14
Until relatively recent times the role, both active and passive, played in the Hundred Years’ War by the non-combatant populations of England and France has been understudied and underestimated and, consequently, not properly appreciated. Historians have long known what contemporaries knew only too well: that the non-combatant was the chief victim of the war. But it is only as we study the war’s less publicised aspects, and come to understand it as involving the destinies of others than those who actually bore arms, that we are able to appreciate its full significance. Perhaps, for better or worse, we are influenced by events which have occurred within the lifetime of living generations, who have observed how unarmed civilians can suffer appalling distress as a result of modern warfare. This is a factor to be considered in our attitude towards the study of the past. But the historian is also influenced by other factors, such as the materials that provide him with the story which it is his task to build upon. The chroniclers and their works are given less prominence now than in former times. With many other kinds of sources, literary, legal, administrative, financial and religious being increasingly employed, none should be surprised if the perspectives of history are changing.
War should be seen and studied in the round, within a broad contemporary context.1 In no case is this more important than in the study of what has come to be known as the Hundred Years’ War for, however it originated, it soon became a conflict involving two peoples in many of its aspects. It was partly financed by funds voted in non-military assemblies, in Parliament and in the Estates (both national and regional); in specially summoned meetings of the merchant community; and in assemblies of churchman called, in England, convocation. What proportion of the finances needed to undertake the war’s many campaigns came from such sources, it is difficult to estimate. The important point here is the simple one: the country was required to help pay for undertakings in which the whole nation, not merely an army fighting in the name of the king, was becoming increasingly involved.
1 See the important statement of support, favouring a broadly based approach to the study of the history of war, in H. J. Hewitt, The Organization of War under Edward III, 1338–62 (Manchester and New York, 1966), preface, pp. vii–viii.
In the course of time, too, it became the practice for kings to raise loans from their subjects to supplement the sums already raised at the national level. Such payments led not only to a theoretical involvement in the war: men began to expect and, on occasions, to demand a say in the way national affairs were run. Subsidies voted in Parliament became public money, and the king and those who held office under him were expected to see that it was not misused, as the events of the Good Parliament of 1376 remind us. Subjects would help pay for war and would follow their leaders; but they expected something in return – success. If this were not forthcoming, as the French rebels showed in the 1350s, and the English demonstrated both inside and outside Parliament in the 1370s, and again in the 1440s, somebody would have to answer for it.
Influential economic groups might seek to further their own interests within the context of the war. The well-known tract, The Libelle of English Polycye, written in 1436, represents an attempt to influence English policy makers to turn the conflict in the direction which might bring maximum advantage to the English merchant community.2 On the opposite side of the Channel the dukes of Burgundy were also, to a considerable degree, subject to the political and military pressures exerted by those living off trade, much of it done with England. So important was the English connection to the prosperity of certain Flemish towns, that these could not bear to see trade with England cut off for long. If the dukes tried the use of economic forces against England, they were likely to find themselves in trouble at home. Not even the most influential of the dukes felt free to do as he alone willed, for it was made clear to him where the public interest lay, and what policy he should follow.
2 The Libelle of English Polycye, ed. Sir George Warner (Oxford, 1926).
Not all, however, were enthusiastic for the war nor, as Edward III discovered, would the Commons readily give advice as to how it should be waged, preferring to leave this to those whose training and position in society better fitted them for the task. As a consequence, it is hardly surprising that the years of the war witnessed a considerable development in the use of propaganda, designed chiefly to arouse involvement in the conflict against the enemy, as well as an increased awareness of national sentiment and identity. The methods used to achieve this were various: the dispatch of letters home, describing progress and, if possible, success – letters which would be read publicly from pulpit and market cross: the publication of letters justifying a particular line of action such as those issued by Henry V before his first invasion of Normandy in 1415: the request that bishops made to their clergy to recite special prayers for the successful outcome of a campaign, or to organ-ise processions to petition the Almighty to bless men’s efforts when an important peace initiative was about to begin. To such forms of involvement were added more sophisticated kinds, whose chief purpose was to arouse in men, by pictorial illustration and the written word, an awareness of the legitimacy of the ruling dynasty (the English did this in France in the fifteenth century) and an emphasis on the need for support for a national policy.3 The size and importance of this propagandist literature shows how clearly it was appreciated that only by general cooperation in the war might the French drive the English out of France, and thereby bring the conflict to a successful conclusion. Aided by what we would call propaganda, the war became increasingly the nation’s war, propaganda being designed on both sides of the Channel to ensure that this was appreciated and acted upon.
3 B. J. H. Rowe, ‘King Henry VI’s Claim to France: In Picture and Poem’, The Library, 4th ser., xiii (1932); J. W. McKenna, ‘Henry VI of England and the Dual Monarchy: Aspects of Royal Propaganda, 1422–1432’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xxviii (1965), 145–162.
