The lance fournie (French: "equipped lance") was a medieval equivalent to the modern army squad that would have accompanied and supported a man-at-arms (a heavily armoured horseman popularly known as a "knight") in battle. These units formed companies under a captain either as mercenary bands or in the retinue of wealthy nobles and royalty. Each lance was supposed to include a mixture of troop types (the men-at-arms themselves, lighter cavalry, infantry, and even noncombatant pages) that would have guaranteed a desirable balance between the various components of the company at large; however, it is often difficult to determine the exact composition of the lance in any given company as the available sources are few and often centuries apart. A lance was usually led and raised by a knight in the service of his liege, yet it is not uncommon in certain periods to have a less privileged man, such as a serjeants-at-arms, lead a lance. More powerful knights, also known as a knight bannerets, could field multiple lances. Origins The origins of the lance lie in the retinues of medieval knights (Chaucer's Knight in the Canterbury Tales, with his son the Squire and his archer Yeoman, has similarities to a lance). When called by the liege, the knight would command men from his fief and possibly those of his liege lord or in this latter's stead. Out of the Frankish concept of knighthood, associated with horsemanship and its arms, a correlation slowly evolved between the signature weapon of this rank, the horseman's lance, and the military value of the rank. In other words, when a noble spoke of his ability to field forces, the terms knights and lances became interchangeable. The lance had no consistent strength of arms throughout its usage as a unit. Different centuries and different states gave it a fluctuating character. However, the basic lance of three men; a knight, a squire who served as a fighting auxiliary, and a non-combatant squire, primarily concerned on the battlefield with looking after the knight's spare horses or lances, seems to evolve in the 13th century An excellent description to convey its relevance is in Howard, "a team of half a dozen men, like the crew of some enormous battle tank". The 13th-century French rule of the Templars had specified that a brother knight should have one squire if he had one warhorse, two if he had an extra one.