Army composition during the High Middle Ages.

by Gwafu

Particularly from the end of the viking age (1100) to the start of the mongol invasions on the east (1200).

A little backstory. I recently got interest into medieval age (or post-classical age according to Wikipedia as a general term) after recently playing hours of video games such as Crusader Kings II, Civilization V, Age of Empires II, Medieval 2: TW, Stronghold (Crusader), and Mount & Blade: Warband. Also watched a few feature films such as Kingdom of Heaven. These rapid burst of media sparked an interest for medieval warfare and had me reading around Wikipedia and forums/boards outside of reddit. Everyone and everything has conflicting narratives and discussions on how medieval armies were composed and it just got me more confused as before.

(I don't know the percentage of video-gamers in this subreddit, forgive me). A common trend in video games is to have specialized or definitive type of troops: spearmen (spear and shield), pikemen (long spears with no shield) swordsmen (sword and shield), archers, maces, light and heavy cavalry, mounted archers, and the list goes on. Another thing is that weaker troops are designated as "peasants" and are cheap and can be easily amassed, while the stronger troops as "nobles/veterans" and costs more in exchange of being stronger. It is also possible to have troops unique to a selected culture or faction such as mamluks and camels for Arabs/Muslims, berserkers for Scandinavian, and Longbows for English.

Now to my question, what is the general or typical composition and organization of medieval armies particularly of the crusaders and Muslims during the years 1100-1200? I picked the year range of 1100-1200 as it is between two very prominent conquest or invasion: Vikings and Mongols. It also contains the first four crusades, which are, arguably, the major ones of them all.

What were the trends? What percentage of soldiers would have swords, axes, maces, spears, shields, javelins, pikes, bows, crossbows, armor, horses, etc.? What is the probability that a randomly chosen soldier will just be a conscripted peasant with minimal training or a highly-trained soldier? How was the open-field battles? Were there advanced tactics or just straight up volley with arrows, charge with horses, and advance with infantry? Is the 1100-1200 to big of a range that warfare was too different in 1100 to 1200?

I know that medieval warfare is too broad to and answered at once, but it is just too fascinating to dwell into!

Thank you! :)

WARitter

There is a lot to be said about this, but u/Rittermeister has written About raising an army just before your period here and about how non-aristocratic soldiers weren't exactly conscripts here.