According to Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1, at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, many fighters were disguised as Henry IV to divert attention from him: “The king hath many marching in his coats.” I tried googling this to see if there are any factual references to it, but can’t find any. Shakespeare fictionalized much of his account of the battle, and omitted the future Henry V’s arrow wound, referred to above by @jnglmassiv in post #26
And adding to @Slithy_Tove and post # 10
“Apocryphal addenda to the two posts above:
Young Lt Col and future Supreme Court Justice yelled “get down you fool!” at Lincoln.”
The future Supreme Court Justice who yelled “get down you fool!” at Lincoln was Oliver Wendell Holmes.
About the Bayeux tapestry’s depiction of the death of Harold Godwinson, some say that the arrow to the eye is not literal but symbolic of his treachery, which would have been understood by 11th Century viewers of the tapestry. One commentator says that our taking it literally now would be like future generations looking back at our internet and wondering from Twitter screenshots if it was powered by trained birds carrying messages.
From what I recall on maybe a previous thread, shooting at the king and other ‘higher up’s’ was in general simply not done (often) as that could easily be used to have the enemy shoot your king and other ‘up’s’. It was an early form of mutually assured destruction that make kings a rare target. Also if a person was shooting at the king it might even get the man disciplined or worse for this very reason, they are putting their king at risk.
One thing to add: during the Middle Ages, a good source of income for a ruler was the ransom attained by capturing high-ranking officers and nobles on a battlefield. Richard I was held by the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI who “purchased” him from Leopold, Duke of Austria, who had captured Richard as he returned from Crusade. The cost to the English people was literally a king’s ransom: 100,000 pounds of silver.
I often find battle diagrams confusing. What exactly do you believe the image you attached shows? Because Alexander’s name appears behind the white square w/ the diagonal, does that mean that he was positioned behind them? I guess I just sorta assumed that the name was identifying his general location. And once the attack took place as demonstrated by the large blue arrow, it sure seems as tho he would be in the think of things - instead of cowering back in “CAMP”.
But, like I said, I generally find such diagrams somewhat confusing.
So you are somehow making a distinction because he led a charge following the initial clash, as opposed to being the first guy in front during the initial contact?
The paragraph seems to indicate that the Persians attacked. Seems A would have been limited in his ability to dictate exactly where the enemy chose to attack. "I’m over here! Fight ME!"
I recall reading (possibly here) how little contemporaneous documentation exists for so much of accepted history. For example, I think Alexander’s Granicus lacked much in the way of contemporaneous records.
Unless you are requiring him to literally set out alone on foot at a dead run from the center of the battlefield without bothering to employ any tactics or strategy, this is exactly what he did. The normal deployment on ancient battlefields was the infantry in the center, the cavalry on the flanks. He personally led the charge of his elite Companion cavalry from the start of the battle all of the way to the end of the battle, first winning the fight on the flank against the Persian cavalry and then the battle as a whole by moving against the center. The cavalry was what in modern military parlance would be termed the schwerpunkt or the point of decision, which he personally led, from the front, something he did in all of the battles he fought in his conquest of what was the entire known world of the time to classical Greece. This rather disproves your statement that
That was exactly the way Alexander led his army, all of the time, and not only conquered the known world, but never once lost a battle while doing so.
Your own cite says he led some troops, but did not lead his army. That’s the one and only distinction that I’m making.
I don’t understand how this ever got to be an issue in the first place.
The answer to the question the OP gave, whether kings were killed leading their armies into battle, is mainly no, even given all of history to sort through. A simple “no” never seems to not satisfy posters. They immediately started talking about kings who weren’t killed, or weren’t killed in battle, or weren’t leading armies, or weren’t even kings. I get it. That’s the way the internet works. But those are different topics which allow for different answers. None of them are answers to the OP or refutations of “no.” And neither is Alexander.
Parsing is all part of the 'dope experience, and I think the actual title (which is always the question I think the OP wants answered) isn’t whether kings lead troops in battle (and the word army isn’t even in there) but how hard it would have been to kill a king who was leading his troops in battle. All the side digression about who was or wasn’t a king or which watery bint tossed a saber at them is beside the point of what the OP was asking. Even if it was only one king in history who ever lead his troops (nothing about armies) in battle it can be answered without getting into all that other stuff.
William I had a near miss - he was wounded, unhorsed and very nearly killed by his eldest son Robert in a skirmish in 1079. Purportedly Robert backed off only when he recognized his father’s voice. Which, y’know, maybe.
So did Henry II campaigning in Wales in 1157 when his army was ambushed and routed.
In France Philip II was unhorsed and nearly killed in an infantry assault on his position at Bouvines. If he had died Bouvines would likely have been lost and European history would have at least temporarily taken a left-turn (no Magna Carta?).
Philip VI of France wasn’t leading from the front (or he likely would have died), but he did get caught in the fighting at Crecy, had two horses killed from under him and took an arrow in the jaw.
There are certainly others. It wasn’t common, even the early Middle Ages. But it wasn’t quite rare either.
And the arrow was probably not an original feature. An engraving of the work made in 1729 does not include it. It was added during later repairs. Probably. (wiki cite)
And the guy with the arrow in his eye clearly isn’t dead. If it is an arrow at all.
So there’s little reason to think that Harold died from an arrow to the eye.
Lincoln had always been a hands-on commander-in-chief, even personally test-firing rifles on the grassy expanses around the White House. Still, Confederate sharpshooters probably could not have believed their eyes when during the first afternoon of the Battle of Fort Stevens a lanky, bearded man in a dark suit and stovepipe hat emerged on the fort’s earthen parapets.
Discouraged by the elaborate defenses that had been erected and concerned about his tired soldiers wilting in the blistering heat, Early had held back on a major assault, but Confederate snipers trained to hit targets from distances of 800 yards or more were firing shots from perches in trees, cornfields and houses. One of those shots rang out and came close to striking the president, who was standing on the parapet surveying the enemy in the line of fire.
As John Hay, Lincoln’s private secretary, noted in his diary that night, ”A soldier roughly ordered him to get down or he would have his head knocked off.”
