An Army Breaking Camp

Bob Charrette sent me this picture. According to Stephen Wyley, the original source is MS Canon. Class. Lat.81 f49v. Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the picture appears in Bartlett & Embleton's 1997 English Longbowmen 1330-1515, p. 32, under the title "An Army Breaking Camp", by Giovanni Bettini. I don't know whether that title and attribution are due to Bartlett & Embleton or whether they appear in the manuscript.
This picture shows clearly several steps in the process of striking (or perhaps setting up) camp. My first impression was that the tents were being raised, but as of this writing I'm leaning the other way.
  1. The tent in the upper left is being carried to the pack animals, with guy-lines and stakes still dangling from it.
  2. The tent on the right is having its center pole lowered by one of the storm-guys; at least two of the other storm-guys are still staked down, which helps keep the center pole under control.

    The tent could likewise be raised with all or some of its storm-guys already staked down, so that once the center pole is vertical, they'll hold it in place while roof-guys are measured and staked. Tentmaster's has recommended this technique in the tent classes I've led at Pennsic. However, the fact that the tent is being handled by a guy-rope rather than by the center pole makes me suspect it's on the way down: if you raised the center pole by pulling on a guy-rope, the base would tend to slide away from the center of where you want the tent to stand.

  3. The tent in the upper right is still up, with both storm- and roof-guys staked down and someone bending over a storm-guy stake. Whether he's tightening a storm-guy in the process of setting up a tent, or pulling the stake before lowering it (in which case why are the roof-guys still staked down?), I don't know.
  4. The tent in the lower right is still up, with two thirds of its walls attached and someone standing inside, reaching up to finish detaching the walls (whether with toggles, buttons, or something else we don't know).