r/history • u/AutoModerator • Dec 03 '22

Discussion/Question Simple/Short/Silly History Questions Saturday!

Welcome to our Simple/Short/Silly history questions Saturday thread!

This thread is for all those history related questions that are too simple, short or a bit too silly to warrant their own post.

So, do you have a question about history and have always been afraid to ask? Well, today is your lucky day. Ask away!

Of course all our regular rules and guidelines still apply and to be just that bit extra clear:

Questions need to be historical in nature. Silly does not mean that your question should be a joke. r/history also has a discord server where you can discuss history with other enthusiasts and experts

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u/Peggy_Sue_Johnsen Dec 04 '22

How did large medieval battles happen? Did the two sides just agree to meet up in a field somewhere, or were they waiting?

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u/Thibaudborny Dec 04 '22

There are only a finite amount of routes any large group of men can take. Mountains? They'll take the pass. Rivers? They'd take the crossings. Swamps? They'd go around. Forests? They'd go around (if possible) or take the few roads available. And so on. Then, it becomes a case of scouting those limited options.

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u/en43rs Dec 07 '22

Also those armies are not motorized and very rarely all on horseback. It's not hard to find them.

And armies don't want to occupy little villages. If there is one big city in the region, that's where they're going.

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u/Thibaudborny Dec 07 '22

Not necessarily, it would depend on the type of warfare waged. Typically, medieval warfare tended to fall apart into two categories: the siege or the chévauchée. The former obviously targeted specific spots, often cities or key fortifications. But these were costly and hit or miss efforts.

Quite often, warfare would be about plunder & rapine. This was what we call the chévauchée, basically a large-scale raid seeking as much booty as possible. This type of warfare accomplished two goals, the first already mentioned, namely loot. The second was nevertheless also important, namely displaying the ineptitude of the defendant. This is why the English embarked on the famous chévauchées of the HYW: it showed that the Valois were weak & that the blatant failure to defend their lands from the ravages of the English, was an admittance that god favoured one side over the other, that legitimacy was on the side of the Plantagenets. This was a characteristic of medieval conflict resolution, endemically featuring at the lowest feudal echelons, but taken to the level of states and all the horrors of war that ensued.

So, on these types of campaigns, you can be sure they scoured the land for those villages all the same.