Gendarme (historical)
A gendarme was a heavy cavalryman of noble birth, primarily serving in the French army from the Late Middle Ages to the early modern period.
They provided the King of France with a potent regular force of armored lancers which, when properly employed, dominated late medieval and early modern battlefields.
Their symbolic demise is generally considered to be the Battle of Pavia, which saw the gendarmes suffer a disastrous defeat and inversely confirmed the rise of the Spanish Tercios as the new dominant military force, leading to the preeminence of the House of Habsburg in 16th century Europe.
These methods, though improvements on the old annual 40-day service owed by knights (the traditional warrior elites of Medieval Europe), were also subject to strain over long campaigns.
The French kings sought a solution to these problems by issuing ordinances (ordonnances) which established standing armies by which units were permanently embodied, based, and organized into formations of set size.
The first such French ordinance was issued by King Charles VII at the general parliament of Orléans in 1439, and was meant to raise a body of troops to crush the devastating incursions of the Armagnacs.
[4] Likewise, appointment of individual gentlemen to a gendarme company (a matter of provincial administration) was mostly accomplished by patronage and recommendation, favouring those with the right family connections.
It was with his increasingly professional army, including its gendarme heavy cavalry, that the French king ultimately defeated the English in the Hundred Years War and then sought to assert his authority over the semi-independent great duchies of France.
Ultimately, however, elements of his gendarmes d'ordonnance were re-established by Philip the Handsome on a smaller scale, and these companies survived to fight in Habsburg forces into the sixteenth century.
[9] France entered the sixteenth century with its gendarme companies being the largest and most respected force of heavy cavalry in the world, feared for their powerful armament, reckless courage and esprit de corps.
However, the gendarme cavalry, when properly employed, could still be a decisive arm, as they could deliver a potent shock attack and remained fairly maneuverable despite the extremely heavy armour they now wore to defend themselves from increasingly powerful firearms.
In others, such as at Marignano, they were part of a de facto combined arms team, operating in conjunction with infantry and artillery to achieve battlefield victory against an all-infantry foe.
However, when unsupported and facing enemy infantry in good order, particularly those in pike and shot formations or in a strong defensive position, they suffered heavy casualties despite their now immensely thick armour.
Also proving effective in the same battle routing the pike and shot formations engaged in the center via a charge into the flank by a group of 80 Gendarmes under the command of Boutières.
"[11]De Saulx noted in his own memoir: "The large pistols make close action so dangerous that everyone wants to leave, making the fights shorter"[12]The French, starting with the Huguenot rebels, rapidly replaced the heavy gendarme lance with two pistols, and the armour of the gendarme rapidly lightened to give the horseman more mobility (and to cut the extreme cost of fielding such troops).
In time of war, their role was to protect the Imperial headquarters, to escort prisoners and occasionally to enforce the law and limit civil disorder in conquered cities.
