What purpose did men think war should serve? Many would have claimed that it served none, that it was but the result of the Fall and of sin, and that it brought only harm and hurt to the world. This opinion, which had a long Christian ancestry, was still widely held and propagated in the fourteenth century. It did not, however, go unchallenged. As far back as the late fourth century two men had expressed the view that war should be fought in order to bring about peace and order. One was Augustine, whose ideas were to be fundamental in forming medieval Europe’s views on the subject. The other was Vegetius, also a Christian, who likewise regarded war as a means of bringing about peace. His work on war, the De re militari, grew to become the main expression of the ideas of late antiquity on the aims of war and how it should best be fought. Cited in the writings of the Carolingian age, the De re militari began to enjoy a particular vogue during the renaissance of the twelfth century, being referred to as an authority on military matters by writers who had no first-hand knowledge of war. By the late thirteenth century, when the first translations into the vernacular were commissioned (often at the behest of men of a military cast of mind, such as Edward I, who had one made in Anglo-Norman) Vegetius was beginning to enjoy a popularity which was to last until early modern times. His view that war could be justified by the need to find peace, a view which won support from later philosophers, theologians and lawyers, was to be an influential one.
Implied in this idea was the notion that war was not, as some would have argued, the main cause of social disharmony, but rather the chief means of attaining the restoration of an order which had been broken by other causes. The influence of this view is clearly reflected in the works of the two thirteenth-century Dominican friars, Raymond of Peñafort and Thomas Aquinas, who, over a period of half a century, set out what was to become the orthodox justification of certain wars, the ‘just’ wars, as we term them. War, argued Aquinas, was the defence of peace which, in practice, might involve the forcible protection of rights, lands, or honours under threat or attack. This was its justification: ‘All who make war seek through war to arrive at a peace more perfect than existed before war.’
Such a view took account of the fact that war was likely to hurt some; for that reason every effort must be made to restrict it. But this did not prevent the Dominicans from setting out that war could be justified as a means of restoring order in situations of political or social disharmony, for instance between territories (here we see the beginnings of the idea of the territorial unit and the defence of its justifiable rights) or between sovereign rulers and their vassals (if the vassal chose to rebel against his lord and thus fell into a state of disobedience). Thus Aquinas, who stood in a long tradition which came to him through the teachings of the early canonists summed up in Gratian’s Decretum (1140), was clear that every state had both the right and the duty to defend itself, its legitimate existence, and its rights when these could be legally proved (‘It is legitimate to oppose force with force’, as Justinian’s Digest put it). In this way of thinking war was seen as an attempt to pursue a ‘reasonable’ claim which was being forcibly threatened or attacked, which implied not merely the use of force but the means of persuasion (propaganda) and discussion (negotiation) as well. As Sir John Fortescue was to write in the second half of the fifteenth century, ‘a King’s war is a legal trial by battle [when] he seeks the right he cannot obtain by peaceful means’. War was a means of restoring justice to society.
Legitimate war, however, was concerned not only with the defence of sovereign or historical rights to territory. The stability of feudal society had always depended upon a relationship of trust between lords and vassals. In a society in which the king was regarded as God’s regent, rebellion was seen as rising against an authority divinely appointed. The rebel or traitor was a destabilising influence, whose bad example might tempt others to emulate him. In such circumstances, war was a necessary and final punishment imposed upon a recalcitrant vassal who had ignored all calls to obey his feudal lord. It is for this reason that in so much of the literature and documentation dealing with the justification of a war emphasis was placed upon the enemy as a rebel who must be punished for his acts of infidelity or treason.
The French justified the war against the English in two main ways. It was an act of punishment, or vindictive justice, against an arch-rebel, the king of England as duke of Aquitaine, who had broken faith. It was also seen as a war of national self-defence against those who had invaded French territory and had incited loyal subjects into rebellion.1 For the English kings, on the other hand, war was an attempt to assert historic and feudal rights to Aquitaine, Normandy, and other parts of France, as well as their legal claim to the French crown, which had been unjustly denied them by successive French kings. The attentive listener present at the English coronation of Henry VI in 1429 would have heard the young king being exhorted to avenge injustices (‘ulciscaris iniusta’) and to be ‘the powerful defender of his country… triumphant over the enemy’ (‘sit fortissimus protector patrie… triumphator hostium’). The traditional way of doing this was through war.
The need for war, then, was fairly generally accepted, although it was widely recognized that it brought destruction and death. Although the innocent might suffer, such tragedies were often accepted philosophically as part of the divine will or punishment. In such a way of thinking, war was regarded as an invitation for divine intervention, carried out through the divine instrument, the soldier. Yet it was not merely an appeal to the strength of God that was being made. God was Goodness: He was Justice: Christ had shown himself humble even unto death. God would reward good; his judgements in battle would be just; he would favour the humble who honoured him and recognised his strength by bringing down the proud. Human power was as nothing compared with the strength of God.