The point is underlined by what we know of the practice of war. No longer was it the duty of the soldier alone to be involved in military activity: those concerned with the preparations for war, the conveyance of troops, the provision and carrying of supplies, as with the voting of taxes to pay for such necessities, all were concerned in that one over-all activity which is called war. The involvement of the non-military elements in both English and French societies clearly indicates that the history of war in the late medieval period must be extended beyond the impression gained from reading the chronicles alone. These give an inadequate picture of societies at war. To study war in terms of armies and their activities alone can only lead to an under-appreciation of the many problems which conflict brought in its wake.4
4 This is amply borne out by H. J. Hewitt’s The Organization of War under Edward III (See n. 1 above).
Many late medieval writers were strongly of the view that those whom the war had affected the most were not the soldiers but the non-combatants. If, other than on a relatively small number of occasions, the civilian population of England suffered but little, that of large parts of France suffered considerably from the destructive effects of war. In part this was due to the succession of English raids and invasions; in part, too, to civil conflict caused in some measure by the weakness of the French crown and the quarrels of an uncurbed and independently minded nobility. Which was responsible for what, it is not our task here to decide. Rather, we should ask why people suffered such material destruction, how it came to be inflicted, and, finally, what others thought and did about it.
In spite of the chivalric spirit which motivated Froissart and many of those whose exploits he described, this was an age of violence and uncertainty. Such is the message writ large in the chronicles and other literary works of the day. Acts of violence, legitimate in battle, less so when perpetrated against the non-combatant of whatever class, order or nationality, are frequently recorded in historical sources. Considering the length of the war, there were relatively few set battles between opposing armies. Had there been more, it is conceivable that the non-combatant might have escaped more easily.
Two main factors led to the imposition of war, and its effects, upon those who did not actually bear arms. The first was the physical nature of France itself, a country of small towns, with relatively open country in between. Such towns, and in particular the larger ones, were usually well fortified; walls and castles provided both protection for the population of the locality, as well as a military challenge which no enemy commander could for long ignore. This meant that any invasion of France by the English would be held up by the presence of such castles, so that the war was certain to be dominated, at the stage of invasion at least, by siege warfare, which could only lead to a slowing down and protraction of the conflict. The longer foreign armies were present on French soil, the more all classes of French society were likely to suffer. Since, too, the towns and their attendant castles existed, in part, to provide protection for those who did not normally live within their confines, sieges were certain to bring calamity upon those seeking refuge within their walls. At best, life would be arduous, but relief would come: at worst, a town would be taken by storm and no quarter given. Even if the town surrendered, the fate of those within it was very precarious … At no time were the prospects for the besieged encouraging. The classic example, the siege of Rouen by the English in the hard winter of 1418–19, shows how the innocent non-combatant might suffer if the besieger were determined and unrelenting.5
5 See John Page’s poem on the siege in The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century, ed. J. Gairdner (London, Camden Soc, 1876).
The second factor, closely bound up with, and largely made possible by, the openness of the French countryside, was the nature of the war which the English fought upon French soil. In the fourteenth century part of its aim was to help demoralise the French population, thereby bringing pressure to bear upon the French king without having recourse to the near ultimate sanction of a pitched battle. Great encounters were therefore avoided, and a form of petty war (but one with a definite plan) was inflicted upon the French population. In addition to, and frequently surpassing, the damage caused by the new artillery against military fortifications were the ills caused to the usually unarmed non-combatants. These, sometimes ignorant of why they should be the victims of other men’s quarrels, suffered physical violence, arson, theft, destruction of home and farming instruments, animals and crops, in addition to having to pay their protection money (pâtis) or ransom to a greedy and less than merciful soldiery. Towns and castles might afford succour to those in their vicinity: for those who lived in the open country (‘le plat pays’) there was little hope once the armed bands came in their direction.
If the fifteenth century saw changes in the way that war was fought, the non-combatant was still the war’s principal victim. True, the English were now more determined upon conquest then they had been under Edward III and, for that reason, more likely to try to control the activities of their soldiers. Yet the fact remains that in August 1424, at the moment of the striking English victory at Verneuil, control of the English armies seemed to be slipping out of their commanders’ hands, thereby obliging the duke of Bedford, Henry VI’s regent in France, to issue the following directive:
We wish and therefore command you that all men-at-arms who have come from England whom you may find living off the land or practising theft or extortion upon the poor people, should be taken by you and put into prison where they shall be punished as was formerly ordered both by the king and by us.6
6 Chronique du Mont-Saint-Michel, 1343–1468, ed. S. Luce (2 vols, Paris, SATF, 1879–83), I, p. 145.
Nor were the English alone in practising violence and extortion. As was well recognised at the time, Norman patriots who had taken to the woods (the so-called brigans) committed crimes against the non-combatant populations. In response, against these, the English were obliged to take drastic, but not always successful, action against them.
But why, it may be asked, was there such material destruction? In part, this was the result of the weapons employed in war. Fire, used on both land and at sea, could be devastating in its effects when so much, from buildings to ships, was constructed of wood. The development of the cannon, gunpowder and larger missiles also meant that destruction, even of strongholds built largely of stone, became more common. Considerable architectural developments were made necessary to combat the destructive effects of cannonball and gunpowder.7
7 On this question see B. H. St.J. O’Neil, Castles and Cannon: A Study of Early Artillery Fortifications in England (Oxford, 1960); J. R. Hale, ‘The Early Development of the Bastion: An Italian Chronology, c.1450–c.1534’, Europe in the Late Middle Ages, ed. J. R. Hale, J. R. L. Highfield, and B. Smalley (London, 1965).
