Transportation: Means of Conveyance

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Transportation: Means of Conveyance

Travel on Horseback. Travelers who did not make their way on foot in the Middle Ages likely rode a horse. The actual speed would depend on the type of horse, the weight the horse was carrying, its feed and forage, and the rest breaks for both man and mount. Sources differ, but it seems that the distance one could cover riding a horse on an extended trip, such as from Venice to Bruges, ranged from 20 to 30 miles a day depending on the weather, with a courier being expected to cover as much as 60 miles every 24 hours. A horse can easily carry a rider 40 miles in a day and even 50 miles without duress, but the lower figure of 20 miles is probably a more realistic average. In the tenth century it is recorded to have taken one week to travel from Algeciras Córdoba, a distance of 150 miles.

Walking vs. Horseback Riding. Pushing a horse to achieve 60 miles daily would certainly cause it to founder sooner rather than later. On a pilgrimage a rider might average five to seven miles an hour, and medieval travelers accustomed to walking found travel on foot faster. A horse fatigues long before a man and recovers more slowly. Italian merchant families hired runners who would travel 55 miles a day for a week’s stretch and then rest for a week instead of messengers on horseback.

Suitable Horses. Medieval chivalric values exalted the horse and travel on horseback. Once it became possible to mount a soldier bearing heavy armor and weapons, medieval warfare in Europe was dominated by the cavalryman until well after the Middle Ages. The destrier, or heavy warhorse, could carry some 250 to 300 pounds and, weighing twice as much as a conventional riding horse, could give greater force to the impact of the knight’s lance. Off duty or perhaps on the round of visits a lord financed for his eldest son and other new knights immediately after their dubbing, knights rode the palfrey, a short-legged, long-bodied horse, which had a gentle ambling gait. While the destrier and palfrey excelled others in power and comfort, they were not fast horses.

Muslim Provisioning. In the Islamic world, the Arab warrior was just as obsessed with the horse as was the European knight. In al-Andalus, Muslim warriors stayed aloft and did not deign to fight on foot. Huge stables maintained by the eleventh-century Caliph at his palace Madînat al-Zahrâ, five miles west of Cordoba, testified not only to the Andalusian use of horses but also to the careful breeding of them. European Latin and Arabic cultures alike prized horses of Turkish or Arabian blood. Within Latin Europe, the need for a fast carrier of messages between armies or kingdoms gave rise to the courser, a strong, lean horse. Neapolitans, of the kingdom of Naples, were the major suppliers of this breed, a hybrid of the Turkish/Arabic and European stocks. In one of the many tales about him, Robin Hood was said to have given both a courser and a palfrey to a downtrodden knight:

A FEAT OF TRAVEL

In 1389 in Montpellier, “a good 450 miles from Paris,” the King of France and his brother, the duke of Touraine, turned to talking about how good it would be to be in Paris with their wives and families. They worked themselves into a challenge as to who could reach Paris first, each one starting at the same time on the same morning accompanied by only one other person. A bet of five thousand francs was riding on the outcome. The following is an extract of the account of this episode by the chronicler Jean Froissart.

Those four keen young men continued riding night and day or had themselves taken on in carriages to give themselves a rest, when they felt like it. Of course they made several changes of horses.…
Think of the discomforts those two rich lords endured through sheer youthful spirits, for they had left all their household establishments behind. The King took four-and-a-half days to reach Paris, and the Duke of Touraine only four-and-a-third; they were as close together as that. The Duke won the bet because the King rested for about eight hours one night at Troves, while the Duke went down the Seine by boat as far as Melun, and from there to Paris by horseback.…
The ladies treated the whole thing as a joke, but they did realize that it was a great feat of endurance, such as only the young in body and heart would have attempted. I should add that the Duke insisted on being paid in hard cash.

Source : Jean Froissart, Chronicles, translated and edited by Geoffrey Brereton (Baltimore: Penguin, 1968).

“Take him a grey courser,”said Robin,
“And a saddle new;
He is Our Lady’s messenger;
God grant that he be true.”
“And a good palfrey,” said little Much,
“To maintain him in his right”
“And a good pa lfrey,” said littleMuch,
“For he is a gentle knight.”

Question of Comfort. Frequently, medieval women as well as men rode a horse or mule, simply because it was more comfortable than either walking or riding in a contemporary wheeled vehicle. The smooth ride afforded by the palfrey made it a suitable horse for the majority of medieval travelers on horseback who might have been less skilled at mounting and riding the heavier destrier or faster courser. For medieval women, riding horseback was, nonetheless, no mean feat. Until the sidesaddle was devised, probably in the Middle East as early as the twelfth century but not arriving west until the fourteenth century, both men and women rode astride. This would have been particularly uncomfortable for women given the elaborate dress of the time.

