Feudalism rested on the superiority of the horseman to the footman, of the mounted noble to the unmounted churl.

The real fighting power of a feudal army lay in its knighthood, in the baronage and landowners who took the field, each with his group of esquires and mounted men-at-arms.

A host of footmen followed them, but they were ill armed, ill disciplined, and seldom called on to play any decisive part on the actual battle-field.

In France, and especially at the moment we have reached, the contrast between the efficiency of these two elements of warfare was more striking than elsewhere.

Nowhere was the chivalry so splendid, nowhere was the general misery and oppression of the poor more terribly expressed in the worthlessness of the mob of footmen who were driven by their lords to the camp.