Writing War: Medieval Literary Responses to Warfare

WRITING WAR: MEDIEVAL LITERARY RESPONSES TO WARFARE Corinne Saunders, Françoise Le Saux, Neil Thomas

WRITING WAR MEDIEVAL LITERARY RESPONSES TO WARFARE War is a powerful and enduring literary topos. Literature of different types, in different periods and in different countries, engages with the practice of war, and reflects too the cultural attitudes of particular periods to war. The idea and practice of war are central to some of the most dominant subject matters in the medieval period: to chivalry, to religion, to ideas of nationhood, to concepts of gender, the body and the psyche. War is a repeated theme in both secular and religious literary genres of the Middle Ages, but is not necessarily celebrated. The essays in this collection consider the variety of responses to warfare and combat in medieval literature. They begin with a consideration of ideal military practice and the reception of Vegetius, which is contrasted to Christine de Pizan’s treatise on warfare. The collection then turns to chronicling war, particularly in France, Germany and Scotland, and also covers the fictions of war, as presented in English Arthurian narratives, Chaucer, Malory, and pastoral poetry. It concludes with an examination of attitudes to women in warfare. DR CORINNE SAUNDERS is Reader in Medieval Studies in the Department of English Studies, University of Durham; DR FRANÇOISE LE SAUX is Senior Lecturer in the Department of French, University of Reading; DR NEIL THOMAS is Reader in German in the School of Modern European Languages, University of Durham.

WRITING WAR MEDIEVAL LITERARY RESPONSES TO WARFARE

EDITED BY

CORINNE SAUNDERS, FRANÇOISE LE SAUX and NEIL THOMAS

D. S. BREWER

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First published 2004 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge

ISBN 0 85991 843 2

D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604–4126, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Writing war : medieval literary responses to warfare / edited by Corinne Saunders, Françoise Le Saux, and Neil Thomas. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0–85991–843–2 (alk. paper) 1. Literature, Medieval – History and criticism. 2. War in literature. 3. Military art and science – Europe – History – Medieval, 500–1500. I. Saunders, Corinne J., 1963– II. Le Saux, Françoise H. M. (Françoise Hazel Marie), 1957– III. Thomas, Neil, 1949– PN682.W35W75 2004 809 .93358 – dc22 2003015830

This publication is printed on acid-free paper Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Contents Contributors

vii

Abbreviations

ix

Introduction

1

CORINNE SAUNDERS, FRANÇOISE LE SAUX AND NEIL THOMAS

The De re militari of Vegetius in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

15

CHRISTOPHER ALLMAND

Heroes of War: Ambroise’s Heroes of the Third Crusade

29

MARIANNE J. AILES

Warfare in the Works of Rudolf von Ems

49

W. H. JACKSON

Chronicling the Hundred Years War in Burgundy and France in the Fifteenth Century

77

GEORGES LE BRUSQUE

War and Knighthood in Christine de Pizan’s Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie

93

FRANÇOISE LE SAUX

Barbour’s Bruce: Compilation in Retrospect

107

THEA SUMMERFIELD

‘Peace is good after war’: The Narrative Seasons of English Arthurian Tradition

127

ANDREW LYNCH

The Invisible Siege – The Depiction of Warfare in the Poetry of Chaucer

147

SIMON MEECHAM-JONES

Warfare and Combat in Le Morte Darthur

169

K. S. WHETTER

Women and Warfare in Medieval English Writing

187

CORINNE SAUNDERS

Speaking for the Victim

213

HELEN COOPER

Index

233

Contributors Marianne J. Ailes is College Lecturer at Wadham College, Oxford and Visiting Fellow at Reading University. Her main areas of research are Old French chansons de geste and chronicle. As well as articles in a number of journals, including Romania, Medium Ævum, Olifant and Reading Medieval Studies, she has published a monograph on the Chanson de Roland, and her edition and translation of Ambroise’s Estoire de la guerre sainte is forthcoming. Christopher Allmand was Professor of Medieval History at the University of Liverpool. He is the author of The Hundred Years War and Henry V, and is at present preparing a study of the reception of Vegetius’ De re militari in the Middle Ages. Georges Le Brusque holds a PhD in French literature from King’s College, University of London. His research is in the areas of the writing of warfare in late medieval French and Burgundian chronicles. He also holds degrees in art history from the University of Saint Andrews and Sorbonne University Paris IV, and is currently based in Rome. Helen Cooper is Tutorial Fellow in English at University College, Oxford. She has published widely on both medieval and Renaissance literature. Her books include Pastoral: Medieval into Renaissance (1977), The Structure of the Canterbury Tales (1983) and an Oxford Guide to The Canterbury Tales (1989). Her study of medieval and Renaissance romance is forthcoming. W. H. Jackson is the author of Chivalry in Twelfth-Century Germany: The Works of Hartmann von Aue (1994), and co-editor (with J.R. Ashcroft and D. Huschenbett) of Liebe in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters (1986) and (with S. A. Ranawake) The Arthur of the Germans: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval German and Dutch Literature (2000). He has published numerous articles in the field of medieval German literature and has special interests in aristocratic culture, especially the history of the tournament in Germany. Andrew Lynch teaches in English, Communication and Cultural Studies at The University of Western Australia. His publications include Malory’s Book of Arms (D. S. Brewer, 1997) and articles on medieval romance. He also writes on medievalism in the modern period. Simon Meecham-Jones is Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of English in Cambridge. He has published on Chaucer, Gower, medieval Latin lyrics and the eighteenth-century editors of medieval romance. He is currently vii

Contributors completing a monograph, The Natural World and Literary Authority in Chaucer, and co-editing a study of literature of the reign of Henry II. Corinne Saunders is Reader in Medieval Studies in the Department of English Studies in the University of Durham. Her research interests are in later medieval literature, particularly romance, and the history of ideas. Her publications include The Forest of Medieval Romance (1993), Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England (2001) and a Blackwell Critical Guide, Chaucer (2001). Françoise Le Saux is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Reading, where she is also Director of the Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies. Her research interests include translation and cultural adaptation in medieval texts, and Arthurian literature. Thea Summerfield teaches Old and Middle English literature at the University of Utrecht (The Netherlands). Her research interests include vernacular verse, historiography and romance, also in Middle Dutch. Neil Thomas is Reader in German in the University of Durham and has published widely on the medieval German and French romances, his most recent book being Diu Crône and the Medieval Arthurian Cycle (2002). K. S. Whetter is Assistant Professor of English at Acadia University, Nova Scotia. He has written a biography of Malory for Chadwyck-Healey and published on Arthurian matters in BBSIA, RMS, and Arthurian Studies in Honour of P. J. C. Field (forthcoming, D. S. Brewer).

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Abbreviations ANTS EETS ES OS SS MGH RS SHF

Anglo-Norman Text Society Early English Text Society extra series original series supplementary series Monumenta Germaniae Historica Rolls Series Société de l’Histoire de France

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Introduction: Writing War: Medieval Literary Responses CORINNE SAUNDERS, FRANÇOISE LE SAUX AND NEIL THOMAS

Introduction

And never syns was there seyne a more dolefuller batayle in no Crysten londe; for there was but russhynge and rydynge, foynynge and strykynge, and many a grym worde was there spokyn of aythir to othir, and many a dedely stroke . . . And thus they fought all the longe day, and never stynted tylle the noble knyghtes were layde to the colde erthe. And ever they fought stylle tylle it was nere nyght, and by than was there an hondred thousand leyde dede uppon the erthe. (Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur)1 But the past is just the same – and War’s a bloody game . . . Have you forgotten yet? . . . Look down and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget. (Siegfried Sassoon, ‘Aftermath’)2

M

ALORY WROTE his Morte Darthur in prison, while the dynastic civil wars of York and Lancaster, the so-called ‘Wars of the Roses’, surged around him; his charge and imprisonment may have been the direct result of that political turbulence, and his involvement with Yorkist politics. Small wonder that in Malory’s great Arthurian history he could so evocatively and so realistically depict the last battle of Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. His Morte Darthur engages directly with the problems of his own society, of an unstable kingdom, of feuds between knights, resulting in dissent among the people and civil war. For Malory, war is indeed a ‘bloody game’: devastating, yet also, in its relation to chivalry, its manifestation in single combats, jousting and tournaments, a fundamental, even desirable, aspect of life and society. He perhaps would not have been surprised at the recurrence of war through subsequent centuries, in forms still more hideous

1 2

Book XXI, iv, p. 713. In Martin Stephen, ed., Poems of the First World War, p. 303.

1

Introduction than before, nor at that peculiar combination of Armageddon and gameplaying in Siegfried Sassoon’s very different war. War, the destroyer of civilisation, seems as enduring an action of the human race as love or faith or discovery. Indeed, it might be said to be the dark side of all these things, and most of all, of the human desire for power. It is not surprising that war is one of the great topics of writing. The shadow of war is evident as far back as it is possible to look in human history, in the rivalry within the earliest forms of society for possessions – land, women, treasure. The story of civilisation is also the story of war, as one great people rises and is vanquished by another – Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman. The Old Testament is full of battles as the chosen tribes of God attempt to establish themselves against the Canaanites, the Philistines, and other nations. History can often seem exclusively to consist of the stories of battles and kings, and this association is not coincidental: one of the great motivating societal forces is power, and power has most of all been enacted first in kingship, then in the assertion of one society, one nation, and often one ruler, over another. A brief narrative of the history of war in the Middle Ages illustrates how acutely aware medieval writers in particular would have been of its reality. The world that formed and underpinned the Middle Ages, that of the Roman Empire, rose swiftly, for the Romans were able to take over and fortify the Greek civilisation of the Mediterranean with its established cities and trade routes – though they were dependent on a powerful army made up of mercenaries of many different nationalities. The subsequent history of the Roman Empire, its expansion, its uniting of East and West, and its uneasy relations with the power structures of Christianity, was more complex, and its disintegration much more gradual. Like its rise, however, Rome’s end, as for all the great preceding civilisations, was in war – in the threat and destruction caused by the waves of barbarian invaders. The Roman initiative had not been unique – it found its competitors in the Huns under Attila and then the East Germanic tribes led by Odovacar, the Vandals, the Visigoths, the Burgundians and the Franks. Whereas Rome was dependent on raising a large, paid army, the barbarians could draw on all fit adult men: their numbers made up for their rudimentary military techniques. As Philippe Contamine has argued, these were not simply armies but ‘whole peoples on the move’, and their movement was marked by raids and attacks made in order to subsist.3 In this period, war in actuality meant long processes of raid and battle, uneasy peace, settlement and transfer of power from Rome to the ‘barbarians’ – and it is this transfer that marks the start of the ‘Middle Ages’, the period of the supremacy of the Germanic kingdoms. For these Germanic kingdoms, war was a mode of life. Wars could be of many different kinds – wars undertaken in defence against invaders; wars

3

2

Philippe Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, p. 12.

Introduction initiated in the spirit of religion; wars between factions of nobles or cities; wars between families or individuals. As Maurice Keen writes, war is ‘central to the narrative political story of the Middle Ages. It is also central to their cultural history.’4 The period from the decline of the Roman Empire in the fourth century to the ninth century, so often labelled the Dark Ages, saw a continuation of the fluidity of power, as first one people and then another advanced and conquered and gained the advantages of rule. The Merovingian kingdom in Gaul was in turn succeeded by the Carolingian Empire; in the tenth century this would to some extent be replaced by the Ottonian Empire. In part, expansion was the result of the clearing of waste lands, but it was also the result of the claiming of territories and establishing of boundaries, the foundation of power structures and systems of kingship and rule, of state and Church. Timothy Reuter argues that ‘Carolingian and Ottonian societies were largely organized by war.’5 The powerful Germanic world was rivalled, and threatened, by the growing Islamic empire in the East, which by the early eighth century included the territory of the Visigoths, modern-day Spain: its encroachment provided a particular focus of warfare. The support of warfare therefore played a crucial role in the development of social structures, creating a deeply-rooted system of vassalage or feudalism, in which men served their lords through military support and were in turn protected by them. Early medieval battles were probably fought with a mixture of cavalry and infantry, and with relatively small numbers. But with the development of new technology, in particular the stirrup, the figure of the mounted warrior came to dominate the medieval military world of the Middle Ages.6 A whole new class of warriors emerged, men who possessed their own horses and equipment, and were trained in battle. From the ninth century on, these milites, chevaliers or knights, as they were variously known, were placed in a lord’s household and taught the noble arts, including horsemanship. In the later period, such knights would be armed and equipped by the lord, would fight for him, and would forge bonds of brotherhood, eventually inspiring their own literature of romance, and their own values of chevalerie, which bound together the great feudal lords and the knights who served them. With the development of a more sophisticated kind of warfare, which used both cavalry and archers, came new systems of defence. The construction of castles as military strongholds was an important aspect of the process of expansion from the tenth to the twelfth centuries. With this system, by the time of Charlemagne, the need for constant warfare might have seemed 4 5

Maurice Keen, Introduction, in Keen, ed., Medieval Warfare, p. 3. Timothy Reuter, ‘Carolingian and Ottonian Warfare’, in Keen, ed., Medieval Warfare, p. 13. 6 There has been considerable discussion of the relation between the development of the stirrup and the growth of cavalry warfare: for an overview, see Contamine, pp. 179–84.

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Introduction to be receding: yet in fact the ninth century ended in crisis with ever more frequent invasions from different quarters – Muslim, Viking and Magyar – and hence the need for enormous defences, garrisons manned by the local population, and strong standing armies. The Vikings in particular brought a different and threatening kind of warfare, effected by raids and skirmishes, usually for provisions, treasures and prisoners. They had armies and horses, but their most valued weapons were ships. This period of severe military threat limited the progress of many of the great projects of the Middle Ages – building, writing, the institution of the arts. The eleventh century saw the rise of a new militant people, the Normans, who collected as mercenaries from France, northern Italy and Normandy itself, moved southward in Italy, and came to dominate that region and Sicily. The Duke of Normandy also of course moved northwards, to England. Germanic rulers pursued Italian expansion actively, and this period saw too the Reconquesta of Spain. On the whole, however, from the tenth century, as Europe entered what is now seen as the High Middle Ages, the waves of invasion largely ceased. It is no coincidence that the great literature of the medieval period, like much of its great art, dates from after the tenth century. But if the constant threat of foreign invasion lessened, warfare did not become less real. The motivation for war was various: as well as defence and the desire for expansion, rivalry between ruling dynasties and families, and conflict between cultural and religious ideals. As principalities were formed, small-scale wars became more and more frequent. Kingdoms were divided, so that internecine conflict recurred – in the Saxon and Frankish kingdoms and between the Italian states. Warfare became more ambitious. More and more castles were built, so that siege warfare became the norm, and new weapons such as the trebuchet were developed. When wars were not conducted around cities or castles, they took the form of the chevauchée or raid. There was a growing reliance on archers and crossbowmen alongside cavalry, and the disasters that could occur when enemy archers met oncoming cavalry are well known. Armies in this period were raised partly from households and the demands of loyalty, but also through payment of fees. They could be large: expenditure records suggest, for instance, that Edward III led thirty thousand men.7 War was becoming more professional, more orchestrated by rulers, less reliant on freelance warriors. The twelfth century saw conflict on a larger scale than previously with the war between Louis VI of France and Henry I of England, and there were in the same period large-scale German invasions and French wars, especially against Flanders. Perhaps the most ambitious of all military enterprises in the period were the Crusades. From the eleventh century, when the Greeks in the Holy Land called on the Pope for military assistance against the Turks, an extra7

4

See, for instance, Norman Housley’s discussion, ‘European Warfare c.1200–1320’, in Keen, ed., Medieval Warfare, p. 126.

Introduction ordinary number of men had set out to fight for Christianity in the East. Jerusalem was won in 1099 and a series of new Crusading states was set up in the East, but the empire was vulnerable, and Jerusalem fell once again to the Muslims in 1187. The possibility of winning it back fuelled a further series of Crusades in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and as the Turks began to move into Europe other ‘holy wars’ were launched, which continued into the mid-fifteenth century. Military behaviour was sometimes far from Christian, as in the sack of Alexandria of 1365, with its widespread plunder and massacre, but the Christian ideals of the Crusades remained powerful right through the Middle Ages. In the fourteenth century Geoffrey Chaucer is able to imagine in his Knight a man who has fought against the Muslims in Spain, North Africa, the Near East, and the Baltic (Lithuania and Russia), where Henry IV himself fought, as well as against hostile pagans in Turkey. Medieval English history can seem a constant succession of wars: against a series of invaders and between royal houses, against the Welsh, against the Scots, against the French. The misty origins of Roman Britain may have involved some degree of warfare against the Celts; it is more certain that the Celts and Roman Britons fought fiercely against the invading Saxons, perhaps with the help of that legendary dux bellorum who may have been Arthur. Anglo-Saxon England was devastated by the raids of the Vikings, and finally conquered by the Normans, who in turn were conquered by the King of France. From the rivalry of King John and Philip Augustus over Flanders, battles between France and England continued through the reigns of five kings. From 1294 until 1485 (from the reign of Edward I to that of Henry VII), England was almost constantly at war with France, with Scotland, France’s ally. The Hundred Years War was only a continuation of age-old rivalries. War with France was balanced by the need of English rulers to quell the attempts of the Welsh and the Scots to assert their power. The campaigns of Edward I and Edward II against the Scots were enormous enterprises, using armies recruited through the feudal system and large numbers of contracted men: they required immense sums to be spent on provisions, ships, horses and siege engines, and hence immense taxes. War was a way of life for the English in the fourteenth century: during Chaucer’s life, for instance, there was no period when England was not at war. As Maurice Keen writes, ‘The course of the great wars of the late Middle Ages shaped England’s gradual achievement of self-conscious, insular identity as a nation-state.’8 War was a constant financial drain on the English economy, and expensive too in terms of lives; this in part caused the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381. Not all wars were fought against other countries: civil war ended the reigns of five medieval English kings. The Wars of the Roses (1450–61) demonstrate especially well the prevalence of violence in this period: their

8

Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, p. 1.

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Introduction cause was an aristocratic struggle between two peers, both of whom had some claim to the throne, Edmund, Duke of Somerset, constable of England and close adviser of Henry VI and Queen Margaret, and Richard, Duke of York, who had gained much noble and popular support. Through the failure of a weak king to control the dispute, it escalated into violent factionalisation in which the great families took sides for and against the Lancastrians, and a series of battles occurred: at St Albans in 1455, Somerset was killed, heightening the feud; at Wakefield in 1460, York was killed. But ultimately the support of the populace was crucial, and despite their victory, the Lancastrians were refused entry to London: the son of Richard, Duke of York, Edward, was established as king, to be crowned Edward IV. The Wars of the Roses ended with the battle of Towton in March 1461, perhaps Malory’s model for the last Arthurian battle, and the largest battle ever fought on British soil, in which some 28,000 men died. Not all the battles of this extraordinary dynastic struggle involved such large-scale slaughter as Towton. War had, however, changed its character in the fourteenth century – in particular, after the French cavalry were cut down by waiting infantry in a battle against the Flemings in 1302. This marked the so-called ‘Infantry Revolution’, which made it possible to employ much larger armies, and thus caused battles to become bloodier.9 The feudal system of raising armies shifted to one of contracts or indentures, which would gradually lead to the retention of free, professional, standing armies. New strategies of defence, attack and siege warfare were developed, and over the course of the fourteenth century the use of gunpowder grew more widespread. Thus, as Clifford J. Rogers notes, between the Battle of Agincourt (1415) and the Battle of Orléans (1428), in which Joan of Arc took part, a crucial change occurred: at Orléans artillery that employed gunpowder played an important role.10 The development of successful cannon vastly empowered those taking the offensive, whether in battle or siege warfare, and the Hundred Years War was ultimately resolved with the French victory at Castillon as a result of cannon, just as Constantinople was finally taken with cannon by Mehmed the Conqueror: these two battles of 1453 marked the end of medieval warfare.11 The late medieval period saw a new interest in the theory of war, with the production of treatises on ‘the art of war, military discipline and the organization of armies’,12 of the kind that Christopher Allmand discusses in this volume. There was a serious philosophical discourse of war, as well as a practical and theoretical one on how to conduct war. War had its own justice system and its own justification. Though there was not general concern 9

Clifford J. Rogers, ‘The Age of the Hundred Years War’, in Keen, ed., Medieval Warfare, p. 143. 10 Rogers, p. 157. 11 See Rogers’ discussion, pp. 157–60. 12 Contamine, p. 118.

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Introduction about just cause for war in a world where battle seemed a natural outcome of hostility, early Church thinkers had addressed the issue, recognising the profound clash between the practice of war and Christ’s teachings of love. Some of the earliest edicts of the Church (for instance, those issued by Hippolytus, Tertullian and Lactantius) condemned the involvement of Christians in war, though Christians are in fact recorded as fighting from the second century onwards. Augustine’s view, that war could justifiably be undertaken for the good of society and the aim of peace, was widely adopted throughout the Middle Ages. Christians other than those in religious orders were seen as belonging to a secular society, where force was necessary to uphold justice, and the action of war was occasionally also necessary and defensible, indeed potentially honourable. The Crusades brought the further possibility of becoming literally a miles Christi. The frequency of war throughout the period did, however, lead to debate and to the development of a sophisticated ‘just war’ theory: theologians specified the kinds of wars in which Christians might or might not take part. The conditions set down by Aquinas were widely recognised and echoed by numerous thinkers: war had to be on the authority of a prince; the cause must be just; and the intention must be rightful, of advancing good or contesting evil.13 Chivalry with its complex code of honour was to some extent transferred to war. The ideas of loyalty and service were crucial to feudal values, underpinning the knight’s relation to his lord.14 Warfare could include acts of supreme bravery and high idealism: Malcolm Vale has explored the dynamic relation of chivalry and war in the Middle Ages.15 The immense body of medieval chivalric writing attests to the influence of chivalric ideals, and the creation of orders of chivalry could play important political roles in creating a sense of corporate identity. The chivalric focus on prowess and especially the tournament, popular from the twelfth century on, provided crucial training for the knight. Tournaments indeed could merge into factionalised warfare: in the thirteenth century, royal regulations were issued to control their violence. Despite the high pageantry of tournaments, and sometimes their imitation of romance literature, they allowed for the practice of group warfare and skilled use of weapons. Maurice Keen has argued persuasively that tournaments taught knights ‘the sort of civilised conventions . . . that they should observe towards each other in real hostilities’, which would become ‘a nascent international law of war’.16 Vale remarks that formal challenges of honour continued to be issued in war, and single combats and duels could form important aspects of warfare: they were 13 14 15

Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 2.2, qu. 40, de bello. See, for example, Keen’s discussion, Chivalry, pp. 224–6. See Malcolm Vale, War and Chivalry: Warfare and Aristocratic Culture in England, France and Burgundy at the End of the Middle Ages (1981). 16 Keen, Chivalry, 101: see also his full discussion of ‘The Rise of the Tournament’, pp. 83–101.

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Introduction ‘increasingly confined to the interstices between combat . . . but there is no evidence that such occasions were treated with anything but the highest seriousness’.17 As Vale has also argued, medieval chivalry sowed the seeds of Renaissance humanist ideas regarding war.18 There was another side too. Chivalric custom was not always followed.19 Despite the tradition of honourable treatment of prisoners, for instance, this was not always observed – as in the battle of Agincourt, when Henry V ordered many of his French prisoners to be killed. Battles could have high death tolls, especially, as at Agincourt and Flodden, for the losing side; sieges were destructive both for those within and those without; and infection and disease were also great killers. Pillage within battle was widespread, and the effect of raids, particularly by the later Free Companies of soldiers and the fifteenth-century Ecorcheurs, was devastating not only in terms of human life, but also to crops, buildings, villages and the land itself. The end of wars was deeply problematic, for companies were not disbanded once they were paid off: They had to be left at large, still armed with equipment that was their own, beyond control; and so whole provinces were subjected to the indiscriminate pillaging of soldiery that sought to claim a share in chivalry but whose manner of living was the antithesis of what chivalry stood for, the protection of the poor, the fatherless and the widow.20

The practices of chivalry, the figure of the knight errant, the ideas of adventure and quest, the glimmering ideal of the Holy Grail, the pageantry and honour of knighthood, deeds of arms and tournaments, chivalric codes and oaths and romance literature, all these must to some extent be detached from the reality of the history of war. Yet at the same time, they played crucial roles in making glamorous the blood, sweat and tears of warfare, and even in the creation of the medieval warrior. War is a powerful and enduring literary topos. Literature of different types, in different times, and in different countries, engages with the practice of war, and reflects too the cultural attitudes of a period to war. The idea and practice of war are central to some of the most dominant subject matters in the medieval period – chivalry, religion, ideas of nationhood, concepts of gender, the body and the psyche. War is a repeated theme in both secular and religious literary genres. The practice of war is addressed and recommended in military treatises and books of arms, and recounted, rewritten and assessed in chronicles, often in relation to the defence or expansion of a 17 18 19

Vale, p. 166. Vale, p. 174. See in particular Keen’s discussion of Chivalry and War, Chivalry, pp. 219–37, to which the paragraph that follows is indebted. 20 Keen, Chivalry, p. 230.

8

Introduction nation, the making of a hero or king, or the pursuit of Christianity. In hagiography, the saint can become the hunted enemy, but can also lead armies against the nations, and the figure of the miles Christi functions on both a literal and symbolic level across devotional writing. In romance, the knight is proven through his prowess in war as well as through individual chivalric deeds, and his making of an identity can correspond with that of a nation, while the ladies of romance repeatedly fall victim to warfare. War is not necessarily celebrated in literature, even when it is presented as necessary, and it can be undercut: the pastourelle, for instance, can engage acutely and satirically with the predicament of those who experience war and its aftermath. Across medieval writing, the enemy, and especially the infidel, become the measure of the hero. The contributions to this volume commence with a consideration of ideal military practice: Christopher Allmand explores the medieval reception, use and understanding of Vegetius’ De re militari, a text often referred to as a locus classicus throughout the medieval period but which has since been more typically studied by classicists with a view to establishing the manuscript tradition. Vegetius illuminates the growing importance of the idea of an army prepared to protect the nation, and hence the notion of the professional soldier. His work addresses medieval social attitudes to war, and the ways in which chivalric and military responsibility informed the mind and offered a sense of purpose. Many of his ideas entered into the mainstream of medieval culture via John of Salisbury’s Polycraticus: for John, as for Vegetius, the position of both the King and his curia of knights as of pre-eminent importance. The collection then turns to the chronicling of war and, in particular, the myth-making aspect of accounts of war. Kingship and nationhood are crucial themes. Marianne Ailes explores the Norman chronicler Ambroise’s eye-witness account of the Third Crusade and shows how events are shaped to create heroes of war. Her essay demonstrates how the chronicler uses a number of literary techniques in order to render vivid the characters of James of Avesnes, Aubery Clement and Andrew of Chauvigny, without sacrificing what the chronicler took to be the historical truth of their situation (a method of imaginative empathy bearing a certain affinity with the heuristic methods favoured by some historians of our own generation). Ambroise’s sympathy for the cause of King Richard and his fellow-combatants may have done much to promote the ‘Coeur de Lion’ myth. Harry Jackson examines the writing of a thirteenth-century German chronicler with close court connections, Rudolf von Ems, demonstrating both the realism and detail of the chronicle, and the ways war is placed within its broader socio-political and historical contexts to form a commentary on the education of princes, and to reflect the legendary history of Alexander. The bearing of arms was seen as a birthright and a prime marker of social status by the new (secular) élites of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Conspicuously different from many literary products of the Arthurian 9

Introduction cycle, Rudolf’s accounts of warfare are indicative of contemporary military realities and are described in largely naturalistic terms. Even the battle arrangements of Alexander the Great are described in terms of medieval warfare, the anachronism throwing much light on contemporary practices in Rudolf’s own age. There is an absence of reference to magic (although God’s aid for the supposedly just side is frequently invoked) and the virtues of mediation and negotiation (which were an important part of the thirteenth-century ‘peace movements’, as Jackson has demonstrated elsewhere) are given wide literary scope in Rudolf’s chronicle-romances. The subject of specifically medieval conditions of warfare is developed by Georges le Brusque in his exploration of several later chronicles of France and Burgundy. Whereas the predominant mode upholds and elucidates chivalry and knighthood, in this period chronicles can also be critical, presenting war and its practitioners as threats to social order. The chronicles thus offer contrasting portrayals of the knight-hero, and Le Brusque points out that the late chivalric tradition of the Burgundian chroniclers of the fifteenth century was to have a relatively brief floruit, being replaced in the incoming century by the tradition of unvarnished military realism recorded by soldierpractitioners, most notably in Philippe de Commynes’ Mémoires of 1524. The chivalric mode is taken in new directions by another fifteenth-century writer, Christine de Pizan, whose treatise on warfare is the subject of Françoise Le Saux’s essay. Christine’s treatise offers an interesting contrast to that of Vegetius: while her work too is practical and male-oriented, she must reconcile her choice of subject matter with her pacifist views and her own authority as a woman. Thea Summerfield raises some similar questions about the narration of warfare in a very different context, in her investigation of Barbour’s Bruce. She examines the political context of the poem, Barbour’s reconciliation of fashionable notions of warfare with Robert the Bruce’s actual strategies, and his construction of a heroic leader through the interweaving of different literary traditions. As with Ambroise’s chronicle which did so much to raise the profile of King Richard to that of Lion Heart, John Barbour’s chronicle did much to establish Robert the Bruce as the proverbial figure he has become in the Anglophone world. As Summerfield points out, he is portrayed to some extent in ‘demotic’ terms as an underdog, but his ability to bring relief and safety to his people advances him to the legendary standard of more grandiose names such as Alexander, Fierabras or Caesar. The volume addresses the fictions of war presented in a variety of literary texts. Andrew Lynch explores medieval English Arthurian narratives, considering how narratives of war develop from Geoffrey of Monmouth through Wace and Layamon to the alliterative Morte Arthure and Malory. He traces in particular the attitudes to peace demonstrated in these narratives, and the possibility of representing war as an accountable and potentially culpable policy. Noting the strong desire for peace actuated by the Hundred Years War, he takes as his text the words of Gawain to Cador in Wace’s Roman de 10

Introduction Brut stating that peace is very welcome after a long period of war. Peace in Geoffrey’s chronicle occurs only as a ‘gap’ of twelve years (in which time many subsequent romances of the Arthurian cycle are implicitly situated), and Geoffrey’s French translator, Wace, takes over the same time-scheme. Lynch surveys the posterity of this chronological gap in later texts including the alliterative Morte Arthure and Malory’s version. He shows that Malory may have shared a sense first encountered in the alliterative poem of Arthur’s Roman Wars as excessive (‘overmuche’) and thus may have moved towards a partial ‘disarmament’ (to the extent that his material would permit). In the following essays, two of the most celebrated English medieval writers, Chaucer and Malory, are also shown to complicate their portrayals of war despite its centrality to their poetic genres. Simon Meecham-Jones examines Chaucer’s writing, taking the Knight’s Tale as his starting point, to elaborate Chaucer’s reservations regarding war and its socio-political contexts. He points out that Chaucer, like most other medieval authors, lived in a conformist society which was at least functionally similar in a number of respects to more modern societies built on a collectivist ideology (with all the constraints on ‘free speech’ that such systems entail). Beneath Chaucer’s formal obeisances to the spirit of his age, Meecham-Jones discerns attitudes to war that do not conform to the accredited ideology of the feudal age despite ‘the near-impossibility of a writer escaping complicity in the rhetoric of aristocratic warfare’. Kevin Whetter demonstrates how, while warfare is crucial to Malory’s Morte Darthur, underpinning Arthur’s rise to kingship and providing the means for a knight to prove his worship and, frequently, to win his lady, Malory also probes the complexities and limitations of war. The seeming ambivalence about war that Whetter documents and analyses may have been linked, in his contention, both with Malory’s knowledge of the Battle of Towton and with unresolved conflicts and curious dissonances present in the imagination of this most famous medieval ‘knyght prisonour’. In a conspectus of texts as distant in time and sentiment as the Old English Judith and the South English Legendary (together with a variety of romances, including some of the works treated by Whetter and MeechamJones) Corinne Saunders examines the role of women in relation to warfare. Women can be trophies of war, but the act of ravishment in war more often characterises the enemy. Traditionally feminine virtues of mercy and pity may contrast with the violence and cruelty of war, although on occasion women too may become soldiers of Christ. Saunders’s broad approach makes it clear that, although women are traditionally portrayed as extrinsic to the stubborn virtues of the battlefield, they may play the role of ‘catalyst’: generalisations are counter-indicated by the diversity of textual evidence. The place of the victims of war is explored by Helen Cooper in her study of medieval pastoral poetry: these poems can provide powerful reminders of the truth underlying the chivalric myth and of the predicament of those 11

Introduction who suffer the exploits of invading armies. Cooper pays particular attention to the genre of pastoral known as bergerie. The literature of this tradition does not privilege the rich and well-born but rather attempts to recover and represent (however partially) the voices of the peasantry (which in unmediated form would have been an impossibility given the almost universal illiteracy of the lower classes in the medieval period). Jean Bodel is cited as one of a long line of writers in this genre who use bucolic characters in order to decry war and whose dreams/fantasies of order and security show by implication the trauma of war (particularly, in this chronological context, by the freebooting pillagers of the Hundred Years War) for its numberless and most often nameless victims. The range of periods, languages and literatures treated in this volume attests to the prominence, variety and interest of the motif of war in the medieval period. So transformative and traumatic an event could not but provide a powerful stimulus to the literary imagination, then as now. This collection of essays arises from an international, interdisciplinary conference on ‘War: Medieval and Renaissance Responses’, held in the medieval setting of Durham Castle at the University of Durham in April, 2001. It was the first in a series of conferences initiated by the Durham Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, a University-wide organisation spanning History, English, Archaeology and Languages (European and Oriental). The conference addressed several related strands: the practice of war, the ideology of war, and cultural responses to war. The topic of writing war emerged as being of particular importance with regard to all these strands. Whilst most of the essays in this volume find their origins in papers presented at the conference, the collection has been completed by the addition of essays on Arthurian chronicles and Malory’s Morte Darthur by Andrew Lynch and Kevin Whetter respectively. The editors of this volume would like to thank the University of Durham Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, which played a large part in the organisation of the conference, as well as the Departments of English, History and Modern Languages. We also extend thanks to the Master and Fellows of University College, Durham for permitting the use of their splendid building and facilities, to the Master and Fellows of St Cuthbert’s Society who provided welcome additional facilities, and to the Arts and Humanities Research Board for a generous subvention. Thanks are due too to the participants in the Conference, for their excellent papers and stimulating discussion, and to Boydell and Brewer for their careful presentation of this volume. We are grateful to all these and the many others who were instrumental in the success of the inaugural colloquy and the smooth production of this book.

12

Introduction

Works Cited Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologiae (Alba, Rome: Editiones Paulinae, 1962). Contamine, Philippe, War in the Middle Ages, trans. Michael Jones (1980; Oxford: Blackwell, 1984). Keen, Maurice, Chivalry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984). ——, England in the Later Middle Ages: A Political History (London: Routledge, 1973). ——, ed., Medieval Warfare: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Malory, Sir Thomas, Works, ed. Eugène Vinaver, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971). Stephen, Martin, ed., Poems of the First World War: ‘Never Such Innocence’, Everyman Library, 2nd edn (1988; London: Dent, 1993). Vale, Malcolm, War and Chivalry: Warfare and Aristocratic Culture in England, France and Burgundy at the End of the Middle Ages (London: Duckworth, 1981).

13

The De re militari of Vegetius in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance 1 1

CHRISTOPHER ALLMAND

O

N THE LAST folio of an otherwise rather ordinary fifteenth-century paper manuscript of a French translation of Vegetius’s De re militari, to be seen today at the Archivio di Stato, Turin, the scribe or a contemporary drew what looks like a rolled-up scroll on which he wrote, in gold letters, the three words ‘ung pot d’or’, ‘a pot of gold’.2 By the time these words were written, Vegetius’s work had celebrated its thousandth birthday and had marked itself out as the text to which men naturally turned when in need of an authority to cite when matters military were under discussion. When someone wrote on the manuscript’s inside cover ‘ce le livre nommé Vegesse’, it underlined the fact that no title was required. There was no need to tell people what the book was, nor what it was about. The author’s name alone told all. Of that author, however, they will have known little other than what the text told them. Sadly, we cannot improve on that meagre information. Probably a high official at the court of a late Roman emperor (which emperor being the subject of much academic debate among late Romanists),3 Vegetius compiled his work some time between 380 and 450 A.D. to demonstrate how the ailing fortunes of Rome, then under attack, might be revived if ‘reform’ of the army could be achieved. According to the text, he began by writing a memorandum, advocating the need to recreate an army drawn from those who were Roman citizens, and based upon the twin processes of selection (with its implied rejection of the unsuitable) and rigorous and sustained preparation and training for war.4 From the very first, what

1

I am deeply indebted to the Leverhulme Trust for having given me valuable financial support to undertake the research upon which many of the conclusions offered in this paper are based. 2 Turin, Archivio di Stato, MS Jb.vi.11, fol. 85v. 3 See Vegetius, trans. Milner, Introduction, ‘The Date’. 4 Ibid., Book I, Preface.

15

Christopher Allmand we would today call ‘professionalism’ lay at the very root of what Vegetius advocated. Didactic in nature, founded not on personal military experience (which the author probably lacked) but on much reading and interpretation of ancient military texts, such as the Strategemata of the first-century writer, Julius Frontinus, and of the ancient military historians, the De re militari was to prove very popular in the Middle Ages, some 260 Latin manuscripts alone surviving to this day.5 Having won imperial favour with his ‘memorandum’, which became Book I of the larger work he was to compile, Vegetius followed with three further books (or sections): Book II, which described the legion, its personnel, its organisation and function, probably as it had existed a century or so before Vegetius; Book III, which dealt with the activities of war, with strategies and tactics, as well as with the attributes of the good leader; finally, Book IV, concerned with siege warfare, both attack and defence, and conflict at sea. Behind it all lay not an urging to an aggressive policy of expansion, but primarily a desire for internal stability, order and peace, all under threat at the time. Vegetius’s work has so far been virtually monopolized by classical scholars interested in the text’s transmission. But we need to consider how it was received in the Middle Ages, and how some of its different yet largely complementary messages were put to use during the period.6 Indications come in various forms. For example, we know of those who had knowledge of the work quite early on: Isidore in the early seventh century, Bede a century later, and Alcuin c. 800. Interest in it during the Carolingian Renaissance is underlined by the survival of a dozen ninth-century manuscripts. It was under the influence of Book I of the De re militari that, in the mid-ninth century, Rabanus Maurus, abbot of Fulda, wrote his De Procinctu Romanae Militiae, which was to prove influential in encouraging a view of knighthood as a force in the service of the public good, as advocated by the Church. About 850 the Irishman, Sedulus Scotus, working in Liège, was already copying excerpts from Vegetius. Let me briefly draw attention to three points here. First is the interest which the De re militari evoked among the clergy, who may have seen in it an encouragement to self-discipline and training, which the monk, in particular, would need; secondly, a perception, which appears early on, that many of its ideas contained social as well as military implications for the good of society so often in conflict with itself; thirdly, the growing practice, observed as early as the ninth century, of men creating collections of excerpts from the De re militari as they did from other works. These show that Vegetius was read, and that he provoked interest among his readers who admired his ability to write aphorisms neatly summing up important points or principles. 5

See Shrader, ‘Handlist’ and, more recently, Reeve, ‘Transmission’, pp. 351–4. Since this list was drawn up, two further manuscripts have been identified. 6 The only general study known to me is Richardot, Végèce et la Culture militaire.

16

The De re militari of Vegetius in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance If the number of manuscripts declined after the Carolingian Renaissance, it would increase again with the coming of the next ‘renaissance’, that of the twelfth century, for which period at least sixteen manuscripts can be identified. More important, however, is the development which furthered the growth of Vegetius’s reputation from the mid-twelfth century onwards. It is with John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, written about that time, that basic ideas contained in Vegetius’s work enter the chain of that influential politicoliterary genre, the ‘mirror for princes’, destined to have a long history.7 Behind the genre lay the idea that ruling was an art which could be taught. Didacticism was very much in the air. This greatly favoured Vegetius, who had himself insisted that the ability to wage war successfully depended upon the willingness of soldiers – and in particular of commanders – to think and be ready to learn from the experiences of their forebears, experience passed down the generations largely through the written word. So in Book VI of the Policraticus, which deals with the need for the ruler to be able to fight, Salisbury underlines both the importance of knighthood as the order whose task it is to protect society, and the use which a prince will have for a disciplined soldiery, serving under his command, in the defence of the ‘patria’. Notice that the emphasis is largely on the needs of defence, and on the establishment of order and stability in the lands controlled by the prince. This had also been the role envisaged for the Roman army by Vegetius some eight centuries earlier. Note, too, that it was the clerical, educated, Latin-reading class which, perforce, had assumed control of what Vegetius had taught. In the blending of Christian and Aristotelian thought to which the friars made so notable a contribution in the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas could claim the right of the individual state both to its own existence and its right to self-defence, while Vincent of Beauvais, the encyclopaedist, and, in particular, Giles of Rome, the author of the widely read De regimine principum (c. 1280), a work whose influence would later spread through translation, depended heavily upon Vegetius when they came to discussing the military role and responsibilities of rulers. Giles also emphasised the part to be played by the soldier acting under oath in the service of the prince, his role being essentially that of defending society whose protective arm he personified.8 We may note that the oath referred to was not the oath of allegiance but rather the soldier’s personal oath or commitment to the ruler to which Vegetius made reference in Book II, ch. 5, in a passage which, judging by the scoring and marginalia in many surviving manuscripts, greatly interested medieval readers. In the realm of ideas, at any rate, the notion of the soldier’s responsibility to his prince, and through him to the broader society (which, incidentally, paid his wages), was now quite clearly emerging. What impression did this text, a mixture of theory and the practical, make 7 8

See John of Salisbury, ed. Webb; Richardot, pp. 77–84. Giles of Rome, De regimine principum, III, iii.

17

Christopher Allmand upon the practice of war in the Middle Ages? Was its influence to be mainly upon the way men thought about war, or upon the way they fought it? We should recall that the work’s Latin title is broad and inclusive, as are its contents. A close reading of the text, and in particular the study of the observations and marginalia added in the Middle Ages, give us some notion of what appealed to medieval readers. These were interested not merely, or indeed mainly, in instruction on how best to defeat an enemy, or what military responses are required in a particular set of circumstances. They also welcomed the conceptual basis of the work, which dealt with questions of what purpose war served, what an army was, and in whose service it acted; they were interested in the principles leading to the successful conclusion of a war; they reacted positively to ideas regarding the role played by good leadership in achieving victory; and they were receptive to ideas concerning the role of the soldier using arms in defence of the common good which was a prominent theme in much of the work. In the preface to Book III, Vegetius made one of his best-known statements, drawn to the reader’s attention in a large proportion of the surviving manuscripts: He who desires peace, let him prepare for war. He who wants victory, let him train soldiers diligently. He who wishes a successful outcome, let him fight with strategy, not at random. No one dares challenge or harm one whom he realises will win if he fights.9

Pared down to four interconnecting sentences, such are the bare bones of one of the work’s most important (and best known) statements. How did the broader text support and develop it? First, it became clear that war was an instrument in the making and defence of states; having created the Empire, war was necessary to protect it, to achieve that peace to which Vegetius referred. War, therefore, was part of the process of both setting up and defending a ‘state’ (for which Vegetius uses the term ‘res publica’). War itself had to be fought by the people, or at least by specially selected ones singled out for their physical, moral and intellectual attributes to do this work. Setting out the criteria for the selection of the best soldiers, Vegetius established the precise characteristics which the soldier should possess. He was no ordinary man, for he must be suited to the rigours of long, continuous training and to war itself. He must also show loyalty, by taking the oath (‘sacramentum’) to God and Emperor (that Vegetius was a Christian came as a surprise and a delight to his medieval readers among whom it may have enhanced his authority),10 promising to serve faithfully and never to desert. Here, too, Vegetius was underlining his marked preference for the ‘citizen’

9 10

18

The translation is that of N. P. Milner. See for example ‘Fuit Vegetius X[rist]ianus’ (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS D. 2 sup. fol. 12v).

The De re militari of Vegetius in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance soldier; the auxiliary or mercenary he regarded as unreliable, and should not be counted on. In Book II Vegetius considered something else, the army itself, and the way it functioned. The reader should bear in mind that war is fought to bring about peace, which may result either from war itself or from deterrence which only a trained army that is feared can achieve. The logic of this position is that a decision to fight must come from a confidence in one’s ability to achieve victory, which now assumes an importance of its own. The ability to win that victory depends on three factors: skill, theory and planning. The skill is that of the soldiers who constitute the army, being the result of a programme of rigorous training and preparation, involving running, jumping, swimming and the use of a whole range of weapons described mainly in Book I. It is also the skill of the army’s leaders, principally its ‘dux’, regarding whose person and place in the well-run army Vegetius has much to say, chiefly in Book III. How successfully an army functions depends in large measure on the leadership skills of the ‘dux’: on his ability to fulfil his obligation to train his soldiers and create a positive spirit of unity among them; on his relationship with his subordinate commanders and his ability to communicate with them; and, most important, on his awareness and appreciation of the soldier’s fears, hopes and frustrations, all of these being seen as challenges to the commander’s skill in leadership. The ‘dux’ must also be aware of the main lines of military theory: how to get an army through different kinds of terrain with an enemy not far away; how and when to attack; how, too, to retreat without giving his men the impression that he has lost confidence in their ability to win. The third characteristic is planning. If one idea dominated much of this work, it is ‘forethought’, the military virtue of anticipation. The successful commander looks further ahead than does the enemy: he foresees difficulties of all kinds, and he leads a well disciplined and versatile army, prepared by its training for every eventuality, to gain both a moral and practical advantage over the enemy. Above all, the successful leader is ever-ready to seize any opportunity to harry, hinder, discomfit or wrong-foot the enemy, thereby dissuading him from seeking a major encounter which can, as Vegetius admits, go wrong. Guerrilla warfare, on the other hand, if properly maintained, is a major deterrent, less hazardous in terms of possible defeat, less costly in terms of lives lost or of money spent. It enables much to be achieved with the minimum of effort. The ‘dux’, a thinking commander, has his hand on everything that goes on; through spies he is even informed what the enemy is doing and planning. At the centre of a network of information and at the head of a chain of command, he can pass orders rapidly down the ranks, often using a system of signals to do so. It is not surprising that Vegetius should place such emphasis upon the successful fulfilment of the commander’s role. In so doing he was stressing two things. One was the crucial significance of the ‘dux’ to an army seeking victory. The other was to emphasise the way of promotion to those 19

Christopher Allmand showing the necessary skills, qualifications and character. Like Napoleon’s private who was said to carry a marshal’s baton in his knapsack, Vegetius’s recruit saw the possibility of command and honour advancing to meet him if he showed his worth in war. Promotion on merit and experience is, albeit obliquely, referred to in this text, awarded for outstanding military qualities and performance. The exercise of authority was not the monopoly of the well-born alone; the claim of merit was being openly recognised. By the thirteenth century we begin to see Vegetius’s ideas having a greater effect on events on the ground, albeit still through the influence of the intellectual. In a recent paper, Gabrielle Spiegel has shown how, in France, narratives of the struggle between the aristocracy and the Capetian monarchy which led to the battle of Bouvines in 1214 came to be characterised, in an increasingly influential royal historiography, in terms of a traditional, feudal aristocracy striving to preserve its independence, confronted by a confident, centralising monarchy.11 There is little new in that interpretation. But the texts become significant if we look more closely at the assumptions and language which they use. First is the ‘spin’ given to events: a self-seeking aristocracy is opposed by a monarchy presented as working for the good of society, for the ‘res publica’. To this we may add the development of language which also has strong political connotations. In this language, the conflict is described as a match between chivalric tradition, ‘proesce’, bravery and the pursuit of glory, and the power of the centralising monarchy, representing society as a whole, which understands that what brings success is planning, calculation, and order, in a word, reason.12 So, at one point in the story, his councillors urge Philip-Augustus to avoid direct confrontation with the enemy, telling him: Gentle king, the situation does not require a battle. So powerful a king should not fight at night, before the lines of battle can be drawn up and each man is accorded his own captain and knows what place he must assume and whom he must follow . . . Good king, do not fall into error; you are lord of so many that you should not wish to put yourself and your people into such great danger.13

The rivalry between the self-seeking aristocracy and the monarchy responsible for the good, not of one group, but of the entire community is a dominant theme of the Chronique des rois de France running right through the account to its culmination at Bouvines, the old aristocratic values getting the worse of the argument when confronted by the new, ‘royal’ values founded on the ‘res publica’. In the battle, too, ‘new’ values of order, discipline and foresight make their appearance. The royal forces are now ‘arrayed

11 12 13

20

Spiegel, ‘Débuts français’. Spiegel, ‘Débuts français’, p. 401; Murray, Reason and Society, pp. 127–30. Spiegel, ‘Débuts français’, p. 401, n. 6.

The De re militari of Vegetius in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and ordered each on his battle line, knights inspired by boldness but who maintain their lines closely pressed together, holding themselves at the ready to attack and fight the enemy at the moment the trumpets sound the call to arms’.14 Vegetius did not write those lines, but he surely inspired them. Philip Augustus, in charge of knights said to be bold yet disciplined, is presented as fighting for the common welfare, the wider society. The text also tells us that he was persuaded to act in this way by his councillors. Where had these men, lay or clerical, got their ideas from? Perhaps from reading Vegetius’s text, or from collections of excerpts, or from reading the work of one, such as John of Salisbury, who acted as a propagator of Vegetius’s ideas? If the point cannot be proved, it nevertheless remains an intriguing possibility, and a not unrealistic one at that. Times moved on. Let us turn to the means by which Vegetius’s text came to be made known to a wider public: translation.15 About 1271 (a slightly earlier date has also been suggested) Vegetius was rendered into AngloNorman at the request of Prince Edward, when he was in the Holy Land. The text survives in only a single known manuscript, today in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Clearly intended to emphasise the didactic nature of the work, a miniature shows Vegetius, the Philosopher, inviting a group of young knights to come to him with the words ‘Venez a moy, senurs chevaliers, que volez aver honur de chevalerie’, ‘Come to me lord knights who wish to have the honour of chivalry.’16 As far as we know, this was the first attempt to translate Vegetius out of Latin. It is not without significance that the work should have been done at the wish of a man known for his military prowess; for a man, too, who would soon become king, reminding us that Vegetius had stressed that rulers, being responsible for the safety of the state, should be better informed on military matters than anybody else. Some years later, in 1284, Jean de Meun, a leading literary figure in his own right, made the first French translation at the request of Jean de Brienne, count of Eu, son of Alphonse, a notable crusader, and grandson of Jean de Brienne, king of Jerusalem, who had died in 1237, the evidence pointing to the interest which crusaders may have had in Vegetius’s work.17 Although Meun’s text kept reasonably close to the original, it did include references to military events which had taken place ‘en cest derrain age’ or ‘de notre tens et de notre souvenance’. This tendency to ‘up-date’ or ‘modernise’ a

14 15 16

Spiegel, ‘Débuts français’, p. 401. Richardot, Végèce et la Culture militaire, ch. III. Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Marlay MS Add. 1. The miniature is reproduced (indifferently) in Richardot, p. 58, and (well) in Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, p. 184. On the translation, see Thorpe, ‘Mastre Richard’, and Dominica Legge, ‘The Lord Edward’s Vegetius’. 17 Jean de Meun, L’Art de Chevalerie, ed. Robert; Li Abregemenz, ed. Löfstedt.

21

Christopher Allmand translation through references to recent events is something observable from the start of the process. Translation was now very much in the air. About 1286, Vegetius was rendered into Tuscan by the Florentine, Bono Giamboni,18 while it may have been in almost the same year that a verse translation was made into French by Jean Priorat of Besançon, a man of military background, whose version took not the original Latin but Meun’s French version as its basis.19 A generation later, probably about 1320, Jean de Vignai produced yet another French translation,20 to which he attached an interesting preface. Soldiers, he wrote, did not read Latin, which made a translation necessary. He went on to justify his efforts by emphasising that, as Plato and Aristotle had explained things according to reason, so the military art could be explained following the same criteria. This would help those, princes and nobility, ‘who have charge over people committed to their care in such a way that, for lack of leadership, these will not suffer the perils of wars and battles, and that they shall be properly instructed according to what rank each will require’. Vignai’s preface is important for what he reads into the text which, he feels, the military class should have in a form which it can understand. He sees it as a practical, reasoned contribution, based on the wisdom of old inherited in written form, to problems of government and the establishment of good order and stability, for which society’s upper ranks have a responsibility. If, to achieve this, there is need for the use of force, then it should be directed through the army which must consist, as Vegetius had insisted, of selected, trained and disciplined soldiers. Book III, Vignai also emphasises, teaches us about all the ‘art et subtilité’ which are needed to wage war successfully on land. Here it is quite clear that Vignai has grasped the all-important point that getting the better of the enemy means taking measures to outwit him, as well as the significance of the importance of leadership dependent on the exercise of skills rather than on social position. In short, the emphasis is on the need to deal with the enemy with every eventuality properly thought through and considered. It is the well-prepared army that achieves success. The translations constituted an important element in getting Vegetius’s message through to later ages.21 They also create problems of semantics and translation which are both interesting and important as we try to appreciate how the Middle Ages interpreted Vegetius. Furthermore, I believe, they underline that this kind of text can be studied successfully only if it is approached from the perspective of more than a single discipline. One major practical problem (for us) is how translators (and their readers) were to 18 19 20 21

22

Bono Giamboni, Vegezio. Jean Priorat, Li Abrejance, ed. Robert. I know of some eleven manuscripts of this text. See Knowles, ‘Jean de Vignay’s Translation’. On the English translations, see Allmand, ‘Fifteenth-Century English Versions’.

The De re militari of Vegetius in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance interpret certain key words and phrases in the Latin original. How, for instance, was the work’s title, De re militari or, as it was sometimes given, Epitoma rei militaris, to be rendered into a vernacular language? Meun, Priorat and Vignai all translated ‘res militaris’ as ‘chevalerie’ or ‘la chose de chevalerie’; the Tuscan, Giamboni, on the other hand, preferred ‘Dell’arte de la guerra’, as if he were translating ‘ars militaris’. At first sight, the emphasis appears to be rather different; much clearly depends on how the word ‘chevalerie’ is interpreted. Vignai, let us recall, had made his translation so that the upper ranks of society could read the wisdom of Vegetius. Is ‘chevalerie’ for him a word denoting rank or position? Is he writing for knights, in the formal, social meaning of the word, or was he using it as indicating (as it were) ‘la chevalerie de France’, the ‘knighthood of France’ or, by extension, the ‘army’ of France’, in 1320 still very much dominated by knights? How far does the notion of the ‘national’ army exist in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries? Later it would come to be called ‘l’armée du roi’, the ‘king’s army’. In early fourteenth-century France, however, is the term ‘chevalerie’ (with its implications of the importance of the role played in it by knights) the nearest term which could be found to describe the ‘army’? It is not easy to tell. Two indicators, however, may help. The notion of knighthood, in the medieval, feudal sense of the word, was (of course) unknown to Vegetius. A translator who understood what the work was about would have found it impossible to limit its relevance to the knighthood alone. A second, more persuasive point is to be found in the translation of other Latin words. For example, take the word ‘tiro’, understood as meaning a young soldier or recruit with little experience of war. It is significant that Jean de Meun frequently translates it as ‘chevalier’ (a word which, to confuse matters, he also used to render the Latin word ‘miles’). One of the Catalan versions, made by the middle of the fourteenth century, renders ‘tiro’ into ‘hòmen d’armes’, a man of lesser rank, perhaps; it also translates ‘tiro’ as ‘cavaller’, while the Latin ‘tirones an veteres milites’ is rendered as ‘cavallers jòvens o vells’.22 Some years later, the first English translator, encountering ‘tiro’, would use ‘newe knightis’, ‘yong knihtes’ or ‘werriours’, one term having social connotations, the other, perhaps, not.23 The point I am enquiring about and driving at is this. If Giamboni could offer his translation as ‘Dell’arte de la guerra’, a title which, perhaps significantly in a work intended for an Italian readership, omitted reference to ‘cavalleria’, is it right for us to interpret the late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century French use of ‘chevalerie’ to mean essentially ‘war’, or simply ‘fighting’, and the ‘chevalier’ not necessarily as a knight but any fighting man or soldier? This understanding is, I believe, implied in at least 22

Madrid, Biblioteca Francisco de Zabálburu, MS 1655, fols 1v, 4, 34. I wish to thank Dr Antoni Alomar, of the University of Palma de Mallorca, for drawing my attention to this manuscript and for providing me with a copy of his transcription, which awaits publication. 23 Earliest English Translation, ed. Lester, pp. 49, 59, 64.

23

Christopher Allmand one of the Catalan translations which is given the title ‘Del mester d’armes et de la art de cavallerie’ which may be rendered (if I am right) as on the ‘profession of arms and the art of war’. Let us not ignore the fact that this happens to be an accurate description of what Vegetius’s work was all about. Being more descriptive of war in the third and fourth centuries, Books II and IV of the De re militari contain many more technical terms (concerned with weapons, armour, vessels, etc.) than do Books I and III, which are more concerned with broad generalisations regarding the preparation for and the waging of war. It is not evident who would be interested in these ‘technical’ chapters, although clearly some were. Were they military men concerned with the practicalities of war in times past? Or were they scholars, humanists, philologists, simply students of things Roman? To some, the interest of this text was precisely that it contained technical matter which allowed them to learn how the greatly admired Roman army had functioned. To others, it contained matter of what we might today call ‘scientific interest’. Such people, ready to appreciate Vegetius for these reasons, should not be forgotten or ignored as we enquire about the reception of the De re militari in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. We should also recall, however, that while technical aspects of war develop with time, many of war’s underlying principles change less rapidly or not at all. Michael Prestwich has written that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between common sense and certain things which Vegetius wrote about the conduct of war.24 I would agree, while at the same time not criticising Vegetius too much for doing what he did, since it was his ability (as, once again, the manuscript evidence clearly demonstrates) to produce broad, ‘common-sense’ statements of principle transcending time that gave his work the unique, long-lasting authority it enjoyed. We see this best if we turn from the technical aspects of war (which change) to what he had to say about the men who formed the armies upon which the success of the system he described depended. Here we find statements likely to stand the test of time. The importance of selection, exercise and training which Vegetius underlined in the first three books remains unchallenged. The emphasis on team work, rather than on individual, outstanding acts, is also significant; Vegetius is not concerned with heroism. We may note here Juliet Vale’s reminder that ‘the term “tournament” or tournoi refers specifically to a contest between two teams using sharp weapons in a mêlée – simulating . . . . the procedures of war’, and recall how she demonstrated these ‘team games’ taking place.25 Furthermore, as already emphasised, Vegetius sought to encourage human, not superhuman, qualities in leaders. One of the characteristics of his work is the way it treats soldiers as men who deserve the respect of their commanders. The army may be a machine, but it is a very human machine. That, I suggest, is where 24 25

24

Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, pp. 186–7. Vale, Edward III and Chivalry, p. 5.

The De re militari of Vegetius in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance skill, planning and organisation come in; properly used, these enable the maximum to be derived from the army’s potential. Behind this lies a fundamental confidence that, provided certain things are done and others avoided, success will follow. The De re militari was to prove something of a challenge to the traditional, fatalistic approach to the outcome of war or battle, usually expressed in terms of divine judgement. The ‘just war’ doctrine accorded victory to those whose cause God ‘approved’, while St Paul, claiming that ‘if God is with us, who can be against us’, was saying much the same thing. Yet, through an important change of emphasis, this view was being challenged by Vegetius. For whereas the wheel of Dame Fortune plunged one down as often as it took one up, Fortune (‘fortuna bellorum’ as Vegetius called it) represented ‘opportunity’ which, if seized, could only improve one’s position. So his insistence that the ‘dux’ must always be prepared to act upon every chance offered him by man or elements, and to make the most of them. Advantage, however gained, was something to be constantly striven for, not shunned. The qualities of the ‘bonus dux’ were shown at their most positive if this were achieved. Behind this lay a more optimistic view of human ability and a more positive view of why armies existed than was usually found among medieval writers, for whom armies were all too often the source of violence and disturbance. Fundamental to this was the notion, which will have appealed to the humanists of the period, that man could improve his lot if he acted rationally and took steps to prepare seriously for success. Such a view was at odds with the more ‘traditional’, religious view prevalent at the time. For example, Denis the Carthusian, a prominent fifteenth-century theologian from the Low Countries, criticised Vegetius for encouraging men to strive for victories by rational means rather than allowing the will of divine providence to prevail.26 Seen from this perspective, what Vegetius helped to encourage was a major change of attitude in the Europe of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. All this presupposes the existence of the army which lies at the very heart of all that Vegetius wrote. In the De re militari he set out not only how the army should function, but also what purposes it served. The first has already been considered; the second – why did societies require armies? – would be perhaps even more important, even radical, in its implications. A little earlier I drew attention to the role which the king’s army, organised in a manner reminiscent of Vegetius’s thought, was regarded as having played in the extension of royal authority in early thirteenth-century France. From the perspective of certain chroniclers, the king’s army was an instrument employed to create and develop unity in France under the crown. Let us advance a century and a half to the France of the early Valois, a country at the mercy of the English, badly in need of a force which would stand up for

26

Cited by Richardot, p. 91.

25

Christopher Allmand it at a time when the traditional, noble-led army had so obviously failed. In 1351 John II began what would be a century-long process of sporadic reforms of which Vegetius would certainly have approved. We may note some of its characteristics. As Vegetius had insisted that the emperor should take charge of the army, so in this case it was the king, acting in the name of and for the benefit of his subjects, who took command and assumed the initiative for change, as the texts of the royal ordinances make clear. In 1351 certain reforms were initiated: proper and regular pay for all in the royal army; the establishment of the number of men in different units and companies, how they should be counted (or mustered) and controlled; and the decision that all men-at-arms should swear not to leave the royal service without proper authorisation. Later, in 1374, under the rule of Charles V (the king who encouraged the study of Latin authors in France through the medium of translation), came further measures to support those taken in his father’s time, not least the insistence that units should be controlled by officers acting on behalf of the king. As in the De re militari, there now grew a greater tendency to promote on merit, less on social rank, a change which would lead to the creation of military career structures within both royal armies and others.27 This was certainly the case in France until the illness of Charles VI allowed the ‘old’ nobility to return the country’s army to its earlier, unreformed state. Yet it had been changes in the intellectual climate in the third quarter of the fourteenth century which had allowed the promotion by the king of Bertrand du Guesclin, the rising star in the French military firmament, as constable of France. ‘Will these great nobles obey me?’: Froissart has the newly appointed constable express his misgivings to the king, his apprehensions receiving the answer he seeks when the king replies affirmatively that he will vent his anger upon any who do not. In the De re militari, it is the emperor who recognises the skill and the ‘labor’ (to use Vegetius’s word) of the good commander by promoting him; in fourteenth-century France it is the king who does the same. Similarly, a century later, Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, was to put into effect reforms intended to lead to a more effective central command by appointing officers who received their letters of appointment and batons of office from the duke in person at a public ceremony. Appointed for a year, at the end of which they returned their insignia of office, these men were the successors of those named by the emperor to high military office as described by Vegetius himself.28 Dealing with a book-size subject in a short article leaves one with the realisation that much else should have been discussed, or at least touched on. I could also have raised the matter of the ownership of manuscripts, and what this can tell us about the work’s reception in the Middle Ages. Were 27 28

26

See Allmand, Society at War, pp. 45–9, and ‘Views of the Soldier’. Allmand, ‘Did the De re militari of Vegetius influence the military ordinances of Charles the Bold?’, pp. 139–40.

The De re militari of Vegetius in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance there periods when the work appears to have been more popular in one region of Europe than in others; Italy, for instance, was to show great interest in the work during the Renaissance. A comparison between France (where I believe the work was very influential), Italy, and (possibly) England, with their different military systems may, I think, be useful. What happened when one form of technology, the cannon, was introduced on to the scene? Or when another form, printing, made the propagation of its contents more readily available? While the De re militari is, and will always remain, a book about how war should be fought (with the minimum of risk and effort) and armies controlled, my argument here has had a different emphasis. Seen from a long historical perspective, the real influence exercised by Vegetius was to make men realise that the army, increasingly controlled by the ‘state’ or the prince, existed mainly to create and protect political society; that leadership, vested in one person, was vital for victory; and that the career of the soldier, now increasingly ‘professional’, was an honourable one, presenting opportunities for both service and advancement. In a word, there is very much more to this text than may at first appear. For that reason, one may sympathise with the man who described it as ‘a pot of gold’. It is a text to be read at different levels, in different circumstances. There is something in it for everybody, everywhere, at any time.

Works Cited I. Sources Bono Giamboni, Di Vegezio Flavio dell’Arte della Guerra libri IV. Volgarizzamento di Bono Giamboni, ed. G. Marenigh (Florence, 1815). Frontinus, Iuli Frontini Strategemata, ed. Robert I. Ireland (Leipzig: Teubner, 1990). Giles of Rome, Egidio Colonna (Aegidius Romanus). De regimine principum, libri III. Reprint of the 1607 edn (Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1967). Jean de Meun, L’Art de Chevalerie. Traduction du De re militari de Vegèce par Jean de Meun, ed. Ulysse Robert, Société des Anciens Textes Français (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1897). Jean de Meun, Li Abregemenz noble Honme Vegesce Flave René des Establissemenz apartenanz a Chevalerie, ed. Leena Löfstedt, Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, Ser. B. 200 (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1977). Jean Priorat, Li Abrejance de l’Ordre de Chevalerie, ed. Ulysse Robert, Société des Anciens Textes Français (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1897). Jean de Vignai, Li Livres Flave Vegece de la Chose de Chevalerie, ed. Leena Löfstedt, Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, Ser. B. 214 (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1982). John of Salisbury, Ioannis Sarisberiensis Episcopi Carnotensis Policratici, ed. C. C. I. Webb, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909). Vegetius, P. Flavii Vegeti Renati Epitoma rei militaris, ed. Alf Önnerfors (Stuttgart & Leipzig: Teubner, 1995). 27

Christopher Allmand Vegetius, Vegetius: Epitome of Military Science, trans. N. P. Milner, Translated Texts for Historians 16 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2nd edn, 1996). The Earliest English Translation of Vegetius’ De re militari, ed. Geoffrey Lester, Middle English Texts 21 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, Universitätsverlag, 1988).

II. Studies Allmand, Christopher, Society at War. The Experience of England and France during the Hundred Years War, ed. C. Allmand (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2nd edn, 1998). Allmand, Christopher, ‘Views of the Soldier in late Medieval France’, in Guerre et Société en France, en Angleterre et en Bourgogne, XIVe–XVe siècle, ed. Philippe Contamine, Charles Giry-Deloison, Maurice Keen (Lille: Université Charles de Gaulle, 1991), pp. 171–88. Allmand, Christopher, ‘Did the De re militari of Vegetius influence the military ordinances of Charles the Bold?’, Publication du Centre Européen d’Etudes Bourguignonnes (XIVe–XVIe s.) 41 (2001): 135–43. Allmand, Christopher, ‘The Fifteenth-Century English Versions of Vegetius’ De re militari’, in Armies, Chivalry and Warfare in Medieval Britain and France, ed. Matthew Strickland, Harlaxton Medieval Studies VII (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1998), pp. 30–45. Knowles, Christine, ‘A 14th century imitator of Jean de Meung: Jean de Vignay’s Translation of the De re militari of Vegetius’, Studies in Philology 53 (1956): 452–8. Legge, M. Dominica, ‘The Lord Edward’s Vegetius’, Scriptorium 7 (1953): 262–5. Murray, Alexander, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978). Prestwich, Michael, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages. The English Experience (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1996). Reeve, Michael, ‘The Transmission of Vegetius’s Epitoma rei militaris’, Medium Aevum 74 (2000): 243–354. Richardot, Philippe, Végèce et la Culture militaire au Moyen Age (Ve–XVe siècles) (Paris: Institut de Stratégie Comparée EPHE IV – Sorbonne & Economica, 1998). Shrader, Charles R., ‘A Handlist of extant Manuscripts containing the De re militari of Flavius Vegetius Renatus’, Scriptorium 33 (1979): 280–305. Spiegel, Gabrielle, ‘Les Débuts Français de l’Historiographie royale: quelques aspects inattendus’, in Saint-Denis et la Royauté. Etudes offertes à Bernard Guenée, ed. Françoise Autrand, Claude Gauvard, Jean-Marie Moeglin (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1999), pp. 395–404. Thorpe, Lewis, ‘Mastre Richard, a Thirteenth-Century Translator of the De re militari of Vegetius’, Scriptorium 6 (1952): 39–50. Vale, Juliet, Edward III and Chivalry. Chivalric Society and its Context 1270–1350 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1982).

