Knight: The Medieval Warrior’s (Unofficial) Manual

Practise knightly things and learn arts that help you and grant you honour in war.

As a knight, you will be expected to display many qualities. Skill in the use of arms is essential; you will also need to understand how to behave in the right way and how to fit into the upper-class world.

When Boucicaut was young and played with his friends, they would pretend that their caps were helmets and their sticks swords. They imitated sieges and played at battles. Boucicaut was a good child; Bertrand du Guesclin, who would do so much to restore French prestige in the wars with England, was not. During his upbringing in Brittany, he used to recruit local boys for his gang, and organize mock tournaments with them, until his father forbad it. After that, young Bertrand would go off to the local village to pick fights. All his father could do was lock him up, not realizing what valuable knightly skills his wayward son was developing.

You will probably be sent away for your education, to be brought up as a page in a noble household. Christine de Pizan, widowed at 25, packed her eldest son off to England, to the Earl of Salisbury’s household. On the earl’s death in 1397 she wrote a poem recommending the boy to the duke of Orleans: ‘For this I beg, valiant and gracious prince, that it please you to take him into your service.’

In an aristocratic household there will be a master to look after the education of the boys. He will teach you how to look after military equipment, and all the skills needed to use it. You will pick up a lot from listening to the knights and squires, and watching what they do. As Geoffroi de Charny explains:

They like to hear and listen to men of prowess talk of military deeds, and to see men-at-arms with their weapons and armour and enjoy looking at fine mounts and chargers.

A knight needs to be proficient with weapons, but you will also need to learn proper manners at court, such as how to wait at table. There are other aspects of noble culture to imbibe. Although the full details of heraldry can be left to heralds, it is important to learn how to recognize and describe coats of arms, and to memorize as many as possible. This is a vital means of distinguishing friend from foe in the heat of battle. Listening to the stories of knightly heroes of the past, such as the tales of Arthur and his knights, should inspire you. You should note, however, that Boucicaut would not want you to read such trivia, but would limit your reading to serious works on the history of Greece and Rome, and the lives of the saints.

A good knight needs physical strength, stamina, a good eye and fine coordination. You need hard exercise to develop these. Boucicaut provides the best model. As a young man, he realized the importance of athleticism to a knight. His exercise regime included:

Boucicaut practised constantly with a lance and with other weapons. He was not a tall man, but he was an exceptional athlete. It was not just in military exercises that he excelled; off the battlefield he was also an extremely good tennis player.

The lance is a difficult weapon; it requires immense skill to hold the point steady and to aim it correctly. Before practising this on horseback, boys can try it seated on a small cart, pulled by their friends. Various targets can be used; the quintain is the best. This consists of a vertical post, with a horizontal beam swivelling on the top. On one end of this is a shield, which is the target. A weighted sack at the other end balances the shield, and if you get the hit wrong, or move too slowly, it will swing round and give you a good wallop. Endless practice is needed.

Practice is also needed with the sword; you should be familiar with it both as a single-handed and a double-handed weapon. A sword can:

It is important to practise using the sword on horseback; at the battle of Nicopolis it was by slashing to right and left with his sword that Boucicaut was able to drive his horse through the Turkish ranks. And don’t forget that the hilt and pommel can be used to strike when fighting at close quarters.

For sword fighting on foot, learn the four basic guards that can be used, and their variants, with all the different types of thrusts and cuts. There are German books that set out fencing methods in a lot of detail. One such Fechtbuch explains that:

You should always look for the upper openings rather than the lower, and go over his hilt with strikes or thrusts artfully and quickly. For you have better reach over the hilt than under it, and you are also much safer in all your fencing.

Swordplay is not an art intended for everyone; this is a skill exclusively for the military elite. Master Roger le Skirmisour kept a fencing school in London in the early 14^th century, but he was convicted of ‘enticing thither the sons of respectable persons, so as to waste and spend the property of their fathers and mothers upon bad practices: the result being that they themselves became bad men’. He should not have been teaching military skills to townspeople.

It is important that you should gain expertise in handling horses. You will ride with long stirrups and an upright body posture. You need to ride smoothly, with good control at all times; you and your horse should be as one. Control comes with proper use of the bit and your spurs; do not be too hard with these. You should aim to be like the Spanish knight, Pero Niño, of whom it is said that ‘he knew all about horses; he sought for them, tended them and made much of them. In his time had no man in Castile so many good mounts; he rode them and trained them to his liking, some for war, some for parade and others for jousting.’

This late 14th-century bas-relief shows an Italian knight, with visor raised. Note his straight-legged riding style. He holds his reins in his left hand, leaving his right free for wielding his sword. (San Francesco, Bagnacavallo)

Hunting

The hunt provides some excellent training for war, as well as being the main recreation activity for the upper classes. Geoffroi de Charny wrote that ‘it befits all men of rank to enjoy the sport of hunting with hawk and hound.’ Through hunting you will learn such things as:

•How to handle a horse.

•How to dissect a stag and distribute the portions according to the proper conventions.

•How to kill a boar or a stag with a spear, which will be useful experience when it comes to killing a man.

