Hi my name's Kevin Hicks, welcome to my YouTube channel the History Squad, and we're making a film
today on uh, a part about the medieval warfare uh which is often forgotten and that's logistics and
the baggage train and my favourite uh character in this is, is one of our greatest kings one of
the greatest English kings that's Edward III who came up with an idea of reducing the size of the
baggage train. Now you consider a medieval baggage train, it's got to carry everything.
As soon as it's in enemy territory it's got to have everything. It's got to have every nail for
every plank every plank every beam if they expect to make bridges they've got to bring it with them
from England. Horseshoes, horse nails uh arrows by the hundreds of thousands, bows, bowstrings,
victuals, food that won't rot yeah? It's so much and you can imagine a baggage train containing
everything, even to make the big catapults for a siege like the trebuchet and things like that.
They would be incredibly long and they'd need good roads but Edward III looked at this
and he decided that instead of having enormous wagons pulled by great big long teams of oxen
he will reduce the size and he will have small two wheeled ox carts that can pull one load
but go through every narrow road so instead of the baggage train being contained or confined to
one big thoroughfare they can go by the byways the highways and then meet at other locations.
The soldiers will march with them yeah and uh protect them but he also had this other
genius, and I've actually got uh, an important piece for the baggage train yeah, a bill hook.
Because Edward III employed soldiers to go forward ahead of the baggage train to cut away all of the
vegetation on the side of the roads they had guys with the law the pikes with these on the end yeah
and they would cut down low hanging branches so that the baggage train wasn't delayed so they're
protected by soldiers they have uh soldiers and foragers going forward clearing the road.
This is an absolute brilliant way of approaching, moving the the baggage trains. Now I used to work
at Blenheim palace uh many years ago and I got to know about the history of the Duke of Marlborough
the Battle of Blenheim 1704, and he was actually famous for his two-wheeled carts and for moving by
the highways and the byways through the narrow paths, I wonder where he got his idea from?
There's actually a picture of a medieval baggage train on the move I don't think it's English and
there are lots of wagons, great big wagons lots of horses lots of men all moving around over the
countryside but one of the wagons, one of the main focus is not fully, not only full of baggage it's
actually full of ladies too so this just goes to show just what you had to put in your wagons
yeah? So if you've got a wagon full of ladies you've got their clothes as well
yeah and their tent and they're well tented you know. Ropes, if there's a flag there's
got to be a flagpole that's got to be carried, if there's a flagpole there's got to be ropes,
so you have got so many different wagons full of kit. Spare wheels, the wheelwrights yeah? The
spare shoes and boots, the guy who can repair the boots and shoes, the cobbler as we call him.
Caltrops, look at these horrible things you know for spiking horses that terrible terrible things
that they put in front. How about this then, if you've got the king or a lord or a knight
he's going to have his own special baggage train and he's going to have a better tent, he's going
to have stuff, he's going to have a nice cot to sleep in but how about they carry their
own supply of nice fragrant moss to wipe their backsides in their own special privy yeah? So
these wagon trains they were enormous, these baggage trains as they’re called,
but on my model here I've got one wagon which is full of fodder, that's all it's full of, fodder
for the oxen and horses within the baggage train. Then you have wagons filled with arrows with all
the different kit yeah? So Henry V though, when he left uh the Siege of Harfleur this is 1415
on his route up to what he thought was going to be safe Calais, but in fact he was intercepted
at Agincourt but that's for another story, he stripped the baggage train down. He had wagons,
but mainly he had pack horses, so you've got pack horses that can carry an extreme amount of kit
but if you look at uh like this the uh Crecy campaign Edward III, in one of the shipments
there was half a million arrows that's absolutely incredible and of course if you go back to my
film the Battle of the Herrings yeah, the food supply the English army was fine provided it
operated within striking distance of the coast so it could simply be resupplied from England.
I hope you enjoyed our little film if you did like, share and subscribe
and we now have a Patreon account so if you'd like to support our channel even further
yeah, the link is in the description. Now before I finish I've got to give a shout out to a couple
of our new Patreon members yeah, so here we go thank you very much Richard Macpherson and Micah
S, and if I get the names wrong tell me it's my accent. So for now bye, see you soon