Numbers on the field of battle counted for little. When Archbishop Bradwardine preached before Edward III after English victories at Crécy and Neville’s Cross in 1346 he claimed that God granted victory to whomever he willed, and he had willed to grant it to the virtuous. Experience clearly showed, Bradwardine declared, that virtue, not numbers, triumphed over the iniquity of the enemy. Similarly Henry V was seen as the Judas Maccabeus of his day who, faced by great odds at Agincourt, worried little about his lack of forces but trusted in the rightness of his cause, the piety of his people at home praying for him and for his army, and in divine strength. The result of the battle showed how just was the cause of England’s king. In effect, God had declared himself for the English and against the French. Had the French not been so proud, the anonymous chaplain of Henry V’s household asserted, they would have recognised that earlier defeats which they had experienced (he was referring to the battles fought at Sluys in 1340 and at Poitiers in 1356), constituted a clear sign of divine arbitrament, and much bloodshed would have been avoided. But what else could be expected from such a stiff-necked people?2
How did defeat, even the possibility of defeat, fit into this pattern of thought? Since it was to act against hope, it was wrong to assume that defeat was an explicit sign of divine condemnation of a cause from which there could be no recovery. To think that way made it almost impossible to understand a pattern of battle results other than that which pointed consistently in one direction. How, then, to explain defeat in a war which was regarded as just? The answer lay in seeing such defeats as signs of God’s temporary displeasure with a people, not with their cause, a displeasure which resulted from their sinfulness which was now being punished. On more than one occasion French writers explained the defeats and set-backs suffered by their kings and military leaders by emphasising that these were divine punishments for civil disorder and pride. Once the people had been chastised by God’s flail (‘flagellum Dei’), with the English acting as the instruments of his punishment, then the days of victory would return. Events were to justify such a view of things, and God was duly thanked, by the royal order that masses should be said to commemorate the defeat of the English at Formigny in April 1450, for the way he had turned his gaze towards the French cause which, for so long, had appeared to be lacking his support.3
If Frenchmen had doubts, Englishmen had them, too. What if the arguments conjured up to justify a war were false, or a king’s motives reflected factors (naked ambition, for instance) less worthy than a seeking after justice? The lingering doubts were probably always there, even if a war received the approval of the Church that it was being fought for a good cause. For men were worried not only by the fact that the cause for which they fought might not be morally sound. A more important matter concerned them: the fate of their souls in eternity if they were to die fighting for an unjust cause. Would men, misled into fighting for a cause which, in spite of claims made on its behalf, was a war fought for the wrong motives, be eternally damned if they met their death suddenly in battle, even if they were fighting out of loyalty to their king? In such a case it was argued, following St Augustine, that since the soldier was in the service of his lord, it was the lord who must accept responsibility.
A different answer, however, might be given to a soldier who followed a leader of his own choosing – for pay; he could not plead obedience if his conscience left him uneasy. St Antonino of Florence felt that the professional soldier could not fight in a war the justice of which was not above doubt, nor could he be given absolution as long as he continued to fight in that cause.4 The whole problem was one which drew some fine theatre from Shakespeare in Henry V.5 The playwright was only reflecting, dramatically, upon one aspect of the problem of death, and its consequences, which soldiers of the later Middle Ages had constantly before them.
To the knighthood, or chivalry, of the Middle Ages war had long given a sense of purpose. For the Christian, as we have seen, wars were acts of pacification since they were fought to secure peace which depended upon justice. Had not St Augustine written: ‘There are two friends, justice and peace’? The Crusades, in one view, had been an attempt to restore Christ’s inheritance (into which he had entered in triumph) both to him and to his heirs, the Christian community. Seen in feudal terms, the Crusades were a defence of the Lord’s rights to which, in all loyalty, all Christians should contribute, either personally or in other ways. Or, again, the Crusades might be seen, as they were in much propaganda, as wars fought to defend fellow Christians suffering physically at the hands of the Muslim world – those who took part being ‘fired by the ardour of charity’ towards their brothers.6
Such ideas might be translated into a more secular context nearer home. As Bishop Thomas Brinton of Rochester said when preaching at the time of the Black Prince’s death in the summer of 1376, it was part of a knight’s duty to help his king in time of war; failure to do so meant loss of the right to be called a knight, which was both a sign of honour and a mark of responsibility which had to be lived up to. The knight must be ready to fight hard when his prince required it of him; he must never desert; nor must he refuse to fight for the common good; and, above all, he must fight fearlessly. Particularly influential were the ideas of serving the feudal overlord, of fulfilling the obligation inherent in fidelity, and of helping to restore justice when the lord or his ally was deprived of what was justly his. As Bishop Brinton said, it had been to restore a rightful heir to his kingdom and to defeat tyranny that the campaign in northern Spain had been fought in 1367. Without justice there could be no peace; a knight was in honour bound to strive for justice, and at the ceremony of his dubbing his sword had been blessed so that, with the approval of the Church thus clearly implied, it might become a sword for justice.7
War gave to the chivalry of medieval Europe a sense of purpose and of justification for their existence and privileged state. It gave, too, a chance of winning merit. Essential to the ethos of chivalry was the earning of fame, which enabled the knight to hold his head high in the world, and was complementary to lordship, inheritance, or manor house as signs of his position in society. Honour, the esteem of both peer group and others, was something to be won in war. To be the first over the wall of a castle or town which was being stormed; to be encamped close to the wall of a besieged city and thus within range of missiles fired from its walls, these were acts which merited honour and respect. Martial acts might also be more dramatic or better recorded for wider public esteem. The account given by Froissart of the manner in which the Black Prince won his spurs at Crécy in 1346 shows this clearly. The young man (he was but sixteen years old at the time) was fighting for justice, for the claim of his father, Edward III, to the throne of France. By the end of the day he had not only helped to further that cause; by showing outstanding courage and skill in arms in the thick of the fighting he had shown how the knight could use situations of war to win personal renown for himself.
