These units formed companies under a captain either as mercenary bands or in the retinue of wealthy nobles and royalty.
Each lance was supposed to include a mixture of troop types (the men-at-arms themselves, lighter cavalry, infantry, and even noncombatant pages) that would have guaranteed a desirable balance between the various components of the company at large; however, it is often difficult to determine the exact composition of the lance in any given company as the available sources are few and often centuries apart.
However, the basic lance of three men; a knight, a squire who served as a fighting auxiliary, and a non-combatant squire, primarily concerned on the battlefield with looking after the knight's spare horses or lances, seems to evolve in the 13th century[1] An excellent description to convey its relevance is in Howard, "a team of half a dozen men, like the crew of some enormous battle tank".
[3] A similar arrangement was also seen in Spain in the 1270s,[4] according to Ramon Llull: Neither horse, nor armour, nor even being chosen by others is sufficient to show forth the high honour that pertains to a Knight.
Upon the original establishment of the French compagnies d'ordonnance, the lances fournies were formed around a man-at-arms (a fully armored man on an armored horse) with a retinue of a page or squire, two or three archers, and a (slightly) lighter horseman known as the serjeant-at-arms or coutilier (literally "dagger man," a contemporary term for mounted bandits and brigands).
In the Abbeville Ordinance of 1471, the army is re-organised into 1250 lances of nine men each : a man-at-arms, a coustillier, a non-combatant page, three mounted archers and three foot soldiers (a crossbowman, handgunner, and pikeman).
[8] In Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries, mercenary soldiers were recruited in units known variously as barbuta, lance or corazza, consisting of two to six men.
However, in various regions, other sizes of gleven existed of up to ten men, including up to three mounted archers (who would dismount to fight) and armed servants who acted as infantry.
[15] Kopia (Polish for lance) was the basic military formation in medieval Poland, identical to the lance-unit employed elsewhere in Western Europe.