ABSTRACT
Infantry were an element in all the wars of the period: in 984 their skills extricated Lothar and his cavalry from a difficult situation in Lorraine; their steadiness fought off Barbarossa’s attacks on the carroccio to win the victory of Legnano on 29 May 1176, and they were vital to the victory of the Florentines at Certomondo on 11 June 1289. Of course, knights sometimes fought on foot while sergeants, a term normally associated with footsoldiers, sometimes fought on horseback. Broadly, the groups that we are considering here are those who normally fought on foot and were not in any sense gentle. Our sources in general pay much less attention to these people, dismissing them as mere pedites. The Bayeux Tapestry ignores all but the archers in its account of Hastings, probably because its public were the knights, upon whose doings the narrative sources also focus. Gislebert of Mons gives us much precise information about warfare in Flanders in the later twelfth century, including very believable figures for the numbers of cavalry involved in campaigns, but sometimes offers ridiculously high figures for the infantry.1