The importance of this was considerable. When members of the French royal order of chivalry, that of the Star, met for their annual feast, a special table was reserved for those princes, bannerets, and knights, three from each group, who were judged to have performed the most valiant deeds of war during the past year.8 In some orders, special books of adventure were kept so as ‘to give valour its due’. The words used by Froissart to express his aim in writing his great chronicle, ‘that the honourable enterprises, noble adventures and deeds of arms which took place during the wars waged by France and England should be fittingly related and preserved for posterity’, fit admirably into the pattern of thought and practice which regarded war as a noble way of life. ‘Qui plus fait, mie[u]x vault’ (‘Who does most is worth most’), the refrain in the Livre de chevalerie written in the middle of the fourteenth century by Geoffroi de Charny, the standard-bearer of King John II of France at the battle of Poitiers, who preferred to stand and die ratherthan run away in the moment of defeat, aptly sums up the chivalrous attitude to war.9
War was also a means of finding and experiencing companionship among like-minded persons. Tournaments provided opportunities for practising some of the arts and skills of war in common. It is clear that such occasions brought together, often from many countries, knights who were brought up and trained in the same martial traditions. Knights also went to war in company; a number, sometimes from the same lordship, would serve in the retinue of a great lord. It is not fanciful (we have the evidence of the fifteenth-century French lord, Jean de Bueil, to show it) to see them discussing war, its dangers, its ‘occasions’ rather as men today recall political or sporting occasions over a drink. The physical thrill of war and its perils, and of the intense satisfaction of a deed nobly done, is what emerges from Bueil’s work.10
Essentially based on war, too, were the martial associations, the orders of chivalry, election to which was itself an honour and a sign of good military reputation, whose members vied with one another in the stakes for further recognition born out of daring and courage shown in war. Associated with the orders were the colour and the pageantry of war: the richness of the apparels; the emphasis on the outward trappings (say of the heralds); the sense that going to war was an occasion, just as tournaments or jousts were occasions. Some descriptions of armies on the move, left to us by writers of the chivalric tradition, notably Froissart, glow with light and colour. War was never intended to be a drab affair. Prestige, if nothing else, demanded that it be entered into with due pomp and circumstance.
Writing soon after the expulsion of the English from France in the mid-fifteenth century, the author of Le débat des hérauts d’armes could underline the importance of the nobility, in particular the great nobility, in French society. Their role as supporters (‘pilliers’) of the monarchy he regarded as specially significant. Had it always been so in the period of the conflict with England? The answer to this must be negative. On a number of occasions during the war, the role of the nobility had come under attack, in particular at moments of severe crisis. In 1357 the clerical author of the short De miserabili statu regni Francie, reflecting upon the disaster of Poitiers, praised the courage of the king, John II, who had fought bravely up to the very moment of his capture, but condemned in strong terms the failure and lack of heart of the nobility, the ‘duces belli’ who had failed in their obligation to the French state. The author’s indignation was expressed ironically. Those who liked to regard themselves as heroes (‘milites delicati’) must show a change of heart and a will to win before any victory might be theirs.11 Further, and more important, it was open to doubt whether the nobility was properly trained for war. Without training, all its efforts were doomed to failure.