This, however, is less than half the answer. More fundamental still were the soldiers’ attitude to war and peace, and what contemporary military practice permitted him to get away with. Of one thing we may be certain: in his attitude to the war the soldier, of whatever rank, was not normally motivated by patriotism alone. If, particularly towards the end of the period, the French soldier saw it as his chief task to help expel the English enemy from France, that enemy saw matters very differently. Conquest and war abroad might present him with the opportunity of making more money (much more money, if he were lucky) in a shorter time than if he remained at home. Add the possibility of acquiring status, land and titles, and the sums received for the payment of ransoms, and it becomes possible to understand how men could be drawn to enlist by the possibility of profit. A large variety of sources, covering the narrative accounts found in chronicles, the evidence of disputes found in legal records, and the terms of indenture, or contract, sealed between kings and their subordinate commanders, show that the incentive motive, largely an economic one, was very powerful in gathering an army together. ‘The desire for booty was a motive in all medieval warfare’.8
8 D. Hay, ‘The Division of the Spoils of War in Fourteenth-Century England’, TRHistS, 5th ser., iv (1954), 91.
It was generally accepted that the profits of war were available to the soldier, be he noble or common, under certain conditions and at certain times. Laws and customs, international in character, to some extent regulated this aspect of war, stating what it was proper to take, and under what conditions.9 As usual, the victor came out best, and to him most things were possible – and legally possible. He and his soldiers held the defeated enemy at their mercy; lives might be forfeit, and property would certainly be so. The picture which we have of the siege of Caen by Edward III’s army in 1346 shows how a triumphant army could set to work to strip a prosperous town of its important inhabitants and worthwhile possessions, many being shipped back to England for ransom or sale. This, it should be emphasised, was being done by an army, led by the king of England himself which had already, as a rather shocked Froissart reported, plundered Barfleur, Cherbourg, Valognes and Saint Lô, helping itself to as much booty as it could carry. In the next century some of these Norman towns were to suffer a similar fate: as Charles VII wrote in 1450, the town of Caen underwent two changes of lordship within one generation, the first in 1417, when taken by the army of Henry V; and, again, in 1450 when recaptured by the French king.10 The Welsh chronicler, Adam of Usk, had already reported that the booty won by the victorious army of Henry V was on sale all over England, following upon English successes abroad.
9 The best over-all coverage is to be found in M. H. Keen, The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages (London, 1965).10 Caen, Archives Départementales du Calvados, D. 27.
In spite of the risks involved, the temptations to go to war were considerable. With its own rules, war became a kind of game,11 a chivalric game for those trained in the ways of chivalry, a dirty and underhand one for those disreputable elements who, as Froissart claimed, existed in the armies of the time.12 It was against these last that military leaders had to take strong action. To many, all was fair in war, and, since the laws of war gave little protection to the undefended non-combatant, it was up to the leaders of armies and mercenary groups to see that the defenceless were not unduly molested in an age when even officially recruited armies were badly paid or paid tardily or, sometimes, not at all. It needed firmness and determination on a commander’s part to see that his orders were carried out. All medieval armies had to live, to a greater or lesser degree, off the land in which they found themselves; they had orders, if not always the means, to pay for what they took for their subsistence. It was when they broke this first rule that they incurred the odium of the non-combatant population. Whatever the laws of war might fail to do providing sufficient protection for the men who did not fight, the writers and moralists of the age were in no doubt that the non-combatant should be left alone to pursue his peacetime occupation. In this they were supported by some of the notable writers of the day, who pointed out that few military leaders had sufficient moral courage or authority to hold back their men when looting and plundering were legitimately allowed them. When, however, they did so Froissart, Eustache Deschamps and others went out of their way to give them an unsolicited pat on the back for having maintained a firm grip upon their soldiers’ activities, thereby avoiding the all too normal excesses of war. Such firmness was indeed worth applauding. When considered with the respect shown to a man such as Henry V for the firm way he disciplined his armies, such comment goes far towards suggesting that effective discipline was too rarely exercised in a context which gave opportunity to the soldier of gaining immediate material benefit in the form of plunder and prisoners, causing the non-combatant population to be at the mercy of a victorious force or army.
11 J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study in the Play-Element in Culture (English trans., 1949), ch. 5: ‘Play and War’.12 Hewitt, Organization of War, pp. 28ff.
It was men’s attitudes to warfare, and the un-chivalric practices thus encouraged, which lay at the root of the misery all too frequently experienced by the non-combatant population. If the prospect of quick profit helped to recruit an army, it made it correspondingly more difficult to exercise effective discipline, as many commanders discovered. If the initiative slipped from the hands of the leaders into those of their men, then the non-combatant would be ever at the mercy of undisciplined armies. Assuming, therefore, a general need for discipline, contemporary writers and critics discovered at length how best to achieve it. In theory this was done in English armies through the publication of military ordinances by a succession of kings from the time of Richard II onwards.13 However, these well intentioned attempts did not always prove adequate, since they failed to take proper account of that which lay at the root of the matter: the need for adequate and, above all, regular pay. As long as men were uncertain of receiving their wages, they would seek to find them elsewhere, and discipline would consequently suffer. Soldiers were not angels, and non-combatants were easy victims. This was an economic problem whose long term solution lay in the adequate provision of genuine pay. To those who took part in it, war had become a commercial venture with the result that it was easier to begin a war than to end it. The words which follow, those of the late fourteenth-century English Dominican friar, John Bromyard, were written about Italy, but they could as easily have been applied to France:
it is plain that the majority of wars fought in Lombardy are fought unjustly, and are not begun with the authority of the Prince, but at the command of the strongest man in the city. Nor are they fought for any honest reason, but by partisans of the Ghuelf and Ghibelline parties: not out of good intention, but out of a desire for gain and an urge to lord it over others.14