•How to use a bow and a crossbow. These are not weapons that a knight is likely to use in war, but it is nonetheless valuable to have some experience of handling them.

If you do not hunt, it is hard to see how you can win the respect of your comrades-in-arms. The unfortunate Edward II of England had no taste for the chase, but instead preferred menial occupations such as hedging and ditching along with low-born fellows. It is hardly surprising that such a man was totally unsuccessful in war, and ended up losing his throne and, ultimately, his life.

A hunting scene showing a king bringing down a stag, the most highly prized quarry. Hunting is excellent practice for knights, but you won’t have to shoot from horseback in war. (From Decretals of Gregory IX, 14th century. British Library, London)

Reading and writing

It is rare to be sent to school, as Boucicaut was for a time, but a knight should still learn to read and write. War is not just a matter of riding confidently into battle. This is a bureaucratic age. There are muster rolls to be kept, writs to be read and acted upon, and agreements and contracts to be made. Of course, there are clerks to do these things, but it is important to be able to keep a check on them. You may be surprised that knights should be literate, but the English knight Thomas Gray even wrote a history, the Scalacronica, and Henry, Duke of Lancaster, a devotional treatise, the Book of Holy Medicine. You may even be able to cheer your companions up on campaign by reading to them, as the king of Scots, Robert Bruce, is said to have done with the romance of Fierabras, the 15-foot-tall son of the king of Spain, ‘who was honourably beaten by the right doughty Oliver’.

Here are some books that all knights should read:

•The standard book on the art of war, De Re Militari, by the Roman author Vegetius, perhaps in the French translation produced by Christine de Pizan. There is no need, however, to go quite so far as Vegetius does in his recommendations for training. He suggests that, among other things, young men should learn to swim, but this is hardly a necessary accomplishment for a knight.

•Geoffroi de Charny’s Book of Chivalry.

•The Catalan polymath Ramon Llull’s Book of the Order of Chivalry, which covers similar ground to de Charny’s work, setting out the virtues a knight should ideally possess.

OF CHILDHOOD AND PASTIMES

It is normal for aristocratic children to have wet-nurses, and they are usually weaned by the age of three.

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Children today are not what they used to be – those born after the plague of 1348 are said to have only 20 or 22 teeth, rather than 32 as before.

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As a young man in Edward I’s household, John de Warenne, the earl of Surrey, had 17 servants to look after him.

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The future Henry V had a sword when he was only nine.

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Boucicaut did not cry when beaten at school after another child said he had hit him.

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Ball games, according to Geoffroi de Charny, should be for women to play, not men.

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When hunting, the best hunter should be given the left shoulder of any deer taken; the right shoulder goes to the forester.

Go on campaign

The final stage of training is to acquire campaigning experience. Children can be taken to war at quite a young age as the following examples show:

•Edward III was only 14 when he rode in front of the troops on the 1327 Weardale campaign against the Scots.

•John of Gaunt, though at the age of ten he was far too young to bear arms, was present with his brother the Black Prince at the naval battle of Les Espagnols sur Mer in 1350.

•Boucicaut was 12 when he was taken on campaign in Normandy in 1378. This was exceptionally young, and it’s not surprising that on his return he was taunted: ‘Now look, master, there’s a fine man-at-arms! Get back to school!’

It is more usual for young men to acquire their first campaigning experience and take up arms for the first time in their late teens.

The young squire

After you have been trained in the use of arms, you will not normally become a knight straight away. You will first be a squire, perhaps like the one described by the poet Geoffrey Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales. The son of a knight, Chaucer’s squire was about 20 years old, and had experience of the wars in France. Fashionably dressed, he could ride well, and joust. He possessed the courtly skills; he could sing, dance, sketch and write. This was a young man, much in love, who would surely soon receive the accolade of knighthood.

The smartly-dressed squire from a manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. He told a romantic story set in far-off lands, but never reached the end. (From Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales from the Ellesmere Mss., 1400–10. Huntington Library, San Marino, California)

Squires are equipped for war in much the same way as a knight, but are not expected to have such expensive armour or high-quality horses. Some people serve for many years as a squire before being knighted. Philip Chetwynd came of age in 1316, and was thinking about becoming a knight in 1319, when he entered the service of Ralph, Lord Basset of Drayton, but did not actually do so until 1339. Indeed, there are an increasing number of squires who never take the final step of being knighted.

What you will get out of it

Training is tough, but necessary. You will not be tested in the skills you have acquired in the use of weapons when you eventually become a knight; it will be taken for granted that you possess all the right abilities. Nor will you find that you are given training when on campaign; your commanders will assume that you are already competent and capable. As a result of your preparation you should:

•Be physically tough.

•Know how to manage your horse.

•Have expertise in wielding lance and sword.

•Have acquired courtly skills.

You will be ready to become a member of a military elite of the highest quality, and can hope to become a warrior of renown, a man of true prowess. As the chronicler Froissart explained:

Just as wood cannot burn without fire, neither can a noble man achieve perfect honour nor worldly glory without prowess.