Narratives of war frequently convey the urgency of supply problems. As the lansquenet commander Roggendorf put it in 1562, when confronted by a failure of supplies for his Reiters, ‘no one willingly lets himself die of hunger.’ The alternative to regular supply was all too often self-help on the part of soldiery and much of the energy of military administration went into the – not always successful – task of keeping armies fed. This itself generated innovation.

The numbers of fighting men were always inflated by a vast train of support services. In 1491, for instance, the council estimated that, for the army in Brittany of 20,000 men, food was needed for 40–50,000 mouths. It seems probable that the norm was to double the number of active fighting men. When an army of around 40,000 men was being prepared for the Metz campaign in 1552, the duchess of Lorraine was warned that 90,000 would need feeding. Early modern soldiers are thought to have required two kilos of bread a day. This meant 200,000 ration loaves and also 600 muids of wine, with 50 cows and 600 sheep for the German troops who were not expected to observe Lent. A list of daily provisions for a manat- arms in Dauphiné in 1494 lists a loaf of 25 ounces, a pot and a half of wine, two livres of meat, a quintal of hay and a charge of oats. The scale of the task is immediately apparent.

The bonnes villes, garrisons and military supply

The essence of the supply system for the heavy cavalry remained, from the start until around 1550 (and well beyond that in some ways), one by which local communities were made responsible for the supply of food and equipment to troops in garrison. Indeed, some obligations to provide lodgings for garrisons remained until well into the 18th century. The reforms of 1445 envisaged supplies valued at 10 lt. p.m. per lance contributed through local communities. By the end of the 15th century, this sum of 10 lt. had been absorbed into the pay of the lance but the communities remained responsible for a proportion of the costs of the gendarmerie. The ordinances of 1515 and 1526 insisted that the gendarmerie would be garrisoned in walled towns, that they would be supplied there and forbidden to live off the country villages, as they had done hitherto.