8 - The Distinctiveness of the Welsh Soldier: Equipment and Organisation

Summary

The story of the Welsh archer is one that has grown in the telling over the centuries. If romantic accounts are to be believed, Welsh archers won the battle of Agincourt, and probably Crécy and Poitiers as well. The actual evidence for this idea is slight and fraught with difficulties. Undoubtedly, the Welsh were well known as soldiers to the kings and barons of England by the twelfth century. Writing towards the end of that century, Gerald of Wales noted that archery was a particular specialism of the men of Gwent, though it was not confined to that area nor to the Welsh. Between 1277 and 1360, when the greatest use was made of Welsh soldiers in large numbers, it could be said that English armies had a ‘Welsh’ flavour. It would have been difficult for the infantry elements of the armies of Edward I and Edward II to have taken the form they did without their Welsh subjects. To a lesser extent this is also true of the armies of Edward III, but thereafter the changing nature of English armies led to a decline in the participation of Welshmen in war. Welsh soldiers were a significant part of English armies until about 1359, a fact noticed by contemporary chroniclers and in the pay accounts of the armies themselves. To what extent then did Wales produce a distinctive type of soldier in the period between the Edwardian conquest and 1360? Were Welsh soldiers in English armies perceived to be ‘different’ from their English fellows? How did Welsh culture recognise achievements in war, given that it was in the service of their erstwhile conquerors? The extremely rich legacy of literature in the Welsh language, mostly in the form of praise poetry, has generally been undervalued by historians, although H.T. Evans's pioneering book, Wales and the Wars of the Roses, devotes its first chapter to the value of the medium. This chapter will discuss how Welsh soldiers were perceived within their own society. It will also consider how they were armed and how the type of soldier Wales could provide affected the conduct of England's wars.

Tactics

The idea of distinctively Welsh tactics having any influence upon the way England conducted its wars can be discounted. The influence of Edward I's Welsh wars on the mixed formations of archers and men-at-arms that was to be characteristic of Edward III's armies.