14 Johannes de Bromyard, Summa Predicantium (various editions, sub ‘Bellum’).
13 F. Grose, Military Antiquities (1788), II, pp. 79ff.
Of the chief participants in the Hundred Years’ War, England was fortunate enough to suffer the least damage to property and morale. There were disadvantages in fighting abroad, but as far as the non-combatant was concerned this was the war’s greatest advantage. Englishmen were thus largely spared the experiences which were the lot of much of the French population: almost, but not quite. The defence of the coast was something which mattered greatly in the eyes of those who lived within striking distance of the English Channel, and when the French were successful in making raids upon the coast of England people demanded to know why the government had not been able to protect them. The threat of French attacks was ever present, except under Henry V and Henry VI, when control of the Channel was effectively assured by the presence of Englishmen on both of its shores. In the fourteenth century, however, the whole coast lived under this threat. In October 1338, it became a reality at Southampton when a French galley fleet descended upon the port, causing the citizens to flee to the surrounding countryside. In the meantime, for one profitable day, the French controlled the town and some of the unfortunate inhabitants who had not fled, and helped themselves to what they could carry, before being driven back into the sea by the levies of the neighbouring counties who, under cover of expelling the enemy, caused further considerable loss to the citizens of Southampton, and to some visiting Spanish merchants, before order could finally be restored.
Yet this was mild when compared to what certain parts of the French population had to endure. During much of the war, the French were ‘visited’ not only by English royal armies, but by other groups of soldiers (some well-connected, and acting with royal approval, others little more than authorised bands of predatory soldiers) who did much to help achieve one of the aims of English policy, the demoralisation of the population and kingdom of France. It was to these bands that critics such as Philippe de Mézières were referring when they described the English as the scourge of God inflicting punishment upon the people of France for their sins. These men, whether known as Companies in the fourteenth century or as Écorcheurs in the fifteenth, were the bane of the countryside and of the defenceless people who lived there, an affront to order and especially to the royal authority, which feebly did its limited best to rid France of this affliction which seemed to be at its most dangerous during the periods of truce which punctuated the long war.15
15 A. Tuetey, Les Écorcheurs sous Charles VII (Montbéliard, 1874).
To list the activities of the soldiery, and to draw up a catalogue of their mis-deeds, would be simple enough, but of little value for this essay. None the less, some kind of indication of the devastation wrecked at this period is called for. We have already seen how, at the successful conclusion of a siege, the conquerors normally divided the spoils and enriched themselves in this way. In battle, too, the taking of prisoners was considered to be of the greatest importance, above all if the captive was either notable or rich (a king, perhaps, as happened at Poitiers in 1356), for he could then be put to a heavy ransom and his captor might be considerably rewarded. Ransoms were sufficiently important for men to go to law over the settlement of a claim to capture, and the perseverance of certain litigants during the years which the courts sometimes took to reach a verdict indicates that ransoms and, indeed, less valuable material booty counted for a great deal in the eyes of the late medieval fighting man. That those taken into captivity and put up to ransom included both soldiers and non-combatants hardly needs to be emphasised here.16
16 Some cases took many years to settle. See E. Perroy, L’Affair du comte de Denia’, in Mélanges d’Histoire du Moyen Âge Dédiés à la Mémoire de Louis Halphen (Paris, 1957), and A. Rogers, ‘Hoton versus Shakell: A Ransom Case in the Court of Chivalry, 1390–5’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, vi (1962) and vii (1963).
The armies of the late Middle Ages were also responsible for much material destruction which today might be termed vandalism. Many of the instances reported by the chroniclers concern armies looting and pillaging before setting fire to the places they had robbed. At times, whole districts might be held to ransom by the soldiery who demanded the payment of pâtis in order that a particular area should be exempted from depredation. Frontier regions were particularly prone to blackmail of this kind.
One of the chief victims of the war was the Church, whose buildings – sacred or not – frequently attracted the attention of armies, to the loss of the church’s spiritual and temporal ministrations. Soldiers were hardly inclined to spare a church simply because it was a sacred building. The story of how Henry V caused one of his soldiers to be hanged for stealing a sacred vessel from a church is well known; the fact that only a short time before the incident the king had ordered the publication of special ordinances granting royal protection to all women, children and churchmen adds point to the story. The evidence of the St Albans chronicler, who recalled that many Normans adopted a religious habit when coming into contact with Henry V’s men, indicates clearly enough that although the cowl did not make the monk, it was thought to afford a certain protection against the less disciplined elements in the English army. That the clerical garb did not always prove to be adequate protection is emphasised by the fact that the Companies once held the Pope and the papal court at Avignon to ransom. If such could befall a Pope, what might not happen to lesser churchmen and their churches?
Ecclesiastics were made particularly vulnerable by the fact that they were often large landowners. Their estates and their buildings, their crops and their flocks were at the mercy of a hostile army – with little that could be effectively done in their defence. As a consequence, and like the landed nobility all over France at this period, ecclesiastical institutions found themselves in difficulties because their estates were not providing them with the revenues required to maintain and repair them. Not only was there a lack of money; there was also a lack of incentive. English forces had made several descents upon the French mainland, and the Companies (Écorcheurs) were never far away. In such circumstances, populations lacked a positive desire to repair and to rebuild after destruction, since the same might soon occur again. There thus seems little doubt that French agriculture in general and individual fortunes in particular, declined as a result of war. About 1470, Sir John Fortescue, a former chief justice of England, noticed the desolation in which the land in the region of the Caux, north-west of Rouen, still lay after a rebellion which had taken place about thirty-five years, or more than one generation, before. This may appear as an extreme example, yet it indicates how, even in a rich agricultural region, war might have a devastating effect upon the fortunes and, above all, on the morale of the non-combatant population.
