3
The work of Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus has been termed ‘the most influential military manual in use during the Middle Ages’1 by the editor of the earliest known translation of the work into English. Part of its importance lies in the fact that it was a work which might be read at different levels. Already widely known, in the original Latin, in the early and central Middle Ages, translation added a whole dimension to the text’s significance. Thus made available in Anglo-Norman,2 French (some four translations before the sixteenth century), Tuscan, Castilian, English (two in the fifteenth century), German and, in part, Scots, it would become a text which interested the student of languages and translation, as well as the student of the large corpus of classical literature which was rendered into the vernacular languages at the end of the Middle Ages.3 Besides all this, the text is one which should be of interest to the historian of the transmission of ideas within late medieval military culture.
1 The Earliest English Translation of Vegetius’ De Re Militari, ed. G. Lester (Heidelberg, 1988), p. 7.2 See L. Thorpe, ‘Mastre Richard, a Thirteenth-Century Translator of the De Re Militari of Vegetius’, Scriptorium, 6 (1952), 39–50; M. D. Legge, ‘The Lord Edward’s Vegetius’, Ibid, 7 (1953), 262–265.3 Earliest English Translation, pp. 14–16; C. Allmand, The De Re Militari of Vegetius: The Reception, Transmission and Legacy of a Roman Text in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2011), ch. 7 and p. 365; J. Monfrin, ‘Humanisme et traductions au moyen âge’, in L’humanisme médiéval dans les littératures romanes du XIIe au XIVe siècle, ed. A. Fournier (Paris, 1964), pp. 217–246.
What had been Vegetius’ intention when he compiled his Epitoma rei militaris, most probably during the dying years of the fourth century?4 The work is in four books or chapters, each divided into sections of varying length. It is quite possible that the first book was written to stand on its own, and that the remainder of the work was compiled at the request of the emperor to whom Vegetius had dedicated the first book after encouraging remarks had been made about it.5 In this, Vegetius had been looking back to the past when Rome had ruled the world, something it no longer did in his lifetime. Its failure to do so, the author implied, was the result of poor standards of recruitment and training, as well as a decline in the organ-isation, strategies and effective use of equipment in the army of his day. As the author told the emperor, the greatness of Rome could be revived if the army were restored to its former efficiency, when few had stood against it. The reasons for successes achieved in the past were not difficult to explain, or so Vegetius thought. As we discover on reading his work, he was a firm believer in the basic military doctrines that victories were won as the result of proper training and preparation, as well as through the use made of the experiences of others. Soldiers must be taught the basics about their arms and about the strategies which won wars. They could hear about these from their leaders, but they should on no account ignore the lessons of past experience which could be learned and absorbed from the written word: ‘they of Atthenes … writen … bookys and reweles, and commaunded the maystres of her yong chiualrie to teche and to rede thilke bookys to the yonge [werriours]’.6 Reference is made several times to the doctrina armorum, translated as the ‘teching and lore of armes’ in English, and as l’usage et la science des armes by Jean de Meun in the first French rendering of 1284.7 All three translations of the phrase give the sense that fighting is something which can be taught and, therefore, learned. Thus it was the duty of those with experience to preserve it in writing, for it to be passed down to succeeding generations. The De re militari falls into the category of didactic works intended to instruct.8
4 On the dating, see W. Goffart, ‘The Date and Purpose of Vegetius De Re Militari’, Traditio, 33 (1977), 65–100.5 P. Flavi Vegeti Renati Epitoma Rei Militari, ed. P. Önnerfors (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1995), pp. 52–53; N. P. Milner (trans), Vegetius: Epitome of Military Science (Translated Texts for Historians, 16 (2nd edn, Liverpool, 1996), p. 29.6 Earliest English Translation, p. 103/12–16 (Citation is by page and line number).7 Ibid, p. 56/19; L’Art de Chevalerie: traduction du De Re Militari de Végèce par Jean de Meun, ed. U. Robert (Paris, SATF, 1897), 14; Li Abregemenz noble homme Vegesce Flave René des establissemenz apartenanz a chevalerie, ed. L. Löfstedt (Helsinki, 1977), p. 75.8 M. Keen, Chivalry (New Haven and London, 1984), p. 111.