28

Heroes of War: Ambroise’s Heroes of the Third Crusade MARIANNE J. AILES

A

NY WAR produces its heroes. The Third Crusade has left us a long-standing legacy of heroes on both sides. Though now no longer politically correct, the stirring tales of Richard the Lion-Heart and his noble opponent Saladin have provided many a comic book with material. If we go back to the contemporary accounts we find that shortly after the Third Crusade even reliable, factual accounts, such as the eye-witness account of the Norman chronicler Ambroise, depict these knights as worthy of heroic status.1 Ambroise’s chronicle was written shortly after the end of the crusade by a clerk, apparently at the royal court, who had accompanied Richard on the crusade.2 It is an important historical document, not without literary merit, written in rhyming couplets making extensive use of sophisticated rhetorical devices. Ambroise’s main hero is Richard the Lion-Heart himself and we will return to Richard shortly, but Ambroise also has other heroes, a number of lesser figures who have their ‘fifteen minutes of fame’ in one or more episodes, men, and very occasionally women, who are in some way exemplary. First three of these ‘minor heroes’ claim our attention: James of Avesnes, Aubery Clement and Andrew of Chauvigny. 1

Ambroise, Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, ed. Ailes and Barber. All quotations are taken from this edition and its accompanying translation, and are cited by line number; the historical details about the heroes are taken from Barber’s historical notes to the edition. See also Ambroise, Estoire de la guerre sainte: histoire en vers de la 3e croisade, ed. Paris. Other evidence of an early development of Richard’s status as a hero can be seen in the late thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman prose text, La Mort Richard Coeur de Lion, published as The Crusade and Death of Richard I, ed. Johnston, which drew on the Latin chronicles of Roger of Howden and Roger of Wendover, and in the planh, or lament, on the death of Richard written by the occitan troubadour Gaucelm Faidit, one version of which follows the Estoire in Vatican MS Regina 1659; see Les Poèmes de Gaucelm Faidit, ed. Mouzat, poem 50, pp. 415–24. 2 On the identity of Ambroise see the introduction to Estoire, ed. Ailes and Barber.

29

Marianne J. Ailes

JAMES OF AVESNES James of Avesnes, described by Jean Richard as a ‘baron du second plan’,3 was from Avesnes-sur-Helpe in Hainant; his family held lands from both the Count of Hainant and Philip of Alsace, the Count of Flanders.4 He appears to have been in civilian life a less than perfect vassal and was involved in a serious revolt against his overlord Philip of Alsace in 1175–76, apparently out of resentment of the count’s ‘low-born’ administration.5 However, such a troublemaker was clearly of value when intrepid and perhaps inspirational bravery was needed. When he first appears in Ambroise’s account he is compared to the heroes Alexander, Hector and Achilles: 2848

2852

2856

Ço est Jackes d’Avernes en Flandres Si ne cuit c’onques Alixandres, N’Ector, n’Achilles mielz valusent, Ne que meillor chevalier fussent – Ço estoit Jakes qui tot vendi E enguaga e despendi Ses terres e ses heritages, E dona, si fist mult que sages, Cuer e cors e alme en aïe Al rei qui vint de mort a vie.

This was James of Avesnes in Flanders. I think that Alexander, Hector and Achilles were not more worthy than he, nor better knights. This James had sold, mortgaged and spent all his land and his inheritance and in a most wise deed, had given everything, heart, body and soul, to the service of the King Who rose from death to life.

Ambroise uses this technique of comparing, or sometimes contrasting, his contemporaries with the heroes of classical or vernacular legend and literature at several points.6 James’ great commendation here is his total commitment to the cause. The closely related Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi describes James in similar, heroic terms, but lacks the reference to the commitment to God: That night . . . James of Avesnes reached the longed-for shore. He was a man endowed with triple perfection: a Nestor in counsel, an Achilles in

3 4

Richard, ‘Philippe Auguste, la croisade et le royaume’, p. 413. So obscure was he after the crusade that the copyist of the only extant complete MS of Ambroise’s text consistently gets his name wrong and calls him Jacques d’Avernes. 5 Ed. Ailes and Barber, n. 217; see E. Warlop, The Flemish Nobility before 1300, pp. 275, 325–6. 6 Keen, ‘Chivalry, Heralds and History’, p. 67. Ambroise uses the same technique to disparage the emperor of Cyprus whom he compares to Ganelon and Judas, lines 1387–8.

30

Heroes of War: Ambroise’s Heroes of the Third Crusade arms, better than Attilius Regulus at keeping his word. He pitched his tents opposite the so-called ‘Cursed’ Tower. (I:28, transl. pp. 74–5)7

A few lines later James figures in a list, linked with the major figures of Guy and Geoffrey of Lusignan (lines 3043–9). James is described as one who carried out ‘heroic deeds in the land’ (line 3047) and more attention is paid to him than to the more important figures of the Lusignans. In this way Ambroise prepares for his main appearance several thousand lines later at the siege of Acre. Here again he is first mentioned in a list (lines 6160–79), this time with the Earl of Leicester, William of Borris, Walchelin of Ferrieres, Roger of Tosni, Count Robert of Dreux and the Bishop of Beauvais – exalted company indeed. This time James’ death is presaged in a way that emphasises his role as a martyr of the crusade, for we are told that ‘God took him that day into His kingdom’ (line 6170). A few hundred lines later he is listed again in noble company with his family with some emphasis on the fact that he was not the only member of his family involved in the crusade (lines 6432–8): 6623

6628

6632

6636

6640

6644

7

Ha! Deus, si grant descomfiture Et si laide mesaventure Nos avint la ou [li] noz errent Quant Sarazin recovrerent D’un prodom[e] que il forsclostrent, En lor recovrir e enclostrent! Ço fu li preuz Jaques d’Averne, Dont Deus face [saint] en son regne, Car de lui trop nus meschaï Par son cheval qui lui chaï, Mais il fist tant de sei defendre Que l’en nos dist e fist entendre Que aprés la fin de la bataille, Quant il jut entre la chenaille, E l’[en] enveia son cors quere, Quë en un poi espace de terre Entor le cors de lui troverent Li prodome qui i alerent, Bien .xv. Turs tot detrenchiez, Dont li prodom s’esteit vengiez. Sei quart de parenz i mururent, Si quë onques nes sucururent – Tels genz dont il fud grant parlance – Ço fud un des barons de France

Chronicle of the Third Crusade: A translation of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, trans. Nicholson; the Itinerarium compares Richard I to the epic heroes in the same way that Ambroise compares them with James of Avesnes. Nicholson discusses the relationship between Ambroise and the Itinerarium, pp. 12–14, concluding that the Latin text uses the French text.

31

Marianne J. Ailes 6648 6655

6660

6664

6668

6672

Ço diseient, li coens de Dreues, Il e les genz qui erent sues. Sin oï l’en tant gent mesdire Que l’estorie nel puet desdire . . . Etht vos la novele espandue De nostre gent qui iert perdue – Non pas perdue, mais trovee, Qu’ele s’iert pas Deu esprovee – Jake d’Averne e sa maisnee Qui esteit morte e detrenchiee. Eth vos l’ost Deu tote pensive, E si troblee e si baïve Quë onques de la mort un home Pois quë Adam morst la pome Ne fud oïe si grant plainte Ne tel regret ne tel complainte; E il feseit mult bien a pleindre, Car mult bien servi Deu, sanz faindre, Qu[ë] il aveit ja esguardé En paradis iert porguardé Son liu o seint Jake l’apostre, Qu’il teneit a son non e a nostre – Jake d’Averne le martyr, Qui des Turcs ne deigna partir.

Oh God! What an affliction, what a dreadful loss we suffered there, when the Saracens rallied, the loss of a valiant man whom they cut off and surrounded! This was the worthy James of Avesnes, may God make him [a saint] in His kingdom, for much misfortune came to us because of his horse, which fell under him. However, he defended himself so well, so we are told and understand, that after the end of the battle, when his body was searched for, where he lay among the hoards of curs, that for some distance round his body, the worthy men who went there found a good fifteen Turks, all hacked into pieces, the valiant man having taken his vengeance on them. He was the fourth of his family to die there and there were some who did not come to their rescue which gave rise to much talk about such men [as failed to help], in particular one of the barons of France, they said, the Count of Dreux, he and his men. I have heard so many speak ill of this that the history cannot deny it . . . The news spread of our people who were lost, or not lost but found, tested for God, James of Avesnes and his household dead and slaughtered. So the army of God was in melancholy, troubled and shocked; not since Adam bit into the apple was such mourning, such regret and such complaint heard. And he was worthy of being mourned, for he served God well, without fail. He had already chosen his place in heaven, his place was reserved, at the side of St James the apostle, whom he held as his patron and ours, James of Avesnes the martyr, who would not deign to flee before the Turks. 32

Heroes of War: Ambroise’s Heroes of the Third Crusade The account in the Itinerarium is similar but lacks the reference to St James, a significant element in Ambroise’s exaltation of James.8 James’ commitment to God and the special blessing conferred by his martyrdom are stressed throughout Ambroise’s account. In the Itinerarium James is given more earthly patrons as we are told that King Gui and King Richard ‘assisted at his burial’. The actual death is built up to with the exclamatory opening to the paragraph, the eulogy, and the detail of how he was found surrounded by dead Saracens – like the hero of a chanson de geste. The position in which his body is found, the evidence of a hard fought battle, is used to show what a brave man he was and how dearly he sold his life. Ambroise is not above making a side-sweep at those who should have served as ‘guarantor’ to this apparent hero, specifically here the Count of Dreux. Indeed such non-heroes or counter-heroes are part of the presentation of the hero figure. Much is made of the consequences of James’ death, the mourning which followed. His death is treated hyperbolically as as great a tragedy for the human race as the Fall of man – yet Ambroise shows no dire consequences of his death, no great revenge is taken and this man who is finally put on a par with his name-apostle St James and presented as a martyr was in reality far from being a saint. Ambroise shows very clearly the suffering of the crusaders at the siege of Acre and there must have been a real need for exemplary and inspirational figures. For Ambroise James of Avesnes was one such. He was clearly brave and could be used to illustrate the ideal of self-sacrifice and total commitment. There was no need to mention his past, even if Ambroise was aware of it. Here he represents the ideal rather than the individual.

AUBERY CLEMENT Aubery Clement was from a quite distinguished family. His father was the tutor and guardian to Philip Augustus and the family had provided several marshals of France, including Aubery himself, his brother Henry and their father Robert.9 It is, incidentally, quite remarkable that Ambroise, who normally has little that is positive to say about the French (as distinct from the Normans), is nonetheless prepared to present a Frenchman as a hero. Perhaps it is because of his relative renown that Ambroise does not prepare for the main appearance of Aubery during the siege of Acre: 4881

8 9

La fud feiz un granz hardemenz; Ço fist Aubris Climenz, Cil qui dist qu’a cel jor mureit

Cf. Itinerarium, IV:20, trans. p. 258. Ed. Ailes and Barber, n. 338.

33

Marianne J. Ailes 4884

4888

4892

4896

4900

4904

4908

Ou que dedenz Acrë entreit; N’il n’en deigna onques mentir Ainz devint illoques martir; Car sor les murs s’ala combatre As Turs qui l’alouent abatre E tant sor lui en acurut Que sei defendant i murut, Car cil qui sivre le deveient, Qui sor l’eschiele ja esteient, La chargerent tant qu’el pleia E qu[ë] al ploier pecheia E cil al fossé trebucherent. Li Turc hüerent e crïerent; Si i ot de tels qui i mururent Des noz e tels qui traiz i furent, Mais d’Auberi Climent sanz dote Fud desheitie l’ost trestote, E por lui regreter e pleindre. Covint icel assalt remaindre. Ne demora mie grantment Puis la mort Auberi Climent Qu’il foïrent la tur maudite – Que jo avoie nomee e dite – Tant qu’ele fud estançonee E empeiriee e estonee. . . .

There was a bold deed committed by Aubery Clement; he had said that he would either die that day or enter Acre; he did not lie, but became a martyr; he went to fight on the walls, against the Turks, who came upon him to knock him down in such numbers that he died while defending himself. Those who were following him were already on the ladder, putting such a weight on it that it gave way and broke into pieces, throwing them into the ditch. The Turks mocked and jeered; some of our men died and others were dragged out. The whole army was distressed over the death of Aubery Clement and in order to mourn and lament him the assault was suspended. It was not long after the death of Aubery Clement that the Cursed Tower, as I have called it, was undermined, with props put in place, then damaged and weakened.10

We can see here one of the difficulties that the extant text poses for us. There is only one complete manuscript of Ambroise’s Estoire and there are a number of passages which are clearly corrupt. Here the extant French text is rather disjointed and reads as if there may be something missing. The Itinerarium has more detail about the actual death, describing how Aubery was surrounded and crushed by the Turks after being left alone at the top of 10

34

Cf. Itinerarium, III:10–11.

Heroes of War: Ambroise’s Heroes of the Third Crusade the wall, and died the death of a martyr as a result of stab wounds, having been bereft of all help (III:10, p. 212). It seems in the account of the Itinerarium that Aubery Clement was forced to be a hero – but this is less clear in Ambroise’s account. However, we cannot tell whether this is because we have a faulty exemplar of Ambroise’s text, or because he is deliberately suppressing details which detract from Clement’s heroic status. At the same time, in both texts, Clement dies alone, as befits a hero. In both Ambroise and the Itinerarium Aubery appears to have made the kind of boast that we might associate with an epic hero, ‘I will take Acre or die in the attempt.’ This could be compared to Roland’s declaration that Charlemagne will not lose any animal or item from the rearguard without it being defended to the end, or Vivien in the Chanson de Guillaume declaring that he will not retreat by one step from the enemy. This is not necessarily a good attitude in military terms, but clearly would have its uses in whipping up enthusiasm in a besieging army. Aubery’s status as a hero is confirmed when a Saracen has the presumption to appear arrayed in the despoiled armour of the dead man and King Richard himself ‘strikes him with a bolt square on the chest’ (lines 4963–5). That it is the king himself who avenges this presumption gives reflected glory to Aubery Clement. This time Ambroise spells out the consequences of his death, not just the mourning, a subsequent cessation in the assault being ascribed to Clement’s death. Later it would appear that the besieged Saracens were aware that sorrow for this individual knight would make the whole crusading army pitiless: 5075

5080

5084

5093 5096

Mais il n’esteient pas a chois N’en esperance de socurs, E bien saveient tot a curs Que tote l’ost iert en torment Por la mort Auberi Climent, Et por lor filz e por lor freres, Por lor oncles e por lor peres, Lor neveuz, lor cosins germains, Qu’il aveient mort de lor mains, Dont les haouent veirement. E saveient certainement Que nostre gent illoc mureient Ou qu[ë] a force les prendreient . . . Mais Deus lor fist un conseil prendre Qu’a nostre gent vint honorable E as lor mortel e nuisable, Si que Acre fud par cel affaire Nostre sanz lancier e [sanz] traire.

But they were not sufficient nor had they any hope of help, and they knew well that the army was in deep sadness because of the death of Aubery Clement, and because of their sons and their brothers, their uncles and 35

Marianne J. Ailes their fathers, their nephews and their first cousins, whom they had killed with their own hands and because of whom they were indeed hated. They knew for certain that our people would take them by force or die in the attempt. . . . but God caused them to make a decision that brought honour to us and death and harm to them, so that because of it Acre was taken without a bolt being fired or a stone hurled.11

The decision made by the besieged was to treat with Richard. Thus the death of Aubery Clement is presented as being a direct cause of the surrender of Acre. Both James of Avesnes and Aubery Clement die on the crusade, fighting, as heroes do, against insuperable odds. Both are heroes of the siege of Acre, a soul-destroying siege which had need of inspirational figures. Such men, as Jean Richard has pointed out, were those who really did make great sacrifices for the cause, ultimately giving their lives.12

ANDREW OF CHAUVIGNY Andrew of Chauvigny was an important member of Richard I’s own entourage and is mentioned by Ambroise on several occasions, figuring in a number of lists of leaders involved in attacks (e.g. 4982–95 – attack on Acre; 10960–72 – going to the relief of Jaffa; 11384–403) – attacking the Turks. He is described as ‘strong and valiant in his saddle’. On one occasion he is at the front of the field in the rescue of some Knights Templar (lines 7261–7) Andrew of Chauvigny is singled out as a central figure on two other occasions. The first is when he sustained an injury. Chauvigny, in the distinguished company of Henry of Graye, Peter of Préaux and ‘many other men of renown’ (line 7546) engages a group of infidels. Chauvigny is praised by the poet before his particular encounter is described: 7558

Oiez, seignors, estrange juste, E tant est proz qui issi juste Com mis sires Andreus josta!

Listen my lords [to the account of] a strange joust. How valiant he is who jousts as my lord Andrew jousted!

Chauvigny strikes first, the point of his lance piercing the opposing emir, but the emir in return strikes Chauvigny, breaking his arm. A broken arm 11 12

36

Cf. Itinerarium, III:15, pp. 216–17. ‘Peut-être y a-t-il quelque justice dans le fait que, sous le nom de Jehan d’Avesnes, la légende a fait d’un des croisés partis indépendamment, dès 1189, et à leurs propres frais, le héros de la 3e croisade. Car ce sont les barons, les chevaliers, les écuyers, les sergents . . . qui ont supporté . . . les dangers et les épreuves du siège d’Acre, deux années avant l’arrivée des deux rois, en payant leur tribut en vies humaines’, Richard, ‘Philippe Auguste, la croisade’, p. 423.

Heroes of War: Ambroise’s Heroes of the Third Crusade does not seem to prevent his continued participation in the crusade, for his banner is among those seen when Darum is taken (lines 9293–7). Chauvigny’s second moment of glory comes as he leads one of the groups taking pilgrims to Jerusalem under the terms of the peace treaty concluded with Saladin. Here there is no glorious fighting – yet in many ways the visits to the shrines in Jerusalem are among the most touching passages of Ambroise’s account, and the leaders are singled out as men of importance. Although apparently less heroic, this role does involve danger as those who were to have taken Richard’s letter to Saladin asking for safe passage had fallen asleep on the way and the pilgrims are genuinely fearful that the Saracens will extract revenge for the massacre of the prisoners at Acre. Andrew of Chauvigny may have been a well known figure in his own times. His name crops up in a number of contemporary accounts and documents and he also moves into the world of fiction. He has fleeting appearances in several chansons de geste attached to the crusade cycle. Unlike the semi-historical early crusade chansons de geste these texts are highly fictionalised. In the fourteenth-century chansons de geste Baudouin de Sebourg and its sequel, the Bastard de Bouillon, his name, it would appear, ‘authenticates’ the text. The use of a known, real, crusader adds historicity. In Saladin, a text of which only prose versions survive, but which was probably based on a chanson de geste, Andrew of Chauvigny receives a serious leg injury in a joust with Saladin; in the shorter version Chauvigny defeats Saladin himself and becomes the hero of an adventure with the Saracen queen.13 Thus the real knight and member of Richard’s court whom we see in Ambroise’s account becomes a romance hero.

RICHARD Ambroise’s account is full of tales of the heroism of such men as James of Avesnes, Aubery Clement and Andrew of Chauvigny – but it is above all the account of Richard’s crusade. Richard I is the central character in Ambroise’s account,14 absent from the scene only when Ambroise gives the background to the siege of Acre, before the arrival of the kings of France and England. Richard is introduced early in Ambroise’s chronicle. Although his father is still king it is Richard who is named first and who is apparently the first to take the cross: 59

Li cuens de Peitiers li vaillanz, Richarz, n’i volt estre faillanz,

13

Saladin: suite et fin du deuxième cycle de la croisade, ed. Crist. Andrew appears at several points in the text. 14 Levy, ‘Pèlerins rivaux de la 3e croisade’, pp. 145–50.

37

Marianne J. Ailes

64

Al besoing Deu e sa clamor, Si se croissa por sue amor. Premiers fu de toz les hauz homes Des terres dont nos de ça sumes. Puis mut li reis en son servise

Richard, the valiant Count of Poitiers, did not wish to fail God at the time of His need and His call, so he took the Cross for love of Him. He was the first of the great men of the lands from which we came [to do so]. Then the king entered His service.

Immediately Ambroise makes it clear what he thinks of Richard: ‘the valiant Count of Poitiers’. Throughout his tale Ambroise attaches such epithets to his main hero as ‘the great, ‘the ‘valiant’, ‘the noble king’. Most significantly Richard is already the ‘Lion-Heart’, ‘Le preuz reis, le quor de lion’ (line 2306)15 and references to his ‘lion banner’, his coat of arms,16 reinforce this. At no point is Richard explicitly linked with heroes of the chansons de geste by Ambroise;17 the associations are made in a more subtle way. Some association is made through the name of the horse he captures from the Emperor of Cyprus, Fauvel, the most common name for a horse in the chansons de geste. More significantly Richard certainly behaves in a way that is reminiscent of the most famous hero of chanson de geste, Roland, for Richard is a little headstrong. He takes personal risks for which others rebuke him. He is criticised by Saladin for his recklessness as one who ‘rushes into things so foolishly’ (line 12114), but this is expressed as a qualification to the praise that ‘the king has great valour and boldness’ (line 12113). Saladin continues with a phrase which again recalls the epic, questioning the value of heroism without moderation: 12116 Ge voldroie mielz que jo eüsse Largesce e sens o tot mesure Que hardement o desmesure. I would prefer to exercise generosity and judgement with moderation than boldness without moderation.

There is at least a suggestion here that it is possible to criticise Richard and that recklessness, although a heroic attribute, is not necessarily desirable in a king. Moreover Richard is rebuked by his own men:

15

Ed. Ailes and Barber, n. 183; Broughton, The Legends of King Richard I, Coeur de Lion; Ambroise was not the first so to designate him; Gerald of Wales calls him ‘lion-hearted’ in his Topographia Hibernica in or before 1187. 16 On Richard’s lion banner see Ailes, The Origins of the Royal Arms of England: Their Development to 1199, pp. 71–2. 17 Cf. Itinerarium, II.5, transl. pp. 144–6: ‘King Richard had the valour of Hector, the heroism of Achilles; he was not inferior to Alexander, nor less valiant than Roland.’

38

Heroes of War: Ambroise’s Heroes of the Third Crusade 7135

7140

7144

7148

7152

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7164

Quant Dampnedeus par sa franchise Ot esparnié en itel guise Le rei qui l’ost deveit conduire, Lores pristrent plusors a dire, Que a coregeus le saveient E qui de lui peür aveient, ‘Sire, por Deu merci ne faites! Ne vos chaille a feire tels guaites. Gardez vos e cristïentez. Vos avez bone gent a plentez, N’alez mes sels en tel affaire. Quant voldrez as Turs forfaire, Menez od vos grant compainie, Qu’en vos mains est nostre aïe, Ou nostre mort, s’il vos meschiet; Quant le chief des membres chiet, Li menbre puis ne soffisent, Ainz faillent sempres e defisent, E tost avient une aventure.’ Assez i mistrent paine e cure A chastïer l’en meint prodome, E il toz jorz, c[ë] est la some, Quant il veeit les assemblees, Dont mult poi li erent emblees, Assembloit as Turs a meschief, E en veneit si bien a chief Qu’il en aveit ou mort ou pris E que suens iert li graindre pris; E Deus toz jorz des greignor presses Le jetoit hors des genz engresses.

When God in His Grace had, in this way, spared the king who was to lead the army, several, who knew him to be a man of courage and who feared for him, decided to say ‘Lord, for the sake of God, do not do this! It is not for you to go on such spying expeditions. Protect yourself and Christianity. You have many good people. Never again go alone on such business. When you want to damage the Turks, take a large company, for in your hands is our support, or our death, should harm come to you – for when the head of the body falls, the body cannot survive alone, but will soon fail and fall and misadventure then comes.’ In this way many worthy men took great pains and put much effort into rebuking him but always, this is the sum of it, when he saw any skirmishes, very few of which were hidden from him, he would go against the Turks to bring things to a conclusion, and he would always finish the business so that some were taken or killed and that the greatest prize was his. God always brought him out of the greatest dangers of that hostile race.

In this passage Ambroise manages to convey two notions: that Richard’s behaviour was sometimes a little reckless, and that he enjoyed the special 39

Marianne J. Ailes protection of God. Thus the king’s very fault becomes an aspect of his heroism, and the special protection given by God enhances his reputation. Similar criticism only two hundred lines later is couched in terms which emphasise Richard’s importance to the Christian cause. Richard, with only a few companions, is about to support some of his men, engaged in a struggle, when some try to stop him: 7320

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Lors lui comencerent a dire Tels [en] i aveit, ‘Par fei, sire, Vos errez a mult grant meschief, Ne ja n’en vendrez [vos] a chief De noz genz qui la sunt rescore, E sels les en vient mielz encorre, Sanz vos, que vos i encurgiez. Par ço est bien que vos retorgiez, Car si [a] vos vos mescheiet E que issi fust escheieit Cristïenté sereit tüee.’ Li reis ot la culor muee Lors dist, ‘Quant jo les i enveieai E que d’aler les i preiai S[ë] il [i] moerent donc sanz moi, Donc n’ai[e] jo ja mes non de rei.’ Es costez al cheval dona E le frein lui abandona, E fud plus joinz que uns esperviers.

Then some of them began to say to him, ‘In faith, sir, it could do much harm for you to go on, nor will you be able to rescue our men. It is better that they should suffer alone without you than that you should suffer there. For this reason it is good that you should turn back, for if harm comes to you Christianity will be killed.’ The king’s colour changed. Then he said, ‘As I sent them here and asked them to go, if they die there without me then would I never again bear the title of king.’ He kicked the flanks of his horse and gave him free rein and went off, faster than a sparrowhawk.

Ambroise puts the justification for this foolhardiness into the king’s own mouth, giving some force to his arguments. He is in contrast to the Count of Dreux whom we saw earlier failing to behave as a good guarantor of James of Avesnes. Moreover, as Richard proceeds to strike the enemy, both these passages show Richard’s success and God’s protection of him. All the positive epithets at his command would not portray Richard as a hero if he were not shown behaving as a hero. This includes risk-taking (however unwise). Richard is shown fighting with great valour – and we have no reason to doubt this aspect of Ambroise’s depiction of him. Richard is also shown to be generous. Here his generosity is compared to that of Philip Augustus. Richard pays his soldiers more than Philip does. 40

Heroes of War: Ambroise’s Heroes of the Third Crusade Clearly a less positive interpretation could be put on this act. Richard and Philip were rivals; what better way to ensure you have the better mercenaries than by paying them more – but Ambroise puts only a positive gloss on Richard’s generosity.18 Indeed Philip serves as a foil for his hero. In all points of contrast Richard comes out better. Not only is he a more generous lord; he also presents himself as a king should. The two kings are contrasted as they arrive on Sicily. Ambroise begins his description with the assertion that it is normal when great lords arrive somewhere that they make some show of their arrival, coming ‘as a great lord’ (line 567). However when Philip arrives he does not do so, but comes unobtrusively, even avoiding the crowd (line 579). Richard, on the other hand, ‘came with such pomp that the whole sea was covered by galleys full of competent people, fighters, bold of countenance, with little pennoncels and with banners’ (lines 588–92). The response to this arrival is, however mixed, for the people approve, but the locals are concerned: 598

604

Si diseit tels qui vit la rote Quë itels reis deveit venir E bien deveit terre tenir. Mais li Grifon s’en corucerent E li Lomgebard en grocerent Por ço qu’il vint o tel estoire Sor lor citié e od tel gloire.

Those who saw the procession said that this was how such a king should enter, a king to hold his land well. But the Grifons were angry and the Lombards grumbled because he came into their city with such a fleet and such pomp and circumstance.

The wisdom of annoying others is not questioned by Ambroise; Richard is behaving as a king should. The explicit contrast drawn here between Richard and Philip is a theme which runs through much of the text.19 Both men suffer from illness. Philip then returns to France and Ambroise makes no attempt to disguise his contempt for this lack of commitment to the enterprise:20 5246 5248

E, merci Deus, quel retornee! Tant fud malement atornee, Quant cil qui deveit maintenir Tantes genz s’en voleit venir!

18

Hanley, ‘Reading the Past through the Present: Ambroise, the Minstrel of Reims and Jordan Fantosme’, compares the treatment of Philip and Richard in Ambroise and the Minstrel of Reims. 19 Levy, ‘Pèlerins rivaux’, pp. 148–50. 20 Hanley, ‘Reading the Past’, p. 267 analyses the way Ambroise casts doubt on Philip’s illness and pp. 267–8, contrasts Ambroise’s pro-Richard account with the pro-Philip account of the Minstrel of Reims.

41

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5252

5256

5260

5264

Il s’en vint par sa maladie, Li reis ço dist – que que l’en die – Mais nus n’ad de ço testimoine Que maladie en seit essoigne D’aler en l’ost le rei demaine Qui toz les reis conduit e maine. Ge ne di pas qu[ë] il n’i fust E qu’il ni meïst fer ne fust, Plum [e] estaim, or e argent, E qu’il ne socurust meinte gent, Com li plus haut reis terïens Que l’en sache de cristïens; E por ço deüst il remaindre A faire son poeir sanz faindre En la povre terre esguaree Qui tant ad esté comparee.

God’s mercy! What a turn about! This was an unfortunate turn of mind, when he, who should support so many men, wished to go home. He was going back because of his illness, so the king said, whatever is said about him, but there is no witness that illness gives a dispensation from going with the army of the Almighty King, who directs the paths of all kings. I do not say that he was never there, nor that he had not spent iron and wood, lead and pewter, gold and silver, and helped many people, as the greatest of earthly kings known among Christians, but for this very reason he should have remained to do what he could, without failing, in the poor lost land which has cost us so dear.

Richard stays. Ambroise does not need to spell out the contrast. Of course Ambroise will later have problems justifying Richard’s return to England; but for the moment he is shown to be the more committed of the two kings, the man who ‘having put his hand to the plough will not look back’ (Luke 9:62). Even Richard’s enemies are shown to respect him.21 One of Saladin’s men speaks of Richard with evident admiration: 6815

6820

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21

42

‘Encor fait plus a merveiller D’on Franc qui est en lor compaine, Qui noz genz ocist e mahaine. Onques mes nul tel ne veïmes; Toz jorz iert il devant meïsmes; A toz les besoinz est il trovez Com bon chevaler esprovez. C’est cist qui des noz feit esart; Si l’apelent “Melec Richard”, E tel melec deit tenir terre E aveir e despendre e conquere.’

Levy, ‘Pèlerins rivaux’, p. 147.

Heroes of War: Ambroise’s Heroes of the Third Crusade ‘What is to be even more wondered at is a Frank who is one of them, who kills and maims our men. You never saw anyone like him; he will always be at the front; he will always be found at the place of need, as a good and tested knight. It is he who cuts so many of us down. They call him “Melec Richard”, and such a melec should hold land, conquer and dispense wealth.’

The most noble Saracen in Ambroise’s account is Saphadin, Saladin’s brother, and Saphadin’s respect for Richard enhances Richard’s reputation, even although Saphadin is an enemy. He even gives him a gift of two horses when the Christians are fighting valiantly but badly mounted (lines 11512–32). Such respect and assistance from the brother of his main enemy shows something of Richard’s charisma. Saladin himself also shows respect for Richard, to the extent that he acknowledges that if he were to be defeated by anyone he would rather it were Richard than anyone else (lines 11782–93). Richard is however a human hero, with weaknesses. There are his recurrent bouts of illness. More seriously Richard makes mistakes of judgement. On one occasion during discussions with Saphadin Richard accepted presents from the Saracens; the giving and receiving of gifts is and always has been part and parcel of international diplomacy and this seems to be the spirit in which the gifts were accepted: 7360

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7368 7371

7376

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Sis tramist a Salahadin E a son frere Saffadin, E lor fist merveilluses demandes E mult riches, nobles e grandes: Ço iert la rïaume de Sulie De chief en chief si com il lie, E quant qu’al regne aparteneit Quant li reis messaus le teneit, E de Babiloine treü Issi com il l’aveit eü, Car tot clamot en heritage Par le conquest de son lignage. Li messagier le soldan quistrent E lor message mult bien li distrent, E il [lor] dist que nu f[e]reit E que li reis le sorquereit, E li manda par Saffadin, Son frere, un sage Sarazin, Qu’il lui lareit tote la terre De Sulie en pais e sanz guerre Dele le flum de si qu’a la mer Qu[ë] il n’i poreit riens clamer. Mais par tel covent le f[e]reit Que Eschalone ne ref[e]reit Ne cristïen ne Sarazin. 43

Marianne J. Ailes

7388

7392 7406

7416 7420

7424 7429 7432

Ço li manda par Saffadin; Mais li rois ne se gardot mie De la fause gent enemie Qui le detrichent e teneient Por les chastels qu’il abateient, E le serveient de losenge. Lor acointement mal chief prenge! Car Saffadin tant le deçut Que li reis ses presenz reçut. Messagers vindrent e alerent . . . Messager alerent e vindrent E le rei en parole tindrent, Tant qu’il aperçut la traïne De la fause gent sarazine, Qui trop iert fause e desleial . . . Quant cele pais ne pot pas estre, Eth vos venir . . . Les Turs en l’ost granz enchauz faire . . . E li reis a els assembloit, E par essample a els mustroit Qui des presenz blasmé l’aveient De cui li Turc le desceveient, Qu’il ne voleit fors liauté A Deu ne a la cristïenté . . . N’onques l’ost ne fud destorbee Por present qu[ë] il receüst E la terre recusse eüst, Mais teles genz l’en destorbouent Qui sa burse sovent robouent.

He sent word by his brother, Saphadin, a wise Saracen, that he should leave all the land of Syria to Richard, in peace and without war, from the river to the sea, and that he could make no claim on it – but that on the condition that Ascalon would not be rebuilt, by Christian nor Saracen. This message he sent by Saphadin. But the king did not distrust these false enemies; [he did not realise] that they tricked and delayed him while they destroyed the castles and deceived him. Let such a liaison come to a bad end. For Saphadin so deceived the king that he accepted his gifts. Messengers came and went, bringing gifts to the king, for which he was much blamed and much criticised. . . . Messengers came and went, talking with the king, until he realised that the false Saracens, who were too false and too disloyal, were creating delays. . . . When the peace plans could not be concluded, then the Turks made great attacks on our army . . . The king fought against them and by [his] example showed those who had blamed him on account of the gifts with which the Turks deceived him that his intentions towards God and Christianity were loyal . . . The army was no longer worried because of the gifts that he received and he would have rescued the land but for those who caused harm by robbing from his purse. 44

Heroes of War: Ambroise’s Heroes of the Third Crusade Ambroise does not hide the fact that Richard was criticised, but contrives to put all the blame on the Saracen Saphadin and immediately follows this with an account of the valour of Richard as a warrior in order to show Richard’s good faith. Blaming others, especially the Saracens, for Richard’s mistakes is one way of dealing with them. Thus failure on the part of the crusaders cannot be seen as Richard’s fault (see lines 5946–53). The most dramatic case of others being blamed is the massacre of the inhabitants of Acre after the surrender of that city. Today this stands out as a shameful incident, and the care Ambroise takes to deflect the responsibility from Richard would suggest that even during a bloody war such a massacre, however strategically useful, was difficult to justify. Ambroise puts the entire blame on Saladin for failing to keep his side of the agreement and for not coming to the rescue of his people. Indeed he states that the Saracens themselves blame Saladin. The most severe test of Ambroise in his fidelity to Richard comes towards the end of the poem. As we have seen, Ambroise makes it quite clear that he considers Philip’s departure a dereliction of duty; how then is he to depict his hero when Richard decides to leave? First Ambroise shows all the vicissitudes – the appeals made to Richard to return home which he turns down. Ambroise’s most eloquent rhetoric is put into the mouth of the priest who at one point persuades Richard to stay as he reminds the king how God has caused him to prosper. The careful structure of the speech enhances, rather than detracts from, the feeling behind it; this can be seen in an extract: 9569

9574 9580 9584 9590

Reis, remembre tei des granz honurs, Que Deus t[ë] at en tanz lius faits, Qui serunt mes tozjorz retraites, Que onques a rei de ton eage Ne fist a mains de damage. Reis, recorde tei que l’en conte, . . . Reis, remenbre des granz tençons E des routes des Brabeçons . . . Reis, menbre tei de l’aventure, De la riche descomfiture . . . Reis, menbre tei de ton realme.

King, remember the great honour God has accorded you in many places, which will be spoken of, for never has a king of any time suffered so little loss. King, remember what was said of you . . . King, Remember the quarrels and bands of men of Brabant . . . King, Remember the great defeat . . . King, Remember your kingdom.

These words may be put into the mouth of the unknown priest William of Poitiers, but they are the words of Ambroise and express his feelings. Ambroise has shown a king who is tormented, pulled in two directions, 45

Marianne J. Ailes apparently having a duty in each. On this occasion Richard stays, but Ambroise has prepared the way. When Richard finally leaves, he must be seen to have had no real choice.22 First of all, he is ill. In his illness he sends for Henry of Champagne, the Templars and the Hospitallers and tells them to guard Ascalon and Jaffa while he receives medical attention at Acre. Without his physical presence, however, they are unwilling to guard anything, much to the king’s anger:

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11732

11736 11762

Quant li rois vit que tot li mondes, Qui n’est guaires ne lïaus ne mondes, Lui fu tot en travers failliz, Lors fu troblez e maubailliz E durement desconseilliez. Seignors, ne vos esmerveilliez S’il fist del mielz qu[ë] il savoit Selonc le tens qu[ë] il avoit, Car qui crient honte e aim henor Choisist de deus mauls le menor. Si velt mielz une triwe quere Que leisser en peril la terre, Car tuit li autre la leissoient, [E] a lor nefs a plain aloient. E lors manda il a Saffadin Qui iert freres Salehadin, Qui mult l’amoit por sa pröesce, Qu’il li porchacast sanz peresce La meillor triwe quil poroit E il devers lui la donroit . . . E il qui estoit sanz aïe Que si pres de la gent haïe Que l’ost ert al mains a deus liwes, Prist ensi faitment les triwes – E qui autrement en diroit L’estoire, si en mentiroit.

When the king saw that everyone, everyone had let him down, no-one was either loyal nor blameless, then was he troubled and disturbed and very perplexed. My lords, do not wonder at it that he did the best he could in the time that he had. For he who shuns shame and seeks honour chooses the lesser of two evils. So he would rather seek a truce than leave the land in danger, for everyone else was leaving, openly making for their boats. Then he sent to Saphadin, who was brother to Saladin and who respected him because of his valour, asking that, sparing no effort, he would seek for him the best truce which he could and that he, Richard, would agree to it. . . . He, being without support and so close to that hated

22

46

Others did criticise Richard for leaving, indeed Ambroise is very much on the defensive here; cf. Roger of Howden, Chronica, XVII, p. 551.

Heroes of War: Ambroise’s Heroes of the Third Crusade race, with their army at a distance of no more than two leagues accepted in this way the truce. Anyone who tells the tale differently is lying.

Again others are blamed. The hero stands alone because others have let him down. Ambroise sets out in detail the terms of the truce, in particular that Christians would be able to make their pilgrimage, and the emphasis is that Richard achieved as much as was humanly possible, when abandoned by those who should have supported him.

CONCLUSION In his depiction of his heroes Ambroise uses all the literary techniques at his call – and he is a considerable rhetorician. His ‘minor heroes’ were men who could serve as exempla. In the cases of two of the men we have looked at they were also safely dead, so Ambroise did not need to fear that their post-war lives would damage their heroic status. Ambroise may have been ignorant of their lives before the crusade, or may have chosen to ignore aspects of his heroes’ characters, to be, like any politically engaged writer, ‘economical with the truth’; but there is no reason to doubt that these men behaved in war as Ambroise depicts them. His bias for Richard I is so obvious that it need not distort the historian’s analysis – but he steers a careful path. Richard is a human hero, larger than life, like any hero, but facing real dilemmas and shown to suffer alongside his men, physically from illness, and in the stress of his responsibilities. These very partial views are in themselves evidence: evidence of a young and rapidly growing myth of Richard Coeur de Lion and his army.

Works Cited I. Sources Ambroise, Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, ed. Marianne Ailes and Malcolm Barber (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, forthcoming). Le Bâtard de Bouillon, ed. R. F. Cook (Geneva: Droz, 1972). La Chanson de Roland, ed. F. Whitehead (Oxford, 1942; revised ed. T. D. Hemming, Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1993). La Chanson de Guillaume, ed. and trans. Philip E. Bennett (London: Grant & Cutler, 2000). Chronicle of the Third Crusade: A Translation of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, trans. Helen J. Nicholson, Crusade Texts in Translation III (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997). The Crusade and Death of Richard I, ed. R. C. Johnston, ANTS 17 (Oxford: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1961). Les Poèmes de Gaucelm Faidit, ed. J. Mouzat (Paris: Nizet, 1965). 47

Marianne J. Ailes Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. W. Stubbs, RS (London: 1868–71). Saladin: suite et fin du deuxième cycle de la croisade, ed. Larry Crist (Geneva: Droz, 1972).

II. Studies Ailes, Adrian, The Origins of the Royal Arms of England: Their Development to 1199 (Reading: University of Reading, 1982). Broughton, B. B., The Legends of King Richard I, Coeur de Lion, Studies in English Literature 25 (The Hague: Mouton & Co, 1966). Hanley, Catherine, ‘Reading the Past through the Present: Ambroise, the Minstrel of Reims and Jordan Fantosme’, Mediaevalia 20 (2001): 263–81. Keen, Maurice, ‘Chivalry, Heralds and History’, in Nobles, Knights and Men-atArms in the Middle Ages (London: Hambledon Press, 1996), pp. 63–81, first published in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays presented to R. W. Southern, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J.M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford: OUP, 1985), pp. 393–414. Levy, Brian, ‘Pèlerins rivaux de la 3e croisade: les personnages des rois d’Angleterre et de la France d’après les chroniques d’Ambroise et d’“Ernoul” et le récit Anglo-Norman de la Croisade et Mort Richard Coeur de Lion’, in Croisade – réalités et fictions: Actes du Colloque d’Amiens, 1987, ed. Danielle Buschinger (Goppingen: Kümmerle, 1989), pp. 143–55. Richard, Jean, ‘Philippe Auguste, la croisade et le royaume’, in La France de Philippe Auguste: le temps des mutations: Actes du colloque international organisé par le C.N.R.S. (Paris, 29 septembre–4 octobre 1980), ed. Robert-Henri Bautier, Colloques Internationaux du CNRS 602 (Paris: CNRS, 1982), pp. 411–24. Warlop, E., The Flemish Nobility before 1300, trans. J. B. Ross and H.Vandermoere, vol. 1 (Kartrijk: Desmet-Huysman, 1975).

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Warfare in the Works of Rudolf von Ems W. H. JACKSON

I

R

UDOLF VON EMS was one of the leading German vernacular authors of the thirteenth century, active from about 1220 to the mid-1250s. By this time military affairs had formed an important theme in German literature for several centuries, at first in heroic poetry that was transmitted largely in oral form, then from the twelfth century onwards in increasingly complex strands of written literature that combined German traditions with new concerns drawn to a large extent from French and (directly or indirectly) Latin literature. In the medieval literary processing of warfare Rudolf’s works have a strong claim to interest in that they bring together these various strands, connecting the worlds of secular, knightly nobility and of religion and school learning. Moreover, since we can locate some of these works among the nobility associated with the Staufen royal court, we have here a writing of warfare that throws light on the concerns of an important section of German society at a politically sensitive time. Rudolf stemmed from a family of ministeriales, that is to say knightly vassals, in Hohenems in the northern Alps. He describes himself in Willehalm von Orlens as a squire, ‘knappe’ (l. 15627), and the internal evidence of his works shows that he had a good education that allowed him to convey features of Latin learned culture to a lay audience, as well as drawing on French literature. His works cover a wide thematic range, with a morally exemplary story, a religious legend, a romance of love and chivalry, a life of Alexander, and a world history (the last two works remaining unfinished). Rudolf was exclusively a narrative author. He left no lyric poems. What is important for the topic of warfare is that his works convey a strong sense of historical plausibility, and are closely geared to the practices and the mentality of his contemporary audience. The works are set in the known geographical world and deploy characters with historically real names; Rudolf quite avoids the fantastic landscapes and personnel of much contemporary Arthurian romance. Rudolf also provides unusually specific information about his patrons and 49

W. H. Jackson those who have helped in his literary activity, so that we can form a clearer view than with many German authors of the period about the social context of his works.1 His first work, Der guote Gerhart, was written at the request of Rudolf of Steinach (Der guote Gerhart, 6826–30), a vassal in the service of the bishop of Constance. The Latin source for the religious legend Barlaam und Josaphat was supplied to Rudolf von Ems by Wido, abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Kappel (Barlaam und Josaphat, 144–7, 16057–74). Willehalm von Orlens was commissioned by a leading Staufen ministerialis, the imperial butler Conrad of Winterstetten (Willehalm von Orlens, 15649–65). Rudolf worked on his Alexander in two stages, with a break at line 5015. There is a consensus that after this break Rudolf wrote Willehalm von Orlens and only then returned to work on Alexander. Rudolf does not name a sponsor in his Alexander, but there is every indication that this work too was connected with the Staufen court; and he names no less a figure than King Conrad IV as the sponsor of his Weltchronik (Weltchronik, 21656–710). At the latest with Willehalm von Orlens, Rudolf’s work thus moves into close contact with Staufen court circles. Warfare plays a particularly prominent role in the two works of Rudolf’s that are most concerned with secular, aristocratic values: the romance Willehalm von Orlens and the story of the conqueror king Alexander. These two works form the basis for the present study.

II The ideas and practices of military conflict were, in the thirteenth century, integral to the lives of the secular nobility that formed Rudolf’s main target audience, for these were men who saw the use of arms as a birthright and a mark of social status. More specifically, warfare had a sharp contemporary relevance to the Staufen nobility during Rudolf’s literary career. Rudolf’s literary patron for Willehalm von Orlens, Conrad of Winterstetten, had a prominent position in Staufen imperial and royal circles. He was a trusted adviser to Emperor Frederick II and was involved in the upbringing and the rule of the two sons of Frederick who were successively kings of Germany at early ages during the lifetime of their father, and during Rudolf’s career: Henry VII and Conrad IV (Brackert, pp. 26–7). Henry was born in 1211 and elected king in 1220. During the 1220s Frederick entrusted the young Henry’s upbringing to Conrad of Winterstetten and a number of other leading Staufen figures while he (Frederick) attended to affairs in Italy. There were growing signs of discord between Henry and his advisors, and Henry and his father, from the late 1220s on. In autumn 1234 Henry was in open rebellion against his father, with armed conflict between the opposing 1

50

On Rudolf’s patrons and the social environment of his works see Schröder; v. Ertzdorff, pp. 48–113; Brackert passim; Bumke, Mäzene, pp. 16–17, 250–2, 261–2, 274–7.

Warfare in the Works of Rudolf von Ems supporters from November 1234 until Henry submitted himself in July 1235 (Weller). As a rebel son, Henry was stripped of his royal status and held captive by his father until his early death in southern Italy in 1242.2 Conrad of Winterstetten seems to have held faith with the emperor in this conflict, for he does not appear as a witness with the rebellious young king after August 1234, but he does appear in the entourage of Frederick II immediately on his arrival in Germany in summer 1235 (Brackert, p. 27). The infant Conrad arrived in Germany with his father in 1235, aged seven. He was elected king of Germany in 1237, and Conrad of Winterstetten was one of the nobles under whose tutelage he was placed during his minority. Rudolf composed Willehalm von Orlens between the mid-1230s and Conrad of Winterstetten’s death in 1243. The work is not only a romance of love and chivalry but just as much a miroir de princes which provides detailed exemplary evocations of aristocratic life and mentality, with a particular focus on the education and the passage from youth to lordship of the hero Willehalm, who becomes duke of Brabant and finally king of England. As a work of aristocratic didacticism Willehalm von Orlens reflects in literary form something of the important political role of Rudolf’s patron as adviser and protector to the young King Conrad, presenting a range of social and political situations calculated to offer prescriptions for ideal sentiment and action in contrast with the negative example of Conrad’s elder brother.3 Warfare is an integral part of this literary programme of aristocratic education. In terms of military action, Willehalm von Orlens contains a fairly detailed account of a pitched battle, descriptions of two tournaments and the preliminaries to a third, and several brief sketches of other military encounters. The pitched battle (911–1484) is a prearranged encounter between the armies of Willehalm of Orlens (who is lord of Hainault and the hero’s father) and Jofrit, duke of Brabant, who becomes the hero’s adopted father. The battle is an attempt to bring a decisive end to a longstanding state of enmity and feuding between the nobles of Brabant and Hainault. Both sides have agreed to bring the same number of knights onto the field. This agreement and the decision to settle the old disputes by military means give the battle something of the ritual quality of a judicial duel. The battle is fought in earnest with many deaths, and Rudolf’s account contains much pragmatic military detail.4 On the eve of the encounter Willehalm arranges his battle order by dividing his army into five divisions of 400 knights, each under a leader, a vürste who has a standard, or banner (911–35). Jofrit of Brabant divides his knights into four divisions of 500 knights, also grouped around leaders and a 2

For an account of the relations between Henry and Frederick and the political and personal background to their conflict, see Stürner, pp. 116, 126–9, 275–309. 3 On the subject, see also Brackert, pp. 240–4 and Weigele-Ismael, pp. 27–8. 4 The accounts of battles in Willehalm von Orlens and in Alexander are discussed in detail in the light of battle descriptions in earlier German literature by Pütz, pp. 161–213.

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W. H. Jackson standard (947–73). These details correspond closely to the deployment of cavalry in real pitched battles of the period, where 1,500 to 2,000 horsemen, comprising ‘elementary tactical units called “banners” ’, might be deployed across a battlefield one kilometre wide.5 Willehalm has an overall battle plan in that he orders one of his five divisions to stay in reserve and not enter the battle until a late stage, as fresh troops (936–44): a move that is successfully implemented in the course of the battle (1205ff). The victory of Willehalm’s army is thus presented as a consequence not only of strength and courage, but also of tactical planning. The approach to battle is accompanied by military music, ‘raise notten’ (1005), from flutes, drums and fiddles, which is intended to heighten the joy and strengthen the resolve of the combatants (1000–10). The action on the battlefield itself (1063–364) is vividly described and shows an essential tactic of mounted combat, that is to say groups charging through the enemy line in attempts to break up the enemy’s formation.6 Passages of arms between individuals are referred to in the fighting, but the main focus remains on group combat. Rudolf pays particular attention to the role of standard bearers as key figures in the course of the battle. This again points to the importance of group action in mounted combat, and provides a lively dramatic moment with the capture of Jofrit’s standard-bearer, Count Lembekin (1287–1301). Lembekin’s capture is the decisive turning point in the battle: because Jofrit’s men no longer have a visible rallying point when their leader tries to gather them, they are unable to keep an effective battle order and Jofrit is forced to flee (1305–32). The literary focus on standard bearers in Willehalm von Orlens matches the importance of these figures in historically real battles of the time, and Rudolf indicates this link by commenting as narrator that Jofrit’s knights were disoriented by the lack of a visible standard ‘als es noch geschiht’, ‘as still happens’ (1316).7 Finally the end of the battle touches on a major problem of military action in the thirteenth century, the relation of individual booty and collective discipline, as Willehalm’s men are so preoccupied with taking booty and ransom from the defeated enemy that few of them support their leader Willehalm in his pursuit of Duke Jofrit (1336–64), with fatal consequences 5 6 7

52

See Contamine, p. 229. Willehalm von Orlens 1072–8; see also Pütz, pp. 168–9. On the importance of the standard in real warfare see Pütz, p. 171 and Verbruggen, pp. 89–91. Rudolf’s account reads like a textbook illustration of the tactical significance of the standard in medieval warfare as described by Verbruggen: ‘Once the standard was down, the men no longer had a rallying-point, and they could not form new units out of widely scattered men, as the lord of Valkenburg was able to do at Worringen [5 June 1288], for the organic connection between the formations was lost, and since this betokened defeat, they fled. This should effectively dispel the notion that the fighting took place in the form of duels. If it was not done in units, it would not have mattered whether the flag was flying or not, since each man had to choose only one opponent in order to go on fighting. Besides, it would have been unnecessary to draw units up in formation before the battle’ (p. 91).

Warfare in the Works of Rudolf von Ems for Willehalm who, while victorious on the field, is killed in this pursuit. The risks involved in an undisciplined pursuit of booty and ransom by a victorious army were evidently recognised by military leaders in the thirteenth century; for instance at the end of the battle of Bouvines (27 July 1214) the French king Philip Augustus ordered that his men should not pursue the fleeing enemy for more than a mile as night was falling, and he feared that important prisoners might escape during the pursuit.8 On this point too, a thirteenth-century audience could be alerted by Rudolf’s literary account to the tactical importance of maintaining discipline precisely at the euphoric moment of victory. The passages of arms and the attendant social circumstances of three tournaments are described in some detail in Willehalm von Orlens, on lines 5915–6826, 7096–958 and 8313–527. Rudolf’s descriptions hold much interest for the broader history of the tournament. Here only some salient points will be raised that throw light on the military dimension of these accounts. First, as is often the case in thirteenth-century German literature, tourneying marks the entry of the young noble into military manhood, as tournaments are the first military events that Willehalm takes part in after his knighting ceremony, which is also described at length (5659–884). Only mounted knights take part in the military exchanges at the tournaments, wearing full battle armour. The only weapons mentioned are the noble weapons: lance and sword. Individual combat plays a more prominent role in these events than in the portrayal of serious warfare, but even in Rudolf’s accounts individual jousting takes place primarily before the tournament proper, while the main military action in the tournament itself is combat between groups in a melee that is close in style to the pitched battle of serious warfare. Rudolf does not speak of the weapons used in the tournaments as differing in sharpness from those of serious warfare. However, while the battle between Willehalm and Jofrit involved fatalities and serious injury the narrator speaks in the tournaments only of ‘swarzer búlan vil’, ‘many black bruises’ (6705, 7701), which perhaps suggests blunt weapons.9 A striking feature of Rudolf’s tournament descriptions is the attention he pays to the discussions held about how to divide the participants into sides and what terms of ransom and booty to agree on (6529–87). This is characteristic of Rudolf’s interest in the role of negotiation in military life, a topic to which we shall return. Historical research has shown that pitched battles in open country were 8 9

See Verbruggen, p. 255; Duby, p. 219. The earliest explicit reference to blunt weapons in the tournament in German sources comes around 1270–1280 in Albrecht’s Jüngerer Titurel (Jackson, p. 271; Bumke, Höfische Kultur, p. 356). Interestingly, the Jüngerer Titurel also connects blunt swords with the inflicting of bruises, ‘bulen’ (2239), which strengthens the view that already Rudolf was thinking of blunt weapons in his tournament scenes.

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W. H. Jackson actually relatively rare in the Middle Ages. For all the dramatic impact of battles in literature, and of battles that actually took place, they were more often avoided by leaders as involving too much risk, and warfare in the thirteenth century far more often took the form of skirmishing, small raids, pillaging and siege actions.10 In portraying the hero’s fortunes later in the narrative Rudolf presents brief sketches of all these forms of action. Willehalm chooses a small stone bridge as a place for his raiding party to defend themselves against pursuers (9147–319). In a large-scale war of aggression, the kings of Denmark, Estonia and Livonia lay waste to the kingdom of Norway with plunder and fire; roup and brant (10778) are the typical actions of feud warfare in German sources.11 Amelot, king of Norway, responds to the aggression by choosing his strongest fortified places to defend and leaving the weaker places unprotected (10815–23). Later Alan, king of Ireland, pillages the lands of Abbess Savine and lays siege to her fortresses (11822–33). The hero’s career thus includes military undertakings that would have been recognised as part of the fabric of real life by his audience. For instance the war between the young King Henry and his father (1234–35) was largely a matter of siege warfare as Henry’s supporters withdrew to their castles, and Frederick laid siege to ten fortresses at the same time.12 And whereas the tournaments were a matter only for mounted knights, archers and ‘sarjande’ appear beside the knights in the later military actions in Rudolf’s romance.13 Informative as Willehalm von Orlens is about military actions, these are developed far less extensively than are scenes of social interaction at courts; and throughout the work Rudolf shows a keen interest in the broader social, ethical, diplomatic and political dimensions of warfare, the ways in which military action connects with other aspects of aristocratic life. Military and social values interpenetrate strikingly in Rudolf’s account of the death of Willehalm père (1365–484). Willehalm, in hot pursuit of the fleeing Jofrit, fails to see that he is accompanied by only a handful of knights. Jofrit flees into his own town Nivel (Nivelles, in Brabant), where Willehalm’s men are surrounded by ‘die sarjande von der stat’ ‘the militiamen of the town’ (1415). Willehalm, recognising the danger of the situation, calls on his small company to defend themselves as best they can against the common sarjande until they might be rescued by highborn men who are moved by knightly considerations (‘ritters pris’, 1407). The sarjande, armed with spears and bows and other weapons, hack Willehalm to death, despite the attempts of their own lord, Jofrit, to rescue his enemy but fellow noble (1436–75).

10 11 12 13

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On the subject, see Contamine, pp. 219–28. See Brunner, pp. 79–86 and Hagenlocher, pp. 250–1. See Weller, p. 179. Archers are mentioned in Willehalm lines 8741, 9232, 10804; and ‘sarjande’, lines 10739, 10745, 10750, 10801.

Warfare in the Works of Rudolf von Ems Willehalm’s surviving companions manage to defend themselves until they are rescued by ‘edel ritter wert’, ‘noble and worthy knights’ (1480), who accept their swords in surrender and guarantee them safe conduct. Jofrit, ashamed and enraged that a noble knight has been killed in this way without mercy in his (Jofrit’s) town, has the killers executed and their families driven away (1485–91). The account of Willehalm’s death expresses a hierarchical mentality that saw the orderly conduct of warfare as a transaction of honour and trust between those of knightly status, a transaction in which common footsoldiers, who were increasing in importance in the conduct of real wars and in the defence of towns in the thirteenth century, were thought by aristocratic circles to have at best a doubtful place. In this sense the passage takes its place in a powerful, ideologically motivated strand of aristocratic commentary about the killing propensities of infantry as opposed to the giving of quarter by knights that appears in situations as far apart as the battle of Bouvines, the conflicts between Scottish and English armies in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and the defeat of French knighthood by the militiamen of the Flemish towns at Courtrai in 1302.14 Rudolf is attentive to the forms of declaration of war and to the proper grounds for hostilities. Count Baldewin acts as emissary for King Witekin of Denmark, warning Amelot of Norway that Witekin will make war against him if he does not do homage (10522–677), and King Amelot sends Count Morant to propose an honourable settlement to King Alan of Ireland, failing which Amelot will make war on Alan (11932–12011). Alan is portrayed as an aggressive king who attacks the abbess Savine ‘ane alles reht’, ‘without good cause’ (12366), and we hear that it was God’s will that Alan was defeated by Amelot’s forces (12367–8). War appears here, as often in thirteenth-century thinking, as a judgement of God, with victory going to the side that fights for a just cause. The medieval aristocracy, as well as asserting the right to press its claims by force in countless feuds, also developed over the centuries a wide range of non-violent practices for settling conflicts and devoted much energy to establishing peaceful relations after armed hostilities.15 In the political 14

See Duby, pp. 37, 58, 138–46, 211; Strickland, pp. 42–3. On the distinction between knights (and squires) and non-noble soldiers in the laws of war relating to ransom and killing, see also Stacey, p. 36. Rudolf’s negative portrayal of the sarjande of Nivelles might be connected specifically with the routiers known as Brabançons, who appear in historical sources of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, including accounts of the battle of Bouvines (Duby, pp. 58, 138), as distinct from knightly forces and as particularly brutal in their style of fighting. The Brabançons stemmed largely from the provinces of Brabant, Flanders and Hainault (Contamine, p. 244), which also form the setting for the conflict between Willehalm and Jofrit. 15 Much attention has been devoted to medieval conflict settlement in recent research; for valuable studies of the German evidence see Althoff, Spielregeln and ‘Genugtuung’, and Kamp.

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W. H. Jackson education of a thirteenth-century ruler, warfare was indeed intimately connected with mediation and negotiation, and here again Rudolf is in tune with the political climate of his time, for he shows particular interest in the negotiation of settlements to avert or end hostilities. Philip, king of France, is related to both Willehalm and Jofrit, and he and various lords spiritual and temporal bring heavy diplomacy to bear in an attempt to avert the battle between the two (306–464); the spiritual lords make a last-minute attempt at conciliation on the eve of the battle (743–8). The failure of these attempts at mediation does nothing to lessen the force of the close parallels they show with mediation processes in historical reality, which often proceeded from family ties, and in which kings and bishops played a leading part.16 After the battle Jofrit makes peace with the king by swearing an oath of purgation, and the reconciliation is marked by the release of prisoners (2582–8). The terms of peace after the cessation of hostilities between Amelot of Norway and his enemies are secured by hostages (11631ff). Wise rulers try to negotiate peaceful settlements of disputes, but they keep the threat of war as a means of strengthening their negotiating position (11909ff); the abbess Savine similarly takes advice as to how she might bring about a firm peace after the military defeat of her enemy Alan of Ireland (12305ff). All this is close to the real world of aristocratic transactions around warfare in the thirteenth century. Witekin of Denmark and Alan of Ireland both lead wars of aggression, and Willehalm’s prominence in their defeat shows his surpassing military prowess. However, it is characteristic of Rudolf’s approach to warfare that Willehalm also brings about lasting peace between former enemies by proposing a series of marriage alliances (13683–737). Marriage forms a convenient link between the real world of thirteenth century power-broking and the fictive world of literature, and Rudolf exploits this link amply in the closing stages of the romance, where a series of great counsel and negotiation scenes establish peace between warring parties by marriage settlements. The narrative also shows forward movement in this complex of negotiation and warfare, as the stubborn refusal on the part of Willehalm and Jofrit to accept a mediated settlement to their dispute leads to unnecessary bloodshed and the death of the hero’s father in the opening of the romance,17 while the mastery of reconciliation shown by the young Willehalm in the later stages of the work brings new political alliances where formerly enmity had ruled. The young hero Willehalm thus emerges as a great warrior and a wise counsellor, and he goes on to exercise exemplary rule. Indeed throughout Willehalm von Orlens warfare is placed in a larger political framework in relation to peace and justice. More specifically, Rudolf presents warfare beside the maintenance of peace and justice as an expression of the power and 16 17

56

See Kamp, pp. 130–55, and 210–15. For a critical reading of the conflict between Willehalm and Jofrit, see also Schnell, pp. 23–4.

Warfare in the Works of Rudolf von Ems authority of the ruler. This topic of warfare and government will be foregrounded again in Rudolf’s treatment of the world conqueror Alexander. With some nineteen complete manuscripts and twenty-nine fragments known from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, Willehalm von Orlens seems to have been one of the most widely transmitted romances of the German Middle Ages.18 Five of these manuscripts contain illustrations. One of the earliest complete Willehalm manuscripts, Cgm 63 in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, from the late thirteenth century, probably around 1270/1280,19 contains a series of twenty-seven full page illustrations, each comprising two frames, which document the narrative pictorially. The original rich colours of the miniatures have been almost completely lost, but the figures and much detail are still clearly discernible. The illustrations are reproduced in full in Erika Weigele-Ismael’s valuable study (pp. 318–44). They follow the main points of the story, showing the fate of Willehalm père and, far more fully, the progress of the young noble Willehalm. Such extensive illustration is more characteristic of historical than of fictional texts at this time in Germany, and this feature matches the strong sense of historical reality in Rudolf’s narration. Of the twenty-seven sides of miniatures, thirteen contain some military reference. Folio 7r shows the meeting of Willehalm and Jofrit and the ensuing battle (fig. 1), with the knights wearing full armour and helms and wielding swords. Folio 12r shows Willehalm’s fatal pursuit of Jofrit and his death at the hands of the town militia who are shown wearing simpler headgear than the knights and using spears and axes (fig. 2). Folio 56v shows the tournament at Poy, with a lance joust in the upper frame and ‘grogierer’, ‘criers’ (6462, 6471 – an early form of herald) wearing tabards in the lower frame (fig. 3). Folio 81r shows knights driving a herd of cattle and men besieging a castle; these scenes relate to the aggressor King Witekin’s pillaging in Norway and his siege of King Amelot’s capital city, Galverne (fig. 4). Folio 86v shows the hero Willehalm defeating the aggressor Gutschart in single combat and accepting his surrender (fig. 5). Other illustrations include Willehalm’s knighting (fol. 44v), a tournament melee with swords (fol. 53r), and the skirmish at the bridge (fol. 68r). The miniatures in Cgm 63 thus confirm the importance of military life for the contemporary reception of Willehalm von Orlens, and they illustrate visually some of the main technical, social and ideological features of warfare as it appears in Rudolf’s text.

18 19

See Weigele-Ismael, p. 11. See Weigele-Ismael, pp. 15–16.

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III Warfare is a pervasive theme in Rudolf’s Alexander. Moreover, whereas we do not know the French source that Rudolf used for Willehalm von Orlens, for Alexander he draws chiefly on the Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus, who produced his History of Alexander probably in the first century A.D. A comparison of Rudolf’s text with that of Curtius throws light on the German author’s interests and alterations, and on broader similarities and differences between the Roman period and the thirteenth century. It is essential for an understanding of the role and significance of warfare in Rudolf’s narrative to note that, while he does little to change the course of events in Curtius, he presents Alexander in a different light. Rudolf focuses the narrative more exclusively than Curtius does on the figure of Alexander himself, often reducing the colourful wider canvas of the Roman historian. More importantly, Rudolf offers an emphatic idealisation of Alexander that informs the presentation of his thoughts and actions on and off the battlefield, as general and as king. Alexander is an outstanding general already in Curtius’s work, but Curtius also presents a darker side to the Macedonian king, showing how his good fortune corrupts him and pointing to his pride, his irascibility, his unjust killings, his drunkenness and sexual debauchery beside the continuing positive aspects of his character.20 Rudolf cuts or reshapes all these negative features, making Alexander a less complex figure psychologically than he is in Curtius, but a more exemplary leader. Rudolf emphasises time and again, in narrator commentary, in the words of the characters and in the shaping of the action, the importance of intelligence, wisdom, skill, planning, discipline and good man-management for success in warfare. This message is concentrated in the portrayal of Alexander as the exemplary soldier and general, with the terms witze, wîsheit, kunst, zuht and the like running as leitmotifs through the narration of Alexander’s actions and thoughts. The saelde and heil, the good fortune that Alexander traditionally enjoys, is underpinned in Rudolf’s work by his personal qualities, so that the German Alexander reads at one level as a guide to good generalship. As far as the pragmatics of military encounters are concerned, Rudolf describes the battles of Issus and Arbela and the siege of Tyre in some detail, and he has shorter accounts of many other military engagements.21 In the battle descriptions Rudolf follows Curtius for the numbers of cavalry and

20 21

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See Heckel, pp. 12–13. The battles of Issus and Arbela are described on lines 6911–7546 and 11635–12812 of the Alexander (ed. Junk), and the siege of Tyre on lines 8893–9440.

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Figure 1. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 63, fol. 7r: Jofrit and Willehalm père meet at the lance which signals their dispute; battle in progress between their armies. All plates are reproduced by kind permission of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.

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Figure 2. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 63, fol. 12r: Willehalm pursues Jofrit; Willehalm is killed by sarjande.

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Figure 3. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 63, fol. 56v: tournament at Poy, showing lance joust and grogierer wearing tabards with heraldic decoration.

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Figure 4. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 63, fol. 81r: armed knights drive a herd of cattle; siege of Galverne.

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Figure 5. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 63, fol. 86v: combat between Willehalm and Gutschart; Gutschart’s surrender.

