How OLD were Medieval Knights & Soldiers in Battle? The Battle of Tewkesbury (1471)

I'm not surprised the guys in the best armor money could buy survived battles to serve at older ages. Also ransoms.

"42...certainly not young" I feel attacked :)

9:23 this is why “average age” is so deceptive. If you have one person who lives to be 100 and one who dies at birth, the average age is 50. And that gives the impression that people live to 50. Infancy mortality rates are a very important factor.

"Too old to reenact." Nobody told Wlliam Marshall he was too old for fighting back in the day. No one should do that to people now, who want to have fun.

When my dad was 64, he and I were lifting something when I tripped, and fell face forward headed towards various sharp objects. He whipped his arm forward to keep my face from being stabbed . . . and knocked me out cold with his forearm onto my forehead. I don't remember it, but from the bruise, it was like a hammer blow. I think he would have been fairly at home with the whole "In armor, beating down the (prospective) King's enemies" thing.

Made me realize how scary a grey haired man-at-arms would be to face. Maybe slower, but massive amounts of experience.

Sir Edmund Hampton fighting at Tewkesbury would be the like a guy who was old enough to have fought at the Battle of Somme in WW1 actually fighting in the Tet Offensive in Vietnam

that just makes it scarier honestly, I've fenced people sub 25 and they dont scarw me nearly as much as ~35 years old. Experienced folks into their 40 or 50 are just unbeatable lol

For the Archers: It would be really hard to master a warbow as a teenager. That kind of upper body strengh is hard to build up for someone who is not a professional.

Correction about the battle of Visby: The townspeople (of Visby) weren't really involved in the battle. The losing side consisted mostly of people from the countryside with everything from (presumably) freeholders and yeomen up to countryside gentry and nobility.

It occurs to me that a lot of these knights were the oldest members of their families, and so skewed older. That doesn’t negate the original point, that mature and older men could fight.

"I was once an adventurer like you - until I took an arrow to the face." - Henry V ( who was about 16 when he got wounded at Shrewsbury in 1403)

Fascinating! Most people don't realise that "life expectancy" is an average that includes the very high infant mortality of the times. Great sword collection, btw.

This is really interesting stuff. To add to the fun historical info: Harold Hadrada when he died at Stanford Bridge: 51 William The Conqueror at Hastings: 38 Harold Godwinson: 44 King Richard the Lionheart at Arsuf: just turned 34 Saladin at Arsuf: 54

24:30 Hearing about this 72 year-old still fighting reminds me of King Théoden from Lord of the Rings, who was 70-71 in the books.

They were landed gentry, so they had to be old enough to have full inheritance to be proper claimant of these titles. Also they had to serve their lord/kings call regardless of age.

A quick check suggests that Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was around 18 1/2 at Tewkesbury and he was in command of the vangard of Edwards forces.

I would expect that in battles the nobility would skew older than commoners, because the nobility would have trained from a young age, would have better armour, and would be worth ransoming. Those 3 factors would combine to make the nobility much more likely to survive any battles they might fight in without serious injury. The more likely they are to survive battles relatively unscathed, the more likely you are to see them on the battlefield much later in life. Commoners would generally be more poorly trained, would have less protective armour, and wouldn't be worth ransoming so enemies wouldn't try to capture them alive. That would make it much more likely for a commoner to be killed or suffer a serious injury (keeping in mind that any wound that gets infected can be life-threatening) that would prevent them from fighting in future battles, so commoners on the battlefield would likely skew at least somewhat younger. Mind you, when it comes to peasant levies in particular, I wonder if the demographics might be artificially skewed by the lord raising them to ensure that there are still enough relatively young and strong men working the fields. I suppose that might depend on things like the exact time of year, the reason for raising a levy, etc.

Maybe someone has more information on this, but I once read that if a fighting man made it to 40 years old, his chances of living to 60 were pretty good. This kind of makes sense because in hand-to-hand combat, experience is perhaps more valuable than any other factor. When someone launches a blow at you, you've seen that particular technique before and you know how to counter it. I don't remember where I read it, so maybe it's not even true, but it's an interesting observation.

The Order of the Hospital fielded many brothers aged 50+ at the Great Siege. Fra Jean de Valette was 70 and supposedly engaged in combat. The one English brother present, Fra Oliver Starkey was 42.