The first book is therefore packed full of principles, sound if often general in nature. It was after a favourable reception had been given it that its author decided to continue his work. His book, then, should probably not be seen as a proper Art of War as such, conceived as a whole,9 but rather as an attempt, by a reformer, to bring an improvement to the army of AD 400 by breathing new life into an institution which, all knew, had seen better days. Some, trying to look at Vegetius’s work from the viewpoint of the Middle Ages, have found it strange that so little is said about cavalry. It should be remembered, however, that in the days of Rome’s greatness the cavalry had not been the state’s most powerful arm, nor, indeed, was that arm in need of fundamental reform at the time when Vegetius was writing. On neither count, then, did it fall within the author’s self-imposed brief. However one cannot ignore the fact that some of Vegetius’ views were old-fashioned even by the standards of his own time, and that he emphasised the role of the foot soldier at the expense of cavalry and cavalry tactics.10
9 Milner, Vegetius: Epitome of Military Science (Liverpool, 1993), p. xviii.10 Earliest English Translation, p. 11, n. 10.
What were the author’s qualifications for writing this work? Vegetius was not a military man, but a well-read and versatile functionary who may have had experience of high-level finance and, in particular, of the recruiting and provisioning of armies. Since he was no great military expert he depended, for the detail, upon the experience and wisdom of others.11 Should this work, then, be regarded mainly as an ordered résumé of the work of others or, rather, as an original creation of the author, however eclectic in its use of sources and ideas? Recent scholarship suggests the second of these, although at times Vegetius appears to have been following known texts quite closely, in particular the works of Cato the Elder, Cornelius Celsus and, perhaps above all, that great source of examples, the Strategemata of Julius Frontinus, written in the first century AD.12 From these and others Vegetius drew material to compile his own work of which several hundred manuscripts, of greatly varying reliability, ranging from the seventh to the seventeenth century, and written in both Latin and the vernacular languages, have survived.13
11 ‘For I claim no authority to myself, but merely to write up the dispersed material of those whom I have listed above, summarising it as if to form an orderly sequence’ (Epitome of Military Science, 2nd edn, p. 10).12 Frontinus, The Stratagems and the Aqueducts of Rome, trans C. E. Bennett (London and Cambridge, MA, 1969).13 C. R. Shrader, ‘A Handlist of Extant Manuscripts Containing the De Re Militari of Flavius Vegetius Renatus’, Scriptorium, 33 (1979), especially pp. 286–305.
Why was Vegetius’ work so popular in medieval Europe? Some will have seen it as part of the general culture, others as part of the military culture, inherited from the ancient world. But it was more than that. Here was a work both informative and didactic, from which men could learn lessons useful for their own time. One wonders whether the medieval translators realised when the work was written and, in particular, what intentions had lain behind its compilation. One suspects not, so that the first task of the translator to provide his readers with a text which reflected the author’s intentions, may not have been regarded as a prime obligation. The translator’s options were limited. Either he could try to aim for accuracy but, in so doing, produce a work which, because of its rather technical nature and, consequently, specialised vocabulary, might not make great sense to the contemporary reader, whoever he might be. Alternatively, he might try to produce a version which reflected the spirit rather than an accurate rendering of the original text. Furthermore, what if the work being translated had been written almost one thousand years earlier? What might the late medieval reader expect to learn from studying Vegetius? Cited by two Benedictine monks, Bede in the early eighth century, Hraban Maur a century or so later, Vegetius was to come into his own in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when not only did the number of copies of his work appear to have increased, but he also came to be cited, or ‘moralised’, often at length by such as John of Salisbury, Vincent of Beauvais, Giles of Rome and other compilers of the princely ‘mirror’ literature, as they tried to show why rulers should have armies and effective commanders to lead them.14 To such writers, the importance of Vegetius lay not so much in what he could teach them about the administration of the Roman legion, or the details of good tactics to follow either in the field or at a siege, but rather what guidance he could offer the rising national monarchies regarding successful preparations for war which had to be carried out irrespective of time, place, or circumstance. An army consisting of well selected troops (selection, Vegetius taught in Book 1, was crucial) trained and drilled in the disciplines of war achieved its own sense of confidence, and was thus ready to face the enemy. For the purposes of their works, which soon came to be widely disseminated, these writers concentrated on what was, broadly speaking, the message shared with the first Boy Scout: ‘Be prepared’.
