How many knights where at any one point and how did they afford...

[sleeperul]

It also depends what is meant by 'knight'. Many of the fighting men were various forms of non-noble professionals such as men-at-arms, serjents, yeomen and city militia. To even guess what proportion of combatants were knights is really just a stab in the dark.

A very approximate guess can be made by taking the population of Europe (~70 million during the 13th century) and assuming a proportion of around 2% based on what we know of settlement patterns, you wind up with 1.5 million knights. This should give a very rough guide as to the total number.

Holy shit and they got their ass kicked by the mongols well the first time the second time they kinda eliminated the invading army. It was in the same century so that is something.
But 1.5 million knights withing an population of 70 million like the Roman empire had who could only field half an million troops. Starting to think centralization and huge amlunt of military men do not get along.

 

[Henry IX]

The feudal system, such as it was, proved to be an excellent way to raise large numbers of trained fighters from a relatively small population. It is worth noting that a vast majority of the effective taxation peasants paid was to support the military aristocracy. Perhaps 90% of the tax burden of the peasantry was directly used to support military functions (including the upkeep of the knights and their households). The remainder went to the church for its non-military functions (most church funds came from land owned by the church and farmed for profit, but when the church had land it generally had military obligations to go with that land).

Even at its peak size under the Dominate the Roman army did not occupy anything like 90% of state expenditure and the state captured a far smaller proportion of total production for its uses than the aristocracy in medieval Europe.

So yes, centralised states generally mobilise a far smaller percentage of their potential resources for military functions than do decentralised states. The flip side is they generally have a far greater ability to direct the resources they do have, generally meaning they can field far larger armies than decentralised states. The Romans occasionally assembled armies in excess of 100000 men whereas a medieval European army rarely exceeded a few thousand, with the very largest pan-European armies reaching perhaps 50000 (e.g. crusades).

 

[pithorr]

Those 2% was probably the whole knighthood class. We need to deduct women, elders and children from the amount...

 

[bz249]

Holy shit and they got their ass kicked by the mongols well the first time the second time they kinda eliminated the invading army. It was in the same century so that is something.
But 1.5 million knights withing an population of 70 million like the Roman empire had who could only field half an million troops. Starting to think centralization and huge amlunt of military men do not get along.

Not to underscore the ability of the Mongols but they never get past the fringes of Europe... sure they razed Poland (multiple times) and Hungary (once) and that's it.

 

[Båtsman]

The feudal system, such as it was, proved to be an excellent way to raise large numbers of trained fighters from a relatively small population. It is worth noting that a vast majority of the effective taxation peasants paid was to support the military aristocracy. Perhaps 90% of the tax burden of the peasantry was directly used to support military functions (including the upkeep of the knights and their households). The remainder went to the church for its non-military functions (most church funds came from land owned by the church and farmed for profit, but when the church had land it generally had military obligations to go with that land).

Even at its peak size under the Dominate the Roman army did not occupy anything like 90% of state expenditure and the state captured a far smaller proportion of total production for its uses than the aristocracy in medieval Europe.

So yes, centralised states generally mobilise a far smaller percentage of their potential resources for military functions than do decentralised states. The flip side is they generally have a far greater ability to direct the resources they do have, generally meaning they can field far larger armies than decentralised states. The Romans occasionally assembled armies in excess of 100000 men whereas a medieval European army rarely exceeded a few thousand, with the very largest pan-European armies reaching perhaps 50000 (e.g. crusades).

It feels to me like you are comparing apples and oranges here. You really have to separate between taxation and land-rent (the fee for renting a piece of land). Medieval taxes were generally low, and generally dominated by indirect sources, like legal fees. The largest income streams for the central authority were instead the land-rent from the land personally owned by the king. For the roman empire, hard numbers on anything outside of Egypt (which was always heavily centralised), are almost non-existing. But the land-rent from the land owned by the emperor was also a major revenue source, if perhaps less significant than that from taxation. The medieval land-rent was often in the form of direct labour on the lord's fields however, not in silver.

The biggest problem for the Roman empire was the unwillingness of the aristocracy to pay for anything that did not benefit them directly, and I'd actually say that the best part of the medieval decentralised structure was in how it motivated the aristocracy to contribute at least a little, since now every single aristocrat may still not pay any taxes, but they instead had to keep a military force physically capable to protect his subjects. This does not mean that the aristocracy spent 90% of their resources on military matters - a lot of it went to fancy clothes and food, a large court, arts, and a nice house (the castles as defensive structures are overvalued, and undervalued as fancy homes).

