But a king (or any other medieval lord) wasn’t a dedicated warrior. They were also managers, lawyers, judges… a king who was only a warrior may have been a good warrior, but he was a lousy king. The immense majority of medieval lords, like the immense majority of medieval footmen, were summer warriors. One of the things that made the “mamelucos” (I can’t find a translation) so scary is that they were dedicated warriors in a world were nobody else was; they were also slaves who didn’t know or were expected to know anything but fighting and making little mameluquitos, mind you.
The Spartans fought mostly as a unit, I can’t think of any who excelled in single combat.
We also have the norseman at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, who held up an entire army at the bridge for a brief time. Another hero, Horatius, who held the Sublican Bridge against Porsena’s entire army.
William Marshal.
Alexander the Great. Not only was he a master strategist and tactician, but he was also his own best soldier. One report had him going over a wall and fight alone until some of his other soldiers could get over as well. He suffered several injuries, and never lost a battle (not even dying in battle).
At the time of that post I was still digging around for info, hence the hedging of bets :).
In connection with Pizarro we hear of “some” native auxiliaries by October of 1533, “5,000” by November and “20,000” by January 1534. Not to mention Alvarado setting out for from Guatemala with 500 European and 4,000 native troops to join the fun that same month. Thousands of supporting native troops seem to have been the norm within a year of Pizarro’s campaign opening up. So it is not inconceivable chroniclers in the spirit of hagiography may have played up the events at Cajamarca slightly.
But I actually don’t doubt that 168 disciplined armed men could inflict a massacre on many times that number of mostly unarmed, unnerved opponents. So in this case the accounts are probably close enough to what happened.
The Mamluks. The system reached its peak with the Turkish Janissaries, who were the first to be organized as a modern regular military, with uniforms, salaries and peacetime duties.
Thanks, Alessan.
But most (Though by no means all) warriors as opposed to soldiers;had other jobs.
Born and raised as a Mongol warrior for example, or a Hun you spent a fair amount of your time as a herdsman. (before of course you’d subjected most of the known world by conquest).
The Norse warriors, excepting those who turned proffessional, were farmers and fishermen when they weren’t going a Viking.
Scots, English and Welsh nobility and royalty, were almost literally trained from birth to be experts in the use of multiple weapons and horseback riding apart from learning possibly Latin,etiquette and so on.
Soldiers I.M.O. grow up in mixed societies where there may be a history of martial valour but also that of trade, engineering whatever.
As adults they’re trained in war fighting, do a set stint and then retire.
I would put say, the Roman Army post Marius in this category.
A warrior is someone who is born into a warrior culture, but learns another trade to keep his society going when its not fighting.
A soldier is someone who learns fighting as that trade.
To slightly stretch the definition of warrior - I’ll add these guys:
Erich Hartmann in particular. He engaged in air combat 825 times!! That alone should be enough to demonstrate his bad-ass credentials. From that, he claimed 352 victories, 260 of those against fighters. Definitely a warrior in my book.
Without shedding a drop of blood:
I’M BRIAN!
On subject:
I read that King Richard was a real tough guy.