14 Earliest English Translation, pp. 14, 11.
Vegetius was first translated from Latin into a vernacular language in the second half of the thirteenth century. We cannot be certain which translation was the first to be completed. Dominica Legge thought that the one into Anglo-Norman dialect could have been made about 1254–55, or else in the very early years of the fourteenth century; Lewis Thorpe, on the other hand, argued that this translation was intended for Edward I and was made in about 1271, when the future king of England was on crusade.15 In any event, it seems likely that by the late thirteenth century the text was already regarded as important enough to justify a complete translation. In France, the first of these, in prose, was made in 1284 by Jean de Meun, who had already completed the text of the Roman de la Rose, begun more than a generation earlier by Guillaume de Lorris, and who was already proving himself a translator of skill. The work on Vegetius, he informs us, was done in response to a request made to him by Jean de Brienne, count of Eu, who had only recently served on crusade with the saintly king, Louis IX.16 A few years later (certainly before 1291), Jean Priorat of Besançon produced a verse version of Meun’s translation.17 The work is that of someone who had at least personal experience of war, and suggests that the original prose version was already known, certainly among military men, within a short time of completion and (although the point is more speculative) that it was achieving a measure of success.
15 L’Art de Chevalerie, ed. Robert, p. 177; Li Abregemenz, ed. Löfstedt, p. 195.16 Li Abrejance de l’Ordre de Chevalerie, ed. U. Robert (Paris, SATF, 1897).17 Earliest English Translation, p. 189/32–33.
What was to be the approach of the first English translator who, more than a century later, ‘at the ordenaunce & biddynge of the worthi & worschipfull lord, sire Thomas of Berkeley’,18 an active campaigner at the time engaged under Prince Henry [V] in Wales, tackled the Latin text, the task being completed, as we learn from the colophon, on All Souls’ Eve, 1 November 1408. The problem confronting the translator faced with important changes, such as those of military organisation or terminology or, at another level, with developments such as the invention of new arms, could be considerable. How was he to react to the letter of his text? Should he treat it as a relic of a past age, to be left as it was found, a text which fossilised an age and, in this case, its army? Or should he treat it as a text whose content had relevance for his own day?19
18 On the translations into French, see C. Buridant, ‘Jean de Meun et Jean de Vignay, traducteurs de l’ Epitoma Rei Militaris de Végèce. Contribution à l’histoire de la traduction au Moyen Âge’, Études de langue et de littérature française offertes à André Lanly (Nancy, 1980), pp. 51–69.19 On omissions, see Earliest English Translation, pp. 33–34.
Lacking a fully developed technical vocabulary (some of it would have had to refer to officers, weapons and practices now totally historical), the translator was soon forced into compromises, in spite of the fact that living in an age which saw itself as the heir to the Roman/Latin past, and which still shared a Latin culture with it, he may have wished to produce a rendering which was close to the original, both to do honour to that original and to demonstrate the relevance of the book’s content to his own day. It is likely that the Middle Ages looked upon Vegetius’ work as one and whole, a handbook whose practical teachings were more appropriate in some sections than in others: the character of siege warfare, for example, had not changed all that much until the Middle Ages were well advanced. To make the text more comprehensible to his own day, the translator was obliged to make some concessions; where possible, terms had to be updated; some passages could be omitted since their practical relevance was very doubtful; others, too, were dropped because the translator could not understand them,20 while others by contrast were developed and ‘augmented’ in respect of both vocabulary and content.21 In practice the translator did what he could to transform parts of the De re militari into a useful guide on how to achieve success in war. Of the eleven surviving manuscripts of this translation, five are found on their own, six are bound with other works, most frequently John Lydgate’s Book of Governance of Kings and Princes.22 In spite of much research and scholarly ingenuity, the name of the translator is still not known. His rendering is normally fairly close to the original, but its effect, in the words of one critic, is to make it rather wooden. Nor is it always the needs of clarity or explanation which lead to the expansions of the text: the use of otiose language helps to make the translation more than twice as long as the published text of the original Latin.
