Gendarme (historical)
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For other uses, see Gendarme.
A gendarme was a heavy cavalryman of noble birth, primarily serving in the French army from the Late Medieval to the Early Modern periods of European History.
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[edit] Etymology
The word gendarme derives originally from the French homme de'armes (man at arms), plural of which is gens d'armes. The plural sense was later shortened to gendarmes and a singular made of this, gendarme.
[edit] Origin
Like most fifteenth century sovereigns, the Kings of France sought to possess standing armies of professionals to fight their incessant wars, most notable of which was the Hundred Years War. By that period, the old form of feudal levy had long proven inadequate and had been replaced by various ad hoc methods of paying vassal troops serving for money rather than simply out of feudal obligation, which method was heavily supplemented by hiring large numbers of out-and-out mercenaries.
These methods, though improvements on the old annual 40-day service owed by knights (the traditional warrior elites of Medieval Europe), were also subject to strain over long campaigns. They also resulted, during periods of peace, in social destabilization, as the mercenary bands, referred to in this period as Armagnacs, refused to disband until granted their back-pay (which was generally hopelessly in arrears), and generally looted and terrorized the areas they occupied.
The French kings sought a solution to these problems by issuing ordinances (ordonnances) which established standing armies in which units were permanently embodied, based, and organized into formations of set size. Men in these units signed a contract which kept them in the service of the unit for periods of one year or longer. The first such French ordinance was issued by King Charles VII at the general parliament of Orleans in 1439, and was meant to raise a body of troops to crush the devastating incursions of the Armagnacs.
[edit] French Gendarme Companies
Eventually more ordinances would set the general guidelines for the organization of companies of gendarmes, the troops in which were accordingly called the gendarmes d'ordonnance. Each of the 15 gendarme companies was to be of 100 "lances," each lance composed of six mounted men -- a noble heavy armoured horseman, a more lightly armed fellow combatant (coutillier), a page (a non-combatant) and three mounted archers meant as infantry support. The archers were intended to ride to battle and dismount to shoot with their bows, and did so until late in the fifteenth century, when they took to fighting on horseback as a sort of lighter variety of gendarme, though still called "Archers." These later "Archers" had armour less heavy than the gendarmes, and a light lance, but could deliver a capable charge when necessary.
This organization was provisional, however, and on occasion one of the mounted archers might be replaced by another non-combatant, a servant (valet).
The heavy cavalrymen in these companies were almost invariably men of gentle birth, who would have served as knights in earlier feudal forces. In many ways they still closely resembled knights -- wearing a complete suit of plate armour, they fought on horseback, charging with the heavy lance. (It should be noted that throughout the Hundred Years War, knights and, later, gendarmes fought on foot as well, as was the custom of that period, a response to the arrow storms unleashed by the massed longbowmen of English armies.) While most of the recruits in the gendarme companies were the same men would have comprised the knightly "lances" of earlier times, not all of the heavy armed horsemen on the gendarme squadrons were technically "knights," so the term "(gentle)man at arms" was more appropriate.
The French ordinances established regular infantry forces as well, but these were substantially less successful.
[edit] Burgundian Gendarme Companies
It was with this increasingly professional army, including its gendarme heavy cavalry, that the French king ultimately defeated the English in the Hundred Years War and then sought to assert his authority over the semi-independent great duchies of France. When the Burgundian duke Charles the Bold wished to establish an army to stand up to this royal French threat, he emulated the French ordonnance army, raising his own force of gendarmes.
Burgundian gendarmes d'ordonnance companies were also composed of 100 "lances," but were organized differently, being split into four squadrons (escadres), each of four chambres of six lances each. Each Burgundian lance still contained the six mounted men, but also included three purely infantry soldiers -- a crossbowman, a handgunner and a pikeman, who in practice fought in their own formations on the battlefield. There was a twenty-fifth lance in the escadre, that of the squadron commander (chef d'escadre).
The newly-established Burgundian Ordonnance companies were almost immediately hurled into the cauldron of the Burgundian Wars, where they suffered appalling casualties in a series of disastrous battles with the Swiss, including the loss of the Duke himself, leaving no male heir. Ultimately, however, elements of his gendarmes d'ordonnance companies survived to fight in Habsburg forces into the sixteenth century.