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W. H. Jackson infantry, and in describing scythed chariots.22 On the other hand the battle descriptions are amongst those parts of the text where Rudolf makes his most substantial alterations to Curtius, and he does so in order to bring these descriptions into line with medieval concepts and practices. Thus Rudolf alters Curtius’s account of the battle of Issus to have the various contingents attack in the sequence in which they were arranged in the battle order. This sequential attack follows the pattern of Rudolf’s own Willehalm von Orlens and it matches the tactics of real battles in the Middle Ages, in which the line of battle ‘was rarely engaged at a single clash, but section by section’.23 Rudolf introduces another new element into the battle of Issus when he orders his men to construct a letze, a defensive fortification from which they can make sorties and to which they can return for rest (6973–80). This fortification contributes to the success of the Macedonian army and is referred to several times during the battle.24 The construction of the letze is a typical example of Alexander’s intelligent tactical thinking.25 In broader terms this action is characteristic of the medieval concern with fortified places and defensive works, and it is a mark of Rudolf’s attention to the tactics of contemporary warfare that he twice evokes the situation of men defending a letze in Willehalm von Orlens, on lines 7796–800 and 12085–136. The besieging of fortified places is one of the strongest links connecting warfare in the ancient world with that of the Middle Ages, and Rudolf exploits this link when he follows the main lines of Curtius’s account of the siege of Tyre. Rudolf places the siege of Tyre close to his German audience’s experience when he comments that the defenders fought ‘as men still do who are subject to attack’ (9068–9), and he adds a feature unknown to Curtius when he has the citizens of Tyre use Greek Fire to burn Alexander’s siege engines (8929–34). Greek Fire seems to have been a Byzantine invention of the seventh century that was used in the West from the mid-twelfth century. The Staufen emperor Frederick deployed Greek Fire at the siege of Viterbo in 1243, though with unfortunate results, since a change in the wind caused 22

See Alexander, lines 11659–81; Curtius IV, ix, 5. On scythed chariots used by Persian and Hellenistic armies in the ancient world, see The Hutchinson Dictionary of Ancient and Medieval Warfare, pp. 67–8. The Gesta Frederici I. Imperatoris in Lombardia refers to similarly armed vehicles in 1160 in a conflict between Milan and the emperor. Here the Milanese mounted men and infantry set out with the familiar Italian carroccio and with a hundred other small chariots (or carts) prepared by the Milanese engineer Guintelmus, which were shaped like shields at the front and surrounded with sharp irons made from scythes: ‘cum carocero et aliis plaustrellis centum – que Guintelmus fecerat, que quasi ad modum scuti facta fuerunt in fronte; et in giro erant circumdata precidentibus ferris factis de falcibus pradariis’ (Italische Quellen über die Taten Kaiser Friedrichs I. in Italien und der Brief über den Kreuzzug Kaiser Friedrichs I., ed. Schmale, p. 268). I am indebted to Holger Berwinkel (Marburg) for this twelfth-century reference to vehicles armed with scythes. 23 On the parallel with Willehalm von Orlens, see Pütz, pp. 187–8; on medieval battle tactics, see Contamine, p. 230. 24 See Alexander, lines 7153ff, 7212ff, 7316ff. 25 See Pütz, pp. 184–5.

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Warfare in the Works of Rudolf von Ems his own siege engines to catch light; the material would have been known and feared by the military men in Rudolf’s audience.26 The armies include cavalry and infantry in Curtius’s and Rudolf’s works. However, in the accounts of pitched battles, the focus is already mainly on cavalry in the Roman work, and Rudolf goes further to describe the equipment and the fighting techniques of the cavalry in thirteenth-century, knightly terms. The account of knehte (squires) arming the ritter before the battle of Issus (6891–910) has no equivalent in Curtius; it is Rudolf’s own creation, and the armour is that of thirteenth-century knights, including hauberk, chausses, helm with fitted crest and horse-covers. Later, in a single challenge combat between Satibarzanes and Erigyius, Curtius has Satibarzanes throw his spear (VII, iv, 36), but in Rudolf’s version the two opponents break their spears in a tjoste (21228), a joust, where the shock charge is so strong that it forces the horses back onto their haunches (21237–8). Clearly the ancient use of the spear as a throwing weapon has here given place to the couched lance as a shock weapon. The use of military music to accompany the charge of contingents in battle is another medieval motif that Rudolf adds to Curtius’s narrative (12234–41). Warfare is no less intimately bound up with social, ethical and political values in Alexander than was the case in Willehalm von Orlens; and Rudolf’s treatment of Curtius’s life of Alexander shows paradigmatic alterations in precisely these areas. The military distinction between cavalry and infantry acquires additional overtones of social hierarchy in Rudolf’s version. Thus, Rudolf departs from Curtius and follows the contemporary custom of precedence by consistently mentioning ritter before sarjande.27 He also introduces a new distinction placing cavalry on a higher level than infantry when he has Alexander decree that in the division of spoils, material objects shall go to the sarjande, whilst captives shall be left to the ritter to ransom as they see fit (7075–80). With these shifts of presentation Rudolf transports into his account of the ancient world the social distinctions between knights and lesser men that were becoming increasingly marked in thirteenth-century Germany. Rudolf pays close attention to questions of motivation and morale in warfare, and he makes a large alteration to the mentality of warfare vis-à-vis Curtius by including the inspiration of women as an impetus to battle. In a typical address to his army before the key battle of Arbela, Alexander urges his men to take courage from the thought of women (12086–8) while his enemy Darius, king of Persia, tries to spur his army on by pointing out that they outnumber the Macedonians six to one (12140–1) and that he will have all the enemy killed if he is victorious (12160–2). Darius is defeated in the ensuing battle, and here the German author privileges by the judgement of battle a military mentality that includes the latest in aristocratic cultural 26 27

On Greek fire, see Bradbury, esp. pp. 277 and 151. See Fechter, p. 145.

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W. H. Jackson values (service of women) over a less civilised attitude that relies on strength in numbers and shows no quarter to the defeated. Alexander also accepts ethical constraints in his form of engagement with the enemy. Again before the battle of Arbela, Alexander’s leading generals advise him to attack Darius’s army under cover of darkness and while the army is at rest (11815–51). Alexander rejects the advice on the grounds that such covert action is fit only for robbers and murderers, while he will fight openly and according to the dictates of êre and triuwe, honour and good faith (11852–78). The passage has a general validity in illustrating how, as Maurice Keen has pointed out,28 knightly honour was a factor of great importance in the conventions of war in the Middle Ages. Moreover, Rudolf here follows Curtius (IV, xiii, 8–9) in relating Alexander’s scruples, and this is a reminder that the medieval criterion of knightly honour in warfare also draws on the classical concern with gloria exhibited by Alexander in Curtius’s work (IV, xiii, 9). Characteristically, however, Curtius’s Alexander follows up his principled rejection of his generals’ advice by adding that such a night attack would be fruitless anyway because the enemy will be under guard (IV, xiii, 10), while Rudolf omits this pragmatic consideration, presenting Alexander as being moved solely by the concern for honour and good faith. In the aftermath of victory Rudolf’s Alexander shows magnanimity in his humane treatment of the vanquished and of captives, and this quality extends to Alexander’s army in general: whereas Curtius tells how Alexander’s milites plundered and raped with the cruelty and licence of the victor (‘victoris crudelitas ac licentia’, III, xi, 22) after the battle of Issus, Rudolf transforms them into disciplined knights (ritter) who treat the captive women with utmost tact and sympathy (7547–72). However, even in Rudolf’s version, Alexander at times exacts stern retribution by ordering capital punishment. Before the siege of Tyre its citizens violate Alexander’s honour by killing the emissaries he has sent to negotiate terms and flinging them into the sea before Alexander’s eyes (8764–72). After the siege, Rudolf follows Curtius (IV, iv, 17) in having Alexander put 2000 Tyreans to death, and the German author comments that this was done to avenge the shame done to the Macedonian king by the citizens (9407–20).29 Later Dimnus, a member of Alexander’s own army, plots 28 29

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Keen, The Laws of War, p. 20. The high figure of two thousand men put to death on Alexander’s command after the siege of Tyre doubtless springs from Rudolf’s principle of fidelity to his source on numbers (Fechter, p. 145), even though he often modifies Curtius in ethical and psychological interpretations. However, in the Middle Ages too siege warfare was conducted at times with great savagery, and when a city was taken by force (as is the case with Tyre), ‘almost any licence was condoned’ on the victor’s part (Keen, p. 121). Keen’s discussion of the special, harsh rules of medieval siege warfare (pp. 119–33) indicates that the burning of Tyre at Alexander’s command (Curtius IV, iv, 13; Rudolf 9383ff) would have been regarded as a legitimate step by a medieval audience. Curtius and Rudolf both indicate some constraint

Warfare in the Works of Rudolf von Ems against the king, and when his treachery is discovered he commits suicide in Curtius’s version (VI, vii, 29–30). Rudolf alters this to have Alexander himself order that Dimnus should suffer death by decapitation (19085–8). The mercy shown by Rudolf’s Alexander is thus not the Christian virtue of absolute forgiveness; it is a politically conditioned quality that stops short of condoning treachery against the king and offences against royal honour, and Rudolf goes further than the Roman author in presenting the king as the proper enactor of justice. As Wilfried Schouwink has argued,30 these and other acts of retribution do not suggest a critical attitude of the author towards Alexander but rather match a fierce strand in the practice of Staufen rule and convey the message that even the exemplary king may treat recalcitrant opponents with unmitigated severity. As in Willehalm von Orlens so in Alexander warfare is presented in a larger political framework; and the topic of warfare and government in Rudolf’s Alexander can usefully be approached through a comparison with another medieval treatment of the life of Alexander, the Alexandreis produced by Walter of Châtillon some time between 1176 and 1202. Like Rudolf von Ems, Walter drew chiefly on Curtius’s History of Alexander, and not only did Rudolf use the same Roman source as Walter, but also he knew and used Walter’s Alexandreis, especially for his account of Aristotle’s instruction of the young Alexander in the tasks of the ruler,31 so that a comparison of Rudolf’s Alexander and Walter’s Alexandreis can throw further light on the German work. Walter was a cleric who enjoyed the patronage of a leading church dignitary, William of the White Hands, archbishop of Reims, and his work clearly shows the intellectual influence of the northern French schools. Rudolf’s Alexander by contrast, for all its Latin learning, draws strongly on vernacular German literature for its style and presupposes a German aristocratic court as its target audience. The difference between the two works is marked for instance by Walter’s use of the Latin hexameter, and by his deployment of the classical world as a framework of learned reference and a source of imagery. Like Rudolf, Walter focuses on Alexander even more strongly than Curtius does, but while the French author’s selections in the portrayal of warfare seem guided by considerations of a clerical, learned target audience, Rudolf seems to have in mind more the concerns of those who exercise secular lordship. A striking instance of this difference is that whereas Walter in his accounts of Alexander’s military victories makes ‘no mention of the arrangements made by Alexander to rule the subdued areas’,32 Rudolf pays particular in Alexander’s treatment of the defeated Tyreans by having him respect the law of sanctuary for those who have taken refuge in temples (IV, iv, 13; 9400–6), and this parallel shows a further link between the ancient and the medieval world in the conventions of warfare. 30 Schouwink, pp. 140–5. 31 See Wisbey, pp. 100–8. 32 Pritchard, pp. 10–11.

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W. H. Jackson attention precisely to this aspect of the history of Alexander. When the people of Rhodes surrender to Alexander’s army the narrator asks the rhetorical question: ‘wie er besazte sîniu lant?’, ‘How did he settle his lands?’ (9468); and he goes on to tell how Alexander gave charge of various regions to different governors (following Curtius IV, v, 9). Such rhetorical questions indicate how a narrator wishes to respond to, or to steer, his audience’s reactions. Time and again Rudolf tells how Alexander arranges to rule the lands that he has conquered or annexed, and often the arrangements for rule are stated in medieval, feudal terms, with defeated lords receiving their lands again as fiefs from Alexander (‘lêhen’, 2557, 13315; ‘nâch manschaft’, 10695), and swearing ‘hulde’, fealty, to him (2848, 10565, 13307, 15081). Similarly Alexander distributes lands in fief as rewards to allies and to those who have served him in war.33 Warfare in Alexander thus leads to the formation of a great empire, the governance of which is described in terms of the ties of vassality and lordship that also shaped the social relations of Rudolf’s German audience. Indeed, in portraying Alexander’s wars, Rudolf von Ems seems to be at least as interested in the exercise of government as he is in the topic of conquest. In his accounts of warfare and the establishment of rule Rudolf pays particular attention to three related topics: the giving of counsel (rât), the relation between king and magnates (vürsten), and the securing of peace and justice. Willehalm von Orlens shows a similar political focus, and with this complex Rudolf’s texts process matters of immediate political concern in Staufen court circles.34 Throughout Willehalm von Orlens and Alexander Rudolf pays particular attention to scenes of counsel, not least in military contexts; and a major didactic theme in the works is that the ruler should listen to advice, and should do so with critical discrimination. We have seen, for instance, that Alexander does not follow advice when he deems it to run counter to his honour. The giving of counsel was of course an important political matter throughout feudal society, and it had special relevance in Staufen circles in Rudolf’s time, not least because of the problems of guidance that were posed by the young ages of the successive kings Henry VII and Conrad IV. Conrad of Winterstetten, for whom Rudolf wrote Willehalm von Orlens, was himself one of the leading advisors to the young King Henry, and then to the young King Conrad. Just how politically sensitive the giving of counsel to these sons of Emperor Frederick II was is indicated in a letter from the emperor to his son Conrad, reminding him that disobedience and false counsellors had led to the fall of his brother Henry, and urging him to listen to

33 34

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Such scenes occur on lines 9153–6, 13450–3, 18546–50, 21295–6. For detailed interpretations of Rudolf’s works in the light of Staufen concerns, see Brackert, especially pp. 67–9, 239–47; Schouwink, pp. 155–77.

Warfare in the Works of Rudolf von Ems good advice.35 Huillard-Bréholles dates the letter in 1244, the year in which Conrad, under whose patronage Rudolf was later to undertake his Weltchronik, was sixteen. It was around this age that the young king might have received Willehalm von Orlens, which Rudolf completed for Conrad’s mentor Conrad of Winterstetten before the latter’s death in 1243. Rudolf also shows special interest in the magnates known as vürsten, ‘princes’ in medieval German history, especially in their relation to the king or emperor.36 In Willehalm von Orlens the hero is a prince of the empire who receives his fief from the hands of the emperor as a child (3130–8), and in Alexander the vürsten are recurrently presented around Alexander in warfare and in scenes of counsel. However, the relation of king and princes was a matter of considerable tension involving armed conflict in Germany during Rudolf von Ems’s literary career. This relation was a major issue in the discord between the young King Henry VII and his father, Emperor Frederick II, from the late 1220s.37 Frederick relied on the princes as a crucial support to the crown in the business of government, while Henry entered into some conflict with them, not least by favouring support from towns. In 1229 Henry made an armed attack on Louis (Ludwig), duke of Bavaria and forced him into submission. Such action led to the princes asserting themselves in a more collective way. In 1231 they won confirmation of some of their rights from Henry in a statute that was confirmed by Frederick II in 1232. Rudolf’s patron, Conrad of Winterstetten, was a witness to Frederick’s confirmation of this statute.38 In 1233 Henry attacked the new duke of Bavaria, Otto, with a large army, forced his submission and took his son hostage. No clear grounds are known for this attack. It may have been an attempt at territorial aggrandisement, in which case King Henry would have been in the position of attacking an imperial prince for reasons of power politics and without sufficient legal grounds.39 This was precisely the kind of real-life situation in thirteenth-century German politics that underlies Rudolf von Ems’s literary concern with the proper grounds for armed conflict. In January 1235, after Henry’s open rebellion, Frederick wrote to all the imperial princes, describing them as the essential members of the empire of which he was head and condemning Henry as a rebellious son who had also failed in his duty towards the princes.40 When Frederick arrived in Germany in May the princes rallied to his cause almost without exception, and Henry’s rebellion was quickly put down. In the light of these events the concord between ruler and magnates that Rudolf recurrently presents in 35 36 37 38 39 40

See Schouwink, pp. 158 and 176–8, referring to the text of the letter in Huillard-Bréholles V, i, pp. 244–5. On the central role of the princes in the governance of Germany in the Middle Ages, see especially Arnold, Princes. For what follows on the conflict between Frederick and his son, see Stürner, pp. 275–309. See Weinrich, pp. 438 and 439, note 9. See Stürner, p. 300. See Stürner, pp. 303–4; text of letter in MGH Const. II, pp. 236–8, no. 193.

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W. H. Jackson Willehalm von Orlens and in Alexander has a particular relevance to the contemporary German political scene. There is a fundamental ambivalence to warfare in Rudolf’s works in that it is both a threat to ordered social life and the means whereby social order is restored, and it is characteristic of Rudolf’s concern with the political framework of war that he shows a strong narrative interest in the securing of peace and justice after military hostilities. Moreover, as Brackert has shown,41 the great scenes of the ruler’s establishing peace and justice in Willehalm von Orlens and in Alexander correspond in spirit and in some details to the Staufen peace edicts (Landfrieden) that reached a high point in the Mainz Imperial Peace of 1235, a wide-ranging act of legislation that sought ‘to define and to adjust the rights of three powerful parties, the royal dynasty, the German Church, and the secular princes into a mutual exercise of regional political authority fitted to the circumstances of thirteenth-century Germany’.42 Rudolf’s account of Alexander’s arrangement of the government of Persia after the defeat and death of King Darius (15125–211) exemplifies the difference between Curtius and Rudolf in their conception of Alexander as general and ruler, and indicates the contemporary political orientation of Rudolf’s work. At the equivalent point in Curtius’s text, Alexander is described as falling into a dissipated way of life after his victory (VI, ii, 1–2). Curtius’s Alexander is a great general but a flawed ruler who is unable to control himself once the pressure of military action is removed. Rudolf transforms this image of the Macedonian king, making him into a morally exemplary figure who combines perfectly the qualities of the great general and the great ruler. The German author drops Curtius as his source at this point in the narrative, gives no hint of moral dissipation, and takes up instead the Historia de preliis. Historia de preliis is a title used to describe the tradition of texts deriving from the account of Alexander’s achievements that was written by Archpriest Leo of Naples around 950; the wide and complicated spread of this tradition is discussed by Cary.43 The Historia tells how Alexander arranged the government of Persia after Darius’s death, and Rudolf expands and adapts his source here to provide an exemplary image of the establishment of government (15125–211) that reflects in its wording the contemporary Staufen concern with counsel and the co-operation of king and princes in the establishment of peace and justice.44 In the counsel chamber as on the battlefield Alexander appears as a historical precedent for the Staufen rulers. His disciplined army is a model for the German princes and knighthood in their relation to the ruling dynasty; and just as the military exchanges in Willehalm von Orlens and Alexander connect with the 41 42 43 44

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Brackert, pp. 67–79. Arnold, Medieval Germany, p. 156. See Cary, pp. 38–58. See Brackert, pp. 68–72.

Warfare in the Works of Rudolf von Ems contemporary German experience of warfare, so the concern with negotiated settlements and terms of peace in these works had a particular relevance in circles around the Staufen court in the years following the armed conflict between the forces of Henry VII and those allied to his father. Finally, warfare is not just a matter of secular government in Rudolf’s Alexander; it also plays a metaphysical role in the broad sweep of world history seen from a Christian standpoint, so that we see warfare from its beginning through to the end of the world. Rudolf departs from Quintus Curtius and draws on Christian authors to synchronise Alexander’s conquests with Old Testament history. Here he follows Christian tradition to see Nimrod, king of Babylonia, as the first ruler to introduce warfare into human life: ‘dô huop sich urliuges nôt’, ‘then the suffering of war arose’ (17141), and with the war between Nimrod and Pontibus, king of Pontus, ‘daz êrste urliuge huop sich an / daz lant mit lande ie gewan’, ‘the first war began that was conducted land against land’ (17147–8). Rudolf describes Alexander himself as God’s scourge, ‘Gotes geisel’ (10055), and he comments that Alexander’s victories were all at God’s command, as a punishment of the heathen (12873–909). Warfare accompanies the whole of human history in Rudolf’s works, as part of the divine plan, and he projects it into the future in Alexander when he draws on the tract known as the Pseudo-Methodius to include a prophecy of the end of the world (17319–573).45 In this excursus to his story of Alexander Rudolf taps into the rich stream of prophecies about the end of the world that became caught up in propaganda conflicts between Empire and Papacy in the thirteenth century. A key feature in this current was the notion of a Last Emperor who would introduce a period of peace and prosperity before the onset of Antichrist.46 In Rudolf’s eschatological narration warfare appears in a negative sense when the Ismaelites shall enslave the world with war, ‘mit urliug’ (17391), and in a positive sense when the last Roman king shall be sent by God to defeat the Ismaelites (17496–514) before the birth of Antichrist heralds the end of the world. Moreover, even this eschatological view of war is another allusive gesture in favour of the Staufen dynasty, for they were kings of the Romans in Rudolf’s time, and Brackert’s detailed analysis of Rudolf’s account of the last days47 leaves no doubt that the German author saw the victorious Last Emperor as stemming from the Staufen dynasty.

45

On Pseudo-Methodius see Reeves, pp. 300–1; on Rudolf’s use of the text see Brackert, pp. 188–93. 46 See Reeves, pp. 312–13. 47 Brackert, pp. 186–200.

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IV War is not an unchanging constant but subject to variation in different cultures and different periods of history, and subject to differing evaluations in different social contexts. Rudolf’s works illuminate key features of medieval practices and conceptions of warfare in a specific social context. In a military sense, Rudolf’s emphasis on the need for skill, foresight, planning and discipline in war, and his highlighting of military encounters as group combats, all match the findings of recent historians to dispel the view that thirteenth-century warfare was an individualist enterprise lacking in discipline and tactics. Or perhaps Rudolf was reacting against individualist tendencies in literary portrayals of military action and in actual warfare, in order to reinforce the need for discipline and tactical thinking. At any rate, the linking of prowess with wisdom that underlies Rudolf’s portrayal of warfare is not a merely abstract ideal but a recognition of the exigencies of real military action. Rudolf’s writing of war also matches the historical record by presenting war as being informed by social values of a hierarchical, legal and broadly political nature. The giving of quarter among knights carries aristocratic concepts into the theatre of war; the consideration of proper causes and the view of war as a judgement of God provide a legal framework of reference; and Rudolf shows particular interest in the politics and diplomacy of war, the bonding between ruler and nobles, the exercise of pressure by threat of force, the opening and closing of hostilities, the negotiation of settlements. As has recently been observed, war was often brutal in the Middle Ages, especially between classes or religions, and in sieges (and there are at least intimations of all these sources of brutality in Rudolf’s works), but the material interest and the mentality of those involved in medieval warfare also provided constraints that meant that warfare was neither anarchic nor total but ‘organised, regulated and limited’.48 The practice of violence in the form of armed combat was a key feature in the social self-understanding of the secular aristocracy in the thirteenth century,49 and it was also crucial to this self-understanding and to the cultural identity of the knightly nobility that the ethos of violence was accompanied by a range of legitimating constraints, however diverse might have been the force of these constraints in specific circumstances. Vernacular literature was an important vehicle for the formulation and transmission of this paradoxical complex of violence and constraint in the thirteenth century. Rudolf saw his own works as forming part of the developing canon of German literature, and in his treatment of warfare as in so many aspects of his works, literary stylisation is also intimately bound up 48 49

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Honig, p. 122. On the subject see Kaeuper.

Warfare in the Works of Rudolf von Ems with the pressures and possibilities of the real life of the German aristocracy around the Staufen court in the mid-thirteenth century.

Works Cited I. Sources Albrecht [von Scharfenberg?], Jüngerer Titurel, ed. Werner Wolf and Kurt Nyholm, 3 vols (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1955–1992). Curtius Rufus, Quintus, History of Alexander, Latin text with English trans. by John C. Rolfe, 2 vols (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1946; repr. 1956). Historia diplomatica Frederici secundi, Huillard-Bréholles, Jean Louis Alphonse, ed., 7 vols in 12 (Paris: Plon, 1852–61). Italische Quellen über die Taten Kaiser Friedrichs I in Italien und der Brief über den Kreuzzug Kaiser Friedrichs I., ed. and trans. Franz-Josef Schmale (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1986). MGH Const. II = Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Constitutiones et acta publica imperatorum et regum, ed. Ludwig Weiland, vol. 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1896). Rudolf von Ems, Der guote Gerhart, ed. John A. Asher (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1971; 2nd edn). Rudolf von Ems, Barlaam und Josaphat, ed. Franz Pfeiffer (Leipzig: Göschen, 1843; repr. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965). Rudolf von Ems, Willehalm von Orlens, ed. Victor Junk (Berlin: Weidmann, 1905; repr. Dublin and Zürich: Weidmann, 1967). Rudolf von Ems, Alexander, ed. Victor Junk, 2 vols (Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1928–9; repr. in one vol., Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1970). Rudolf von Ems, Weltchronik, ed. Gustav Ehrismann (Berlin: Weidmann, 1915; repr. Dublin and Zürich: Weidmann, 1967). Walter of Châtillon, The Alexandreis, trans., introduction and notes by R. Telfryn Pritchard (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1986). Weinrich, Lorenz, ed., Quellen zur deutchen Verfassungs-, Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte bis 1250 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1977).

II. Studies Althoff, Gerd, Spielregeln der Politik im Mittelalter: Kommunikation in Frieden und Fehde (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1997). Althoff, Gerd, ‘Genugtuung (satisfaction). Zur Eigenart gütlicher Konfliktbeilegung im Mittelalter’, in Modernes Mittelalter: Neue Bilder einer populären Epoche, ed. Joachim Heinzle (Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig: Insel, 1994), pp. 247–65. 73

W. H. Jackson Arnold, Benjamin, Princes and Territories in Medieval Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Arnold, Benjamin, Medieval Germany 500–1300: A Political Interpretation (Houndsmill and London: MacMillan, 1997). Brackert, Helmut, Rudolf von Ems: Dichtung und Geschichte (Heidelberg: Winter, 1968). Bradbury, Jim, The Medieval Siege (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992). Brunner, Otto, Land und Herrschaft: Grundfragen der territorialen Verfassungsgeschichte Österreichs im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1970; 6th edition). Bumke, Joachim, Mäzene im Mittelalter: Die Gönner und Auftraggeber der höfischen Literatur in Deutschland (Munich: Beck, 1979). Bumke, Joachim, Höfische Kultur: Literatur und Gesellschaft im hohen Mittelalter, 2 vols (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1986). Cary, George, The Medieval Alexander (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956). Contamine, Philippe, War in the Middle Ages, trans. Michael Jones (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984). Duby, Georges, Le Dimanche de Bouvines, 27 juillet 1214 (Paris: Gallimard, 1985; first publ. 1973). Ertzdorff, Xenja von, Rudolf von Ems: Untersuchungen zum höfischen Roman im 13. Jahrhundert (Munich: Fink, 1967). Fechter, Werner, Lateinische Dichtkunst und deutsches Mittelalter: Forschungen über Ausdrucksmittel, poetische Technik und Stil mittelhochdeutscher Dichtungen (Berlin: Schmidt, 1964). Hagenlocher, Albrecht, Der ‘guote vride’: Idealer Friede in deutscher Literatur bis ins frühe 14. Jahrhundert (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1992). Heckel, Waldemar, Introduction to Quintus Curtius Rufus: The History of Alexander, trans. John Yardley (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), pp. 1–15. Honig, Jan Willem, ‘Warfare in the Middle Ages’, in War, Peace and World Orders in European History, ed. Anja V. Hartmann and Beatrice Heuser (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 113–26. The Hutchison Dictionary of Ancient and Medieval Warfare, ed. Matthew Bennett (Oxford: Helicon, 1998). Jackson, William Henry, ‘Das Turnier in der deutschen Dichtung des Mittelalters’, in Das ritterliche Turnier im Mittelalter, ed. Josef Fleckenstein (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985), pp. 257–95. Kaeuper, Richard W., Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Kamp, Hermann, Friedensstifter und Vermittler im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001). Keen, Maurice H., The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages (London and Toronto: Routledge & Kegan Paul and University of Toronto Press, 1965). Pritchard, R. Telfryn, Introduction to trans. of The Alexandreis: see Walter of Châtillon. Pütz, Hans Henning, Die Darstellung der Schlacht in mittelhochdeutschen Erzähldichtungen von 1150 bis um 1250 (Hamburg: Helmut Buske, 1971). Reeves, Marjorie, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969). 74

Warfare in the Works of Rudolf von Ems Schnell, Rüdiger, Rudolf von Ems: Studien zur inneren Einheit seines Gesamtwerkes (Bern: Francke, 1969). Schouwink, Wilfried, Fortuna im Alexanderroman Rudolfs von Ems: Studien zum Verhältnis von Fortuna und Virtus bei einem Autor der späten Stauferzeit (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1977). Schröder, Edward, ‘Rudolf von Ems und sein Literaturkreis’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum 67 (1930): 209–51. Stacey, Robert C., ‘The Age of Chivalry’, in The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World, ed. Michael Howard, George J. Andreopoulos and Mark R. Shulman (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 27–39. Strickland, Matthew, ‘A Law of Arms or a Law of Treason? Conduct in War in Edward I’s Campaigns in Scotland, 1296–1307’, in Violence in Medieval Society, ed. Richard W. Kaeuper (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000), pp. 39–77. Stürner, Wolfgang, Friedrich II. Teil 2: Der Kaiser 1220–1250 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000). Verbruggen, J. F., The Art of Warfare in Western Europe during the Middle Ages from the Eighth Century to 1340, trans. Sumner Willard and Mrs R. W. Southern (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997). Weigele-Ismael, Erika, Rudolf von Ems: Wilhelm von Orlens: Studien zur Ausstattung und zur Ikonographie einer illustrierten deutchen Epenhandschrift des 13. Jahrhunderts am Beispiel des Cgm 63 der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1997). Weller, Karl, ‘Zur Kriegsgeschichte der Empörung des Königs Heinrich gegen Kaiser Friedrich II’, Württembergische Vierteljahrshefte für Landesgeschichte NF 4 (1895): 176–84. Wisbey, Roy, Das Alexanderbild Rudolfs von Ems (Berlin: Schmidt, 1966).

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Chronicling the Hundred Years War in Burgundy and France in the Fifteenth Century GEORGES LE BRUSQUE

T

HE PALADIN, the thug, and the soldier: with a touch of hyperbole, one could describe as such the three images which the French and Burgundian chroniclers of the later part of the Hundred Years War offer of the knight, the major actor of the Anglo-French wars. Beyond this, it was the chroniclers’ whole outlook on warfare which varied extensively, from the heroic vision of the Burgundian Georges Chastelain to the denunciation of the horrors of war by the Bourgeois de Paris, or the pragmatic perspective of the Berry Herald, alias Gilles Le Bouvier.1 These authors are exponents of three genres of chronicling wars which emerge when examining the historiographical scene in the Kingdom of France and the Duchy of Burgundy throughout the first sixty years of the fifteenth century. I propose to delineate these three groups, with reference to the chroniclers’ treatment of the period between Agincourt (1415) and the days of Joan of Arc, in 1429. We shall see how some of the men who witnessed these dramatic times of civil war and invasion approached them in writing, recording them for posterity.

THE CHIVALRIC CHRONICLES OF BURGUNDY The school of historiography which developed under the aegis of Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy may be the genre with which we are most familiar, as it exemplifies a favourite theme of modern scholars: the reverence professed by the nobility and the ruling class towards the ideals of chivalry at the close of the Middle Ages, in times when the evolution of tactics and the increasingly murderous character of war rendered this 1

This article is derived from my 2001 unpublished doctoral thesis, ‘From Agincourt (1415) to Fornovo (1495)’.

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Georges Le Brusque ideological decorum somewhat obsolete.2 Philip the Good, who was allied with the English until 1435, had high ambitions for his rich domain. In his attempt to put Burgundy on an equal footing with the old kingdoms of France and England, Philip adopted an impressive cultural policy, revolving around the ideals of chivalry. By posing as a champion of this worthy discipline, the Duke hoped to secure the allegiance of the Burgundian nobility.3 The promotion of a chivalrous historiography, which glorified the deeds performed by the Burgundian, French and English knights in the wars of the time, was an important element in Philip’s designs to increase the international prestige of his young state.4 Enguerrand de Monstrelet, who presented his chronicle to Duke Philip in 1447, may be regarded as the founder of the Burgundian chivalric chronicle, which culminated with the appointment of Georges Chastelain as the first official and remunerated historiographer of Burgundy in 1455. Although Chastelain and other exponents of the genre under Philip’s rule, such as the knight Jean de Wavrin or the herald Jean Le Fèvre de Saint-Rémy, made extensive use of Monstrelet’s narrative for the years 1400–1444, the genre underwent a visible evolution, from Monstrelet’s still unpretentious style to Chastelain’s bombastic presentation of Duke Philip’s first deeds of arms. The spiritual father of the Burgundian chivalric chronicle was Jean Froissart, who had recorded the martial deeds of Edward III, du Guesclin and the Black Prince in an epic prose style. Froissart had inflamed the imaginations of his aristocratic readers by presenting proesce as the martial virtue par excellence, and the stuff of which history was made. In a paragraph which is often quoted for its manifesto-like character, he argued that the name of preu was a treasure so dearly earned, that it would be a sin to allow the deeds performed by the disciples of prowess to be forgotten: J’ai ce livre [Jean Le Bel’s chronicle] hystoriiet et augmenté à la mienne, . . . sans faire fait, ne porter partie, ne coulourer plus l’un que l’autre, fors tant que li bien fais des bons, de quel pays qu’il soient, qui par proèce l’ont acquis, y est plainnement veus et cogneus, car de l’oubliier ou esconser, ce seroit pechiés et cose [chose] mal apertenans, car esploit d’armes sont si chierement comparet et achetet, che scèvent chil qui y traveillent, que on 2

On chivalry in the Late Middle Ages see in particular Howard, pp. 1–19; Fowler, pp. 140–81; Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages; Keen; and Vale. Vale has shown that it was wrong to overemphasize the decline of the knight in the fifteenth century: although Agincourt, like Crécy, Courtrai or Bannock Burn in the former century, did indicate the rise of infantry as a redoubtable tactical force, the heavy cavalrymen still found ways to remain an element of prime importance in late medieval armies until the beginning of the sixteenth century. 3 On the policy of the princes of royal blood (and primarily the Dukes of Burgundy) with regard to the French nobility in the Hundred Years War see Caron, pp. 141–205. 4 On politics and literature at the Valois court of Burgundy see Poirion’s ‘Préface’ and Régnier-Bohler’s ‘Introduction générale’ in Splendeurs de la cour de Bourgogne. Récits et chroniques, pp. i–xxix.

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Chronicling the Hundred Years War in Burgundy and France n’en doit nullement mentir pour complaire à autrui, . . . et donner à chiaus qui n’en sont mies digne.5 I have compiled and augmented this work [Jean Le Bel’s chronicle] . . . without doing anything, nor favouring any party, nor lending more colour to the deeds of the one side more than to those of the other, only ensuring that the good works of the good men, from whatever country, who performed them through prowess, should be clearly seen and known, for it would be a sin . . . to forget or neglect them, for feats of arms are so hard-earned and hard-won . . ., as those who perform them do know, that one should never tell lies so as to flatter anybody . . . nor attribute them to those who may not be worthy of them.

Froissart dedicated his chronicle to the recording of fine feats of arms, martial valour being the ruling criterion for inclusion in his work – the gateway to everlasting fame. In their prologues, the Burgundian chroniclers profess the same commitment to the recording of instances of Proèce. Monstrelet explained that it was only natural that the valiant men who had been involved as fighters in the recent dramatic events, often tragically, should be rewarded ‘en racomptant leurs vaillances, bonnes renommées et noble fais, quand pour eulx et leurs successeurs, est et doit estre dénoncé par les vivans, à durable mémoire’, ‘by relating their exploits, good fame and noble deeds, which must be exposed by the living, for everlasting memory’.6 They were the heroes of these epic times. As in Froissart, the knights in our chivalric chronicles act according to a well-established code of chivalry, which embellishes and distinguishes their way of waging war. They appear loyal to their lord, courageous, honourable, and courteous. In fact, the only major point of difference between Froissart and his Burgundian heirs lies in their increased partisan spirit. Froissart wrote for different patrons successively and may appear as relatively neutral; the Burgundian chroniclers on the other hand clearly uphold Philip’s policy. The wish to present a version of history that was favourable to their prince, already noticeable in Monstrelet, becomes blatant in the official chronicle of Chastelain. Thus the chroniclers excused Philip’s alliance with the English on the grounds that, as an honourable and chivalrous prince, Philip could not leave the murder of his father by the Dauphinists without response. Chastelain offers an interesting example as he relates how, in 1422, Philip the Good asked Henry V for assistance on his way to confront the Dauphin at Cosne-sur-Loire. The chronicler blames 5

J. Froissart, Chroniques, i, 2. Translations from the sources are my own; for Monstrelet and Jean de Wavrin I have taken my inspiration from The Chronicles of Enguerrand de Monstrelet, ed. and trans. T. Johnes; and A Collection of the Chronicles and ancient histories of Great Britain, now called England, by John de Wavrin, ed. and trans. W. Hardy and E. L. C. P. Hardy. 6 Monstrelet iv, 128. The prologue of Monstrelet’s second book does not appear in Thomas Johnes’ translation.

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Georges Le Brusque Henry V for responding positively and preparing to do more harm to the chrestien peuple of France, ‘jà-soit-ce-que ce fust plus en faveur de son allyé le duc de Bourgongne, de qui la querelle estoit de pitié, plus que pour la sienne propre’, ‘more to profit his ally the duke of Burgundy, whose case was pitiful, than to promote his own interests’. Chastelain was a francophile and deplored on many occasions the miseries of France during the Hundred Years War. Although he felt uneasy about Philip’s alliance with the English, the chronicler would not blame Philip’s policy: he insisted that his cause was just, more than that of Henry. Chastelain presents Philip’s plea for Henry’s support as a demonstration of humility – ‘non soy présumant en propre puissance’, ‘not presuming in his own strength’ – yet he criticises Henry’s eagerness to come with his army: the English king was actuated by profane vainglory.7 In the end, the Dauphin avoided the fight, as the combined forces of Henry and Philip were too great a challenge. One of the most interesting aspects of the chivalric chronicling of war is what has occasionally been described as the aesthetics of war.8 Written to please the noblesse d’épée, the noble military caste, the chroniclers often depicted war as a beautiful affair, both in the moral and physical sense. The aesthetic canons of chivalric warfare had been developed by Froissart, and they are eloquently expressed, for instance, in Jean de Wavrin’s report of Verneuil (1424), a battle which the knight ranked as the greatest among all those in which he had taken part because it was particularly fierce, with equal chances on both sides, and fought mainly by sheer bodily strength: Je vey l’assemblée d’Azincourt, ou beaucop y avoit plus de princes et de gens, et aussi celle de Crevant, quy fut une tres belle besongne ; mais pour certain celle de Verneuil fut du tout plus a redoubter et la mieulz combatue. I saw the battle of Agincourt, where there were far more princes and men, as well as that of Cravant, which was a very fine affair, yet certainly that of Verneuil was the most formidable, and the best fought.9

Wavrin equally praised the magnificence of the armies, and the spectacular character of the fight, as well as the courage and determination of the fighters. Such events brought out the best qualities in those who fought. A century earlier, Froissart had similarly declared that he thought more highly of the battle of Poitiers (1356) than of Crécy (1346): the chronicler was more sensitive to Poitiers – where King John was honourably captured – as

7

Chastelain (i, 321–2) talks of Henry V’s ‘convoitise . . . de régner en la gloire du monde’, his ‘desire to rule in the glory of the world’. 8 See for instance Huizinga, Homo Ludens, p. 96. 9 Wavrin iii, 109.

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Chronicling the Hundred Years War in Burgundy and France a show, than to the significant strategic lessons of Edward III’s earlier victory.10 As they were exceptional events, opposing major armies led by the flower of nobility, and almost viewed as appeals to the judgement of God,11 battles were seen as the most outstanding events in a knight’s career. Monstrelet, Wavrin and Saint-Rémy devoted pages and pages of their works to the sensational and dramatic battle of Agincourt, which had shaken them tremendously, as it had the rest of the kingdom. In many respects, Agincourt broke with the chivalric traditions, and the chroniclers were rather disconcerted. They were abashed, for instance, at the appearance of King Henry’s archers, who for the most part had no armour on, and wore their hose below the knee, some even going barefoot.12 The aesthetic standards of chivalric warfare were upset. Yet this riff-raff could utterly destroy the splendid heavy cavalry of France. The chroniclers did not really stop to draw conclusions from the success of the English tactics; instead they dwelt on the forlorn courage and valour of the knights, who had come running to the battle ‘comme se ce fust à aller à une festes de joustes ou de tournoy’, ‘as if they were going to a festive joust or tournament’, to quote Saint-Rémy (i, 128). They recounted many a story of brave and hopeless deeds, such as the vain prowess exhibited by Duke Antoine de Brabant, who had arrived at the battle with only a few men. So impatient was he to fight, that his company had been unable to keep pace with him. Without bothering to wait for his men, the Duke grabbed a banner from one of his trumpeters and cut a hole in the middle, so as to make himself a coat of arms. He had no sooner reached the English lines than the archers slew him.13 The tribute paid to the valour, however vain, of the knights of France gives a truly tragic and moving flavour to these chroniclers’ narratives.

THE CLERICAL CHRONICLE Closer to the events in question, a number of French chroniclers, whom I shall refer to as ‘clerical chroniclers’, relate the period in a very different way. In the early fifteenth century we find the Bourgeois de Paris (in fact a cleric from the University of Paris), the parish priest and apostolical notary Pierre Cochon, and the monk of Saint Denis Michel Pintoin, who wrote in Latin. Pintoin was the continuator of the Grandes chroniques de France, and so it is worth noting that the work of one of our clerical chroniclers had, at

10 11

Cf. Froissart v, 42–3. On the significance of the pitched battle in the ideology of medieval warfare see Contamine, ‘L’idée de guerre à la fin du Moyen Age’. 12 Monstrelet iii, 106; Saint-Rémy i, 254. 13 Saint-Rémy i, 256.

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Georges Le Brusque the time, a semi-official status.14 The Bourgeois and Cochon wrote most probably for themselves, or a restricted circle. The clerical tradition of chronicling war in France has attracted relatively less attention from modern scholars than the chivalric genre we have just discussed; Nicholas Wright has, however, accurately, if succinctly, delineated its main characteristics, connecting some of its exponents to a wider circle of personalities, including the lawyer Honoré Bonet, Jean de Montreuil the royal secretary, the preacher Jean Gerson or poets such as Alain Chartier, who had their hearts set on defending the cause of the humble.15 Whereas the chivalric genre of Burgundy had its origin in Froissart’s chronicle, the clerical chronicling of war is very reminiscent of the work of Jean de Venette, a contemporary of Froissart, who related the Anglo-French conflict in an entirely different manner. Like Venette, Cochon, Pintoin and the Bourgeois sympathized with the common people; they did not consider the Hundred Years War as a grand and epic time but as a dark period of suffering and tribulation. Also, like Venette, our authors did not hesitate to castigate the nobility in very forthright terms. The function of the knights was to protect the labourers and the peasants, yet in these times of anarchy and civil war they would rather trample the people under foot. Pierre Cochon, for instance, lamented the state of the country around Rouen, in 1415, once the French soldiers who were supposed to protect Harfleur had left. The natives had fled from their homes, and the soldiers had taken all that was left in the houses, before setting fire to doors and windows.16 Nothing in the chronicles seems to indicate that the knights behaved better than the common soldiers. In fact, most of the chroniclers’ rancour is directed against the knights. The clerical chroniclers strongly resented the fact that the French chivalry could not stand up to the English. Sometimes they even had the impression that the knights were unconcerned, or afraid: in 1415 and in 1417, they had done nothing to save Harfleur and Rouen. The knights appeared not only useless, but also harmful to the people; they were seen as parasites. In a prosopopoeia attributed to the personified city of Rouen, Michel Pintoin (iii, Book 39, 307) severely censures the chivalry of France: Chevaliers sans courage, qui êtes si fiers de vos cuirasses et de vos casques empanachés, qui mettez toute votre gloire dans le pillage et le jeu de dés, 14

On the Dionysian tradition of historiography see Bernard Guenée, Histoire et culture historique dans l’occident médiéval, pp. 340–2. Guenée has emphasized that Pintoin’s chronicle was not patronized by the King of France, and that Pintoin did not intend to be the spokesman of the men in power. Yet the Grandes chroniques enjoyed a high reputation, and Pintoin’s friends, several of them being close to the royal circle, as notaries or secretaries of the King, occasionally expressed wishes (which Pintoin more or less willingly observed) regarding the inclusion of specific events or documents in the chronicle (cf. L’opinion publique, pp. 163–9). 15 See Wright, Knights and Peasants, pp. 13, 17–18. 16 P. Cochon’s Chronique rouennaise in the Chronique normande, esp. pp. 316–56.

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Chronicling the Hundred Years War in Burgundy and France cette source de . . . blasphêmes contre Notre-Seigneur, vous qui vantiez avec tant d’arrogance les prouesses de vos aïeux, vous voilà maintenant devenus la fable des Anglais et la risée de toutes les nations étrangères. Knights without courage, you who take pride in your armour plate and plumed helmets, you who glory in looting and playing dice, that source of . . . blasphemy against our Lord, you who boasted with so much arrogance about the feats of valour of your ancestors, now you have become the laughing stock of the English and the butt of foreign nations.

This tirade offers a fine example of the clerical chroniclers’ style, which is strongly reminiscent of vigorous sermons aiming to castigate the proud nobility and take up the cause of the humble. What is also typical of sermons is Pintoin’s vehement disapproval of gambling with dice, which our chronicler seems to consider as criminal as ill-treating the peasants. Cochon and the Bourgeois could be even more violent when venting their anger. Thus Cochon (p. 302) refers in turn to the routiers who were ransoming and looting the people of Normandy around 1429 as: une maniere de larons qui apatichoient les villez, et prenoient gens prisonniers de tous estas, et les mestoient a grosse finanches. Et s’allerent rendre avec eulx plusieurs gens du pais de Caux, merdalle et truandalle, qui faisoient tant de maulx que c’estoit mervaille . . . Et couroient celle merdalle-là jusques emprès Rouen. some kinds of brigands who racketed the towns, and captured the people of all estates, and heavily ransomed them. And many men of the region de Caux joined them, thugs and rubbish who did so much harm it was hardly believable . . . And all this scum overran the country as far as Rouen.

Some of these brigands were undeniably knights, for Cochon (p. 304) tells us that the routiers who were captured by the English, and had once sworn allegiance to them, were beheaded, a method of execution traditionally reserved for the nobility. Unlike the Burgundian chivalrous chroniclers, Pintoin, Cochon and the Bourgeois saw no beauty or nobility in the waging of war, at least during this troubled period. In a bitter invective, Pintoin (Chronique du Religieux iii, Book 40, 399) rejected the principles of the chivalrous chronicle, stating: La plupart des habitants du royaume applaudissaient à ces atrocités et les vantaient à la façon des hérauts d’armes : ‘En telle rencontre, disaient-ils, les Armagnacs ont vaincu les Bourguignons’ . . . comme si de pareils faits méritaient, à leurs yeux, d’être consignés par écrit. Quant à moi, aux yeux de qui toutes ces hostilités n’avaient aucun résultat que la désolation du royaume, j’ai cru que le récit devait en être abandonné aux accents de la muse tragique, plutôt que retracé par la plume de l’historien. Most of the inhabitants of the Kingdom applauded these atrocities, praising them in the manner of heralds: ‘During such battle, they would say, the Armagnacs defeated the Burgundians’ . . . as if such actions deserved, 83

Georges Le Brusque in their eyes, to be recorded in writing. As for me, who only saw in these hostilities the desolation of the Kingdom, I thought it best to let their narratives be lamented by the tragic muse, rather than be recorded by the historian’s pen.

The chivalric chroniclers had related Agincourt as a moving misfortune, paying tribute to the knights’ forlorn courage. In the clerical chronicles, the destruction of the chivalry of France is devoid of any eminence or dignity. Pintoin mocks the arrogance of the knights, who had charged joyfully against the English, shouting ‘Mont-joie!’, and he scornfully relates the outcome of the battle (iii, Book 36, 563): ‘Alors la noblesse de France fut faite prisonnière et mise à rançon, comme un vil troupeau d’esclaves, ou elle périt sous les coups d’une obscure soldatesque’, ‘The nobility of France was then captured and ransomed like a vile herd of slaves, or else it was slaughtered by an obscure soldiery.’ Cochon explains that the knights had refused the help of any fighters who did not belong to the nobility, curtly concluding (p. 275): ‘Et fu la pluz laide besongne et plus malvese que, puis mil anz, avenist au roialme de France’, ‘And thus happened the ugliest affair, and the most wicked, that the Kingdom of France had seen in a thousand years.’ Both chroniclers simply see the battle as a massacre of fools on a large scale. Both also criticize the fact that the knights had discarded the support of the communes, the people’s militias. Our clerical chroniclers thus echo the people’s wish to take an active part in the defence of the Kingdom, an idea which was expressed half a century earlier in the Complainte sur la bataille de Poitiers, written shortly after the disaster of 1356. The anonymous writer of the Complainte had urged the Duke of Normandy (the future Charles V) to take up the fight again and avenge King John; only this time, he should allow the people of France to participate in the fight: S’il est bien conseillé, il n’obliera mie Mener Jaque Bonhomme en sa grant compagnie Guerres ne s’enfuira pour ne perdre la vie If well counselled, he shall not neglect / To include Jacques Bonhomme in his great company / At least he [Jacques Bonhomme] shall not flee to save his life.17

The Bourgeois de Paris often suggests that the Parisian commune fought better than the knights. He relates how in 1418 – the year of the terrible uprisings in Paris, a time when the Parisian commune was particularly impassioned – the commune had launched an attack on the Armagnac fortress of Montlhéry. The Burgundian knights soon ordered the commune to raise the siege, as they had been warned about the coming of Armagnac reinforcements. According to the Bourgeois, however, this was a mere pretext: he 17

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Quoted from F. Autrand, ‘La déconfiture. La bataille de Poitiers (1356) à travers quelques textes français des 14e et 15e siècles’, in Guerre et société en France, p. 99.

Chronicling the Hundred Years War in Burgundy and France asserts that the Armagnacs had bribed the Burgundian knights. He argues (pp. 111–12): Qui eut laissé faire les communes, il n’y eust demouré Arminac en France en mains de deux moys qu’ilz n’eussent mis à fin ; et pour ce hayoient les gentilzhommes qui ne vouloient que la guerre, et ilz la vouloient mettre à fin. Had the communes had their way, France would have been cleared of all Armagnacs within two months; and that is why they hated the nobility, for all the nobles wanted was war, and they wanted to put an end to war.

In the opinion of the Bourgeois, the knights only fought to enrich themselves by looting and ransoming prisoners, whereas the commune aimed to restore peace. Once they had returned to their homes, the Parisian militiamen ‘allerent faire leur labour’, ‘they went back to their work’; the knights on the other hand lived for and through war, and one could not trust them to end the conflict. In both the works of Pintoin and Cochon, however, one notices a return of confidence in the nobility of France, after the Treaty of Troyes (1420): once Henry V had in effect gained the governance of Northern France, as the Dauphinists, formerly the Armagnacs, continued to resist the English, in Pintoin’s case; and with the deeds of Joan of Arc in Cochon’s chronicle. It seems that the reason for these changes was a strong patriotic feeling, which prompted the chroniclers to back the traditional defenders of France whenever Fortune seemed to favour them. Cochon (p. 300) writes very enthusiastically of the victory of Patay (1429), stating that the English were ‘très bien catrés, plus que onques mès n’avoient esté en France’, ‘well and truly castrated, as they had never yet been in France’, and that they wished to return to England, only the Duke of Bedford would not let them. And the chronicler rejoices over the seizure of Château-Gaillard by the French, and the subsequent release of Barbazan, a Dauphinist captain whom Cochon calls ‘ung bon et notable chevalier’, ‘a good and eminent knight’, who had been kept prisoner for seven years in the fortress. Cochon relates (pp. 308–9) how Barbazan was led ‘à grant joie et solemnité’, ‘with much rejoicing and solemnity’, to Louviers. Only the Bourgeois, insubordinate by nature, continues to slander the knights and the governors well after the re-establishment of France.

THE FRENCH CHIVALRIC CHRONICLE A chivalric tradition of chronicling wars flourished in France throughout the first seventy years of the fifteenth century; however it was rather different in style and spirit from Burgundian chivalric historiography. Less homogeneous in appearance, the genre includes the official history of Jean 85

Georges Le Brusque Chartier, the continuator of Michel Pintoin, the Berry Herald’s semi-official chronicle, as well as the Chronique d’Arthur de Richemont by the Breton Guillaume Gruel and Perceval de Cagny’s Chronique des ducs d’Alençon. One could also include some less easily definable works such as the curious Chronique de la Pucelle, a straightforward chronicle which suddenly develops into hagiography with the appearance of Joan of Arc, or the remarkable Jouvencel, a fictional work by the experienced captain Jean de Bueil, based on real military events from the Hundred Years War. The Jouvencel, in fact, could be seen as de Bueil’s memoirs in disguise. Compared with the works of Saint-Rémy, Wavrin and Chastelain, the majority of the French chivalric chronicles appear unadorned and factual, recording the course of war with only a few subjective comments. In a sense, they were close in spirit to the work of the chronicler Jean Le Bel, of whom Froissart had been the continuator: it was Jean Le Bel who had advocated the use of prose over verse to celebrate chivalric deeds, arguing that verse by nature tended to embellish martial feats to such an extent that they became implausible.18 Like Monstrelet or Wavrin, the French clerical chroniclers had great esteem for the institution of chivalry, as well as its values, and first and foremost proesce. This is particularly evident in the opening of Jean Chartier’s chronicle, begun in 1437; the King’s historiographer declares (i, 27) that he has undertaken to write the history of Charles VII ‘affin qu’il soit perpétuelle mémoire des gestes et faiz du dit roy, de sesdits adversaires et de leurs chevalleries’, ‘So as to perpetuate the memory of the deeds and exploits of the said king, of his adversaries, and of their acts of chivalry’. However, the French chivalric chronicle differed from its Burgundian homonym in a number of respects. The Burgundian chroniclers presented chivalry as an international brotherhood, lamenting for instance the death of eminent English knights. Philip the Good had been allied with the English for more than a decade, and presenting chivalry as a fellowship was a convenient way of appearing hostile neither to the English nor to the French; Chastelain, who rebuked the English on many occasions, is the exception. The French chroniclers, by contrast, were often intent on venting their resentment towards the English. Thus Jean Chartier violently asserts Charles VII’s legitimacy in his prologue, declaring (I, 26): ‘Et a esté occuppé la plus grant part d’icelluy royaulme viollamment et contre raison par les dits Angloiz, anciens ennemis du dit roy et de ses prédecesseurs’, ‘and most of the said Kingdom was occupied by force, with no justification, by the said English, the old enemies of the said king and his predecessors’. He further deplores (I, 28) the fact that the realm had been ruled ‘par estranges manières et nacions, qui estoit et est contre raison et ordre de droit, à la totalle destruction du peuple et du royaulme de France’, ‘by foreign nations, according to foreign customs,

18

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On this aspect of Jean Le Bel’s historiography see Keen, ‘Chivalry’, p. 402.

Chronicling the Hundred Years War in Burgundy and France which was and is against reason and right, to the utter destruction of the people and of the Kingdom of France’. The struggle against the English had developed patriotic feelings; this is particularly evident in the Chronique de la Pucelle, which often appears violently anti-English. The chronicler denounces the unchivalric behaviour of the Earl of Salisbury, who brutally invaded the Duke of Orléans’ territories despite the fact that the French prince was held prisoner in England, explaining how a multitude of soldiers, ‘tant Anglois comme faulx François’, ‘both English and turncoat French’, attacked Orléans, and praising the fierce resistance of the people, including the women, who brought food and wine to the defenders and occasionally drove off the assailants themselves.19 One notable difference between the French chivalric chronicles and their Burgundian counterparts is that, having experienced humiliation and defeat for decades, the knights had grown wiser, so that the French chivalric discourse about warfare often appears more pragmatic and rational than its Burgundian equivalent. The Berry Herald, for instance, follows military affairs with much concern, and the austerity of his narratives shows that there was no place for frills in his conception of warfare. He often condemns with a few cutting words the lack of discipline or the foolhardiness which caused so many defeats. Thus he relates (p. 128) how Le Mans had been taken by the English, because the French had neglected to fortify their position, and nobody was on the watch. As the English entered the town, they found the French ‘couchez en leurs litz ou ilz dormoyent comme pourceaulx’, ‘lying in their beds where they were sleeping like pigs’. In his account of Verneuil, the Berry Herald explains how the Lombard mercenaries, entrusted with an attack from the rear, had soon left the battlefield so as to chase the English pages. He ends his account (p. 119) with the caustic remark: ‘tost après la desconfiture retournerent les Lombars dedans le champ, cuidans que les François eussent gangnee la bataille, et trouverent les François mors et tous nus’, ‘Soon after the defeat, the Lombards returned to the battlefield, thinking that the French had won the day, but they found the French dead and naked.’ In their account of battles, the Burgundian chroniclers did point out some of the mistakes made by the knights, but they often excused them, or buried their remarks in epic discourse. By contrast, the comments of the French chroniclers about strategy often appear sharper. Guillaume Gruel’s narrative of Agincourt is not lengthy. He was not insensitive to the grandes armes performed, but he devoted half of his narrative to a discerning analysis of the reasons for the defeat. The battlefield was (p. 17) trop . . . estroicte pour combatre tant de gens ; et y avoit grant nombre de gens à cheval de notre parti, tant Lombars que Gascons, qui devoient ferir sur les esles des Angloys; et quant ils sentirent le trait venir si espessement ilz se misdrent en fuyte et vindrent rompre la bataille de noz gens, en telle 19

Chronique de la Pucelle, pp. 256–8, 260–3 (quotation p. 260).

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Georges Le Brusque manière que a grant peine se peurent jamais rassembler que les Angloys ne fussent tousjours près d’eulx. The battlefield was too narrow for so many people to fight, and there were many cavalrymen, Lombards or Gascons, who were supposed to charge the English on the flanks. Yet as they felt the arrows fall so densely, they fled and broke our ranks, so that our side found it extremely difficult to form up again, as the English were constantly on them.

The French chivalric chroniclers present a picture of the knight which is far more realistic and practical than the Burgundian writers.20 One revealing example is a curious episode in the Chronique de la Pucelle, dealing with the famous La Hire, one of the French heroes of the Hundred Years War. Shortly before the battle of Montargis, La Hire asked a chaplain to quickly grant him absolution. The chaplain asked to hear his confession, and La Hire replied that there was no time for this; now was the time to strike at the enemy, and he had done what soldiers usually do. The chaplain granted him absolution. La Hire then prayed to God, asking in his Gascon language (p. 246): ‘Dieu, je te prie que tu fasses aujourd’huy pour La Hire, autant que tu voudrois que La Hire fit pour toi s’il estoit Dieu et que tu fusses La Hire’, ‘God, I beg Thee to do today for La Hire what Thou wouldst wish La Hire would do for Thee, if he were God and Thou wert La Hire’. The chronicler adds that La Hire thought this was a very fine prayer. The battle was a victory for the French, and according to the chronicler, the poor people greatly rejoiced that night, celebrating the victory. The whole episode is remarkable for its vivid realism, and portrays a knight as a soldier, a professional whose job it is to fight for the people, and to fight well. The chronicler certainly does not blame La Hire for having somewhat livened up the conventional practice of religion, in his wish to be efficient. Moreover, the story puts the crimes for which knights were often blamed into perspective: La Hire had only done what soldiers usually do. In other words, one could not make an omelette without breaking eggs. La Hire was one of the mentors of Jean de Beuil, having been de Beuil’s captain for many years, and this partly explains why the most realistic and modern depiction of the knight as soldier of the King of France is to be found in the Jouvencel. De Beuil showed that there was nothing glamorous about the life of a soldier: stealing the goats and the laundry of the soldiers from the nearest enemy fortress are the first deeds performed by the ‘Jouvencel’ at the start of his career (i, 24–5). However, the good knight 20

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On this subject, more specifically in the field of the chivalric biography, see Elisabeth Gaucher, esp. pp. 586–97, who contrasts the image of the knight offered by late fourteenthand early fifteenth-century French works, such as Cuvelier’s biography of Bertrand du Guesclin, with Burgundian chivalric biographies such as the Livre des faits du bon chevalier messire Jacques de Lalaing. The military achievements under Charles V, in the late fourteenth century, had paved the way in France for a realistic and functional discourse about war and chivalry.

Chronicling the Hundred Years War in Burgundy and France loyally serving his king experiences the pleasure of comradeship in the face of danger, and the satisfaction of performing one’s duty (ii, 20–1); and in his penniless old age, he will be invited into every house, and be hailed (I, 56) as ‘le bon homme, qui a si bien servi le Roy et le royaulme’, ‘the good man who has served King and country so well’. De Bueil understood that the soldiers could not live on fresh air, and he recommended them to levy what was needed from those who were on the same side, as gently as possible, explaining to the people that this was necessary in order to defend their interests. He knew that, ideally, the King should provide his soldiers with regular wages. By the time he composed his Jouvencel, the ordonnances of 1445 had been adopted, whereby the ‘professional’ soldiers of the King’s standing army (fifteen companies of cavalry, composed of knights and mounted archers, which Charles VII had kept in his permanent service, the rest having been disbanded) would receive their pay, in times of war and peace alike, from a tax levied on the people.21 Thus he could retrospectively explain (I, 95–6): ‘Et ainsi passerons le temps jusques ad ce qu’il plaise au Roy nous faire aucune ordonnance’, ‘And so we shall spend our time until it pleases the King to issue an ordinance.’

CONCLUSION By the middle of the fifteenth century, the clerical genre of historiography had become less popular in France, though one still finds strong echoes of it in some chronicles, such as the histories of Bishop Thomas Basin, written in the 1470s. The re-establishment of France, the creation of a standing army and the rise of the professional soldier partly account for the decline of the old genre. Also, the chivalric chronicle was replacing clerical historiography as the genre favoured by the Kings of France. At the dawn of the sixteenth century, when the traumatic memories of the Hundred Years War had faded and the Kingdom was triumphant, it was the chivalric genre promoted by the Dukes of Burgundy which took the French monarchy’s fancy: more bombastic, heroic and ornate, the Burgundian rhétoriqueur style was deemed more appropriate to celebrate the exploits of the Renaissance Kings as they embarked upon their conquests in Italy. It is from Chastelain and his continuator Molinet that the official chroniclers of Charles VIII and Louis XII were to draw their inspiration. Yet with Philippe de Commynes’ Mémoires, written in the late fifteenth century but only published in 1524 (and the narrative of the conquest of Naples in 1528), a new genre appeared: memoirs written in unsophisticated language, by men who had 21

On the establishment of the compagnies d’ordonnance, their composition, and on the reactions to this important change in the French military institutions, see Histoire militaire de la France, I, pp. 201–8. See also Howard, pp. 18–19. For a particularly detailed study see Contamine, Guerre, Etat et société à la fin du Moyen Age, pp. 275–530.

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Georges Le Brusque taken part in the military or diplomatic events they related, and who were primarily concerned with the unvarnished truth. This new genre, the Mémoires d’épée, eventually triumphed in the sixteenth century.22 Some of its qualities were already extant in the mid-fifteenth-century type of French chivalrous historiography that we have discussed: the gravity of Philippe de Commynes’ comments on war is reminiscent of the perspective of the Berry Herald, and the sober and realistic depiction of a soldier’s career that we find in Blaise de Monluc’s Commentaires, written in the late sixteenth century, recalls Jean de Bueil’s Jouvencel. The days of the chroniclers had drawn to an end, but the military wisdom of the French chivalric chronicle was not lost; its pragmatic depiction of war and of professional soldiers endured in the Renaissance.23

Works cited I. Sources A Collection of the Chronicles and ancient histories of Great Britain, now called England, by John de Wavrin, ed. and trans. W. Hardy and E. L. C. P. Hardy, Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores, 3 vols (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1864–1891). A Parisian Journal, 1405–1449, translated from the anonymous Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris, trans. J. Shirley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968). Basin, Thomas, Histoire de Charles VII, ed. and trans. from Latin to French C. Samaran, 2 vols (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1933–1944; repr. 1964–1965). Basin, Thomas, Histoire de Louis XI, ed. and trans. C. Samaran and M.-C. Garand, 3 vols (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1963–1972). Bueil, Jean de, Le Jouvencel, ed. C. Favre and L. Lecestre, Société de l’Histoire de France [SHF], 2 vols (Paris: Renouard, 1887–1889). Cagny, Perceval de, Chroniques, ed. H. Moranvillé, SHF (Paris: Renouard, 1902). Chartier, Jean, Chronique de Charles VII, ed. A. Vallet de Viriville, 3 vols (Paris: Jannet, 1858). Chastelain, Georges, Œuvres, ed. J. M. B. C. Kervyn de Lettenhove, 8 vols (Brussels: Heussner, 1863–1866; repr. Geneva: Slatkine reprints, 1971). Chronicles of Enguerrand de Monstrelet (The), ed. and trans. T. Johnes, 5 vols (London: J. Henderson, 1809). Chronique de la Pucelle, ed. A. Vallet de Viriville (Paris: Delahays, 1859). Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys contenant le règne de Charles VI, de 1380 à 1422, ed. and transl. L.-F. Bellaguet, 6 vols (Paris: Crapelet, 1839–1852);

22

On the Mémoires d’épée see Dufournet, ‘Les premiers lecteurs de Commynes’, esp. pp. 168–9. 23 On the representation of the professional soldier, at the dawn of the sixteenth century, in the context of the first wars of Italy, see my article ‘Du chevalier à l’officier du roi’.

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Chronicling the Hundred Years War in Burgundy and France repr. in 3 vols (Paris: Editions du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 1994). Cochon, Pierre, Chronique normande (1408–1430), ed. C. de Robillard de Beaurepaire (Rouen: Le Brument, 1870). Commynes, Philippe de, Mémoires, ed. J. Calmette and G. Durville, 3 vols (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1924–1925; repr. 1964–1965). Froissart, Jean, Chroniques, ed. S. Luce, SHF, in progress, 15 vols (Paris: Vve Renouard, 1869–). Gruel, Guillaume, Chronique d’Arthur de Richemont, ed. A. Le Vavasseur, SHF (Paris: Renouard, 1890). Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris de 1405 à 1449, ed. C. Beaune (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 1990). Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris, 1405–1449, ed. A. Tuetey (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1881). Le Bel, Jean, Chronique, ed. J. Viard and E. Déprez, SHF, 2 vols (Paris: Laurens, 1904–1905). Le Bouvier, Gilles, also known as the Berry Herald, Les chroniques du roi Charles VII, ed. H. Courteault and L. Celier, SHF (Paris: Klincksieck, 1979). Le Fevre de Saint-Remy, Jean, Chronique, ed. F. Morand, SHF, 2 vols (Paris: Renouard, 1876–1881). Monluc, Blaise de, Commentaires, 1521–1576, ed. P. Courteault (Paris: Gallimard, 1964). Monstrelet, Enguerrand de, Chronique, ed. L. Douët d’Arcq, SHF, 6 vols (Paris: Vve Renouard, 1857–1862). Splendeurs de la cour de Bourgogne. Récits et chroniques, ed. D. Régnier-Bohler (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1995). Wavrin, Jean de, Recueil des croniques et anchiennes istories de la Grant Bretaigne, à présent nommé Engleterre, ed. W. Hardy and E. L. C. P. Hardy, Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores, 5 vols (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1864–1891).

II. Studies Autrand, F., ‘La déconfiture. La bataille de Poitiers (1356) à travers quelques textes français des 14e et 15e siècles’, in Guerre et société en France, en Angleterre et en Bourgogne, 14e–15e siècle, ed. P. Contamine, C. GiryDeloison, M. H. Keen (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses de l’Université Charles de Gaulle (Lille III), 1991), pp. 93–121. Caron, M.-T., Noblesse et pouvoir royal en France, XIIIe–XVIe siècles (Paris: Armand Colin, 1994). Contamine, P., Guerre, Etat et société à la fin du Moyen Age. Etude sur les armées des rois de France, 1337–1494 (Paris: Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes; La Haye: Mouton, 1972). Contamine, P., ‘L’idée de guerre à la fin du Moyen Age: aspects juridiques et éthiques’, in Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1979), pp. 70–86, repr. in P. Contamine, La France au XIVe et XVe siècle. Hommes, mentalités, guerre et paix (London: Variorum reprints, 1981), essay 13. 91

Georges Le Brusque Corvisier, A., ed., Histoire militaire de la France, I: Des origines à 1715, ed. P. Contamine (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992). Dufournet, J., ‘Les premiers lecteurs de Commynes ou les Mémoires au XVIe siècle’, in Mémoires de la Société d’histoire de Comines-Warneton et de la région, XIV (1984), pp. 51–94, repr. in J. Dufournet, Philippe de Commynes. Un historien à l’aube des temps modernes (Brussels: De Boeck-Wesmael, 1994), pp. 145–91. Fowler, K., The Age of Plantagenet and Valois (London: Ferndale, 1980). Gaucher, E., La biographie chevaleresque. Typologie d’un genre (XIIIe–XVe siecles) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1994). Guenée, B., Histoire et culture historique dans l’occident médiéval (Paris: AubierMontaigne, 1980). Guenée, B., Un roi et son historien. Vingt études sur le règne de Charles VI et la Chronique du religieux de Saint-Denis, Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres: new series, XVIII (Paris: Diffusion de Boccard, 1999). Guenée, B., L’opinion publique à la fin du Moyen Age d’après la ‘Chronique de Charles VI’ du Religieux de Saint-Denis (Paris: Perrin, 2002). Howard, M., War in European History (London / Oxford / New York: Oxford University Press, 1976). Huizinga, J., The Waning of the Middle Ages, trans. F. Hopman, 2nd edn (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965). Huizinga, J., Homo Ludens. A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, 2nd edn, The Sociology of Culture III (London: Routledge, 1998). Keen, M. H., ‘Chivalry, heralds, and history’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 393–414. Le Brusque, G., ‘From Agincourt (1415) to Fornovo (1495): Aspects of the Writing of Warfare in French and Burgundian 15th-Century Historiographical Literature’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of London, 2001). Le Brusque, G., ‘Du chevalier à l’officier du roi: images du soldat professionnel noble dans les chroniques françaises des premières guerres d’Italie (1494– 1500)’, Revue historique des armées, 222 (2001): 3–12. Vale, M., War and Chivalry. Warfare and Aristocratic Culture in England, France and Burgundy at the End of the Middle Ages (London: Duckworth, 1981). Wright, N. A. R., Knights and Peasants. The Hundred Years War in the French Countryside (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998).