20 On the translator’s expansions, see Ibid, pp. 30–33.21 Ibid, p. 17/23.22 John Lydgate, The Book of Governance of Kings and Princes (New York, 1997).
How did the translator deal with the problems of rendering a technical work written so long ago into a developing vernacular language? The translation was said to have been commissioned for ‘lordes and alle worthi werrioures that ben apassed by wey of age al labour & trauaillyng, and to greet informacioun & lernynge of yonge lordes & knyghtes that ben lusty & loueth to here & see and to vse dedes of armes and chyualrie’.23 The use of a vocabulary bearing implications of rank and social order which did not exist in the fifteenth century created a difficulty. Another concerned the most effective way of rendering a technical vocabulary into English. The Latin acies, or battle line, became ‘scheltromes’ or ‘batailes’ in English.24 The different means of protection afforded to those approaching a wall were called by a variety of terms, ‘targattes’, ‘pauyses’ and ‘scheldes’,25 the ‘snayle’ being the smaller version of ‘testudo’, the covered battering ram.26 The not infrequent use which the translator makes of two or more English words to render one in Latin suggests that he may feel that his readers would not always be familiar with every English form which he employed to translate technical terms. His desire to help the reader understand ancient meanings is made clear by this practice, as is that of adding a phrase or clause, sometimes even a sentence, by way of explanation or enlightenment. Further evidence that the translator found it difficult to deal with an unfamiliar vocabulary comes, when confronted with the task of rendering the ranks and titles of the legions’ leaders into comprehensible English, he finally admits to ‘grete difficulte to Englisshe the names of officeris’.27 Responding to this problem as any schoolboy might do, he simply omits some and fudges others in a manner not always satisfactory.
23 Earliest English Translation, pp. 46/1–12; 189/28–190/5. See also R. Hanna III, ‘Sir Thomas Berkeley and his Patronage’, Speculum, 64 (1989), 878–916.24 Earliest English Translation, p. 49/19.25 Ibid, p. 162/28.26 Ibid, pp. 168/18–22; 161/2.27 Ibid, p. 83/18–19.
In the work’s opening sentence the translator tells his readers that his ‘tretys techith holliche of knighthod and of chiualrye’.28 How are we to understand these two terms? In one sense ‘knighthod’ may be taken to mean the fulfilment of the enhanced role of the soldier who, through ‘the sacramentis of knighthod’ renders honour to God, the emperor and society; while ‘chiualrye’ is the putting into practice of the skills and rules involved in waging war successfully. We may understand ‘res’ (‘matter’) as referring to the ‘military matter’, in this particular context something like the Art (or Practice) of Waging War. So the Latin phrase res militaris refers to the art or craft of making war, this being regarded as an almost scientific activity (with rules) to which the wisdom of the past, set out in books and manuals, has much to contribute. This is underlined in another phrase containing the word ‘knyghthode’, ‘the lore and the teching of knighthoode’, which the translator used to render the Latin term ‘disciplina militaris’, the word ‘disciplina’ referring to the rules, conventions and practices which can be taught and instilled into the minds of soldiers who, as eruditos (skilled, experienced) ‘in dedes of armes wel vsed and lerned’, will go forward to win wars. It is in this roundabout way that we reach another meaning of chivalry. This time the sense suggests the exercise of military power for the benefit of the community. In this way chivalry emerges as a sense of responsibility to society as a whole, exercised by those selected by the emperor for their marked military virtue, not for their birth or rank, to prepare and keep themselves ready to act for ‘the helthe and profight of the comynalte’.29
28 Ibid, p. 47/3–4.29 Ibid, p. 55/4–5.
Modern commentators, noting the increase in the number of surviving manuscripts of Vegetius’ text, have remarked how its popularity appears to have been on the increase well into the sixteenth century, by which time his work was available in print, and was being produced with other works of a military character.