 

[Geriander]

Holy shit and they got their ass kicked by the mongols well the first time the second time they kinda eliminated the invading army. It was in the same century so that is something.
But 1.5 million knights withing an population of 70 million like the Roman empire had who could only field half an million troops. Starting to think centralization and huge amlunt of military men do not get along.

The feudal system was very good at defending everywhere against low level raiding, but rather poor at concentrating forces. The First Crusade for example is estimated to have had approximately 5,000 knights despite being an international effort.

 

[Kovax]

The point was that Rome could field those half million troops and KEEP a significant portion of them in the field for as long as needed. Rome could set up defensible field camps, supply them by ship or caravan over good roads, and fight when the time was right. The feudal armies only carried a couple of weeks' supply at best, and were mostly tied down to local defense, or sent on a brief campaign not too far from home.

The Mongols only faced a tiny portion of the military manpower which Europe had available, because that's all that medieval Europe could supply at any distance. The problem that the Mongols faced was that they would have to win again, and again, and again against each region's defenders, while facing supply shortages of their own as they sieged castle after castle. Basically, Europe was a much tougher nut to crack than anything they had faced previously, even though Europe's "reach" was pathetic. That barely changed during the first couple of crusades, but the Europeans started re-learning logistics, which Rome had mastered in its own day.

 

[Eusebio]

I'm sorry, there's absolutely no way there were 1.5 million knights in 1200 AD Europe.

The only way that number could possibly have been sustained is if hundreds of thousands of men-under-arms were roaming the countryside looking for employment. I know the Chevauchee and Raubritter were a thing, but come on...

 

[kaoss]

And when taking that into account, a quick google search shows a torso-and-arms Chainmail armour (of the less fancy type) can be bought for about 100 dollars; you'd need some leather armour to go with it, but certainly for part of the middle ages that could serve as a knight's armour.

Advances in metallurgy from the second half of the XIXth century onward have made steel ridiculously cheap compared to medieval times. To a roman or medieval architect the idea of a bridge (or even a small building) made from steel, would sound like one made of solid gold to us.

 

[sleeperul]

I'm sorry, there's absolutely no way there were 1.5 million knights in 1200 AD Europe.

The only way that number could possibly have been sustained is if hundreds of thousands of men-under-arms were roaming the countryside looking for employment. I know the Chevauchee and Raubritter were a thing, but come on...

Lets think about it we take the number of landed nobles for lets say an baron we give 10 knights for an count 100 and for an duke 1000. We take all barons or of respective rank from each country and we multiply it by 10 then each count and its equivalent by 100 and then each duke and by 1000.

 

[Avernite]

Advances in metallurgy from the second half of the XIXth century onward have made steel ridiculously cheap compared to medieval times. To a roman or medieval architect the idea of a bridge (or even a small building) made from steel, would sound like one made of solid gold to us.

Well, I was comparing to the 'tens of thousands of dollars' in current prices from the OP - which, if your comparable calculation was used on it, would result in impossible prices for the middle ages.

When starting from my 100-ish dollars and using your calculation on it you end up at 'very expensive, but doable'.

 

[Henry IX]

I'm sorry, there's absolutely no way there were 1.5 million knights in 1200 AD Europe.

The only way that number could possibly have been sustained is if hundreds of thousands of men-under-arms were roaming the countryside looking for employment. I know the Chevauchee and Raubritter were a thing, but come on...

As has been pointed out, that number is the size of the knightly class. Call it perhaps 500000 actual knights. These are distributed over about 6 million square km, so not a particularly high density.

Of course the knightly class made up a minority of the professional militaries of Europe so the theoretical military capability of Europe was higher.

It feels to me like you are comparing apples and oranges here. You really have to separate between taxation and land-rent (the fee for renting a piece of land). Medieval taxes were generally low, and generally dominated by indirect sources, like legal fees.

I was unclear in what I meant. By effective taxation you could read surplus extraction. The total production of the land of the land needs to support the farmer, and everything in addition to this can be potentially extracted to support other things. In the Roman Empire much of this wealth was extracted by the nobility and used for their own purposes. In medieval Europe this wealth was used to support the military capacity of the nobility. The central government in Roman times also extracted some of this wealth as taxation, and some of this was used for military purposes. In medieval Europe very little of this wealth was extracted by the central government.

