The Castle Yard. Medieval soldiers received varying degrees of training. Conscripted villagers were given little, while training a knight could take a decade. For a member of a garrison or a young noble, the training site was the castle yard. In the small, open spaces inside the castle walls, various tools could be set up to aid the apprentice soldier. Archers had targets, and swordsmen had their training ground. One of the most common pieces of equipment was a cloth dummy stuffed with straw and set on a rotating pole at a man's height. This dummy could be used to train a foot soldier with a sword or a horseman with various weapons. Because the dummy was the size of a man, the soldier could learn to aim his strokes instinctively, and because it moved, it could swing...