Well, here's the thing. The Agincourt campaign was an aggressive campaign for Henry V to gain the French throne. Can that be said about all the various campaigns of the English kings? I don't know. Plus farmers and minor landholders aren't craftsmen, could be very "peasant-y" if you look at it from certain angles (See below...) .
The campaigns of the English medieval kings post-defeat of the Vikings can be broadly broken down into aggressive campaigns of foreign conquest (or defence of said foreign parts) and civil war. Its very rare that they fought other major invading armies (particularly post Anglo-Saxon) and most of the time that was linked to civil wars anyway. I think the Scottish invasion that ended at Neville's Cross might be the only non-civil war linked major invasion to occur in this period.
Alas, I sacrificed my War of the Roses collection when I moved, but playing compare the difference between that and Agincourt would be fascinating - and then again with that and the Great Anarchy.
Yeomen, I believe, were originally bowmen that were retainers in noble courts. Should have been really good bowmen, I think, 'cause they should have been bowmen and nothing else.
Their surnames state pretty clearly that these men weren't bowmen and nothing else; also, I haven't heard that before and Wiki (fwiw) says otherwise - "In early recorded uses, a yeoman was an
attendant in a
noble household "
I suppose it depends on your definition of 'peasant'. You might be thinking that peasant is the 'lowest of the low' but I believe there was a great deal of different levels of peasant. And some could be quite rich., So, a farmer could easily be lumped into that class. And I'd guess that plenty of the noble knights in Henry's army would have deemed a great deal of the army with them as peasants (or some other label that is close to that definition!)
I was dealing mainly with the lowest of the low type peasant, yes. People who can't pay other people to labour in the field for them. Which is a nebulous concept at farmer, but not at minor landholder imo although I'll freely admit that when we get into the social history side I start to get out of my depth. However, since the historian in question I'm quoting put farmers directly after and linked to higher social rank, I'm going to go with them being of a slightly higher rank than ye average peasant.
And while there would have been a certain amount of snootiness on the nobles' parts, yes, in this part of the period the lines start to get blurred and there is a lower gentry/middle class in evidence. The standard definition of mounted armoured warrior in Henry's army was Man At Arms, not knight, because most of them weren't knights. Scrope brought 4 knights and 26 esquires. And sure, not everyone could be a esquire either, but things are clearly getting a little wobbly (not to mention that as already quoted, there were family members of esquires serving as archers).
Erm, why wouldn't the contract also involve them replacing wear and tear? I.e. the expense of maintaining good weapons? A mercenary unit that required that soldiers applying to their unit had to buy and maintain their weapons would drive away recruits I feel!
Replacing wear and tear and buying new equipment when they join are two different things. I don't know for sure how this part of it worked but its worth looking at.
So this is a big topic....essentially I'd argue that it's nothing to do with urban communities providing troops, in Europe armies shrank from Late Roman times, partly because there wasn't massive armies invading and a number of other issues, and therefore they could rely much more just on retinues and mercenaries. Interestingly I think DRM seems to argue what I pondered before: "More important, I think, is the evidence which suggests that a distinction was made between service in defence of the country and service on offensive campaigns" i.e. you try and get your best for a pillage or invasion, but if someone invades you...you get everyone involved.
Then the same paper states "At their best, however, the civic militias of urban Europe were part-time fighting men. Their tactical skills were correspondingly limited."
Further more:
"In northern Wales and the border counties of England, boys began learning to use the bow almost as soon as they could walk. The genetours of the Iberian Peninsula and the stradiots of the Balkans might be part-time laborers or farmers, but they drew much of their personal identity, and an increasing amount of their civil status, from their military proficiency."
Very good article, the DRM one, reading through it all BTW. Very thought provoking!
The Stradiots and Jinetes were both horsemen and therefore outside of the remit of what I'm saying
But yes, you can see communities other than predominantly urban ones producing the level of social cohesion needed to overcome knights in the middle ages. That doesn't change the fact that it was Flanders and Northern Italy (i.e. high level of urbanisation) that did it first. Maybe the causation is off but that is definitely how it went down.
And, limited or not, the best of them were able to take knights.
Finally, even when invaded, most armies still didn't call in mass levies of peasants. It happened in places, in periods, but pretty much every place you have a decent pool of professional soldiers, feeding levies are more trouble than they're worth. And even what we do think of levies, things like the Fyrd, were generally organised in such a way to try and a few good fighting men rather than a ton of crap ones.