Why was there this long-standing interest in a thousand-year old text? Take, first, the idea that man may help himself to work out his destiny through his own conscious efforts. The notion lay at the heart of much of what Vegetius had written and of the manner in which he had presented it. We have already seen how important it was, in his view, for each generation to pass on its experience and wisdom to those who succeeded it, the best way of doing this effectively being to write things down for transmission to posterity. It is the manner of doing this which was significant. Vegetius recalled that we have much to learn from history.30 But how much? Therein lies the heart of the matter. History recounts what happened, but often fails to tell us what we should be seeking to know, how it happened. To record victories is one thing, to understand how they were won is quite another. Hence his book is an attempt to answer the questions: ‘Hou … hou … hou’. To Vegetius who, here, was following a long Roman tradition, it was possible to explain rationally how wars were lost and won. The soldier, in particular the commander, must be a thoughtful soldier or commander. If he were so, he had every chance of being successful. The knight, already endowed with the attributes of sapientia and fortitudo, acquires prudentia by the end of the eleventh century. From that time, the ‘intellectual’ approach to war grows steadily, a development which helps explain the growing appreciation, from the twelfth century onwards, of Vegetius’ fundamental message: thought, particularly forethought, can win wars, a message gleaned from Frontinus and the wider classical tradition.31 It is not surprising, therefore, that he should have become an author whose ideas were very much quoted, for example, in the ‘mirror’ literature of the age. Since wars could, to a certain extent, be planned, rulers had a duty to look to the future and have their deterrent forces ready to be called upon in time of necessity. It was important to fight wars with a background of knowledge and experience, what the French called science. It was the recognition that soldiers commonly found the Latin language difficult to understand that had led Jean de Vignai to translate Vegetius into French about 1325. He did so because he was among those writers ‘[qui] ont dit aucunes choses qui mout sont profitables a savoir a ceus qui veulent estre sages et apris darmes’. It was good to be well informed, Vignai wrote at the end of his translation, ‘car en toutes batailles seulent plus donner victoire sens et usage darmes que force ne multitude de gens mal endoctrinés’.32 As the English prose translation would put it in the next century, ‘he concludith and scheweth that … ne strengthe vntaught is cause of ouercomynge, but craft, usage, and exercise of armes getith victorie & ouercometh enemyes’.33
30 Ibid, see Bk I, ch. 8.31 A. Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1978), pp. 124–127, 134.32 P. Meyer, ‘Les anciens traducteurs français de Végèce, et en particulier Jean de Vignai’, Romania, 25 (1896), 412, 421–422.33 Earliest English Translation, p. 47/17–21.
So, in the first and fundamental book of the De re militari, Vegetius dealt with the basic requirement of any army, the recruitment, selection and training of young soldiers. Here he established the bases of any successful army. Recruits must be those tested and chosen, the implication being that some, perhaps many, would be rejected as unsuitable. They must be trained in the use of arms, how to act and react together, how to conquer fear. All this should be achieved through regular training and exercises with the implied responsibility owed by each recruit to the legion, the emperor and, as indicated earlier, to the good of the wider society.
