David S. Bachrach

   On 31 July 1471, at the Somme river-town of Abbéville, Charles the Bold, the last of the Valois dukes of Burgundy, issued an ordinance ordering the recruitment and equipping of 1200 nine-man units called "lances." This ordinance also contained a series of regulations concerning the training, discipline, equipment and pay for these units as well as numerous other clauses including the disposition of these new companies in combat, the detection of deserters and benefits for wounded veterans.1 For more than a century, historians studying this highly detailed set of regulations, and the subsequent military ordinances issued in 1472 at Bohain-en-Vermandois and in 1473 at St. Maximin near Trier, have concluded that Charles instituted immense, even revolutionary, change in the military organization commanded by the Valois dukes.2 For example, Hermann Heimpel, one of the most influential specialists in Burgundian history during the first half of this century, argued that Charles the Bold's succession and subsequent reform efforts represented the victory of the values of the state against the values of chivalry--a change that could be seen nowhere more clearly than in the army. According to Heimpel, Philip the Good, the father of Charles the Bold, did not have a real army (keine ordentliche Armee). Instead, he utilized mercenaries (Söldner) whom he hired and let go from campaign to campaign. Heimpel drew a sharp contrast between Philip's mercenary army and the companies of the ordinance established by Charles in 1471. In Heimpels view, these latter formed a standing army and thus were an important element in the creation of the state.3

   Werner Paravicini, current director of the German Institute in Paris and a leading Burgundian specialist, also argues that the companies of the ordinance, established by Charles, changed dramatically the composition of the military forces available to the last Valois Duke. In Paravicini's view, the city militias and rural fieffés, that is, men whose land tenures entailed military service, whom Charles commanded between 1467 and 1471 were slow to mobilize and difficult to maintain in service during long campaigns. In contrast to these insufficient military

   Richard Vaughan, one of the most prolific contemporary scholars concerned with the Burgundian state, also embraces the view that Charles the Bold's military reforms had a major, even revolutionary, impact on the military organization commanded by the Valois dukes. Indeed, he argues that in the five years between the promulgation of the ordinance of Abbéville in 1471 and Charles' siege of Neuss in 1475-1476, "Charles the Bold's field army ... had been transformed from one composed of paid but conscripted feudal levies and civic militia, raised separately for each campaign among those obliged to perform military service, to an army of troops of the ordinance: that is a standing army of mercenaries."5

   The model of dramatic change in military organization postulated by these three scholars--and the number could be multiplied many times--is of a piece with the phenomenon, common among historians, of trying to identify revolutions in their fields of study. One only has to consider the influence of Michael Robert's essay on the military revolution of the sixteenth century or Lynn White's work on the impact of the stirrup upon medieval warfare to appreciate the tendency among military historians in particular to favor models that emphasize dramatic change over continuity.6 The purpose of this paper is to test whether the military organization of fifteenth-century Burgundy lends itself to a model of revolution or rather to a model characterized by continuity. It would seem clear that to answer this question it is necessary to compare the military forces commanded by the Valois Dukes both before and after 1471, the point at which Charles the Bold introduced his military reforms.

   There is general agreement among historians that fieffés and town militias constituted a significant portion of the military forces commanded by three successive Valois Dukes of Burgundy in the years before 1471, John the Fearless (1404-1419), Philip the Good (1419-1467), and Charles the Bold.7 For example, in 1411 John the Fearless reportedly commanded an army, raised for his invasion of France, that included fifty thousand civic militiamen from Flanders as well as units composed of fieffés and mercenaries. Similarly, Philip the Good called upon the military resources of nobles of Burgundy, Flanders, Artois, Hainaut, and Holland, as well as a reported thirty thousand civic militiamen from the towns of Flanders and Holland, for his campaign against Calais in 1436.8 For his part, Charles followed his predecessors' policy of utilizing civic militia during his campaign in 1467 against Liège. Indeed, Charles went to great lengths to secure military forces from the communes of Flanders sending three letters between 17 and 25 September asking for men.9