Determining Horse Use. The medieval use of the horse reflects the relatively settled society required to support it. Cultivation of oats, integrated use of the stirrup, saddle, and horseshoe, and the breeding of a range of horses from the destrier to the palfrey and courser all led to an increased adoption of the horse into medieval travel. The saddle became so important that if merchants and other people were traveling partly by sea and partly by land, they would take their own saddle along to place upon a hired horse or mule when the overland portion of the trip began. Horses were expensive to buy, and compared to oxen and donkeys who were foragers, expensive to keep. With the development of the rigid horse collar, the Middle Ages saw the horse used on a large scale in agriculture for the first time in history.

Vehicular Transportation. During the Middle Ages several different wheeled vehicles were in use in Europe. One notable boon to medieval transportation technology was advancement in the harnessing of horses as draft animals to the wheeled vehicle. One or more shafts extending from the vehicle and attaching to a band around the horse’s breast allowed its chest to serve to pull the weight behind. Where shafts could not be used, a special form of the rigid horse collar was devised. A significant addition to these changes was the widespread integration of a pivoting front axle, already known for centuries among the Celts and the Chinese.

Horses and Carts. The need for portable regalia and equipment may have driven some of the improvement in carts. Medieval armies and monarchs traveled extensively. Some of the German kings and Holy Roman Emperors traveled as much as two thousand miles a year, so there was a constant need for the transportation of baggage, if not personnel. The real problem for any medieval military relocation was not just in moving individuals, but also supplies. In Harold II’s famous rapid march, physical and logistical strengths both came into play. There was also the matter of booty, which carts made much easier to transport. For booty alone a victor in Spain had thirty carts made. In the Arabic world, transport by camel was more economical than by horse and cart by a factor of 20 percent.

Need for a Wagon. A horse or mule pack train on an extended trip seems to have averaged ten miles a day, but then not every sort of baggage was conducive to pack transport. Iron or wood chests and waterproofed leather boxes, the luggage containers of choice for the nobility, demanded wheeled vehicles. During the early Middle Ages, heavy wagons of the sort known for centuries were still in use, although the improved harnessing did allow for the use of a single animal instead of two as before.

Wagon Speeds. Carts with two wheels were most commonly used for smaller, lighter loads and four-wheeled wagons for heavier burdens. A mule- or horse-drawn wagon covered an average distance of twenty miles a day, compared to the ten to twelve miles a day of an oxen-drawn one. If road conditions were good, the speed for wagons could reasonably have been between fifteen to twenty-five

miles in a day’s time, with rest stops about every ten miles. Pilgrimages, like any organized medieval travel practice, contributed in the long run to the effort to improve wheeled vehicles. As the movement of pilgrims increased, larger wagons and carts were designed to carry groups.

Four-wheeled Vehicles. There was considerable momentum for change in human travel by four-wheeled vehicle. The ordinary wagon was terribly rough and uncomfortable. Women in particular, if they chose not to ride on horseback, suffered in being packed into rough carts called litters, which consisted of little more than a few boards and wheels haphazardly assembled. Significant advances in transportation technology became possible from the Carolingian era forward. The Magyars or Hungarians, who after threatening Europe settled into the former Roman province of Pannonia in the ninth century, possessed high competence in the use of wheeled vehicles. During the Middle Ages, Europe was poised for considerable transport advances.

Coach of Kocs. By the close of the Middle Ages, rich and powerful travelers had quite elaborate carriages that provided more comfort. What distinguished the carriage or coach (derived from the name of Kocs, a town in Hungary that became renowned for its excellence in carriage making around 1350) from the wagon was a suspension system. In the Middle Ages, leather straps, instead of the more complex later device of iron springs, were used to suspend the passenger compartment above the axle and thus to dampen the jolts that characterized the rigidly built wagon body. The swaying of suspended compartments might have led to motion sickness, but it reduced the number of passengers with broken bones or severe bruises. Improved suspension in four-wheeled vehicles made traveling behind a horse instead of on one increasingly more comfortable. What remained to be accomplished was an increase in speed. The poor condition of medieval roads made it impossible for any vehicles to make better speed than a good walker could achieve, at most some eighteen to twenty miles a day. With improvements in the harnessing of horses in tandem, one behind another, speeds could be somewhat increased.