The favourable reception accorded to the first book led Vegetius to write three more which, together, make up the work. In the second book he dealt with the general matter of the army’s organisation, its command structure, its duties and its equipment. Significantly, he stressed the importance of war fought at sea. Significantly, too, while recognising that mounted soldiers generally move more quickly than do others, Vegetius stressed that it was the foot soldier who should occupy the central position in battle, the cavalry being accorded a position, although a not insignificant one, on the wings. It was the foot soldier, too, whom Vegetius recognised as being more versatile than his mounted counterpart owing to his ability to fight in a greater variety of situations in which physical factors were likely to play an important, if not dominant, role. Nor should it be forgotten that the foot soldier was cheaper than the cavalry: ‘men may se and vndirstonde that footmen ben most profitable for the communalte, for thei mowe profighte in alle places bothe in londe and on water, and also more multitude of werriours wel vsed to dedes of armes may with lasse cost be norschid than of any other degre’.34 Vegetius then returned to a point which he had made before: an army should not be drawn from anybody or everybody, but from men specially selected for their suitability. Greater responsibility rested upon them. Equally important was the fact that society depended heavily upon the selectors to act with a sense of communal responsibility as they chose those to serve in the army, a responsibility which was seen as extending as far as the emperor himself.35 In the same line of argument the ordinary soldier, too, was regarded as a servant of the public good and the recipient of public money who should fulfil no other service than that of furthering the emperor’s wars. Vegetius was critical of those who left the public for the private service.36
34 Ibid, pp. 77/32–78/2.35 Ibid, p. 78/14–17.36 Ibid, p. 95/27–29.
This part of the work produced several ideas which could fall on fertile ground. The first was the emphasis placed upon the active role attributed to the foot soldier now, by the end of the Middle Ages, fully prominent again in war, as well as upon archery. The second idea was of a different kind. The translation of tiro as ‘knyght’ was not as inappropriate as it might have seemed. According to Vegetius, the tiro was distinguished by two important characteristics. First, he was a man accustomed to the use of arms who had acquired skills through regular training and practice.
Secondly, Vegetius regarded the soldier’s role essentially as a public one, with strong social obligations, those of protecting territory and property. He regarded the army (the ‘oost’) essentially as a public instrument whose existence was specifically justified by the need to defend and promote the common good. It was a notion to which Vegetius returned time and again. It follows quite logically that every member of that army, every soldier, should be regarded as a servant of the common interest, whose skills, acquired by training, were available to defend that interest. Nor was ‘knyght’ simply or chiefly a word which reflected position or rank in society, a title implying privilege. On the contrary, it entailed certain obligations which were essentially ‘social’ in scope, that is to say that the privileges of position implied a moral compunction upon the ‘knyght’ to serve the society of which he was a member . Noblesse oblige. When Vegetius wrote about the societal obligations of the late fourth-century soldier, what he was saying could be translated in terms of what was expected of the knight in medieval Europe, and what one day would be expected of the soldier, seen increasingly as the servant of the society whose wage he was now coming to accept.37 In other words, the fundamental first book, in which Vegetius justified the need for, and the position of, the army in society may have been a strong theoretical influence in creating the thinking behind the development of national armies, which were already coming into being in the thirteenth century, armies whose existence was to be justified as being required for national defence, the need which, in turn, would be used to demand taxation at a national level.38
37 ‘Antiquity’s example taught that the soldier must regard his trade in the light of defined obligations’ (Keen, Chivalry, p. 111).38 In France attempts to create a ‘national’ army under the king were made in the 1370s and 1440s.
In the third book Vegetius considered the practical side of war. Here the message was clear: much can be achieved if precautions are taken by anticipating events. This was consistent with the notion, running right through the work, that for experience to have a lasting benefit, it must be passed on through the written word. Much of this chapter is common sense. The general rules of battle, which bring it to an end, sum up its character best: adequate supply and its opposite, famine, are crucial factors in deciding the outcome of war; the ability to seize an opportunity is often more effective than force of numbers; likewise, military virtue (by which Vegetius meant obedience, discipline and proper training, putting experience to its best use, as well as the maintenance of a high level of morale in the army) is of greater avail than numbers. The outcome of war must not be left to Dame Fortune, whose unpredictable wheel was all too well known in the Middle Ages. Soldiers must be ready, versatile, and properly trained, for only skill in arms and the necessary mental attitude would be regularly rewarded with victory.
