Even when a military general was able to amass many hundreds of
knights for a battle, however, there was no guarantee that he and they
would be successful. h e opposing army might be considerably bigger,
for instance. Or the opposing commander might have a superior strategy.
Another factor that sometimes worked against the ef ectiveness of
large units of heavy cavalry on the battlei eld was excessive pride and arrogance.
Many medieval European knights viewed themselves as superior
to average folk and were notorious for their conceit and overconi dence.
Members of Europe’s oldest and proudest cavalry establishment, French
cavalrymen were particularly susceptible to this sort of thinking. As a
result, late medieval France lost several battles because its commanders,
often cavalrymen themselves, were guilty of poor judgment.
An example is the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. h at year England’s
king Henry V invaded France, and masses of French knights and other
soldiers converged on the intruders, vowing to crush them. h e French
were certain of victory partly because they outnumbered the English
more than two to one. In addition, when the armies faced each other on
the battleield, the French knights saw that a major portion of Henry’s
forces consisted of infantry, including large numbers of longbowmen.
Viewing those archers as socially and militarily inferior to themselves, the
French horsemen were conident of success. here was no doubt in their
minds that “the English must fall an easy prey to them,”19 writes Enguerrand
de Monstrelet, a French noble of the period.
he events of the subsequent epic military clash swiftly put this brash
attitude to rest, however. When the French knights charged, they were
devastated by one colossal English arrow storm after another. “heir horses
were so severely [wounded] by the archers,” Monstrelet recalls, that they
galloped wildly, causing great confusion in the French ranks. “Horses
and riders were tumbling on the ground and the whole French army was
thrown into disorder.” Terriied, other French soldiers “led and this caused
so universal a panic in the army that a great part followed the example.”20
World History
