The largest battle involving Englishmen during the medieval period was Towton, one of the battles of the Wars of the Roses. A conservative estimate would be about 40,000 men, with some figures putting it at nearer 60,000. If you take the smaller figure, that's about 1% of the population of England fighting in a single battle at a single location.
~700,000 men is simply not feasible in any sense. Even if the numbers were there, they simply couldn't be paid and fed.
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Just a terrible assumption. The idea of using the 11th-century survey for 14th estimates is quite daft, any historian would tell you that no century is the same, and that's unquestionably the case here. For the starters, there were no slaves in England, slavery had been greatly in the decline since the Norman takeover.
The other thing is this "26% percent population as recruitable", that percentage recruitable-percentage belongs to WW2. Even if 26% of the population are male tenants, it doesn't mean they are recruitable, there is no recruiting, these are not 20th-century conscriptions. Some tenants held their land via scutage, some via socage, some by frankalmoin, but the only people who had to serve in military capacity held their land via serjeanty. So, the 26% percentage is already broken. Now, again, these are not 20th-century constriction, the obligation is tied to individual families, thus each family would have to provide a soldier (the equipment being defined by the value of their chattel). So, if we assume that only 25% of the 26% hold their land via serjeanty, and that every family has three male members, we get 26%/4/3= 2.1%. This is a fair number, indeed the largest army England ever saw during the 14th century was that of Edward I who briefly mustered 30,000 men.
If we talk about emergency calls such as arrière-ban and heerbann, that technically included "all able-bodied men", well… These are not practical; Ian Heath notes that people called by arrière-ban didn't generally serve further than half a march walk from their home.
Instead of "quick research" and ludicrous assumptions, I'd recommend reading a book, e.g Feudal Armies 1066–1300 by aforementioned Ian Heath.
Ok by max recruitment pool I me
An max number of citizens( wait should I use the term citizens because that term wasn't than, but than what possible shorthand can I use for people that consider themselves loyal to particular kingdom) who can be called upon to serve, not how many that would be called in to serve.
Of course no one is going to send their entire military force to fight a single battle, not even a single campaign, nor will they recruit( I am using term recruitment, but really it's catch all phrase I am using about dozen different methods for gathering military forces saying we all covering 60o years and hundreds of different cultures, governments, and rulers) all eligible citizens for military service. I consider that common sense, but apparently I was wrong. Using your logic the US should invaded Iraq with 10s of millions of troops.
As for why I didn't use book to back me up oh mister, I don't have a book on European levy system laying around and it was 1'o clock in morning.
And I used census from domesday book ( there was but slaves listed, and they where freed, but the Normans just made them serfs, such aren't a factor) was because it's was only accurate census taking of England in this era that has survive. If you got a book with accurate census numbers please share. And if I can't use the domesday book as a source, than why using a book about 1100ad to 1300ad about game with earliest start date is 867, a near 300 years before hand, in cultures that don't follow the western European model of who can fight.
Finally You forget when talking about that 26 percent that Included yeoman, or wealthy non-noble landowner who were expected to serve the levy. So let's remove that 21 percent from the tenant/craftsman being a mix bag.
We still got 5 percent. But let's go further and say that by 1300 they only represented 2.5 of the population ( unlikely to reduced that much, but let's go with it for arguments sake) that gives a use manpower number 75,000. This doesn't include the Noble and their Entourage of squires and man at arms, nor the tenants/craftsman. This o
But is all crazy as the Noble and their personal troops and landowning yeoman would be counted as man at arms. Where tenant farmers and craftsman would count as levy troops more than likely. But reason was someone regard that levy troops were only the weathly landowners.
Another person mentioned ten years replace just 400 lost man. Levy shouldn't take that long to replace as they where expected to fight in formation and only formation. It might take 6 years replace your forces if lost 50,000 man in battle. But to lose let's say 5,000 or 10,000 troops in 1300 ad isn't a huge crippling loss.
You should be able replace those rather quickly as far as levies are concerned as.
It professional soldier or semi professional soldiers on other hand....