Having dealt with war in the field, Vegetius turned his attention, in the fourth and final book, to siege warfare and to ways of fighting at sea. In a series of short chapters he discussed different kinds of defences as well as a variety of approaches which an attacker might use. Not all the practical means of pressing a siege were out of date by 1408; his observation that a round tower rendered a ram less effective could be translated into the advice given by late medieval architects that, in the age of the cannon, it was wise to avoid the full frontal wall. But by chapter 22 the translator had realised that the text he was rendering into English was no longer adequate to describe the artillery pieces of his day. In the most blatant ‘up-dating’ of the entire work he suddenly referred to the ‘grete gunnes that schete nowadays [stoones] of so grete peys (weight) that no wall may withstonde hem, as hath ben wel schewed bothe in the north cuntrey and eke in the werres of Wales’.39 This is one of the clearer examples of the difficulties faced by the translator who, without a blush, introduced examples of up-to-the-minute technology into the ancient text.
39 Earliest English Translation, p. 173/4–7.
What do such ‘augmentations’ suggest? The importance of the text lies not only in the interest which the philologist may have in it (though that should on no account be forgotten) but in the historical significance of a work, already 1000 years old, being rendered into the vernacular for what it had to offer a contemporary readership, a process which the translator helped along by referring to technical developments and to their recent use in the north of England and in Wales. In other words, the translation was not so much a rendering of an ‘historical’, ‘archaeological’ or ‘fossilised’ treatise as one which, through the omission of certain material, the addition of up-to-date examples, and the modernising of the vocabulary, could be shown to still have practical, contemporary value. We may note that Jean de Meun’s translation of 1284 was on the whole careful to follow the original as far as this could be done; yet it would not be long before ‘augmentations’, some of them references to events in the history of both Greece and Rome, others to events of relatively recent times, such as the battle of Bouvines or the defeat of Conradin, or to events ‘de nostre tens ou de nostre souvenance’, came to be added to the text, such illustrations being evidence of the importance of the topical status being accorded by copyists to the work in hand.40
40 Li Abregemenz noble homme Vegesce, ed. Löfstedt, pp. 11–13.
Topical, too, was the interest shown to war at sea, to ‘schippewerre’ or ‘water-werres’, as the translator called them.41 In a series of some fifteen short chapters he rendered Vegetius’ text into an English which, he hoped, his readers would understand. Trying to be helpful, he described how the ‘lyburnus, that beeth galeyes in Englische’,42 were used in the past, an explanation intended to assist his readers understand what went on in a battle at sea. One wonders how many of those reading this text would have observed the similarities of tactics used in a naval battle fought at that time with that described by Vegetius a millennium earlier. The galley still saw active service, even in the waters of the North, now increasingly dominated by the high-sided ship. The emphasis on the kinds of weapons used in naval battles, the similarity of the need to grapple and board, and to hurl and drop missiles from a height, had not greatly changed. Yet it was important and significant that observations on war fought at sea, taken as a more general view of warfare, should have been made at this time. The message will have been understood by those with recent experience of war against France, Genoa and Castile. The consistent message of the De re militari, to be prepared for all forms of war and ready to learn from experience, will have applied to naval war as much as it did to conflict on land.