That the French population suffered a great deal both physically and psychologically cannot be doubted. Yet a reading of the evidence forces one to ask the question whether that evidence was not exaggerated, and whether it did not place too much emphasis on material destruction and the economic loss which inevitably ensued. Suspicions are aroused by the fact that we learn much about the losses incurred by the church and churchmen from the supplications sent to the papal court seeking remission from certain ecclesiastical taxes or the union of benefices which could no longer exist separately. Take, for instance, this example selected at random:
Most Holy Father. Since the revenues and dues of the parish church of St Mary of Ardevone, and the chapel or leprosy of St Giles of the said place, both in the diocese of Avranches, are so terribly reduced that the said church, worth in time of peace twenty gold ducats, is now, because of wars which have been raging in these parts for the past twenty years, worth scarcely six, and the chapel, which was formerly worth ten gold ducats, is now worth but four, from which revenues it is now only possible to maintain one person. Stephen de la Chesnaye, clerk, bachelor in canon law, priest of the said church of St Mary, supplicates that the two benefices be united.
Granted, at St Peter’s, Rome, 21 November, 143317
17 H. Denifle, La Désolation des Églises, Monastères et Hôpitaux en France pendant la Guerre de Cent Ans (Paris, 1897), I, p. 78.
In the secular sphere similar demands, citing the losses caused by war, were made for exemption from rent or royal taxation. But on reading further, suspicions are allayed. This was no gigantic plot to deny pope and king of their revenues. It is the use of other evidence which convinces one that, over all, the picture of devastation derived from this type of evidence is trustworthy. Thus the evidence about the region of the Caux, taken from Sir John Fortescue, agrees with that provided by administrative documents and other sources. Again, as regards the Church, we have the reliable testimony of Philippe de Mézières that the church was one of the chief victims of the war in the fourteenth century. In addition, we have other forms of evidence which point in the same direction: the legal records of the Paris Parlement, and those of notaries in many parts of France; the records of the reluctance of Frenchmen to pay taxes voted by the Estates, on the grounds they had been impoverished by war; the more literary evidence of the works of Roland de Talent, the Italian humanist who lived in Normandy during the last part of the English occupation in the fifteenth century and who, as an outsider, was in good position to study the situation without too much commitment; not to mention the evidence, very different but strangely complimentary, of two bishops, Jean Juvénal des Ursins and Thomas Basin. Taken as a whole, evidence from such varied sources is overwhelming.
As might be expected, a long period of hostility between countries found public opinion asserting itself against what was seen as the evil practices of war. Such opinion is reflected in the practical measures advocated to avert those evils. Of those who wrote, we may distinguish two kinds: the chroniclers, who reflected opinion rather than formed it; and the social commentators and critics whose task it was to influence public opinion, as far as this was possible. Those who took steps to improve the situation were those who worked actively for peace, who strove to bring order to the military scene and who helped alleviate suffering and hardship undergone by the more innocent of the war’s victims. In all these ways men showed themselves aware of the situation which appeared to many to be worsening with every passing year.
No chronicler, if he collected his information assiduously, could fail to realise that war had its darker side. To a man like Froissart, the arch-exponent of the chivalric chronicle, such a realisation must have been distasteful. In his reporting of the war, we do not normally find the worst excesses being committed by men of birth and breeding – the natural leaders – but rather by the riff-raff of society found in any army of his day. Yet, in spite of his leanings, Froissart did not ignore the realities of life which he was at pains to describe. Nonetheless, he clearly frowned upon acts of treachery and unnecessary violence, reserving praise for those who helped prevent such excesses.
If Froissart had both feet on the ground and knew what was going on between men in wartime, he nevertheless did not live so close to ordinary people as did some other writers of whom we may take the fourteenth-century French Carmelite, Jean de Venette, as an example.18 Froissart, it is true, was a clerk, but Venette was a dedicated priest, and doubtless there was something of the priestly outlook reflected in his comments on the conduct of war. Born a peasant, his social attitude was more humble than that of Froissart, and it is probable that he reflected with greater feeling and accuracy the sentiments of the French lower classes – especially the non-combatant classes – towards the activities of the soldier. He was also a sharp critic of the nobility for their failure to take a proper lead against the English, and for not protecting the people from some of the worst effects of war. Such criticism was not motivated by Venette’s lowly birth, for the nobility had other critics, more highly born than Venette had been. On the effects of war upon the French countryside and its unfortunate populations, few could paint a more harrowing picture. Venette’s liking for the purple passage, however, should not prevent us from realising that, in spite of his wordiness, he felt strongly about the desperate situation in the France of his day, and that he was aware enough to see where the roots of the trouble lay.
18 The Chronicle of Jean de Venette, trans. and ed. J. Birdsall and R. A. Newhall (New York, 1951).
Not unnaturally, social critics had more to say on the matter of war, and especially on its abuses. They are interesting not only because they reflect a sympathetic understanding of the troubles which affected Europe, and France in particular, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but because they put forward solutions as how best to bring them to an end. That these solutions bore considerable resemblance to one another is not surprising, for each critic owed a debt to those who had preceded him. Yet it would be wrong to assume that they copied one another blindly. The fact that their solutions seem to follow a close pattern indicates, rather, how valid and widely accepted the suggestions may have been.
