Armed Escort of Urban War Wagons in Poland of the Fifteenth–Sixteenth Century

Abstract

The article presents an unstudied problem of armed escort of urban war wagons in late medieval and early modern Poland. From the thirteenth century on, towns and cities were obliged to provide food on carts sent to war. Those carts were usually accompanied by an armed escort. But the first document — specifying this obligation for the entire Polish Kingdom together with the number of escorting men and their protective and offensive weapons — dates to 1521. An analysis of this source and some other fragmentary references (from both earlier and later times) makes it possible for us to say that most often the escort included urban infantry. Another interesting conclusion is that from the early sixteenth century crossbows were being gradually replaced with firearms. A detailed table juxtaposes different types of protective and offensive weaponry used by soldiers escorting the urban war wagons in the analyzed period.