41 Earliest English Translation, p. 178/19, 23.42 Ibid, p. 179/33: ‘lyburnus, that beeth galeyes in Englische…’.
What is the significance of these translations? England was relatively late in making Vegetius available in the vernacular; there were already four French versions in existence by about the year 1380, although the German translation was not made until 1475, just in time for it to be put directly into print in that year. When we seek the owners of such translations we find that a copy of the English one was owned by Richard III;43 another by a leading herald, John Smert, first Garter King of Arms; yet another by Sir John Astley, K.G.; and a fourth by Sir John Paston. When Thomas Hoccleve warned Sir John Oldcastle of the dangers of reading books on theology, he suggested instead works which included ‘Vegece: Of the aart of chiualrie’.44 We do not know whether Henry V read him, but given the date of the first translation and the fact that Henry, as both prince and king, encouraged translations from Latin, it is not unlikely that he had done so, particularly as John Lydgate referred to Henry training and exercising his body in the manner that Vegetius had taught. Certainly the Brut chronicle records the king acting at the siege of Rouen in ways which resembled recommendations made by Vegetius to those besieging a fortified position. We may also note that the anonymous member of Henry’s clerical household, who wrote the Gesta Henrici Quinti, was familiar with Giles of Rome’s De Regimine Principum, for he cited passages from that work reflecting a knowledge of Vegetius’ text.45
43 A. F. Sutton and L. Visser-Fuchs, ‘Richard III’s Books. IV. Vegetius, De Re Militari’, The Ricardian, 7 (1987), 541–552. For much of what follows, see Earliest English Translation, pp. 16–17.44 M. C. Seymour (ed), Selections from Hoccleve (Oxford, 1981), p. 66.45 Gesta Henrici Quinti. The Deeds of Henry the Fifth, ed. F. Taylor and J. S. Roskell (Oxford, 1975), pp. 28, n. 4; 40, n. 1; 42, n. 2.
The work was to make an indirect impact upon England through a number of fifteenth-century works written in English. It has been argued convincingly that Thomas Malory liked Vegetius’ realism and, far from regarding a knight as a romantic figure, preferred him as a proper soldier influenced by prudentia rather than by considerations of romance. Examples of his work show how he had accepted Vegetius’ realistic message on the need to fight when circumstances and conditions were favourable, and that espionage should be used if it could procure an advantage.46
46 D. Bornstein, ‘Military Strategy in Malory and Vegetius’ De Re Militari, Comparative Literature Studies (Univ. of Illinois), 9 (1972), 123–129.
The influence of Vegetius also came to England through translations of the works of Christine de Pisan, especially her Faits d’Armes et de Chevalerie, written about 1410, which was translated and printed as The Book of Fayttes of Armes and of Chyualrye by William Caxton in 1489.47 Most of that work’s first book relies heavily upon the ideas of Vegetius, and it is of interest to note which passages from the De re militari Christine chose to cite or emphasise: choice of leadership in time of war; men so chosen should earn their promotion through experience, not through birth or social standing; the great importance of training and practice, and of always having access to adequate and regular supplies. The book ends with what was doubtless intended to be a useful ‘short recapytulacyon’, ‘in manere of prouerbys’ (or maxims) of what Vegetius had taught.48
47 The Book of Fayttes of Armes and of Chyualrye, ed. A. T. P. Byles (EETS, London, 1932).48 Ibid, pp. 20, 28–32, 43–44, 98.
Using several means of access to his thought, men were anxious to cite Vegetius as the leading authority on military thinking in fifteenth-century England. Through his own work in Latin (copies of which were still being made at this period) or in French (Humfrey, duke of Gloucester, owned one such) and through two English versions of his treatise, and the translation of French works in which he was cited, Vegetius was being given the opportunity to set out not only the old, timeless advice, but also his more philosophical ideas about war which had been the source of his reputation for centuries, and which would ensure survival of his influence until the seventeenth century, and later.49
49 In this paper I have made no reference to a second English translation made by a ‘person’ living in Calais in 1458 (Knyghthode and Bataile, ed. R. Dyboski and Z. M. Arendski, EETS, London, 1935). The work is in verse, and is a less accurate translation than the prose version considered above. This rendering, however, is of considerable interest having been made during a period of civil unrest while the rule of Henry VI was in danger of collapse. Passages of particular relevance to the situation in England show how some hoped that peace and reconciliation would prevail. See C. Allmand, ‘The English Translations of Vegetius’ De Re Militari. What Were Their Authors’ Intentions?’, Concerns and Preoccupations (The Fifteenth Century, XI. Writing Records and Rhetoric, ed. L. Clark [Woodbridge, 2012], pp. 1–8).