Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Mask View Post
Is much known about the training the militia would go through?
Yes though it's not very accessible to the non academic layman.

In summary, there are two types of training, skill training, which seems to have been organized principally in the form of competitions and is pretty well documented, and actual drill which usually happened in militias, professional armies and mercenary companies.

For commoners, marksmanship contests, of the type you see in various Robin Hood films, William Tell stories and so on, were probably the single most important type of skill test, and hugely popular. Towns put out immense amounts of money to sponsor marksmanship contests with crossbows (and later guns), the English King did so with longbows - hosting mandatory training events and awarding prizes.

The second most important was something called 'fechtschules', a combination instructional event and tournament for fencing with swords, sabers, staffs, and later also rapiers and other weapons. We have a great deal of documentation about these, as well as some period artwork. Alongside this kind of tournament we see practice lifting weights, grappling or wrestling, sparring with special blunt swords, and gymnastics.

For knights, and the merchant elite of the towns, the tournament, joust, fight at the barriers and so on, was key.

Boucicaut described a series of 'feats' that knights should train to become practice expert at, (from my friend Richard Marsden via a 19th Century book:)

1 - While fully armored he leaped on and off his horse without assistance.
2 - He ran great distances in armor to build up his endurance.
3 - With an axe or mace he delivered strikes to a thick logs or a block of stone.
4- He did many leaps while in armor.
5 - He leaped upon his horse in armor while the horse had no stirrups.
6- He danced in his hauberk. (No explanation is given)
7 - He would vault onto the shoulders (unarmored it appears) of a tall man on a horse with no help except grabbing the man by his sleeves. (?)
8 - With one hand on the pommel of the saddle and one hand on the ears of a charger, he'd leap over it.
9 - He'd, unarmored, find two narrow walls and scale up them using his legs and arms.
10 - He'd climb a ladder upside-down. Unarmored he did this one handed.
11 - He and his squires practiced the art of 'darting the lance' (no explanation given).

In some respects this is kind of like the armored, cavalry version of the famous feats of the Fianna.

On the formal group-trianing, we have accounts of this pretty early among the Swiss, in places like the Dithmarschen, in Flanders, and among a lot of the towns. Also certain royal armies and mercenary groups (like the Landsknechts) would do formal drill training, both for cavalry and infantry. Jan Ziska formally trained the Czechs before and during the Hussite wars, including training scouts; Piotr Dunnin started doing this with the Polish Cavalry during the 13 Years War, creating the basis for what would later become the Polish Hussars. I believe the French Royal armies were doing formal cavalry training by the 16th Century.

G