Destichado said:
Numerous sources and accounts of how battles were conducted. Pioneers in use of flags as effective battle tools were the Arabs, the Seljuks, the Almoravids and the Normans. You'll see them clearly in use in the accounts of the Islamic conquest, the Bayeux Tapestry, the Song of El Cid, the Crusades, etc.
When there are banners depicted in battle scenes, those banners carry the arms of nobility who were present at the battle.
That is not inconsistent. A nobleman was not a courtier. He brought his own army to the king's campaign and led that contingent himself. His standard was the rallying points for his troops (and only his troops) in the battle. It would also help other fellow commanders (incl. the overall commander) see where each particular contingent was as the battle progressed.
In the early days, battlefield flags were any piece of fabric available, usually distinguished by color or simple charge (in the Almoravid case, by a Qur'anic phrase), and handed out pre-battle to the various contingents. There was no personal or national signifance to them; they used just what was at hand (e.g. the flag of St. George became the English flag because English Crusaders had no flags and borrowed the ones from the Genoese ships that carried them there).
Eventually, rather than have them assigned at the battlefield, each nobleman began bringing his own home-made standard with him and using that. They made them quite fancy, translating the heraldic devices they had on their seals and placing it on their standards. But fanciness aside, the functional purpose remained the same -- to be used in battle as a rally device.
Heraldry was developed to identify people in an illiterate society, and banners in the age of chivalry were designed to more widely announce the presence of the person that the heraldry identified.
Society has always been illiterate. Yet noble banners only began being used in the 1200s or thereabouts, shortly after standards gained widespread use on the battlefield. Prior to that, counts, dukes, kings and even emperors did
not have any flags whatsoever. Were these older lords just humbler?
And noblemen did
not walk around with flags in peacetime to announce themselves. Standards were only seen on those ceremonial state occasions which happen to require that noblemen be decked out in full battle dress. The rallying standard was just part of a nobleman's battlefield gear, just like his armor, lance and sword. (and it seems everyone in that picture there is dressed in armor
)
I know of NO sources on mediecal military organization that advocated the use of flag commands -OTHER THAN the command of the orliflamme, which when flown, was an order to kill everyone and take no prisoners.
I don't know where that story comes from.
I do know the oriflamme was an ecclesiastical gonfalon, the sacred banner of the Abbey of Saint-Denis. It belonged to the Abbot and was lent at his descretion to the French king (in a big religious ceremony with great blessings). But gonfalons, as I pointed out earlier, are an entirely different class of flag.
To be honest, I don't know where this oriflamme "no quarter" story comes from. The oriflamme, as an ecclesisatical banner, accompanied the troops to the battlefield, but it was not used in battle; it was not a rallying flag and I doubt very much it was used to give any commands.
They were announcements, they were prestige ("he gathered many banners to him" -denoting the presence of knights bannerete, who led other knights, denoting the size/quality of the leader's army)
I don't see that that has anything to do with "prestige". Lots of banners = lots of contingents = large army, each contingent under its own commander and with its own rallying flag. How is that inconsistent?
You make very simple "announcements" to your troops with the standard -- come to me/follow me, hold this spot, charge, etc., which translated into simple thing like raising it vertically, waving it vigorously, etc. Some signals we still have -- most famously, bringing it down to the ground (the signal for retreat/surrender), which is why it is considered dishonorable to let a flag touch the ground. (An aside: the Almoravid flags had Qur'anic inscriptions (which would be sacriligeous to let touch the ground), so they typically set their battle standards alight to signal retreat.)
If you have a source for this (other than Braveheart?), I'd be more than happy to see it and say I'm wrong, but until then.... just... No.
Never seen that movie. Do they have battle standards?
Through one frame of reference that's true -though that doesn't mean anything, especially since there is no Church in Mount&Blade. What happened in history during the periods covered by Mount & Blade,
does. I mean, if you want to take it *all* the way back, the earliest gonfalon I can think of seeing depicted was used by the Byzantines. And I don't think I need to say where they got it.
Byzantines got their gonfalons from the same place the Church got it: Rome. Gonfalons were the "Roman style" flag. When the Germanic tribes (who had no flags and never used them) overran western Europe, the Church was the only Roman-era institution left standing, so they held on to the gonfalon (together with so many other Roman institutions, titles, & ceremonial stuff). Gonfalons, in Latin Europe at least up to the 1200s, were exclusively a Church thing.
The bulk of Latin Europe was ruled by Germanic tribes -- yes, all those Latin European kings, dukes, counts were German -- so the secular nobility did not have
any flags of any sort. AFAIK, there are no depictions or accounts of any Frankish or Lombard or Visigothic banners, standards, pennans, gonfalons or what not. None whatsoever.
Battle standards were an innovation that arose in the Middle East. It was used particularly by Arab cavalry to coordinate their cavalry units during their blitzkriegs. The Spaniards and the Normans -- who fought against Arabs in the Mediterranean -- were the first Europeans to adopt them (and their cavalry techniques), sometime in the 11th C.
[An aside on the "pennon: in the Bayeux tapestry you will see "pennons" tied to some knight's lances, but some knights not. That is because Norman knights fought in tight-knit squadrons ("conrois") that attacked in separate waves; so every conroi had a separate pennant so they could coordinate their moves as a unit. Both the lance-tied pennant & the conroi wave were the traditional Bedouin Arab technique, which the Normans picked up when adventuring in the Mediterranean. This is what made the Normans the fastest & best-oiled war machine in Medieval Europe (at least north of Spain & west of Constantinople). ]
But ecclesiastical gonaflons existed in Europe much before that. We have records of Italian communes carting gonfalons to the battlefield in the early 900s. But these gonfalons were eccleasistical. They belonged to the hometown bishop and resided in the hometown church -- which is why they had crosses or the depiction of the town's patron saint, rarely (if ever) any secular heraldic device.
But, as I keep insisting, these weren't rally devices. They were left behind, mounted on the ox-cart in the rear. I know of no gonfalons outside of eccleasistical ones.
========
Let me summarize where I'm getting at: you seem to want all your knights in your contingent to each carry flags of some sort just because they're important looking.
My argument is that standards are not for looks. They're for setting rallying points for the troops. Unless one of your knights is commanding his own contingent of your army, he has no
need for a flag.
You (and only you) are the commander.
You (and only you) set the rally points.
You (and only you) need a standard.
If every darn knight had a standard, how would troops know whom to follow/where to go? You suggest bugles. But I don't know of bugles being used in battlefields at this time. And it would probably be rather hard to hear above all the clashing metal. And then you have to pause to hear it and memorize all those different signal sounds.
Flags were/are the simplest communication. As a soldier, you don't need any special hearing or memory or to pause and ask anyone what your commander's latest command was. All you need to do is look up, see where your commander's standard is and go there. Simple. (And, of course, kill anyone on the way who tries to stop you from reaching it.
)
That is why I want a standard-bearer in M & B . He fits the job. We have (thankfully) only very "simple" commands, the set of which coincides rather well with what
can and
was communicated through a standard-bearer.
If, sometime in the future, we are allowed to create groups & formations on the battlefield, then, yes, there is a case for distributing flags. Each formation can then have a single sergeant-knight with a "pennon" tied to his lance to rally his men as a unit. (and will also be helpful to you, as a general commander, to see where each formation is).
But given that we don't have formations, given that you expect everyone to obey you rather than move in seperate groups, then you should only have one flag, one standard -- yours, carried by a standard bearer, signalling the simple 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 orders with your standard.
That said, I support your idea of using a stiff banner for easy-rendering.