The criticisms of the luxurious life led by the nobility (with its attendant implications of better diet and better health) were not limited to the writers of such political pamphlets. Criticisms of the same kind were also to be made by such as Philippe de Mézières, whose long reflective work on the state of French society, the Songe du vieil pèlerin, was written towards the end of the fourteenth century. In England, an attempt was made in 1316 to cut down the amount of luxurious food which the nobility might consume. Such may appear like attacks on the wealth and privilege of the ‘haves’ by the ‘have nots’. In reality, it was part of a wider problem, perhaps best expressed in the Quadrilogue invectif of the Norman, Alain Chartier, written in 1422 when his homeland had been overrun by the English.
Chartier was reluctant to place all responsibility for this disaster upon the nobility alone. Like the clerical writer of 1357, he saw the English victory as a sign of divine displeasure and punishment for divisions within France. Where Chartier went further was in asking whether nobility was something which came to a man by virtue of his birth (and could therefore be inherited) or whether it was accorded in recognition of merit? Did nobility derive from birth, function, or attribute? The debate was an old one: ‘does gentilesse proceed from birth’, John Gower had asked a generation earlier in his Confessio amantis.12 Its significance in 1422 lay in the way it questioned whether birth was a sufficient warrant for high military office, or whether the responsibilities of leadership in war time should only be accorded (and it was the king who accorded them) to those whose experience and reputation in military affairs merited them. Society had a right to expect the best from those with responsibilty for its defence.
War, indeed, caused questions to be asked about the nobility’s role in it. Traditionally, war had given men opportunities to achieve honour through individual acts of valour and courage. Times, however, were changing. By the early fourteenth century Ramon Lull could stress the need to fight not merely for self-glorification but for the common good. The didactic works which the nobility used to educate their children stressed, in the words of the Burgundian, Ghillebert de Lannoy (himself a nobleman), the obligation to ‘expose themselves to death for the good of the land’, an ideal which many would have been able to read about in the works of classical authors such as Valerius Maximus, Livy and Caesar. Chivalry was coming to mean life in the public service under the ruler’s direction. When Charles de la Trémolïle was mortally wounded in the battle of Marignano in 1515, his death brought pride for his family since he died fighting for the public good in an engagement at which the king of France himself had been present.13
In a word, the nobility was being restored to its former role as the protector of society, a role which, far from contradicting the true spirit of chivalry, corresponded exactly with it. But although the spirit might be willing, there were difficulties, chiefly economic ones, to be overcome. Whether the owners of large or small estates, noblemen were members of a caste which was expected to live nobly with a certain liberality and panache (‘vivre noblement’) as befitted their rank. Yet to do this was proving increasingly expensive, for articles of luxury were fast rising in price. But none could deny that a fine house was a symbol of status and wealth. In border areas, dwellings which incorporated architectural features concerned with defence (the ‘maison-fortes’ of France) were both dwellings for a family and, in certain circumstances, they might provide some measure of protection for local people, in so doing underlining the nobleman’s responsibility for the defence of the people.14
The expenses incurred in participating in campaigns were, by the early fourteenth century, already considerable. Furthermore, they were rising. There was the war horse to be thought of: a fine animal might be worth the value of a small lordship or, put differently, in the mid-fifteenth century a charger could cost a French man-at-arms the equivalent of anything from six months’ to two years’ wages. The higher a man’s rank, the better the mount he was expected to have, so that the horse of a knight could cost twice that expected of an esquire, while a banneret might, in turn, pay double the price a knight-bachelor could pay for his. In addition, the cost of equipment and armour, the quality of which could vary considerably, added greatly to the expense of going to war.
It was the matter of cost which played an important part in changing noble attitudes towards the practice of war. In the summer of 1297, the earl of Arundel may not have wished to accompany his king, Edward I, on an expedition to Flanders. But the excuse which he gave had a genuine ring about it: he could not afford to go, for none would serve in his retinue unless he rewarded them with revenues from his own lands, which would entail a loss of status (‘grant abesement de mon estat’) which the king would not wish. Nor could the earl find anyone who would lend him money to be secured on his landed revenue.15
Arundel’s predicament was an early warning of difficulties to come. The economic boom of the thirteenth century, accompanied by an expansion in the population of Europe, was beginning to tail off. By the late thirteenth century, those for whom landed income was the chief source of revenue faced an uncertain future. A century later the French nobility would be among the worst affected victims of the activities of the routiers, often called Companies, whose particular style of war entailed the destruction of a wide variety of noble revenues. The hazard of confiscation by Frenchmen of opposing loyalties in times of political turbulence, or at the hands of the English during the occupation of much of northern France between 1417 and 1450, could also lead to greatly diminished revenues. The need to pay ransoms could be ruinous since, to raise the cash required, land often had to be sold. The trouble was that it did not necessarily sell well so that in some cases, such as that of the Burgundian lord, Guillaume de Châteauvillain, both he and his family, who acted as guarantors for the payment of 20,000 saluts which he had agreed to pay when captured by the French in 1430, faced financial ruin.16 The French and English kings sometimes had to help those who had served them to regain their freedom: in 1444 Sir John Handford, who had been in France for more than twenty years, received 1,500 livres from Henry VI as a contribution towards the purchase of his freedom; while Jean de Rodemack got a substantial sum towards the payment of his ransom from René d’Anjou,17 and Georges de la Trémolïle received a seigneurie in Poitou from Charles VII in lieu of ransom promised but not paid. Similarly, the insistence of lords that their tenants perform their feudal duty of watch and ward (guet et garde), or carry out necessary repairs to castle wall or ditch, as their predecessors had customarily done, was an insistence which reflected economic necessity. It was that same necessity which forced tenants to refuse their service or, as in the case between Guy le Bouteillier, as lord of La Roche-Guyon, and the people of the town, to have the dispute between them on these matters heard before the Parlement of Paris.
