How messy did medieval battles get with so much killing going on in such concentrated areas?

by ralphredosoprano

In the large infantry battles there must have been issues with corpses becoming obstacles and blood turning the field into mud. Did any writers of that era ever really talk about how the tactics morphed as the battlefield as the piles of bodies started forming?

Iphikrates

I answered a similar question recently; you can find it here. Speaking only for Ancient Greece, the answer is that even though we get descriptions of piles of bodies in the aftermath of battles, there is no evidence that they were enough of an obstacle to require infantry to change its approach. This is probably because the number of casualties in the actual clash of the lines was much lower than Hollywood would have you believe, and most of the losses suffered were killed in the pursuit when one side had broken.

By contrast, there are several examples of battles that were decided by sudden thunder and heavy rain.