A description of a French army on the march in July 1502 brings together all the elements necessary: ‘there were scouts sent out on the route, skirmishers across the country, carts on the way, infantry on the march, men-at-arms at the trot and supplies to follow.’ In an age when a community of 10,000 was a substantial town and few cities topped 30,000, armies of between 10,000 and 50,000 were the largest gatherings of human beings most people would ever encounter. The concentration of such numbers on a single field of battle represented a prodigious achievement of leadership and administration. The deployment and care of troops was a major concern of all good commanders: how to get men trained and ready; how to get them to the field and how to command them in battle? When the battle-fields of Italy had become sought out as ‘places of remembrance’ by the end of the 16th century, Brantôme recollected that his father had seen his first battle with Bayard at the Garigliano (1503) and recalled visiting the site himself one day in 1559 or 1565, at sunset, imagining the shades of the brave French dead rising up and bewailing with him the marshy ground that had spelled the doom of the French gendarmerie on that day.

The evidence: the memoirists describe war

The military memoirists provide a distinctive perspective on the mentality of war. High- and middle-ranking commanders, such as Blaise de Monluc and Martin du Bellay, and men-at-arms such as Rabutin had stories to tell, and historiographers such as Jean d’Auton were eager to record them. D’Auton, at the start of the 16th century, regretted that the French were tight-lipped, ‘for the French are so disposed that, when asked to write up or respond about their deeds, they shut their mouths and let them be forgotten.’ We might wonder whether French menat- arms were such shrinking violets when it came to singing their own praises or whether they found d’Auton a bore. At all events, one of the most salient features of French military history in the Renaissance period is this flourishing genre of memoir-writing by noblemen experienced in war at all levels. Some have argued that this was a quintessentially French phenomenon.