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War and Knighthood in Christine de Pizan’s Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie FRANÇOISE LE SAUX

C

HRISTINE DE Pizan’s attitude towards war and warfare has attracted a good deal of scholarly attention over the past ten years or so. In particular, her socio-political reflection on the possible justifications of warfare has been studied by peace-theory scholars, who consider Christine’s stance as proto-pacifist in nature, and indeed in some respects as ahead of her times.1 In view of Christine’s well-documented opinion that war is an evil to be engaged in only when all other avenues have been explored, and then only in order to redress a gross injustice such as a hostile invasion, the presence on her list of writings of a treatise on the art of warfare strikes a somewhat dissonant note. Le Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie, published in 1410, that is, three years after the assassination of Louis d’Orléans, is a manual for knights and soldiers. It is a compendium of the leading authorities on the subject: Vegetius’s De re militari, Frontinus’s Stratagemata and Valerius Maximus’s Facta Ditaque Memorabilia for Books I and II, and Honoré Bouvet’s Arbre des batailles (published c. 1387) for Books III and IV. However, the Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie is more than a mere compilation. The shortcomings of old authorities such as Vegetius are recognised, and changes in warfare requirements due to technological developments such as the rise of the artillery lead to supplemental chapters based, we are told, on the advice of ‘wise knights expert in the said matters of arms’, ‘saiges chevaliers expars es dittes choses d’armes’ (Laënnec, p. 148).2 Similarly, Christine does not hesitate to disagree with Bouvet, her authority for

1

See in particular the pioneering work by Charity Cannon Willard; among more recent publications are the articles by Carroll, ‘On the Causes of War and the Quest for Peace: Christine de Pizan and Early Peace Theory’ and van Hemelryk, ‘Christine de Pizan et la paix’ (both 2000), and Forhan’s The Political Theory of Christine de Pizan (2002). 2 The Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie is quoted from the unpublished edition by Christine Laënnec (1988). For an analysis of technological change in Christine’s work, see Hall, ‘ “So Notable Ordynaunce”: Christine de Pizan, Firearms and Siegecraft in a Time of Transition’.

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Françoise Le Saux Books III and IV of her work, to the extent that A. T. P. Byles,3 the editor of the English translations of Christine’s work, considers that these sections are more of a commentary than a translation of L’arbre des batailles. The up-to-date quality of Christine’s manual, together with her willingness to grapple with the practical consequences of, for example, the legal niceties of the practice of warfare, probably account for the popularity of the work, both in France and in England, where it was translated several times. This eager reception is an interesting phenomenon, as one would not necessarily have expected a woman writing on so heavily-gendered a subject as warfare to be granted the necessary level of authority for such recognition. That Christine’s femininity was indeed problematic for many readers is attested by the fact that a group of English manuscripts ‘masculinise’ the author, to bring her more into line with the perceived virile nature of the material.4 The Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie is therefore a book with a strong practical element, teaching knights how to do their job, and aimed at a purely male readership whose function in society is to conduct war. This essay proposes to investigate the strategies used by Christine to defuse the tension between the knowledge she is imparting and her identity as female authority, and to resolve the conflict between her anti-bellicist views and the military ethos implicitly embraced in the very writing of a work such as the Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie. A first, important observation to make is that Christine’s intended reader is very well-defined. Though the simple soldier is occasionally mentioned, the advice given in the Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie is clearly aimed at a caste of officers, for whom it is crucial to ensure that battle is engaged in optimum conditions and with suitable equipment; whose responsibility it is to manage mercenaries; and whose moral duty it is to contain the inevitable depredations of warfare within certain bounds. The upper nobility would also presumably have read the work with interest, but Christine’s manual would have been of especial use to younger members of the lower nobility, the ‘doers and enablers’ of warfare, who were confronted directly with the thorny questions of when wages to mercenaries were due or not, what sorts of safe-conducts were to be honoured, and who was fair game for ransoming. These people were unlikely to be particularly open to pacifist discourses, as their hopes for social advancement were intimately linked with their military skills. This is in evidence in Froissart’s Prologue to his Chroniques, where young men ‘qui se voellent avancier’, ‘who want to get on in life’,5 are urged to seek the patronage of some grandee who will train and equip them, 3

Byles, p. xlvi. On the Middle English translations of Christine’s works, see Mahoney, ‘Middle English Renderings of Christine de Pizan’. 4 On the suppression of Christine’s authorship in fifteenth-century English translations, see especially Chance, ‘Gender Subversion and Linguistic Castration in Fifteenth-Century English Translations of Christine de Pizan’. 5 Quoted from the edition of Luce, vol. 1, p. 2, line 30.

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War and Knighthood in de Pizan’s Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie thus allowing them to establish themselves ‘plus par leur proesce que par leur lignage’, ‘more by their prowess than by their lineage’ (p. 3, line 29). However, whereas Froissart’s tone verges on that of the recruiting sergeant, urging young men of the lower nobility to keep up family traditions and emphasising both the glory and the financial gain to be derived from dashing feats of arms, Christine’s prologue to the Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie is altogether more subdued. No suggestion is made that the military career is particularly desirable or effective as a means of climbing the social ladder. Indeed, Christine’s Prologue intellectualises the ‘office des armes et de chevallerie’ to such an extent that the noise and colour of the battlefield are all but obliterated. On the face of things, Christine’s Prologue appears to be a protracted variation on the humility topos, with the very title of the chapter emphasising Christine’s stance of feminine submissiveness: Le premier chappitre est le prologue ouquel Christine se excuse d’avoir osé emprendre a parler de sy haulte matiere que est contenue ou dit livre .1. The First Chapter is the Prologue in which Christine apologises for having dared to undertake to speak of such exalted material as that contained in the said Book I.

But this humility is swiftly contradicted by the terms in which Christine describes her endeavours: Pour ce que hardement est tant neccessaire a haultes choses emprendre, que sans lui jamais emprises ne seroient, ycellui m’est convenable a ceste present oeuvre mettre sus, autrement veu la petitece de ma personne que je congnoiz nondigne de traitier de sy eslevee matiere. Ne l’osasse nes seullement penser, mais quoy que hardiesce face a blasmer quant elle est folle, moy, non mie meue par arrogance ou folle presumpciun, mais admonnestee de vraye affeccion et bon desir du bien des nobles hommes en l’office des armes, suis ennortee, apres mes autres escriptures passees – si comme cellui qui a ja basti un chastel ou fortresce quant garny se sent de convenables estofes ad ce neccesaires d’entreprendre – a parler en ce present livre du tres honnouré office des armes et de chevallerie. Since boldness is so necessary to undertake great things that would otherwise never be undertaken, it is fitting that I should ascribe the present work to it, considering the insignificance of my person, whom I know not to be worthy to treat of such elevated material. I would not even dare think of doing so; but even though boldness is blameworthy when it is ill-considered, I am not moved by arrogance or foolish presumption, but spurred on by true affection and goodwill towards the noble men in the office of arms; and am encouraged by my past experience in writing – just like someone who has once already built a castle or a fortress and who knows himself to be equipped with the necessary materials to do so again – to speak in this present book of the most honoured office of arms and chivalry. 95

Françoise Le Saux One may note that the act of writing is described in terms strongly reminiscent of those conventionally applied to warfare itself: ‘hardiement’, necessary for all ‘haultes choses’; ‘hardiesce’, blameworthy when it is ‘folle’, but positive when not founded on arrogance or presumption. More striking still is the simile likening Christine’s experience as a writer to that of building and equipping military strongholds: the distinctiveness of warfare is erased, as its semantic field is appropriated to describe scholarly activity. Christine acknowledges her inferiority as a woman, talking of the ‘petitese de ma personne’, ‘non digne de traitier de sy eslevee matiere’, but at the same time indicates that she is responding to a male need. This turns her transgression into an act of womanly concern and obedience; but it also has as indirect effect of re-gendering the subject-matter of the book. If the art of arms and chivalry is an exclusively male preserve, why do these ‘nobles hommes en l’office des armes’ require Christine’s help? The sting is somewhat attenuated – in appearance at least – by an immediate shift from the male/female polarisation underlying the first sentences of the Prologue to that of knight and clerk: Mais comme il affiere ceste matiere estre plus excecutee par fait, dilligence et scens que par soubtillité de parolles polies, et aussi considéré que les exerçans et expars en la ditte art de chevallerie ne sont communement clers ne instruiz en science de langaige, je n’entens a traittier ne mais au plus plain et entendible langaige que je pourray, a celle fin que la dottrine donnee par plusieurs autteurs, que a l’ayde de Dieu propose en cest present livre, declairier puist estre a tous clere et entendible. But as it happens that this business must be executed by deeds, diligence and common sense more than by subtlety and polite words, and considering also the fact that those practising and expert in the said art of chivalry are not commonly clerks, and have not been educated in the science of language, I intend to treat this material in as plain and understandable a language as I can, so that the teaching transmitted by several authorities (which I put forward in the present book, with the help of God) may be clear and understandable to all.

Christine emphasises the practical nature of warfare, but presents this as something of a disadvantage to its practitioner: the warrior is someone who is verbally challenged, and who cannot access his authorities directly. Christine, by contrast, has the skill required to become a quasi-transparent, and by implication genderless, intermediary between knights and the authorities who have written on the art of warfare. However, Christine does not allow this de-gendered image of herself to take hold. She immediately goes on to reaffirm, under the guise of humility, the fact that she is a woman; begging her readers not to hold her sex against what she is going to say, ‘pour ce que c’est chose non accoustumee et hors d’usaige a femme qui communement ne se sieust entremettre ne mes quenouilles, fillaces et choses de mainaige’, ‘because it is an unusual and 96

War and Knighthood in de Pizan’s Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie unaccustomed thing for a woman who commonly only deals with spindles, thread and housework’. Once again, though, apparent humility leads to an affirmation of authority, through the introduction of Minerva into the discourse. Minerva is presented as a woman of such outstanding achievements that she was deemed a goddess; Christine thus appears to be inviting a contrast between herself and the god-like woman credited with the invention of iron and steel weaponry. Yet what actually happens is the exact opposite: just as Minerva’s inventions were embraced by men, so should Christine’s words be embraced by her readers, for she also has something valuable to give them. The point is emphasised by a quotation from Seneca. The full impact of Christine’s process of inversion of expectations comes in the rhetorical address to Minerva that closes the Prologue. Minerva is addressed in terms reminiscent of those used of the Virgin Mary: ‘par vertu d’eslevé entendement par sus les autres femmes’, ‘above all other women by virtue of her high level of understanding’. Minerva is now credited not only with the invention of working iron and steel, but also with the beginnings of military strategy; and though Christine repeatedly states that Minerva is unrepresentative of the common woman because of her superior intellectual and civilisational achievements, the femininity of the goddess is equally emphasised, allowing Christine to end the Prologue with the startling and much-quoted words: ‘Je suis comme toy femme ytalienne’, ‘like you I am an Italian woman’. Christine, for all her claims to be a ‘simple femmelette’, has more in common with Minerva, the origin and inspiration of modern warfare, than the male practitioners of the art. Moreover the technological advances attributed to Minerva, which underpin the practice of war, are depicted in such a way as to blur the boundaries between the womanly activities at home and the requirements of warfare. Armour, described as ‘propice et convenable a couvrir et targier corps de homme’, ‘good and suitable to cover and protect a man’s body’, is in effect just a specialised form of clothing, no different in essence to the garments woven with ‘fillaces’; whilst the art of fighting in an orderly manner, ‘en maniere arree’, requires the same qualities as those displayed by the competent housewife in the smooth running of her household. Minerva may well have been exceptional, but she was not unrepresentative. It is noteworthy that at no point in the Prologue do the terms ‘preux’ or ‘prouesce’ appear: an absence all the more striking when one considers the importance of the concept of prowess in the Prologue to Froissart’s Chroniques. Moreover, Mars, the male, traditional god of war, is totally absent from the picture. The tutelary deity of ‘armes et chevallerie’ is unambiguously female. Similarly, physical skills are barely mentioned, eclipsed by the superior intellectual requirements of the ‘nobles ars et sciences’ which make warfare ‘de si magnifie office’. A good knight, clearly, is not so much someone who knows how to wield weapons as someone who knows when and in what manner he should do so. This intellectualisation of warfare has the dual effect of disempowering 97

Françoise Le Saux those noblemen lacking the education to access the theory of their art, and of reinforcing the authority of Christine, who has from the outset shown that she is endowed with the necessary virtues of ‘hardiesce’ and ‘hardement’ to tackle her material, has privileged access to the authorities (including, on a metaphorical level, Minerva herself) and the relevant experience to mediate them. The body of the work repeats this strategy of apparently accepting a male-centred bellicist world-view, whilst systematically undermining it. Thus, experience is repeatedly mentioned as an essential requirement for any war leader (in this, Christine follows her sources faithfully), but the stress is firmly placed on the superior importance of knowledge of a more abstract nature, namely the laws of the art. This point is made in no uncertain terms from the outset; in chapter 2 (p. 23), Cato is quoted as saying that his ‘belles vittoires’ on battlefield were less valuable than his ‘escripture des regles, enseignemens et discipline d’armes’, ‘encoding of the rules, teaching and discipline of arms’. This, of course, enhances Christine’s own status as writer of precisely that sort of book. The implicit debasement of actual warfare by Cato himself allows Christine to make a tentative criticism of war. Considering the great evils attendant on warfare, such as rape, murder and theft, she says, ‘pourroit sembler a aucuns que guerre et batailles fust chose excommeniee et non deue’, ‘it could seem to some that war and battles are worthy of excommunication and should not occur’ (Book I, ch. 2, p. 24). The impact of these strong words is attenuated by the use of the conditional (‘pourroit sembler’) suggesting that Christine disagrees with the people holding such an opinion; and indeed she proceeds to demonstrate, with reference to the Bible, that war is not necessarily evil, and that warfare for a just cause is legitimate. The suffering and crimes that come with warfare are, she argues, due to the ‘mauvaistié des gens’, the evil ways of men who ignore the rules of warfare. Hence, the true justification of the Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie. Christine is not primarily teaching knights how to conduct warfare (though of course she is also doing that): she is attempting to instil a culture of restraint, and foster a sense of moral and legal responsibility through awareness that some things are ‘choses limitees’ by man and the Church. The low-key approach to chivalry in the Prologue is also evident in Books 1 and 2 of the Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie, which, as mentioned above, are based predominantly on classical Latin sources. Once again, there is little to suggest anything but the most conventional and innocuous reservations on the part of the narrator as regards the practice of warfare, but equally, Christine is extremely sparing in her use of epithets that might lend prestige and glamour to military activity. The ‘art’ of chivalry is repeatedly referred to as ‘noble’, but the terms ‘preux’ and ‘vaillans’ only appear infrequently, and are almost exclusively applied to great generals from GrecoRoman history, ‘preux conquerours du monde’ or ‘vaillans nobles chevallereux’ (pp. 17, 18) such as Alexander the Great. This concession to the 98

War and Knighthood in de Pizan’s Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie traditional glorification of successful war leaders is, however, tempered by an explicit condemnation of wars of conquest. Christine lists the possible reasons (pp. 26–8) for engaging in warfare. Among these, vengeance and conquest are unequivocally stated to be invalid and against divine law: Quoy que les conquereurs, Alixandre, les Rommains et aultres soyent moult louez es tiltres de chevallerie, et semblablement ceulx qui grandement ce sont vengiez de leurs ennemis ou que bien soit ou mal, et quoy que communement on le face, je ne treuve pas en loy divine ne aultre escripte que pour ces deux causes sans autre mouvement loise emprendre sus pays crestien guerre ne bataille, Mes ouil bien le contraire, car selon la loy de Dieu n’appartient a homme pas seulement prendre ne usurper riens de l’autrui, mais neiz meesmement le convoittier. (Book I, ch. 4, p. 27) Even though Alexander, the Romans and other conquerors are greatly praised for their chivalry, as are also those who have avenged themselves spectacularly on their enemies, whether this be good or bad, and despite the fact that this is done commonly, I find nowhere in divine law or in any other written law that it is acceptable to wage war against another Christian country for those two reasons alone. Indeed, the very opposite is true, for according to the law of God, man should not only refrain from taking or usurping someone else’s property, he should not even covet it.

The suggestion discreetly made above that the practice of warfare sometimes violates the laws and rules of war is here made explicit. Whilst Alexander and the Roman generals were unrestrained by Christian principles, the implications are that present-day unjust wars are even less acceptable, as leaders have the benefit of the guidance of the Bible, and have duties towards fellow Christians. Public opinion, which condones and admires such actions, is tersely but categorically dismissed as misguided. Book II, devoted in part to Frontinus’s stratagems, similarly betrays a critical attitude towards the use of trickery in war (‘maintefoys ont plus nuit faintes paix et mauvais couvines soubz umbre d’acord que force d’armes’, ‘insincere peace settlements and bad intentions under cover of agreement have often done more harm than force of arms’, Book II, ch. 37, p. 175). So success at war and chivalric prowess are not coterminous with moral justification; indeed, the most celebrated paragons of chivalry are in breach of divine law. The thrill derived from the account of the adventures of an Alexander the Great thus takes on a flavour of sinfulness, and any attempt to emulate him is tainted with evil. Under these circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising that Christine’s picture of the ideal general or war leader is more akin to that of an energetic saint than to the dashing handsome knight of epic and romance. Warfare, which endangers ‘la vie, le sang, l’onneur et la chevance d’infinies personnes’, ‘the life, blood, honour and livelihood of an infinite number of persons’ (Book I, ch. 5, p. 29), is too serious a matter to entrust to the hot-blooded impulses of youth (‘legiers mouvemens ne jeunes voulentez’). 99

Françoise Le Saux The virtues of the ideal ‘congnestable’ are listed at great length in Book I, chapter 7, over some ninety-seven lines of printed text (pp. 38–9): pell-mell, he must have great experience, plenty of common sense, a good nature, a noble disposition; he must be wise, generous, untainted by covetousness, just, true to his word, mildly-spoken, dignified in his manner, and compassionate; he must be daring, loyal, diligent, discerning, always well-equipped and on the alert, prepared to defend the widow and orphan; but lastly and above all, he must love God and the Church and support justice. This paragon of virtues is implicitly recognised to be an unattainable ideal; Christine recommends that war leaders be chosen ‘a tout le moins approuchans aux dictes condicions que on peut’, ‘at least approximating as much as possible to the said conditions’. The qualities required of a war leader are repeated on different occasions in the book, but in less detail and with a more realistic slant allowing a little more for human frailty; the key qualities emerge as experience, wisdom and the ability to control covetousness, which Christine appears to see as the key to the excesses of warfare. The detailed description of the perfect war leader is followed by the statement that chivalry is now a forgotten and neglected art: the hard work and skills of the Romans and other conquerors have given way to ‘delit, et repos et aux convoitises de pecune’ (‘pleasure, indolence and desire for money’, Book I, ch. 8, p. 41), all of which the worthies of yore despised. The answer to these problems, stresses Christine, is education in the complementary areas of ‘usaige d’armes’, ‘enseignement d’ost’ and ‘chevallerie’ (p. 42), that is, physical training in the manipulation of weapons, military strategy and chivalry, which under Christine’s pen takes on marked ethical connotations. This education is contrasted with the custom of sending out children to be brought up at the courts of grandees, where they learn (p. 43) ‘orgueil’, pride, ‘legerie’, frivolity, and ‘mignotes’, precious manners – terms which recall the image given by Christine of the predatory young men at court in her Epistre au Dieus d’amours.6 The different facets of a good chivalric education are described by Christine as complementary. Even courage is the direct result of a knight’s training, given by ‘la bonne doctrine des parolles honorables’, ‘the good teaching of honourable discourse’ (Book I, ch. 9, p. 46). Verbal skills are at the heart of military prowess – a fact further exemplified by the inclusion of a model pre-battle speech a few chapters later (ch. 21, pp. 82–3). Valour, and the ability to inspire it in others, is synonymous with knowledge: ‘Et a celui dist il que en tel discipline est bien enseiné, paour de combatre est nulle contre quelconques adversaire, ains lui est si que droit et soulas’, ‘and [my source] says that whoever is well educated in this discipline will have no fear to fight any adversary, but on the contrary it will feel quite natural and pleasurable to him’ (Book I, ch. 10, p. 47).

6

See esp. lines 51–9 of the Epistre, in vol. 2 of the Oeuvres poétiques de Christine de Pizan, ed. Roy, pp. 1–27.

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War and Knighthood in de Pizan’s Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie Conversely, the absence of knowledge leads to cowardice – a startling statement further enhancing the status of Christine’s book. Having carefully undermined the mystique of warfare, Christine proceeds to destroy it in Books III and IV, devoted to the legal aspects of warfare and based on Honoré Bouvet’s Arbre des batailles. The themes introduced in Books I and II (with all the precautions we have seen) recur in the last half of the Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie, but with a change of tone. This second half of the work opens with some self-promotion, with the Master – Bouvet – stating that the writing of the Livre des faits d’armes will lead to the ‘enhortacion de toutes nobles oeuvres et meurs vertueux’, ‘encouragement of all noble deeds and virtuous living’, and allow noblemen and knights to ‘plus enbellir es faiz que noblesce requiert’, ‘to further embellish themselves in the deeds that nobility requires’: i.e., the threefold education mentioned above. The question of legal awareness leads to a detailed discussion of the rights and responsibilities of members of the warrior class. The restraint in evidence up to this stage all but disappears, as Christine takes on the persona of the naïve student asking questions of her Master: from this stance of apparent non-authority, Christine can afford to be outspoken without being perceived as overstepping the mark – particularly since the harshest statements tend to be put in the mouth of Bouvet himself, whose credentials cannot be doubted. This is especially the case in chapter 7 of Book III, where Christine ‘innocently’ questions the legitimacy of employing mercenaries in warfare. She is given an answer that seems to contradict her views, but in fact presents the practice in so grim a light that the ‘official’ position appears to be morally untenable. Thus, if the mercenary is fighting an unjust war, he is jeopardising his eternal soul. He should therefore make sure that his employer has right on his side; for otherwise, ‘cellui qui s’y met dampne son ame, et ce en cel estat meurt, va en voye de perdicion se grant repentance par grace divine n’a en la parfin’, ‘he who gets involved is damning his soul, and if he dies in this state, he will go the way of perdition unless through divine grace he greatly repents at the end’ (Book III, ch. 1, p. 196). This stern warning, of course, follows the teaching of the Church, but within the context of the Hundred Years War, where the rights and wrongs of the warring parties would have been well-nigh impossible to discern for the common man, it is tantamount to stating that everyone engaged in warfare is potentially courting damnation. The fact that mercenaries take this risk for their pay rather than out of loyalty towards their lord is simply an aggravating factor. The mention of mercenaries leads to a lengthy discussion on pay and financial compensation. It is striking that chivalry is reduced to a monetary relationship not unlike that of mercenaries – which indeed corresponds to historical reality at the time, with the rise of pensions and paid military services. On one occasion only does Christine use the positive courtly image of chivalry found in romances, in Book III, chapter 10 (pp. 204–5), where a noble knight (‘un gentil chevalier’: note the ‘gentil’, an adjective that does 101

Françoise Le Saux not qualify the substantive ‘chevalier’ very often in the Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie), ‘meu de pitie et pour garder le droit des dames et croistre sa renommee en vaillance et en chevallerie’, ‘moved by pity and in order to preserve the right of ladies and increase his renown in valiance and chivalry’, decides to help a beleaguered widow. By his prowess (‘prouesce’) and chivalry, he reinstates the lady in her rightful possessions. This situation, worthy of any romance, leads to a very down-to-earth question: is this knight entitled to claim payment for his services? The question suggests that in real life, this is what the widowed lady should expect. The answer from the Master is no, the increase in honour and renown derived from this good deed is its own reward, but embedded as it is in a section where financial concerns are paramount, Bouvet’s answer sounds decidedly idealistic and naïve. Christine accepts it, but one feels that the hypothetical knight might not have been convinced quite so easily. Similarly, on the question of the amount of protection to which civilians (or, less anachronistically, non-combatants) are entitled, the answer states that only priests, students, madmen and little children can expect to remain unmolested by warfaring troops.7 Yet, in fact, the practice of ransoming prisoners, with the obvious financial gain involved for the captor, is shown to have such a perverting influence that even young children are taken prisoner and ransomed. Naïve Christine suggests that ransoming should be illicit, as the practice goes against the duty of mercy owed to any prisoner of war (Book III, ch. 17, p. 220); her Master defends the principle of ransoming, but has to acknowledge its abuses, reducing many captives to bankruptcy. In the words of the Master, such a practice is an inhuman horror (‘horreur inhumaine’), debasing even an evil Christian tyrant to the level of ‘pire que juif’ – a reference to the Jews’ activities in the reproved area of money-lending – and leading to damnation. This damnation is clearly ahead of only too many warriors, it would seem. Christine responds to the Master’s statement that it is not licit to ransom children with a meek ‘sans faille, maistre, dont n’est mie aujourdui cete loi bien gardee’, ‘indeed, master, this law isn’t respected at all these days’ (Book III, ch. 21, p. 231). Bouvet in turn acknowledges that the laws of warfare are currently abused because of rampant covetousness. The English are particularly targeted, as one would expect, and their habit of taking prisoner ‘femmes, enfans, gens impotens ne vieillars’, ‘women, children, the disabled and the aged’ is denounced as especially shameful. Lack of loyalty also appears to be widespread. In Book IV, Christine laments the ‘pou de foi qui au monde cueurt’, ‘the lack of faith about the world’ (ch. 3, p. 248), only to be outdone by her Master in a blistering, 21-line long indictment of the fifteenth-century military man:

7

Old men incapable of bearing arms are said to be fair game, as they may be suspected of acting as military advisers to the enemy.

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War and Knighthood in de Pizan’s Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie Mais a present, pour les barats et soubtilletez trouvees par lesquelles on n’a honte de mentir foy ne rompre sermens entre crestiens trop moins que juifs ou mescreans n’aryent, est conseillé par aucuns de nos maistres que en saufconduit on ne se fie de legier, comme le temps soit ades venuz que ce que les droiz appellent fraude et barat est appellé soubtillité et cautelle. Et sy est le peril grant. But nowadays, because of the deceit and contorted stratagems through which promises are broken and oaths violated between Christians, with even less shame than Jews or infidels would have, it is advised by some of our masters not to have too much confidence in safe-conducts; for the times are such that what men of integrity call fraud and deceit is now called subtlety and ruse. And the peril is great.

To this virulent passage, Christine merely answers, ‘Sans faille, maistre, c’est pure verité, ‘Indeed, master, that’s the pure truth’ (p. 249). This negative tone is maintained almost to the end of Book IV.8 There are no further outbursts of righteous indignation, but a number of tolerated practices such as marque or single combat are presented in such a way as to emphasise the essentially unethical, and therefore, unsatisfactory, nature of these customs. The inadequacy of custom to provide a reliable yardstick for human behaviour is vividly illustrated by Christine’s humorous asides on the Lombard laws, with examples of counter-intuitive, bizarre or unjust laws, such as, for example, the stern penalty stipulated for the seduction of a virgin. Law codes do not hold the truth; this obvious inference from Christine’s examples in turn gives greater relief and credibility to the arguments put forward throughout Books III and IV by the apparently naïve questioner, whose approach is increasingly revealed to be based on common sense and moral principles not always in evidence in the statements of the Master. The reader is thus invited to invert the balance of authority from the male Master to the female student. But equally, this strategy leads to a questioning of the value of the Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie as a whole. We have repeatedly been told throughout the four Books of the Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie that in order to be a good knight, one has to know the rules. But the rules themselves are shown to have severe limitations, and do not really provide adequate guidance. And, as though the dangers threatening the fighting man had not been made clear enough, the last piece of practical advice of the work, in chapter 24 of Book IV, is a brutal warning. Christine asks her Master if it is possible for a soldier dying in war to save his soul, as the whole point of going to war is to destroy an enemy whom God enjoins us to love. The Master rehearses the conditions of the just war, stating that in such a war, it is meritorious to die. But

8

The final chapters of Book IV deal with relatively uncontentious matters relating to heraldry.

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Françoise Le Saux Se un homme muert en bataille, en laquelle fust contre sa conscience – c’est assavoir que il pensast que la querelle fust mauvaise, et pour tollir et exurper le droit d’autruy, dont ne lui chausist mis que tollir peust, pillier ou gaangner ses souldees – sans faulte se tel homme n’a loysir d’avoir bien grant repentance en la fin nous ne pourrions presumer qu’en voie de sauvement fust. Si s’y gardent bien tous ceulx qui s’y mettent, car ame et corps exposent en grant peril se en faulces querelles soustenir s’abandonnent (pp. 284–5). If a man dies in a battle undertaken against his conscience – that is, he believed the cause to be a bad one, aiming to pillage and deprive people of their rights, and he didn’t care less as long as he could steal, pillage or earn his pay – without mistake, unless such a man has the time to repent greatly at the end of his life, we cannot presume that he will be on the way to salvation. Indeed, all those who put themselves in such a situation should be extremely wary, for they expose body and soul to great peril if they allow themselves to support bad causes.

A more discouraging note for a young man considering a military career is hard to imagine. The Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie, which on one level is a good, no-nonsense manual for the fifteenth-century knight wishing to know more about his profession, and for the most part seems pragmatic and non-judgmental, in fact quietly provides all the possible arguments against involvement in anything but the most clear-cut defensive warfare. The art of chivalry is described as fraught with moral dangers; the material gain derived from military activity is shown in many cases to be evil, even though it is legal in the strictest sense of the word, or sanctioned by custom. The glory of military activity is virtually unmentioned; physical prowess remains unsung. The traditionally virile qualities of warfare are absent; knighthood is in effect emasculated. The absence of an unrealistic gloss to the Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie was probably an added appeal for Christine’s readership, who wanted straight answers to straight questions. But the Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie asks questions that many knights would not have wished to hear asked, and gives answers that were not designed to enhance peace of mind. One suspects Froissart would not have approved.

Works Cited I. Sources Oeuvres poétiques de Christine de Pizan, ed. Maurice Roy, 3 vols (Paris: FirminDidot, 1886–91). Christine de Pizan, ‘An Edition of B.N. Ms. 603. Le Livre des Fais d’Armes et de Chevallerie’, ed. Christine Laënnec, unpubl. Ph.D., Yale, 1988; vol. II. 104

War and Knighthood in de Pizan’s Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie The ‘Livre de la Paix’ of Christine de Pisan, ed. Charity Cannon Willard (London: Mouton, 1958). The Book of Fayttes of Armes and Chyualrye. Translated and printed by William Caxton from the French Original by Christine de Pizan, ed. A. T. P. Byles, EETS 189 (Oxford, EETS, 1932). Chroniques de Jean Froissart, ed. Siméon Luce, Société de l’Histoire de France, ongoing (Paris: Renouard, 1869–).

II. Studies Carroll, Berenice A., ‘On the Causes of War and the Quest for Peace: Christine de Pizan and Early Peace Theory’, in Au Champ des escriptures. IIIe Colloque international sur Christine de Pizan, ed. Eric Hicks (Paris: Champion, 2000), pp. 337–58. Chance, Jane, ‘Gender Subversion and Linguistic Castration in FifteenthCentury English Translations of Christine de Pizan’, in Violence Against Women in Medieval Texts, ed. Anna Roberts (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1998), pp. 161–94. Forhan, Kate L., The Political Theory of Christine de Pizan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). Hall, Bert, ‘ “So Notable Ordynaunce”: Christine de Pizan, Firearms and Siegecraft in a Time of Transition’, in Cultuurhistorische caleidoscoop: Een Huldealbum aangeboden aan prof. Dr. Willy L. Braekman, ed. C. De Backer and M. de Clerq (Gent: Stichting Mens en Kultuur, 1992), pp. 219–40. Mahoney, Dhira B., ‘Middle English Renderings of Christine de Pizan’, in The Medieval Opus, Imitation, Rewriting and Transmission in the French Tradition, ed. Douglas Kelly (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), pp. 405–27. Parussa, Gabriella, ‘Instruire les chevaliers et conseiller les princes, L’Epistre Othea de Christine de Pizan’, in Studi di storia della civiltà letteraria francese. Mélanges offerts à Lionello Sozzi, ed. Marciano Guglielminetti (Paris: Champion, 1996), pp. 129–55. Soret, David, ‘Le syndrome de Mars. La guerre selon Christine de Pizan’, Cahiers d’histoire 40 (1995): 97–113. Tarnowski, Andrea, ‘Pallas Athena, la science et la chevalerie’, in Sur le chemin de longue étude. Actes du colloque d’Orléans, juillet 1995, ed. Bernard Ribémont, Etudes christiniennes 3 (Paris: Champion, 1998), pp. 149–58. Van Hemelryk, Tania, ‘Christine de Pizan et la paix: le rhétorique et les mots pour le dire’, in Au Champ des escriptures. IIIe Colloque international sur Christine de Pizan, ed. Eric Hicks (Paris: Champion, 2000), pp. 663–89. Willard, Charity Cannon, ‘Pilfering Vegetius? Christine de Pizan’s Faits d’Armes et de Chevalerie’, in Women, the Book and the Worldly: Selected Proceedings of the St Hilda’s Conference, 1993, ed. Lesley Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995), pp. 31–7. Willard, Charity Cannon, ‘Christine de Pizan on the Art of Warfare’, in Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Difference, ed. Marilynn Desmond (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), pp. 3–15.

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Barbour’s Bruce: Compilation in Retrospect THEA SUMMERFIELD

I

N AN ARTICLE published in 1991, Peter Burke posed the question of what a historical narrative would be like that dealt ‘not only with the sequence of events and the conscious intentions of the actors in these events, but also with structures – institutions, modes of thought, and so on – whether these structures act as a brake on events or as an accelerator’.1 In Barbour’s Bruce we have such a story.2 John Barbour’s task, whether commissioned or self-appointed and later rewarded,3 was not an easy one. Writing c. 1375 for Robert II, king since 1371, and his court, Barbour might have confidently expected a lively interest in his poem, particularly as the early 1370s had been a time of renewed hostilities between Scotland and England as well as of friction within Scotland itself. A poem celebrating the king through whose efforts unity and independence had been secured must, therefore, have been of great topical interest. However, Barbour’s chosen subject, King Robert Bruce (who reigned 1306–1329), was not only a man of legendary fame, to which songs and stories testified, but also a controversial figure, especially with regard to his political choices and manner of warfare. Had not the chronicler Langtoft earlier in the century ridiculed the king for skulking about in the woods naked, eating herbs and roots? 4 1

I should like to thank the participants in the Second Chronicle Conference (July 1999) at Driebergen and the War. Medieval and Renaissance Responses Conference at Durham (April 2000). 2 All references are by book and line number, unless otherwise stated, to A. A. M. Duncan’s edition of John Barbour. The Bruce. Translations are Duncan’s unless otherwise stated. The numbering system in Duncan’s edition corresponds to that used in previous editions by McDiarmid and Stevenson (1985) and Skeat (1870–89). 3 See Duncan’s introduction to The Bruce, pp. 3–4; McDiarmid and Stevenson (eds), Barbour’s Bruce, I, pp. 7, 10. 4 Pierre de Langtoft, Le Règne d’Édouard Ier, ed. Thiolier, p. 424, lines 2475–9. Langtoft refers to a book about Bruce: ‘Son livre le temoygne’ (2479). Robert Bruce is ridiculed in similar terms in the anonymous ‘Song on the execution of Sir Simon Fraser’. Thomas Wright’s Political Songs of England, ed. Peter Coss, p. 216.

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Thea Summerfield The scribes who recorded payment of the perpetual annuity awarded to Barbour in 1499 stated that such payment was due to Barbour pro compilatione liber de gestis quondam Roberti de Brus.5 Barbour also refers to compilation practices: ‘And in the tyme of the compiling / Off this buk this Robert [= Robert II] wes king’ (XIII, 709–10). Barbour’s poem is, indeed, best regarded as a compilation of highly diverse material, governed by the author’s desire to reconcile the conflict between celebration and exaltation on the one hand, and existing criticism, extant literary traditions and political expediency on the other. Resonances of the author’s conciliatory strategies may be detected both in the work’s content and its construction. After a brief introduction to the poem, the first part of this article will sketch the political atmosphere in the early years of the reign of Robert II and the difficulties faced by Barbour when writing his Bruce, insofar as they appear to have influenced the beginning of Barbour’s text (lines 1–445). In the second part the emphasis will be on Barbour’s reconciliation of fashionable notions of warfare and actual strategies used by Robert Bruce, while in the third part Barbour’s construction of a heroic leader from different literary traditions will be discussed. The analysis will focus on the core section of the poem (see below). Barbour’s Bruce is a complex poem, partly as a result of the multiple aims which the author set himself, and partly as a result of the heterogeneous elements from which it was constructed. We find in it conventional anti-English invective, popular episodes of the underdog-outsmartingpowerful-oppressor type, information on itineraries and battles, summaries of famous classical and medieval stories, biographical episodes, learned discourse, rhetorical flourishes and much more. Scholars have tried to come to terms with the diversity within the poem by assigning it to a variety of genres, established ones as well as newly invented hybrids,6 and by speculating about Barbour’s lost sources.7 In the end the poem can only be studied as it has survived, in two relatively late manuscripts.8 5 6

McDiarmid and Stevenson, Barbour’s Bruce, I, p. 11. For example: ‘romance-biography not a chronicle’ (Duncan, ‘Introduction’, The Bruce, p. 4) and ‘a chronicle of chivalry’ (ibid., ‘War of the Scots’, p. 125), ‘a heroic poem even more than . . . a chronicle’ (McDiarmid and Stevenson, Barbour’s Bruce, I, p. 45), a ‘national epic’ (McDiarmid, ‘The Metrical Chronicles’, p. 29), ‘a romance, not a chronicle’ (Cameron, ‘Chivalry and Warfare’, p. 13), a mirror for princes (Ebin, ‘Bruce, Poetry, History and Propaganda’), an ideological enterprise to ‘unify the nation and defend its sovereignty’ (Goldstein, The Matter of Scotland, p. 151). E. D. Kennedy notes that ‘verse chronicle is as good a classification as any’ (Kennedy, Manual, vol. VIII, p. 2684). 7 The traditional view that material for The Bruce was assembled by Barbour ‘from orally transmitted accounts in the immediate aftermath of the War of Independence’ is represented by H. Henderson, ‘The Ballad and Popular Tradition to 1660’, p. 263. But see Duncan, ‘Introduction’, The Bruce, p. 2. Duncan believes that Barbour relied largely on detailed written accounts about King Robert, James Douglas, Edward Bruce and Ingram d’Umfraville, all of them now lost; Duncan, ‘Introduction’, The Bruce, pp. 14–30. 8 MS Cambridge, St. John’s College G23, dated 1487 (incomplete); MS Edinburgh, National

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Barbour’s Bruce: Compilation in Retrospect The lack of sources makes it impossible to determine conclusively whether the poem was compiled in two or more phases, or whether the disparity between some of its sections is due to the variety in source material.9 The poem’s core may be considered the section beginning with the words ‘Lordingis, quha likis for till her’ in line 445, and ending with the description of the Battle of Bannockburn. It owes much of its appeal to fairly sensational episodes in which Robert Bruce, James Douglas or the Scots in general outwit the English, not by force but by ingenuity and pluck. This part of the poem would be eminently suitable for oral recitation. After the description of the Battle of Bannockburn a remarkable passage, almost amounting to an envoy, appears to indicate the (temporary) end of the poem. In the (now) intermediate envoy, Barbour states that he completed his poem when five years of King Robert II’s reign had passed, and that he hopes Robert Bruce’s offspring (i.e. Robert II) will maintain the land, protect the people and maintain justice as well as he (Robert I) did (XIII, 718–22).10 These lines are part of a retrospective passage in which Barbour muses on the workings of Fortune, which caused the mighty king of England (Edward II) to fall, while Robert Bruce rose to the top, as a result of which, according to Barbour, Scotland became an Arcadian place: men grew rich, there was an abundance of corn, cattle and wealth; mirth and happiness were everywhere (XIII, 723–9). Clearly, if Robert Bruce was a hard act to follow, it was well worth trying if these were the rewards. When the story is resumed, its focus is more diffuse with descriptions of campaigns in Ireland and the role played there by Edward Bruce. It may have been added to achieve a complete account of Robert I’s reign, up to and including his death. The end of the poem tells the story of James Douglas’s death in Spain (XX, 200–630). A remarkable feature of the text is that in the first 444 lines of the poem as it survives today Robert Bruce plays only a minor role; the emphasis is on anti-English sentiments, including the famous passage beginning ‘A! Fredome is a noble thing’ (I, 225) and on a detailed account of the early years of James Douglas. Here, at the beginning of the poem, Barbour’s way of combining multiple aims can be seen: he responds to newly ‘fashionable’ anti-English feeling and a desire for establishing tangible links with the past, circumvents criticism of Robert Bruce’s early years, and underpins Robert II’s efforts to restore unity with the powerful Douglases.

Library of Scotland, Advocates 19.2.2, dated 1489 (complete). Duncan, ‘Introduction’, The Bruce, pp. 32–3. 9 See also Duncan, ‘Introduction’, The Bruce, p. 10. 10 See also Goldstein, The Matter of Scotland, pp. 177–78.

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I The rousing anti-English invective in the first four hundred-odd lines of The Bruce is not a feature specifically of the 1370s; expressions of intense hatred and mistrust between the Scots and the English are well documented on either side of the Border throughout the fourteenth century and beyond. John Barbour was just one voice among many telling of atrocities committed by the English, as the English had been telling of atrocities committed by the Scots, a chorus of mutual hatred dating back to the correspondence with Pope Boniface VIII in 1299–1301. However, there was in the early years of the reign of Robert II an increase in such feelings when Anglo-Scottish relations were showing similarities to the situation earlier in the century. The years from 1357 until 1368 had been largely peaceful, but from 1369 onwards there was a steady reconquest of the English occupied territories in the East March of Southern Scotland,11 as well as an increase in cross-border attacks. Although it has been argued that these hostilities were not initiated by the crown or by ‘overmighty magnates’, and should perhaps be regarded as ‘typical cross-border criminal co-operation’, the activities of the militants in question effectively met with royal approval.12 In addition the FrancoScottish treaty established in the reign of Robert I was renewed in March and April 1371, thus giving new impetus to the increasingly hostile attitude towards England. Barbour’s catalogue of rape and the deprivation of rights and goods (I, 190–214) catered to renewed anti-English feelings; possibly, in the words of Peter Burke quoted at the beginning of this article, accelerating events later in the reign.13 The curiously long passage on the early years of James Douglas in this initial part of the poem may be expected to have served a double political purpose. It detracted attention from Robert Bruce’s years before his accession to the throne and strengthened the link between the houses of Stewart and Douglas. Barbour begins his biographical account of Robert Bruce with Bruce’s rebellion against King John Balliol, the king instituted by Edward I after the lengthy diplomatic effort to solve the problem of the succession in which Robert Bruce’s grandfather of the same name had played a prominent role. In Barbour’s text grandfather and grandson are curiously jumbled together into one person, so that it seems as if the later king had been active in securing the crown ever since the death of Alexander III. This kind of ‘telescoping of time, the confusion between different men’ is considered a characteristic feature of the creation of myth.14 It would seem that, whereas 11 12 13 14

MacDonald, Border Bloodshed, pp. 11–18. Boardman, The Early Stewart Kings, pp. 28–36; quote p. 29. See also MacDonald, Border Bloodshed, pp. 161–95. Burke, The Renaissance Sense of the Past, p. 13.

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Barbour’s Bruce: Compilation in Retrospect stories about Robert Bruce’s later career were current as late as the 1350s, memories of the events and persons involved around the turn of the previous century were fading fast.15 The start of Bruce’s ‘biography’ in the poem with the institution of John Balliol means that there was no need to record that Bruce deserted the Scottish cause in favour of the English three times before 1306.16 It is something with which Robert Bruce is reproached from late medieval chronicles to the film Braveheart. As the author of the metrical version of Hector Boece’s chronicle exclaims: Robert Bruce, O rabill mynd, allace! Quhair wes thi wit or wisdom in that cace? How culd thow find that time in thi hart, Aganis thi awin to tak so plane ane part With king Edward [. . .] (III, 48,319–323)17 Robert Bruce, O confused mind, alas! Where was your wit or wisdom in that case? How could you find it in your heart at that time to side with King Edward against your own [kind] so openly?

Not all authors were as charitable as this author who, in the next few lines, puts the blame for Bruce’s ‘lack of wit’ on King Edward ‘that subtill wes [and] sle, / Full of falsheid and greit crudelitie’ (III, 48, 327–28). Barbour avoids the issue entirely by not dealing with Bruce’s early years. Instead we are told at length about the youth of James Douglas, later Bruce’s second-incommand, close friend and right hand. Barbour recounts how he sowed his wild oats in Paris and, once returned to Scotland, joined Bruce as a way of recovering his ancestral lands which had been confiscated by the English.18 In this way for James Douglas as for Robert Bruce justification for rebellion is provided, and the anti-English tone set. The emphasis on the Douglas interest at the beginning of the poem is balanced by the account of Douglas’s journey to Spain with Bruce’s heart at the end, so that effectively the story of Robert Bruce is encircled by accounts of James Douglas. Certainly there were good reasons at the time of writing for emphasising the close bond that had existed at one time between the Scottish king and the Douglas family. Robert II’s succession had not been uncontested. William, Earl of

15

Brie, Die nationale Literatur Schottlands, p. 39; see below for evidence of stories extant in the 1350s. 16 Does homage to Edward I in 1296; submits to Edward I in 1302; fights for Edward in Scotland between 1302 and 1304. See Barrow, Robert Bruce, pp. 76–7, 114 and 121–4, 141–2. 17 The Buik of the Croniclis of Scotland; or A metrical version of the history of Hector Boece, ed. Turnbull. 18 On the significance of the details of James Douglas’s youth and training for his role in The Bruce, see McKim, ‘James Douglas and Barbour’s Ideal of Knighthood’, pp. 167–71.

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Thea Summerfield Douglas, had put himself forward as a candidate on flimsy grounds which were probably intended to extract concessions from the new Stewart dynasty rather than as a serious move.19 As Stephen Boardman points out, Douglas’s supporters were keen to hold on to privileges acquired during the reign of David II, and as such were a very real political threat. The matter was resolved by Robert II’s typical ‘low-key and non-confrontational approach’:20 through appointments, financial arrangements and the marriage of William’s son Sir James Douglas to Robert II’s daughter Isabella (24 Sept. 1371). Loyalty was not being taken for granted, it was bargained for and richly rewarded to guarantee the future stability of the kingdom.21 In the Douglas family itself as in the royal household, the glorious past was much in the air. In 1369 Sir Archibald Douglas, James’s son, had provided for a hospital in Holywood Abbey, Kirkcudbrightshire, ‘having in mind the souls of his father [James Douglas], King Robert, Edward Bruce and King David’. He may also at this time have had the ‘rich tomb of alabaster, fair and beautiful’ made for James Douglas’s remains which Barbour mentions (XX, 598). Barbour’s poem, encompassed as it is by the lengthy description of James Douglas’s youth and his honourable death in Spain, thus became a celebration of Douglas’s life in the service of Robert Bruce and a reminder for the present generation of the glory that might be achieved by loyalty to the king. After the introduction with its rousing anti-English invective, its celebration of James Douglas and the justifications for rebelling against the English king, the story proper begins: ‘Lordingis, quha likis for till her’. It is a story about a man whose efforts secure, as the medial epilogue states, peace, prosperity and justice for the country. But this is achieved by unconventional, even controversial means. It was Barbour’s task to reconcile extant memories about Robert Bruce, often of a highly popular and anecdotal nature, with his aim to present Robert I’s exceptional gifts of leadership as a fit subject for emulation, while dealing at the same time with some of the criticism which he knew to exist about Robert I’s methods. As we shall see, the core section of the poem presents us with a literary patchwork in which all these elements are given a place.

II In a poem in which one bloody encounter follows upon another, the emphasis appears to lie on warfare, and this certainly is an important aspect of The Bruce as a whole. Accordingly a number of scholars have noted that in The Bruce different types of military command are represented by Robert 19 20 21

Boardman, The Early Stewart Kings, p. 42. Boardman, The Early Stewart Kings, p. 49. Nicholson, Scotland. The Later Middle Ages, p. 185.

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Barbour’s Bruce: Compilation in Retrospect Bruce and his closest followers, James Douglas, Edward Bruce and Thomas Randolph.22 James Douglas is the epitome of loyalty, but fights for his own, personal ends; Edward Bruce is audacious, but, as a result of his lack of mesure, often a liability rather than an asset; and Thomas Randolph may be regarded as representing those of a later age who found Bruce’s methods of waging war less than honourable. For if Robert Bruce’s early activities in the service of the English king were remembered with dismay in the 1370s, his methods of fighting the English appear to have been similarly regarded with less than approbation by some in Robert II’s entourage. Historians have noted a renewed interest in the early years of the reign of Robert II in the concept of chivalry, ‘the desire to attain glory and renown through military feats and an enjoyment of martial endeavour for its own sake’.23 This was a European, rather than a peculiarly Scottish phenomenon, revived and given ‘a new flavour, a new emphasis’ and ‘fresh prominence’ during the Hundred Years War.24 David II, a tournament enthusiast as well as a patron of chivalric literature, had gathered round him many young men who felt inspired by the renewed emphasis on gaining glory in combat.25 It is unlikely that with the succession of Robert II the interest in chivalric feats and notions disappeared overnight. Such interests concerned equipment, such as weaponry and horses, the ‘proper’ way of conducting battles, and individual behaviour. In his story Barbour unobtrusively incorporates comments on aspects of chivalry to illustrate examples of chivalric conduct that he considered irrelevant to effective leadership. The Battle of Methven (19 June 1306), where the Scots suffered a humiliating defeat, inaugurated a period of great hardship for the Scots. Barbour’s story about Bruce and his followers becomes a tale of fugitives, moving about the country on foot, dodging their enemies, attacking from ambushes, and, as often as not, being hungry and scared. They do not even have a single horse among them. Barbour writes that when winter approaches, the ladies, who so far have accompanied their men, are advised to go to warmer and safer places and that the horses are given to them (III, 352–7). Robert Bruce’s decision to do without the horses and henceforth fight on foot (III, 354) was a strategic decision: in an encounter with the followers of John of Lorn he had found that in a fight with men armed with axes a man on horseback is extremely vulnerable. By giving the horses to the ladies, as Barbour tells us, the strategic move also becomes an act of kindness and chivalry. It is not unlikely that the late fourteenth-century audience had considered the horselessness of Bruce and his men a matter for contempt; for although in battles fighting on foot had

22

Kliman, ‘The Idea of Chivalry in John Barbour’s Bruce’; McKim, ‘James Douglas and Barbour’s Ideal of Knighthood’; Cameron, ‘Chivalry and Warfare in Barbour’s Bruce’. 23 MacDonald, Border Bloodshed, p. 178. 24 Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages, p. 243. 25 Nicholson, Scotland. The Later Middle Ages, p. 174.

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Thea Summerfield become common towards the end of the century, even for the nobility, horses continued to be ‘recognisable signs of . . . status, wealth and importance’.26 The lack of horses signals the absence of all three qualities at this stage. Bruce’s tactics also appear to have been controversial, as they are obliquely criticised and defended in a conversation between the king and his nephew, Thomas Randolph, which Barbour renders in direct discourse. Thomas Randolph, after 1312 Earl of Moray, and, after Robert Bruce’s death in 1329, Guardian of Scotland until his own death in 1332 was in Professor Barrow’s words, one of Bruce’s ‘famous captains’.27 Randolph had been with Bruce at Methven in 1306, had been captured there and had changed sides. About two years later28 he was, according to Barbour, recaptured by James Douglas. Barbour tells us that, having been brought face to face with his uncle, Thomas Randolph decided to change sides again and rejoin the Scottish cause, but not without telling his uncle his reason for his earlier defection: Ye chasty me, bot ye Aucht bettre chastyt for to be, For sene ye werrayit the king Off Ingland, in playne fechtyng Ye suld pres to derenyhe rycht And nocht with cowardy na with slycht. (IX 747–52) You rebuke me, but really you should be rebuked. For since you made war on the king of England, you should strive to prove your right in open fighting, and not by cowardice or cunning.

In other words, fighting – and winning – by means of underhand tactics is dishonourable; Robert should obey the rules of chivalry in his wars instead of resorting to guerilla methods.29 However, Robert Bruce had found out the hard way that at this early stage it was impossible for him to defeat the English, who outnumbered and out-equipped him, in a set battle, and that when he resorted to guerilla tactics, making use of the superior knowledge of the terrain and the enormous powers of endurance of his men, he was virtually invincible. Robert replies by saying, according to Barbour: ‘Yeit may-fall it may / Cum or oucht lang to sic assay’ (IX, 753–4) – ‘Well, perhaps it may come to that [i.e. a regular battle] before too long.’ After which he orders Randolph to be imprisoned for a while as a punishment for his proud words, 26

Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, pp. 30–31; Ayton, Knights and Warhorses, p. 26; Oakeshott, A Knight and his Horse, p. 27, quoted by Ruck, Index of Themes and Motifs in 12th-century French Arthurian Poetry, p. 55. 27 Barrow, Robert Bruce, pp. 193, 208. 28 According to Barrow ‘at some time before March 1309’ (Robert Bruce, p. 183); Duncan (p. 354 note to IX, 696–700) thinks it was ‘probably the early summer of 1308’. 29 McKim notes a number of theoretical opinions which do not reject the use of guile in warfare (‘James Douglas and Barbour’s Ideal of Knighthood’, p. 180, n. 31).

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Barbour’s Bruce: Compilation in Retrospect and as an opportunity for reflection (IX, 759–61); later the nephew exerts himself credibly on his uncle’s account and becomes, with James Douglas and Edward Bruce, one of his main-stays. This passage, and especially the exchange of words, serves to underline the fact that such high and mighty criticism was irrelevant in the difficult circumstances of Bruce’s struggle.30 At the same time mitigation of Robert Bruce’s methods is added by the statement that conventional battle may be on the cards at a later stage: a pointer forward to the Battle of Bannockburn (which we, like Barbour’s audience, know would be fought by pre-arrangement on a battlefield between two armies and would result in a resounding victory for Bruce); finally, the passage also serves as an acceptable rationalisation of Thomas Randolph’s earlier defection; to change sides because one’s chivalric conscience is being compromised looks better than leaving the underdog to fend for himself and joining the side where victory and reward are more likely. Criticism of the more extreme manifestations of chivalric conduct in a war situation is found in Barbour’s story of Sir John Webiton. It would be a funny story if it wasn’t so sad. Webiton, according to Barbour, was the captain of Douglas Castle, a man described by Barbour as ‘yong stoute and felloun / Joly alsua and valageous, / And for that he was amorous / He wald isch fer the blythlyar’ (VIII, 454–7) – ‘young, brave and ruthless, cheerful too and flighty, and because he was in love, he was the readier to issue forth’.31 He is lured from the safety of his castle by a ruse thought up by James Douglas and is killed.32 After his death, Barbour tells us, a letter was found among his possessions from a lady, telling him that when he had guarded the highly dangerous Douglas Castle for a year ‘as a gud bachiller’, he might ask the lady for ‘hyr amouris and hyr drouery’, her love and her service (VIII, 488–99). The story is told without further comment, but its message is obvious: such conduct is not to be commended. Webiton’s fancy and fate were by no means exceptional; cases of knights losing or nearly losing their lives as the result of tasks set them by ladies or of oaths sworn in knightly company are well-known, nor was Barbour the only author to deride these potentially fatal practices.33 30 31

See also Cameron, ‘Chivalry and Warfare’, p. 21. ‘He wes amorous’ is translated by Duncan as ‘he was a loving [person]’; in view of Webiton’s subsequent actions I believe amorous must be understood here as being in love. Lines 456–7 are, therefore, my translation. 32 Douglas had sacks filled with grass put upon horses and led by innocent-looking rural types in a long line below the castle walls. It was meant to look – and was interpreted as such – as if the Scots were taking a great quantity of grain to Lanark fair. However, once the English have left the safety of the castle to capture the sacks of ‘grain’, the Scots discard the worthless sacks and their rustic cloaks and mount their horses. At the same time Douglas and his men burst forth from their ambush. All the Englishmen are killed. Douglas takes the castle, sparing its inhabitants (VIII, 437–517). 33 See Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, pp. 219–20, 233–4.

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Thea Summerfield As Sir John Webiton cannot be traced in the records,34 it is as impossible to verify the historicity of this episode as it is to know whether or not the conversation between Robert Bruce and Thomas Randolph ever took place or if the horses were really given to the ladies. However, the possible lack of historical veracity of these episodes does not make them or the information contained in them of any less value. In Paul Strohm’s words, ‘composed within history, fictions offer irreplaceable historical evidence in their own right’.35 Although discussed here at some length, these episodes are incidental to the main issue in the poem, more particularly in its core section. They are interesting in giving us a glimpse of the audience and their ‘modes of thought’, which Barbour bore in mind when writing his long poem. However, his main concern was with Robert Bruce himself, in particular with the representation of Bruce’s exceptional gifts of leadership. He does so by incorporating and exploiting existing traditions and legends and yet raising the stature of his protagonist above the anecdotal level of these popular stories by relying on his wide reading and learning. Examples are given, first, of Robert Bruce in the midst of his men, giving them moral comfort by literary means, and second, of Bruce as a hunted individual.

III Throughout the difficult time following the Battle of Methven, Barbour emphasises Bruce’s care for his men’s morale and mental well-being. This is done – at least in Barbour’s narrative! – by telling them stories about great heroes of classical and medieval legend who had been victorious in the face of great trouble. The key-word in Barbour’s comments accompanying these stories is comfort, as the antidote of disconford (discouragement) and despair.36 An image is created of Bruce surrounded by his men, suffering with them, but morally rising above them through determination and his care for others, not showing his own worries so as not to distress his followers, pretending to be more sanguine than the situation warrants: ‘And fenyeit to mak better cher / Than he had mater to be fer, / For his caus yeid fra ill to wer’ (III, 300–2) – ‘And pretended to be more cheerful than he had reason to be by far, for his cause went from bad to worse’. An illustrative example is provided by the famous episode situated on the edge of Loch Lomond. The king and his men have decided to move to Kintyre and find their way 34

Duncan notes that this person is not found in English published records (The Bruce, p. 314). 35 Strohm, ‘False Fables and Historical Truth’, p. 4. 36 Conford: III, 189; disconford/disconforting/discumfyt: III, 191, 193, 197, 267, 258; undiscumfyt: III, 274; desparyt/disparyng: III, 195, 200, 251, 295.

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Barbour’s Bruce: Compilation in Retrospect blocked by Loch Lomond. Walking round it is said to be too far and more importantly too dangerous, as their enemies – Scots and English – are everywhere (III, 411–13); their only chance is to cross the lake. Having searched the bank for a while, James Douglas, according to Barbour, finds ‘a litill sonkyn bate’ (III, 417) on the shore. It is full of water, but, once it has been bailed out, proves sound. The oars are apparently still with it, for it is decided that one man will row James Douglas and Bruce himself across to the other side. He will then row back to fetch two more men, and so on. Not everyone fancies waiting; some, Barbour says, swim across with their belongings on their backs (III, 427–32). Barbour specifies that it took one day and one night for everyone to reach the other shore (III, 429–30). Meanwhile, Barbour tells us, Robert Bruce reads his men a story to comfort and entertain them while they were waiting: ‘The king the quhilis meryly / Red to thaim that war him by / Romanys off worthi Ferambrace’ (III, 435–37) – ‘Meanwhile the king read cheerfully to those who were with him the romance of worthy Fierabras.’ The story of Fierabras is well chosen in the circumstances. It belongs to the matter of Charlemagne; Fierabras is the heathen king of Alexandria who takes on the knights of Charlemagne, come to recover the relics of the Passion. A small group of Charlemagne’s knights ends up being imprisoned by the Saracens, as are the seven pairs sent to relieve them. Fortunately the sultan’s daughter is on their side and saves them from certain death. She also restores the relics of the Passion to the Christians, who, after great tribulations, take them to Saint Denis. The original story, which numbers around 6,000 lines, was written ‘some time between 1190 and 1202’ in Old French;37 versions survive in verse and prose in many languages, AngloNorman and English among them. In the twenty-five lines in which Barbour gives a précis of Bruce’s story, the emphasis is not on the complications of love and religion or the exotic decor which are such a marked aspect of the story as it survives, but on the siege of eleven men and one woman by an enormous army in a castle without any supplies who are rescued by Fierabras (who has meanwhile embraced the Christian faith), once he has managed to cross the water. He then vanquishes the sultan’s army and obtains the holy relics, all ‘throu his chevalry’ (III, 435–66).38 Barbour may well have heard the story, or seen the relics, during his visit to Saint Denis in 1365.39 The episode has been studied primarily with a view to the veracity of its details: did Bruce know the story by heart, or did he read from a book he had

37

Dates established on the basis of manuscript, linguistic, historical and literary criteria by Ailes, ‘The Date of the Chanson de Geste Fierabras’. See also Fierabras, Chanson de Geste, ed. Kroeber and Servois. 38 The episode is also discussed by Cameron (‘Chivalry and Warfare in Barbour’s Bruce’, pp. 24–9) as a vehicle for her argument that The Bruce is ‘a romance in the crusading mould’ (p. 25). 39 Duncan, ‘Introduction’, The Bruce, p. 2.

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Thea Summerfield with him? Which language did he use, English, French or Anglo-Norman? And who told Barbour about this?40 However interesting these questions are, it is hard to believe that Robert Bruce really sat there telling his men – cold, wet, scared and hungry as they arrived by twos and threes – a story (whether from a manuscript or from memory) about how a recently converted heathen saved a handful of Charlemagne’s knights as well as the relics of the Passion. It surely makes more sense to consider the episode as an invention of Barbour’s, to echo, duplicate and thus underline once more the importance of Robert Bruce’s concern for the morale of his men: ‘The gud king apon this maner / Comfort thaim that war him ner / And maid thaim gamyn and solace / Till that his folk all passyt was’ (III, 463–6), ‘The good king in this way cheered those who were with him, diverting and amusing them until his folk had all crossed.’ The message of the Fierabras story – take comfort from famous legendary examples – repeats that formulated in an episode some two hundred lines earlier about the despair felt by the Romans on Hannibal’s approach and their eventual victory,41 and other ‘auld storys’ (III, 269) about men in difficult circumstances who had persisted and won through. In these cases too, the comfort afforded by such stories is stressed by Barbour. It should be noted that an earlier comparison to two legendary Gaelic heroes, made by an admiring opponent, is disdainfully dismissed. After an attack by John of Lorn, one of Lorn’s men is so impressed by Bruce’s personal courage that he praises him in a speech, a well-known rhetorical device, and compares Bruce to Goll MacMorna and Fynn, heroes of Gaelic legend (III, 67–70).42 Barbour explicitly rejects this comparison as mydlike, insignificant and insufficient; Bruce might be better compared, says Barbour, to Gaudifer de Larys from the Romance of Alexander, even though Gaudifer was killed and

40

Bingham wonders if the book ‘was . . . given him at parting by the Queen or one of the other ladies?’ (Robert the Bruce, p. 146); Skeat notes, without committing himself, that in the Middle English Fierabras romance, entitled The Sowdon [= Sultan] of Babylon ‘all the points mentioned by Barbour are found’, suggesting Barbour used an early, now lost, Middle English version of this romance (The Bruce, vol. II, note to p. 437, p. 557); McDiarmid concludes: ‘The circumstance of Bruce reading from a manuscript kept with him as he wanders on foot in the highlands is probably an embellishment on a simpler story of the king “merryly” remembering the crossing of Flago’, an opinion shared by Duncan (McDiarmid and Stevenson, p. 74; Duncan, The Bruce, p. 132). Sir Walter Scott, in his Tales of a Grandfather, also concluded that Bruce read from a book; for Scott the fact that Bruce could read proved that he was fit to be king (Tales of a Grandfather, p. 27). 41 ‘Thusgat thaim comfort the king / And to comfort thaim gan inbryng / Auld storys off men that wer / Set intyll hard assayis ser / And that fortoun contraryit fast, / And come to purpos at the last’, ‘The king comforted them in that way, and to encourage them he cited ancient stories of men who were placed in various difficult circumstances, whom fortune opposed strongly, but who in the end won through’ (III, 267–72). 42 According to Henderson (‘The Ballad and Popular Tradition to 1660’, p. 265) Goll MacMorna (Gow Macmorn) and Fyn Makowll (Fionn MacCumhail) are the most frequently mentioned Gaelic legendary characters in the Middle Ages.

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Barbour’s Bruce: Compilation in Retrospect the king survived (III, 71–92). Clearly the native Scottish heroes were not considered suitable material for comparison; perhaps they were felt to be too provincial, and the comparison evidence of the inferiority of the speaker, who was, after all, one of Bruce’s enemies. Instead, Robert Bruce is immediately raised by Barbour to the level of one of the great international heroes of medieval romance. In the Loch Lomond episode Bruce is portrayed as the caring leader. Strategic insight and personal courage having earlier been proved in the encounter with John of Lorn and his men, a forceful empathetic dimension is added to the depiction of Bruce. This narrative strategy is sustained throughout the early part of the core section of the Bruce, in which Bruce and his followers move from one place to another, always in danger, both as a group and, in the case of Robert Bruce, as an individual. This section shows many similarities to stories about outlaws, as they are told all over the world. Indeed, both Barbour and the fourteenth-century English writer of a newsletter compare Bruce and his men to outlaws. In their years of persecution by Scots and English alike, Bruce and his followers live, according to Barbour, like outlaws, ‘utelawys’, drinking water and eating ‘flesch’, dressed in tatters and wearing the shoes made of hide, rivelyng, for which the Scots were both famous and derided.43 Barbour’s reference to the Scots as outlaws may reflect English attitudes towards the band of Scottish rebels in their forests. In an English newsletter dated 15/5/1307,44 Robert Bruce is referred to as King Hobbe, ‘Hobbe’ or ‘Hobbehod’ being an alternative for Hood, as in Robin Hood: a name used by many real criminals who wished to associate themselves with the legendary outlaw.45 By referring to Robert Bruce as King Hobbe, the anonymous English newsletter-writer disdainfully acknowledges Bruce’s outlaw status, his living wild in the woods with a group of men, perhaps also his sudden attacks and guerilla methods. However, outlaws have a tendency to adopt heroic stature if they successfully fight or evade a common enemy. It is this feature of the popular tales about Bruce which Barbour exploits, both in his portrayal of Bruce among his men and in episodes in which Bruce is hunted ‘like a wolf, a thief or thief’s accomplice’ (IX, 472). 43

Both Froissart and Jean le Bel mention the half-cooked meat prepared in leather pots and the shoes made of hide. Froissart, Chronicles, p. 47; Chronique de Jean le Bel, ed. Viard and Déprez, I, pp. 68–9; see also The Bruce, ed. Duncan, pp. 775–8 for a translation. The word rivelyng was used in connection with abuse of the Scots by Pierre de Langtoft in his Anglo-Norman Chronicle, by Robert Mannyng in its translation into English, and by Laurence Minot, Skelton and Dunbar; see Summerfield, ‘The Political Songs in the Chronicles’, pp. 141–2. 44 Printed by Duncan, The Bruce, p. 304, note to VIII, 271. The ‘Song on the execution of Sir Simon Fraser’ also refers to Robert Bruce as ‘King Hobbe’. See Thomas Wright’s Political Songs of England, ed. Peter Coss, p. 216. 45 Dobson and Taylor, Rymes of Robyn Hood, pp. 1–17; Holt, ‘Robin Hood: the Origins of the Legend’, pp. 27–34.