   In addition to the fieffés and civic militias, the military household of the duke formed an important element in the field forces of the Burgundian army.10 The financial records produced by the Burgundian court make very clear that both Philip and Charles maintained a substantial military complement in their house-

   Finally, John the Fearless, Philip the Good, and Charles the Bold all made ample use of mercenary forces in order to reinforce the military forces provided by fieffés, civic militias, and the soldiers serving in the ducal household. Throughout the first seven decades of the fifteenth century, military expenses incurred by the Dukes of Burgundy, including the wages for mercenary soldiers, rose dramatically in periods of intense conflict.14 A few examples of such expenditures should suffice to make clear the reliance of the Valois dukes upon mercenary units as a supplement to other sources of military manpower. In 1408 John the Fearless ordered his receiver general, Jean de Pressy, to make arrangements to pay the wages of fifty-eight military companies which the duke had employed during his occupation of Paris.15 In 1452 Philip the Good used so many Picard mercenaries in his campaign against the rebellious city of Ghent that his soldiers attained the sobriquet "Picard."16 Charles the Bold, in the wake of his failure to secure sufficient numbers of civic militia solders from Flanders, negotiated with King Edward IV of England to obtain license to recruit English mercenaries to serve against Liège during the campaigning season of 1467. He received permission from Edward to enroll 2000 English archers for this campaign, and Charles' household receipts for 1467 contain a payment of £1300 to support 500 of these archers.17

   This quick overview of the field forces available to the Valois dukes in the period before 1471 should make it clear that John, Philip, and Charles all utilized three major sources of manpower. These were fieffés, civic militias, and mercenaries. In addition, both Philip and Charles maintained a fourth source of military manpower by retaining substantial military forces within the household. It now remains to determine whether the reforms instituted by Charles in 1471 altered this state of affairs in any significant way.

   If we turn first to the fieffés it appears that the ordinance of 1471 did not have the dramatic effect upon military organization suggested by Heimpel, Paravicini, and Vaughan. Paravicini is correct to point out that Charles, on occasion, granted to men holding military tenures the option of paying a fine rather than performing their military service in person. For example, on 6 June 1475, during the siege of Neuss, Charles issued written orders to the holders of military tenures either to come and serve in person or to pay a tax equal to one sixth of their yearly income.18 It is important to note, however, that Charles also exercised his prerogative to demand military service from his fieffés without giving these men the option to pay a fine in lieu of service. Indeed, on 15 January 1475, during the initial stages of the siege at Neuss, Charles demanded

   The importance of the services of these fieffés to Charles' military forces is made exceptionally clear by the measures taken by the Duke to insure compliance with his call to arms. On 16 August 1476 Charles issued a general ordinance for the confiscation of the property of any fief-holder who failed either to pay the tax of one sixth of his yearly income or to fulfill his military obligation in person.20

   If we turn from the fieffés to the town militias, we can see that here, too, Charles continued to make use of these soldiers in his campaigns following the issue of the famous Abbéville ordinance. He drafted units of pikemen and archers from the communes in Flanders and organized them under ducal officers. Charles also utilized the militia units from non-Flemish towns such as Antwerp, Liège, and Malines as late as 1476. Indeed, in January of that year Charles demanded that Liège send no fewer than 500 pikemen to serve under the Duke, presumably for duty at the siege of Neuss.21

   In addition to the military forces raised from the communes and fieffés, Charles also continued to utilize his military household as a key element in his military organization. Indeed, Paravicini argues that the soldiers of the household formed an elite corps within the Burgundian military organization. 22

Paravicini's view would seem to be substantiated by the high regard in which Charles held the officers of his household soldiers. Olivier de la Marche, whom Charles chose to be the commander of the first new company of the ordinance, had served previously as the commander of the military household. Jaques de Montmartin, who served as the captain of the household archers, was chosen to inspect the men who Volunteered to serve in the companies of the ordinance. 23

   At this point it seems clear that Charles maintained at least some of the traditional norms of Burgundian military organization. He expended significant effort to ensure the participation of fieffés at the siege of Neuss in 1475-6. He provided officers to the militia units from the communes and utilized these companies in his campaigns as late as the summer of 1476. Finally, he not only maintained the military household as an elite force but used the officers of the military household to help organize the new companies of the ordinance to which we shall now turn.

