Historical battles. Fights between knights and knights or knights with infantry are always interesting. It's excitingly interesting, especially if we imagine how such battles took place. Imagine that you are holding a five-meter lance and pressing it to the ground with your foot. It is clear that you are not alone: your comrades are standing on the right and left in the same poses. Knightly cavalry rushes - "lava" of people and horses, chained in iron. One thing is the transitional era from chain mail to plate armor, when the metal on the knights was practically not visible - blankets, gambizons, helmet-mounted lambrequins, but at the end of the 15th century polished metal already dominated the battlefield. And such "iron guys" on "iron horses" are jumping on you, and you need to stop them. The Japanese book "Zobier Monogotari" describes what an infantryman with a pike in his hands feels when he plunges it into the horse's neck and what is required of him at this time … "Like a giant pulls the pike out of your hands …" - this is the feeling. But you need to try to keep the pike, then pull it out of the fallen horse and try to stick it in the next one! And the knights - they are also not lambs at the slaughter, they try to get into the bursts of the peak, stab you with their spears, chop with swords, there is a tinkle of iron and a horse neighing, and, of course, they are still yelling, yelling out loud!
This is approximately how one of the battles "at the turning point" of the eras took place - the Battle of Ginegat on August 7, 1479 - a battle between the allied Habsburg and Dutch troops and the French army during the War of the Burgundian Succession. And, I think, to get acquainted with how it happened, readers of "VO" will be very interesting, since we have already examined here the armor of Emperor Maximilian I, as well as with his biography, learned about the war for the Burgundian inheritance, and now it will be logical to get acquainted with one from the battles of this era.
In 1478, hostilities mainly took place in the provinces of Picardy. The parties did not achieve success and as a result, on July 11, they signed a truce for a period of one year. Yes, that's how they fought back then. Louis XI was very afraid of the intervention of the Holy Roman Empire in this conflict, and in order not to give a reason for it, he decided to withdraw his troops from Hainaut, and also promised to return Franche-Comté, which he could not completely capture. However, from the main thing, that is, from the Duchy of Burgundy, he never refused, and in addition he also said that henceforth he would title Mary of Burgundy and Maximilian of Habsburg only as the Duchess and Duke of Austria, but no more.
At Franche-Comte, the ceasefire, however, did not apply. And so Louis XI thought, and decided that there was no point in returning this territory, and words, these are just words, and if so, it means that it should continue its conquest. And already in the spring of 1479 large forces of the French moved there. At the same time, in Picardy and Artois, there are also Ordonance companies and also free riflemen ("franc archers") of Marshal Jier and Senor de Corda. However, their forces were not enough to carry out offensive operations. This was taken advantage of by the Archduke Maximilian, who quickly gathered an army of 27 thousand people and on July 25 approached the city of Terouane. Apparently, he wanted to succeed in Picardy even before reinforcements from Franche-Comté came to the aid of the local forces.
The city garrison of Terouane was commanded by the lord de Saint-André. Under his command were 400 "spears" and 1,500 crossbowmen - that is, a fairly large force. When the Imperials surrounded the city and began shelling, the message came that the French army was coming to the rescue. Maximilian immediately convened a council of war, at which many of his military leaders expressed doubts that their troops, consisting of Flemish militias, would be able to withstand the blow of French horse men at arms. However, the duke, who was also supported by his younger colleagues, nevertheless decided to give the French a fight. Heavy bombards were abandoned, and only light coolers were taken to participate in the field battle.
The French army, although outnumbered by the enemy, had a large number of heavy guns. Among them, the recently cast “Big Bourbonka” cooler stood out, that is, here the advantage was on the side of the French. Their army took up positions between the hills, in a place that the locals called Ginegat. The army was commanded by Lieutenant General of King Louis XI Philippe de Krevker, lord de Cord, a Burgundian by birth and a knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece.
The size of the French army was 1800 "copies" and 14000 "francs archer", although the data of different historians are somewhat different. Archduke Maximilian built the Flemings in the form of an extended phalanx of great depth, putting in front of it 500 hired English archers under the command of the knight Thomas Origan, who had fought for Charles the Bold, and as many as three thousand of his German arquebusiers. His heavily armed cavalry, which was outnumbered by the French, he divided into several small detachments of 25 horsemen each, so that they supported the infantry flanks. Among the riders of this cavalry were many noble Flemish lords and those of the Burgundians who remained loyal to Mary and Maximilian.
Modern chronicles report that the duke, before the battle, addressed his soldiers with a heartfelt speech, in which he urged them to return everything taken away by the French and "restore justice", to which his troops, allegedly, unanimously answered: "So we will do!" But here it should be noted that since the French robbed the Flemish cities and villages, the Flemings did not particularly need to be roused to battle - they already hated the French with all their hearts.