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Thea Summerfield Bruce is repeatedly described in situations where he is alone or nearly alone and in acute danger of being murdered. There is a curious repetitiveness about these episodes, evidence of their oral origins. There are, for example, four elaborately-described attacks on Bruce’s life, when Bruce is alone and unsuspecting, in each case by three men;46 twice Bruce is informed of treason by a woman;47 three times a woman gives Bruce her sons or warriors to serve in his army;48 four times, in close proximity, stories are told in which ladders play a role.49 We see Robert Bruce in a different light in these episodes: as a man who is above all a human being, on the run, hunted with bloodhounds, near despair, hungry, thirsty and in need of sleep. But even in these circumstances his behaviour is worthy of a king: he is ever one step ahead of his attackers. Stories about Robert Bruce and his associates outwitting their Scottish or English enemies were still current in the 1350s, as is clear from an anecdote recounted by Sir Thomas Gray in his Scalachronica, telling of two boatmen, both of them Bruce’s enemies, who ferry a person unknown to them across the river. While rowing across they mention that they would dearly like to have Robert Bruce in their boat, and would lose no time in killing him. Once safely ashore and out of reach, Robert Bruce reveals his identity, presumably to the chagrin of the ferrymen.50 Examples of similar stories of amusing and successful trickery in The Bruce are the episodes in which William Bunnock smuggles armed men in his hay wain into the peel of Linlithgow (X, 150–254) and of James Douglas and his men who are taken for oxen in the twilight (X, 373–402). Although strongly anecdotal and demotic in character, such stories contribute to the heroic stature of the protagonist, the survivor who has made his enemies look silly. The stories which Barbour includes in his poem about Robert Bruce’s close encounters with antagonists who always outnumber him and whose sole desire it is to kill him, are rather more grim, in that they involve real suffering for the hero, not just for the enemy. This further enhances their emotive effect. Some of these stories were, as Duncan has pointed out, ‘internationally famous’.51

46

47 48 49

50 51

III, 93–146: the Mac na Dorsair brothers and one other man; V, 549–658: a man once close to the king and his two sons; VII, 111–230: three men and a wether; VII, 407–94: three anonymous men emerging from the woods when Bruce is out hunting alone. V, 535–46; XIX, 22–30. IV, 662–7; V, 133–42; VII, 259–68. Ladders are mentioned four times in Book X: rope ladders made by Sym of Ledhouse in the siege of Roxburgh Castle (X, 363–73); the ladder used when scaling the wall of Edinburgh Castle, provided by William Francis (X, 535–95); the example of ladders used by Alexander the Great when taking the tower of Babylon (X, 708–40); the prophecy of St. Margaret involving a ladder (X, 741–60). Sir Thomas Gray, The Scalachronica, pp. 34–5. Jean le Bel records that Robert Bruce was hunted with dogs. Duncan, The Bruce, pp. 226–7, note to VI, 36, 39.

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Barbour’s Bruce: Compilation in Retrospect In his book Bandits Eric Hobsbawm discusses a number of typical aspects of the ‘image’ of the ‘noble robber’, which I shall here transpose to what I consider to be a genre in its own right, the genre of the outlaw tale, where ‘images’ are based on stories rather than facts. Hobsbawm shows that outlaw stories are typically set in motion by the protagonist’s deprivation of rights (usually land) and the abuse of authority. Outlaw heroes, in other words, are rebels with a cause; they are morally justified in their rebellion. They do not fight for themselves only; they are the champions of an anonymous community. The enemy is always well-defined, and the outlaw, who was an accepted member of society before he became an outlaw, ultimately acquires his proper status.52 During the period of his outlawry, there is a close bond between the outlaw and his usually all-male associates, while the poor assist and feed the outlaw and his men. All outlaw stories have a historical and geographical basis in fact. Outlaw tales consist of a succession of often very similar incidents, repeated several times, in realistic settings; all have a ruthless, violent substratum under their fight for justice. At the same time, the tension is regularly relieved by truly comical episodes. The rationale given by Barbour for Robert Bruce’s rebellion and fight for freedom, which is of a more exalted nature than Douglas’s struggle to recover his property, the implicit knowledge that this man will one day be king, the assistance of frequently named commoners as well as groups, the named close companions and sense of unity of purpose, the part played by the scenery and the violence, all contribute to creating a picture of Robert Bruce as a hero. There are also differences: food, usually luxurious and plentiful in the ‘greenwood’ of outlaw fame, is decidedly scarce in the Scottish hills.53 The picture of Robert Bruce as a hunted, suffering human being, separated from civilisation by an evil power and deprived of what is rightfully his, as a man to whose personal sacrificial suffering ultimate success is due, is already found in the Declaration of Arbroath (1320), where it is stated that, in order that ‘his people and heritage might be delivered out of the hands of enemies, [he] bore cheerfully toil and fatigue, hunger and danger’.54 The memory of Bruce as a hunted man, as the Scalachronica and other chronicles testify, was still alive in the 1350s. These stories, and the sentiments expressed in the Declaration, could not be ignored by Barbour; indeed, they were used to great effect. However, Barbour added a dimension by juxtaposing the popular 52 53

The only other option is death by treason, Robin Hood’s fate. The difficulty of finding provisions is a constant in this section of the poem. For example: James Douglas is shown catching fish and trapping animals to feed the ladies (II, 573–84); the people of Rathlin agree to feed Bruce and his men, but may have had little choice (Bruce gives them a promise that their possessions will not be stolen from them if they agree to feed him and his men). This agrees with actual outlaw practice (III, 741–52). See also Hanawalt, ‘Ballads and Bandits’, pp. 165 and 170–1. Later Bruce decides that he is too heavy a burden on the population (IV, 336–53). The Earl of Lennox is no less welcome for the food he brings after a long day’s unsuccessful hunting. 54 The Nation of Scots and the Declaration of Arbroath, ed. Duncan, p. 35.

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Thea Summerfield image of Robert Bruce, officially enshrined in the Declaration, with the image of an empathetic leader whose grandeur was on a par with the status of the great heroes of the past. It is the combination of these features with his great military qualities that makes him fit material for emulation by a later king.

CONCLUSION John Barbour compiled his liber de gestis quondam Robert de Brus from disparate material consisting of, among much else, songs or chronicles about Robert I and the other main protagonists, celebrating their memorable exploits; famous stories about the great men of the classical and medieval past; surviving information on battles and campaigns; and popular legendary tales telling how Robert Bruce and his men outwitted their enemies, and of the great personal suffering of the future king, through which independence was achieved (sentiments echoed in The Declaration of Arbroath). This material was adapted by Barbour in his compilation to answer the needs of a later court and a later king, Robert II. This involved dealing, often implicitly, with aspects of Robert Bruce’s struggle which were controversial, even condemned, in the 1370s, and taking into account existing or recent tension between the descendants of the two main characters in the poem: Robert Bruce and James Douglas. It also involved raising the status of the future king from the demotic level of popular legend to the hieratic level of famous heroes of the past, from the king as a fugitive to the king as the man who leads his followers, in spite of great personal anguish and suffering, to victory, to ‘myrth and solace and blythness’ (XIII, 728); a king of the legendary stature of an Alexander or Fierabras. However, the demotic episodes forcefully and effectively contribute to Bruce’s heroic stature in a different way, as stories comparable to those told about famous outlaws everywhere in the world. The underdog who successfully fights to regain that of which he and his followers have been unjustly and cruelly deprived, may be certain of the sympathy of the audience. Throughout what I have called the core section of Barbour’s Bruce, Robert Bruce’s leadership is presented in messianic terms: his personal suffering and his care for the comfort and solace of his men ultimately lead to success. This is what true leadership is about, and this is the message Barbour has for the court of Robert II. Kingship is not only about waging war, whether in accordance with generally accepted or newly invented and expedient methods. Whether in the end Barbour’s expositions on current modes of thought led to the result desired by him, whether they were ‘brakes or accelerators’, is unknown. That he wrote in response to contemporary sentiments about Robert I cannot be doubted.

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Works Cited I. Sources Barbour, John, The Bruce, ed. and trans. Archibald A. M. Duncan, Canongate Classics 78 (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1997; repr. with corrections 1999). Barbour’s Bruce, ed. Matthew P. McDiarmid and James A. C. Stevenson (Edinburgh: The Scottish Text Society, 1985). The Bruce, or The Book of the most excellent and noble prince Robert de Broyss, King of Scots Compiled by Master John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen A.D. 1375, ed. Walter W. Skeat, EETS ES 11 and 55 (London, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1870–1889). Fierabras, Chanson de Geste, ed. Auguste Kroeber and Gustave Servois (Paris: Vieweg, 1860). Froissart, Chronicles, ed. and trans. Geoffrey Brereton (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics 1968). Gray, Sir Thomas, The Scalachronica. The Reigns of Edward I, Edward II and Edward III, trans. Sir Herbert Maxwell, Baronet (Felinfach: Llanerch Publishers, 2000. Facsimile Reprint. First published Glasgow, 1907). Langtoft, Pierre de, Le Règne d’Ëdouard Ier. Edition critique et commenté, ed. Jean-Claude Thiolier. Vol. I (Créteil: C.E.L.I.M.A Université de Paris XII, 1989). Le Bel, Jean, Chronique, ed. Jules Viard and Eugène Déprez, SHF, 2 vols (Paris: Laurens, 1904–1905). Scott, Sir Walter, Tales of a Grandfather (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1869, first publ. 1827). Stewart, William, The Buik of the Croniclis of Scotland; or A metrical version of the history of Hector Boece, ed. William B. Turnbull, Rolls Series, 3 vols (London: Longman, Browns, Green, Longmans and Roberts, 1858). Wright, Thomas, Political Songs of England, From the Reign of John to that of Edward II, ed. Peter Coss (with a new Introduction by Peter Coss) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966. Facsimile Reprint. First Published by the Camden Society, 1839).

II. Studies Ailes, Marianne J., ‘The Date of the Chanson de Geste Fierabras’, Olifant 19 (1994): 245–71. Ayton, Andrew, Knights and Warhorses. Military Service and the English Aristocracy under Edward II (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1994). Barrow, Geoffrey W. S., Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1965). Bingham, Caroline, Robert the Bruce (London: Constable, 1998). Boardman, Stephen, The Early Stewart Kings: Robert II and Robert III, 1371–1406 (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1996). Brie, Friedrich W. D., Die nationale Literatur Schottlands von den Anfängen bis zur Renaissance (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1937). 123

Thea Summerfield Burke, Peter, ‘History of Events and the Revival of Narrative’, in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. P. Burke (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), pp. 233–48. Burke, Peter, The Renaissance Sense of the Past (London: Arnold, 1970). Cameron, Sonja, ‘Chivalry and Warfare in Barbour’s Bruce’, in Armies, Chivalry and Warfare in Medieval Britain and France. Proceedings of the 1995 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Matthew Strickland (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1998), pp. 13–29. Dobson, Richard B., and John Taylor, Rymes of Robyn Hood. An Introduction to the English Outlaw (Stroud: Sutton, 1997, rev. edn). Duncan, Archibald A. M., ‘The War of the Scots, 1307–1323’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Sixth Series II (1992): 125–51. Duncan, Archibald A. M., The Nation of Scots and the Declaration of Arbroath (London: Historical Association, 1970). Ebin, Lois A., ‘John Barbour’s Bruce: Poetry, History and Propaganda’, Studies in Scottish Literature 9 (1971–2): 218–42. Goldstein, R. James, The Matter of Scotland. Historical Narrative in Medieval Scotland (Lincoln (Neb.) and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1993). Hanawalt, Barbara A., ‘Ballads and Bandits. Fourteenth-Century Outlaws and the Robin Hood Poems’, in Chaucer’s England. Literature in Historical Context, ed. Barbara A. Hanawalt, Medieval Studies at Minnesota 4 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), pp. 154–75. Henderson, Hamish, ‘The Ballad and Popular Tradition to 1660’, in The History of Scottish Literature I: Origins to 1660 (Mediaeval and Renaissance), ed. R. D. S. Jack (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1988). Hobsbawm, Eric, Bandits (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1969, repr. 2000 with postscript). Holt, James C., ‘Robin Hood: the Origins of the Legend’, in Robin Hood. The Many Faces of that Celebrated English Outlaw / Die vielen Gesichter des edlen Räubers, ed. K. Carpenter (Oldenburg: Bibliotheks- und Informationssystem der Universität Oldenburg, 1995), pp. 27–34. Kennedy, Edward D., A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050:1500. Volume 8: Chronicles and Other Historical Writing (New Haven, Connecticut: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1989). Kliman, Bernice W., ‘The Idea of Chivalry in John Barbour’s Bruce’, Mediaeval Studies 35 (1973): 477–508. MacDonald, Alastair J., Border Bloodshed (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2000). Macdougall, Norman, ‘Foreword’, in Stephen Boardman, The Early Stewart Kings. Robert II and Robert III, 1371–1406 (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1996). McDiarmid, Matthew P., ‘The Metrical Chronicles and Non-alliterative Romances’, in The History of Scottish Literature I. Origins to 1660 (Mediaeval and Renaissance), ed. R. D. S. Jack (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1988), pp. 27–38. McKim, Anne, ‘James Douglas and Barbour’s Ideal of Knighthood’, Forum for Modern Language Studies 17 (1981): 167–80. Nicholson, Ranald, Scotland. The Later Middle Ages. The Edinburgh History of Scotland, 2 (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1974). Oakeshott, Ronald E., A Knight and his Horse (Guildford and London: P. Lutterworth 1962). 124

Barbour’s Bruce: Compilation in Retrospect Prestwich, Michael, ‘England and Scotland during the Wars of Independence’, in England and her Neighbours. Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais, ed. Michael Jones and Malcolm Vale (London: Hambledon Press, 1989), pp. 181–97. Prestwich, Michael, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages. The English Experience (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996). Ruck, Elaine H., Index of Themes and Motifs in 12th-century French Arthurian Poetry (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1991). Strohm, Paul, ‘False Fables and Historical Truth’, in Paul Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow. The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 3–9. Summerfield, Thea, ‘The Political Songs in the Chronicles of Pierre de Langtoft and Robert Mannyng’, in The Court and Cultural Diversity. Selected Papers from the Eighth Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, The Queen’s University of Belfast, 26 July – 1 August 1995, ed. Evelyn Mullaly and John Thompson (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 139–48.

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‘Peace is good after war’: The Narrative Seasons of English Arthurian Tradition ANDREW LYNCH

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EDIEVAL English Arthurian narratives do not in themselves make up a solid tradition, more a series of differently situated and shaped responses to disparate source materials. Their supposed common identity often cannot disguise wide differences. Sir Launfal and the Wife of Bath’s Tale, for instance, contemporary romances of love and magic set in Arthur’s reign, are worlds apart in ethos and literary conduct. But if we look beyond self-contained bachelor-knight romances to English narratives attempting a broader chronological treatment of Arthur’s career, what might be called Arthurian biography, a much stronger sense of tradition and intertextuality emerges, from Geoffrey of Monmouth to Malory, including the Brut books of Wace and La
amon, Robert Mannyng’s Chronicle, and the Alliterative Morte Arthure.1 Within these texts, Arthur’s story centres on the changing representation of military power, political organisation and right to rule; narratives of war provide the main discursive resources for this. A term like ‘war biography’ would best describe the treatment of Arthur in these texts, for the king and the conduct of the wars are inseparable. Less often noted, the representation of peace is also a persistent and significant Arthurian interest. However warlike their outlook, those writing the reign of Arthur were inevitably required by their material to construct imaginative sequences in which the establishment and breaking of peace, the alternations of peace and war – ‘blysse and blunder’2 – were accounted for in terms intelligible and meaningful to their audiences. The question of peace assumed greater importance in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries because of new political developments. The growing importance of parliament in England, the dependence on it for financing war, the obvious costs of war to the commons, the 1 2

For an account, see Barron, ‘Arthurian Romance’, p. 23. Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, ed. Tolkien and Gordon, rev. Davis, line 18.

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Andrew Lynch prolonged and inconclusive nature of the war with France, the adoption of more widely destructive military tactics, the bad experience of civil war, all apparently gave the benefits of peace a stronger voice than they had previously had.3 Especially in the clerkly tradition of moral poetry, the literary discourse of peace became newly invigorated in Chaucer’s time and beyond. ‘Al werre is dreedful, vertuous pees is good, / Striff is hatful, pees douhtir of plesaunce’, Lydgate could write.4 How, if at all, do English Arthurian writings respond to these developments? Do militarist values of prowess and conquest continue to dominate the representation of Arthur, as in Geoffrey’s work, or is their influence at all contested or moderated? What is the value of Arthurian peace? John Barnie, referring to the Alliterative Morte Arthure (c. 1400), long ago suggested that it gave out a mixed message on war issues: ‘Arthur . . . is presented as a great chivalric and national hero, as well as a proud and avaricious tyrant’; ‘Arthur . . . may be the subject of far-reaching criticism, but he is still “Sir Arthure of Inglande”, “owre wyese kyng”.’ 5 Barnie was responding to the assumption that a poem which described such destructive wars must inevitably be an ‘anti-war’ poem. For all the horrors of war it depicts, he and Karl Heinz Göller were both surely right that the Alliterative Morte is ‘ambivalent’ on the issue; it does not simply identify itself as an anti-war statement,6 let alone as a work in the near-pacifist spirit of some later medieval moral poetry. In this study I attempt a further articulation of its ambivalence, through analysis of peace and war as sequential and inter-related, rather than separate and adversarial, in the English tradition of Arthurian war biography. Rather than offering global assessments of these Arthurian texts as pro- or anti-war, militarist or pacifist, I make a comparative analysis of the particular ideological relation each establishes between war and peace, especially at the difficult narrative junctures that explain the transition between these states. Lori Walters and Ad Putter have shown that early Arthurian verse romances adopted a cyclical alternation of peace and war. They strictly bound themselves to respect the temporal authority of chronicle prose history by situating their adventures interstitially, in the ‘unused story time’7 of peace between Geoffrey’s wars. Wace draws attention to the ‘time of great peace’, after the king’s return from France, in which the marvels and

3

4 5 6 7

For war and political changes, see McKisack, The Fourteenth Century 1307–1399, Chapters 7, 9, 13–15. For the associated growth of peace and anti-war literature, see Scattergood, Politics and Poetry in the Fifteenth Century; Yeager, ‘Pax Poetica’; Ben Lowe, Imagining Peace, esp. pp. 70ff; Lynch, ‘ “Thou woll never have done” ’. Lydgate, A Praise of Peace, in The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed. McCracken, no. 64, lines 169–84. See Scattergood, pp. 148–50 for other works by Lydgate and Audelay. Barnie, War in Medieval Society, p. 150. Göller, ed., in The Alliterative Morte Arthure, pp. 15–17. Putter, ‘Finding Time for Romance’, see pp. 2–3; Walters, ‘Le Rôle du scribe dans l’organisation des manuscrits des romans de Chrétien de Troyes’, see pp. 303–5.

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The Narrative Seasons of English Arthurian Tradition adventures of Arthurian poetic fiction are placed.8 The association of peacetime with romance invention marked its original subordination to a war-history schedule. It is as if the narrative authority of war could never be challenged by the fictions of the poets, only complemented and structurally buttressed. As Elizabeth Edwards puts it, ‘the romance of errancy is . . . instituted as the project of the now politically stable court’.9 In time, Ad Putter has shown, English Arthurian romances, once supported by French prose, developed enough of their own authority to make new gaps in the chronicles, further breaking up the ‘historical’ fabric to insert more fictive adventures.10 I shall argue here that the Alliterative Morte Arthure, imaginatively re-working Arthurian history at the seam of war and peace, fashioned a new critique of Arthur’s wars. Some unusual narrative and structural features of its Arthurian war biography vary and partly disable the traditional cyclical relation of war and peace, ultimately supporting the suggestion, not that all war is dreadful, but that the king’s war goes on too long. King Arthur’s peacetime role became more important after his twelfthcentury transformation from dux bellorum to rex, but always remained overshadowed by his wars. Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1135) made Arthur a leader hastily crowned in wartime11 and glorious in conquest, perhaps in contrast to the saintly kings of earlier clerical tradition.12 Geoffrey’s Arthur tries to make peace with the Saxons, but their duplicity disrupts his plans, sparking a holy war of extermination.13 Later, Geoffrey passes over twelve years of Arthurian peace in a few lines.14 Then, after extensive wars in Gaul, he devotes considerable space to Arthur’s glorious return. The more the king conquers in foreign war, the more splendid his subsequent peacetime life is shown to be. But Geoffrey breaks up Arthur’s Whitsun celebrations, where the king renews ‘pacts of peace’ with his chieftains,15 by introducing Rome’s demands for tribute, and these precipitate further wars never brought to an end, because the rebellion by Mordred in which Arthur dies interrupts his final push on Rome.16 As glorious as Geoffrey made Arthur, he left it possible to see the king’s last wars as both unduly prolonged and inconclusive, failing to meet the expectation of total victory raised by previous campaigns 8 9 10

11

12 13 14 15 16

Wace’s Roman de Brut, ed. and trans. Weiss, lines 9788–98. (Cited as ‘Wace’ hereafter.) Edwards, The Genesis of Narrative in Malory’s Morte Darthur, p. 36. Putter, ‘Finding Time for Romance’, p. 7. See also Fichte, ‘Grappling with Arthur’. Fichte, p. 156, places the Alliterative Morte in an English Arthurian tradition giving ‘imaginative poetic elaborations of the historical “facts” as they are presented in the chronicles and histories’. The Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, ed. Griscom, p. 432 (cited as Historia hereafter); Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, trans. Thorpe, p. 212 (cited as ‘Thorpe’ hereafter). Flint, ‘The Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth’. Historia, pp. 436–7; Thorpe, pp. 215–16. Historia, p. 446; Thorpe, p. 222. Historia, p. 451: ‘inter proceres suos firmissimam pacem renouaret’; Thorpe, p. 226. Historia, pp. 459ff; Thorpe, pp. 230ff.

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Andrew Lynch against the Saxons, Frollo and Lucius, or to achieve the expected peacetime aftermath. In the Historia and its successors, peace is principally treated as the precondition and the result of war; it is first a state of unrealised potential, then a temporary period of triumph and repletion, the one becoming the other through a transformative intervening space of war. Geoffrey’s highest form of peace is Arthurian – the plentiful feast, the full court, the huge numbers of royal and noble vassals in attendance, the display of luxury, the sports and games with their sexualised ambience.17 He represents peace mainly as the ‘fruits’ and spoils of war, complementing his overall theme that loss of military prowess brings eventual disaster to a people. Whilst in the moral tradition of the later medieval period, war and peace could be understood as separate, and in opposition, they are here quite interdependent, necessarily alternating but not truly alternative states, being parts of the one generative strategy within a continuing narrative. Though interdependent, their status is not equal. Peace is ancillary to war, a space of leisure in which success in past war is celebrated and displayed, and new war prepared and justified. If any problem in the relation of these two states arises, it is represented as a cyclical hitch: not peace versus war, but too long a peace without war. Accordingly, in the crisis posed by the Roman challenge Geoffrey shows almost no prudential assessment of war and peace as alternatives. Arthur’s council18 is of the kind Chaucer would much later attack in Melibee as ‘a moevyng of folye’ – assembled in anger, covetousness and haste, tainted with flattery, and preempted by the king’s expressed desire for war.19 But Chaucer’s Prudence is speaking out of a ‘desire for peace as a temporal condition’20 not much known to Geoffrey of Monmouth. Geoffrey’s characters regard peace itself as the problem; it has lasted too long. Duke Cador of Cornwall, in a tradition going back at least to Tacitus,21 complains that even five years of peace have made the Britons degenerate – cowards, lechers, dice-players – and rejoices that war has come again.22 17 18 19

Historia, pp. 451–9; Thorpe, pp. 226–30. Historia, pp. 460–6; Thorpe, pp. 231–5. See ‘The Tale of Melibee’, in Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer, p. 225, VII, lines 1243–8. Although to Chaucer anger vitiated royal council, Arthurian writers seem comfortable with the ira regis, which had enjoyed a renaissance since the twelfth century. See Althoff, ‘Ira Regis’, esp. p. 70. 20 Lowe, p. 5. 21 Cornelii Taciti De Vita Iulii Agricolae, ed. Sleeman: Chapter 14: ‘si civitas in qua orti sunt longa pace et otio torpeat, plerique nobilium adulescentium petunt ultro eas nationes, quae tum bellum aliquod gerunt, quia et ingrata genti quies’. Tacitus, Germania, trans. Hutton: ‘Should it happen that the community where they are born is drugged with long years of peace or quiet, many of the high-born youth voluntarily seek those tribes which are at the time engaged in some war; for rest is unwelcome to the race.’ 22 Historia, p. 461; Thorpe, pp. 222–3. For a valuable discussion of the topic in romance texts, see Putter, ‘Arthurian Literature and the Rhetoric of “Effeminacy” ’, with special reference to Geoffrey and Wace at pp. 43–5.

130

The Narrative Seasons of English Arthurian Tradition Two succeeding Brut-poems, by Wace (1155) and La
amon (c. 1185– 1216),23 add different responses to Cador’s counsel in Geoffrey. The reply Wace’s Walwain gives to Cador implies a seasonal sequence and continuity between war and peace: ‘De neient estes en efroi Bone est la pais emprès la guerre, Plus bele e mieldre en est la terre; Mult sunt bones les gaberies E bones sunt les drueries. Pur amistié e puir amies Funt chevaliers chevaleries.’ ‘you are upset about nothing. Peace is good after war and the land is the better and lovelier for it. Jokes are excellent and so are love affairs. It’s for love and their beloved that knights do knightly deeds.’24

Though Wace’s peace is leisure after work, a youthful re-generation after old winter, a feminised time of plenty, it is also a time for motivating arms. And yet, after some point in the time of peace, apparently, rest becomes idleness, health becomes sickness, pastime becomes vice, women’s company stops inspiring men to arms and makes them effeminate and unmartial. Wace’s Cador and Gawain disagree about the timing, but they both understand the same period of peace as after the last war, before the next one. In this narrative moment, Wace holds the virtues of peace and war in poise. He celebrates the joys of soldiers’ return and family reunion, the increase of luxury and wealth, yet adds disputes arising from chess and dice-playing.25 He invents Gawain’s courtly praise of peace, yet by adding some more about love affairs to Geoffrey’s narrative prepares the ground for Cador’s soldierly complaints.26 Overall, Wace’s outlook is fundamentally appreciative of the advantages of conquest. He treats peace as a springtime27 for the growth of a new generation of warriors at home, and an off-season abroad in which stripped lands can recover their profitability. Wace’s Arthur has only ‘made peace and a treaty [in Brittany] because, apart from towers and castles, nothing was left to destroy, neither plants nor vines to be despoiled’.28 Now the Roman challenge arrives at the perfect time, just when war is necessary again. 23 24 25 26 27

28

Le Saux, Lahamon’s Brut: The Poem and its Sources, p. 10. Wace, lines 10765–72. Barron and Weinberg, ed. and trans., Lahamon’s Arthur, p. xxviii, call Wace’s courtly additions ‘trifling in themselves’ (cited as ‘La
amon’ hereafter). Wace, lines 10561–88. Wace, lines 10539–42 In Thorpe, p. 225, Arthur returns from France ‘just as spring was coming on’. In later English texts, spring descriptions become naturalised as preludes to deeds of chivalry and war. See Of Arthour and of Merlin, Vol. 1, ed. Macrae-Gibson, lines 7619ff; The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. Vinaver, rev. Field, Vol. III, pp. 1120–1; 1161. Wace, trans. Weiss, lines 10125–8.

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Andrew Lynch La
amon, who generally follows Wace in his own way, diminishes the Caerleon feast and the later Arthurian episodes.29 He cuts the gambling, music and story-telling from Arthur’s court,30 and his version of the council scene is quite different. In La
amon’s Brut, when Cador attacks ‘idelnesse’ and ‘advocates war for the sake of war’31 – For nauere ne lufede ich longe grið inne mine londe. for þurh griðe we beoð ibunden and wel neh al aswunden32

– Walwain’s reply says nothing about ‘love of women’,33 but takes up the praise of peace ‘in wider terms of ethical principle and national economy’:34 ‘Cador, þu aert a riche mon! þine redes ne beoð noht idon, for god is grið and god is frið þe freoliche þer haldeð wið – and Godd sulf hit makede þurh his Goddcunde – for grið makeð godne mon gode workes wurchen. for alle monnen bið þa bet þat lond bið þa murgre.’ ‘Cador, you are a mighty man! Your advice is not sound, for peace and quiet are good if one maintains them willingly – and God himself in his divinity created them – for peace allows a good man to do good deeds whereby all men are the better and the land the happier.’35

La
amon, the ‘strong moralist’36 who ‘pruned down’ Arthur’s Roman wars,37 refuses to dismiss peace as a mere occasion of sin. He allows it an effective value in its own right, as the creation of God, and the general precondition of good works and happiness amongst men. Peace is good, La
amon says, where it can be ‘freely’ (‘willingly’, ‘nobly’) kept. This is an unusually strong statement in the Arthurian tradition. Under the circumstances, the Roman threat of force is doubtless understood to make a ‘free’ or ‘noble’ peace impossible; such a peace dictated by cowardice, forced on the country by military weakness, and necessitating homage against the customary rights of the land, would be shameful.38 But despite this context, and although he 29 30 31 32 33

34 35

36 37 38

Le Saux, pp. 30–2. Le Saux, p. 37. Le Saux, p. 70. La
amon, lines 12449–50. Barron and Weinberg translate: ‘For I have never favoured a prolonged peace in my land, for peace ties us down and makes us all but impotent.’ Le Saux, p. 39, shows how La
amon tends to cut such references. She notes instead, p. 65, the role of the woman in La
amon as ‘freoþuwebbe’, ‘the peaceweaver of Old English tradition’. Le Saux, p. 39. La
amon, lines 12454–8. Barron and Weinberg, p. lxiii, call this ‘a different idealism [from Wace’s ‘amorous dalliance’] based on social good rather than personal happiness’. See Le Saux, p. 57, for La
amon’s ‘higher sense of the dignity of his subject matter’. Le Saux, p. 13. See also pp. 155ff. Le Saux, p. 229. See Barnie, pp. 2ff, for the concept of ‘shameful peace’.

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The Narrative Seasons of English Arthurian Tradition often gives Arthur’s wars a positive religious aspect,39 La
amon is unwilling to leave Cador’s sweeping statement unanswered. There is an idea, much more developed than in Wace, that peacetime benefits the whole land and people, however much it derogates from the military ‘wurþ-scipe’ of ‘riche’ (‘powerful’) men like Cador. Walwain’s reply in La
amon’s Brut associates especially with Cador the value-nexus of conquest through war, increased honour and enrichment through spoils. Following Geoffrey’s lead, Cador (the proto-Obélix) has repeatedly thanked God for sending him these Romans.40 But to La
amon’s Walwain, Cador is self-interested, not a voice who can speak for all, much less divinely motivated, and against his partial interest the poet sets up an idea of peace itself as God-given and salutary. La
amon goes beyond the traditional praise of the strong king as good security for the land, fierce to his foes, generous to his friends, which the poem provides elsewhere, in the tradition of the Peterborough Chronicle’s approval of tough rulers like William I and Henry I.41 This is nevertheless an equally patriotic concept of peace, which fits the poet’s ‘pro-Briton bias’.42 La
amon’s idea of Britain’s happiness under Arthur is less the victorious return from France43 than the previous twelve years without war. Geoffrey had mainly treated this space as a time for military build-up, Wace as a time for chivalric adventures; La
amon thinks of the whole country: Her mon mai arede of Arðure þan king hu he twelf
ere seoðen wuneden here inne griðe and inne friðe, in alle uaer
nesse. Na man him ne faht wið, no he ne makede nan unfrið; ne mihte nauere nan man biþenchen of blissen þat woren in aei þeode mare þan i þisse; ne mihte nauere moncunne nan swa muchel wunne swa wes mid Arðure and mid his folk here.44

No wonder the poet is unwilling to see peacetime traduced by Cador. A peace like this would not inevitably go on ‘too long’; it could be freely ‘held’. La
amon comes closest in the English Arthurian tradition to imagining a peace that opposes wars.

39 40 41

Le Saux, p. 159. La
amon, lines 12428–50. See Thorpe, p. 232. See Barron and Weinberg in La
amon, p. 268, notes to p. 81, lines 10776–800. They cite other praises of peace in La
amon: lines 10744–799, which seems to echo the Peterborough Chronicle, years 1087, 1135; lines 1255–1257 (Gwendoleine); lines 9255–9258 (Uther). 42 Le Saux, pp. 40–41. 43 La
amon, lines 12073–96. 44 La
amon, lines 11337–44: ‘Here one may read of Arthur the king, how he afterwards dwelt here twelve years in peace and prosperity, in all splendour. No one fought against him, nor did he make war on anyone; no man could ever conceive of greater happiness in any country than there was in this; nor could any nation ever know such great joy as there was with Arthur and his people here.’

133

Andrew Lynch Later English versions of Geoffrey’s council scene tend strongly to affirm the cyclical, rather than the adversarial, model of war and peace, and in doing so they continue the traditional narrative subjection of peace to war. Mannyng’s Chronicle fills out the idea of peace as the restoration of the land by emphasising, following Wace, the recent joyful return from France of Arthur’s army. Mindful of home, the king has demobilised the veterans, keeping the young men with him.45 War is seen as natural to the young, in line with the views normally attributed to Gawain in this tradition. After nine years in France, all the Britons return. Families are re-united; spoils are reckoned; news is exchanged between old friends: Ladies kist þer lordes suete, modres on childir for ioy grete; sones welcomed þer fadres home & mad myrth at þer tocome. ... þei stode in ilk strete and stie, in gashadles [crossroads] men passed bie to spir at þam how þei had faren, & whi þat þei so long waren, & how þei sped of þer conquest, and whan þei won so far est, & how þei ferd in alle þer wo. ‘We wille no more
e far vs fro.’46

For all the charm of Mannyng’s scene, this moment encapsulates the praise of victory rather than of peace per se, since it can properly apply only to the land and people of a conqueror. Despite his promise in the Prologue to tell ‘whilk did wrong, & whilk ryght, / and whilk mayntend pes & fyght’,47 Mannyng’s general debt to Wace effectively makes him a partisan for war because it restricts the view of war’s aftermath to the victorious side. Accordingly, when the Roman challenge is offered, the distinction Mannyng draws is in favour of war. The author of Handlyng Synne has Cador give a weighty moral critique of how peace encourages sloth, lechery and vicious pastimes: ‘þorh idelnes of pes ere Bretons feble & hertles. Idelnes norisces but euel; & mykelle temptacoun of þe deuel; idelnes mas man right slouh & dos pruesse falle fulle louh; idelnes norisches licherie 45 46 47

Robert Mannyng of Brunne, ed. Sullens, lines 10757–9 (cited as ‘Mannyng’ hereafter). Mannyng, lines 10802–14. Mannyng, lines 19–20.

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The Narrative Seasons of English Arthurian Tradition & dos vs tent to suilk folie; idelnes & long reste,
ougþe in wast a way wille keste, & dos men tent to foly fables, tille ha
ardrie, to dee
and tables.’48

Peace is no more than an inglorious ‘sleep’ from which God has wakened them by sending the Romans: ‘Long pes lufed I neuer, ne nouth salle, þof I lyf euer.’49

Wawan’s ‘curteise’ reply is here reduced to a brief defence of peace as ‘good after war’, like happiness after sorrow, and as a source of deeds of arms: In pes ys don gret vassalage, for luf men dos many rage.50

Even here, in a way which recalls the medieval church’s attitude to sex, Mannyng’s diction shows him troubled by the thought of taking up arms for love rather than to avoid sin. Despite serious reservations, he morally approves the shift to war because of the dangers of peace. His Cador is a voice to be respected, more restrained and circumspect than in previous versions. Cador’s counsel is long-meditated, and given at the king’s request, not in a premature outburst of anger.51 Mannyng’s Arthur, also, is unusually morally aware and cautious in counsel. He admits, for instance, that annexation by force confers no legal rights, that avarice motivates conquerors, and that the church’s teaching on restitution should apply to conquered lands. The previous British conquest of Rome confers no more ‘right’ on Arthur than Julius Caesar’s conquest of Britain does on the Romans.52 For all that, Cador’s low view of peace goes basically unchallenged, since Wawan’s answer is so lightweight. Disapproval of some aspects of war does not in itself generate much enthusiasm for peacetime life, because the poem does not conceptualise war and peace as alternative states of being, or as equally important in the lives of its hero and his associates. Mannyng has had plenty to say about the virtues of Arthur’s peacetime rule.53 But when it is ‘time’ for war, he has nothing to say for peace. Peace then becomes an empty time, with no worthwhile ‘deeds’ of its own – a worrying occasion of sin. The fifteenth-century English version of the French Vulgate Merlin

48 49 50

Mannyng, lines 11321–32. Mannyng, lines 11349–50. Mannyng, lines 11355–66. In the Lambeth MS of the Chronicle, the rhyme is ‘grete outrage’. 51 Mannyng, lines 11307ff. 52 Mannyng, lines 11417–20. 53 Mannyng, lines 9610–31; 10205–28; 10329–404; especially 10793–826.

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Andrew Lynch continuation, the Prose Merlin, fairly closely resembles Wace in this scene. Cador understands the Roman demands as a salutary ‘challenge’ to the English: ‘longe haue we be idill and in slouthe in deduyt a-monge ladyes and damesels in Iolite and wast’.54 Gawain replies that ‘full good it is to haue pees after the warre, for the londe is the bettere and the more sure, and full good is the game and pley a-monge ladies and maydenes, ffor the druweries of ladies and damesels make knyghtes to vndirtake the hardynesse of armes that thei don’.55

The courtly interest purely serves the martial here. Gawain’s argument for peace circles back again into an appreciation of the benefits of victory. Success in war allows the stable (‘sure’) conditions that make noble recreation both possible and blameless, and the recreation makes better warriors. From the tradition of these Arthurian texts, with the exception of La
amon’s, a clear relational model emerges: peace after war is youthful, leisured, plentiful, feminised, regenerative of the land, and a good preparation for more war; war after peace is mature, industrious, masculine, healthy hardship, regenerative of the person, and the foundation of more peace. The war/peace continuum acts like the cyclical episodic sequence in romance narrative: riding-out/accomplishment/return. To imply such a depersonalising pattern is effectively to avoid the issue of Arthur’s choice between peace and war, and to lessen any possibility that the sequence of war/peace/war might be broken off or arrested. War occurs without the necessity for individual motivation, merely according to the rhythm of earthly life, and for the good of the realm. The question to be answered in council is not ‘should Arthur make war?’, but ‘is he ready?’. The unmotivated nature of Arthurian war, which is always presented as reactive – overthrowing usurpers and tyrants; aiding allies; repelling invaders; responding to others’ belligerence; maintaining ancient rights – permits its real cause to be seen as providential: God wants times of war, to punish wrong and keep the Britons from vice. Seasons of war and peace on earth implicitly owe their origin to the unchanging and eternal.56 The Alliterative Morte Arthure (c. 1400), my main focus in this study, is demonstrably conscious of the traditional cyclical structure, but employs it in unusual ways. The Morte’s récit begins with the king and his men ‘resting’ 54 55 56

Merlin, ed. Wheatley, Vol. 2, Chapter xxxii, pp. 640–1. Ibid. See Ecclesiastes 3, 1.8: ‘Tempus belli, et tempus pacis’. God’s hand in Arthurian history is quite explicit in Historia, p. 494: ‘Quod diu ne potentie stabat dispositione. cum & veteres eorum priscis temporibus auos istorum inuisis inquietationibus infestarent. & isti libertatem quam illi eisdem demere. tueri instarent’. Thorpe, p. 256: ‘All this was ordained by divine providence. Just as in times gone by the ancestors of the Romans had harassed the forefathers of the Britons with their unjust oppressions, so now did the Britons make every effort to protect their own freedom, which the Romans were trying to take away from them.’

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The Narrative Seasons of English Arthurian Tradition for ‘solace’ after many previous conquests,57 but peace is given little chance in the narrative discours. The nominal peacetime setting is overshadowed by a plot forecast of Arthur’s future wars, down to the conquest of Rome, and a long summary of his wars so far.58 Normal motifs of peace are enlisted as part of Arthur’s hostile capacity. The description of the plenary court at Carlisle is rearranged so that the long feast section occurs after the Roman envoys’ challenge has been delivered and Arthur has stated his intention of calling his council; it therefore functions as part of Arthur’s stupefying response to the Romans, an overwhelming statement of his superiority, since the chief guests have all been overcome in his previous wars or else yielded by treaty. (Significantly, there is no corresponding later description of Emperor Lucius’ court.)59 Arthur’s spectacular hospitality to the Romans is basically another aspect of the ferocious anger expressed by his countenance.60 As with the political display of the feast, mention of the council allows Arthur to remind the Roman delegation just how many conquered kings, dukes and nobles are his men. (His safe-conduct for the Romans will similarly be made a sign of how much his subjects fear him.)61 Anger dominates the council, already manifested by Arthur’s countenance, rather than by his young knights’ words, as in earlier versions,62 although a newly invented seven-day interval avoids some appearances of over-hastiness and acting in anger:63 ‘To warp wordez in waste no wyrchipe it were / Ne wilfully in þis wrethe to wreken my seluen.’64 The poet seems to have recognised in this, and in occasional mention of negotiation65 and truces, that anger is a dangerous motivation, and that war is not necessarily the only option, but we see practical alternatives laughed away. Though the author also uses Wace, La
amon and Mannyng in this passage, he chooses to follow Geoffrey in including no response by Gawain to Cador in praise of peace.66 Cador jokes that Arthur must be dragged off to Rome by the emperor’s summons, unless he can ‘treat’ more successfully – ‘ “
ow moste be traylede, I trowe, but
ife
e trett bettyre.” ’ (As in Geoffrey’s and Wace’s narratives, though not in La
amon’s67 and Mannyng’s, Cador seems to have started talking before the proceedings are formally opened.) Arthur then teases Cador with ‘affectionate’68 criticism of his impetuousness – ‘For thow countez no caas, ne castes no furthire, 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Morte Arthur, ed. Hamel, lines 53–5 (cited hereafter as Morte Arthur). Morte Arthur, p. 254, n. 24. Morte Arthur, lines 503ff. Morte Arthur, lines 116–19. Morte Arthur, lines 475–8. See Morte Arthur, p. 257, n. 116–19. Hamel, pp. 258–9, n. 152–5. Morte Arthur, lines 150–1. See also line 407: ‘Qwhen they tristily had tretyd’. See Hamel, p. 264, n. 247–62. See Le Saux, p. 70. Hamel, p. 264: ‘The resulting badinage is unprecedented.’

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Andrew Lynch / But hurles furthe appon heuede as thi herte thynkes’69 – and jokingly floats the idea that he might have to make a ‘truce’, either with the Romans, or with the warlike Cador himself, before they can proceed to council: ‘ “I moste trette of a trew towchande þise nedes, / Talke of thies tythands þat teenes myn herte.” ’70 Here and elsewhere Arthur links the idea of a possible truce with unthinkable cowardice – ‘I myght noghte speke for spytte, so my herte trymblyde!’71 It is the first of several occasions in the poem when he and his men deal with pacific suggestions by military sarcasm: others include reference to making a ‘treaty’ and ‘truce’ with the giant of St Michael’s Mount, and sending two humiliated senators with the emperor’s corpse as ‘tribute’ and ‘tax’ to the Romans.72 Peace is made a joke because Arthur’s warlike intentions are really quite plain. His cousin Ewan’s ‘kyndly’ request to know his will73 seems nothing but a courtesy, since Arthur has already spoken immediately after Cador to approve his ‘noble’ counsel, and scotched any possibilities for diplomacy by a whole-hearted assertion of Roman tyranny and his ‘right’ to take tribute of Rome, his ius ad bellum.74 Peace is not a factor in the council, even in the guise of military recuperation or prelude to war. To Cador, it has simply been a lazy time of ‘dessuse of dedez of armes’.75 The ethos of Arthur’s establishment is solely military. Just as the guests at a peacetime feast are there to represent his wartime success, so he repeatedly tells his men that their prime function is to fight for him as he pleases:
e have knyghtly conqueryde þat to my coroun langes. Hym thare be ferde for no faees þat swylke a folke ledes, Bot euer fresche for to fyghte in felde when hym lykes.76 All this seems to point to a thoroughly militarist conception of Arthurian history. Yet the scene is haunted by its pacific absences. The Alliterative Morte both suggests and erases the normal period of Arthurian ‘revel and rest’; it heightens consciousness of the need for prudent counsel, yet produces counsel only as a bellicose show of strength; it points to possible diplomatic solutions other than war to this crisis, only to cancel them with heavy sarcasm. In all, the poem somewhat denaturalises the traditional moment of change from peace to war. Going to war becomes less a part of a providential pattern, an unmotivated seasonal cycle, and more exposed as an Arthurian 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

Morte Arthur, lines 261–2. Morte Arthur, lines 247–64. Morte Arthur, line 270. Morte Arthur, lines 877–9; 991–2; 2340–51. Morte Arthur, lines 337 ff. Morte Arthur, lines 259ff. Morte Arthur, line 256. Morte Arthur, lines 402–4.

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The Narrative Seasons of English Arthurian Tradition cultural obsession, an accountable decision on the part of the king. In deploying so many narrative strategies which deprive this peacetime of its traditional value as an interval between hostilities, the Alliterative Morte re-motivates the frequent and prolonged nature of Arthurian wars, implicating Arthur’s belligerent will as a factor. As in earlier versions, Arthur is probably seen to have no option but to fight the Romans, and so the possibility that peace might be ‘freely held’ is foreclosed. Yet the narrative of Arthur’s decision-making still shows him eagerly embracing the opportunity of war for reasons of self-interest, and its onset can be more readily understood in terms of his anger, pride, avarice and ambition. (At this stage, that accusation is made only by the Romans: ‘ “thow has redyn and raymede and raunsound þe pople / And kyllyde doun . . . kyngys ennoynttyde.” ’)77 The space between periods of Arthurian war-history now unoccupied by the courtly discourse of peace offers itself to a potential discourse of choice, and the first impression grows of a kingdom too much at war. Malory’s ‘Tale of Arthur and Lucius’, drawing on the Alliterative Morte, is fairly similar in the issues it raises in this episode, but different in the more straightforward impression created. Malory jumps immediately to description of the Roman challenge, avoiding Arthur’s earlier lengthy continental wars, so that the sense of endless conquest is much diminished. In this shortened version, Arthur’s determination not to be ‘over-hasty’, his restraint of the young knights, and the seven-day cooling-off period stand out more, indicating a controlled anger, despite his furious show of countenance.78 The king does not speak his mind at once; Cador waits to be asked for his counsel. Their exchange is brief, unmoralistic and to the point: ‘Sir . . . as for me, I am nat hevy of this message, for we have be many dayes rested now. The lettyrs of Lucius the Emperoure lykis me well, for now shall we have warre and worshyp. ‘Be Cryste, I leve welle,’ seyde the kyng, ‘sir Cador, this message lykis the. But yet they may nat so be answerde, for their spyteuous speche grevyth so my herte.’79

The interval of rest since the last war, though reckoned in ‘days’ not years, is at least present. (The long previous story of Gawain, Yvain and Marhalt has in effect provided a sizeable peacetime respite.) Nothing is said about peace. Arthur realises he needs some better formal answer than Cador’s ‘warre and worshyp’, but the remaining business of the council is really to see how much armed support the king can muster in his undisputed ‘right’. Arthur seems quietly in control, vengeance on Roman outrages is repeatedly justified, and the idea of a treaty is not even raised. Malory seems to have

77 78 79

Morte Arthur, lines 100–1. Malory, Vol. 1, pp. 185–86. Malory, pp. 187.18–188.3.

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Andrew Lynch adapted the Alliterative Morte’s story in ways that make the onset of this war a much simpler business.80 The ideological value of Arthurian peace is further illuminated if we look at another crisis point in the traditional narrative cycle, when war is unexpectedly prolonged. This moment occurs at the end of Arthur’s wars against the Romans, as the news of Mordred’s rebellion at home deprives the king of his anticipated victorious rest. In Geoffrey’s narrative, the rebellion impinges just as Arthur is ready to cross the Alps and head for Rome. The king rushes back to defeat Mordred, but due to his departure for Avalon, and the Britons’ subsequent decline into prolonged civil war under his successors, no true peace ensues. The fulfilment of the peace/war cycle signalled after the first continental wars by the army’s ‘spring’ return, with Arthur ‘overjoyed by his great success’,81 and extensive court ceremonial, is quite absent. The king has to fight his way ashore in Britain, and knows no rest again in this world.82 Geoffrey’s core idea of ‘peace’, as celebrated in Arthur’s Whitsuntide feast, cannot be realised, because such ‘peace’ is never simply the cessation of hostilities but a gift in the hand of the prosperous conqueror. Not war itself, but lack of victorious return, is the true opposite of Arthurian peace. So although Geoffrey blames only Mordred and Guinevere for what has happened, he still gives the king’s last wars a sad sense of incompletion, one which would be retained or even increased in subsequent versions. Wace, similarly, ascribes no blame to Arthur for his second continental adventures. Arthur thanks God, buries the slain with honour, and settles things down in Burgundy.83 Mordred’s sin, too great for any peace to be concluded with his father, is alone responsible for the civil war.84 In Geoffrey’s work, Mordred is ‘the boldest of men’.85 In Wace’s, he is given a degenerate nature, associated with his having remained too long in peace at home, away from war: Modred ot humes concultis, En pais et en repos nurriz; Ne se sorent pas si cuivrir Ne si turner ne si ferir Cume la gent Arthur saveit, Ki en guerre nurrie esteit. Modred had assembled men brought up to peace and quiet; they did not know how to protect themselves, to wheel and to strike, as Arthur’s men did, who had been brought up to war.86 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

For Vinaver’s comments on Malory’s changes, see Malory, Vol. 3, pp. 1366–71, and subsequent notes. Thorpe, pp. 225–6. Thorpe, p. 258. Wace, lines 12977–3012. Wace, lines 13015–30. Historia, p. 499: ‘omnium audacissimus’; Thorpe, p. 260. Wace, lines 13113–18.

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The Narrative Seasons of English Arthurian Tradition And yet, after so much combat detail in his previous Arthurian narrative, and despite ample material in Geoffrey, Wace chooses to leave the last battle vague: Par grant ire fud asemblee E par grant ire fud justee; Par grant ire fud l’ovre enprise Grant fu la gent, grant fu l’ocise; Ne sai dire ki mielz li fist Ne qui perdi ne qui cunquist Ne qui chaï ne qui estut Ne qui ocist ne qui murut. They gathered and joined battle in great anger; in great anger was the work begun, great were the numbers of men and great was the slaughter. I cannot say who did best, nor who lost nor who won, nor who fell or stood firm, nor who died and who lived.87

By withholding closure to combat in this way, Wace specifically prevents the suggestion of peacetime conditions after Camble. Instead, all is left ‘doubtful’, even whether Arthur has lived or died.88 The king’s campaign remains unfulfilled also, since Arthur will never return and conquer Rome as he has promised.89 He fights to the finish, but not to the conclusion. The departing of Arthur is all but the end of the British. Their hope of the king’s prophesied ‘return’ from Avalon, so strongly painted by Wace,90 points to the conventional cyclical importance of this theme, as in Arthur’s previous return from France, but it is now the illusion of a people pathetically ‘degenerated from the nobility, the honour, the customs and the life of their ancestors’.91 La
amon also treats this war purely as a rightful punishment of treachery. Although he reduces the immediate survivors of the last battle to just two knights and Arthur,92 a distinctive respect for peace is maintained in his ending. Barron and Weinberg call it ‘devoid of military glory’.93 The departing Arthur passes on to Constantin his concern to maintain the good laws of the land. Arthur promises to return, and the ‘great joy’ he anticipates in dwelling with the Britons clearly refers to peacetime at home, rather than the prospect of conquest abroad: ‘And seoðe ich cumen wulle to mine kineriche / and wunien mid Bruten mid muchelere wunne.’94 Robert 87 88 89 90 91

Wace, lines 13255–62. Wace, line 13286. Wace, lines 13047–50. Wace, lines 13275ff. Wace, lines 14851–4: ‘Tuit sunt mué et tuit changié, / Tuit sunt divers et forslignié / De noblesce, d’onur, de murs / E de la vie as anceisurs.’ 92 La
amon’s addition. See Le Saux, pp. 148–89. 93 La
amon, p. xlviii. 94 La
amon, lines 14281–2.

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Andrew Lynch Mannyng, by contrast, gives Arthur a death beyond all hopes of return – ‘Bot the Bretons loude lie; / he was so wonded that him burd die’.95 These English narratives of the end of Arthur’s Roman wars and his battles against Mordred operate without condemnation of the king for his absence or his long campaign. Their sadness is that through treachery Arthur fails to conclude his greatest military victory, and so never returns to Britain and another glorious peacetime as he should have. The Alliterative Morte continues within this tradition, but, as I have tried to show, is unusual in its heavy concentration on war, even more so than in the source material. It does not make La
amon’s ‘attempt to achieve variety in a work so largely concerned with warfare, both in the alternation of war and peace, action and ceremonial’.96 The Morte mounts some open critique of Arthur’s wars as wrong;97 but it often treats them as a kind of Crusade, by introducing so many prayers for victory, and so many pagan and outlandish enemies. More generally, the poem creates the impression of excessive war, I believe, by maintaining a strong consciousness of the broken expectation of peace after war, through the relentless representation of a campaign that takes Arthur away so far and for so long, with very brief interludes of ‘revel and rest’. The king’s departure to fight the Romans is overshadowed by premonitions that he will not return to what he left. Arthur bids farewell not just to Britain but to the whole nexus of activities – courtly life, hunting, government, law and good works – that make up his peacetime existence.98 Mordred begs not to be left at home, apparently foreseeing his degeneracy (as in Wace) if kept so long from war: ‘ “When oþer of werre wysse are wyrchipide hereaftyre, / Than may I for sothe be sette bot at lyttill.” ’99 Gaynour blames the man who began this war, and forecasts a permanent separation from Arthur – ‘ “All my lykynge of lyfe owte of lande wendez, / And I in langour am lefte, leue
e, for euere.” ’ Arthur, comforting what he sees as a woman’s irrational grief, foreshadows a happy return: ‘ “Grefe þe noghte, Gaynour, for Goddes lufe of hewen, / Ne gruche noghte my ganggynge; it sall to gude turne.” ’ But the moment is accompanied by a reminder that she will in fact never see him again: ‘cho sees hym no more’.100 Mordred and Gaynour are, in one sense, to be ruined by Arthur’s long absence. Gawain, too, is made the subject of dramatic irony, for anyone who knows the famous story. His praise of peace, absent in the council scene of this poem, is poignantly displaced to a speech motivating his knights with hopes of a traditional courtly aftermath to the wars:

95 96 97 98 99 100

Mannyng , lines 13723–4. Barron and Weinberg in La
amon, pp. xlvi–xlvii. See Hamel in Morte Arthure, p. 351, n. 3038–43. Morte Arthure, lines 648–78. Morte Arthure, lines 685–6. Morte Arthure, line 720.

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The Narrative Seasons of English Arthurian Tradition ‘We sall in this viage victoures be holden, And avauntede with voycez of valyant biernez, Praysede with pryncez in presence of lordes And luffede with ladies in dyuerse londes.’101

More and more as the poem goes on and a complete peacetime continually eludes Arthur, the anticipation of peace is replaced as motivation by the grieving impulse to take revenge for slain comrades – Cador for Berille, Gawain for Chastelayne (like Mordred, a ‘child’ of Arthur’s chamber), and especially Arthur for Gawain, slain by Mordred. The poem continues to represent full ‘peace’ as an arrangement ensuing from conquest, but the onset of more war continually puts it off, leaving only minor instances: Arthur negotiates to capture a city by appointement with a charter of ‘peace’,102 is sued for ‘peace’ and ‘treats of a truce’ with a cardinal from the Pope’s court. And in its new and prolonged extension of Arthur’s wars into Italy, the Morte carries war beyond the narrative expectations of the Arthurian tradition, and, as it had at the poem’s start, brings news of more trouble just when glorious peace is most anticipated – ‘ “Now may we reuell and riste, for Rome es oure awen!” ’103 The words of Fortune to Arthur in his dream underline the contradiction in his expectation of a peace consequent on war: he is urged into acquisitive war – ‘ “fyrthe noghte þe fruyte” ’ (‘ “do not leave the fruit [Rome] in peace” ’) – yet motivated by the hope of ‘ryotte’ and ‘riste’, key terms in the poem’s discourse of peacetime.104 (A homonym – ‘roo’ – is used for both ‘rest’ and Fortune’s restless ‘wheel’.) The poem’s emphasis on Arthur’s fortune, which changes ‘be ane aftyre mydnyghte’,105 replaces the omnitemporal seasonal cycle of war and peace with the limited time span of human life and death. Only after his previous war history has been discredited as a providential and unmotivated pattern is Arthur’s personal responsibility made clearer, and he is then subjected to severe criticism from his own ‘philosopher’ for having caused so much bloodshed.106 An important ideological shift has occurred. In effect, as we see, Mordred’s war puts Arthur’s peace on hold indefinitely. Arthur has returned ‘home’, but the death of Gawain demands revenge before he can hunt or hold court again,107 and it would be a court without his wife and two dearest supporters. The poem’s ending is divided between a sense of fulfilment and disappointment. Arthur consoles himself at the last for the triumph he has missed with the thought of rest and peace in 101 102 103 104 105 106 107

Morte Arthure, lines 2863–6. See Hamel in Morte Arthure, pp. 352, n. 3053, p. 355, n. 3125–7, with reference to Keen, The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages, pp. 119–21. Morte Arthure, line 3207. Morte Arthure, lines 3370–5. Morte Arthure, line 3222. Morte Arthure, lines 3396–9. For commentary, see pp. 57–8. Morte Arthure, lines 3997–4006.

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Andrew Lynch Glastonbury (if not at Caerleon) – ‘ “There we may ryste vs with roo and raunsake oure wondys” ’108 – and thanks God for at least letting him ‘dye in oure awen’. He sets up his successor, and is given a spectacular burial. But these weakened motifs of peace cannot fully efface the impression of excessive and unconcluded war, to which they now provide a haunting contrast. The naturalised cycle of war/peace/war, an ideological model concealing the self-interest of the conqueror, is strongly challenged. The Wheel of Fortune allegory, substituting its unpredictable changes for the orderly seasonal sequence of war and peace, displays the private motivation of the conquerors clinging to the wheel, Worthies though they may be. As ruled by Fortune, the king’s change from peace to war, his prolongation of war, have become implicitly unstable, a culpable pride, even a fall.109 Evidence that one medieval reader was troubled by the image of endless war in the Alliterative Morte is provided by Malory’s re-working of the text in Le Morte Darthur. Malory cut and changed his ‘Arthur and Lucius’ to make a happy ending, and to leave space for long books of knight errantry and the Launcelot plot. Interestingly, his newly fashioned end is rich in details that re-establish the traditional onset of peace after war: Arthur is crowned in Rome; he comes to terms with the conquered cities; he ‘stabelysshe[s]’ lands; the knights and lords request permission to return to their wives; they bring home with them ‘all maner of rychesse . . . at the full’,110 and Guenevere and other queens and ladies meet them on the shore.111 Now that he has all he wanted – for in Malory’s work he has finally got all the way to Rome – Arthur consciously avoids ‘too much’ war: ‘for inowghe is as good as a feste, for to attemte God overmuche I holde hit not wysedom’.112 Then, in the next book, even the peace-time adventures only begin after Launcelot has ‘rested hym longe with play and game’.113 Malory, it appears, found in the Alliterative Morte Arthure a sense of Arthur’s Roman wars as ‘overmuche’, and moved to disarm it. In summary, Arthurian texts in England generally come across as traditional and militarist in what they say (and do not say) on the issue of peace, largely uninfluenced by the growth of a separate peace discourse in the moral poets, the new ‘desire for peace as a temporal condition’114 which has been so often noted by Scattergood, Barnie, Göller, Hamel, Yeager, Lowe and others. These Arthurian texts belong to a tradition which makes peace and war part of the same discourse. La
amon’s Brut contains the exception, an isolated view of peace as ‘good’ in itself, blessedly free from war. Yet 108 109 110 111 112 113 114

Morte Arthure, line 4304. On two attitudes to Fortune, that it operates independently, or in relation to the fallen man’s nature, see McAlpine, The Genre of Troilus and Criseyde, pp. 19–20. Malory, p. 247.1–2. Malory, pp. 244–7. Malory, p. 246.11–13. Malory, p. 253.20. Lowe, p. 5.

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The Narrative Seasons of English Arthurian Tradition within the cyclical model of peace and war always remained the potential understanding that war might go on too long. In Malory’s narrative, this becomes proverbial; his characters say casually in support of a truce: ‘bettir is pees than evermore warre’; ‘better ys pees than allwayes warre’.115 Of the texts I have examined that inherited this traditional ideology, the Alliterative Morte Arthure subjects it to most pressure. It does not simply display a distaste for war, or an acceptance of peace as the highest good, which we see in some English contemporaries like Chaucer, Gower and Hoccleve, or later in Lydgate. But it is still able to represent war as an accountable and potentially culpable policy, rather than as the natural and necessary successor to peace.

Works Cited I. Sources Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Riverside Chaucer, ed. L. D. Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). Geoffrey of Monmouth, The Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, ed. Acton Griscom (London: Longmans, Green, 1929; reprinted Geneva: Slatkine, 1977). Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966). La
amon, Lahamon’s Arthur: The Arthurian Section of Lahamon’s Brut, ed. and trans. W. R. J. Barron and S. C. Weinberg (Exeter: Exeter University Press, rev. edn., 2001). Lydgate, John, The Minor Poems of John Lydgate: Part II: Secular Poems, ed. H. N. McCracken (London, Oxford University Press 1934), Early English Text Society, O.S. 192. Malory, Sir Thomas, The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. E. Vinaver, rev. P. J. C. Field (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). Mannyng, Robert, Robert Mannyng of Brunne: The Chronicle, ed. Idelle Sullens (Binghampton, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 153, 1996). Merlin, ed. Henry B. Wheatley (London: Kegan Paul, 1899), Early English Text Society O.S. 21 and 36. Morte Arthur: A Critical Edition, ed. Mary Hamel (New York and London: Garland, 1984). Of Arthour and of Merlin, Vol. 1, ed. O. D. Macrae-Gibson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), Early English Text Society O.S. 268. Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, ed. J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, rev. N. Davis (Oxford; Clarendon Press, 1967). Tacitus, Cornelii Taciti De Vita Iulii Agricolae, De Origine et Moribus Germanorum, ed. J. H. Sleeman (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1952).

115

Statements by Guenevere and Lancelot respectively, in Malory, pp. 1128 and 1212.

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Andrew Lynch Tacitus, Germania, trans. M. Hutton (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970). Wace’s Roman de Brut. A History of the British, ed. and trans. Judith Weiss (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1999).

II. Studies Althoff, Gerd, ‘Ira Regis: Prolegomena to a History of Royal Anger’, in Barbara H. Rosenwein, Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998). Barnie, John, War in Medieval Society: Social Values and the Hundred Years War 1337–99 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974). Barron, W. R. J., ‘Arthurian Romance: Traces of an English Tradition’, English Studies 61 (1980): 1–23. Edwards, Elizabeth, The Genesis of Narrative in Malory’s Morte Darthur (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000). Fichte, Joerg O., ‘Grappling with Arthur’, in Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds, Poetics: Theory and Practice in Medieval English Literature (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1991), pp. 149–63. Flint, V. I. J., ‘The Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth: Parody and Its Purpose: A Suggestion’, Speculum 54 (1979): 447–68. Göller, Karl Heinz, ed., The Alliterative Morte Arthure: A Reassessment of the Poem (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1981). Keen, Maurice, The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1965). Le Saux, Françoise H. M., Lahamon’s Brut: The Poem and its Sources (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1989). Lowe, Ben, Imagining Peace: A History of Early English Pacifist Ideas (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997). Lynch, Andrew, ‘ “Thou woll never have done”: Ideology, Context and Excess in Malory’s War’, in D. Thomas Hanks Jr. and Jessica G. Brogdon, eds, The Social and Literary Contexts of Malory’s Morte Darthur (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 24–41. McAlpine, Monica E., The Genre of Troilus and Criseyde (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1978). McKisack, May, The Fourteenth Century 1307–1399 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959). Putter, Ad, ‘Finding Time for Romance: Mediaeval Arthurian Literary History’, Medium Aevum 53: 1 (1994): 1–13. Putter, Ad, ‘Arthurian Literature and the Rhetoric of “Effeminacy” ’, in Friedrich Wolfzettel, ed., Arthurian Romance and Gender (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995), pp. 34–49. Scattergood, V. J., Politics and Poetry in the Fifteenth Century (London: Blandford Press, 1971). Walters, Lori, ‘Le Rôle du scribe dans l’organisation des manuscrits des romans de Chrétien de Troyes’, Romania 106 (1985): 303–25. Yeager, R. F., ‘Pax Poetica: On the Pacifism of Chaucer and Gower’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 9 (1987): 97–121. 146

The Invisible Siege – The Depiction of Warfare in the Poetry of Chaucer SIMON MEECHAM-JONES

O

NLY a fortunate few in medieval Europe can have escaped experiencing the physical facts of war, its dangers and privations, and the psychological corollary – the fear and anticipation of war, the pains of grief, and the social dislocation which resulted from war. Armed conflict in its diverse manifestations was an anticipated trial of medieval life, and one could expect that medieval literature would be replete with images of warfare. It is the more striking, then, that the extensive poetic oeuvre of Geoffrey Chaucer’s work1 is notable for the infrequency of the appearance of feats of arms and scenes of chivalric prowess. That a poet so conscious of his relationship to the ‘authoritative’ literature of the past should choose not to drink from so major a fountain-head of themes and styles from the Epic, Tragic and Romance traditions demands explanation. In justifying the writing of a book entitled Chaucer and War, Pratt ventures the claim: Yet Chaucer, the writer, could not have failed to produce commentary on war, for he lived in an age of military conflict.2

It proves impossible, however, to read Chaucer’s works as mirrors of the violence of his times, or as commentary either on specific conflicts or on the nature of war itself. Chaucer’s refusal to use the stock tropes of literary heroism as foundation stones of his narrative, or even as garnish, proves to be a key strategy in revealing both his awareness of the centrality of the ideology of war in the perpetuation of the aristocratic culture of his day, and his need to evade the expectations this imposed on him as a writer.3 In The House of Fame, Chaucer translates the celebrated opening lines of 1 2 3

All quotations are from The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Benson. Pratt, Chaucer and War, p. 3. One might make the comparison with Malory: in Lynch’s judgment, ‘Warfare in the Morte is . . . ideologically privileged and protected in terms of some aspects of Malory’s style’, ‘ “Thou woll never have done”: Ideology, Context and Excess in Malory’s War’, in Hanks and Brogdon, eds, p. 28.

147

Simon Meecham-Jones Virgil’s Aeneid – ‘I wol now synge, yif I can, / The armes and also the man’,4 but in this poem, and throughout his work, he resists the challenge to emulate Virgil’s identification of the warrior prowess of the individual with the destiny of the res publica or common weale. This marked reluctance to make use of martial motifs can be demonstrated at every level of Chaucer’s work, from the narrative structure of events, through the selection of imagery, even to the vocabulary of each poem. Chaucer makes strikingly spare use of terms associated with warfare, avoiding not merely the display of specialised knightly terminology of medieval engagement, but also the most general and familiar descriptive terms. Despite Chaucer’s extensive adaptation of classical, mythological and ‘historical’ material, terms such as ‘war’, and ‘battle’ are used rarely.5 The word ‘war’ appears on a mere 72 occasions throughout Chaucer’s work, and more than half of those appearances occur in a single Canterbury Tale, the Tale of Melibee,6 which is written to some extent as a parody of medieval romance forms. Nor does Chaucer replace the word ‘war’ with equivalent terms – the word ‘battle’ appears on 42 occasions,7 ‘strife’ 36 times, ‘affray’ a mere 14, and the appearance of all three words is heavily concentrated in Melibee, The Knight’s Tale, and the translations of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy and the Roman de la Rose. In Troilus and Criseyde, a poem set amidst the cataclysmic and mythopeic disorder of the Trojan War, the word ‘werre’ is used a mere eight times, and its meaning refracted by its employment metaphorically to describe emotional states or circumstances rather than scenes of war. Having used the term in this way to characterise the abandoned Troilus’s distress, ‘Who can conforten now your hertes werre?’,8 Chaucer reiterates the conflation of war as a physical and psychological experience in Troilus’s potently ambiguous wish, ‘That deth may make an ende upon my werre!’9 Chaucer’s use of the word is in keeping with his presentation of Troilus’s physical involvement in the war. Though the reader is continually reminded of Troilus’s role as ‘a second Ector’, we do not see him in action in his role as defender of Troy. There is an avoidance of narrative set-pieces of the sort found, for example, in the Scottish Gest Historiale, an alliterative translation and adaptation of Guido de Colonna’s Hystoria Troiana, which was also one of 4 5

6

7

8 9

Chaucer, The House of Fame, lines 143–4. Occurences have been calculated using Oizumi, A Complete Concordance to the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Oizumi uses the Riverside edition of Chaucer’s text as the basis of the concordance. The word war, characteristically spelled in a form werre which recalls the Italian guerra and the French guerre, appears 37 times in the tale of Melibee, and 8 times in the translation of the Roman de la Rose. Pratt draws attention to the three possible meanings of the word in the fourteenth century – as a term for individual combat, as a division of an army, or in its modern sense of a military engagement, Chaucer and War, pp. 85–90. Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde V, line 234. Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde V, line 1393.