Few could resist pressures which were making the waging of war, never cheap, more expensive than ever before. The fourteenth century was to see a change among the natural leaders of military society from free service in the fulfilment of obligation to service in return for pay or reward. In a very real sense war was becoming an important supplementary source of livelihood, for which the nobility increasingly sold their services to the king in return for wages and promises of opportunities of obtaining what were euphemistically known as the ‘advantages’ of war: the profits of ransoms; booty; and grants of land seized from the conquered. As in the case of war presenting the knight with a chance of achieving reputation, so in this different context the key word was ‘opportunity’.
War gave to men of initiative many such opportunities. Sir John Fastolf, involved in a long drawn-out lawsuit in Paris between 1432 and 1435, could remind the court that he had been the first to jump into the sea when Henry V had come ashore in France in 1415, and that the king had rewarded him with the grant of the first house which he had seen in France.18 Being the first ashore was an honourable achievement which brought its own reward; respectability was what Fastolf was claiming. Some of the books which he is known to have possessed, which included Christine de Pisan’s Letter of Othea to Hector, a didactic work for knights, reinforce this view. At the same time Fastolf’s attitude to the practicalities of war reflect a hardheadedness which was essentially of this world: the plan which he drew up in 1435 favouring a ‘tough’ approach to the war made little concession to romantic ideas of chivalry which would influence a knight’s conduct in war.19 His long career in France which led him to hold high military and administrative posts, as well as amassing a fortune through the capture of prisoners in battle, the seizing of property and the exploitation of estates, shows him to have been a ‘realistic’ person in all that he did.
As often the case, Froissart had a story which illustrates this point. Describing Edward III’s arrival at Calais in 1359 with a sizeable army, the chronicler recalled that a large number of men, of different backgrounds and nationalities, were there waiting in the hope of being allowed to join him, some, he added significantly, wishing to advance their honour, others intent upon pillaging the kingdom of France. In many cases, those who had come had spent large sums preparing themselves adequately to join the English ranks, such was their keenness to serve under a commander of high reputation.20 Their motives, at least as described by Froissart, indicate that the profit motive was increasingly important in attracting men to war, and that mundane, as well as idealistic, motives provided a double purpose for the achievement of skill in arms.
Society was faced with two images of the soldier. On the one hand was the traditional knight of chivalry, the figure of the romances, and, more recently, of the new chivalric orders, one of whose social functions was the defence of those in physical need and danger. Not surprisingly, St George and St Michael were the patrons of new orders: both were depicted in art as the defenders of the innocent against the forces of evil. On the other hand was the image, conveyed with increasing frequency by the chroniclers, of the common soldier as a symbol of something to be feared, the perpetrator of violence and destruction, whether this took the form of attacks on property (pillage and arson) or on people (murder and rape).
The image of the drunken and ill-disciplined soldier, a figure who aroused an emotional response, more often that of fear than that of respect, was nothing new in this age. Mercenaries, like the hireling of the bible, could not be trusted: the bells which warned the inhabitants of the villages and towns of southern France of the danger of the approaching Companies reflect society’s fear and mistrust of such men. If soldiers could find a defender from outside their number (as they did in the poet Thomas Hoccleve, who pleaded that greater respect be paid to their economic predicament in old age),21 more often than not they suffered from the verbal and literary lash of preachers, moralists and other writers. The mid-fourteenth-century English Dominican, John Bromyard, launched into what he regarded as the increasingly unChristian spirit of those, both knights and common soldiers, who went to war with the vilest of intentions and ‘oaths and curses in their mouths’. The views of his French contemporary, the Carmelite, Jean de Venette, corresponded almost exactly; not without reason did the poor people of France have little trust in the nobility who abused them and their property and virtually held them to ransom in the most disgraceful way. The remark of Honoré Bouvet, a Benedictine who was a contemporary of both Bromyard and Venette, that no man who did not know how to set places on fire was worthy of the name of soldier, might be cynical, but it was not entirely unmerited.22
The gamekeeper, it would seem, had turned poacher, leaving much of society undefended. If war was a means of achieving peace, or social and political harmony and order, how compatible were the activities of many soldiers with that aim? Were not soldiers, and their activities, the enemies of peace? It was for reasons such as this that every attempt was made to bring a measure of order to war. Although it was difficult, in practice, to stop war from breaking out, serious attempts were made to control it by emphasising that only a war duly and properly declared by a soverign authority could be regarded as just. The causes lying behind such a declaration had to be serious (the denial of rights, the breaking of the feudal bond), and every attempt to resolve a possible conflict by negotiation had to be made. War was only to be a last resort.
