How much military training did the average European medieval soldier get?

by GaySkull

I know that knights would get extensive military training and nobles would be expected to know how to hold a sword, but what about the average foot soldier?

I've heard that in the Hundred Years War that English archers would train for like an hour a day from the time they were 10 or something.

Rittermeister

Sadly, this is a question that's basically impossible to answer, and for two reasons.

First, the vast majority of medieval European fighting men were trained by family members, members of their local community, or under similar circumstances. There was no kind of systematic, standardized national training program like we have today. When a medieval king or noble wanted to go to war, he didn't draft civilians and turn them into soldiers; he essentially called upon people who already knew how to fight and were equipped to do so. There's just no way to reach an average amount of training, even if we had substantial information to work with.

Which brings me to my second point, which is that the vast, vast, overwhelming majority of medieval soldiers left no record of their thoughts, experiences, wishes, etc. to us. This is largely true (with some exceptions) for knights and nobles, but especially so for the common soldiery. Chroniclers were simply not interested in humble soldiers. They largely wrote for an aristocratic audience that wanted to hear about itself. This extends beyond just soldiers: as /u/sunagainstgold has so aptly explained, the voices of the common people of the Middle Ages are lost to us.