The battle began in a rather traditional way: the English archers, standing in front, crossed themselves, kissed the ground - such was their strange custom, and began to shoot at the French, shouting: "Saint George and Burgundy!" At the same time, light coolers were also opened fire, which turned out to be more effective than the heavy guns of the French.
Seeing that his troops were suffering losses, Philippe de Krevqueur sent a detachment of six hundred spears and part of the crossbowmen to bypass the enemy's right flank. Flemish gendarmes came out to meet them, and they first managed to repulse their attack. But the numerical advantage of the French soon affected, and the second attack of the French was crowned with success: the Flemish cavalry was defeated, the guns of the Burgundians, standing on the left flank, were captured.
After that, the remnants of the Flemish cavalry fled, and the French gendarmes began to pursue them. Of course, this was a big mistake, but it was simply impossible to restrain them from this, since everyone understood that a large ransom could be obtained for the noble horsemen, of whom there were many among them. And it is not surprising that many representatives of the Burgundian nobility, who took the side of Maximilian, were captured then, and Philippe de Trazeny, dressed in gilded armor, and even decorated with diamonds, the French pursued right up to the city of Era, believing that they were chasing after Maximilian himself …
Historian Philippe de Commines reports that not all of the royal cavalry set out to pursue the retreating Flemings, but the commander himself and the lord de Torcy took up this "interesting business" along with it. army. Whatever it was, but it happened. As a result, the Flemish infantry on the left flank escaped complete defeat.
Meanwhile, in the center, the French franc archers attacked the Flemish infantry, but they resisted very staunchly, especially since more than two hundred dismounted nobles, led by Prince Maximilian himself, fought among them. The Flemish numbered about 11,000 and the battle in this sector took on a very fierce character. Moreover, Maximilian, with a pike in his hands, took a place in their row, which, of course, could not but cause their enthusiasm. Bristling with pikes in the manner of the Swiss, they steadfastly held the defenses, while archers and arquebusiers showered the enemy with arrows and bullets. The Ordinance companies of the French tried several times to break through their formation in different places, but they did not succeed. The French could not oppose them. The fact is that they did not have their own Swiss, because shortly before that, the Swiss cantons announced that they were withdrawing from the war. Louis XI was allowed to recruit only 6,000 people, but they were all sent to Franche-Comté.
Under a hail of arrows and bullets, the Ordonance companies and free riflemen began to retreat little by little, and Maximilian had already given the order to pursue, but then the garrison of Terouane undertook a sortie. However, instead of striking the rear of Maximilian's army, they rushed to plunder the Flemish baggage train, and in addition, they perpetrated a merciless massacre of the sick in the baggage train, as well as women and children who prevented them from enriching themselves at someone else's expense.
The French tried to use their cannons to break up the Flemish ranks, but then Comte de Romont, who commanded Maximilian's right flank, taking advantage of the disorder reigning among them, bypassed their formation and burst into the camp. Panic began, the French fled, so that even their gendarmerie, which just at that time began to return from the pursuit, could not stop them. In addition, the horsemen returned to the battlefield in small groups, or even one at a time, and could not organize a well-coordinated rebuff to the attacking Flemings.
As a result, in this battle, which lasted from two o'clock in the afternoon until eight in the evening, Maximilian managed to win, although he got it at a high price. Almost all the gendarmes of his cavalry were killed or captured. In general, the Flemings lost more than the French. After the battle, Krevker quickly gathered his scattered troops. However, Louis XI perceived the defeat suffered as a real disaster. True, only because he felt that his courtiers did not tell him the whole truth.
But then he ordered to declare in all his cities the victory won, although he told the garrison of Terouane through the commander-in-chief, Count Krevker, that the battle would indeed have been won if they had struck at Maximilian's army, and not robbed his convoy, and that the atrocities of the soldiers were against civilians lead only to the same response atrocities. However, it was already positive that he condemned such actions, and then decided to start peace negotiations with Maximilian and defeat him, if not by force of arms, then by force of diplomacy.
And Maximilian did not have the strength at all to develop his success. He could not even take possession of Teruan and, although the battlefield remained with him, he did not take further military actions and even disbanded his troops. There is an assumption that his treasury was simply empty and he could not pay the troops necessary to take Teruane.
So the Battle of the Ginegata as a political event remained a "dummy", the mass murder of people and horses, and nothing more. But from a military point of view, the benefits from it were great, since it clearly showed that no cavalry at arms could by itself penetrate a dense mass of infantry with pikes and halberds, which, in addition, is supported by numerous arrows. Well, the Dutch infantry, who fought so successfully with the gendarmes at Ginegat, became the obvious forerunner of the infantry of the Landsknechts.