In England there appears to have been considerable awareness, among the better informed critics at least, of the plight of those caught up, in spite of themselves, by the war in France. Not surprisingly, churchmen were among the strongest critics of the manner in which the war was being fought. Sermons were preached condemning the conduct of the war, if not the very policy of the war itself. Two well-known fourteenth-century bishops, Richard Fitz Ralph of Armagh and Thomas Brinton of Rochester, could openly state their doubts concerning the morality of fighting one’s neighbour, Brinton expressing what was for an Englishman a very forthright opinion when he stated, about 1375, that the English were at that time being worsted by the French as divine punishment for their sins. This kind of opinion, more normally associated with French publicists writing about their own people, is revealing as suggesting that the evils of war, as they affected the non-combatant, were the retribution levied by God upon a whole people for their sins, a notion implied if not openly stated.19
19 On this, see G. R. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1933; new edn, Oxford, 1961).
The violence of war and the hypocrisy which it engendered caused some to attack all forms of military aggression. If Langland was, in some sort, a pacifist, the chief exponent of this doctrine was to be John Wyclif who, with not a little justice, saw war as being waged, ‘for pride and coveitise’, or for ambition and hope of advantage, as we might put it.20 In his Latin work, De Officio Regis, Wyclif condemned the war fought among Christians as being against the commandment to love one’s neighbour. How, he asked, could a claimant to a kingdom (he probably had in mind Edward III’s claim to the French throne) know for certain that God had chosen him for it and, if not, how dare he risk so many lives in pursuit of so great an uncertainty? War, he stated to add weight to his argument, was more dangerous in his day than it had been in Old Testament times. A bitter critic of his fellow clergy, Wyclif castigated them for giving financial support to a king who pursued a policy of war. No words, either, were strong enough to condemn the activities of bishop Despenser of Norwich in leading a crusade to Flanders against the supporters of the anti-pope, Clement VII, in 1383. Death, when it came to Wyclif at the end of the following year, must have been a relief from so sinful a world.21 His influence, however, lived on. In 1391 Walter Brut, who described himself as ‘a sinner, layman, farmer and a Christian’, denounced all war, as Wycliffe had done, as being against both the spirit and the letter of the gospel; while the opinions of William Swynderby who, like Brut, condemned war in strong terms, had to be refuted by two Cambridge theologians who defended the right of the king of England, Richard II, to attack the kingdom of France.22
20 The English Works of Wyclif, hitherto unpublished, ed. F. D. Matthew (1880). Wyclif had said that money spent on war could have been better spent on other causes.21 Tractatus de Officio Regis, ed. A. W. Matthew and C. Sayle (London, 1887), pp. 262, 272, 279; English Works, pp. 90–91.22 The Register of John Trefnant, Bishop of Hereford (1389–1404), ed. W. W. Capes (Hereford, 1914).
One of the most interesting critics of the effects of war was another priest, the more orthodox Dominican, John Bromyard. In his Summa Predicantium, or notes for preachers, he expressed in several places what he saw as being wrong with war; his views have added interest in that they referred to events in both France and Italy, which he mentions more than once. As became a priest, Bromyard was concerned with the morally degrading effects of war, both upon those who caused evils and those who suffered them. Soldiers, he asserted, came to look for money and, not finding it, they searched for their victims’ best clothes. Those robbed found themselves in such poverty that necessity obliged them to steal and to use threats and violence to obtain even the minimum of what they needed.23 War was, therefore, a source of moral danger for all concerned; death came quickly and unexpectedly and the man who died in sin might be damned for all eternity.
23 Summa Predicantium, under ‘Ministratio’.
Bromyard also showed an awareness of the difficulties experienced by the non-combatant, together with much sympathy for him in his plight. The well-informed Dominican friar clearly realised that if the age in which he lived was dominated by war and its effects, this was largely due to the existence of badly paid soldiers who encouraged aggression for their own benefit. They were the only men who knew how to use force with any effect, being accustomed to overriding the law and the courts, both secular and ecclesiastical, as the occasion demanded. Such men despoiled the church and the poor as they went along, taking what they wanted as and when it suited them. But the poor had yet more to suffer, for not only did they expect the visitations of the soldiery and the companies, but they also had to put up with the levying of dues and other taxes by their Lords and the officers of the king, the money then being wasted on tournaments, on buying horses for war, on paying of ransoms and the like. Behind this condemnation of many aspects of war was the recognition that men’s desire for luxuria lay at the root of the deceit, treason and violence by which war was now characterised.24
24 Ibid, under ‘Lex’ and ‘Bellum’: Wyclif, De Officio Regis, p. 271.
On the French side much was naturally made of the physical sufferings brought about by war: ‘the groans of poets Eustache Deschamps and Jean Meschimot are only too easy to hear’.25 These present what may perhaps be seen as the popular view of the war. Later, in the fifteenth century, two Normans, Alain Chartier and bishop Thomas Basin, also criticised the manner of conducting the war, being joined in this by the voice of the influential Jean Juvénal des Ursins. Basin was particularly critical of Charles VII for not defending his people, blaming it chiefly on the lack of control which the king had over his army, which was allowed to do much as it, rather than what the king himself, willed.
