century, which for simplicity and
virile strength was the flower of our civilisation, armour, with many
another feature of life, took on complexity and declined. Men risked less
(the lance also came in to frighten them more). The bascinet, which had
protected the head but not the face (with later a hinged face-piece
attached), was covered or replaced by a helmet protecting head and face
and all. At the knees, shoulders, elbows, jointed plates of iron
appeared. Scales of iron defended the shin and the thigh, sometimes the
lower arm as well. The wealthier lords covered the front of every limb
with plates of this sort, and there was jointed iron upon their hands. The
plain spur had rowels attached to it; the sword shortened, so did the
shield; a dagger was added to the sword-belt upon the right-hand side.

We must further see in the picture of a fourteenth-century battle great
blazonry.

The divorce of the gentry from the common people (one of the fatal eddies
of the time) developed in the wealthy this love of colour, and in their
dependants the appetite for watching it. Of heraldry I say nothing, for it
has nothing to do with the art or history of soldiers. But banners were a
real part of tactics and of instructions. By banners men had begun to
align themselves, and by the display of banners to recognise the advent of
reinforcement or the action at some distant point (distant as fields were
then reckoned) of enemies or of friends. Colour was so lively a feature of
those fields that shields, even the horses' armour, cloths hung from
trumpets, coats, all shone with it.

Now to the feudal cavalry with their domestics, to the gentry so armed
whose tradition was the soul and whose numbers the nucleus of a
fourteenth-century army, one must add, quite separate from their domestics
and squires, the foot-soldiers; and these were trained and untrained.

At this point a capital distinction must be made. Armies defending a whole
countryside, notably the French armies defending French territory during
the Hundred Years' War, levied, swept up, or got as volunteers masses of
untrained men. Expeditions abroad had none such: they had no use for them.
Edward had none at Crecy and his son had none at Poitiers; and what was
true of these two Plantagenet raids was true of every organised expedition
made with small numbers from one centre to a distant spot, throughout the
Middle Ages. It is important to remember this, for it accounts for muc