There was, too, the matter of the methods used by the soldier in war. They had to be reasonable (no sledge-hammer to crack a nut), controlled, and moral. Were all weapons moral? The Church certainly had doubts about the crossbow, with its deadly bolt or quarrel, a reaction which was about to be extended among certain circles to the use of cannon in its early days. Should all members of the enemy’s population be equally at risk in time of war? An unarmed cleric must not be harmed; but no more should women, children or old men, and even students travelling to their place of study should not be molested or put to ransom. But what of the farmer who grew crops to feed the enemy’s army, or who paid taxes to the enemy king (and more and more people were now doing this, in one form or another), or whose farmyard provided feathers for enemy arrows? The maker of weapons, the fletcher or the bowyer, might not so easily claim immunity from war. The problem was to know where to stop. And who would say that enough was enough, and would take on the task of punishing those who transgressed the rules of the game?
At this stage, the need to control war to prevent it becoming a tragic and self-defeating activity demanded strong action. War had its rules and conventions, the so-called laws of war (‘jus in bello’), which, internationally understood, bound military society together by providing a common code of practice and a moderating influence upon its conduct.23 There were ways of treating prisoners properly, and of recognising that they had certain claims upon their captors; there were also rules about the taking, sharing, and disposing of booty and pillage; there were signs of formal war, such as the unfurling of banners or the setting off of a cannon at the start of a siege, which informed all those present that a certain legal situation now existed, hostilities having been formally declared. Indeed, as the study of the law emerging from the application of these laws makes clear, it was the formalisation of war, bringing a set of rules to apply to its conduct, which men were trying to achieve. The parallel with the tournament or the joust, where the constraints imposed by space and regulations applied, cannot be ignored. The free-for-all of war had to be curtailed.
The formulation of rules, however, was not sufficient. There must be people officially appointed to apply them. Heralds were an essential aspect of the waging of war, just as they were of chivalry. Their task was not limited to the granting of coats of arms; they had to be experts in recognising such armorials to identify both the dead and those who performed noble (and base) deeds in war. It was in their power to make and break military reputations; men gave of their best in front of them. Equally, however, the constable and marshal of the army had authority delegated to them to try in their courts (in which the military law was applied) men such as deserters and those who broke the rules of discipline.24 Unlike the herald who sought to observe and note the outstanding (the chroniclers, notably Froissart, made good use of the reports of battle given to them by heralds), the constable and marshal were more concerned with maintaining order. They shared a common aim, however, for each was trying to keep the standard of soldierly behaviour up to at least that of an acceptable minimum.
The heralds and the disciplinary officers could achieve much; but it is clear that no factor could ensure a greater respect for the rules of war and for the interests and property of the non-combatant than could firm leadership. To the outstanding leaders, the chroniclers and others gave unstinted praise. One can readily understand why. The ability to lead was a characteristic once associated with nobility, an attribute of social rank. As the period wore on, leadership became increasingly associated with personal qualities and skills which earned nobility, thus bringing renown to the man blessed with them. The application of such skills led to the greater control of an army and, as a consequence, to its more effective use as a military arm. At the same time it assured that those who, under weaker leadership, might have suffered at the hands of armies, could live in greater security. From this stems the historical importance of the ordinances of war issued by kings on campaign: by Richard II during the Scottish war of 1385; by Henry V in France in 1419; and by his brother John, duke of Bedford, in Normandy in 1428, all three attempts to control the illegal or ‘un-peaceful’ activities of soldiers, in particular in their relationships with non-combatants. That relationship, an uneasy one in all societies, was best served by personality. The praise lavished upon Henry V by his contemporaries, by no means all English, is indicative of the admiration accorded to one whose hold upon his men was such that, for a while, those parts of France under English control were freed of the worst excesses committed by soldiers. To the anonymous writer of the Parisian Journal the Armagnacs (‘faulx Armignaz’) were like Saracens, as they hanged, burned, ransomed and raped at will. He might have reservations about the English but, generally speaking, under their rule both military and civilian knew where they stood. That was something to be thankful for.
