Talk:Infantry in the Middle Ages

Page move, general comments
This article read very much as an essay. I have renamed it to provide a more topical name rather thena the essay name Rise of Medieval Infantry over Cavalry. I have also added wikilinks and rephrased some things to make them more encyclopediac. Watch your peacock words, and try to keep the general tone appropriate. Also remember that WP is not a place for original research; we're not here to draw conclusions but to present the facts as laid out in reliable sources. A good article will provide more citations. Well done for tackling this large topic. Gwinva (talk) 01:49, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, a lot of it is quite outdated, and the examples leave a huge gap of the larger part of a full millenium. No word of the frankish shield walls, no word on the anglo-saxon shield walls, one of which held and one of which only almost held during more or less key battles. What about the Scots? The "supremacy of cavalry" the article speaks of is largely illusionary and a product of the fact that the nobility did not just provide the cavalry, but also the money for those writing the chronicles. --OliverH (talk) 14:07, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

ReWrite!
This entire article needs a rewrite, unfortunately I don't have the time to do so. However I have added a new section "Feudal Levies" as it's rediculous to have an article titled "Infantry in the Middle Ages" without any mention of the most common kind of infantry. I will try and provide some references soon. I'm also planning on adding a section on Italian Militia. Master z0b (talk) 00:31, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

I think the "Feudal levies" sections should be removed, or at least heavily rewritten. You would be hard pressed to find mention of levied troops armed with "agricultural implements" outside of peasant revolts. 80.167.108.49 (talk) ---

Them Swiss Don't Have Honor
"Pike weapons were considered "unchivalrous" by some of the knightly class, but the practical Swiss had little concern for such sentiments."

Haha srsly —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.199.100.223 (talk) 03:59, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Revision
I've begun a revision of this article, as it didn't hang together too well, possibly because it is the work of different editors with different objectives. My own personal style in such a tidy up is to keep as much of existing content as possible, because it represents hours of someone's work, but to create an overall "scheme". The obvious scheme with this in mind is a typological approach, followed by historical case studies, rather than an historical developmental approach. I hope, time permitting, to lay down at least some text in the empty sections. I hope others will feel enthused to add content within this framework. If that doesn't appeal, there is more that could be done editorially - spelling and grammar checking, improving wikilinking and standardising the referencing scheme, for example. Thanks in advance Monstrelet (talk) 13:11, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

First Section Issue
"The Black Death in the 14th century swept through Europe creating devastating losses but also causing manpower shortages. This encouraged more economical use of available manpower, and the infantry man was much cheaper to outfit and maintain than the aristocratic knight."

This doesn't make any sense. If you have a shortage of manpower, that should push you toward smaller numbers of troops with better gear; the battlefield would have seen less foot soldiers and more knights, not the other way around. If it was economical to support 100 knights with 10,000 peasants (or whatever the ratio was), why was it un-economical to support 50 knights with 5,000 peasants?

If the idea is that the Black Death took a heavier toll on miners/smiths/grooms/farmers than it did on soldiers, so that more soldiers had to make do with less "support staff," it should be rewritten to say that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.181.230.148 (talk) 17:25, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Archers
For military purposes, archers aren't considered infantry. Yes they were foot soldiers. However, archers are widely considered to be units of artillery due to the fact that they used projectiles to attack rather than close quarters weapons such as spears or swords.146.57.249.81 (talk) 20:51, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The terms infantry and artillery both post date the Middle Ages, so this is a bit of a spurious argument. In the Middle Ages archers who fought on foot were considered foot soldiers, not a form of animate war engine. Infantry seems therefore appropriate, though foot soldiers might be an alternative. Monstrelet (talk) 21:38, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
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