25 P. S. Lewis, Later Medieval France, the Polity (London, 1968), p. 16.
The most interesting of French social commentators of the late fourteenth century was Philippe de Mézières, whose Songe du Vieil Pèlerin contains much that is pertinent to our subject. Not surprisingly, he echoed several criticisms which have already been mentioned, while citing other abuses whose existence is confirmed by the surviving historical records of the day. He was much concerned with the fate of the Church, all the more so since that institution was in the grips of the Great Schism at the time Mézières was writing. Like Wyclif, with whom he would not be naturally associated, he was more than once critical of the English clergy who appeared to him to be giving their support to the continuation of the war; he even singled out certain bishops for being too concerned with the cares of the world. In his own France, he claimed, churchmen were experiencing other difficulties; their churches were frequently ruined and they were finding it difficult to obtain possession of livings, being obliged to have recourse to the courts, where they frequently encountered the obstructionist tactics of petty officialdom. When writing of the suffering, both physical and moral, experienced by the non-combatant, Mézières made it clear that what his country needed was an authority which could control its own officials and curb the excesses of the gens d’armes, chiefly by paying them properly, and by demanding of them the implementation of their obligations. It is significant that he should have been against the granting of letters of marque, as these derogated from the king’s right to make war and apply justice, thereby giving encouragement to those wishing to take the law into their own hands.26
26 Philippe de Mézières, Le Songe du Vieil Pèlerin, ed. G. W. Coopland (2 vols, Cambridge, 1969).
Turning to those who took active steps to improve the lot of the non-combatant, it is well to mention a few writers who dwelt more specifically with military affairs. The late fourteenth-century French monk, Honoré Bouvet, whose treatise, L’Arbre des Batailles, concerned practical problems which any soldier might encounter, showed himself keenly aware of the tragic effects of the war, and of its evil influence upon men of his day, although some may object that his legal background caused him to consider these problems in formal rather than in human terms.27 Yet these are precisely the qualities which made his work well known and influential; the popular early fifteenth-century writer, Christine de Pisan, relied heavily on it. Their joint popularity is reflected by the fact that Henry VII of England was to lend William Caxton his manuscript of Christine’s work, with orders to translate it into English; the work finally appeared from Caxton’s press under the title of The Book of Fayttes of Armes and of Chyualrye.28 In a part of the third book, which dealt with some practical considerations of war, Christine asserted that, before engaging in war, a king should ensure that he could pay his army adequately, in order to prevent fighting the common people who, unless they were found helping the enemy, ought to be left in peace. We are once again in the presence of the much advocated answer to violence: discipline and control based upon an ability to pay an army.
27 Trans and ed. G. W. Coopland, under the title of The Tree of Battles of Honoré Bonet (sic) (Liverpool, 1949).28 Ed. A. T. P. Byles (EETS., 1932 and 1937).
Much the same form of argument was to be employed by the Englishman, Nicholas Upton, who compiled his De Studio Militari from the fruits of practical experience gained in the French wars of Henry VI. Upton had no doubts that the non-combatant must remain unmolested. All religious persons, those concerned with farming and agriculture, pilgrims, merchants, surgeons and barbers (the physicians of the day) and, as Christine would have added, university students travelling to and from their place of study – all these should be allowed to go freely. From his own experience Upton agreed that ‘onrewly Couetousnes [is the] mother of stryffes, enemy of peace [and the] occasion of grutche and malice’. Taking this view, Upton would punish soldiers for action that ‘ys not reputyd for a sowdier’ by ‘correction by the purse’.29 This, at any rate, was action which the soldier himself would understand, and was, in fact, used in Normandy by the duke of Bedford, who decreed that soldiers who, against orders, did not pay for goods which they took, would have their value deducted from their wages. The good intention is clear. Yet the fact remained that although the soldiers concerned might be punished, the embittered civilian remained uncompensated for the theft.
29 The Essential Portions of Nicholas Upton’s ‘De Studio Militari’, ed. F. P. Barnard (Oxford, 1931), pp. 4, 5, 28–29, 33, 46.
We have now returned to the realities of life. The social critics, poets and chroniclers might express the views of society and its sympathy for those who suffered from the war. Yet how effective were such comments? Those in authority were not unaware of the problems, but were limited in what they could do to solve them. The English military ordinances, which constituted the shadowy line of demarcation between legitimate military and civil interests, and the development of the court of chivalry at this period, were two attempts to impose effective military discipline. In France, the Cabochien revolt of 1413 was partly provoked by a desire to resolve the military problem, but the ordinances were too short lived to have had any lasting effects.30 The necessary order in the military sphere would only be achieved as part of a more general resurgence and assertion of royal authority. That the effective military reforms of the reign of Charles VII should have coincided with this resurgence was no accident. From then on, matters improved, and France began her recovery from the effects of war.