[edit] Gendarmes in Battle in the Early Sixteenth Century
France entered the sixteenth century with its gendarme companies being the largest and most respected force of heavy cavalry in Europe, feared for their powerful armament, reckless courage and esprit de corps. As the fifteenth century waned, so did the tactical practices of the Hundred Years War, and the gendarmes of the sixteenth century returned to fighting exclusively on horseback, generally in a very thin line (en haye), usually two or even just one rank deep, so as to maximize the number of lances being set upon the enemy target at once.
As such, the early to mid sixteenth century may appear to modern viewers to be a period of military anachronism -- heavily armoured cavalry, appearing to all the world as the knights of old, careened across the battlefield alongside rapidly modernizing heavy artillery and infantry bearing firearms.
However, the gendarme cavalry, when properly employed, could still be a decisive arm, as they could deliver a potent shock attack and remained fairly maneuverable despite the extremely heavy armour they now wore to defend themselves from increasingly-powerful firearms. At some battles, such as at Fornovo and Ravenna, they clashed with their heavily armoured opposite numbers, and prevailed, dominating the battle. In others, such as at Marignano, they were part of a de facto combined arms team, operating in conjunction with infantry and artillery to achieve battlefield victory against an all-infantry foe. They could also function, by plan or by chance, as a decisive reserve which could enter into a confused battle and crush disordered enemy infantry. The prime example of this would be at Ravenna, where the gendarmes, having just driven the Spanish cavalry off the field, then reversed the results of the infantry clash in which the Spanish had prevailed, riding down the disordered Spanish foot.
However, when unsupported and facing enemy infantry in good order, particularly those in pike and shot formations or in a strong defensive position, they suffered heavy casualties despite their now immensely thick armour. Examples include the Battle of Pavia, when the French cavalry were shot down by Spanish infantry who sought cover in broken terrain, and at Ceresole, when the French gendarmes sacrificed themselves in fruitless charges against the self-supporting Imperial infantry regiments. The pike and shot formation developed by the Spanish was particularly deadly to the gendarmes, who suffered heavy casualties from arquebus and musket fire, but were unable to overrun the vulnerable shooters due to the protection offered by the pikemen of the formation.
[edit] Evolution into Lighter Cavalry in the Later Sixteenth Century
Gendarmes faced a further challenge in the second half of the sixteenth century when confronted by a newly-emergent troop type, the cavalry pistolier, which fought with massed pistol fire in deep columns. In the battles of the French Wars of Religion, the pistoliers -- often German mercenary cavalry called Reiters or "Black Riders" -- shot down many of the gendarmes, and this created holes in the very thin lines of gendarmes which put the lancers at a significant disadvantage when they finally closed with the deep formations of pistoliers. As a result, the French, starting with the Huguenot rebels, eventually replaced the heavy gendarme lance with a "brace" of pistols, and the armour of the gendarme rapidly lightened to give the horseman more mobility (and to cut the extreme cost of fielding such troops).
[edit] Gendarmes after the Sixteenth Century
Cavalry called gendarmes continued to serve in French armies for centuries to follow, often with prominence (such as in the wars of Louis XIV), but with less distinctive features than during the sixteenth century. Napoleon I, desperate for troops after suffering heavy losses in the Russian and Central European campaigns after 1812, attempted to lure young men of noble birth to the ranks of his cavalry by establishing regiments of gendarmes d'elite, recalling the glamour and fame of the early noble-dominated gendarme companies. The resulting light cavalry units, though inexperienced, surprised the skeptical regular cavalry regiments by performing quite bravely in the end stages of Napoleon's wars.
[edit] References
- Delbrück, Hans. History of the Art of War, 1920 (reprint edition, 1990), trans. Walter, J. Renfroe.
- Volume 3: Medieval Warfare
- Volume 4: The Dawn of Modern Warfare.
- Elting, John Robert. Swords Around a Throne: Napoleon's Grande Armee, 1997.
- Oman, Sir Charles, A History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century, 1937.
- Oman, Sir Charles, A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages, rev. ed. 1960.
- Taylor, Frederick Lewis, The Art of War in Italy, 1494-1529, 1921.
- Wood, James B. The King's Army: Warfare, Soldiers and Society during the Wars of Religion in France, 1562-76, 1996.
