning.

            In the High Middle Ages, barons and nobles summoned to join a king’s or their lord’s host would have looked quite similar, although most contingents would have numbered anywhere from six men with four or five horses (knight, squire, groom, and three footmen) for the contingent of an individual knight to a few hundred men in the case of barons. As in the case of Abbot Fulrad, royal vassals summoned to fulfill their feudal obligation were required to bring sufficient supplies for the forty or sixty days of owed service. A king was only responsible for feeding his household troops out of his own pocket; the same was true for a duke, count, earl, baron, or knight banneret. The other soldiers were responsible for feeding themselves, which often meant purchasing food and supplies from their lords. Provisions for paid soldiers, whether stipendiary or mercenary troops, came out of their pay.    

 

3. Merchants (fourteenth century): hostility to purveyance led to increased reliance on merchants for army supplies in the fourteenth century.  Mechants were instructed to follow the army with all the goods they could provide, or meet the army at specified places with goods. Increasingly, Crown placed burden of supplies on individual initiative of commanders and magnates.

 

4. Foraging (throughout middle ages). Living off the land, pillaging, extortion of supplies from locals. This was the general mechanism for supplying English troops in France during the Hundred Years War.

 

Supply of arms: regular supply of arms increasingly important in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In England, soldiers raised by commissions of array were to be adequately armed (with bow, arrows, and extra wing feathers) by the locality he represented. But during Hundred Years War both French and English Crowns also needed to provide weapons to replace lost and broken bows and replenish supplies of arrows. English King’s Privy Wardrobe was tasked with purchasing, storing and distributies arms to armies, garrisons, and ships. 1360: 11,000 bows and 23,600 sheaves of arrows stored by Keeper of the King’s Arms in the Tower of London.

     Other essentials stored: tents, saddles, crossbows and bolts, shields, lances, heavy siege-engines, and, in the late 14th and 15th centuries, cannons. The last was very expensive and in England and France the costs were borne by the crown. In the 15th century English and French kings established offices of state to handle the founding and deployment of artillery trains.

 

 

 

RISING COST OF WAR

Cost of war rose under Edward I.

First Welsh war cost: £20,000

1282-3:            £150,000

1294-8 (costs of campaigns in Wales, Flanders, Gascony): £750,000

 

Cost of campaigns during Hundred Years War

Edward III’s unsuccessful campaigns in the Low Countries, 1338-40: £400,000

Wages for soldiers alone in 1359-60: £133,000

Costs of war, 1369-75: £670,000

 

Royal revenues to pay for war:

“Ordinary revenues” p.a..       £30,000

Extraordinary revenues: taxes (direct and indirect), loans, purveyance

Direct taxes granted by Parliament (Commons): assessed as percentage of moveable wealth

1212: John’s “thirteenth” = £60,000

1294-7: £190,000

1337-40: £100,000

 

Attempts to introduce poll taxes in 1370s failed and led to Peasants Revolt in 1381

 

Clerical income taxes:

1294-7: £130,000

1337-40: £40,000

 

Indirect taxes (customs taxes: wool subsidies, tunnage on wine)

1350s: £90,000 p.a.

 

Loans:

Edward I borrowed £392,000 from Riccardi of Lucca (bankrupted in 1294)

Edward III borrowed £103,000 from Bardi and £71,000 from Peruzzi families of Florence. Bankrupted both in 1340s when EdIII defaulted on loans.

 

Dutch lenders 1337-40: £400,000  cf. costs of war: £410,000