Quoting Joey Beutel <mejobo@comcast.net>:
Please, you are totally right that my statements are a bit strong (and therefore a bit misleading). I guess the real point is that soldiers are all different, and some knights were probably very disciplined, while some hoplites might break at the sight of the enemy. The key there though is that the stye of warfare required of a hoplite to be successful is much more dependent on his discipline, less so for a Knight, who also wasn't really expected of much, as he was essentially an unpunishable noble... (which led to their downfall in some ways, as their style of fighting just doesn't work out too well in modern, 1500s- warfare... its not so much that they lacked discipline that killed them, it was that their style which didn't really require asmuch discipline just didn't work anymore).
There's a huge difference between warfare in 1000 vs. 1300 vs 1500. In western Europe circa 1000, you don't really have wars as such, you have more raiding. In 1300, you have wars, but the Knights job was to take other Knights for prisoners. So you have discipline within a lance, but not particularly external to it. By the time 1500 rolls around, you start to have the rise of the national armies, and it's always been true that 1000 guys can take 1 man. National wealth led to that. The other very large difference is that in 1000 and 1300 wars are not particularly fought for land, they're fought for money. By 1500, the wars are explicitly about taking land. (Not that land didn't get taken previously, but the main thrust was money, not land. In the later period, it's about land, not money.)
And nobles weren't unpunishable, except in a modern sense. If they behaved badly, they got punished by other nobles (as long as the offenses were against nobles). Floout the Law of Arms, and someone will come after you, and your buddies won't back you up. Strangely, the Japanese wars had very close parallels.
Neil Gilmore raito@raito.com ===== Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com. Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body "unsubscribe tft"