Eli5: How did the medieval knights survive such long trips
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They didn’t travel alone, they had squires and pages and other servants, some were paid, some were devoted for life.
The other thing is that many of them didn’t survive – injury, banditry, but primarily infectious disease could have easily killed them en route.
They lived in tents. They ate what they could steal/buy. They didn’t have access to the information we have today.
That depends on what trips you mean. A knight would be minor nobility at least, which didn’t always but often meant at least some substantial wealth. Peacetime travel would usually mean staying at inns along the route. No one would camp when civilized food and beds were available.
Knights and other armies would engages what is euphemistically referred to as “Foraging”
Foraging *is not* hunting for game and picking berries. Foraging is often forcibly taking food,grain, stores from farmers. *Wait* you say, that’s theft! You are correct.
Armies in friendly territories were often gentler about this, or there were methods to recompense the farmers in loyal territory. But farmers in hostile territory? Food and goods would be *confiscated*, often forcibly.
[https://acoup.blog/2022/07/29/collections-logistics-how-did-they-do-it-part-ii-foraging/](https://acoup.blog/2022/07/29/collections-logistics-how-did-they-do-it-part-ii-foraging/)
Well into the Napoleonic Era, often they didn’t. There’s a funny line I think I saw in a book on Tallyrand where the Russian ambassador is on his way to Paris and has the temerity to die. Napoleon asked “wonder what he meant by that?!” Others here had good answers about how they did.
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