   As noted above, there is general agreement among scholars that Charles' military forces after 1471 included, and indeed were dominated by, companies of the ordinance. It is important, however, to examine the extent to which Charles was able to carry out his plans for recruiting these formations. A company of the ordinance was intended to be composed of one-hundred lances. Each lance was to have nine men: an armored cavalryman, his page, and his squire; three archers

   In 1471 Charles wished to recruit twelve companies of the ordinance, a total of 10,800 men. However, he found it impossible to find a sufficient number of recruits in his territories to create these new military units25 and therefore found it necessary to employ mercenary companies to make up for these manpower shortages. In 1472 Charles attempted but failed to employ the service of the mercenary company that was commanded by Troylo de Rossano. The next year, he succeeded in hiring Cola de Montforte, count of Compobosso, to serve for three years with his company of 2,300 men. In 1474 Charles secured the services of Bartolomeo Colleoni and his 2,500 man unit for a period of three years. Finally, in 1475 he negotiated with King Edward IV for the services of 2000 English soldiers.26 By hiring mercenaries such as these, Charles would seem to have maintained the techniques for the recruitment of this crucial source of military manpower that had been followed both by his father and his grandfather, the traditional methods that the Valois dukes had employed for three-quarters of a century.

   It should now be clear that the Valois Dukes of Burgundy both before and after 1471 utilized very similar military resources. Both before and after 1471 fieffés, civic militias, household troops, and mercenaries were the key components of the Burgundian military organization. If Heimpel's description of Philip the Good's military as keine ordentliche Armee is accurate, this description must also be applied to the forces put into the field by Charles, which, parenthetically, were far less successful than those commanded by his father.

   Similarly, although Paravicini is correct that a large proportion of the soldiers under Charles' command during the last years of his rule (1475-1477) were mercenaries, including those enrolled in the companies of the ordinance, it is not correct to say either that this was unprecedented or that Charles' armies were composed exclusively of mercenaries. As we have seen, Charles' predecessors also made extensive use of mercenaries during periods of intense military conflict. Moreover, as we have also seen, Charles called out his fieffés and civic militias to serve alongside these mercenaries as late as 1476, a fact which Paravicini does not address.27

   Finally, Vaughan's argument that the real revolution begun by Charles was the transformation of the Burgundian military from a haphazard polyglot force to a standing army of mercenaries misrepresents both the military organization inherited by Charles and the new military formations he tried to create. The civic militias and fieffés had long traditions of successful military organization and service. To describe them, using Vaughan's expression, as "paid but conscripted feudal levies and civic militias, raised separately for each campaign," misses the key point that Charles raised these armies by calling out for service already existing military units.

   Moreover, to describe the companies of the ordinance as a "standing army of mercenaries" misses the point that those units of the ordinance that were actually

   At this juncture, it is instructive to examine the heuristic value of "revolution" as a model for understanding various aspects of the past. While the term revolution has particular connotations of rapid and fundamental change, one is hard put to find a definition that is both necessary and sufficient--certainly no such definition has been offered by the historians whose work has been discussed in this study. Without a sound or even a useful working definition of the idea of revolution, the term has become so elastic as to encompass the changes in form of government in late eighteenth-century France, the Republican congressional victories in the American election of 1994, and the creation of the companies of ordinance by Charles the Bold between 1471 and 1477. In the last mentioned of these examples, it is clear that a model for revolution has been imposed upon circumstances and behaviors that are best characterized by continuity. It would seem that it is time for historians, particularly medieval historians, to abandon the satisfying but ultimately futile search for dramatic turning points and rather seek to grasp the incredibly complex processes of change over time.