Footmen
In medieval times a lord would sometimes need to assemble a fighting force quickly because lords and kings didn’t have a standing army. Most footmen were drawn from the peasant class who were given little training and simply sent into battle for two reasons:1 as a show of force, or 2 to charge into the enemy ranks and pin the enemy down for the knights to finish them off. In some cases some countries specialized in infantry such as the Swiss, Byzantines, and the Scandinavians. As far as England goes there footmen’s main job was to protect the longbow men who were the real killers of the English army.
