Scott Alexander (author/host)

England, like the rest of post-Roman Europe, had been founded on a military basis of feudal levies, with each vassal providing soldiers at his expense to fight alongside the king's personal retinue.

These soldiers could be called out for long enough to stop marauding Vikings, but not for much longer, so any attempt to raise an army for even a single year's campaign required agonizing negotiations with each individual leader, and worse, meant that the troops were all either sullen conscripts or proud knights eager for glory and jealous of their honor.

These knights might fight like the devil, as everyone from Greece to Egypt to Tunis had learned to their cost, but leading these men was like herding cats.

In England, however, the practice of scutage, nobles paying money to get out of raising troops, had arisen, and also in England there existed that fantastically useful tool of kings for raising money, the English Parliament.

Footnote.

which built much of its powers in the reign of his great grandfather Henry III, who wasn't the first weak king to accidentally build strong institutions and won't be the last.

Back to the text.

With the combination of carrot, redress of grievances, and stick, pay or I'll impose costs on you perfectly legally, augmented by the patriotic pride of Englishmen who might not want to kill Frenchmen themselves but really wanted the Frenchmen dead, Edward collected money and used it to pay professionals drawn from England and Wales, and these professionals fought.

The English army was never large, somewhere between 7,000 and 15,000 men at its height.

When it comes to army sizes, we're lucky when our sources only disagree by a factor of two.

Even the Scots could muster more soldiers, but the Scots army was largely lightly armoured and poorly trained spearmen and bowmen, and the English were all armoured and well-armed, with plenty of time to train and no loyalties running against their loyalties to their king and their pay.

And when well-led, they demolished the Scots.

This was the army that landed in France.

Since France had about five times as many people in it as England, this army was wildly outnumbered.

The chroniclers described the French army as variously 72,000 or 120,000 men, to hysterical laughter from modern historians who think they only had 20 or 30,000.

But it was clear that when the armies met, it would inevitably be a slaughter.

It was.

in the other direction.

The king of France raised his levies, called up the royal knights, hired mercenaries, invited in allies.

All mustered beneath the Oriflamme, the sacred banner of Charlemagne, and this massive army went to catch the English, the English backed off rapidly while looking for defensive terrain, the French pushed on, the English started planting stakes in caltrops, the French attacked, and the English massacred them.