The last French Knights - Gendarmes

If today the gendarmes in France are known as lawn enforcers within the military domain and mostly act outside of the cities, their name is much older than that. You see, for most of the era of medieval warfare the Kingdom of France was considered the heart of chivalric warfare. For centuries, the French had set themselves as a major power in Europe; in a time when cavalry dictated the battlefield, they fielded the best on the continent. However, the good times wouldn’t last as France’s knightly prestige would be severely damaged by the coming of one of the biggest calamities in our history: the British.

Our story starts with the advent of the Hundred Years’ War, an agglomeration of smaller conflicts started over a succession crisis. You see the last three kings of the House of Capet, Louis X, Philip V and Charles IV, though it would be hilarious to die without a male heir. However, it was less funny for French society, which required a man sitting on the throne, and while the first two cases were easily patched up, the last one decided to outdo his predecessors. You see Charles IV also happened to be the last living male of the House of Capet, and while he still had female relatives, in the eyes of the nobility his house died with him. From this point, Edward III, Charles’s nephew, should have inherited the throne of France but a little tiny problem would throw a wrench: he was the King of England. This, of course, sat very badly with the rest of the French nobility, who proceeded to create some new bullshit rules to instead put Philip VI of the House of Valois on the throne.

Now England at the time was far from being the worldwide superpower of its colonial times, but rather a backwater state at the fringe of the main theatres of action. Thanks to William’s conquest a couple of centuries ago, England was also deeply linked with France as many of its nobility could directly trace their houses back to the mainland. This included Edward, of the house of Plantagenet, who, to make history short, wasn’t exactly thrilled to lose what he saw as his birthright and after some failed negotiations he and Philip went to war.

All of this is important to our tale as the creation of the Gendarmes was pushed by the necessities of the Hundred Years’ War. You see the House of Valois, to the shock of absolutely everyone, was getting itself trashed left and right by the Plantagenets. This was caused by two factors: the deadliness of English longbowmen on the battlefield and the French knights' refusal to accept that fact. Fortunately for France and the Valois, Charles VII would be able to turn the tide of the conflict and permanently end the Plantagenets’ claim on the French throne.

Realizing the dire state of his kingdom — by this time a third of mainland France, including its ancestral capital Paris, was under English rule while his own domains were crumbling under raids from British free companies and rebelling mercenaries — Charles quickly went into action and started by reforming his military, first dealing with the rebelling mercenaries. He would send messages to the various active companies in his domain, proposing they permanently enter the service of the French army, supplied and paid by the crown, and serve as vanguards against the English forces in the north and Aquitaine. Those that accepted the deal would be called the Companies d’Ordonnance, whose first task would be to hunt down and systematically massacre any mercenaries who refused the deal. These companies were then reorganized to form smaller lances, fighting independently as highly mobile forces composed of a heavy knight, a light horseman, two mounted archers and some camp followers. Other reforms would include the increased recruitment of dedicated archers and implementation of early cannons, but that’s not important for our tale. These reforms would prove highly effective as this development in semi-professional troops, alongside England running into the main issue of archers — their training time — led to France delivering a lightning and decisive reconquest of its mainland territory.

After proving their worth in the closing days of the war, the Companies d’Ordonnance would stay a staple of the French military, staying active even during times of peace which was quite unusual for the time. They would stay to garrison troubled regions of the kingdom, or dangerous frontiers like with the growing House of Habsburg, and served as some of the first European professional armies ever since the end of the classical period. Of course, over time, these companies would evolve in composition and name. Firstly, the Companies d’Ordonnance were more and more referred to as Gens d’Armes (Men-at-Arms), later morphing into Gendarmes, due to the increasing usage of heavily armored cavalry and the disappearance of auxiliaries' militias. Even the mounted archers became more and more like armored knights than skirmishers, although they would hilariously keep the name. The heavy knights on the other hand would turn into a walking block of metal, gaining the nickname ‘heaviest cavalry in Europe’, as both rider and mount were covered in plate armour. The effectiveness of the Gendarmes was not only thanks to their battle readiness and equipment, but also their cohesion. Due to the fact all Gendarmes were of noble birth, they followed a certain code of honor that allowed them to greatly trust each other on the battlefield and deliver coordinated brutal charges on the enemy which was referred to as the Gendarmes’ Fury.

The Gendarmes would be slowly phased out of the French Army with the coming of the Renaissance, as the spread of pike-and-shoot warfare, developed to counter heavy knights, proved a little bit too effective against them.

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