The military power of France was symbolised by its heavy cavalry. Du Bellay remarked that ‘the French gendarmerie … cannot be compared to any other nation’ and even Charles V was reported to have accepted the superiority of French cavalry. It was assumed that the job of the nobility was to fight, preferably in the service of the King and the ‘common weal.’ For noblemen, war was the avenue to honour and renown. Guillaume du Bellay wrote that war was ‘the custom and common calling of the French nobility’ and that, through it, his ancestors had risen to high degree. Monluc reminded ‘you who are born gentlemen, that God gave you birth to bear arms and serve your prince, not to chase hares or make love.’ Montaigne, more measured, remarked that ‘the true and essential form of nobility in France is the military calling,’ while La Noue saw, in arms, what raised noblemen to great honour. A survey of narratives of noble deaths shows that death in battle accounted for 40% of all deaths in such stories in the 16th and early 17th centuries. But the military vocation was most important as an underpinning ideology of social privilege and there were many more nobles than places in the King's army. It has been argued that the heavy cavalry retained its centrality in French military thinking and in the aspirations of the nobility essentially because of the prestige attaching to it, rather than for its usefulness. The lessons of the great defeats of the 14th and 15th century had in some ways been learnt, yet heavy cavalry remained at the centre of the army. The gendarmerie did score successes in the early 16th century, so its replacement by more flexible cavalry was necessarily slow but there were now other avenues through which noblemen at all levels could enter the King's military service, including the infantry.

The Royal Guards

One of the most honorable ways for a nobleman to serve the King was in the elite royal bodyguard. Under Charles VII, the household guard was still relatively small but in subsequent reigns increased to a core of 200 gentilshommes, 100 Swiss, 200 French mounted archers, and the 100 Scots guards and 24 Scots archers of the bodyguard. By 1500, it stood at around 1000 and all except the Swiss served mounted.