Bandes d'ordonnance

Bandes d'ordonnance (French) or Benden van ordonnantie (Dutch) were elite heavy cavalry formations recruited from the aristocracy in the early-modern Low Countries. They were originally formed by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and became an integral part of the military organization of the Low Countries from the mid-fifteenth to late-sixteenth centuries, up to the first years of the Eighty Years' War. They continued to exist into the seventeenth century with far less military importance, although a command in a Bande d'ordonnance was still a considerable social distinction.

Bande d'ordonnance of around 1543, from the New York Public Library Vinkhuijzen Collection of Military Costume Illustration

References
  • Baron Guillaume, Histoire des Bandes d'Ordonnance des Pays-Bas (Brussels, Académie royale de Belgique, 1873)
  • D. J. B. Trim, "Army, Society and Military Professionalism in the Netherlands", in The Chivalric Ethos and the Development of Military Professionalism, 2003, pp. 279-280.
  • H.F.K. van Nierop, The Nobility of Holland, 1993, p. 160.
  • Fernando González de León, The Road to Rocroi, 2009, pp. 23-24.

The New York Public Library Vinkhuijzen Collection of Military Costume Illustration contains the following images:

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