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The Depiction of Warfare in the Poetry of Chaucer Chaucer’s most important sources. The Gest presents the fierce daring of Troilus in battle, which is to be halted only in single combat with Achilles, as a grand scena counterpointing the deaths of Hector and of Paris and Achilles, which precede and follow that of Troilus: Þan Troiell with tene tene the tourfer beheld, Knew well the kyng [Achilles] by caupe of his hond, Reiches his Reynis & his roile strykes, Caires to þe kyng with a kant wille. The kyng met hym with mayn, macchit hym sore; Derf dynttes þai delt þo doghty betwene, With þaire fawchons fell, femyt of blode. Troiell carue at the kyng with a kene sword, Woundit hym wickedly in wer of his lyf, Þat he was led to the loge, laid as for dede, But he langurd with lechyng long tyme after. Troiell in the toile truly was hurt, But not so dedly his dynttes deiret as Achilles.10

Chaucer, by contrast, avoids describing the belligerence of the prince in battle, and turns the readers’ eyes away from the physical rending of his body by Achilles. Instead, Chaucer invites the reader to recognise an artistic sleight of hand, through which Troilus’s active involvement in warfare is not denied, but occurs ‘off-stage’ and as one element of his experience of loving Criseyde, rather than as the most striking characteristic of his being. The praise of his prowess in Book One is unequivocal, but curiously non-specific: The sharpe shoures felle of armes preve That Ector or his othere brethren diden Ne made hym only therfore ones meve; And yet he was, where so men wente or riden, Founde oon the beste, and longest tyme abiden, Ther peril was, and dide ek swiche travaille In armes, that to thenke it was merveille.11

No praiseworthy deeds or vanquished opponents are named. The effect of disengagement from the violence of Troilus’s daily employment is completed in the sour irony of the poet’s word-play on the metaphorical and actual meanings of the word ‘deth’: Fro day to day in armes so he spedde That the Grekes as the deth him dredde’.12

10 11 12

The Gest Hystorial of the Destruction of Troy, ed. Donaldson and Panton, lines 10213–25. Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde I, lines 470–76. Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde I, lines 482–83.

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Simon Meecham-Jones After Troilus’s abandonment by Criseyde, the narrator still refuses to define Troilus in his role as warrior rather than as unhappy lover: In many cruel bataille, out of drede, Of Troilus, this ilke noble knyght, As men may in thise olde bokes rede, Was seen his knyghthood and his grete myght: And dredeles, his ire, day and nyght, Ful cruwely the Grekis ay aboughte; And alwey moost this Diomede he soughte.13

Diomede, the Greek who has supplanted Troilus in Criseyde’s arms, is the only knightly opponent spared the anonymity conferred by Chaucer’s careful imprecision. It is clear that Chaucer has made a conscious stylistic decision to avoid elements of heroic display, even where his material seems to require them, and in Book Five he teases his audience by drawing attention to his omissions in words that humorously reshape those of Virgil: And if I hadde ytaken for to write The armes of this ilke worthi man, Than wolde ich of his batailles endite; But for that I to writen first bigan Of his love, I have seyd as I kan – His worthi dedes, whoso list hem heere, Rede Dares, he kan telle hem alle ifeere.14

The presence of war within the poem has not been denied, but it has been occluded, functioning not as an overt signifier but as, in Sidney’s phrase, an ‘absent presence’,15 the importance of which the reader is expected to retain, and to infer into the action of the poem. If Troilus and Criseyde cannot be characterised as a poem of war, it is a poem shaped by the influence of war, a poem in which the ethics of conflict and the psychological disjunction caused by war are granted a potent but implicit significance. To achieve this occlusion, key elements of the traditional characterisation of the loyal warrior-prince Troilus have, necessarily, been obscured, leading John Burrow to note that ‘the figure of Chaucer’s Troilus illustrates how even the most eligible Ricardian hero can fall short of epic stature’.16 13 14 15

Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde V. lines 1751–7. Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde V, lines 1765–71. O absent presence Stella is not here; False flattering hope that with so faire a face, Bare me in hand, that in this Orphane place, Stella, I say my Stella, should appeare. (Sonnet 106) Sir Philip Sidney, ‘Astrophil and Stella’, The Poetry of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Duncan-Jones, p. 187. 16 Burrow, Ricardian Poetry, p. 99. I would like to record my gratitude for Professor Burrow’s most helpful interest in this paper.

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The Depiction of Warfare in the Poetry of Chaucer Though Burrow notes this ‘falling short’ he does not seek to account for its expressive purpose within Chaucer’s poem. Instead he posits a more wide-spread literary fashion in Ricardian poetry, declaring that ‘The trumpet is not, poetically speaking, a Ricardian instrument.’17 It is hard not to hear in Burrow’s diagnosis of a ‘lack of interest in fighting’, an echo of Walsingham’s taunt that the knights of Richard II’s court were ‘knights of Venus rather than Bellona: more effective in the bedchamber than the field’.18 One might expect that poetry written for a court in which ‘the military atmosphere which had characterised the medieval court had been shaken off’19 would display precisely ‘the civilian or ‘chamber’ quality’20 Burrow describes. But no evidence survives to link the writing of any of Chaucer’s poetry to court commission, and it is far from clear that Richard II’s knights would have been significantly represented in Chaucer’s audience. Nonetheless, though it cannot be shown that Chaucer was familiar with the terms of Walsingham’s rebuke, the apostrophe to Bellona in the Invocation of the poem known as Anelida and Arcite provides a telling, (perhaps coincidental) Chaucerian riposte to Walsingham’s divorce of the service of Mars and Venus. After calling on the full panoply of the deities of war for inspiration: Thou ferse god of armes, Mars the rede, That in the frosty contre called Trace, Within thy grisly temple ful of drede Honoured art as patroun of that place; With thy Bellona, Pallas, ful of grace, Be present and my song contynue and guye; At my begynnyng thus to the I crye21

Chaucer develops an extended poem in the ‘chamber’ rather than ‘heroic’ style. After a brief recapitulation of the bloody conflict at Thebes, as recounted by Statius, Chaucer narrates not the heroic deeds of the knight Arcite, but the sorrows of his abandoned lady Anelida. Like Troilus and Criseyde, Anelida and Arcite is a poem in which the influence of warfare is all-pervasive but never immediate. For Yeager, Chaucer’s unwillingness to sound the trumpet of warlike poetry helps to shed light on the psychology of the man, showing him to be a (discreet) pacifist by temperament. Yeager distinguishes Gower’s calls for peace at a particular historical moment from what he perceives to be Chaucer’s more general distaste for strife: 17 18

Burrow, Ricardian Poetry, p. 95. Annales Richard II & Henry IV, in J. de Trokelowe et Anon., Chronica et Annales, ed. Riley, p. 333, quoted in Saul, Richard II, p. 333. 19 Saul, Richard II, p. 333. 20 Burrow, Ricardian Poetry, p. 95. 21 Chaucer, Anelida and Arcite, lines 1–7.

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Simon Meecham-Jones Unlike Gower’s, which develops demonstrably over time and which draws support from identifiable doctrines, Chaucer’s preference for peace seems permanent, if somewhat inchoate; implicitly apparent throughout his work is a ubiquitous scepticism about the claims of chivalry, though held perhaps more staunchly at the end of his life.22

The conclusions Yeager draws are certainly compatible with the scant depiction of warfare in Chaucer’s poetry: while there is little enough we can say directly to establish Chaucer’s distaste for war, yet also is it much, for Chaucer was, I think, a man of peace by inclination, and to call him so is perhaps to dye him deeper in the color than to demonstrate, as certainly we can with Gower, a logic and a set of sources for the antiwar sentiments in his poems, line by line. In respect to pacifism, then, as in so many other ways, Chaucer may have been more thorough than was Gower yet once more.23

There is, necessarily, a circularity in an argument that draws conclusions regarding the poet’s psychology in shaping these texts from the substance of the texts themselves. Where Yeager praises Chaucer for the considered thoroughness of his response to chivalric violence, other critics have read Chaucer’s refusal to express a personal engagement with the political conflicts of his day as a sign either of social conservatism or as a failure of nerve. There are no equivalents in Chaucer’s poetry of Gower’s outspoken attacks on the tyranny of the deposed Richard II, and from Loomis’s celebrated posing of the question ‘Was Chaucer a Laodicean?’ onwards,24 Chaucer’s perceived failure to rail against the sufferings and tyrannies of late fourteenth-century England has been condemned. In a recent judgement on the politics of Chaucer’s poetry, Pearsall acknowledges that Chaucer may have rejected some of the values of his society at a personal or psychological level, but finds no proof of these reservations in the texts themselves: Chaucer wrote out of the concerns of his class; if his text requires an opinion on a matter of political or social concern, he responds by articulating the views of that class or by evading the question. Both the conventionality and the evasiveness are encouraged by his perception of himself as a comparative newcomer to the class.25

Pratt, considering Chaucer’s responses to war, reveals an impatience, implying a rebuke, with the impossibility of reading Chaucer’s poetry as a commentary on contemporary events:

22 23 24

Yeager, ‘Pax Poetica’, p. 121. Yeager, ‘Pax Poetica’, p. 121. Loomis, ‘Was Chaucer a Laodicean?’ in Long, ed., Essays in Honor of Carleton Brown, pp. 129–48. 25 Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer, p. 148.

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The Depiction of Warfare in the Poetry of Chaucer In modern terms, was he a hawk or a dove or something in-between? But if it is the latter, which way did he lean? No one can maintain noncommitment for a lifetime.26

Such an analysis flattens out the potential diversity of ways through which commitment might be embodied in poetry. It makes no allowance either for the dangers of Chaucer’s position at court as both poet and as senior government official, writing at a time of highly personalised political and dynastic tensions which would lead to civil war and the overthrow of the anointed king. Chaucer was a writer fated to live in, in the words of the apocryphal Chinese curse, ‘interesting times’, and his ‘evasiveness’ owed less to his sense of being on the margins of aristocratic society than to his recognition of the potentially deadly consequences of being too closely identified with the losing side in any conflict.27 Before him as a reminder was the tragic career of Thomas Usk, a self-styled poetic follower of Chaucer, whose political involvement led to his imprisonment, and execution in 1388. No less misleading is the judgement that the writing of The Canterbury Tales marked a new involvement with the particularity of ‘real’ life, rather than the topoi of literature – a ‘turn to the social world of contemporary England’.28 The case is made eloquently by Patterson: it must be acknowledged that Chaucer’s meditations on history remain, throughout the pre-Canterbury Tales two-thirds of his career, for the most part divorced from the specificity of local events. By endowing his courtly writing with both a densely developed classical context and philosophical depth Chaucer distinguished it from the makyng of his contemporaries. But his poetry declined to engage with the real world of late medieval England explicitly.29

But a consideration of Chaucer’s presentation of war shows the difficulty of sustaining Patterson’s attempt to mark out a distinction between The Canterbury Tales and the poems which preceded it. Certainly, the presence of war is more overtly marked in The Canterbury Tales than in Chaucer’s previous works, and studies which find in his work a resistance to the warrior ethos, from Scattergood’s reading of Melibee as an oblique commentary on the French wars30 to Aers’ reading of The Knight’s Tale as a sustained critique of aristocratic codes of violence,31 draw their material from Chaucer’s final work. But both Melibee and The Knight’s Tale develop not from an explicit engagement with ‘the real world’ but from the adaptation of literary sources, 26 27 28 29 30 31

Pratt, Chaucer and War, p. xiii. Terry Jones, Who Murdered Chaucer? (London, 2003) entertains the possibility that the sensitivities of Chaucer’s position led to the official ordering of his death. Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History, p. 26. Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History, p. 24. Scattergood, ‘Chaucer and the French War’. Aers, Geoffrey Chaucer, pp. 54–60.

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Simon Meecham-Jones into which the reader (whether in the fourteenth or the twenty-first century) can, rather than must, infer parallels with the events of Chaucer’s time. Though The Knight’s Tale appears to some modern critics to be Chaucer’s most extended and searching questioning of the ethics of martial society, Chaucer uses the conventions of an antique setting and (pagan) divine intervention to limit any freedom to read the tale as holding up a mirror to fourteenth-century England. Additionally, the complex construction of multiple narratorial personae – the created ‘consciousnesses’ of the pilgrim-as-teller and the persona of ‘Chaucer’ within the text as the (presumably fallible) recorder of the material – further complicates the possibility of reading any of the Tales as a conscious moral statement rather than as a demonstration of the psychology or phraseology of the depicted ‘pilgrims’. If there appears to be more questioning of aristocratic ideologies of violence in The Canterbury Tales than in Chaucer’s prior works, it is certainly because the fictional buffering achieved through the construction of a series of ostensible narrators, positioned between the text and the poet, creates an additional, and protecting, layer of distance between the poet and his unmediated response to the bellicosity of his age. Patterson, like Pearsall, fails to allow due weight to the dangers of being a court-poet working close to the heart of an unstable oligarchy – dangers not merely to the poet’s life, but also to the physical survival of his work. It is a strange irony that in the modern world, with its inescapable confrontation with the violent and capricious nature of tyranny, critics have seemed unable to draw on the testimonies of artists who worked in such conditions to gain an insight into the conditions under which Chaucer worked. Reading the Shostakovich/ Volkov32 account of the lethal irrationality of Stalin’s interference in the careers of Soviet artists and composers, for example, it is hard not to be reminded of the fickle judgement of Chaucer’s monstrous goddess Fama in The House of Fame, who proudly declares, ‘Al be ther in me no justice’,33 granting favour, as the mood takes her, to those that ‘han don neither that ne this, / But ydel al oure lyf ybe’ while denying it to others that had ‘good fame ech deserved’.34 Chaucer depicts a world in which it would be rash to expect that justice will reward the actions of the virtuous or the wise, and in which it would be reckless to express anything more than the most oblique criticism of the follies and injustices of the political world. If Chaucer’s evasion of martial themes reflects the poet’s shrewd notion of the precariousness of his position, it must also be judged as a considered recognition of the spiritual, political and literary pitfalls inherent in the literary models of representation of warfare. The function of warfare as a 32

Testimony, the Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, as related to and edited by Volkov, translated by Bouing. The consequences of Stalin’s interference are demonstrated, for example, on pp. 106–12, pp. 160–71. 33 Chaucer, The House of Fame, line 1820. 34 Chaucer, The House of Fame, lines 1732–3.

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The Depiction of Warfare in the Poetry of Chaucer theatre for the active assertion of self was clearly difficult to reconcile with Christian notions of patience in the face of suffering and humility. There was an inherent incompatibility in attempts to adapt classical models of heroic achievement to exemplify the un-classical virtues of humility and faith in divine grace. Though the language of warfare, understood as a metaphoric construction, could be of value to illustrate the difficulties of achieving a Christian life – for example, through the metaphor of battling worldly temptation – medieval accounts of Christian martial prowess are inevitably compromised and full of contradictions. The contradictions are well-evidenced in the Middle English romance of Sir Ysenbras. Following, and as a result of, a series of reversals, Ysenbras achieves an exemplary state of humility. He also proves himself on the battlefield against the Saracens. But these two elements of his Christian progress are quite separate. Ysenbras’s experiences of loss lead him to a Christian state of mind, which proves to be a necessary prelude to his exploits in battle. On the field, however, his hard-won humility is apparently set aside – the virtues he has struggled to achieve proving irrelevant in the performance of his duties as a knight. Other literary models available to Chaucer offered alternative solutions to the same problem. The incompatibility of warrior values with a Christian interpretation of the world had created a characteristically medieval genre – the genre of failed epic – in which Christian writers imitated the forms of classical epic, while demonstrating the impossibility or undesirability of epic virtues when judged from a Christian perspective. Pre-eminent in the genre was Walter of Châtillon’s Alexandreid – a medieval epic which imitated the form of Virgil’s Aeneid, but which was predestined by its choice of subject to be unable to achieve epic closure. Walter seems to have chosen the career of Alexander partly because his remarkable story had not been immortalised by one of the great classical auctors, and partly because Alexander’s life seemed designed to prove the truth of the Biblical dictum that it would profit a man nothing to gain the whole world if he thereby lost his soul.35 The ethical contradictions of Walter’s poem led him to create an uneasy hybrid of forms and styles, which cannot claim the kudos of being either an achieved emulation or a critique of its authoritative sources – the Alexandreid is, variously, too out-spokenly condemnatory or too grudging to work as epic, but too seduced by the glamour of violence to be judged a successful attempt at a Christian denunciation of the vanity of war. It was an experiment that Chaucer was too acute a reader to emulate. Reconciling traditional epic virtues with Christian morality was not the only potential difficulty faced by an aspirant writer of war-like poetry. The complex figuration of national identity at the court of Richard II, Angevin within England, yet capable of invoking a vision of Britishness in its

35

Matthew 8, v. 36.

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Simon Meecham-Jones ambitions to outflank dissent, made a choice of subject delicate, rendering stories of the heroic British past of Arthur, or of the relationship of English and French forces, potentially dangerous. While the ruling dynasty and the aristocracy of England owed their position to a war of conquest, and esteemed their French origins, large areas of English history and mythology were marked out of bounds for a court poet. The abundance of Charlemagne romances written in medieval England provides revealing evidence as to the complex mediation of issues of ethnicity and national allegiance inherent in English culture. The equation was made more complex by the multilingual nature of English society. Though the ascendancy of Anglo-Norman over English as the language of government, law and literature had been checked in the fourteenth century, the reversal was far from completed – in the early years of the fifteenth century, Gower was to choose Anglo-Norman as the language of his Cinkante Balades. The shifting patterns of relations with France rendered the French wars an uncertain choice of subject made redundant by the possibility of peace. For the writers of medieval romance, the crusades against the Saracens provided one answer to some of these potential sensitivities, but for a court poet there were dynastic and political implications to be weighed up in praising a crusader like Richard I. For every glorious victor, there must also be a vanquished, and Chaucer would have faced great difficulty in choosing a vanquished whose defeat would satisfy all and not disturb the sensitivities of his audience. These may be sound literary reasons for Chaucer’s reluctance to tackle warlike themes, but they do not supply the primary motive for the absence of war in Chaucer’s work. Chaucer’s unwillingness to sound the martial trumpet is a direct consequence of his over-powering belief in the writer’s responsibility for the ethical effects of his writing on future audiences. In The House of Fame, Chaucer depicts a world in which all that is said or written continues to exist, represented through the figure of ‘tydynges’ taking up an independent physical existence of their own: Thus north and south, Wente every tydyng fro mouth to mouth, And that encresing ever moo, As fyr ys wont to qukye and goo From a sparke spronge amys, Til al a citee brent up ys. And whan that was ful yspronge, And woxen more on every tonge Than ever hit was, {hit} wente anoon Up to a wyndowe out to goon; Or, hit myghte out there pace Hyt gan out crepe at som crevace, And flygh forth faste for the nones. And somtyme saugh I thoo at ones A lesyng and a sad soth sawe, 156

The Depiction of Warfare in the Poetry of Chaucer That gonne of aventure drawe Out at a wyndowe for to pace; And when they metten in that place, They were achekked bothe two, And neyther of hem moste out goo For other, so they gonne crowde, Til ech of hem gan crien lowde, ‘Lat me go first!’ ‘Nay, but let me! And here I wol ensuren the, Wyth the nones that thou wolt do so, That I shal never fro the go, But be thyn owne sworen brother! We wil medle, us ech with other, That no man, be they never so wrothe, Shal han on [of us] two, but bothe At ones, al besyde his leve, Come we a-morwe or on eve, Be we cried or stille yrouned.’ Thus saugh I fals and soth compouned Togeder fle for oo tydynge Thus out at holes gunne wringe Every tydynge streght to Fame, And she gan yeven ech hys name, After hir disposicioun, And yaf hem eke duracioun, Somme to wexe and wane sone, As doth the faire white mone, And let hem goon. Ther myghte y seen Wynged wondres faste fleen, Twenty thousand in a route, As Eolus hem blew aboute.36

Six centuries before Barthes’ proclamation of the Death of the Author,37 Chaucer dramatises his sense of the frailty of authorial intention, revealing a sense of helplessness to prevent future audiences mis-reading his works. By comparison with the aesthetic of Dante, who admits no element of fear to colour his narrative, Chaucer’s sense of responsibility for the effect of his poetry on its readers proves to be a major check on the subjects he can present, and the style through which he could present them. Where Dante’s boundless confidence encourages declamation and assertion, Chaucer’s ethical diffidence causes him to develop the evasive strategies of narrative occlusion which might be termed characteristically Chaucerian. The House of Fame is Chaucer’s most sustained and undisguised consideration of the difficulties of authorship, and his reservations concerning the

36 37

Chaucer, The House of Fame, lines 2075–120. Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, 142–8.

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Simon Meecham-Jones depiction of war and warriors by previous poets are explored in his depictions of the vestibule of the goddess Fame. In the Alexandreid Walter had proclaimed the superior power of the poet over the warrior, in Alexander’s lament that his deeds had not been immortalised in great art, like those of Achilles and Ulysses: ‘O fortuna uiri superexcellentior,’ inquit ‘Cuius Meonium redolent preconia uatem, Qui licet exanimem distraxerit Hectora, robur Et patrem patriae, summum tamen illud honoris Arbitror augmentum, quod tantum tantus habere Post obitum meruit preconem laudis Homerum. O utinam nostros resoluto corpore tantis Laudibus attollat nam inuidia fama tryumphos! Nam cum lata meas susceperit area leges, Cum domitus Ganges et cum pessundatus Athlas, Cum vires Macedum Boreas, cum senserit Hamon, Et contentus erit sic solo principe mundus Ut solo sole, hoc unum michi deesse timebo, Post mortem cineri ne desit fama sepulto, Elisiisque uelim solam hanc preponere campis.’38 (‘O supremely blessed is the fortune of the man whose praises are redolent of the Maeonian bard,’ he said. ‘Although he dragged about the lifeless Hector, the strength and father of his country, nevertheless I think that the greatest addition to his honor was the fact that after his death such a great man chanced to have so great a herald of his praise, Homer. O would that an ungrudging fame might extend my triumphs with such high praises when I am dead. For though a wider area will receive my laws, though the Ganges will be tamed, though Atlas will be destroyed, though Boreas and Ammon will be as content under one ruler as under one sun, I fear that I will lack this one thing – fame for my buried ashes. This alone I would prefer to the Elysian fields.’)39

There is a characteristically Walterian slippage of time frames, since Alexander is anticipating that he will be denied something which the living heroes of the Iliad could not have known they would receive, but the imputation is clear – only poets have the power to preserve the deeds of the mighty. Chaucer, though, redefines this conception of authorial power, showing his ‘maisters’ as a series of monumental but immobile figures, perched on pillars, becalmed in the vestibule of Fame: Tho saugh I stonde on eyther syde, Streight doun to the dores wide, Fro the dees, many a peler

38 39

Walter of Châtillon, The Alexandreis, I, ed. Colker, lines 478–92 (p. 32). Translation from Jolly, The Alexandreid of Walter of Châtillon, p. 57.

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The Depiction of Warfare in the Poetry of Chaucer Of metal that shoon not ful cler; But though they nere of no rychesse, Yet they were mad for gret noblesse, And in hem hy and gret sentence; And folke of digne reverence, Of which I wil yow telle fonde, Upon the piler saugh I stonde.40

In contrast to the overwhelming confidence of Dante or Walter of Châtillon, these poets, though initially the creators of Fame, become the creatures of Fame, for central to Chaucer’s perception is the uncomfortable realisation that both those remembered and those who cause them to be remembered are perpetually subject to the vagaries of the judgement of subsequent readers. Chaucer visualises this ambivalent status in his striking depiction of the way the poets physically carry the burden of their subject so that, for example, Virgil: That bore hath up a longe while The fame of Pius Eneas.41

At first this may suggest a gallery of literary strongmen, bearing the weight of cultural history, but the implications of this depiction are both more original and more challenging, for it becomes clear that these eminent men are trapped perpetually by the inheritance of their work, literally weighed down by the results of their endeavours. Chaucer thus manages to reverse the usual perception of the balance of power in the relationship of author and inspiration, making it clear that in the eyes of history, the poet is rendered inert and at the mercy of his work. It is a powerful and surprising realisation of Dante’s remarks in the Comedy to his mentor Brunetto Latini: M’insegnavate come l’uom s’etterna ‘You taught me how man makes himself eternal.’42

The poetry of Latini and of his pupil Dante render his name immortal, like that of Virgil di cui la fama ancor nel mondo dura, e durera quanto ‘l mondo lontana whose fame still lasts in the world, and shall last as long as the world.

But it is not just the poetry of Latini which is remembered – Dante, after all, shows us his revered master in the circles of Hell. In the creation of literature, the particularities of the creator are not purged, and the political, 40 41 42

Chaucer, The House of Fame, lines 1419–28. Chaucer, The House of Fame, lines 1484–5. Dante, Inferno, Canto XV, line 85.

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Simon Meecham-Jones religious and ethnic ideologies of their work do not cease to influence the texts themselves, and the readings future audiences find, or create, there. In his visualisation of the ancient masters in the Court of Fame, Chaucer makes clear the unease about the inescapable and unavoidable bond between writer and work which might be said to have inspired the Retracciouns to The Canterbury Tales. Curiously, in some ways this unease anticipates Barthes’ ideas about the independent power a text exercises over its author, but Chaucer’s work disputes the ability of the author to become detached from his text, in the way that Barthes believed to be inevitable: writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing.43

For Chaucer, such a theory would seem to offer the writer a way of evading the responsibilities of the work he had brought into being. Though Chaucer’s image of the great poets, each perched on a column like St Simeon Stylites, seems a less than respectful one, it is hard to imagine a more striking visualisation of the isolated nature of the poet than these figures removed by the power of Fame not merely from their own cultural milieu, but (apparently) from the obliterating powers of Time. Yet Chaucer’s presentation of the matter of Troy emphasises how, although their works may be blended or muddled into a larger corpus, the separate identities of these poets, their ‘distinctness’, is in no way compromised. It forms a powerful, and poignant, contrast to the ease with which Chaucer can adapt, borrow from or combine the incidents and styles of their works – from Dares, Guido, Benoit and the rest. The vision of poets bearing contrary versions of the matter of Troy and questioning each other’s impartiality emphasises Chaucer’s rejection of the possibility that ‘fallen’ secular literature can expect to embody a single and tangible expression of truth: And by him stood, withouten les, Ful wonder hy on a piler Of yren, he, the gret Omer; And with him Dares and Tytus Before, and eke he Lollius, And Guydo eke de Columpnis, And Englyssh Gaufride eke, ywis; And ech of these, as have I joye, Was besy for to bere up Troye. So hevy therof was the fame That for to bere hyt was no game. But yet I gan ful wel espie, Betwex hem was a litil envye. 43

Barthes, ‘Death of the Author’, p. 142.

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The Depiction of Warfare in the Poetry of Chaucer Oon seyde that Omer made lyes, Feynynge in hys poetries, And was to Grekes favorable; Therfor held he hyt but fable.44

The great ‘auctors’ of the past, displayed on pillars bearing up the ‘fame’ of their subjects, have become the victims of their own work, pinned down under the weight of their own talent and the ideologies of their vision – unable to escape the judgements which result from the exercise of their imaginative faculties. In Chaucer’s visualisation of the consequences of literature in The House of Fame, to write is to leave oneself open to perpetual judgement for the moral consequences of the text. In the sly mention of Dares’s denunciation of Homer as propagandist for the Greek cause, Chaucer isolates a particular strand of his reservation about the proper relationship of art and power, or the artist and the powerful. In the portrayal of the great ‘maisters’ at the Court of Fame it is clear that the propagation of Fame supplies both a justification and practical sustenance for the poetic craft, in a mutual interdependence of poet and ruler that unites the epochs of literary history. Chaucer is careful to draw our attention to the perpetual binding together of the Mighty and their chroniclers in his description of: The grete poete daun Lucan, And on hys shuldres bar up than, As high as that y myghte see, The fame of Julius and Pompe.45

But in this visualisation of the inevitable connection of the reputation of subject and author, Chaucer raises the question of the poet’s complicity in the failings of their subjects. Both Caesar and Pompey are figures whose careers were full of violent and morally questionable acts – but Lucan, as their chronicler, must bear responsibility for the survival of their name. The poet, even if preserving memories of their failings, is also paradoxically helping them to achieve the preservation of their names, an ambition which lay at the heart of heroic culture. It is clear from his portrayal of Fame as a monstrous and unjust figure that Chaucer intends to present this process of poetic embalming of reputations in a severely critical light. The reference to the Apocalypse in the description of Fama For as feele eyen hadde she As fetheres upon foules be, Or weren on the bestes foure That Goddis trone gunne honoure, As John writ in th’Apocalips46 44 45 46

Chaucer, The House of Fame, lines 1464–80. Chaucer, The House of Fame, lines 1499–1502. Chaucer, The House of Fame, lines 1381–5.

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Simon Meecham-Jones emphasises the blasphemous presumption of her judgements. Similarly the trumpet-playing of Aeolus takes on the quality of a parody of the last Trump: What dide this Eolus, but he, Tok out hys blake trumpe of bras, That fouler than the devel was, And gan this trumpe for to blowe, As al the world shulde overthrowe, ... And hyt stank as the pit of helle.47

Though Chaucer’s primary purpose may have been to castigate Dante’s boldness in claiming for poetry the divine right to declare historical figures damned or saved, in the ludicrous but vivid image of Caesar and Pompey riding into eternity on Lucan’s shoulders Chaucer reveals his fear of the artist being locked into an eternal and inescapable relationship with the political leaders of his day. The risk was greatest in chronicling warfare and, in avoiding the topic, Chaucer demonstrates his awareness that in writing of battles and political conflict, the writer is drawn into a direct and indissoluble relationship with the ideology from which the warfare springs. The result is a poetry which achieves disengagement from the pressing political difficulties of its time – the fitness of Richard II to rule, the legality of Henry IV’s usurpation, the proper relationship of the English throne to the lands in France and the colonial annexation of Wales and Ireland. Some scholars have been critical of Chaucer’s perceived lack of political commitment to ethical causes or political factions, reading this disengagement as a sign of weakness, and writing of Chaucer as if he were a free artist working in a liberal democracy. But Chaucer’s presentation of war reveals his recognition of the creative restrictions inherent in his position as an artist working in a volatile and repressive culture of hierarchical patronage. His unwillingness to allow his work to be assimilated within either the valorised tradition of heroic ideology or the passing particularities of political and dynastic conflict reflects not an acceptance of the mores of his time but, on the contrary, a conscious act of dissociation from the ideology of his circumstances. The apparently unassertive courage of Chaucer’s refusal to let his work embody the motives and values of his political masters is illuminated by comparing his practice of resistance with that of twentieth-century artists attempting to safeguard their integrity within totalitarian regimes. In Vaclav Havel’s essay ‘The Power of The Powerless’, the dangers of acquiescence in the rhetoric of the display of power are demonstrated. Havel’s purpose is to show how easily, and without consciously choosing to do so, citizens become complicit in the ideology which denies their freedom – and how that ideology enslaves every level of the hierarchy: 47

Chaucer, The House of Fame, lines 1636–40, 1654.

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The Depiction of Warfare in the Poetry of Chaucer Vedoucí obchodu se zeleninou umístil do výkladu mezi cibuli a mrkev heslo “Proletáøi všech zemí, spojte se!” Proè to udelal? Co tím cht÷l sdelit svetu? Je skuteèn÷ osobn÷ zapálen pro myšlenku spojení proletáøù všech zemí? Jde jeho zapálení tak daleko, »e cítí neodolatelnou potøebu se svým ideálem seznámit veøejnost? Uva»oval opravdu nìkdy aspoò chvilku o tom, jak by se takové spojení mìlo uskuteènit a co by znamenalo? Myslím, »e u drtivé v÷tšiny zelináøù lze právem pøedpokládat, »e o textu hesel ve svých výkladech celkem nepøemýšlejí, nato» aby jimi vyslovovali nìco ze svého názoru na sv÷t. To heslo pøivezli našemu zelináøi z podniku spolu s cibulí a mrkví a on je dal do výkladu prostì proto, »e se to tak u» léta d÷lá, »e to d÷lají všichni, »e to tak musí být. Kdyby to neudìlal, mohl by mít potí»e; mohli by mu vyèíst, »e nemá “výzdobu”; nekdo by ho mohl dokonce naøkout z toho, »e není loajální. Ud÷dal to proto, »e to patøí k v÷ci, chce-li èlovìk v »ivot÷ obstát; »e je to jedna z tisíce “malièkostí”, které mu zajišÿují relativnì klidný »ivot “v souladu se spoleèností”.48 The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: ‘Workers of the world, unite!’ Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has he really given more than a moment’s thought to how such a unification might occur and what it would mean? I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions. That poster was delivered to our greengrocer from the enterprise headquarters along with the onions and carrots. He put them all into the window simply because it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper decoration in his window; someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of those thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life ‘in harmony with society’, as they say.49

In the militaristic culture of medieval Europe, the deployment of images of warfare and prowess must have seemed as natural an employment for writers as the greengrocer’s placing of a Communist slogan. It is the seeming obviousness of this behaviour, its apparent transparency of intention, which, in Havel’s account, proves so enslaving: Jak vidìt, sémantický obsah vystaveného hesla je zelinarí lhostejný, a dává’li své heslo do výkladu, nedává ho tam proto, »e by osobnì tou»il právì s jeho myšlenkou seznámit veøejnost. 48 49

Havel et al., O Svobodì A Moci, pp. 15–16. Trans. Wilson, in Havel, The Power of the Powerless, ed. Keane, pp. 27–8.

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Simon Meecham-Jones To ovšem neznamená, »e jeho poèin nemá »ádný motiv a a »e svým heslem nikomu nic nesdìluje. To heslo má funcki znaku a jako takové obsahuje sice skryté, ale zcela urèité sdìlení. Verbálnì by je bylo mo»né vyjádøit takto: já, zelináø XY, jsem zde a vím, co mam dìlat; chovám se tak, jak je ode mne oèekáváno; je na mne spolehnutí a nelze mi nic vytknout; jsem poslusný a mám proto právo na klidný »ivot. Toto sdìlení má pøirozenì svého adresáta: je namíøeno “nahoru”, k zelináøovým nadøízeným, a je zároveò štítem, kterým se zelináø kryje pøed pøípadnými udavaèi. Svým skuteèným významem je tedy heslo zakotveno pøímo v zelináøovì lidské existenci: zrcadlí jeho »ivotní zájem. Jaký to je však zájem? Všimnìme si: kdyby naøídili zelináøi dát do výkladu heslo “Bojím se, a proto jsem bezvýhradné poslušný”, nechoval by se k jeho sématickému obsahu zdaleka tak laxné, pøesto, »e by se tento obsah tentokrát zcela kryl se skrytým významem hesla. Zelináø by se pravdìpodobnì zdráhal umístit do své výkladní skøínì takto nedvojsmyslnou zprávu o svém poní»ení, bylo by mu to trapné, stydìl by se. Pochopitelnì: je pøece èlovìkem a má tudí» pocit lidské dùstojnosti. Aby byla tato komplikace pøekonána, musí mít jeho vyznání loajality normu znaku, poukazujícího aspoò svým textovým povrchem k jakýmsi vyšším polohám nezištného pøesvìdèeni. Zelináøi se musí dát mo»nost, aby si øekl:V»dyÿ proè by se koneckoncù proletáøi všech zemí nemohli spojit? Znak pomáhá tedy skrýt pøed èlovìkem “nízké” základy jeho poslušnosti a tím “nízké základy moci. Skrývá je za fásadou èehosi “vysokého”. Tím “vysokým” je ideologie.50 Obviously the greengrocer is indifferent to the semantic content of the slogan on exhibit; he does not put the slogan in his window from any personal desire to acquaint the public with the ideal it expresses. This, of course, does not mean that his action has no motive or significance at all, or that the slogan communicates nothing to anyone. The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be expressed this way: ‘I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.’ This message, of course, has an addressee: it is directed above, to the greengrocer’s superior, and at the same time it is a shield that protects the greengrocer from potential informers. The slogan’s real meaning, therefore, is rooted firmly in the greengrocer’s existence. It reflects his vital interests. But what are those vital interests? Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan ‘I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient’, he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome this complication, his expression of 50

Havel et al., O Svobodì A Moci, pp. 16–17.

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The Depiction of Warfare in the Poetry of Chaucer loyalty must take the form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of disinterested conviction. It must allow the greengrocer to say, ‘What’s wrong with the workers of the world uniting?’ Thus the sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade of something high. And that something is ideology.51

Chaucer refuses to decorate his texts with the trophies of the ideology of war which governed medieval aristocratic society, and his refusal to do so should be recognised as a principled and imaginative recognition of the moral implications of accepting and re-using traditional styles and tropes. He does not concede the justice of aristocratic violence, even though he cannot imagine an alternative structure of social organisation once the ‘good feith’ of the mythical Former Age had been breached.52 The simultaneous dis-engagement from the ideology of warfare and pessimism about the creation of alternative mores results in the quality of inchoateness Yeager describes in his account of Chaucer’s distaste for war – a distaste that is potent but implicit. That Chaucer was able to choose this path of implicit and solitary resistance, so at odds with the needs of the ruling class, and so hostile to what was perceived to be in ‘harmony with society’, tells us much about his isolation as an artist, and the apparent obtuseness of his readers. Chaucer worked at a court less than sensitive to the potential propaganda value, both immediately and for posterity, of the poet in its midst – perhaps because he chose to write in the ‘unlearned’ language of English. It appears that the poet’s suitability to plead the case for England and its ruler, (a role which seemed so obvious to Chaucer, as it had to Dante, Walter of Châtillon and Virgil, and to Gower in the writing of the Confessio Amantis) was not noticed. Saul has drawn attention to the fact that no evidence survives that Chaucer ever wrote to a commission from Richard II53 – had he done so, his disinclination to embrace warlike themes would presumably have proved more problematic. At the same time, and disturbingly for a poet, although he was so sensitive to the consequences of his verse, Chaucer had to live and work with the possibility that his prospective usefulness might be discovered, and pressure exerted to make his verse the host for authority’s choice of an ideological parasite. Though it rejects the role of a commentary on the warfare of his time, Chaucer’s poetry is powerfully 51 52

Trans. Wilson, in Havel, The Power of the Powerless, ed. Keane, p. 28. Unforged was the hauberk and the plate; The lambish peple, voyd of alle vyce, Hadden no fanasye to debate, But ech of hem wolde other wel cheryce. No pryde, non envye, non avaryce, No lord, no taylage by no tyrannye; Humblesse and pees, good feith the emperice. 53 Saul, Richard II, p. 362.

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Simon Meecham-Jones shaped by his determined exclusion of the imagery of warfare. It is no surprise that the military imagery that holds most power over Chaucer’s imagination throughout his work is not that of combat on the field of war but of siege – the besieging of Troy which frames the action of Troilus and Criseyde, the siege of Thebes which causes the abandonment of Anelida. Images of siege are not found at the forefront of Chaucer’s poetic canvases, but an awareness of being besieged permeates Chaucer’s poetic voice as deeply as it does the consciousness of Troilus. The absent presence of siege embodied an image of surrounding, potentially mortal, but not immediate, danger which functioned within Chaucer’s poetry as a figure of his sense of the poet’s integrity perpetually under threat from the external demands of a social structure founded on the violence of warfare. It was not possible for Chaucer to achieve an aesthetic in which the existence of war could be denied, but the imagery of the siege, with its strong Christian echoes of the soul besieged by sin, enabled Chaucer to give figurative expression to his fears about the near-impossibility of a writer escaping complicity in the rhetoric of aristocratic warfare.

Works Cited I. Sources Annales Richard II & Henry IV in J. de Trokelowe et Anon, Chronica et Annales, ed. H. T. Riley (London: Rolls Series, 1866). Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edn, ed. Larry D. Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. John D. Sinclair (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961). Sidney, Sir Philip, The Poetry of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Katherine DuncanJones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973). The ‘Gest Hystoriale’ of the Destruction of Troy: An Alliterative Romance Translated from Guido de Colonna’s ‘Hystoria Troiana’, ed. George A. Panton and David Donaldson, 2 vols in 1, Early English Text Society, OS 39 and 56 (London: N. Trübner, 1869 and 1874). Havel, Vaclav et al., O Svobode A Moci (Cologne: Index, 1980). Havel, Vaclav, The Power of the Powerless, ed. John Keane (London: Hutchinson, 1985). Jolly, William Thomas, trans. and commentary, ‘The Alexandreid of Walter of Châtillon’, Tulane University of Louisiana, unpublished PhD thesis, 1968. Volkov, Solomon, Testimony, the Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, as related to and edited by Solomon Volkov, trans. Antonina W. Bouing (London: H. Hamilton, 1979). 166

The Depiction of Warfare in the Poetry of Chaucer Walter of Châtillon, Galteri de Castellione Alexandreis, ed. M. L. Colker, Thesaurus mundi 17 (Padua: In aedibus Antenoreis, 1986).

II. Studies Aers, David, Chaucer (Brighton: Harvester, 1986). Barthes, Roland, ‘Image–Music–Text’, Essays, ed. and trans. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana, 1977). Burgess, G. S., ed., Court and Poet: Selected Proceedings of the Third Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society (Liverpool: Francis Cairns, 1981). Burrow, J. A., Ricardian Poetry (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971). Hanks, D. Thomas and Jessica Brogdon, ed., The Social and Literary Contexts of Malory’s ‘Morte Darthur’ (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000). Jones, Terry with Terry Dolan, Juliette D’Or, Alan Fletcher and Robert Yeager, Who Murdered Chaucer? (London: Methuen, 2003). Long, P. W., ed., Essays in Honor of Carleton Brown (New York: New York University Press, 1940). Oizumi, Akio, A Complete Concordance to the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Hildesheim: Olms-Weidmann, 1991). Patterson, Lee, Chaucer and the Subject of History (London: Routledge, 1991). Pearsall, Derek, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer: A Critical Biography (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992). Pratt, John H., Chaucer and War (Lanham: University Press of America, 2000). Saul, Nigel, Richard II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). Yeager, R. F., ‘Pax Poetica: On the Pacifism of Chaucer and Gower’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 9 (1987): 97–121.

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Warfare and Combat in Le Morte Darthur K. S. WHETTER

S

IR THOMAS Malory’s fifteenth-century Morte Darthur begins and ends in warfare.1 When warfare proper is not the principal subject, the narrative is dominated by tournaments or individual jousts and combats, friendly and unfriendly, in which knights clash together and one of them, to borrow an Homeric phrase, falls upon the earth to have his armour rattle upon him. Unfriendly jousts are obviously a form of combat, but even more amicable encounters and martial games can be considered as an ‘imitation of combat’,2 utilising and honing the skills used in war. This is as true of medieval historical and literary tournaments, including those in the Morte Darthur, as it is of the funeral games in the Iliad. And as with actual warfare, tournaments and individual jousts in the Morte can lead to bloodshed, as when Balyn and Balan fail to recognise one another until they are both mortally wounded, or when Launcelot, prior to knighting Gareth, agrees to joust with him and then has to warn Gareth to stop fighting so earnestly before one or the other of them is seriously injured.3 Balyn and Balan are forced to fight, but Launcelot and Gareth fight by mutual consent, at Gareth’s request, in a battle that is obviously designed to allow Gareth to prove himself and increase his reputation. The danger in such situations, as Malory observes elsewhere, is that however courteously knights may speak to one another, ‘whan they be in batayle eyther wolde beste be praysed’ (223.12–13).4 Such praise, of course, is best won by defeating one’s opponent, and Gareth’s fierce competitiveness in fighting Launcelot illustrates the potential disaster attendant upon such feelings. The full effects of such

1 2

I am indebted to P. J. C. Field for his comments on this paper. Redfield, Nature and Culture in the Iliad, p. 206. For tournaments in Malory, see Hellenga, ‘The Tournaments in Malory’s Morte Darthur’, pp. 67–78. 3 The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, Vinaver, rev. Field, pp. 89.5–91.7 and 298.26–299.7 respectively. All references are by page and line number to this edition; subsequent references will be made parenthetically in the text. I do not reproduce Vinaver’s various brackets around emendations, nor his capitalisation of the explicits. 4 On the potential for good and ill will here, see also Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms, p. 93; Knight, Arthurian Literature and Society, pp. 116–18.

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K. S. Whetter disaster are made even more explicit when Gawayne and Uwayne encounter one another in the Grail Quest: ignorant of one another’s identity and desirous to joust, they come together with the result that Uwayne, ‘a felow of the Rounde Table’, is mortally wounded in their first charge (943.31–945.18). Gawayne and Uwayne are both seeking adventure, as is their habit as knights, but the poignancy of Uwayne’s death is emphasised when we remember that Uwayne is Gawayne’s cousin, and that earlier in the Morte Gawayne willingly accompanies Uwayne into exile (158.5–22). It has been argued that wounds in the Morte Darthur are inflicted by and associated with false knights, whereas true knights are associated with healing. Thus Gawayne’s accidental killing of Uwayne is a sign of Gawayne’s falsity.5 This, however, is only partially true, and is – as we shall see – much less valid elsewhere in the Morte than in the Grail Quest. Rather, there is considerable thematic interest throughout the Morte Darthur not only in the winning of worshyp (honour; glory) through combat and prowess, but in weeping, wounds and blood.6 The consequences of combat are Malory’s focus as much as the combats themselves. Hence one of several small but significant original details in the Morte is Malory’s observation that, in the aftermath of the final battle between Arthur and Mordred, those injured knights left alive on the battlefield were killed by looters (1237.29–1238.4). This emphasises the sombreness and suffering of the final war in the Morte Darthur, and also suggests Malory’s own awareness of the bloody and grim realities of warfare – hardly surprising if this observation is indeed based on Malory’s experiences of the Battle of Towton, ‘the bloodiest battle ever fought on British soil’.7 Yet we cannot conclude from this that Malory is condemning war, for elsewhere in the Morte war, and particularly tournaments and individual battles and jousts, are the means by which a knight proves his worship and, often, wins his lady. Such, for instance, is the case with Gareth or Trystram or, especially, Launcelot, who admits in the Grail Quest that his battles were undertaken in large part ‘for to wynne worship’ (897.20). Such is even the case, mutatis mutandis, in the Morte’s judicial trials by battle, where Malory is more interested in the fighting and the ways fighting advances the plot and aggrandises his heroes than he is in legal niceties.8 Thus warfare in the Morte Darthur is one of those topics that reveals Malory’s seemingly contradictory complexities. At times, war generates opportunities for worship and puts an end to tyranny or unjust rebellion. 5

Kelly, ‘Wounds, Healing, and Knighthood in Malory’s Tale of Lancelot and Guenevere’ (especially, for Gawayne’s falsity, p. 180). 6 For worship and prowess, see Lynch, Book of Arms, pp. 28–33; 43–6; on the consequences, see pp. 73–4. Despite the argument of these last pages, Lynch elsewhere generally downplays the consequences of combat in the Morte, emphasising instead fighting ‘for its own sake’: see pp. 41–3; 49–50; 56; 77–8; 132–3. As will become evident, I disagree with this. 7 See, for this suggestion, Field, ‘Malory and the Battle of Towton’, p. 74. 8 Eynon, ‘The Use of Trial by Battle in the Work of Sir Thomas Malory’, pp. 85; 91–104.

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Warfare and Combat in Le Morte Darthur The Roman War brings just rule to lands that had been in discord, and we witness many instances of Arthur’s good conduct towards both enemies and friends.9 At other times, however, we are reminded how ‘ “there ys harde batayle thereas kynne and frendys doth batayle ayther ayenst other”, for there may be no mercy, but mortall warre’ (1084.5–7). This is corroborated again and again in the Morte, but even if it were not, the fact that the sentiment is described as an ‘olde-seyde sawe’ suggests that it is common experience approved by everyone in Arthur’s (and perhaps even Malory’s) society. In this sense, warfare has both beneficent and destructive consequences, for although war and individual combat are the principal means by which a knight establishes worship, they are also the principal means by which he encounters injury or death. It is my contention that Malory throughout the Morte Darthur asks us to accept each side of this equation as equally valid. The Grail Quest is an exception to this, but only partially. Finally, as the Morte draws to its tragic close, warfare is one of several narrative features or strands used by Malory to highlight the irredeemable loss of an ideal kingdom, ruler, and fellowship. The war which opens the Morte Darthur is brief, and we lose sight of it to focus on its consequence: the birth of Arthur; but it is worth remembering that the war is already in progress when the story opens – ‘Hit befel in the dayes of Uther Pendragon . . . that there was a myghty duke in Cornewaill that helde warre agenyst hym’ (7.1–3) – and that, when it resumes following an abortive peace, ‘there was grete warre made on bothe partyes and moche peple slayne’ (8.6–7). The cost of war, then, is immediately placed before us. Even when this war is ended and Arthur has been recognised as king, much of the opening section of the ‘Tale of King Arthur’ (Tale I) is devoted to Arthur’s wars with Lott and the rebel kings. Although war is not the principal subject, the ‘Tale of Balyn’ and ‘The Wedding of King Arthur’ both open by recalling the great wars Arthur had to fight to become king (61.1–5; 97.1–6), and war recurs in both sections. The explicit to Tale I, meanwhile, recalls Arthur’s ‘many batayles’ (180.17), the opening lines of Tale II – the ‘Tale of the Noble Kynge Arthure that was Emperoure Hymself thorow dygnyté of His Hondys’ – are similar (185.3–4), and both the ‘Tale of Sir Launcelot’ and ‘Boke of Syr Trystrams’ open by recounting Arthur’s lordship over Rome and many other lands, implicitly recalling the wars requisite for establishing that rule. Modern readers with modern values may well view all this fighting as wrong. In doing so they follow (consciously or not) the Renaissance humanist Roger Ascham, who condemned the Morte and its heroes because of the fighting and slaughter.10 Even if they do not frown upon it, modern 9

E.g., pp. 186.24–187.12; 227.7; 241.22–242.18; 245.9–246.3. See also Cherewatuk, ‘Sir Thomas Malory’s “Grete Booke” ’, pp. 55–7. 10 Ascham, The Scholemaster, fols 27r–27v.

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K. S. Whetter readers are often uninterested in the fighting. Helen Cooper’s recent abbreviated edition of Malory, for instance, condenses the fight scenes for this very reason.11 We must remember, therefore, that Malory is interested in the fighting: it is in fact his ‘favourite topic’.12 Thus fighting is not only the norm in the Morte Darthur, it is both accepted and expected, providing the ‘chief means by which a Malory hero can “florysh hys herte in thys worlde” ’.13 Nevertheless, Malory takes pains to emphasise the justice of Arthur’s cause in the early wars by repeatedly showing him drawing the sword from the stone (see pp. 12–16), and it is made clear that ‘Whoso pulleth oute this Swerd of this Stone and Anvyld is rightwys Kynge borne of all Englond’ (12.34–36). Something similar occurs in the ‘Tale of the Noble Kynge Arthure that was Emperoure Hymself thorow dygnyté of His Hondys’,14 in which Arthur (or his emissaries) repeatedly emphasises his right to oppose Rome by evoking the emperorship of his ancestors (188.5–14; 194.21–23; 207.4–6; none of which is denied by Malory), while various of his allies agree to fight Rome to avenge past Roman wrongs (189.9–20) and because they ‘had never scathe syne [Arthur was] crowned kynge, and whan the Romaynes raynede uppon us they raunsomed oure elders and raffte us of oure lyves’ (188.18–20). Even the wording of the explicit, that Arthur became emperor ‘thorow dygnyté of His Hondys’ (italics mine), emphasises Arthur’s prowess while simultaneously singing his praises. The Emperor’s alliance with fiendish giants (193.24–25), meanwhile, contrasts with Arthur’s destruction of the villainous and monstrous Giant of Seynte Mychaels Mounte (198.5–205.10), and again suggests the justice of Arthur’s war. The monstrousness of the Emperor’s allies also indicates that his claim of overlordship of England is itself monstrous. If the wars are just, so is Arthur’s worship, and like the battle with the giant, the wars in Tale I allow Arthur to distinguish himself and win glory, for he fights ‘ever . . . in the formest prees’ (19.16–17) and does so ‘mervaylesly in armys that all men had wondir’ (29.13–14; cf. 19.9–11; 30.33–4). Arthur’s worship is all the greater considering that his opponents are later called ‘the beste fyghters of the worlde’ (37.3) and ‘knyghtes of moste prouesse that ever y saw other herde off speke’ (34.35–6). Just as Arthur wins glory, so too do his knights. Hence Balyn wins both glory and Arthur’s favour in defeating King Royns and fighting against the rebel kings (70.21–7; 73.27–30; 75.34–76.5), Kay wins glory in the ‘War with the Five Kings’ episode (see esp. 128.14–129.22; cf. 75.29–30), and Gawayne and

11 12

See Cooper, ed., Le Morte Darthur, p. xxv. Vinaver, ed., Works, p. xxxiii. Cf. Lynch, Book of Arms, p. 38. Mahoney, ‘Malory’s “Tale of Sir Tristram” ’, p. 177, suggests that Malory may have been attracted to the Tristram story in part because of its fighting. 13 Lynch, Book of Arms, p. 147, quoting Malory, p. 1119.24. See also Lynch, Book of Arms, p. 35, and his ‘Ideology’, p. 26. 14 Tale II is also referred to as ‘King Arthur and the Emperor Lucius’.

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Warfare and Combat in Le Morte Darthur Launcelot (amongst others) win glory in the Roman War.15 When we combine these scenes with Cador’s response to the Roman Embassy (and war) in Tale II, that Arthur’s knights have been idle for too long and thankfully ‘now shall . . . have warre and worshyp’ (187.18–21), we seem to have a straightforward, almost celebratory response to warfare.16 Malory does not, however, simply aestheticise warfare. Thus, as a concomitant of warriors winning glory in battle, we have Lott, one of the causes of the principal war in Tale I, weeping ‘for pité and dole that he saw so many good knyghtes take their ende’ (33.5–7). Shortly thereafter Merlyn encapsulates both aspects of war, the glorious and the bloody, when he upbraids Arthur for continuing to fight when so many are slain, while at the same time praising the worship and prowess of Arthur and his men (36.26–37.3). Such sentiments are continued in the Roman War, which alternately emphasises the opportunities war brings for winning knightly worship, as well as the destruction attendant upon war. Thus, in the wake of a battle in which Gawayne especially is seriously injured, and in which Arthur himself laments Gawayne’s wounds and offers bloody reprisal for them (211.23–8), we are nonetheless told how ‘was there joy and game amonge the knyghtes of Rounde Table, [who] spoke of the grete prouesse that the messyngers [including Gawayne] ded that day thorow dedys of armys’ (212.1–3). Similarly, Launcelot and Cador both argue in favour of fighting against superior numbers and dying with honour rather than retreating (213.31–214.5; cf. 217.25–9), just as Gawayne refuses to allow Pryamus to enter the fray with reinforcements until their men ‘be stadde wyth more stuff than [he sees] hem agaynste’ (237.4–22). Throughout these scenes, war is seen as a means to win glory or die with honour, a sentiment as familiar to the heroes of the Iliad as to the knights of the Round Table.17 Even Merlyn feels this, contrasting his own ‘shamefull dethe’ with Arthur’s ‘worshipfull dethe’ in battle (44.24–30). We are, however, concomitantly reminded of the cost of war, as when Arthur weeps to hear ‘whyche of the good knyghtis were slayne’ (217.17–24), or when 15

For Gawayne, see (inter alia) the episode where he is part of Arthur’s embassy to the Emperor (207.20–211.31) and that with Pryamus (228.20–234.24). For Launcelot’s glory in Tale II, see especially the prisoner escort episode (212.11–217.14); his role in Malory’s version of the Roman War may be contrasted with that in the principal source, the alliterative Morte Arthure, where his part is relatively slight. See also Dichmann, ‘ “The Tale of King Arthur and the Emperor Lucius” ’ (especially pp. 74–9 and 90). 16 The sentiment in Caxton’s version of the Roman War is the same, and the wording is not significantly different: see the Caxton text printed at the bottom of Works, p. 187, or Caxton’s Malory, ed. Spisak, Vol. I, p. 122.9–12. 17 See, e.g., The Iliad of Homer, trans. Lattimore, XII, 322–8. Lewis’s aspersions of the Winchester version of the Roman War and its source notwithstanding, such sentiments are closer to the spirit of the Morte Darthur than is generally acknowledged: Lewis, ‘The English Prose Morte’, pp. 26–7. For the heroic and martial influence of the alliterative Morte Arthure on Malory, see especially McCarthy, ‘Malory and the Alliterative Tradition’; McCarthy, ‘Beowulf’s Bairns’.

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K. S. Whetter a chylde of kyng Arthurs chambir, he was a warde of sir Gawaynes . . . they [the Romans] chaced that chylde, that he nowhere myght ascape, for one with a swerde the halse of the chylde he smote in too. Whan sir Gawayne hit sawe he wepte wyth all his herte. (239.12–19)

Even here, though, Malory tells us, and Gawayne repeats to Arthur (240.28–9), that the youth with his own hands slew an enemy warrior before being killed; considering that Malory generally abbreviates his material, and that the source here recounts only the youth’s death, not his success, the repetition implies some degree of consolation.18 The matter of whether England or Rome owes the other tribute is settled by war. As a general rule, however, Malory treats warfare and tournament combat as much the same thing, often focussing on the opposition of individual knights or small groups of knights.19 Hence Arthur fights Lucyus in the Roman War, sending Lucyus’s body as tribute to Rome (223.14–226.8), and Gawayne fights Bors and Launcelot (et alia) in the Siege of Benwick (1214.20–1221.17). Another indication of the similarities between warfare and individual combat in Morte Darthur comes with the question of Cornish tribute to Ireland, for this matter is settled by individual combat between Marhalte and Trystram. And just as war allows knights the opportunity to win glory, Marhalte agrees to champion Ireland in order ‘to encrece [hys] worshyp’ (376.26), while Trystram, as a newly-made knight, champions Cornwall for similar reasons (381.13–33). Again, just as Launcelot and Cador would rather die with honour than flee their enemies in the Roman War, so in the battle between Trystram and Blamour, Blamour would rather die with honour than be shamed by admitting defeat – a decision endorsed by his brother (408.23–34; 409.20–410.26). To a considerable extent, then, the focus in war, tournament and individual combat is on the winning of worship.20 Arthur even dismisses Launcelot’s warnings about facing numerous envious opponents at Lonezep because Arthur, like Launcelot and Gawayne and others in the Roman War, wants to ‘preve whoo shall be beste of his hondis’ (682.11–17). It has been said of Malory’s (much-maligned) fifth tale, the ‘Boke of Syr Trystrams’, that it celebrates ‘the joys of combat . . . almost beyond limits’.21 Indeed, its theme is the ‘pursuit of “worship” gained by fighting’.22 This, as the above examples or even a superficial reading of the tale help to illustrate, is 18 19 20

21 22

For Malory’s additions to the scene, see alliterative Morte Arthure, ed. Hamel, lines 2952–61 and 3027–8; Vinaver, ed., Works, n. to 240.27–9. See Lynch, Book of Arms, pp. 48–52. Cf. Knight, pp. 111–12 and 126; Hellenga, pp. 72–4 and 78. For Mann, combat also plays a role in the knights’ realisation of their own identities as well as in helping them to confront the mysterious and arbitrary nature of life and the universe, ‘Malory: Knightly Combat in Le Morte Darthur’. Lynch, Book of Arms, p. 78. See also Cherewatuk, pp. 52 and 59–61. Mahoney, p. 175.

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Warfare and Combat in Le Morte Darthur quite true. Yet for all its polyphonic stream of chivalric adventures, tournaments, and fighting, the ‘Boke of Syr Trystrams’ also reminds us of the human cost of warfare and combat. Thus, for instance, when the Sessoyne host attacks Cornwall, one particular battle is ended both by the approach of darkness and also ‘for grete slaughtir of peple and for wounded peple’ (622.22–3; cf. 620.5–8). The slaughter is so great, in fact, that neither party wants to continue fighting. Rather, the war is settled by single combat between Trystram and the Sessoyne leader, Elyas, a combat which Trystram eventually wins, in typical romance fashion, by gaining inspiration from thoughts of his lover (625.1–33). Like the battle with Marhalte, this is one of many acts in the Morte Darthur as a whole that contributes to Trystram’s great reputation as one of the best knights of the Round Table; more importantly in the present argument, the emphasis on the dead and the glory Trystram wins serve to illustrate both the cost and the worship attendant upon war. This is especially true since, in a detail original to Malory, Elyas dies in the combat,23 and Trystram laments the loss of a knight whom he feels to be second only to Launcelot in prowess (626.1–4). Although I believe that Malory’s view of war and individual combat is fairly consistent throughout the Morte Darthur, I do not mean to imply that all wars and battles are the same (however much the paratactic similarities of their narration may make them appear so to unsympathetic readers). It is even possible that the condemnation of murder in the Grail Quest is meant to suggest that war is bad, especially in light of the argument that false knights are associated with wounds and true knights with healing.24 This, however, is only partially true, and even in the Grail Quest Bors can defend (by combat) a lady against the attacks and seizures of her lands and castles by another lady’s army (956.34–960.15). Further, although the notion of war allowing a knight to win worship seems counter to the religious aesthetic of the Grail Quest, the Quest’s values are not those of the Morte as a whole. One of Malory’s greatest changes to his source in the Grail story is to downplay any condemnation of earthly chivalry. Consequently, the Grail allows Arthur’s knights even greater opportunity for winning ‘glory in this world’.25 Bors is one of three knights to achieve the Grail, but even he explains to one of the Quest’s ubiquitous hermits that ‘he shall have much erthly worship that may bryng [the queste of the Sankgreall] to an ende’ (955.9–10; my emphasis). The hermit, it may be added, agrees with this. Thus, excepting certain figures such as Galahad, the Morte and its heroes operate as much by epic-heroic values privileging prowess, glory and honour

23

See Vinaver, ed., Works, n. to 626.5–7, and Lynch, Book of Arms, pp. 61–2. For Lynch, this shows Trystram’s respect for his opponent’s blood and worship. More importantly, to my mind, it shows Malory taking extra effort to emphasise the human cost of combat. 24 See n. 5. 25 Vinaver, ed., Works, p. 1535.

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K. S. Whetter as by medieval Christian morality.26 This is especially evident in two martial scenes. The first is Gawayne’s blood-feud oath against Launcelot: My kynge, my lorde, and myne uncle, . . . wyte you well, now I shall make you a promyse whych I shall holde be my knyghthode[:] . . . for the deth of my brothir, sir Gareth, I shall seke sir Launcelot thorowoute seven kynges realmys, but I shall sle hym, other ellis he shall sle me. (1186.1–12)

The second is Arthur’s decision, in the wake of the destruction of the last battle, to pursue vengeance upon Mordred ‘tyde me dethe, tyde me lyff, . . . now I se hym yondir alone, he shall never ascape myne hondes!’ (1237.5–6).27 The argument that Malory take pains to ‘displace the . . . moral questionability of war’28 is consequently misguided, for he does not view it morally at all. On those occasions where war is objectionable it is because of its destruction or dishonour, not its moral distastefulness. It also remains true that even in the Grail Quest Bors, Galahad and Percivale are twice able to defeat and kill a far greater force than would be humanly possible. On the second occasion Galahad ‘smote on the ryght honde and on the lyffte honde, and slew whom that ever abode hym, and dud so mervaylously that there was none that sawe hym they wend he had ben none erthely man, but a monstre’ (1001.22–26). Although Galahad objects, we can, I think, accept Bors’s appraisal of the situation, that their successes against greater odds, however bloody, are testimony to God’s grace and power, and to their enemies’ evil customs (997.3–11). On these occasions, then, victory in battle generates both earthly and celestial glory. We must therefore remember that although Launcelot is castigated in the Quest for his adultery and vainglory, his penance includes a promise ‘to sew [pursue] knyghthode and to do fetys of armys’ (899.2–3). Since the hermit then encourages Launcelot to perform ‘suche penaunce as he myght do and to sew knyghthode’ (899.4–5), it seems that penance and knighthood ‘are complementary means to salvation’.29 And since combat is an integral part of a knight’s existence, the most common aspect of knightly adventure and (according to one critic) the means by which a knight relates to a hostile world,30 it follows that combat itself is not necessarily a nullification of penance: that it is not, in itself, necessarily a bad thing. The success of Bors and his fellows in battle illustrates how in some wars it is possible for one side to be clearly in the right. An even more obvious case 26

27 28 29 30

Cf. Brewer, ‘the hoole book’, p. 58: ‘For Malory . . . there is no essential incompatibility between the values of Christianity and those of the High Order of Knighthood.’ See also Vinaver, ed., Works, pp. xxix–xxxiv. Lynch, ‘Ideology’, p. 34, also sees Arthur’s act as an example of the Morte’s heroic value system. Lynch, ‘Ideology’, p. 31. Kelly, ‘Wounds’, p. 182. For this point, see Mann, ‘Knightly Combat’, pp. 331–9, and her ‘ “Taking the Adventure” ’.

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Warfare and Combat in Le Morte Darthur of right and wrong comes in Mordred’s revolt and the final war, a situation in which Mordred is so obviously in the wrong that Malory famously interrupts his narrative to castigate Mordred’s followers as typical of English fickleness: Lo ye all Englysshemen, se ye nat what a myschyff here was? For he that was the moste kynge and nobelyst knyght of the worlde, and moste loved the felyshyp of noble knyghtes, and by hym they all were upholdyn, and yet myght nat thes Englyshemen holde them contente with hym. . . . Alas! thys ys a greate defaught of us Englysshemen. (1229.6–13)

Malory’s objections, though, are not based on issues of morality, but honour. This is made clearer by considering Launcelot’s relationship with Gwenyvere. In the Knight of the Cart episode Launcelot rescues Gwenyvere and successfully defends her against charges of adultery. Despite Mellyagaunte’s assertion that ‘God woll have a stroke in every batayle’ (1133.28), Launcelot defeats him in trial by combat. Readers want Launcelot to win, for Mellyagaunte is a villain, but the circumstances of the battle coupled with Mellyagaunte’s claim remind us that, while Gwenyvere did not sleep with any of the injured knights, she did sleep with Launcelot. Later, when accosted in Gwenyvere’s chamber, Launcelot single-handedly defeats fourteen knights, slaying all but Mordred (1165.5–1168.24). This is a singular feat of prowess; yet in both cases Launcelot is morally suspect, if not culpable. Nevertheless, for Malory and most readers, Launcelot’s escape and rescue of the Queen corroborate and increase his worship. This is because, for Malory, both Launcelot and Gwenyvere are honourable, whereas their detractors are not. On the other hand, in Arthur’s wars with Lott and the rebel kings, the justice of Arthur’s cause does not necessarily lessen the prowess, and therefore the reputation, of the other.31 In the war between Launcelot and Arthur, however, questions of right and wrong are even more opaque; indeed, both sides are partially to blame, and Gawayne and Launcelot (and Gwenyvere) each take responsibility for the resulting destruction.32 Unlike the war with Lott or the Emperor, which the audience wants Arthur to win, we are no longer sure which side to support. Moreover, in marked contrast to the earlier wars in which we were told of knights winning worship, there is in this war much less emphasis on glory. We are told of Launcelot’s ‘grete curtesy’ in re-horsing Arthur, preventing Bors from slaying him and putting an end to the war in the Siege of Joyous Gard (1192.9–33). We are also told how for six months at the Siege of Benwick Gawayne is undefeated in single combat, thrashing all who ride against him, including the Grail knight Bors (1214.20–1215.5). But Malory’s emphasis largely lies elsewhere, as when we are told how ‘much people were slayne’ (1192.3–4; cf. 1215.5–6), how ‘horsis wente in blood 31 32

On Lott, see also Lynch, Book of Arms, pp. 39–41. Respectively, 1230.24–31, 1256.33–8 (and 1252.8–25).

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K. S. Whetter paste the fyttlokkes, there were so many people slayne’ (1193.33–4), and of the burying of the dead and caring for the wounded (e.g. 1194.3–4). Malory also focusses on the way in which the Round Table fellowship divides into factions, some supporting Launcelot, some supporting Arthur. All reminds us of destruction, and all contrasts with the earlier wars where – however much blood was shed – Arthur was obviously in the right, and Launcelot’s prowess and glory benefited rather than divided and destroyed the Round Table fellowship. In the war between Launcelot and Arthur, however, this is no longer the case. Even Launcelot’s courtesy, consistently in the Morte Darthur one of the reasons for his great worship, here serves only to increase the suffering of his side in the war (1193.18–20; 1211.30–2) and thus helps to secure the destruction of the Round Table. To make matters worse, this war is interrupted by news of Mordred’s rebellion and another civil war back in England. It has been argued of the alliterative Morte Arthure that Arthur’s downfall – the ultimate consequence of Mordred’s revolt – is the result of a shift from just to unjust wars, with Arthur being punished for his arrogance and foreign conquests.33 Regardless of the validity of this argument, it would be relatively easy for Malory to put precisely such an emphasis on his Arthuriad. He does not. On the contrary, by separating the Roman War from Mordred’s rebellion, and by making the Roman War an early, successful episode in Arthur’s career and story, he emphasises Arthur’s achievements and glory, concomitantly exacerbating the tragedy of the final destruction of such achievements in Arthur’s downfall.34 Further, war itself has thus far in the Morte been presented as both good and bad: a place to win worship, but also a place of slaughter. By the time of the final two civil wars with Launcelot and then Mordred, however, the emphasis is more on slaughter than on worship. The divisive and destructive nature of war is further emphasised in Malory’s version of events by placing the two civil wars back-to-back at the end of Arthur’s reign, where the destruction stems not from any unjust foreign conquests, but from internecine strife attendant upon the tragic unfolding of a combination of fate, free will, chance and conflicting loyalties. Launcelot when banished from England compares himself to Hector of Troy and Alexander the Great, and though he does so to illustrate the fickleness of Fortune (1201.14–19), his words also illustrate the gravity and sorrow which accompany war, for Hector is killed during the Trojan War, and his death prefaces and makes possible the destruction of Troy itself. Alexander the Great died while campaigning in Asia, and although he was not killed by his enemies, his death in the wake of the successful conquest of much of the known world serves to remind us that even so great a king as Alexander can die: and so too can Arthur and Launcelot and the Round Table. It is therefore significant that it is now, in the midst of the internal 33 34

See Finlayson, ed., Morte Arthure, pp. 12–14. Brewer, ‘hoole book’, pp. 46–7. Cf. Vinaver, ed., Works, p. 1367.

