Primary Research To Armed Forces Of Medieval England

The war was frequent in Medieval Europe, the fight were wide existed among different feudal lords. It was significant to find out the reason why England kept his independent and unified without a group of standing army. Along with long conscious about limited royalty and Anglo-Saxon’s military traditions, England comprised several of military system. They not only inherited Anglo-Saxon’s influence, but also established after Norman Conquest. In the almost 500 year’s history, the society, economy and politics changed profoundly in this country. At the same time, different military enlist system also changed in order to adapt superstructure. It is definite a kind of mutual-influential process.The foreword briefly introduces under the background of limited royalty and traditional military idea dating back to Anglo-Saxon period, there are various origins of England forces, not only the inherit of former feudal military traditions, but also new system. Nevertheless, according to the development in the field of society and national polity near 500 years, those military forces adjusted themselves naturally. Objectively to say it is a mutual accommodate process and also a sparkle symbol of national modernization.In the first chapter, one group of army was Knight on the foundation of fiefdom. Those landlords, all named knights, provided forces and warhorses to their king while the latter gave fief to different barons. It seemed a kind of perfect way to obtain manpower resources and to control barons after the Norman Conquest. However, the development of commodity economy and the flow of lands sacked the system, monetary manorial system was preferred.The second chapter introduces conscribe swordsmen by salary was a new system that took charge of knight military service system. Those forces obtained from abroad called mercenary, and contract army were those controlled by domestic barons. There was a long history the England hired forces, but medieval time was the a special period. King made contract to army leader to confirm where, when, how many soldiers to fight, in return, barons got great salary without any feudal obligations. Mercenary and contract army existed throughout medieval England.In the third chapter, infantry system was another traditional military system that continued used as last significant national defense that also exists nowadays. In peacetime civil armed people took charge of local patrol and fortifications constructions, in wartime, they defended local territory and even joined overseas army in the Hundred Year’s War. Under this stimulation, civil corps turned from free, fixed force to paid military service with unfixed service time.The fourth chapter mainly introduces medieval England only hade primary outlines of royal navy, or we call several warships. Those warships came from Five port alliance, or merchant ships. In the 13th century, King John set up Navy Board to administrate national ships on sea. In terms of shipbuilding technology, under the influence of North Europe, medieval England’s ships equipped with erected tiller, shelf, along with big sweep, those ships fit for fight and transport on sea. Generally to say, in this period, England had not proper "Royal Navy", while had an important significance to modern navy development.Above all, in the conclusion, in this time England had both forces on land and sea from different ways. Some of them replaced by time and some of them coexisted. Diversity of national army origins was the best way to restrict royalty that confirmed this country ran to democratic nation. This thesis properly analyzes complementarity and mutual adjustment of diversity of military system which kept England dynamic balance.