It was not so much the existence of war as the manner of fighting it which aroused the criticism of an increasingly outspoken body of persons who reflected the views of society in the growing vernacular literature and poetry of the time. Honoré Bouvet, whoseTree of Battles, composed in the late fourteenth century, was soon to become a kind of handbook on the conventions of war, was deeply influenced by the many human tragedies caused by war. As a result, he was inclined to take a view which favoured the rights of the non-combatants against those of the soldier. The least that can be said for him was that he convinced many that the non-combatants’ interests were worthy of consideration. Bouvet’s writings reflected the opinions of many chroniclers of the period who wrote as vociferous critics of the excesses of the soldiery. When Jean de Venette, whose native village of that name had been destroyed by English troops, described the activities of armies, both regular and irregular, he condemned their excesses and bestowed his sympathy upon the victims. Similarly, if in a much more restrained manner, the Englishman, John Page, himself a soldier in Henry V’s army, described in detail and in passages of considerable emotion the sufferings of the helpless civilians during the six-month-long siege of Rouen which ended in January 1419. If Venette attacked the soldiers, Page did not, perhaps because the man in charge of the operation was his own king who put the blame for the fate of the civilians firmly upon the shoulders of the French. Yet the sensitivities of both for the sufferings of men, women, and children drawn unwillingly into the war reflect something of the way in which thinking men asked themselves whether war was, in fact, not so much a way to peace as the prolongation of bitter conflict.25
Like all ages, the late Middle Ages had its critics who took swipes at the activities of soldiers. We should not leave this brief consideration of how war was regarded by people of the time with the impression that greed and anarchy prevailed. What emerges from recent study of this important period is that war was increasingly coming to be seen as an instrument of state, to be organised by the king for the common good of his people and country. Gradually the idea of serving the king in his wars was being replaced by the need to serve the res publica, a less particular and more all-embracing higher good. We shall see later how, in the fourteenth century, taxation came to be voted in ever larger sums for the purpose of war; this was, indirectly, the contribution of communities towards their self-defence.
Out of the monies voted from this public purse wages were to be paid to soldiers to carry out that work of defence. The soldier, of whatever rank, thus became a public servant whose task it was, under the command of the king, to defend the community’s interests through war. To do this successfully, the soldier had to be ready: he had to train in military skills which he might be called upon to use. This no longer applied only to the knight who took part in tournaments. In England, the obligation to own arms and to train in the use of them was shared by all male adults, as the Assize of Arms of 1181 and the Statute of Winchester of 1285 made clear. The fourteenth century saw the matter being taken further. In 1363 Edward III ordered that regular training at the butts should take the place of football; a century later, in 1456, the difficulties experienced in Scotland in summoning and arming a proper fighting force were recognised in the proscription of football and golf in favour of archery practice.
Training in arms on an increasingly wide scale was a characteristic of the period. The philosophical message of Vegetius’s De re militari centred upon the need to defend the common good, and for that need to be met not by the employment of mercenaries but by members of the community adequately prepared to fight. The matter of leadership, and who should be entrusted with it, was much discussed. These were far from sterile debates. Fundamentally, what was at issue was whether the army, now ideally composed of men with at least a modicum of training and military skill, should be led by men who merited their responsibilities, awarded to them on behalf of the community by the king who paid them from public funds (‘la peccune publique’). If, as Honoré Bouvet wrote, the soldier who acted qua soldier did so as the king’s deputy, all the more so did war’s new leaders act in his name. These leaders were now slowly becoming officers. Before long, in the sixteenth century, the age of the military academy, where soldiers (and above all officers) were to be trained, would arise. A new attitude to war was being developed.26
The academy was for the future. Yet at the time of the Hundred Years War, with the concept of the nation state, and of the need for its interests to be defended, taking root, the raison d’être of war was slowly changing. It certainly continued to give opportunity for glory, for self-advancement, and for material gain; in that respect it has not changed much to this day. None the less war was coming increasingly to be regarded as a form of activity to be carried out by the whole community, which would endeavour in common, under the leadership of the king, to defend its honour and safety. If men had accepted the likelihood of death in war as a means of achieving honour, war fought in defence of a greater good, that of the community, was becoming just as honourable, if not more so. ‘Pugna pro patria’, ‘Fight for your country’, was a call which Bishop Brinton could make from the pulpit in the 1370s. By the middle years of the fifteenth century litigants in civil suits before the Parlement of Paris could send word that they would not appear in person because they were engaged in war for the public good (‘in expedicione causa rei publice’) or were being detained as prisoners by the enemy. Both excuses were practical ones; it is evident that they were honourable excuses, too. ‘Pro patria mori’, ‘Die for your country’, would be the next step.27 Death on the battlefield, fighting for a just cause and, preferably in the presence of the king who led and represented the community, was, for the fighting man like Charles de la Trémolïle, the supreme accolade. A new view of war, albeit one which had close links with past ideas, was gradually emerging.