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Warfare and Combat in Le Morte Darthur war, that we get the exact opposite of Cador’s belief that war brings action and glory. In contrast, Launcelot hopes for peace because ‘better ys pees than allwayes warre’ (1212.25–26). This sentiment also contrasts with Launcelot’s earlier exclamation, uttered in more jocular circumstances and combat: ‘God gyff hym joy that this spere made, for there cam never a bettir in my honde’ (278.4–5). Launcelot’s celebration of his spear reveals his joy in combat35 and the glory it can bring; his (fruitless) hope for peace reveals combat’s destructive and sorrowful possibilities. To emphasise the sorrow and tragedy of events, the war with Mordred is called ‘myschevous’ (1228.23) and ‘unhappy’ (1230.27), while the day of the final battle is the ‘doleful’, ‘unhappy’ and ‘wycked day of Desteny’ (1236.17; 1236.29; 1237.3). So bad will the slaughter of the last battle be that God grants the dead Gawayne leave to warn Arthur against fighting (1233.28– 1234.19). Malory himself calls it the most doleful battle in all Christendom (1235.30–3), replete with ‘many a grym worde . . . and many a dedely stroke’. The horror and destruction of war are here epitomised by the sombre image of the looting of the dead, where pyllours and robbers were com into the fylde to pylle and to robbe many a full noble knyght of brochys and bees and of many a good rynge and many a ryche juell. And who that were nat dede all oute, there they slew them for their harneys and their ryches. (1237.34–1238.4)

In all of the fighting throughout the whole of the Morte Darthur, this is the only occasion where the dead are looted. The killing of the injured for their wealth is, moreover, original to Malory. There is nothing like it in the French Mort le roi Artu, and the English stanzaic Morte Arthur records only that the dead were looted of ‘besaunt, broche, and bee’.36 As Arthur’s fortunes reach their lowest ebb, in the wake of a slanderous strife and ‘grete angur and unhappe that stynted nat tylle the floure of chyvalry of alle the worlde was destroyed and slayne’ (1161.7–8), Malory no longer presents the glory to be won in war, merely the destruction. Sir Thomas Malory was born at some point between 1414 and 1418, and died on 12 or 14 March 1471.37 He thus lived through the last quarter-century of the Hundred Years War, as well as through the Wars of the Roses. He may have fought in France in the early 1440s; he certainly fought for Edward IV in

35 36

Eynon, p. 93; the remainder of the sentence is my own. Le Morte Arthur, ed. Hissiger, lines 3417–19. This may be contrasted with La Mort le roi Artu, ed. Frappier, § 191. Both Vinaver, ed., Works, n. to 1237.29–1238.9 and Field, ‘Towton’, pp. 72–3 comment on Malory’s relation to and alterations of his sources here, but neither observes that the most disturbing aspect of the scene, the killing of those who were not dead already, is original to Malory. 37 This and the following account of Malory’s life comes from Field, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory.

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K. S. Whetter his siege of several northern Lancastrian castles in the 1460s. He was also capable of raising weapons and breaking out of prison. When Malory died, he was buried in Greyfriars Church, Newgate. His marble tombstone records that he was valens miles; the phrase itself ‘claims distinction in arms’, and the fact that someone close to Malory went to the trouble and expense of securing a carved marble epitaph proclaiming this suggests that the claim had some truth to it.38 It is therefore natural to speculate as to whether the sombreness which is especially prominent in the closing wars of Malory’s Arthuriad is a product of the blood which he himself shed or of the bloodshed of the period in which he lived or both. The problem is, we simply do not have enough evidence. As is well known, the few political allusions in the Morte Darthur can be taken to support either Lancaster or York – or neither.39 With the Morte Darthur itself, though, we are on firmer ground. We have established that Malory throughout the Morte treats war as a means by which knights both win worship and are injured or killed. By the time of the wars with Launcelot and Mordred, the focus seems more one-sided, emphasising only the destruction rather than the destruction offset by glory. On the surface this suggests perhaps that Malory modified his view of warfare as the story – and, it might be added, his lengthy prison sentence – progressed. It is claimed, for instance, that although Malory never abandons his celebration of arms, the concept certainly appears to be under unusual pressure in the ‘myschevous warre’ (1228.23) of the ‘dolorous’ last book, and especially in the last battle, where a hundred thousand are ‘layde to the colde erthe’ (1236.7).40

It is also argued that Merlyn’s simultaneous blame and praise of Arthur’s campaign against and slaughter of the armies of Lott and the rebel kings (36.26–37.3; discussed above) is indicative of an ideological disquiet within the Morte Darthur which ultimately problematises the winning of worship in combat by occasionally criticising the text’s violence.41 A slightly different view, but one which must still be addressed in considering the close of the story, is the argument that Malory’s ‘narrative impulse to the end is to undo or defer for as long as possible the consequences – political and bodily – of fighting’.42 38

39

40 41 42

For the epitaph, see London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius F.xii, fol. 284r. For the ‘distinction in arms’ quotation, see Field, ‘Hunting, Hawking and Textual Criticism in Malory’s Morte Darthur’, p. 103, n. 3. Critics have nonetheless attempted to draw connections. Those who see socio-political allusions and influence include Kelly, ‘Malory’s Argument against War with France’, pp. 111–33; Riddy, ‘Contextualizing Le Morte Darthur’, pp. 55 and 66–73; and Knight, pp. 105–48. For a more sceptical view, see Field, ‘Fifteenth-Century History in Malory’s Morte Darthur’, pp. 47–71. Lynch, ‘Ideology’, p. 35. Lynch, ‘Ideology’, pp. 29–30. Lynch, Book of Arms, p. 77; cf. pp. 132–3.

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Warfare and Combat in Le Morte Darthur As is evident by now, none of this is entirely true. The consequences have always been there, it is simply that they become more obvious and pronounced as the Morte draws to its tragic close. There is, moreover, no ideological undermining of the winning of worship in arms. There is a troubling paradox in the fact that war can be alternately good and ill in the Morte Darthur, but the explanation for what has been termed this ‘strangely double view of war’43 is not to be sought in some on-again, off-again love affair with and criticism of violence, the textual and martial equivalent perhaps of Launcelot and Gwenyvere’s amorous tribulations. Rather, it resides in the Morte’s epic-heroic value system, one that Malory will have known from the alliterative Morte Arthure and found amplified and exacerbated by the tragedy of the Arthurian Legend both in general and as it is recounted in another of Malory’s sources, the stanzaic Morte Arthur.44 This system not only valorises the notion that ‘worshyp in armys may never be foyled’ (1119.27), but also accepts – however resignedly – that glory and death are equally integral consequences of such a system. Precisely because of this we have an inherently tragic situation in which the same martial might which is ‘necessary to the establishment and maintenance of Arthur’s new world order’ is partial ‘cause and symptom’ of the collapse of that world.45 Precisely because it is tragic, there is no simple or satisfying answer, that is why it is disturbing; but that is also why much epic-heroic literature, including, it seems, Malory’s Arthuriad with its mingling of epic and romance values, is alien to many modern readers – and critics. C. S. Lewis observes that ‘Malory has a three-storeyed mind’ in which sometimes a character or event seems good, sometimes bad ‘without any inconsistency’ in Malory’s eyes.46 In this sense Malory accepts circumstances that strike the modern reader as incompatible. With regard to warfare, it is not Malory’s attitude which has changed at the close of the story, but the situation. Thus the glory which war brings to Arthur, Gawayne, Launcelot and others in the early wars is tragically inverted in the deaths of Gawayne and Arthur and most of the Round Table fellowship in the final wars. Even laudable character traits now secure only destruction. It is, for instance, Gawayne’s sense of honour and familial loyalty which causes him to denounce Aggravayne and Mordred and refuse to participate in Gwenyvere’s and Launcelot’s denunciation and the Queen’s burning (pp. 1161–3; 1174–7); yet it is this same sense of honour and loyalty which drives the blood-feud with Launcelot. Launcelot’s love of the Queen similarly makes 43 44

Lynch, ‘Ideology’, p. 35. For the influence of the alliterative Morte on Malory, see the work of McCarthy, referred to in n. 17. For the tragedy of the stanzaic Morte and its influence upon Malory, see my ‘The Stanzaic Morte Arthur and Mediaeval Tragedy’. 45 The quotation is from Lynch, ‘Ideology’, p. 24; the rest of the sentence is my own. I agree with Lynch that this duality is a problem for readers of the Morte, but not with his assessment of it. 46 Lewis, review of Chambers, Sir Thomas Wyatt and Some Collected Studies, p. 239.

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K. S. Whetter him both the greatest and technically – though significantly this is not the case in Malory’s eyes – the most treacherous of Arthur’s knights, just as his courtesy towards Arthur actively harms his side in the war (1193.18–20; 1211.30–2; both cited above). In such tragic circumstances, questions of right and wrong, good and bad, become blurred indeed. Nevertheless, in Malory’s Morte Darthur fighting, whether in warfare, tournaments, jousts or individual combats, is viewed principally as a means by which knights can win worshyp. This is the attitude of narrator and characters alike. Indeed, Malory describes single combats and tournaments in language more vigorous than that of his sources, sometimes adding details, and he takes special interest in the technique of fighting. One of his favourite phrases is ‘a noble knight of prowess’. Apart from its inherent worth, prowess is admirable because it brings a knight reputation and honour, or what Malory calls ‘worship’.47

As such, warfare and individual combat in and of themselves are not necessarily bad. Launcelot’s great reputation, as the opening of the ‘Tale of Sir Launcelot’ makes clear, is the result of those deeds, those battles, accomplished in adventure, thereby fulfilling the promise shown in the Roman War: than all the knyghtys of the Rounde Table resorted unto the kynge and made many joustys and turnementes. And som there were that were but knyghtes encresed in armys and worshyp that passed all other of her felowys in prouesse and noble dedys, and that was well proved on many. But in especiall hit was prevyd on sir Launcelot de Lake. (253.2–8)

The fact that Malory does not change his mind about warfare, that it is still not necessarily dire and can in fact still bring glory along with suffering, is evident in the closing lines of the Morte, where Bors, Ector, Blamour and Bleoberis ‘dyd many bataylles upon the myscreantes, or Turkes. And there they dyed upon a Good Fryday for Goddes sake’ (1260.14–15). Although war once again brings glory – both to the knights and to God – this is not sufficient compensation for the loss of Arthur and the Round Table. Furthermore, the dominant image of the close of the story is not Launcelot’s kin fighting in the Holy Land, but Mordred hanging impaled upon Arthur’s spear (1237.14–18), or Launcelot starving himself to death, ‘grovelyng’ on Arthur and Gwenyvere’s tomb (1256.21–1257.9). There is very little glory in such images. Thus, coupled with the fact that worship is best won in battle is the constant reminder that the cost of seeking glory in battle can be death and destruction. Present throughout, this cost is nowhere more evident than in the close of the Morte Darthur and the tragic dissolution of an ideal fellowship in ‘a grete angur and unhappe that stynted 47

Tucker, ‘Chivalry in the Morte’, p. 65.

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Warfare and Combat in Le Morte Darthur nat tylle the floure of chyvalry of alle the worlde was destroyed and slayne’ (1161.7–8). Consequently, with the deaths of Gawayne and Arthur and most of the Round Table, Malory emphasises the destruction and bloodshed attendant upon warfare because that is all that is left. That he can do so without condemning warfare may strike the modern reader as strange, but this serves once again as evidence of Malory’s penchant for complexities, and of the complex tragedy of the Morte Darthur as a whole. For in emphasising and thus lamenting the ‘irreversible loss of something supremely treasured’,48 Malory emphasises the essential tragedy of his own retelling of the story of Arthur and Gwenyvere and Launcelot and Gawayne. But in lamenting this tragedy we also recall the glory of its participants, the fact that, for instance, Launcelot, the greatest of the Round Table fellowship, was ‘never matched of erthely knyghtes hande’, that he was the curtest knyght that ever bare shelde! . . . the truest frende to thy lovar that ever bestrade hors, and . . . the kyndest man that ever strake wyth swerde. And thou were the godelyest persone that ever cam emonge prees of knyghtes, and . . . the sternest knyght to thy mortal foo that ever put spere in the reeste (1259.11–21).

This, the last speech in the Morte Darthur and a summary and evaluation of Launcelot’s career, focusses predominantly on Launcelot’s abilities as knight and his skills in battle. The same abilities and skills allowed Launcelot to achieve the worshyp that made him both the paragon of the Round Table and the lover of Gwenyvere, the friend of both Arthur and Gawayne. The same skills inspired Ector, Bors, Blamour and Bleoberis to emulate Launcelot and, in accordance with his instructions (1260.12), to do ‘many bataylles upon the myscreantes’ (1260.14), thereby winning worship before dying. The tragedy of the Morte Darthur stems from the fact that the same characters, desires and values responsible for achieving the ideal fellowship and Oath of the Round Table are the same characters, desires and values responsible for the destruction of the final wars. The greatness and destruction are intermingled and inseparable, and it is, finally, in warfare and individual combat that this becomes most evident. In this, perhaps, Le Morte Darthur and Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel, Warwickshire, valens miles as well as knight, thief, prisoner, prison-breaker, and author, are not so very far removed after all.

48

The phrase is Halliwell’s, who considers such loss to be one aspect of the essence of tragedy, ‘Plato’s Repudiation of the Tragic’, p. 339.

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Works Cited I. Sources Caxton’s Malory, ed. James W. Spisak (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). Homer, The Iliad of Homer, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951). Malory, Sir Thomas, The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. Eugène Vinaver, rev. P. J. C. Field, 3rd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). La Mort le roi Artu: Roman du XIIIe siècle, ed. Jean Frappier, 3rd edn (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1964). Le Morte Arthur, ed. P. F. Hissiger (The Hague: Mouton, 1975). Morte Arthure, ed. Mary Hamel, Garland Medieval Texts 9 (New York: Garland, 1984).

II. Studies Ascham, Roger, The Scholemaster, English Experience 15 (Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1968). Brewer, D. S, ‘the hoole book’, Essays on Malory, ed. J. A. W. Bennett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 41–63. Cherewatuk, Karen, ‘Sir Thomas Malory’s “Grete Booke” ’, The Social and Literary Contexts of Malory’s Morte Darthur, ed. D. Thomas Hanks, Jr, and Jessica S. Brogdon, Arthurian Studies 42 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 42–67. Malory, Sir Thomas, Le Morte Darthur, ed. Helen Cooper, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Dichmann, Mary E., ‘ “The Tale of King Arthur and the Emperor Lucius”: The Rise of Lancelot’, Malory’s Originality: A Critical Study of Le Morte Darthur, ed. R. M. Lumiansky (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1964), pp. 67–90. Eynon, Nadine Ruth, ‘The Use of Trial by Battle in the Work of Sir Thomas Malory’, Unpublished MA Thesis (University of Saskatchewan, 1974). Field, P. J. C., ‘Fifteenth-Century History in Malory’s Morte Darthur’, Malory: Texts and Sources, Arthurian Studies 40 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1998), pp. 47–71. Field, P. J. C., ‘Hunting, Hawking and Textual Criticism in Malory’s Morte Darthur’, Malory: Texts and Sources, Arthurian Studies 40 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1998), pp. 103–13. Field, P. J. C., The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory, Arthurian Studies 29 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993). Field, P. J. C., ‘Malory and the Battle of Towton’, The Social and Literary 184

Warfare and Combat in Le Morte Darthur Contexts of Malory’s Morte Darthur, ed. D. Thomas Hanks, Jr, Arthurian Studies 42 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 68–74. Finlayson, John, ed., Morte Arthure (London: Edward Arnold, 1967). Halliwell, Stephen, ‘Plato’s Repudiation of the Tragic’, Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond, ed. M. S. Silk (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 332–49. Hellenga, Robert R., ‘The Tournaments in Malory’s Morte Darthur’, Forum for Modern Language Studies 10 (1974): 67–78. Kelly, Robert L., ‘Malory’s Argument against War with France: The Political Geography of France and the Anglo-French Alliance in the Morte Darthur’, The Social and Literary Contexts of Malory’s Morte Darthur, ed. D. Thomas Hanks, Jr, and Jessica S. Brogdon, Arthurian Studies 42 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 111–33. Kelly, Robert L., ‘Wounds, Healing, and Knighthood in Malory’s Tale of Lancelot and Guenevere’, Studies in Malory, ed. James W. Spisak (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), pp. 173–97. Knight, Stephen, Arthurian Literature and Society (London: Macmillan, 1983). Lewis, C. S., ‘The English Prose Morte’, Essays on Malory, ed. J. A. W. Bennett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963): 7–28. Lewis, C. S., Review of E. K. Chambers, Sir Thomas Wyatt and Some Collected Studies, Medium Ævum 3 (1934): 237–40. Lynch, Andrew, Malory’s Book of Arms: The Narrative of Combat in Le Morte Darthur, Arthurian Studies 39 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997). Lynch, Andrew, ‘ “Thou woll never have done”: Ideology, Context, and Excess in Malory’s War’, The Social and Literary Contexts of Malory’s Morte Darthur, ed. D. Thomas Hanks, Jr, and Jessica S. Brogdon, Arthurian Studies 42 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 24–41. Mahoney, Dhira B., ‘Malory’s “Tale of Sir Tristram”: Source and Setting Reconsidered’, Medievalia et Humanistica NS 9 (1979): 175–98. Mann, Jill, ‘Malory: Knightly Combat in Le Morte Darthur’, Medieval Literature: Chaucer and the Alliterative Tradition, ed. Boris Ford, The New Pelican Guide to English Literature, Part I (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), pp. 331–9. Mann, Jill, ‘ “Taking the Adventure”: Malory and the Suite du Merlin’, Aspects of Malory, ed. Toshiyuki Takamiya and Derek Brewer, Arthurian Studies 1 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer; Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981), pp. 71–91. McCarthy, Terence, ‘Beowulf’s Bairns: Malory’s Sterner Knights’, Heroes and Heroines in Medieval English Literature: A Festschrift presented to André Crépin on the occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Leo Carruthers (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 149–59. McCarthy, Terence, ‘Malory and the Alliterative Tradition’, Studies in Malory, ed. James W. Spisak (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), pp. 74–81.

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K. S. Whetter Redfield, James M., Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hector, expanded edn (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994). Riddy, Felicity, ‘Contextualizing Le Morte Darthur: Empire and Civil War’, A Companion to Malory, ed. Elizabeth Archibald and A. S. G. Edwards, Arthurian Studies 37 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996), pp. 55–73. Tucker, P. E, ‘Chivalry in the Morte’, Essays on Malory, ed. J. A. W. Bennett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 64–103. Whetter, K. S., ‘The Stanzaic Morte Arthur and Mediaeval Tragedy’, Reading Medieval Studies 28 (2002): 87–111.

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Women and Warfare in Medieval English Writing CORINNE SAUNDERS

What is war? Ask the young men who fight, Men who defend the right, Ask them – what is war? ‘Honour – or death – that is war’, Say the young men. What is war? Ask of the women who weep, Mourning for those who sleep, Ask them – what is war? ‘Sorrow and grief – that is war’ Say the women. (J. M. Rose-Troup, ‘What is War?’)

E

VEN IN the twenty-first century, war is a gendered concept. Many millions of both sexes have been the victims of war in just the last hundred years, yet the image that perhaps most powerfully haunts the collective imagination is that of the millions of young men who fought and died in the battlefields of France and Belgium. That haunting is reflected in the extraordinary success of novels such as Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy or Sebastian Faulkes’ Birdsong. Those most vividly remembered are the men distinguished by having made the choice to fight, and hence to enter the sphere of heroism. Until very recently, that choice was exclusively open to men, and the idea of war has thus necessarily engaged a set of conventional gender stereotypes throughout the history of western thought and writing: the lines quoted above might as easily refer to the Middle Ages as to the early twentieth century. The world of medieval warfare – battle, arms, the tournament, jousting – was undoubtedly a world of men, one of the interconnected public spheres of medieval society, which found their opposites in the private and domestic spheres inhabited by the lady – the bedroom, the castle, the garden. Such contrasts between male and female, public and private, domestic and 187

Corinne Saunders worldly lie at the heart of the medieval understanding and presentation of gender. In medieval romance, as perhaps in reality, the drama of lady and knight is situated partly in the encounter of public and private worlds, each tantalising to the other in its otherness, the protective armour of the warrior countered by the ornate draperies of feminine clothing. The opposition of masculine and feminine traits – courage, prowess, assertion of individual honour versus pity, vulnerability, maternality – pervades medieval writing more generally, but it is perhaps nowhere more evident than in literary treatments of warfare. As Rose-Troup’s lines suggest, the female figures most obviously associated with war are those who stand and wait – the mothers, sisters, daughters, wives and lovers of those in battle. Yet women are also fundamental in other ways to literary portrayals of warfare: they do not only inhabit the margins as spectators, but also function as catalysts for the enactment of deeds of arms and war through their power, willingly or not, to incite desire. Such emphases are most evident in medieval romance, but even those writers telling ‘history’ play on the drama of the clash of spheres and attitudes in their portrayal of warfare. Writing women into warfare allows for the opposition of passive and active, the exploitation of shock, pity and horror, and the possibility of setting against the structures of the political, military world an ethic of pity, mercy and reconciliation – the desire for peace over war. Writers can also play on the contravention of stereotypes through the troubling figure of the woman who takes up arms, most obviously in the classical legend of the Amazon but also in certain popular religious and hagiographic works. While medieval literature exploits the separation between male and female, public and private worlds, and thus the drama of women in warfare, it is unrealistic to imagine that in actuality the world of medieval warfare was so distinct from the world of women. As so often the stereotypes paint only part of the picture. If the military sphere was not women’s natural habitat, it certainly impinged in major ways on their private and domestic lives. It is instructive to recall that during Chaucer’s life, the period when writing in English reached its height, there was no time when England was not at war, while from the eleventh to the mid-fifteenth century the call to the Crusades was repeatedly heard, and the ideal of regaining Jerusalem hovered luminously in the medieval imagination. Although it is difficult to reconstruct the experience of medieval women, there is no doubt that their lives would have been affected by the absences of fathers, brothers, lovers and husbands on military campaigns, including the Crusades, and that given the difficulty of medieval travel such absences could have lasted for many years, even when the individual concerned was lucky enough to survive the almost insurmountable threats of wounds and disease. Women may have played considerably more active roles than the image of those who wait implies. The very partial evidence available suggests the gap between actual experience and literary representations of women in warfare. Early chronicles offer interesting evidence of women taking part in battles. 188

Women and Warfare in Medieval English Writing The figure of the Amazon was inherited from classical legend, and Germanic legendary history too depicts the figure of the woman warrior: Saxo Grammaticus claims such a tradition for the Danes in the Gesta Danorum, ‘Fuere quondam apud Danos feminae, quae formam suam in virilem habitum convertentes omnia paene temporum momenta ad excolendam militiam conferebant’, ‘There were once women in Denmark who dressed themselves to look like men and spent almost every minute cultivating soldiers’ skills.’ Saxo’s description, however, plays on the contravention of nature: Hae ergo, perinde ac nativae condicionis immemores rigoremque blanditiis ante ferentes, bella pro basiis intentabant sanguinemque, non oscula delibantes armorum potius quam amorum officia frequentabant manusque, quas in telas aptare debuerant, telorum obsequiis exhibebant, ut iam non lecto, sed leto studentes spiculis appeterent, quis mulcere specie potuissent.1 As if they were forgetful of their true selves they put toughness before allure, aimed at conflicts instead of kisses, tasted blood, not lips, sought the clash of arms rather than the arm’s embrace, fitted to weapons hands which should have been weaving, desired not the couch but the kill, and those they could have appeased with looks they attacked with lances.2

The description is unlikely to be founded in historical fact, but rather in a Scandinavian fascination with such figures, powerful in their very unfamiliarity and unnaturalness.3 If these women are the stuff of legend, Germanic history offers a more persuasive image of the powerful woman leading her army in the description of the Germanic queen Fredegund.4 The anonymous late seventh- or early eighth-century Liber Historiae Francorum, based on Gregory of Tours’ Historia Francorum, tells how Fredegund gathers an army against the Austrasians with Landeric and other Frankish dukes, and counsels attack by night with the soldiers carrying branches. Fredegund is certainly included in the action, ‘with Fredegund and young Chlothar they killed the largest part of that army, a countless number, a very large force, from the highest to the lowest’. Fredegund is also said to have continued on 1

Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed. Knabe and Herrmann, 7:6. This passage is cited by Carol J. Clover (1986), p. 35 and n. 1. 2 Saxo Grammaticus, History of the Danes, trans. Fisher and ed. Ellis Davidson, 212. 3 Clover argues that such tales are more about sons than daughters, about ‘the power, in Norse society, of the patrineal principle to bend legend and life to its intention’, p. 49. Jenny Jochens makes a related argument, emphasising the appeal of such exotic figures to Nordic writers, ‘Old Norse Sources on Women’, pp. 155–88. 4 The example of Fredegund is offered by Carolyne Larrington in her discussion of ‘Women and Power’ in Women and Writing in Medieval Europe, pp. 164–9; Larrington’s extracts include a version of the passage cited below, p. 169. Larrington also offers the example of the tenth-century Swedish queen Sigrid told in Heimskringla: Oláfs saga Tryggvasonar, whose exploits include burning the hall where her suitor King Harald and all his men sleep, an act that recalls Gudrun’s vengeance on Atli in Atlakviða, pp. 169–73.

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Corinne Saunders to Rheims, and to have burned and devastated Champagne before returning ‘with much booty and many spoils’.5 Fredegund, like the Norse maiden warriors, seems to have been viewed as morally ambivalent. English chronicles offer a less distant and more positive example in the figure of Æthelflæd, the daughter of Ælfred, who appears to have taken over as ruler of Mercia from her husband Æthelræd while he was ill, and to have been recognised after his death in 911 as ‘Myrcna hlaefdige’, lady of the Mercians: before her own death in 918, she is said to have built a series of fortresses, sent a Mercian army to avenge the murder of Abbot Egbert, and captured Derby and Leicester from the Danes, causing the Danish army and the men of York to yield to her.6 Continental chronicles occasionally offer other tantalising reference to women fighting: Carolyne Larrington cites two eleventh-century examples, that of Richilde of Hainault, ‘captured fighting at the battle of Cassel in 1071’, and that of Gaïta, the wife of the Norman adventurer and would-be Emperor, Robert Guiscard, whose story is told in the Alexiad of Anna Comnena.7 Gaïta accompanies Robert in battle, and is described as ‘a second Pallas if not an Athene’: ‘when dressed in full armour the woman was a fearful sight’. Not only does she admonish fleeing soldiers verbally in Homeric terms, ‘How far will ye flee? Stand, and quit you like men!’, but also chases after the deserters, ‘And when she saw they continued to run, she grasped a long spear and at full gallop rushed after the fugitives; and on seeing this they recovered themselves and returned to the fight.’8 The anonymous Spanish Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris offers a nice contrast to Gaïta’s action in the description of the Empress Berengaria, whose castle at Toledo was besieged by Muslim attackers in 1139. Dressed in their finest clothes, she and her women made music above their enemies until they retreated in shame.9 Later chronicles suggest that women could be called upon to protect their lands while their husbands were away either on business or in warfare. Christine de Pisan instructs ladies to be familiar with arms and to ensure the defences of their castles, and it is striking that she chooses to write a treatise on arms, Le Livre des Faits d’Armes et de Chevallerie, the subject of Françoise 5 6

Liber Historiae Francorum, ed. and trans. Bachrach, ch. 36, pp. 90–1. F. T. Wainwright pieces together Æthelflæd’s life in ‘Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians’. Only Æthelflæd’s death is noted in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle: historians rely on the lost ‘Mercian Register’ which is inserted into other chronicles, including that of William of Malmesbury (Wainwright, p. 305). Larrington cites Æthelflæd as ‘establishing anti-Viking coalitions with neighbouring rulers’, p. 158. Joel T. Rosenthal identifies Æthelflæd as ‘our outstanding secular figure’, ‘Anglo-Saxon Attitudes: Men’s Sources, Women’s History’, p. 268. 7 Larrington, p. 158: the instance of Richilde is cited by McLaughlin, ‘The Woman Warrior’, pp. 194, 200. 8 Anna Comnena, The Alexiad of the Princess Anna, trans. Dawes, I, xv, p. 38; IV, vi, p. 109. 9 This incident is found in the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, c. 150, ed. Sánchez Belda, pp. 116–17, and described by Dillard, Daughters of the Reconquest: Women in Castilian Town Society, 1100–1300, p. 15, and by Larrington, p. 158.

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Women and Warfare in Medieval English Writing Le Saux’s essay in this volume. Christine also paints Joan of Arc in positive heroic terms in her Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc. The large collection of letters written by and associated with the Paston family provides intriguing insights into the everyday experience of upper-class women in fifteenth-century England, including that of what might be termed ‘dynastic warfare’. In the second generation of Paston writers, the letters of the first John Paston’s wife Margaret depict in particularly vivid terms the possible involvement of women in violence between families and factions. Margaret Paston’s engagement with the traditionally male spheres of property, finance, law and arms is obvious throughout her letters. She took charge of the household but also of business affairs during her husband John’s frequent absences, the result of his deep involvement in litigation over property throughout the course of his life: he was imprisoned three times. Margaret’s letters to John relate her very direct experience of violence, yet her tone is never that of the victim; rather she writes with the voice of an equal, engaged with facts, rights and the practicalities of defences. In 1448, she describes how the family chaplain James Gloys was set upon and attacked, fleeing to her mother’s house, ‘And with þe noise of þis as-saut and affray my modir and I came owt of þe chirche from þe sakeryng’: they offer Gloys shelter, are abused in ‘meche large langage’, and take the case to the Prior of Norwich.10 In 1448, Lord Moleyns laid claim to John Paston’s manor of Gresham, bought by Paston from Thomas Chaucer. Margaret writes not of her fear of attack but of her need for defences: Ryt wurchipful hwsbond, I recomawnd me to
u, and prey
w to gete som crosse bowis, and wyndacis to bynd þem wyth, and quarell, for
wr hwsis here ben so low þat þere may non man schete owt wyth no long bowe, þow we hadde neuer so moche nede. . . . And also I wold
e xuld gete ij or iij schort pelle-axis to kepe wyth doris, and als many jakkys, and
e may. (Letter 130, 226)

She describes in some detail the defences already made, but it is a token of the everyday aspect of such concerns that she ends her letter with shopping requests, ‘j li. of almandis and j li. of sugyre, and þat
e wille do byen summe frese to maken of
wr childeris gwnys’ (Letter 130, 226–7).11 Margaret’s defences were in vain: John’s appeal to the King states that ‘his wife was forcibly driven out by “a riotous people to the number of a thousand persons” ’.12 In 1459 John became involved in a struggle over the property of Margaret’s deceased relative Sir John Fastolf, whose will leaving Caister Castle and his many other manors to John Paston was bitterly contested by the other execu10

Paston Letters and Papers, ed. Davis, I, letter 129, p. 224. All subsequent references to the Paston Letters will be from this edition, and will be cited by letter and page number (all in vol. I unless specified). I do not reproduce Davis’s italics. 11 This letter is also cited by Larrington. 12 Davis, The Paston Letters, p. 13, note 1.

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Corinne Saunders tors; John died in 1466 at the age of forty-five with the dispute unresolved. The struggle was by no means exclusively legal. Margaret vividly describes attacks made by the Duke of Suffolk and a force of armed men on the manor of Hellesdon in 1465: ‘gret affrayes have ben made vppon me and my felashep’ (Letter 188, 310), she writes that summer; in October, she describes how the Duke made their tenants ‘breke down the wallys of the place [the manor house] and the logge both’ and ‘rensackyd the church and bare a-way all the gode that was lefte there’ (Letter 196, 330). The threat of violent attack for Margaret is evident, ‘we kype here dayly more then xxx persons for sauacyon of ous and the place, for in very trowght and the place had not be kypyd strong the Duck had com hethere’ (Letter 196, 331). The kind of treatment she might have received is suggested by a petition from one of John Fastolf’s men, J. Payn, to John Paston in 1465. Payn is seized by Jack Cade and threatened with execution; later he is robbed and attacked, as is his wife: ‘And in Kent, þer as my wyf dwellyd, they toke a-wey all ovre godes mevabyll þat we had, and þer wolde haue hongyd my wyf and v of my chyldern, and lefte her no more gode but her kyrtyll and her smook’ (Letter 692, II, 313). Margaret’s active involvement with the violent world of property litigation does not end with John Paston’s death: in 1469, she is writing to her son asking that he assist his brother at Caister, for many are dead or wounded, they lack food and ‘fayll gonnepowder and arrowes, and the place sore brokyn wyth gonnes of þe toder parte’ (Letter 204, 344). Again it is the practical, robust tone, the familiarity with violence and the personal involvement in it that are striking. Chronicles also, however, exploit the contrast between types, masculine and feminine, and between action and passivity, the bearing of arms and the desire for peace. Behaviour towards women can become a key to moral definition, distinguishing good from evil. For Froissart, the shameful treatment of women is a powerful emblem of enemy dishonour and immorality, by contrast to English chivalry. The Bretons, for example, mistreat the people of Castile, ‘we coude nat haue ben worse dalte withall than we were, as in ravysshinge of our wyves and doughters’ (1385).13 In the battle of the English against the French at Canes (1346), the commander, Thomas, takes action to prevent violation of women by the soldiers: ‘he . . . rode into the streates, and saved many lyves of ladyes, damosels, and cloysterers fro defoyling, for the soudyers were without mercy’ (I, cxxiiii, 284). The gentlemanly nature of the English is epitomised by their refusal to violate women: Sir Godfray of Harecourt, at the same siege of Canes, commands the townspeople not to kill citizens, ‘nor to vyolate any woman’ (I, cxxiiii, 285), and in the sieges of Bergnes and Damne, ladies and children are sent away to avoid violation. Unlike the 13

Froissart, The Chronicles of Froissart, trans. Bourchier, Lord Berners. All subsequent references to Froissart will be from this edition and cited by volume, chapter and page number. This discussion and those of Wulfstan, Roger of Wendover, and Old English poetry draw on material from my study Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England: see especially pp. 139–42 and 38.

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Women and Warfare in Medieval English Writing chivalrous English, the foreign captains left in France after the accord is reached (1360), ‘defoyled many a damoselles’ (II, ccxv, 86). Froissart’s description plays on the contrast between chivalrous and savage, but also suggests that, like pillage, rape of women in conquered territories was a common means of asserting military dominance outside battle. In chronicles of the Crusades, the violation of women in warfare can repeatedly function to define the Saracens as evil, and can also indicate infidelity and corruption among the Crusading armies. Roger of Wendover, for example, in his entry for 1096, describes how the Teutonic Crusading army abuses its privileges while marching into Hungary by drinking, killing, plundering and ‘cum uxoribus Hungarorum et filiabus rem illicitam violenter perpetrantes’ (II, 71), ‘abusing the wives and daughters of the Hungarians’ (I, 385). As in Froissart’s description, little emphasis is placed on the victims: rather, the action of sexual abuse characterises the male armies as corrupt. One of the most notable depictions in early English writing of women violated in warfare, that found in Archbishop Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (c.1014), employs similar thematic patterning. Wulfstan employs the ominous image of the Viking raids to represent God’s punishment of the sinful English people. The third and longest version of the sermon (MSS E and I), which may draw on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for the year 1014, includes several long passages detailing contemporary breaches of law and societal order and describing the Viking attacks as punishment for these. Wulfstan graphically portrays how a sinful thane is punished through the loss of his property in a Viking raid, employing the image of sexual violation to portray devaluation. The Vikings rape the thane’s wife and daughter as he looks on: And oft tyne oððe twelfe, ælc æfter oþrum, scendað to bysmore þæs þegenes cwenan & hwilum his dohtor oððe nydmagan þær he onlocað þe læt hine sylfne rancne & ricne & genoh godne ær þæt gewurde.14 And often ten or a dozen, one after another, insult disgracefully the thegn’s wife, and sometimes his daughter or near kinswoman, whilst he looks on, who considered himself brave and mighty and stout enough before that happened.15

Wulfstan exhibits little or no pity for the women; they represent a part of the thane’s property, and their rape brutally proves God’s anger with him. That there was contemporary concern for such treatment of women, however, is suggested by the ninth-century penitential Capitula Judiciorum, which includes the pontifical ruling that women who are raped in warfare do not have to do penance for fornication. The twelfth-century chronicle of Roger of Wendover, formerly ascribed to 14 15

Wulfstan, ed. Bethurum ‘Sermo ad Anglos’, XX, MSS EI, 271, lines 113–17. Wulfstan, in Whitelock, ed., English Historical Documents, I: c. 500–1042, pp. 857–8.

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Corinne Saunders and retold by Matthew Paris (1204–31), looks back on the same period but in considerably more lurid terms. The focus is not punishment but the demonic evil of the invaders, graphically evinced in images of the violation of women. The chronicle describes the Danish King Sweyn’s vengeance on the English, which includes murder, burning, pillage, destruction of churches and widespread rape (1013). Violation becomes part of the stereotypical portrayal of the dehumanised enemy. The image of rape most dramatically conveys the evil of the enemy in the account of the defence of the Abbess Ebba of Collingham and her nuns against Viking invaders in 870. Ebba states directly that violation of women is one danger of heathen warfare: ‘Advenerunt nuper . . . ad partes nostras pagani nequissimi et totius humanitatis ignari, qui loca regionis hujus singula perlustrantes, nec sexui muliebri nec parvulorum quidem parcunt aetati, ecclesias et personas ecclesiasticas destruunt, fæminas sanctimoniales prostituunt, et obvia sibi quæque conterendo consumunt’.16 ‘There have lately come into these parts most wicked pagans, destitute of all humanity, who roam through every place, sparing neither the female sex nor infantine age, destroying churches and ecclesiastics, ravishing holy women, and wasting and consuming every thing in their way’.17

The desecration of churches is echoed in the rape of nuns. In a dramatic response, Ebba cuts off her nose and lips and invites her nuns to follow suit: illa admirandæ animositatis abbatissa, palam cunctis sororibus exemplum castitatis præbens, non solum sanctimonialibus illis proficuum, verumetiam omnibus et successuris virginibus æternaliter amplectendum, arrepta novacula nasum proprium cum labro superiori ad dentes usque præcidens, horrendum de se spectaculum adstantibus præbuit universis. Quod factum memorabile cum congregatio tota videns admiraretur, simili de se opere a singulis perpetrato, materna sunt vestigia insecutæ.18 the abbess, with an heroic spirit, affording to all the holy sisters an example of chastity profitable only to themselves, but to be embraced by all succeeding virgins for ever, took a razor, and with it cut off her nose, together with her upper lip up unto the teeth, presenting herself a horrible spectacle to those who stood by. Filled with admiration at this admirable deed, the whole assembly followed her maternal example, and severally did the like to themselves.19

Although the convent is burnt, the nuns succeed in protecting their virginity by, in a sense, ungendering themselves, cutting off the nose and lips that create the feminine countenance and destroying the capacity to incite 16 17 18 19

Roger of Wendover, Chronica, sive Flores Historiarum, ed. Coxe, I, p. 301. Roger of Wendover, Roger of Wendover’s Flowers of History, ed. and trans. Giles, I, p. 191. Roger of Wendover, ed. Coxe, I, pp. 301–2. Roger of Wendover, ed. Giles, I, pp. 191–2.

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Women and Warfare in Medieval English Writing desire. The depiction of the violation of women, then, provides a powerful means to portray the enemy in chronicles. The earliest English poetic texts also employ compellingly the image of women in warfare, both to characterise the enemy and more generally as an emblem of suffering. The poem Genesis A makes poignant use of the motif of the seizure of women in the depiction of the battle against the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah: Sceolde forht monig blachleor ides bifiende gan on fremdes fæðm. feollon wergend bryda and beaga, bennum seoce. Many a frightened, white-cheeked woman had to go trembling into a stranger’s embrace: the defenders of wives and rings fell, fatally wounded.20

The capture of the women functions as a haunting symbol of loss and defeat. Part of the poem’s power lies in its realism: for the audience, capture and servitude must have been a genuine possibility, and indeed Anglo-Saxon marriage laws allow for the possibility of losing a wife through invasion. Beowulf similarly employs the image of the captive or helpless woman. Its women are political pawns, frequently married into other tribes, and potentially the victims of hostilities between peoples. Hildeburh watches helplessly as her brother and son kill each other when feud breaks out between Finn and her own kinsmen; Hrothgar’s daughter Freawaru awaits renewed battle between the Danes and the Heatho-Bards; the name of Hrothgar’s queen, Wealhtheow, itself means ‘foreign slave’. In Genesis A, lamentation is the only action available to the captured women: the lines used to describe Hildeburh in Beowulf become emblematic of the woman’s part in warfare, ‘ides gnornode, / geomrode giddum’, ‘The woman mourned, chanted a dirge’.21 In Beowulf too we are left with the powerful image of the Geatish woman who mourns Beowulf’s death and the coming destruction of her tribe: Swylce giomorgyd Geatisc meowle bræd on bearhtme bundenheorde song sorgcearig swiðe geneahhe, Þæt hio hyre heofungdagas hearde ondrede, wælfylla worn, werudes egesan, hynðo ond hæftnyd. Likewise, a Geatish woman, sorrowful, her hair bound up, sang a mournful lay, chanted clamourously again and again that she sorely feared days of lamentation for herself, a multitude of slaughters, the terror of an army, humiliation and captivity.22 20 21 22

Genesis A, ed. Doane, lines 1969–72; trans. Christine Fell (1986), p. 67. Beowulf, ed. and trans. Swanton, lines 1117–18. Beowulf, ed. and trans. Swanton, lines 3150–5.

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Corinne Saunders The lines clearly suggest the captivity and violation of women as well as the death of the Geatish warriors. The image of ‘the women who weep’ recurs across Anglo-Saxon literature, just as it will in the writing of later periods. The roles of women in warfare in the imaginative writing of the later medieval period are more various, for in the romance genre women are crucial to the enactment of chivalric order. Romance also, unlike chronicle, captures the emotional situation of the women who wait, though they may only be present on the margins of romance while their lovers’ chivalric deeds of arms are the focus. In one of the earliest English romances, Havelok the Dane, for instance, we are simply aware of Goldborgh, waiting in England while Havelok returns to Denmark to regain his inheritance, although the emphasis is placed on Havelok’s own emotion as he ‘yede sore grotinde away’.23 By contrast, the roughly contemporaneous King Horn makes much of the emotional distress of Rimenhild: even Horn’s absence at a tournament ‘hire thughte seve yere’.24 This romance employs emblematic descriptions of female lament to convey Rimenhild’s emotion during Horn’s banishment: at parting, ‘Heo kuste him well a stunde / And Rymenhild feol to grunde. / Horn tok his leve’ (743–5); when Rimenhild discovers her messenger to Horn drowned, ‘hire fingres heo gan wringe’ (988). On return in disguise, Horn discovers her ‘sitte / Ase heo were of witte, / Sore wepinge and yerne; / Ne mighte hure no man wurne’ (1091–4). At the news of Horn’s supposed death, Rimenhild falls onto her bed, ready to stab herself in the heart (1205–12). An especially memorable image of grief is found in the later Ywain and Gawain, a translation of Chrétien’s Le Chevalier au Lion (Yvain), when Alundyne reminds Ywain of his promise to return from the pursuit of arms within a year, ‘Hir lord Sir Ywayne sho bisekes, / With teris trikland on hir chekes, / On a wise that he noght le / To halde the day that he had set’.25 Her grief will of course be well-founded. The women who wait and weep are not necessarily lovers. The Gawain-poet vividly depicts the court’s pretence at jollity as they await Gawain’s departure, inwardly grieving: Al for luf of that lede* in longynge thay were; [*lord] But never-the-lece ne the later thay nevened* bot merthe, [*talked] Many joyles for that jentyle japes ther maden. ... Wel much was the warme water that waltered of yyen26

23

Havelok the Dane, ed. Sands, line 1390. All subsequent references to Havelok will be from this edition and will be cited by line number. 24 King Horn, ed. Sands, line 528. All subsequent references to King Horn will be from this edition and will be cited by line number. 25 Ywain and Gawain, ed. Mills, lines 1557–60. All subsequent references to Ywain and Gawain will be from this edition and will be cited by line number. 26 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. Cawley and Anderson, lines 540–2, 684.

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Women and Warfare in Medieval English Writing Chrétien’s Perceval offers perhaps the most haunting image of the woman who waits, in the depiction of Perceval’s mother, who falls in a swoon as her son rides off to seek knighthood: si regarda et vit cheüe sa mere au chief del pont arriere, et jut pasmee an tel meniere com s’ele fust cheüe morte27 he looked back and saw that his mother had fallen at the head of the bridge and was lying as if she had dropped dead.28

Later, we learn that she has indeed died from her extreme grief, which is partly rooted in the memory of her two older sons, both killed in deeds of knighthood. In the Middle English Sir Percyvell of Gales, the grief of Perceval’s mother at his supposed death turns her into a wild woman of the woods, ‘For siche draghtis als this, / Now es the lady wode, i-wys, / And wilde in the wodde scho es’.29 Malory repeatedly employs the image of the lamenting woman in the Morte Darthur. There is a kind of solidarity between the women who wait on the sidelines as their knights prove their prowess in deeds of arms: Isoud sends word to Guinevere, ‘there be within this londe but four lovers, and that is sir Launcelot and dame Gwenyver, and sir Trystrames and quene Isode’.30 The Morte recalls too the situation of women who waited during the Crusades, through the depiction of feminine grief when the fellowship departs on the Grail Quest: Whan the quene, ladyes, and jantillwomen knew of thys tydynges they had such sorow and hevynes that there myght no tunge telle, for tho knyghtes had holde them in honoure and charité. But aboven all othir quene Gwenyver made grete sorow. (XIII, 8, 523)

The division between spheres of male and female activity is made especially clear here, for ladies hope to accompany their knights, but are sent word by the hermit Nacien ‘that none in thys queste lede lady nother jantillwoman with hym, for hit ys nat to do in so hyghe a servyse as they laboure in’ (XIII, 8, 523). The women who wait in romance are not always absent from battles. The emphasis of chivalry on the proof of prowess through jousts and tournaments, and challenges to single combat, means that women frequently become spectators in chivalric battle as they do not in scenes of widescale 27 28 29 30

Le Conte du Graal (Perceval), ed. Lecoy, lines 620–3. The Story of the Grail (Perceval), trans. Kibler, p. 389. Sir Percyvell of Gales, ed. Mills, lines 2160–2. Sir Thomas Malory, Works, ed. Vinaver, 2nd edn (1971), VIII, 31, p. 267. All subsequent references to Malory’s Morte Darthur will be from this edition (still in print), and will be cited by book, section and page number. For the full scholarly version with complete notes, see the three-volume 3rd edition, revised by P. J. C. Field (now out of print).

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Corinne Saunders warfare. Romances are full too of images of women who watch as their beloved knights fight, in play or earnest. Such occasions are especially noticeable in the Tristram section of the Morte, punctuated as it is by frequent tournaments and jousts. At the tournament of Lonazep Isode ‘wepte hartely’ on seeing Tristram unhorsed, then ‘was passynge glad, and than she lowghe and made good chere’ (X, 70, 447, 448). Lancelot, having brought Tristram and Isode to Joyous Gard, goes so far as to make ‘suche purvyaunce that La Beall Isode sholde beholde the justis in a secrete place that was honeste for her astate’ (X, 52, 416). The role of spectator is not necessarily a passive one. Ladies, along with the men who for some reason cannot fight, are crucial in forming the audience in large tournaments; they may also act as judges, as in the tournament of Candlemas in Book XVIII of the Morte, where almost all knights of the court are in the field: And kynge Arthure hymselff cam into the fylde with two hondred knyghtes, and the moste party were knyghtes of the Rounde Table that were all proved noble men. And there were olde knyghtes set on skaffoldys for to jouge with the quene who ded beste (XVIII, 22, 785).

Knights are repeatedly spurred on in battle by looking at their ladies. At Lonazep, Palomides sees Isode’s joy at Tristram’s success, and is so cheered that he gains great worship, ‘Than sir Palomydes began to double his strengthe, and he ded so mervaylously all men had wondir; and ever he kaste his yee unto La Beall Isode. And whan he saw her make suche chere he fared lyke a lyon, that there myght no man wythstonde hyim’ (X, 70, 448). In the tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney, Gareth experiences both negative and positive incitement. Dame Lynette repeatedly urges him on through her scorn, placing him as a cowardly kitchen knave and ‘chyding hym in the fowleste maner wyse that she cowde’ (VII, 10, 189). When Sir Gareth arrives at Lyonesse’s castle to take on the Red Knight of the Red Launds, however, Lynette immediately points out her sister, ‘at yondir wyndow is my lady, my sistir dame Lyones’, and Lyonesse later cries out ‘on hyght’ to urge on the fallen Gareth, ‘A, sir Bewmaynes! Where is thy corrayge becom?’ (VII, 16, 197; 17, 199). From this window too Gareth is sent to prove himself further in battle for the next twelve months. In the same way, Horn, though he does not have Rimenhild herself present for his battles, is inspired by looking on her ring. The sight of the beloved may have effects far beyond simple encouragement, most famously perhaps in Le Chevalier de la Charrette, when Guinevere signals Launcelot to spare Meleagaunt, and thus inspires him to fight with his back turned to his opponent while gazing at her. Malory modifies the account of this scene in the Prose Vulgate, so that Guinevere causes Launcelot to make peace with Meleagaunt before the battle. Her role in the combat that occurs after Meleagaunt’s treason, however, is equally striking: So sir Launcelot loked uppon the quene, gyff he myght aspye by ony sygne or countenaunce what she wolde have done. And anone the quene 198

Women and Warfare in Medieval English Writing wagged hir hede uppon sir Launcelot, as ho seyth, ‘sle hym’. And full well knew sir Launcelot by her sygnys that she wolde have hym dede. (XIX, 9, 662)

So eager is Lancelot to prove himself against Meleagaunt for the queen that he fights with his head and left side unarmed, without shield, with his left arm bound behind his back. The treatment of women plays a definitive role in the proof of chivalry in romance, as it does in chronicles. In the Morte Darthur, the oath sworn by all the knights at Pentecost includes the vow ‘allwayes to do ladyes, damesels, and jantilwomen and wydowes [sucour], strengthe hem in hir ryghtes, and never to enforce them, uppon payne of dethe’ (III, 15, 75). Christian knights are frequently characterised by their noble treatment of women, by contrast to the lecherous or violent behaviour of the often heathen enemy. Thus in the Seege off Melayne (written c.1400 or just after) the Christians virtuously pray to ‘Mary mylde that maye’, whereas the Sultan has her image burnt, and his violation of the Christians is especially marked by the martyrdom of ‘ladyes swete of swyre’.31 Ganelon too ‘to ladyse grete barett bredde’ (180). Lechery becomes a powerful marker of evil in the latter part of the romance, when Garcy becomes Sultan. The king of Macedonia sends as a coronation gift, ‘sexty maydynys faire of face, / That cheffeste of his kyngdome was / And fairest appon folde’ (842–4). Garcy proves his godless nature by his treatment of this harem: Of alle the damesels bryghte and schene, The sowdane hade hymselfe, I wene, Thaire althere maydynhede; By tham ilkone he laye a nyghte, And sythen mariede hir unto a knyght: They leffed one haythen lede. So mekill luste of lechery Was amange that chevalry That thay [mygh]te noghte wele spede.

(866–74)

It is notable that Garcy both takes the women’s virginity, and gives them away to other men – a double contravention of the rules of chivalry through lechery.32 The Seege off Melayne finds an interesting contrast in the late fourteenthcentury Siege of Jerusalem, a work that by no means suits modern tastes in its celebration of violence and focus on the punishment of the Jews, but that narrates a celebrated episode in legendary Christian history. While the emphasis on the details of battle and siege may be seen as in the heroic mode, the poem also uses the precepts of chivalry to characterise the 31

The Seege off Melayne, ed. Shepherd, lines 72, 26, 36. All subsequent references to the Seege off Melayne will be from this edition and will be cited by line number. 32 Floris and Blanchefleur, though it presents the Emir more sympathetically, similarly uses the motif of the harem to distinguish the East.

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Corinne Saunders Romans against the Jews. Perhaps unexpectedly, women play an important role in the poet’s depiction of the terrible suffering of the besieged populace of Jerusalem – suffering that is to some extent sympathetically treated within the narrative of an heroic battle. In the description of the appalling ravages of warfare and starvation, women’s predicaments heighten the horror of the scene. Thus in the bombardment of the city by Roman battering engines, a woman is struck so that her child is thrown ‘as a bal’ over the city walls, and other ‘wymmen wode open . walte vnder stones’.33 The poet emphasises particularly the effects of starvation on women, ‘Wymmen falwed falste & her face chaungen, / Ffeynte & fallen doun þat so fair wer; / Some swallen as swyn, som swart wexen, / Som lene on to loke, as lanterne-hornes’ (1143–6); Titus on entering the city is moved by their appearance, ‘Was no
t on ladies lafte bot þe lene bones, / þat wer fleschy byfor and fayr on to loke’ (1245–6). What is perhaps the most troubling moment of all in the poem occurs when extreme deprivation and hunger cause the violent contravention of natural femininity. A woman named Mary consumes the body of her own child: On Marie, a myld wyf, for meschef of foode, Hir owen barn þat
o bar
o brad on þe gledis, Rosty
þ rigge & rib with rewful wordes, Sayþ: ‘Sone, vpon eche side our sorow is a-lofte, Batail a-boute þe borwe, our bodies to quelle, Withyn hunger so hote, þat ne
our herte brestyþ; þerfor
eld þat I þe haf’ & a
en tourne, & entr þer þou cam out!’ & etyþ a schoulder. (1077–84)

The unstated contrast between this Mary and the Virgin, emblem of perfect motherhood, points up the horror of the crime. The sight of the woman’s mad hunger causes the curious citizens attracted by the smell of roasting flesh to depart weeping, and as an act of mercy to kill all ‘wymmen and weyke folke’ (1099) left in the city. The great power of the scene is rooted in the refusal of both the people and the poet himself to judge: this terrible crime against nature reflects not interior corruption but the terrible, unnatural suffering of the siege – itself begun to revenge the terrible, unnatural death of Christ, for which even the innocent must pay, unable to escape the sins of their ancestors. In different ways, all these are women who wait and watch and suffer as victims of warfare: women can also play more causative roles in warfare as objects of desire, inciting competition, conflict and hostility. Much of the action of romance centres on the threat to and defence of the lady; as Roberta Krueger writes, ‘Within the chivalric honour system, the woman becomes an object of exchange.’34 Whereas noble lovers win the love of 33

The Siege of Jerusalem, ed Kölbing and Day, lines 828, 830. All subsequent references to the Siege of Jerusalem will be from this edition and will be cited by line number. 34 Krueger, ‘Love, Honor, and the Exchange of Women in Yvain’, 306.

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Women and Warfare in Medieval English Writing their ladies by performing great deeds of prowess, less heroic knights resort to pure force in order to gain their desired objects. Central to chivalric law is the duty of knights to rescue ladies threatened with enforced marriage, most often represented through the siege of their castles and lands. The defence of a lady tests and proves the knight-protector, but also illustrates the underlying romance assumption that military victory is decisive: once the lady’s castle and lands or those of her father have been won, she has no choice but to submit to the victor. The potential force underlying the chivalric ethic is very apparent in Sir Beues of Hamtoun. The lady Josian’s suitor Brademund states directly, ‘I shal winne hire in plein bataile.’35 Victory in arms, not consent, is definitive, and the protection of women therefore depends on the knight’s willingness to respect consent and desire. Those who exploit force are repeatedly set up against the romance hero, who offers military protection. The founding incident in Arthurian history is perhaps that of Arthur’s defeat of the giant of Mont Saint Michel, who has raped and murdered the Duchess of Brittany, and violates many other women: in his victory over the giant, Arthur establishes the order of chivalry in the savage world outside Logres. Later romance treats the contravention of this order both within and beyond the Arthurian world, and uses in particular the motif of enforced marriage. The focal point of Ipomadon becomes the rescue of le Fere from her attacker Sir Lyolyne, ‘a fendes fere, / That wastythe here landes all way’ (6482–3); his aim is to ‘her have / In to Ynde Mayore’ (6504).36 Lyolyne is identified as a demonic figure, an outsider both in terms of nationality and paganism, whose great might only Ipomadon dares confront. His blackness and villainy provide a foil for Ipomadon’s excellence, and Lyolyne’s force contrasts with Ipomadon’s love for and obedience to le Fere, his use of prowess for rather than against her. The lady, no matter how improbably, must consent to love. Romances play repeatedly on the lady’s need for a defender and lord, if only to save her from other would-be defenders. The successful defence of a lady’s castle from its attackers is frequently accompanied by the swift conferral of her hand and lands on her defender. This phenomenon is particularly evident in the early fourteenth-century English rewriting of Chrétien de Troyes’ Yvain, Ywain and Gawain. After Alundyne’s protector has been killed by Ywain, Lunete elaborates the vulnerability of her lady: If twa knyghtes be in the felde On twa stedes, with spere and shelde, And the tane the tother may sla:

35

The Romance of Sir Beues of Hamtoun, ed. Kölbing, Auchinleck MS, line 920. All subsequent references to Beues will be from this edition and cited by line number. 36 Ipomadon, ed. Kölbing, lines 6482–3; 6504.

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Corinne Saunders Whether es the better of tha?’ Sho said, ‘He that has the bataile’. The lady thoght than, al the nyght, How that sho had na knyght, Forto seke hir land thorghout, To kepe Arthur and hys rowt* (999–1003; 1021–4) [*company]

The narrative intimates the impossibility of independent female existence: within the chivalric society depicted in the romance, women cannot defend themselves, and there is no recourse against the man who wins the woman’s person in battle. Thus Alundyne swiftly accepts the expedient of marriage with the very knight who has killed her husband, while later the lady whom Ywain rescues from her besieger, Sir Alers, prays him to marry her: ‘Sir, if it be yowre will, I pray yow forto dwel here still; And I wil yelde into yowre handes Myn awyn body and al my landes’.

(1959–62)

The link between lady and lands is made explicit, and the virtuous hero equated with the able defender.37 This situation is also acutely realised in the contemporaneous Sir Percyvell of Gales. Perceval describes a heathen sultan’s siege of the lady Lufamour’s castle in order to possess her: ‘That scho may have no pese, The lady, for hir fayrenes And for hir mekill* reches, He wirkes hir full woo! He dose his sorow all hir sythe* And all he slaes doun ry[f]e;* He wolde have hir to wyfe, And scho will noghte soo’.38

[*great] [*life] [*in great numbers]

While Perceval responds according to the precepts of chivalry, the battle between the two becomes a battle for Lufamour’s hand. She views her person as the right of her defender, and indeed employs the same terminology as the Sultan: ‘Scho thoght hym worthi to welde,* (*have) / And he myghte wyn hir in felde / With maystry and myghte’ (1310–12). In the military society of romance, battle proves who is hero, who villain. The lady may be gained through force, but not force enacted against herself: her consent is 37

A similar instance is found in Guy of Warwick, where the Emperor offers Guy the hand of his daughter Clarice in return for defeating his attackers: see The Romance of Guy of Warwick, ed. Zupitza, lines 4177–90. 38 Sir Percyvell of Gales, in Mills, ed., Ywain and Gawain, lines 103–60: 981–8. All subsequent references to Sir Percyvell of Gales will be from this edition and cited by line number.

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Women and Warfare in Medieval English Writing necessary in order to rewrite as love what could be construed as enforced marriage. Episodes of abduction or threats of enforced marriage thus stand in opposition to those where the lady is won through the honour and prowess of the knight, and military achievements for the lady are contrasted with attacks on her. One of the most sinister moments in Sir Orfeo is that of the failure of armed defence of the lady: human prowess proves ineffectual against the mysterious power of the King of Faery. Orfeo’s ‘wel ten hundred knightes with him / Ich y-armed stout and grim’ cannot oppose the invisible forces of the supernatural: Ac yete amiddes hem full right The Quen was oway y-twight, With fairy forth y-nome. Men wist never wher she was bicome.39

It is only through the marvellous power of Orfeo’s harping, rather than through the use of warfare, that Heurodis is regained. The work is compelling precisely for its overturning of the normal structures of chivalry. It is inevitable that women won in honourable warfare or combat appear to some extent as trophies, as valuable property. Chaucer in The Knight’s Tale notably probes this motif, revealing both its centrality to chivalric structures and the constraints it places on women. We are reminded at the start of the tale that Theseus’s wife Hippolyta is the defeated queen of the Amazons, won in battle: What with his wysdom and his chivalrie, He conquered al the regne of Femenye, That whilom was ycleped Scithia, And weddede the queene Ypolita, And broghte hire hoom with hym in his contree With muchel glorie and greet solempnytee, And eek hire yonge suster Emelye.40

The brief reference to the defeat of the ‘regne of Femenye’ in the context of Theseus’s triumph is typical of the way that the tale operates, its smooth surface assumptions of moral order troubled by hints of a more ambiguous universe. Thus Hippolyta appears a ‘fair, hardy queene’, but is also defeated 39 40

Sir Orfeo, ed. Sands, lines 167–70. Chaucer, The Knight’s Tale, ed. Benson, lines 865–7. All subsequent references to Chaucer will be from this edition and will be cited by line number. Woods notes the balance of love and war which defines Theseus as ‘the complete man in this chivalric world’, ‘ “My Sweete Foo” ’, p. 281; Hansen points out that women first appear in the poem as ‘erstwhile powerful separatists’, defeated and domesticated, Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender, p. 218, though Mann suggests that the marriage between Theseus and Hippolyta resists ‘the separateness of “Femenye” ’, Geoffrey Chaucer, p. 171. For an account of the ‘shift from classical to romance versions of the Amazon’, see Susan Crane, Gender and Romance in Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’, p. 79.

203

Corinne Saunders and captured: ‘marriage is consequent on military defeat with no intervening movement of consensual subordination or self-transformation on the part of the Amazons’.41 Emilye, Hippolyta’s sister, is equally a trophy of war; she begins and ends the tale as an object to be fought over and won by men: Emilye’s relative freedom is an illusion, in that she is effectively one of the spoils of war, technically even a prisoner of war, her garden effectively part of the prison.42

Priscilla Martin points to Emilye’s relegation to object, both in narrative and stylistic terms, ‘She is often, as at her first appearance, a syntactical adjunct to her sister the queen.’43 The description of Emilye in the garden presents her as the archetypal romance heroine, and the ensuing rivalry of Palamon and Arcite is typical of the chivalric ethic according to which the woman is fought over and won. Love is defined exclusively from the male perspective and imagined as a siege or battle: Emilye, the ‘sweete foo’ (2780), has no knowledge of the cousins’ love for her, and their emotions are both desired and threatening, the cause of unhappiness, illness and conflict.44 Emilye’s status as trophy of war, and her ignorance of the men whom she inspires to mortal enmity, illuminate the absence of the female voice within the structures of fin’ amors. Upon seeing the cousins fighting, Emilye weeps with the other women, ‘The queene anon, for verray wommanhede, / Gan for to wepe, and so dide Emelye, / And alle the ladyes in the compaignye’ (1748–50), but we hear no word from her; instead, it is Theseus who speaks for her and who decides her future, ‘I speke as for my suster Emelye’; ‘Thanne shal I yeve Emelya to wyve / To whom that Fortune yeveth so fair a grace’ (1833, 1860–1). The only expression of her voice is her prayer in the temple of Diana, ‘Chaste goddesse, wel wostow that I / Desire to ben a mayden al my lyf, / Ne evere wol I be no love ne wyf’ (2304–6). Although it is highly stylised, the passage opens a tiny window onto the predicament of the woman objectified within the patriarchal structures of love and war. When Arcite has died despite his victory, it is Theseus, not Emilye, who restores order by granting her hand to Palamon, and although he addresses her in formal legal terms, we hear no direct response from Emilye herself. The tale obscures all individual emotion with the conventional formula of the happy ending, and replaces the woman’s voice with that of the man. Yet, like the sinister machinations of fate that lead to Arcite’s death, the subtext of force and Emilye’s prayer 41 42 43 44

Crane, Gender and Romance, p. 80. John M. Ganim, ‘Chaucerian Ritual and Patriarchal Romance’, p. 69. Priscilla Martin, Chaucer’s Women, p. 42. Hansen writes, ‘the proper male hero must first conquer with superior violence and then domesticate [her]’, Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender, p. 219; H. Marshall Leicester, Jr, comments on the elision between ‘the idea of doing battle for Emilye’ and ‘doing battle with her for her favors’, The Disenchanted Self, p. 305.

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Women and Warfare in Medieval English Writing contribute to an alternative perception of chivalric order as imprisoning and silencing. Emilye’s plight demonstrates more clearly the absence of free will in a world controlled by the potentially malevolent whims of the gods. The contrast between two modes, feminine and masculine, one of war, one of peace, is made clear at the start of The Knight’s Tale in the pleas of the company of widows to Theseus that they may honour the bodies of their dead husbands. They express a feminised ethic of pity and mercy: ‘Lord, to whom Fortune hath yiven Victorie, and as a conqueror to lyven Nat greveth us youre glorie and youre honour, But we biseken mercy and socour. Have mercy on oure wo and oure distresse! Som drope of pitee, thurgh thy gentillesse, Upon us wrecched wommen lat thou falle. (915–21)

Yet as so often in this tale, the weight of warfare is inevitable: their pleas are answered but lead in fact to still more violence, Theseus’ great battle against Thebes. Romance is shadowed by the powerful classical paradigm of the abduction of Helen of Troy, which causes a war so great that the civilisation of Troy falls. For English writers, the history of Troy was especially important, in that it provided the founding myth of Britain. In Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Troilus reminds Pandarus, ‘this town hath al this werre / For ravysshyng of wommen so by myght’ (IV, 547–8). The comment is the more striking for our view of ‘the faire queene Eleyne’ (II, 1556) at Deiphebus’ house. Here she appears as a highly domesticated figure, integrated into Trojan society, and an unwitting friend to the progression of the love of Troilus and Criseyde. Helen’s ravishment is portrayed as entirely consensual, and Pandarus suggests that Troilus similarly ‘ravysshe’ Criseyde away: ‘Artow in Troie, and hast non hardyment To take a womman which that loveth the And wolde hireselven ben of thyn assent? Now is nat this a nyce vanitee?’ (IV, 533–6)

The backdrop of the war and our knowledge of Troy’s fate, however, cannot but recall the disastrous social consequences of even consensual ravishment. Troilus’ response emphasises both the war and the potential fear and shame associated with such an action: Yet drede I moost hire herte to perturbe With violence, if I do swich a game; For if I wolde it openly desturbe,* [*prevent] It moost be disclaundre to hire name. (IV, 561–64)

The story of Helen of Troy perhaps underpins the numerous examples in medieval romance of knights who fight on behalf of abducted ladies. 205

Corinne Saunders Arthurian romance treats the same complex issues in the crucial narrative episode of Launcelot’s rescue of Guinevere from burning at the stake, which ensues in war between Arthur and Gawain, and ultimately the fall of the kingdom of Logres. Conspicuous by its near-absence in romance is the motif of the woman warrior, whereas in the Renaissance period, this was to become a powerful literary topos, most obviously perhaps in Spenser’s Britomart in The Faerie Queene. As we have seen, Chaucer makes little of the Amazonian past of Hippolyta and Emilye, emphasising instead their status as trophies of war. A rare exception is offered by the thirteenth-century Roman de Silence of Heldris de Cornuälle, preserved only in one long-undiscovered manuscript and written by a wholly unknown poet of north-west France.45 The work is unique in placing at its centre the cross-dressing heroine Silence, daughter of Cador, retainer and later count of Cornwall, brought up as a boy in order that she may inherit: the poet describes the debate between Nature and Nurture over Silence’s gender. The romance traces Silence’s life with a troupe of jongleurs, her attempted seduction by the queen of Cornwall, the rejected queen’s accusation of force, Silence’s exile and her penitential task of finding Merlin. While deeds of arms are not the central focus, they play an important part in the poem and Silence’s military ability is emphasised: N’i a un seul de lui plus maistre Quant il joent a le palaistre, Al bohorder, n’a lescremir, Il seus fait tols ses pers fremir.46 there was no one more adept than he: when they played at jousting, at tilting, or at swords, he alone made all his peers tremble.47

Knighted by the king of France, Silence proves him/herself in a great joust: Kil veïst joster sans mantel Et l’escu porter en cantiel Et faire donques l’ademise, La lance sor le faltre mist, Dir peüst que Noreture Puet moult ovrer contre Nature,

45

Cross-dressing episodes are found in Huon de Bordeaux, L’Estoire Merlin and Tristan de Nanteuil, but are not central to these romances; see Psaki’s discussion of sources and influences in the introduction to her translation of Heldris de Cornuälle, Le Roman de Silence, pp. xxxiii–vi. Thorpe offers an extensive discussion of the author’s use of L’Estoire Merlin in the introduction to his edition of Heldris, Le Roman de Silence, pp. 27–35. 46 Heldris de Cornuälle, Le Roman de Silence, ed. Thorpe, lines 2493–6. 47 Heldris de Cornuälle, Le Roman de Silence, trans. Psaki, lines 2493–6.