I also classed the living costs of the nobility to be a military cost - as it was effectively their pay. In addition, most of the income of the nobility was used in maintaining their equipment, residence and household, and all of these served military purposes.

 

[HuzzButt]

Libya is overestimating the Knight caste age structure.

total population of 5.92m

Another overstimate is to assume that the age of knights reflects the age of being a medieval master(very young master 25) and the retirement (45) so somewhere around 1.2 million of Libya's 5.92 million or 7% of the Libyan population. So if the entirety of the case is 1.5m then the active knights would number 105 000, but that is again to high an estimate since not all men from the case in that age span would be knights, some would be lotless brothers.
Reverse calculation assume the European population to be 80m and pretend that everyone lives in villages of 40 souls, that gives us 2 000 000 villages (gross overestimation many of these would live in cities and be subject to wholly different taxation structures) and we assume that it takes, as mentioned in the thread 5-8 villages to feed a knight we get a number between 250 000 to 400 000 active knights.

in example one the knights amount to .13% in the second examples .315% and .5%. If the knight to village ratio is the hard limit then it stands to reason that the number of knights did not exceed .5% of the population and if we use my very scientific Libyan comparison as the lower limit then the number of knights is anywhere between .13% and .5%.

 

[sleeperul]

Takes far less then 5-8 villages to feed an knight(do you remember that there where posts that said otherwise and gave proof). Did I not mentioned that baronies had at most 5 villages most did not actually had that much and many only 1. Also those knights in Germany had that fief that was basically an couple of farms and they could equip and feed themselves.
I would increase 5 times the 240k and 400k estimate because they need far less.

 

[Klausewitz]

The question is not what it would take theoretically if resources were used as effective as possible.
The question is what it did take. And that was more than mere subsistence plus armour.
And then there is the problem of what a 'farm' is.
While medieval units of land measurement where based on manpower need and sustainability (one unit, a hufe, was measured by how much land a family of peasant could work and that did sustain them... the obvious problem here is, again, what one considers that 'sustaining' to be) we know little about what surplus value peasants produce, i.e. food or other things beyond what was needed to feed themselves.
Which means a knight commanding a couple of farms might be quite rich because those farms are located in areas that had good soil and therefore the peasants might have eaten meat.
While another knight owning several villages on bad soil might have been hard-pressed to feed himself and his immediate household without starving his peasants.

 

[sleeperul]

The question is not what it would take theoretically if resources were used as effective as possible.
The question is what it did take. And that was more than mere subsistence plus armour.
And then there is the problem of what a 'farm' is.
While medieval units of land measurement where based on manpower need and sustainability (one unit, a hufe, was measured by how much land a family of peasant could work and that did sustain them... the obvious problem here is, again, what one considers that 'sustaining' to be) we know little about what surplus value peasants produce, i.e. food or other things beyond what was needed to feed themselves.
Which means a knight commanding a couple of farms might be quite rich because those farms are located in areas that had good soil and therefore the peasants might have eaten meat.
While another knight owning several villages on bad soil might have been hard-pressed to feed himself and his immediate household without starving his peasants.

Yeah the knight is gonna give something about starving his peasants. Also there other ways to get the dough like taking everything you can from an widow once her husband died and if you have several villages you have more widows you ca rob blind.

 

[Klausewitz]

The thing is, you can only starve a peasant once.
Even if he assume that knights were completely devoid of humanity and empathy and their oath were nothing to them, there is still the fact that your peasants are all what stands between you and pulling a plow yourself.

 

[sleeperul]

The thing is, you can only starve a peasant once.
Even if he assume that knights were completely devoid of humanity and empathy and their oath were nothing to them, there is still the fact that your peasants are all what stands between you and pulling a plow yourself.

Their oaths where not to peasants. Yes you can starve more then once and that is the only thing needed once so he can buy the armor, the weapon and I guess the horse getting food to eat is far less an problem for his peasants to do for their lord.

 

[Herbert West]

Their oaths where not to peasants. Yes you can starve more then once and that is the only thing needed once so he can buy the armor, the weapon and I guess the horse getting food to eat is far less an problem for his peasants to do for their lord.

You do know that time is a thing, right? That actions have consequences.

 

[sleeperul]

You do know that time is a thing, right? That actions have consequences.

Not always has consequences. Time is an thing?