1 See J. T. Johnson, Ideology, reason, and the limitation of war. Religious and secular concepts, 1200–1740 (Princeton, 1975); C. T. Allmand, Society at war. The experience of England and France during the Hundred Years War (Edinburgh, 1973), p. 21.
2 Gesta Henrici Quinti. The deeds of Henry the Fifth, trans, and ed. F. Taylor and J. S. Roskell (Oxford, 1975), pp. 123, 125.
3 Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, pp. 305–6.
4 See B. Jarrett, Social theories of the Middle Ages, 1200–1500 (London, 1926), ch. 7.
5 Henry the Fifth, iv, i.
6 J. Riley-Smith, ‘Crusading as an act of love’, History, 65 (1980), 177–92.
7 The sermons of Thomas Brinton, bishop of Rochester (1373–1389), ed. M. A. Devlin (Camden third series, 85, 86, London, 1954), sermon 78. On the other hand, Jean de Cardaillac could write his Liber regalis in 1367 in support of Henry of Trastamara’s right to defend his throne through war (Histoire littéraire de la France, 40, Paris, 1974, pp. 203–6).
8 M. Keen, Chivalry (New Haven: London, 1984), p. 192.
9 See the text in Oeuvres de Froissart, ed. K. de Lettenhove, i, Chroniques (Brussels, 1873), pp. 463–533.
10 See Allmand, Society at war, pp. 27–9.
11 ‘Le “Tragicum argumentum de miserabili statu regni Francie” de François de Monte-Belluna (1357)’, ed. A. Vernet, Annuaire-bulletin de le société de l’histoire de France, années 1962–1963 (Paris 1964), pp. 101–63.
12 J. Gower, Confessio amantis, trans. T. Tiller (Harmondsworth, 1965), p. 166.
13 P. Contamine, ‘L’idée de guerre à la fin du moyen âge: aspects juridiques et éthiques’ Comptes-rendus de l’académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (1979), pp. 82–3, and n. 45.
14 M. G. A. Vale, ‘Seigneurial fortification and private war in later medieval Gascony’, Gentry and lesser nobility in late medieval Europe, ed. M. Jones (Gloucester: New York, 1986), pp. 133–43.
15 M. Prestwich (ed.), Documents illustrating the crisis of 1297–98 in England (Camden fourth series, 24, London, 1980), p. 142.
16 A. Bossuat, ‘Les prisonniers de guerre au xve siècle: la rançon de Guillaume, seigneur de Châteauvillain’, A.B., 23 (1951), 7–35.
17 Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, p. 77; A. Bossuat, ‘Les prisonniers de guerre au xve siècle: la rançon de Jean, seigneur de Rodemack’, A. Est, 5e sér., 3 (1951), 145–62.
18 Allmand and Armstrong (eds.), English suits, pp. 263–4.
19 M. G. A. Vale, ‘Sir John Fastolf’s “Report” of 1435: a new interpretation reconsidered’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 17 (1973), 78–84.
20 Froissart, Chroniques, ed. Lettenhove, VI, 204.
21 T. Hoccleve, Works, III: The regement of princes, ed. F.J. Furnivall (E.E.T.S., London, 1897), pp. 32–4: Allmand, Society at war, pp. 179–81.
22 The Tree of Battles of Honoré Bonet, trans. G. W. Coopland (Liverpool, 1949), p. 189.
23 M. H. Keen, The laws of war in the late Middle Ages (London: Toronto, 1965); N. A. R. Wright, ‘The Tree of Battles of Honoré Bouvet and the laws of war’, War, literature and politics in the late Middle Ages, ed. C. T. Allmand (Liverpool, 1976), pp. 12–31.
24 G. D. Squibb, The high court of chivalry (Oxford, 1959), ch. 1: M. Keen, ‘The jurisdiction and origins of the constable’s court’, War and government in the Middle Ages, ed. J. Gillingham and J. C. Holt (Woodbridge, 1984), pp. 159–69.
25 The chronicle of Jean de Venette, trans, and ed. J. Birdsall and R. A. Newhall (New York, 1953) ‘John Page’s poem on the siege of Rouen’, The historical collections of a citizen of London in the fifteenth century, ed. J. Gairdner (Camden Society, London, 1876), pp. 1–46: The Brut, ed. F. W. D. Brie (E.E.T.S., London, 1908), 11, 404–22.
26 On this development, see J. R. Hale, Renaissance war studies (London, 1983), chs. 8–10.
27 E. Kantorowicz, ‘Pro patria mori in medieval political thought’, A.H.R., 56 (1951), 472–92: reprinted in the author’s Selected studies (New York, 1965), pp. 308–24.