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Women and Warfare in Medieval English Writing Quant ele aprent si et escole A tel us feme et tendre et mole.48 Anyone who saw him joust without a mantle, carrying the shield on his left arm, and set to the attack, lance on the lance-rest, would say that Nurture can do much against Nature, when she teaches and trains a tender, delicate woman in such behavior.49

It is crucial for the success of the poem that Silence’s natural qualities are still profoundly feminine, and that it is through nurture that she takes on male qualities of strength and prowess; they are not intrinsic to her. It is hard to see Silence’s natural femininity in the later part of the poem, when he/she takes thirty French knights to fight for the English king, performing great deeds of prowess, and spurring the others on, eventually to defeat the leader of the enemy army. Although the poet emphasises God’s protection of Silence, his/her abilities seem very much those of the male hero, ‘li vallés de Cornuälle’, ‘the boy from Cornwall’ who leads the battle.50 The power of both nature and nurture are, however, confirmed as this episode is set against the final denouement, when Merlin reveals Silence’s identity, and the poem ends with her wedding. As in Saxo’s account of the Danish women warriors, the appeal of the story of Silence lies in its self-conscious contravention of gender norms, as the debate between Nature and Nurture makes clear. In general, however, it is not in medieval romance but in religious writing that the figure of the woman warrior appears. It seems clear that, for medieval writers, there was great dramatic potential in subverting or opposing the traditional presentation of women as victims, making them into powerful heroic figures – but also that this was a problematic reversal of role, which tended to require a spiritual motivation. The great Biblical example of the woman warrior is that of the Old Testament heroine Judith, the Israelite who finds her way into the attacking Assyrian Holofernes’ camp and kills him. This was obviously a problematic story, relegated to the Apocrypha; it portrayed Judith as using her feminine wiles to seduce and then kill Holofernes. The poet of the Old English Judith (c. tenth century) uses hagiographic elements to make the story more like those of the Christian saints. Thus Judith is identified as a holy virgin, and rather than seducing Holofernes, is absent from his feast. She is identified as the handmaiden of the Lord, authorised to take on a male, heroic role, killing Holofernes and 48 49 50

Heldris de Cornuälle, Le Roman de Silence, ed. Thorpe, lines 5149–56. Heldris de Cornuälle, Le Roman de Silence, trans. Psaki, lines 5149–56. Heldris de Cornuälle, Le Roman de Silence, ed. Thorpe and trans. Psaki, lines 5556, 5572.

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Corinne Saunders leading her troops in battle. Judith seems to usurp Holofernes’ military dominance by striking him with his own sword as he lies comatose on the bed, ‘swa heo ðæs unlædan eaðost mihte / wel gewealdan’, ‘As she might best have power over . . . the hated foe.’51 Judith to some extent equates to the Christian saint, although her fate is very different. She kills her enemy and wins the battle, whereas the traditional hagiographic pattern is of torture and martyrdom. The Golden Legend, the South English Legendary and Osbern Bokenham’s Legends of Hooly Women contain one very striking example of this pattern in the context of warfare, the legend of Saint Ursula and the 100,000 virgins. Here the power of the virgin opposes an entire enemy host: Ursula puts off marriage to travel from Little Britain to Rome with a great company of English virgins in order to face the army of the pagan princes Julian, Maxim and Affrican at Cologne, and is finally cut down on the battlefield with her companions. Bokenham describes the pagan army: ‘As raueynows wuluys . . . / Among a flok of sheep’, terms that recall the descriptions of the Vikings in chronicles.52 Bokenham is careful to downplay eroticism by emphasising the male presence in Ursula’s company – the pope, cardinals and bishops, and her own fiancé in spiritual marriage, Ethereus. In the battle, Ursula herself is spared and, because of her great beauty, her hand is requested by Julian in marriage; on refusing to consent, she is shot with an arrow from ‘a myhty bowe’ (3435), her virginity maintained. The South English Legendary similarly uses the image of wolves among lambs: ‘Hi houede & cride
am assame . to gronde hi ham slowe / Also fale wolues among lomb .
are clene fleiss todrawe’.53 The women are in one sense heroic warrior figures as Judith is, but in another, victims. The legend’s drama is partially situated in the threat to the holy female body posed by warfare, and specifically the threat of ravishment, the archetypal motif linked with the depiction of women in warfare. Women become mirrors of Christ’s passion on the Cross, their bodies perfect in chastity but also torn and bleeding, willingly suffering wounds and death, their unconquerable faith set up against the hollow violence and warfare of the pagan enemy. The introduction of women into the male world of warfare allows, then, for a series of powerful oppositions, crucial to the drama of literary representations of war. Women present still points within the circles of warfare. The male action of battle is opposed by the static quality, though not necessarily the passivity, of the women who wait and weep and suffer. The taken or

51

Judith, in Hamer, ed., A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse, pp. 102–3; for an analysis of the ironic reversal of sexual role behaviour in this passage, see Chance, ‘The Structural Unity of Beowulf’, pp. 254–5. See also Saunders, Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England, 138–9, and for Ursula, 136–8. 52 Bokenham, Legendys of Hooly Wummen, ed. Serjeantson, lines 3415–16. All subsequent references to Bokenham will be from this edition and will be cited by line number. 53 South English Legendary, ed. d’Evelyn and Mills, II, p. 447, lines 131–2.

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Women and Warfare in Medieval English Writing besieged body of the woman is opposed by the warfare of both attackers and defenders. The active, threatening desire of the enemy is opposed by the unassailable, still chastity of the virgin. Yet women also play their own powerful roles: they encourage and incite those who fight; they also provide many of the incentives for the battles that structure the chivalric world and prove the hero. On occasion, they offer alternative, ethical perspectives that rely on ideas of mercy, pity and peace. Especially rare is the image of the woman who takes up arms. What is most full of potential for the medieval writer is not the real experience of women in war, or the possibility of women emulating men, so much as the strong contrast and drama created by placing ‘woman’ within the male world of warfare.

Works Cited I. Sources Beowulf, ed. Michael Swanton, Manchester Medieval Classics (Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1978). Bokenham, Osbern, Legendys of Hooly Wummen, ed. Mary S. Serjeantson, Early English Text Society, OS 206 (London: Oxford University Press, 1938 for 1936). Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). Chrétien de Troyes, Le Contes du Graal (Perceval), ed. Félix Lecoy, 2 vols, Les Romans de Chrétien de Troyes V and VI, Les Classiques Français du Moyen Age (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1975, 1984). Chrétien de Troyes, The Story of the Grail (Perceval), ed. William W. Kibler, Arthurian Romances, Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991). Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, c. 150, ed. Luis Sánchez Belda, Escuela de Estudios Medievales, Textos 14 (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1950). Comnena, Anna, The Alexiad of the Princess Anna Comnena Being the History of the Reign of her Father, Alexius I, Emperor of the Romans, 1081–1118 AD, trans. Elizabeth A. S. Dawes (London: Kegan Paul, Trench Trubner, 1928; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967). Froissart, Sir John, The Chronicles of Froissart, trans. John Bourchier, Lord Berners, intro. William Paton Ker, 6 vols, The Tudor Translations 27–33 (London: David Nutt, 1901–1903). Genesis A: A New Edition, ed. A. N. Doane (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978). Havelok the Dane, ed. Donald B. Sands, Exeter Medieval English Texts and Studies (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1986), pp. 58–129. Heldris de Cornuälle, Le Roman de Silence, trans. Regina Psaki, Garland Library of Medieval Literature 63, series B (New York: Garland, 1991). 209

Corinne Saunders Ipomedon in drei englische Bearbeitungen, ed. Eugen Kölbing (Breslau: Wilhelm Koebner, 1889). Judith, ed. and trans. Richard Hamer, A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1970). King Horn, ed. Donald B. Sands, Exeter Medieval English Texts and Studies (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1986), pp. 17–54. Le Roman de Silence: A Thirteenth-Century Arthurian Verse-Romance by Heldris de Cornuälle, ed. Lewis Thorpe (Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons, 1972). Liber Historiae Francorum, ed. and trans. Bernard S. Bachrach (Lawrence, KS: Coronado Press, 1973). Malory, Sir Thomas, The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. Eugène Vinaver and P. J. C. Field, 3rd edn, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). Malory, Sir Thomas, Works, ed. Eugène Vinaver, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971) Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, ed. Norman Davis, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971, 1976). The Paston Letters: A Selection in Modern Spelling, ed. Norman Davis, World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). Roger of Wendover, Roger of Wendover’s Flowers of History, trans. J. A. Giles, 2 vols (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1899). Roger of Wendover, Chronica, sive Flores Historiarum, ed. Henry O. Coxe, 5 vols, English Historical Society (London: Sumptibus Societatis, 1841–44). The Romance of Guy of Warwick, ed. Julius Zupitza, Early English Text Society, ES 42, 49, 59 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1883, 1887, 1891). The Romance of Sir Beues of Hamtoun, ed. Eugen Kölbing, Early English Text Society, ES 46, 48, 65 (London: N. Trübner 1885, 1886, 1894). Rose-Troup, J. M., ‘What is War?’, in Poems of the First World War: ‘Never Such Innocence’, ed. Martin Stephen, Everyman’s Library (1988; London: J. M. Dent, 1993), p. 63. Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed. C. Knabe and Paul Herrmann, rev. Jørgen Olrik and H. Raeder (Copenhagen: Levin and Munksgaard, 1931). Saxo Grammaticus, History of the Danes, trans. Peter Fisher and ed. Hilda Ellis Davidson (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer; Totowa, NJ; Rowman and Littlefield, 1979). The Seege off Melayne, ed. Stephen H. A. Shepherd, Middle English Romances, Norton Critical Editions (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995). The Siege of Jerusalem, ed. E. Kölbing and Mabel Day, Early English Text Society, OS 188 (London: Oxford University Press, 1932). Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. A. C. Cawley and J. J. Anderson, Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Everyman Classics, 2nd edn, Everyman’s Library (London: Dent, 1976), pp. 159–254. 210

Women and Warfare in Medieval English Writing Sir Orfeo, ed. Donald B. Sands, Exeter Medieval English Texts and Studies (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1986), pp. 185–200. Sir Percyvell of Gales, ed. Maldwyn Mills, Ywain and Gawain, Sir Percyvell of Gales, the Anturs of Arther, Everyman’s Library (London: J. M. Dent and Sons; Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1992), pp. 102–60. The South English Legendary, ed. Charlotte d’Evelyn and Anna J. Mill, 2 vols, Early English Text Society, OS 235 and 236 (London: Oxford University Press, 1956). Whitelock, Dorothy, ed., English Historical Documents, I: c. 500–1042 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1955). Wulfstan, The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Dorothy Bethurum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957). Ywain and Gawain, ed. Maldwyn Mills, Ywain and Gawain, Sir Percyvell of Gales, the Anturs of Arther, Everyman’s Library (London: J. M. Dent and Sons; Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 1992) pp. 1–102.

II. Studies Chance, Jane, ‘The Structural Unity of Beowulf: The Problem of Grendel’s Mother’, in Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessy Olsen, eds, New Readings on Women in Old English Literature (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 248–61. Clover, Carol C., ‘Maiden Warriors and Other Sons’, JEGP 85 (1986): 35–49. Crane, Susan, Gender and Romance in Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). Dillard, Heath, Daughters of the Reconquest: Women in Castilian Town Society, 1100–1300, Cambridge Iberian and Latin American Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Fell, Christine, Women in Anglo-Saxon England; And the Impact of 1066, with Cecily Clark and Elizabeth Williams (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984, 1986). Ganim, John M., ‘Chaucerian Ritual and Patriarchal Romance’, Chaucer Yearbook 1 (1992): 65–86. Hansen, Elaine Tuttle, Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). Jochens, Jenny, ‘Old Norse Sources on Women’, in Joel T. Rosenthal, ed., Medieval Women and the Sources of Medieval History (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press 1990), pp. 155–88. Krueger, Roberta L., ‘Love, Honor, and the Exchange of Women in Yvain: Some Remarks on the Female Reader’, Romance Notes 25 (1984–85): 302–17. Larrington, Carolyne, Women and Writing in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 1995). 211

Corinne Saunders Leicester, H. Marshall, Jr, The Disenchanted Self: Representing the Subject in the Canterbury Tales (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1990). Martin, Priscilla, Chaucer’s Women: Nuns, Wives, and Amazons (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1990). McLaughlin, M., ‘The Woman Warrior: Gender, Warfare, and Society in Medieval Europe’, Women’s Studies 17 (1990): 193–209. Rosenthal, Joel T., ‘Anglo-Saxon Attitudes: Men’s Sources, Women’s History’, in Rosenthal, ed., Medieval Women and the Sources of Medieval History (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press 1990), pp. 259–84. Saunders, Corinne, Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001). Wainwright, F. T., ‘Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians’, The Anglo-Saxons, Studies in some aspects of their history and culture presented to Bruce Dickins, ed. P. Clemoes (London, 1959), pp. 53–70; reprinted in Scandinavian England: Collected Papers by F. T. Wainwright, ed. H. P. R. Finberg (Chichester: Phillimore, 1975), pp. 305–24. Woods, William F., ‘ “My Sweete Foo”: Emelye’s Role in The Knight’s Tale’, Studies in Philology 88 (1991): 276–306.

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Speaking for the Victim1

1

HELEN COOPER

In the sweet springtime, when the grass is fresh and the days clear and bright, I came across a shepherdess wearing a garland of leaves and a belt of roses; she was fluting, ‘Tirra lirra!’, and Perrin was accompanying her on a pipe. I dismounted onto the grass and said, ‘Damoiselle, love me, and I will give you fine jewels, and a better knife than a shepherd’s.’ Then Peronelle replied, ‘I have heard that a troop of treacherous Flemings are making great trouble. Tirra lirra! Whoever asks me for love doesn’t know how fearful I am.’ The shepherdess had a fair face and a hue of rose. I said, ‘Pretty one, I’ll be your lover if you’re willing.’ ‘Sir, I have given my heart to Perrin and mean to marry him; but we are overrun in this country. The French have been here and have devastated it too much. Sir, are you one of those wretches who have passed the river, who gathered across the Lys? Traitors and rebels and perjurers! – they will all be made landless and their shame revealed.’2

T

HAT TEXT is a slightly abbreviated translation of a pastourelle by the Flemish poet Jean Bodel, written in the late twelfth century. Pastourelles are poems that typically describe the encounter of a man, most often a knight, with a shepherdess; he propositions her, and she may or may not consent to his advances. Bodel’s poem opens in the most conventional of ways, and its first audience would accordingly have expected something mildly salacious to follow. The shepherdess’s rejection of the speaker’s chat-up line decisively foils those expectations. Instead, she delivers an attack on both the treacherous Flemings and the French troops who are devastating the country. The last verse, in the original, runs: Sire, estes vos des eschis ki l’iaue ont passee, 1

The second half of the lecture on which this essay is based drew extensively on material used in my as yet unpublished article ‘The Hundred Years War and the Golden Age: French Pastoral Moralities’, written for Order and Disorder: Rationalities and Mentalities of the Medieval World, ed. Lesley Smith and Giles Gaspar (forthcoming). I am grateful to the editors for permission to incorporate some of that material here. 2 Bodel, in Romances et pastourelles françaises des XIIe et XIIIe siècles, ed. Bartsch, pp. 290–1.

213

Helen Cooper qui de l’autre part le Lis font lor assemblee? trecheor et foimentis et gent parjuree! dorenlot ae! tot seront deshirete a honte provee.

The shepherdess’s words are no more a statement about military strategy than they are about unwanted seducers; her principal message is more like, ‘A plague on both your houses!’ Just for that reason, however, the work carries a political message of a broad kind. For Bodel is only one in a long line of poets who use the inhabitants of the countryside – specifically, shepherds and shepherdesses – to speak out against war. We do not hear the genuine voices of peasants here or in any other of these texts: the overwhelming majority of the rural population was illiterate, and incapable of leaving records of their own. What we do have on record are the voices of the commentators and poets and moralists who speak for them and through them – who give them a voice. So far as the peasantry was concerned, the particularity of the politics that drove war across the countryside, or the identity of the lords and knights who conducted it, was beside the point. As in the eyes of Jean Bodel’s shepherdess, the whole lot might just as well be rebels, traitors, outlaws – all equally reprehensible and equally hated. As in this example, a writer of a commentary of this nature will often start out by misleading his audience. Such texts tend to open by setting up a highly conventional form with different expectations; and typically they will start from a pastoral rather than a rural perspective. In other words, the texts represent themselves not as the genuine writings of peasants (which would have been almost a contradiction in terms in the Middle Ages) but as self-consciously literary, whether courtly or urban; and not until that is established do they spring a surprise on the audience when their subject matter turns out to be much more realistic, or even satirical. By convention, the pastourelle form may lead to either sex or frustration; what you do not expect is a disquisition on the fear of having a harrying army overrunning the land. Such poems are found in the Middle Ages almost uniquely in France. Medieval English pastoral concerned itself with broader social satire – the corruption of royal officials or the Church, heavy taxation, or just the state of the world and the weather – but war or invasion was not an issue. When such pastoral satire of war does appear, it takes a negative form, as indicating England’s blessedness; and in this eulogistic form it does indeed become political. It makes a later appearance than in France, emerging in the sixteenth century in panegyrics of Elizabeth I that contrast her peace with the wars that were ravaging Europe.3 Thomas Blenerhasset’s Revelation of the 3

Cooper, Pastoral, pp. 198–207.

214

Speaking for the Victim True Minerva, written in 1582, is a narrative poem declaring how superior Elizabeth, the ‘true Minerva’, is to any other contemporary ruler. It includes an interlude in which three shepherds from continental Europe put in an appearance to lament the condition of their lives: On pleasant pipe to play did please me much, I did delight sweete ditties to indight: But nowe the woes of wretched warres be such As nothing els but howe in fielde to fight, And howe to keepe the flocke from souldiours sight . . . My flockes be stolne, my fruitfull fieldes be bare. The people for the princes pride are plagde, It falleth to the faultlesse subjectes lot, To double drinke in cruel cuppe of care, When perverse princes madding minde doth dote: Bellona then doth sounde a dolefull note, Then blooddie men of warre the sweete doth eate Without regard of us the shepheardes sweate.4

By contrast, an English commoner who has travelled to Europe expresses amazement at the miseries he has encountered there: What taxe, what tolle, what tribute do they pay? With dayly warres, what wretched lives they leade? Kinges they do cause continuall decay, Their subiectes live in daily doubt and dread.5

England’s insulation from the wars across the Channel can therefore be represented as turning the country into a paradise of security and contentment. Blenerhasset and Bodel between them, for all the four centuries that separate them, illustrate three consistent principles of this kind of writing. First, the writer and the audience have nothing to do with real peasants: Bodel was apparently a leading burgher of Arras, Blenerhasset a minor poet of the Sidney circle. Second, it is none the less taken as a premise that real peasants, the suffering common man and woman, can speak a political wisdom that does not always get a voice elsewhere. And third, unless it is turned into a panegyric of a good monarch, as happens in the Revelation, this sort of writing is unlikely to be addressed directly to a ruler. Elizabeth is a possible audience because she is neither perverse nor mad; but a poet is not likely to declare ‘The people for the prince’s pride are plagued’ directly to the prince in question. The period on which this paper will focus comes midway between Bodel and Blenerhasset: the France of the Hundred Years War, when the devasta4 5

Blenerhasset, The Revelation of the True Minerva, ed. Bennett, sig. B1a. Blenerhasset, The Revelation of the True Minerva, ed. Bennett, sig. B2a

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Helen Cooper tion suffered by the peasantry was particularly grievous. A succession of armed bands pillaged the countryside: the free companies, the routiers, of the first English occupation; then the rival armies of the civil wars of the Burgundians and Armagnacs; and then, worst of all, the écorcheurs, the anarchic bands associated with the revival of hostilities with England in the fifteenth century and the wars to displace them. It was a series of horrors that elicited a run of commentaries of this kind, but those texts present major difficulties when it comes to trying to use them for historiographical purposes. Their peasant spokesmen are not, by and large, interested in facts or events. They express rather social desires (for good government, peace, security of life and livelihood) and fears – the worst of which, since it eliminates every social good, is a war fought across their own countryside. These texts most often originate outside the court or the main centres of power, so they are not designed to reflect monarchical policies or aspirations; but they do have the potential to provide evidence for mental frameworks that elsewhere remain largely unstated and unrecoverable. The technical term for this kind of writing, for using the shepherd world as a metaphor for the real world, is bergerie. The word can mean the craft of sheepkeeping, or the imagined literary representation of shepherd life, or, more specifically, a pastoral morality play.6 Such texts describe one way of life, the shepherd’s, in order to comment on another, the political or ecclesiastical or moral world that most directly involves the author and the intended audience. Shepherds are used precisely because they can speak for those excluded from the discourses of power, from the court, chivalry, and the Church – the three institutions that dominate so much of the medieval written record. Bergerie writings combine a sense of what peasant life was actually like with a strong sense of literary tradition. The literariness made them attractive to a cultured readership, whether clerical or urban or courtly, and attractive to authors too, since they did not have to leave behind their own education when they were writing. The learned resonances also helped to make possible the stress on significance as distinct from event. The first of the literary traditions they incorporated was the Bible. It was here that the dignity of the shepherd’s calling was stressed, in the persons of King David and the Patriarchs, figures to whom a writer could appeal in order to insist to his audience that the shepherds of his poem or play are not to be dismissed as mere yokels. Furthermore, the Bethlehem shepherds had been the first to hear news of the birth of Christ, so marking their estate as especially favoured by God. The fact that they were out at night watching not only their sheep, but also, according to a number of these texts, the stars, gave them a further significance, as it was taken as an indicator both of contemplation and of wisdom, and was often cited to justify the presentation 6

For a full account, see Cooper, Pastoral, especially chapter 2. The most detailed study of the late medieval French texts is Blanchard’s La Pastorale en France aux XIVe et XVe siècles.

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Speaking for the Victim of the shepherd not as an illiterate rustic but as a teacher. Above all, Christ Himself was the Good Shepherd. The duties of the good shepherd as spelled out in the Gospels were not very different from those of his fifteenth-century French counterpart: he had to care for his flocks, make sure they were fed, protect them from wolves, and heal their diseases. The derelictions of the bad shepherd had not changed much either since the hireling described in John 10, who is characterized by stealing the sheep and taking the profit. Both good and bad shepherds are represented in this French literature with a strong sense of actuality. Their closeness to reality can be measured by comparison with a treatise on sheepkeeping written by a man who claims to be, and indeed seems to have been, an actual working shepherd, by the name of Jean de Brie.7 Commissioned by Charles V in 1379, the work contains a remarkably detailed account of what was actually involved in raising and caring for sheep, information such as would normally be passed on in the fields from father to son or master to lad and never reach written form. It covers such matters as the practicalities of weather prediction, the treatment of sheep-rot, and the need for the herdsman to wear extra clothing on the front (since sheep face into the wind); and it provides a generous list of musical instruments that the shepherd should be able to play. Its practical instructions, moreover, extend to moral interpretations. It is not just herdsmen who can learn from the treatise, but those pastors equipped with a crozier rather than a crook, who carry responsibility for a different kind of flock. Its commissioning by the king indicates that it carries a further extension to political meanings. The king, in a frequently used metaphor, was the shepherd of his subjects, and bore the responsibility of good government for the sake of his sheep. The work thus bridges the gulf between the literal and the metaphorical herdsman, between allegories of good government and the peasant in the fields. Jean de Brie makes the customary appeal to the Bible to demonstrate the worthiness of the shepherd, but he does not apparently have any detailed scriptural knowledge. Other writers in the bergerie tradition clearly did have a full clerical education, such as included familiarity not only with the Bible but with secular Latin traditions of pastoral. The quintessential innocent pastoral landscape was the one that belonged to the myth of the Golden Age, as described in one of the most widely known school texts, Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This was the time before the advent of agricultural labour: the land produced berries for food; the sheep bore ready-coloured wool for 7

The work was entitled Le Traicté de l’estat, science et pratique de l’art de bergerie, et de garder oeilles et brebis à laine: ‘a treatise on the condition, knowledge and practice of the art of sheepkeeping, and of managing ewes and wool-bearing sheep’. The original is lost, but it survives in a shortened form in early printed editions entitled Le Vray Régime et gouvernement des bergers et bergères, ‘the true order and government of shepherds and shepherdesses’, edited by Lacroix as Le Bon Berger; see pp. vi, xvi for the history of the work. The extent and nature of Jean’s own education is not known, but the evidence of the work indicates that he was literate in French, and had a good familiarity with vernacular culture.

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Helen Cooper use in clothing; the maiden Justice was still present in the world, so there was no need for law or government; and there were no cities, and, crucially, no war. The peace-loving and contented Golden Agers had nothing to do but keep a gentle eye on the sheep, sing, and enjoy free love. This portrayal of an idyllic pastoral existence was to some degree endorsed by a further widely known group of poems, Virgil’s Eclogues, which were often disseminated together with Servius’s late Classical commentary on them. For all the idyllicism they contain, however, they do not rest content with representing such a world. Most of the eclogues are dialogues, and therefore potentially dialectic too; and the opposing positions Virgil represents are first of all those of peace and war. The very first one introduces a shepherd-poet piping under a shady tree, a man who possesses a flock and livelihood and cottage of his own thanks to a powerful political patron, Augustus; but his interlocutor, who has no such political protection, is a refugee displaced by war with the poor remnants of his flock. The opening of the poem, familiar to generations of schoolboys given a Classical education, runs: Meliboeus. Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi silvestrem tenui musam meditaris avena: nos patriae fines et dulcia linquimus arva; nos patriae fugimus . . . Tityrus. O Meliboee, deus nobis haec otia fecit . . . ille meas errare boves, ut cernis, et ipsum ludere quae vellem calamo permisit agresti. Meliboeus. . . . en, ipse capellas protinus aeger ago; hanc etiam vix, Tityre, duco.8 Meliboeus. Tityrus, while you lie under the shade of a spreading beech and play country songs on a slender pipe, I have to leave my home fields and the ploughlands dear to me. I am for exile . . . Tityrus. Meliboeus, the man who gave me such an easy life is a god. He enables my cattle to browse at large, as you see, and myself to play what music I like on my rustic flute. Meliboeus. See, unwell as I am, I have to drive my goats ever forward. I can scarcely drag this one along.

The eclogue offers a model of pastoral as political panegyric by means of its juxtaposition to pastoral as the mode of complaint, of protest – the model followed by Blenerhasset in The Revelation of the True Minerva. There, Elizabeth takes on the role Virgil allots to Augustus, their beneficence being contrasted to the misery of the destitute peasant. The Eclogues also, however, gave later pastoral writers authority to cut the panegyric and concentrate on the hardships of war, and several made the most of the 8

Lines 1–4, 6, 9–10, 12–13; Rieu, in his parallel-text edition, heads this eclogue ‘The Dispossessed’ (Virgil: the translation here is mine).

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Speaking for the Victim opportunity. To take two examples of conscious imitators of Virgil who took such a line: the sixteenth-century French poet Jacques Bereau devoted three of his ten eclogues to just such issues of war and peace, in particular the seventh, ‘Sur les calamitez de la guerre’, on the Franco-Spanish war of 1554, in which its Meliboeus figure describes how he has been viciously beaten up and left destitute by marauding men at arms;9 and in the eighteenth century, Thomas Warton rewrote five of Virgil’s Eclogues to lament the sufferings of the German peasantry during the War of Austrian Succession.10 In these poems, the dialectic takes the specific form of opposing what the good pastoral life should be like against its destruction in war. In medieval French pastoral writing, the good life was represented as being inherent in the shepherd world itself, as is implicit in Jean Bodel’s opening image of the shepherdess singing in a spring landscape. The dialectic of pastoral comes from the writer’s choosing between various opposing possibilities. Rural life could be idyllic, or its idyllicism could be shattered by war, by those French and Flemish armies. Shepherds could be the sophisticate’s image of the naive or uneducated yokel, or a source of divine wisdom. The literary shepherd modelled on either the real-life or the Biblical herdsman could be either good or bad: he could devote himself to the care of his flock through every vicissitude of harsh weather and diseases, or he could be uncaring, irresponsible, at worst vicious, as the sheep are fleeced, flayed and slaughtered. The sexual availability of the shepherdess of the pastourelles overlaps with ideas of Golden Age free love, but the motif can be treated as male fantasy, as female tragedy, or as a measure of deep moral disorder. The shepherd world is often given a thick description by means of lists – of musical instruments (flutes and corn-pipes and bagpipes and shawms and cornemuses); of the shepherd’s equipment (crook and pouch and tarbox and awl and dog); of rustic food (brown bread, mushrooms, nuts, and a whole range of milk products from butter and curds to junkets and cheesecakes) – but all of these can be used for purposes either of celebration or of complaint, since the loss of such things can evoke the suffering of the rural victims of all those groups of freebooting pillagers who made life so persistently wretched for the victims of any age of war, and not least the peasants of the Hundred Years War. The pastoral ideal at its most idyllic is the closest to perfection imaginable: poets will present a GoldenAge-like fantasy where it is always April or May, where there is endless leisure for singing, dancing and rural games. The minimum requirement for contentment is rather simpler, consisting merely of sufficiency of food and clothing, peace, and security. And in war, all those are absent. Two things follow from imagery of this kind. First, it gives a strong weighting towards using the condition of countryside at large as a measure of 9 10

Jacques Bereau, ed. Gaultier, pp. 62–7. Warton, Five Pastoral Eclogues, in The Works of the English Poets, ed. Chalmers, vol. 18, pp. 136–41.

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Helen Cooper the political condition of the state. It does not look to the group interests of the rich or the noble: it offers an inclusive vision, in which the poor and the disempowered punch above their weight. A number of bergerie texts use pastoral precisely because it allows that kind of appeal to be made on behalf of the powerless. Second, the fantasy element is frequently set in balance with a strong appeal to religious ordering. What from one angle is wishful fantasy is from another angle normative: how things ought to be, how God would have them be. Eden, the Biblical parallel to the mythological Golden Age, may have been lost at the Fall,11 but the annunciation made to the Bethlehem shepherds promised an age in which there would be peace on earth for men of good will. The annunciation to the shepherds was widely taken as an injunction against war: Gower, for instance, offers as a paraphrase of the angels’ message to the shepherds of ‘pes to the men of welwillinge’ that ‘ther schal no dedly werre be’.12 One favourite way to represent France in royal entries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was to show it as a park or garden inhabited by shepherds and shepherdesses enjoying the pastimes of peace, and such pageants often incorporated the angels too.13 God had promised that the shepherd-subject should enjoy peace, and it was a measure of the king’s fulfilment of his role as pastor of his people that he should bring that about. Civic pageants of the annunciation to realistic-looking shepherds are therefore making a political rather than a rural or a religious statement; but their method and effect are very different from the advice to the king such as would emanate from his council. They offer an image of a desirable end, but contain very little on any practical means of achieving it. All this presents problems for any modern historian who might want to make use of these bergerie pageants and texts. There is little narrative variety in a society that consists of shepherds and sheep, and not very much more even when shepherdesses are added in. To modern commentators, therefore, tableaux and pageants and royal entries from different decades or cities can appear just to replicate each other; but to their original spectators, the familiar material was always defined and qualified by its known topical context. Such matters as their target audience and the immediate political or local circumstances that impelled the choice of pastoral imagery were evident at the time: they did not need to be spelled out, and so were not recorded. We have the advantage of knowing about the pageants through records in contemporary accounts or civic minute-books, where they are at

11

The parallel was made most familiar by means of another pastoral work, the tenth-century Eclogue of Theodulus: see Theoduli Eclogam, ed. Osternacher. It remained a favourite school text until well into the Renaissance. 12 Confessio amantis, III.2256–62, in The English Works of John Gower, ed. Macaulay. 13 See Kipling, Enter the King, pp. 99–102, on the appearance of shepherds rejoicing at good news, and fig. 2 for the Virgin Mary portrayed with shepherds in Pierre Gringore’s pageant for Mary Tudor’s entry into Paris in 1514.

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Speaking for the Victim least embedded in a specific time and place, but the problems become much worse in the case of full-scale allegorical political drama, which tends to survive in the form of texts without any such contextualizing information. The verbal detail of a play text is likely to carry more information than a bare descriptive record, but that information may be no more occasionspecific than the parks or angels of the tableaux. The drama is typically concerned to promote a state of affairs closer to the ideal; and ideals do not vary very much over time. An author, furthermore, may make a choice for pastoral imagery, the metaphor of the shepherd world, precisely because he wants to promote a timeless vision above messy contemporary detail. The problem of using such material for historiographical purposes is compounded by the principles governing why particular texts survive. The literature of political comment should be the most historically specific kind of imaginative writing; but the more specific it is, the more likely it is to die with the event that gave rise to it. It needs to have some continuing relevance beyond its immediate context if it is to be worth preserving, and so the more generalized the complaints or the wishes for peace, the greater its chances of survival. One apparently fifteenth-century pastoral morality play, for instance, entitled Mieulx que devant, discussed further below, survives only in a mid sixteenth-century print;14 and it may be the very generalization of its wishes for peace, and the absence of unequivocal identifying allusions in its text, that made it worth publishing at all. Further problems of dating arise from the extended relevance of the topic that frequently calls forth writing of this kind: the suffering of the peasantry. Unless there is some very clear hint in the text, it is very difficult to distinguish between the misery caused by one set of marauding soldiers and another. In the fifteenth century, the expulsion of the English from France did not put an end to war or hardship, though the intensity of the misery engendered by the Hundred Years War left that period etched in people’s minds as representing the archetype of suffering, rather as warnings of ‘Boney’ were used to scare children long after the threat from Napoleon was gone. References to the English occupation or the activities of the freebooters do not therefore necessarily allude to a present military situation. They may be more of a symbolic after-image of miseries already long gone, used to express a sense of the continuing injustices of the present; and so their time-frame is much more difficult to sort out than for chronicles or historical narratives that locate their action securely in the past. The action of a play or a pageant is always in the present tense, and can represent with equal ease the memory of what happened in the past, fear of what is happening in the present time of the performance, or hope for what might happen in the future; but memory, fear and hope are rarely separated out along a clear chronological time-line. 14

It was printed in Lyons by Barnabé Chaussard; facsmile reproduction in Le Recueil du British Museum, no. 57.

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Helen Cooper There is just a handful of bergerie texts that identify their historical moment explicitly, but many do so almost incidentally. It is only Jean Bodel’s mention of the river Lys that gives a date and context to his pastourelle (1199, when the crossing of the river represented a crucial moment in the Franco-Flemish campaign his shepherdess deplores); without that, it would be impossible to identify its topicality. Very occasionally, an author will provide a more comprehensive key to decode the allegorical actions within his work. The most elaborate of these is given in the Pastoralet, a poem of epic scope and length on the early fifteenth-century civil wars of the Burgundians and Armagnacs. The author names himself in an acrostic at the end as ‘Bucarius’: his actual identity is unknown. The work is divided into chapters, each with its own non-allegorical summary of the historical events described, and further assistance is given by an ‘exposition’ at the end in which all the proper names are given their historical equivalents.15 It was written as a eulogy of Jean sans Peur, though since it refers to the death of Henry V it cannot have been completed before 1422. It was therefore written from closer to the centre of power, and more on behalf of the centre of power, than most such works. The Pastoralet’s panegyric function probably ensured its preservation, in the Burgundian ducal library. It still stresses the misery of the inhabitants of the French countryside as an indictment of the proud and madding princes who plague them; but that emphasis is possible because it is the Armagnacs who are blamed for that misery. The Pastoralet announces its method at the start: ‘Chi commenche le Pastoralet, ou quel Bucarius faintement par pastourrie descrist la devision des Franchois et la désolation du roialme de France’ – ‘Here begins the Pastoralet, in which Bucarius under the cover of shepherds describes the division of the French and the desolation of the realm of France.’ The statement indicates both the method of the work (‘par pastourrie’) and the reason that such pastoral allegory is appropriate: ‘devision’ is the opposite of that social harmony which ideal shepherd society embodies, and the desolation of the realm is the concrete expression of the destruction of that ideal as represented in the landscape as well as in the people. The materials from which its poetic text is woven are those of the familiar contrasts between golden-age idyllicism and military destruction. The work opens with the country portrayed as a locus amoenus, an ideal landscape filled with shepherds and shepherdesses singing and dancing, but with a warning sounded that this Eden will not last: C’estoit un droit paradis, Se cest déduit durast toudis.

(355–6)

It would have been a true paradise if this delight had lasted for ever. 15

The edition used here is that by Kervyn de Lettenhove in Chroniques relatives à l’histoire de Belgique, which is still more easily accessible than that by Blanchard, Le Pastoralet. For a substantial account of the work, see Blanchard’s Pastorale, pp. 149–235.

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Speaking for the Victim In a postlapsarian world, however, pleasure alone is not enough: shepherds should think of their flocks before their amusements. These particular shepherds turn out to be ‘roiaux et gentils’ (112); the commons, when they eventually figure, lead a kind of wer-sheep existence, sometimes cast as suffering herdsmen whose food and musical instruments are stolen by the aristocratic shepherds, sometimes as the mistreated flocks to whom the wolves are no more dangerous than the evil shepherds (the Armagnacs, that is) who shear them up to twelve times a year. Love itself becomes a danger. The principal shepherdess is named Belligère, and she is not so much the bearer of beauty (belle) as of war (bellum); and her name also echoes the queen’s, Ysabeau or Isabel. She is seduced by Tristifer (the sorrow-bearer, as Lucifer was once the light-bearer), standing for Louis, duke of Orleans. The pastourelle or Golden Age model of the accessible shepherdess is now a political and ethical horror. The events of the war are still more horrible. They reach their climax in the sacking of Compiègne, represented in accordance with the pastoral metaphor as a parc (chapter XII), like the peaceful shepherd worlds represented in the civic entries; but now, instead of the ‘droit paradis’ that France might have been, it has become something more reminiscent of Hell, in the shrieks and howls of the shepherds as they try to escape slaughter and the shepherdesses as they are raped. In between such episodes of gruesome violence, there are increasingly temporary scenes of idyllic life, of revelry and songs in praise of the peace and contentment of the shepherd world. They are not, however, ironic: it is suggested rather that they are normative, how things ought to be, and that sense is given authority by an appeal both to figures from Virgil’s Eclogues, and to the Good Shepherd, Christ. Bucarius’s choice of method may now seem bizarre, and there are times when his tropes of representation stretch credibility: the new-forged crooks glinting before a battle, for instance (6426–8). But the method is not arbitrary, and pastoral allegory, with its all-pervasive implicit appeal for something better than civil strife, turns his work from being a partisan narrative chronicle to a committed plea, not for the Burgundian cause alone, but for government dedicated to the good of the people. Its protagonists are the aristocrats who hold political power and are responsible for the war; and of those, the ones cast as villains act for self-interest or self-gratification or power without regard to the consequences for the country at large and its inhabitants. The pastoral metaphor insistently writes those consequences back in. The shepherds and shepherdesses who represent the commons have a role in the text somewhat comparable to the chorus in an opera (or indeed in Greek tragedy, a form equally unknown in the early fifteenth century): they are not distinguished as individuals, but express their own hopes and fears in interludes of revels and singing or in episodes that deny all such possibilities, such as the anti-musical howling at Compiègne. They have their own agendas that are profoundly at odds with the political and military actions of the named characters, agendas which are specifically opposed to 223

Helen Cooper any kind of intervention in their own world. The work thus inverts the usual point of view of political narrative, to make the victims, not the powerful, those whose interests are most forcefully represented. The other two texts with which this essay will be concerned are both plays, and both lack the decoding key provided for the Pastoralet. Each survives in a unique copy that offers no information about the origins of the text it contains; but both, in terms of language, imagery and subject, seem likely to belong to the later Hundred Years War. Few scholars have looked at them, and there is no consensus as to just what they represent, or when they were written. A close reading to make their conventions yield up a locality, a moment, and an audience, may come tantalizingly close to resolution, but it can never quite get beyond hypothesis. Both, however, are deeply revealing about the way people thought and feared and hoped. The first is a play headed in its sole manuscript Moralité à cincq personnages, though it has more frequently been entitled, from its two primary characters, the Moralité du Petit et du Grand.16 It is much the longest and most elaborate of the surviving pastoral moralities, running to almost 1700 lines. Its key property is a fountain, and the easiest way to supply that would have been to use an existing one in a city street, as was regularly done for pageants for royal entries. The play, like them, spells out a series of allegorical meanings for its various parts: the basin, the spouts, the water. The Moralité, however, is too long and difficult for ordinary street presentation. It contains, for instance, a summary of Boethius’s explanation of how the influence of Providence weakens with its distance from its centre, God: an explanation that would threaten to lose a less than attentive outdoor audience. Yet who it was written for is crucial to answering the question of what it is about. The speech and action of the play vary between a generalized and conventional condemnation of the present in comparison with a lost ideal of shepherd life, and what seems to be very specific detail. It opens with Le Petit and Le Grant, shepherds who represent the commons and the nobility, lamenting the loss of good times past, in terms derived from learned Latin traditions, Virgil and Ovid. Each of them accuses the other of responsibility for their present misery. Dame Justice enters and castigates them at length for their moral failures; they reply by blaming the eglantine, representing England, that has rooted itself in their country and that is blocking the 16

Its late fifteenth-century manuscript, Paris, B.N.F. ms fr. 25467, presents numerous difficulties, not least on account of the scribe’s eccentricities of orthography, which at the extreme produce a number of non-existent words. These led to editors avoiding it for many years; it was finally edited by Blanchard, La Moralité à cincq personnages du manuscrit B.N. fr. 25467, who suggests that the copyist did not understand what he was writing. My discussion is based on my own transcription of the manuscript, though the differences in reading do not affect the points made here. Other scholars who make mention of the play follow the practice of naming it after its characters, established in de Julleville’s Répertoire du Théatre comique en France au moyen-age, no. 58.

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Speaking for the Victim fountain of Justice. An old shepherd named Conseill then appears, to expound the origins of the eglantine and to encourage Le Petit and Le Grant to attack and uproot it, something which, after more quarrels, they proceed to do: a rare piece of real action in a political morality, but still a rather extraordinary way of eliding what war actually involves. The fountain of Justice flows again, and the shepherds ask for a guardian to preserve it in the future. Dame Justice runs through a long list of possibilities, ending with Paris. In the first instance, this is the Trojan Paris, who had himself spent time as a shepherd, but whose experience of judging (in the episode of the three goddesses) might be considered less than encouraging. Le Petit and Le Grant, however, jump at the prospect, and Justice substitutes ‘ung Paris de plus grant renom’ – the city – for the original bearer of the name. Paris is accordingly summoned, and agrees to guard the fountain with the assistance of Conseill. Justice explains the allegorical meanings of the various pipes of the fountain before leaving its care to the others. The final speech within the action comes from Conseill, who predicts a future not unlike the golden past for which the shepherds were longing at the start of the play; and Paris speaks an epilogue to the ‘messeigneurs’ who constitute the audience, apologizing in case the play is not as clever as their capacité might have wished, and confirming that the eglantine has been uprooted, that Justice will flow freely under the guardianship of Paris, and that the country will unite as one flock under one shepherd (John 10.16). One set of circumstances presents itself as particularly appropriate as a context for the play. Its main action, concerning the extirpation of the English eglantine and the restoration of the source of Justice to Paris, could be a recollection of what has happened or a hope for what might happen, but it must indicate some immediate and urgent interest in both topics. There is only one date that fits with such an interest, and that is 1437: the year after the English had been expelled from Paris, and the year in which the Parlement, the institution centrally concerned with the administration of justice, returned to the city.17 Since 1418, the royal Parlement had operated from Poitiers, in parallel with an Anglo-Burgundian Parlement that continued to function from Paris. Charles VII had played with the idea of closing down the Paris Parlement altogether, but that proved impracticable. He therefore decided instead to amalgamate the two, while keeping a majority of members who had remained loyal to the French crown. Some Burgundian nominees, but no

17

There are complicating factors in some of the detail of the work; most previous commentators, including Blanchard in his edition, have favoured 1480 or later. Lewicka concurs with a date of 1437: see her edition of La Bergerie de l’agneau de France à cinq personnages, pp. 9–10. I discuss the dating more extensively, including my reasons for disagreeing with the later dates proposed, in ‘The Hundred Years War and the Golden Age’, cited in the first of these notes.

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Helen Cooper English ones, were allowed to remain. On 1 December 1437 the new joint Parlement was installed and its opening session held.18 Could the play have been performed to advise such a move, or indeed to celebrate it? It goes out of its way to avoid attaching excessive blame to those who had supported the planting of the eglantine in France: it had initially appeared sweet and profitable, and its vicious thorns only became apparent when it was too late (542–64). The Moralité is a play of reconciliation, so long as everyone is now prepared to unite in getting rid of the eglantine, and it is careful to avoid recriminations – a position in keeping with a slight Burgundian tinge to the language of the piece. Those who opposed the English are praised, those who did not have seen the error of their ways. The long passage in which various guardians of the fountain of Justice are proposed and rejected leaves Paris as the only option within the action of the play, and implies that there is no plausible alternative in the real world. The constant Classical references within the play – not just the flurry of Ovid and Virgil and Theodulus at the start, but some heavy doses of Boethius, pseudo-Seneca, Cicero, and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics later – were inserted presumably not just to show off the author’s education, but to appeal to a legal and clerical audience who would appreciate a tribute to their own learning. It would fit very well the opening session of the Parlement, which was attended by a whole flock of archbishops and bishops as well as lawyers. There is, however, no mention of Charles VII himself in the play, nor any figure or image who represents him. The omission strongly suggests that it was not intended for performance anywhere where he was likely to appear. His pathological avoidance of Paris would again support a 1437 date, since he did not re-enter the city until some time later. It would also fit with such a scenario that Le Petit stands for the common people only at some distance. He is cast as a shepherd, and the shepherd’s clothing was immediately distinctive;19 but although real herdsmen and peasants are not excluded from what he represents, and their sufferings get some emphasis, he also stands for the commons in the Estates General sense, those of the middle rank rather than at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Indeed, if an alternative occasion is sought for the play, if its action is retrospective rather than future or present, then a meeting of the Estates General would be a credible alternative. The play urges peace between the commons and the nobility as well as between supporters of the French and English crowns, in a way that would be appropriate for such an occasion.20 There is a strong implication

18

See Bossuet, ‘Le Parlement de Paris pendant l’occupation anglaise’; Neuville, ‘Le Parlement royal à Poitiers (1418–1436)’; and de Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, III.427–9. 19 See Salter, ‘The Annunciation to the Shepherds in later medieval art and drama’ and the accompanying plates; and Cooper, Pastoral, pp. 51–5 and plates. 20 Such a meeting was scheduled to take place in Paris in September 1439, though it was in fact transferred to Orleans. The date would still be close enough to the events of 1437 for a performance to retain its topicality.

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Speaking for the Victim that Le Petit and Le Grant are not just innocent victims; they are partly responsible for the mess that the country is in, and they need to take action to get out of it.21 The next text I wish to discuss by contrast concerns itself centrally with the very lowest levels of society, and with victims who are both undeserving and helpless. The Bergerie nouvelle fort joyeuse et morale de Mieulx que devant, ‘a most pleasant new pastoral morality of “Better than before” ’, is a short play with a very simple action.22 It opens with two shepherds named Plat Pays (that is, open country, easy to invade; it could, but need not, carry an allusion to the flat plains of the Low Countries) and Peuple Pensif (its grieving inhabitants). They exist somewhere between being the personifications implied by their names, and the type characters implied by their speeches and their utter destitution, the latter defining them as representing the suffering commons. The play starts with the two of them lamenting their state in familiar terms: the shepherds’ songs have ceased; April and May, the conventional idyllic months, no longer exist. A full three-quarters of the play, furthermore, is devoted to a relentless exposition of the successive depredations they have suffered. The countryside is overrun by men at arms who steal or kill their sheep and cattle and poultry, fire the hedges, and take all their possessions, their cooking pots and their clothes. The first garments mentioned as having been stolen are their finer clothes, their Sunday outfits, but it then transpires that even their rags have been taken. If the text of the play is to be trusted, far from being recognizable as shepherds by their outfits, these men are naked. What little action the play has consists solely of the entry of a ‘noble shepherdess’ named Bonne Esperance, who comes in singing. She is followed by Mieulx-que-devant himself, who announces the imminent arrival of good times in the form of yet another personification, Roger Bon-Temps. Roger is a type character familiar from other texts, but he never figures in person within this play. Things, in fact, get ‘better than before’, but ‘good times’ never actually arrive within the dramatic action. How is it possible to make historical sense of a text of this kind? It would fit almost any period of rural crisis or depression, and that may indeed be why it survived to be printed, as a kind of all-purpose lament for hardship and vague hope for amelioration. Even here, however, there is one strain of 21

A better-known instance of a comparable argument in non-dramatic form occurs in Alain Chartier’s Quadrilogue Invectif, of 1422, in which a personified France chastises all three estates, Le Peuple, Le Chevalier and Le Clergé, for not aiding her; Le Peuple, who is introduced lying on the ground ‘plaintif et langoureux’ (but who is not here specified as a shepherd), describes bitterly how the others have overturned the order of justice to live off the poor without giving any protection of land or livelihood in return (Alain Chartier, ed. Droz, pp. 10–11, 20–2). 22 See note 12 above for its preservation; the only edition with any annotation is by Fournier, Le Théâtre français avant la Renaissance, pp. 54–60.

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Helen Cooper allusion that seems to be audible, this time to the France of the écorcheurs, the bands who were ravaging the countryside in the 1430s to 50s, and who were perhaps the nastiest of all the roving men-at-arms of the Hundred Years War. They were famously described by Thomas Basin in his Histoire de Charles VII as having instituted a period of constant terror.23 Work in the fields, he tells us, was confined to an area within earshot of a trumpeter stationed on a lookout point such as a church tower, who could sound a warning if any armed men were spotted so that the peasants could attempt to seek refuge, and protect at least themselves if not their goods. This is the scenario described by Peuple Pensif as a key element of his constant insecurity: Quant je os la trompette Sonner la retraicte, Je suis en soucy. When I hear the trumpet summon us back, I am afraid.

The trumpet is altogether an alien instrument in the shepherd world of flutes and bagpipes. It belongs to the martial world, a world where security is impossible, and its very mention in a bergerie setting is a symbolic indication of how wrong things have gone. The écorcheurs, the ‘flayers’, got their name from their habit of stripping their victims of everything they possessed, and these naked shepherds bear eloquent witness to such a process. The text also contains what may be allusions to Charles VII’s attempts, beginning in 1448 but initially not very successful, to suppress the irregular armed bands and set up properly ordered companies in their place: a reference that would suggest a date shortly after the middle of the century.24 There are however other possibilities. The shepherds also speak of a ‘maulvais vent’, an ill wind, blowing from England and keeping them in a state of dread. It sounds as if it should relate to a particular moment, but the reference could fit almost any date between 1415 and 1453, or 1475 (when Edward IV invaded France), or the years after the accession of Henry VII (when English troops crossed the Channel in support of the Breton quarrel with France), or indeed, since the Hundred Years War epitomized the suffering of the peasantry symbolically as well as historically, almost any other year of the century.25 There is a description of a performance of what 23

Ed. and trans. Samaran, Classiques de l’histoire de France au moyen age, I.84–9. For more detail, see Wright, Knights and Peasants, and, on the écorcheurs in particular, the classic account by Petit-Dutaillis, Charles VII, Louis XI, et les premières années de Charles VIII, Histoire de France ed. Lavisse IV.2, pp. 86–93. 24 The clue to this lies in the technical terms used by the text to refer to the men at arms (‘quassés’, or the contrasting ‘compaignies d’ordonnance’). Fournier accordingly dates the play to the middle of the century. 25 For a counter-argument (based on the use of the word ‘picque’ to describe the pain of war, and on the possible allusion in the play’s mention of ‘folle noise’ to the ‘Guerre folle’) that

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Speaking for the Victim sounds very like this piece in 1493, played before Margaret of Austria, daughter of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy, when she was released by Louis XII after spending some years effectively as a hostage. After the peace accord of the Treaty of Senlis she was handed back to the Burgundians and entertained at Valenciennes with a play put on by the townspeople, ‘and the said play was based on the desertion of the country which was beginning to recover, all in pastoral mode’:26 a description very close indeed to Mieulx que devant. Such a context would give extra meaning to the plat pays, since so much of the war concluded by the treaty had been fought over the Low Countries; it would give an additional spin to the bergerète franche who brings Good Hope, who would be a figure for Margaret herself; and the late date would reduce the long gap between performance and publication. It sounds an attractive solution; but it would leave unexplained the play’s strong sense of the desolation of the 1430s and 1440s, and the apparent allusions that link in with that – the warning trumpet, the shepherds’ nakedness. If Mieulx que devant does indeed date from as late as 1493, we can none the less say with confidence that it is still using the anxieties and the images that had been established in the later stages of the Hundred Years War. If it was written several decades earlier, the play might have been imitated or recycled in 1493, for its message would still be appropriate; but neither imitation nor recycling is a necessary hypothesis to explain the overlap. Peace always offers the hope of prosperity, security, and the end of fear and devastation, and an author’s choice of the pastoral mode is also a commitment to the contrast of near-mythical happiness and its appalling opposite. Texts of this kind occupy the shadowy hinterland between history and literature, and seem at first glance to offer little for analysis to scholars of either discipline. They are useless as documentary records on account of their imprecision. They are too heavily dependent on convention to attract modernist literary critics, with their privileging of originality as the greatest of literary virtues; and they are too obscure in their relationship to the sources of power to provide much grist for New Historicists. They do none the less provide a glimpse, as more strictly historical records cannot, of what it felt like to be living through, or in the aftermath of, the Hundred Years War. They tell us what people sensed had gone wrong, and what it was that mattered to them, not as facts but as images. They represent their dreams of order and security, so much easier to imagine in metaphor than in terms of practical politics. And not least, they show the long shadow cast by the trauma of war over its victims. the play dates from the mid- or late 1480s, see Lewicka’s introduction to La Bergerie de l’agneau de France, p. 9. Blanchard concurs with the 1480s dating, suggesting further that the bergière who brings hope is a reference to Anne de Beaujeu (La Pastorale en France, pp. 289–93). See also Cooper, ‘The Hundred Years War’. 26 Chroniques de Jean Molinet, ed. Doutrepont and Jodogne, II.373: ‘et estoit ledit jeu fondé sur la desertion du pays qui revenoit à convalessense, et tout sur bergerie’.

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Works Cited I. Sources Bartsch, Karl, ed., Romances et pastourelles françaises des XIIe et XIII siècles (1870, repr. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967). Basin, Thomas, Histoire de Charles VII, ed. and trans. Charles Samaran, Classiques de l’histoire de France au moyen age (Paris: Société d’édition ‘Les belles Lettres, 1933). Bereau, Jacques, Les Églogues et aultres oeuvres poétiques, ed. Michel Gaultier, Textes littéraires français (Geneva: Droz, 1976). La Bergerie de l’agneau de France, ed. Halina Lewicka, Textes littéraires français (Geneva: Droz, 1961). La Bergerie nouvelle fort joyeuse et morale de Mieulx que devant, in Le Théâtre français avant la Renaissance, ed. Edouard Fournier, 2nd edn (Paris: Laplace, Sanchez, 1873). Blanchard, Joël, Le Pastoralet (Paris: Champion, 1983). Blenerhasset, Thomas, The Revelation of the True Minerva, facsimile ed. Josephine Waters Bennett (New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1941). ‘Bucarius’, Pastoralet, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove in Chroniques relatives à l’histoire de Belgique (Brussels, 1873). Chartier, Alain, Le Quadrilogue Invectif, ed. E. Droz, Classiques français du moyen age, 2nd edn (Paris: Champion, 1950). Gower, John, The English Works of John Gower, ed. G. C. Macaulay, EETS E.S. 81 (1900) Jean de Brie, Le Bon Berger, ed. Paul Lacroix (Paris, 1879). Mieulx que devant, facsimile reproduction in Le Recueil du British Museum: Fac-similé des soixante-quatre pièces de l’original, intro. Halina Lewicka (Geneva: Slatkine, 1970), no. 57. Molinet, Jean, Chroniques de Jean Molinet, ed. Georges Doutrepont and Omer Jodogne (Brussels: Académie royale de Belgique, 1935). La Moralité à cincq personnages du manuscrit B.N. fr. 25467, ed. Joël Blanchard, Textes littéraires français (Geneva: Droz, 1988). Theodulus, Theoduli Eclogam, ed. Joannes Osternacher (Uhrfahr-Linz, 1902). Warton, Thomas, Five Pastoral Eclogues, in The Works of the English Poets, ed. Alexander Chalmers, vol. 18 (London, 1810). Virgil, The Pastoral Poems, trans. E. V. Rieu (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1954).

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II. Studies Blanchard, Joël, La Pastorale en France aux XIVe et XVe siècles (Paris: Champion, 1983). Bossuet, André, ‘Le Parlement de Paris pendant l’occupation anglaise’, Revue historique 229 (1963): 19–40. Cooper, Helen, ‘The Hundred Years War and the Golden Age: French Pastoral Moralities’, in Order and Disorder: Rationalities and Mentalities in the Medieval World, ed. Lesley Smith and Giles Gaspar (forthcoming). Cooper, Helen, Pastoral: Mediaeval into Renaissance (Ipswich: D. S. Brewer, 1977). de Beaucourt, G. du Fresne, Histoire de Charles VII (Paris: Librairie de la Société bibliographique, 1885). de Julleville, L. Petit, Répertoire du Théatre comique en France au moyen-age (Paris: Cerf, 1886). Kipling, Gordon, Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). Neuville, Didier, ‘Le Parlement royal à Poitiers (1418–1436)’, Revue historique 6 (1878): 272–314. Petit-Dutaillis, Charles, Charles VII, Louis XI, et les premières années de Charles VIII, Histoire de France (Paris: Hachette, 1902). Salter, Elizabeth, English and International: Studies in the Literature, Art and Patronage of Medieval England, ed. Derek Pearsall and Nicolette Zeeman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Wright, Nicholas, Knights and Peasants: The Hundred Years War in the French Countryside (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998).

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Index Achilles, 30 Acre, siege of, 33, 36–37 Æthelflæd of Mercia, 190 Agincourt, battle of, 6, 8, 77, 80–81, 84, 87 Alcuin, 16 Alexander the Great, 9–10, 30, 98–99, 118, 122, 158, 178 Amazons, 189, 203, 206 Ambroise, 9, 29–48 Andrew of Chauvigny, 9, 29, 36–37 Anglo-Saxons, 5 Antoine de Brabant, 81 Aquinas, Thomas, 17 Aristotle, 17, 226 Arthur, king, 127–45, 201 Ascham, Roger, 171 Augustine, 7 Bannockburn, battle of, 109, 115 Barbazan, Arnaud Guilhem de, 85 Barbour, John, 10, 107–25 Basin, Thomas, 89, 228 Bede, 16 Beowulf, 195 Bereau, Jacques, 219 bergerie, 12, 216–29 Berry Herald, see Le Bouvier, Gilles Bertrand du Guesclin, 26 Blenerhasset, Thomas, 214–15, 218 Bodel, Jean, 12, 213–15, 219, 222 Boece, Hector, 111 Boethius, 148, 224 Bokenham, Osbern, 208 Bonet, Honoré, see Bouvet, Honoré Bono, Giamboni, 22–23 Bourgeois de Paris, 77, 81–85 Bouvet, Honoré, 82, 93–94, 101–2 Bouvines, battle of, 20, 53, 55 Bruce, Edward, 112–14 Bruce, Robert, see Robert I (king of Scotland) Bucarius, 222–24 Burgundian chroniclers, 77–92 Canes, siege of, 192 Carolingian Empire, 3, 16–17 Cato, 98 Chanson de Guillaume, 35

Charlemagne, 3, 35, 117–18 Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, 26 Charles V (king of France), 26, 217 Charles VI (king of France), 26 Charles VII (king of France), 89, 225 Bergerie nouvelle fort joyeuse et morale de Mieulx que devant, see Mieulx que devant Chartier, Alain, 82 Chartier, Jean, 86 Chastelain, Georges, 77–80 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 6, 11, 147–67, 188, Anelida and Arcite, 151, 166, Boece, 148, House of Fame, 147, 154, 156–62, Knight’s Tale, 148, 153–54, 203–5, Romaunt of the Rose, 148, Tale of Melibee, 130, 148, 153, Troilus and Criseyde, 148–51, 166, 205, Retraccions, 160 Chrétien de Troyes, 197, 198, 201 Christine de Pizan, 10, 93–105, 190–91 Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoriis, 190 Chronique de la Pucelle, 87–89 Chronique des Rois de France, 20 Clement, Aubery, 9, 29, 33–37 Cochon, Pierre, 81–85 Compiègne, sack of, 223 Complainte sur la bataille de Poitiers, 84 Conrad IV (king of Germany), 68–69 Conrad of Winterstetten, 50–51, 68–69 Crécy, battle of (1346), 80 Crusades, 4–5, 7, 29–48, 188, 193 Curtius (Quintus Curtius Rufus), 58–68 Dante, 157, 159, 165 Darius, king of Persia, 65–66, 70 David II (king of Scotland), 113 Declaration of Arbroath, 121–22 Denis the Carthusian, 25 Douglas, James, 109–12, 114–15, 117, 120–22 Ebba of Collingham, Abbess, 194 écorcheurs, 8, 216, 228 Edward I (king of England), 110 Edward II (king of England), 109 Edward III (king of England), 4, 78 Edward IV (king of England), 6, 179–80, 228 Edward, the Black Prince (prince of Wales and Guyenne), 78

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Index Elizabeth I (queen of England), 214–15 Enguerrand de Monstrelet, 78–79, 81, 86 Etienne de Vignolles, ‘La Hire’, 88 Fierebras, 10, 117–18, 122 Flodden, 8 Franks, 4, 189–90 Fredegund (queen of Franks), 189–90 Frederick II (Emperor of Germany), 50, 69 Froissart, Jean, 78–80, 82, 94–95, 104, 192 Frontinus, Julius, 16, 93, 99 Genesis A, 195 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 10–11, 127–31, 133–34, 137, 140–41 Germanic kingdoms, 4–5 Gerson, Jean, 82 Gest Historiale, 148–49 Giles of Rome, 17 Golden Legend, 208 Gower, John, 156, 165, 220 Gray, Sir Thomas, 120–21 Gregory of Tours, 189 Gruel, Guillaume, 87 Hainant, Count of, 30 Harfleur, 82 Havel, Vaclav, 162–65 Havelok the Dane, 196 Hector, 30, 178 Heldris de Cornuälle, 206–7 Henry I (king of England), 4 Henry IV (king of England), 162 Henry V (king of England), 8, 79–80 Henry VI (king of England), 6 Henry VII (king of England), 228 Margaret (queen of Austria), 229 Henry VII (king of Germany), 68–69 Historia de preliis, 70 Hobbe, see Hood, Robin Homer, Iliad, 158, 169 Hood, Robin, 119 Hundred Years War, 5, 6, 10, 12, 77–92, 113, 179, 213–29 Ipomadon, 201 Isidore, 16 Islamic Empire, 3–4 Italian states, 4 Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, 30, 33, 35 James of Avesnes, 9, 29–33, 36–37 Jean de Brie, 217 Jean de Brienne, count of Eu, 21 Jean de Brienne, king of Jerusalem, 21 Jean de Bueil, 88–90 Jean de Meun, 21–23 Jean de Montreuil, 82

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Jean de Venette, 82 Jean de Vignai, 22–23 Jean de Wavrin, 78, 80–81, 86 Jean le Bel, 78–9, 86 Jean le Fèvre de Saint-Rémy, 78, 81, 86 Priorat, Jean de Besançon, 22–23 Joan of Arc, 6, 77, 85, 191 Jofrit, duke of Brabant, 51–57 John (king of England), 5, 80 John Balliol (king of Scotland), 110–11 John II, ‘the Good’ (king of France), 26 John of Salisbury, 9, 17 Judith, 11, 207–8 Julius Caesar, 10, 161 La Hire, see Etienne de Vignolles Langtoft, 107 La
amon, 10–11, 127, 132–33, 136–37, 141–42, 144 Le Bouvier, Gilles, the ‘Berry Herald’, 77, 87, 90 Liber Historiae Francorum, 189 Louis VI (king of France), 4 Lusignan, heroes of, 31 Malory, Sir Thomas, 1, 10–11, 139–40, 144–45, 169–86, 197–99 Mannyng, Robert, 127, 134–35, 137, 142 Matthew Paris, 193–95 Merovingian Empire, 3 Methven, battle of, 113, 116 Mieulx que devant, 221, 227–29 Mort le Roi Artu, 179 Morte Arthur, stanzaic, 179, 181 Morte Arthure, alliterative, 10–11, 127–29, 136–40, 142–45, 178, 181 Morte Darthur, see Malory, Sir Thomas Nimrod (king of Babylonia), 71 Normans, 4–5 Orléans, battle of, 6 Ottonian Empire, 3 Ovid, 217, 224 Paris, 225–26 Paston Letters, 191–92 Paston, Margaret, 191–92 Pastoralet, 222–24 pastourelles, 11–12, 213–31 Paul, Saint, 25 Peasants’ Revolt, 5 Peterborough Chronicle, 133 Philip II, ‘Augustus’ (king of France), 5, 20, 40–42, 53 Philip of Alsace, 30 Philip the Good (Duke of Burgundy), 78–80, 86 Philippe de Commynes, 10, 89–90

Index Pintoin, Michel, 81–86 Poitiers, battle of, 80, 84 Prose Merlin, 135–36 Rabanus Maurus, 16 Randolph, Thomas, 112–16 Richard I, ‘Coeur de Lion’ (king of England), 9, 29, 31, 33, 35–48 Richard II (king of England), 152, 155, 162, 165 Richilde of Hainault, 190 Robert Guiscard, 190 Robert I, ‘the Bruce’ (king of Scotland), 107–25 Robert II (king of Scotland), 109–13, 122 Roger of Wendover, 193–95 Roland, 35, 38 Roman Empire, 2–3, 5, 15 Rose-Troup, J. M., 187–88 Rouen, 82–83 routiers, 216 Rudolph von Ems, 9, 49–75 Rudolph von Ems, Alexander, 50, 58, 64–71, Willehalm von Orlens, 49–58, 64, 67–70 Saladin, 37–38, 42–46 Saphadin, 43–46 Sassoon, Siegfried, 1, 2 Saxo Grammaticus, 189, 207 Saxons, 4–5 Sedulus Scotus, 16 Seege off Melayne, 199

Siege of Jerusalem, 199–200 Sir Beues of Hamtoun, 201 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 196 Sir Orfeo, 203 Sir Percyvell of Gales, 197, 202 Sir Ysenbras, 155 South English Legendary, 11, 208 Spenser, Edmund, 206 Staufen, royal court of, 49–75 Thomas of Walsingham, 151 Towton, battle of, 6, 11 Tyre, siege of, 64, 66 Usk, Thomas, 153 Valerius Maximus, 93 Vegetius, Flavius Renatus, 9, 10, 15–28, 93 Vikings, 5, 193–94 Vincent of Beauvais, 17 Virgil, 148, 155, 165, 218–19, 223–24 Moralité à cincq personages, 224–27 Moralité du Petit et du Grand, 224–27 Visigoths, 3 Viterbo, siege of, 64–65 Wace, 10–11, 127–28, 131–33, 136–37, 140–42 Walter of Châtillon, 67, 155, 158–59, 165 Wars of the Roses, 1, 5–6, 179–80 Webiton, Sir John, 115 World War I, 1–2, 187–88 Wulfstan, 193 Ywain and Gawain, 196, 201–2

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