30 See A Coville, L’Ordonnance Cabochienne (Paris, 1891), esp. p. 172.
The Church, too (pace Wyclif) did not always speak tongue in cheek when she had occasion to bemoan the spilling of Christian blood by other Christians. Mainly through the sermons of the clergy, attention could be drawn to the many moral problems of war, and to the calamities which conflict brought in its wake. The church would help, too, in peace negotiations; on several occasions the papacy and, during the conciliar period, the church councils (notably that of Basel) were represented at international meetings convened to resolve the deadlock existing between the war’s main protagonists. In one now well-known case about 1340, Pope Benedict XII sent a gift of 6000 gold florins as war relief to the inhabitants of the devastated region around Cambrai, in north-eastern France. That this instance of Christian bounty in the face of hardships experienced by an almost defenceless civil population should be needed at all was largely due to the fire-raising excesses of Edward III’s army in the first major campaign of the Hundred Years’ War. This was bad enough but, as we now know, matters would get worse before they got better.31
31 Hewitt, Organization of War, pp. 124–125.
So, although steps were taken to improve the deteriorating situation, they had but little practical effect. For a variety of causes, the fourteenth century witnessed the broadening out of the war into several theatres: over much of France, into Spain and Portugal, not to mention the war at sea. The English could not afford to give adequate pay to those who went to fight on these expeditions. Nor could the French, so often on the defensive in different quarters, do much better. Military leaders finally realised this, taking it upon themselves to lead expeditions against the enemy on condition that a blind eye be turned to their misdeeds and those of their soldiers. Badly and irregularly paid, sometimes not paid at all, they had to fend for themselves. As Nicolas de Clémanges wrote to Jean Gerson sometime after 1408, this meant that any man, simply by making promises, could gather round himself a group which would set out to seek its own fortune. Inevitably this led to the situation in which that group would not fight against the country’s real enemies but rather against its own citizens and inhabitants. Dismissing as rotten the system whereby soldiers were not properly paid, Clémanges, condemned it as the root of all the evils from which the France of his day was suffering.32
32 Jean Gerson, Oeuvres Complètes, ed. P. Glorieux (Paris, 1960), ii, pp. 121–122.
Such was one of the great problems which faced men in late medieval France, a problem which, as events were to show, would only be solved by a successful reassertion of the monarchy’s power. But the monarchy could not do everything alone. There were attitudes to be conquered, and those of the seasoned soldier were the hardest to change. In 1435, in a well-known memorandum, the English knight, Sir John Fastolf, a man of wide experience of war in France, advocated a scorched earth policy as the best way of defeating the French, because they had rejected the suggestion that the war be fought ‘alonly betwixt men of werre and men of werre’. Since this relatively humanitarian approach had been spurned, Fastolf was prepared to support the harshest methods. Groups of soldiers should go through northern France ‘brennyng and distruynge alle the lande as thei pas, both hous, corne, veignes and all treis that beren fruyte for mannys sustenaunce, and all bestaile that may not be driven [away], to be distroiede’.33 It is revealing that, in spite of showing an awareness of the plight of the non-combatant, Fastolf should have advocated the destruction of his goods crops and cattle, of everything in fact that he had to live on. As a hardened soldier, Fastolf had a clear idea as to how the war should be fought. The non-combatant might be spared but, in the name of military necessity, he must be prepared to lose his all.
33 Letters and Papers llustrative of the Wars of the English in France, ed. J. Stevenson, (London, RS). ii, pt 2, 580.
Less than twenty years after these words were written, the English would be expelled from France, and many of the reasons which lay behind the sufferings experienced by the non-combatant population disappeared with them. Yet, in spite of it all, few seem to have adopted strongly held antimilitary attitudes: a man like Bouvet was not against war as such. As the fourteenth century advanced, the predominant feeling grew into one of lassitude and fatalistic resignation. All too frequently men attributed the loss of goods or property to ‘la fortune de la guerre’, a force against which they felt powerless to act. Demoralisation was what leaders in both Church and State had to contend with, since generations had grown up who had never known any condition other than war, a condition which the poet Deschamps described as that of ‘damnation’. War now joined famine and the plague as the signs of divine disfavour from whose tribulations men prayed to be spared: A fame, bello et peste, libera nos, Domine.34
34 Those interested in reading further on the subject may turn to C. Allmand, ‘War and the Non-Combatant in the Middle Ages’ (M. Keen (ed), Medieval Warfare: A History (Oxford, 1999), pp. 253–272.
Until fairly recent times the role of the non-combatant in war has suffered from being insufficiently studied, and the significance of its place in the study of conflict has therefore often not been fully appreciated or understood. Recent years, however, have brought about change. The involvement of sizeable elements of the civilian populations of the war’s participating countries has raised awareness of the important role played by the non-combatant in modern conflict; that importance may be seen in the growing role played by him in the preparation for war; likewise, the civilian as a target for enemy propaganda underlines the importance of the role played by him supporting the side which he does in the conflict.
That role is better known and understood now than it was even three or four generations ago. The demands made upon society by modern warfare have helped forge a better, evidenced-based, understanding of the role of the non-combatant in wars fought in recent times. The use of valuable public records have enabled us to get to know the personnel of English armies who fought in France six or seven centuries ago, to follow their careers as soldiers, and thus to get a far better idea than was previously available of who the ‘typical’ soldier might be, where (in more than one sense) he came from, and what he may have hoped to derive from working in the king’s army. The systematic analysis of sections of England’s fine public records has enabled historians to extend the search to find answers to questions which, if answered in sufficient numbers, allow them to make significant and meaningful generalisations about those who, for example, served in English armies several centuries ago. The growth in both the quantity and quality of information regarding individuals making different contributions to the functioning of the army becoming available has meant that historians can now make assessments of a kind, and in sufficient number, to cause the study which used to be called ‘Military History’ to be changed to the broader and more inclusive subject which we call the ‘History of War’.