15

CHIVALRY AND WAR

Material motives may have been important, but for Geoffroi de Charny, in his tract on chivalry, it was very wrong to see fighting as a means of acquiring wealth. ‘In this profession one should set one’s heart and mind on honour, which lasts for ever, not on profit and booty which can be lost in a single hour.’¹ Honour was central to chivalric culture; prowess, best displayed in fighting, was another essential quality. Other notable chivalric virtues were courtliness, generosity and piety. The cultural expectations bound up in chivalry, broadly defined, were a driving force in aristocratic and knightly society, though it is not always easy to tell whether the ideals and the rhetoric mitigated or aggravated the harsh realities of war.

A great deal was written in France about chivalry. It was expounded, analysed and criticized in treatises such as Geoffroi de Charny’s Book of Chivalry and Honorat Bovet’s Tree of Battles. Lives of heroes of the war, such as those of the Duke of Bourbon and of Boucicaut, glorified chivalric deeds. Yet there was remarkably little along these lines produced in England, nor were the French treatises known and circulated on any scale there until the 1440s. On the other hand, romantic chivalric literature, notably but not exclusively expounding tales of King Arthur, was widely read in England as well as in France. The importance of honour and the value of prowess were very clear in such works, though in contrast to the treatises on chivalry, they mirrored rather than dictated contemporary attitudes. Their relevance to the reality of war is questionable; it is implausible that hardened soldiers would have listened to romances in order to decide how to conduct campaigns. Admittedly, Boucicaut enjoyed hearing tales from Roman history, as well as saints’ lives (though not romances), but it was practical considerations which determined his actions, not lessons from a distant past.

HONOUR AND PROWESS

Honour was crucial. Ghillebert de Lannoy, who narrowly escaped death at Agincourt when he was taken prisoner, advised his son, ‘I would prefer you to die gloriously in an honourable battle, with banner unfurled, than to return cravenly from it.’² The increase of honour was one of the fundamental purposes of King John’s Company of the Star. Any knight of the Star who left the field of battle shamefully would have his membership suspended. His shield would be turned to face the wall, until he was restored to his position. A deed of 1373 written by Thomas Percy, when imprisoned in Paris, stressed that if he went against the terms of an agreement for his release he would lose all honour and be ‘reputed to be a false knight, a traitor and perjurer, and would incur all the blame, villainy and reproach in all places as a false knight, traitor and perjurer’.³ For John Fastolf, the defeat at Patay resulted in the loss for a time of his position as a knight of the Garter, and there always remained a question mark over him.

Prowess was another important chivalric quality. The statutes of the French Company of the Star proclaimed that the knights ‘eager for honour and glory in the exercise of arms, shall bear themselves with such concord and valiance, that the flower of chivalry […] shall blossom in our realm’.⁴ Skill in the use of arms required lengthy training and a high level of fitness to excel. The life of Boucicaut described how he gained endurance through running, and strength through such exercises as climbing the reverse side of a ladder, using only his arms, wearing a steel breastplate. Yet important as such skills were, the chivalric ideals did not fit perfectly with the realities of war. Training was individual, not collective. Chivalry exalted individual skill and personal courage, rather than the spirit that might unite and inspire a body of men. It also exalted mounted warfare, even though tactical developments favoured fighting on foot. The author of the life of the Spaniard Don Pero Niño considered, somewhat implausibly, that ‘A brave man, mounted on a good horse, may do more in an hour of fighting than ten, or mayhap a hundred could have done afoot. For this reason do men rightly call him knight.’⁵

Some of the chivalric virtues had no more than a minor place in war. Generosity and courtliness were on occasion displayed to respected foes, as when Edward III honoured Eustace de Ribemont after fighting him at Calais in 1350. In a flush of chivalric enthusiasm, he gave Ribemont his own chaplet of pearls, and freed him without any ransom, in recognition of his bravery. Piety was naturally extolled; it was displayed by Henry of Lancaster in the fourteenth century by writing a lengthy religious tract, and by Arthur de Richemont in the fifteenth by burning more heretics than anyone else.

While chivalric ideals may have done much to inspire men who fought in the Anglo-French wars, it is also the case that such ideals were capable of diverting them to fight elsewhere, above all by crusading both in the Mediterranean or the Baltic lands. John de la Ryvere, a Gloucestershire knight, went on crusade in 1346 to expiate the sins committed on campaign in France. He fought heroically against the Turks, served as a spy in Syria and Egypt, and was fulsomely praised by the Pope.⁶ Thomas Clifford, an experienced jouster, and some other Englishmen were picked out for the way in which they ‘bore themselves royally’ on the Duke of Bourbon’s crusade in 1390 to North Africa.⁷ Clifford returned to England, but soon set out on a crusading expedition to the Baltic. He would die on the way to Jerusalem. These are just two examples among very many; it was through crusading expeditions, not wars in France, that men could best prove their chivalric credentials.

There were, however, many incidents that show how men sought to demonstrate their qualities of chivalry in the Hundred Years War. On the Crécy campaign a French knight challenged his English opponent, Thomas Colville, to three jousting bouts ‘for the love of his lady’. The third bout was abandoned as the French knight’s shield was broken, and the two men swore ‘to be friends in perpetuity’.⁸ The single-handed charge by William Felton, campaigning in Spain in 1367, which ended with his death, was probably an attempt to redeem his honour after he had failed in a lawsuit against Bertrand du Guesclin before the parlement of Paris. At Agincourt one French knight, Guillaume de Saveuses, charged to his death with an escort of two men. Such incidents had little effect on the outcome of campaigns. Chivalric considerations rarely outweighed the practical realities of warfare.

TOURNAMENTS

Jousts and tournaments were key elements in the rituals of chivalry. Edward III was a great patron of tournaments, in which he himself was often an eager participant. No doubt this was in considerable measure a reflection of his personal enthusiasm, for the king himself participated keenly, often taking part incognito. There was a play-acting element, as when Edward and some of knights dressed as the Pope and cardinals at a tournament held at Smithfield in 1343. Such events are unlikely to have provided much training for war, but they were a means of encouraging and channelling the martial spirit of nobles and knights. Equally, in France Charles VI demonstrated his passion for the tournament and its associated festivities. In May 1389 the young sons of Louis, duke of Anjou and king of Naples, were knighted by the king, tournaments took place and a grand funeral service was held for du Guesclin (who had died in 1380). The king adopted colours of green and red, and had a flying stag as his symbol. There was jousting and feasting on a lavish scale, enjoyed by the ladies of the court as well as the knights. This was not all, for three months later, after the coronation of his queen, Isabeau, Charles VI enjoyed three days of jousting. He took part himself, and naturally was declared the victor. All this helped to encourage the ambitions of a militarized aristocracy. This time was the heyday of jousting. In 1390 one of the most famous events took place, at Saint-Inglevert, not far from Calais. There, Boucicaut and two companions challenged all-comers over a month. They triumphed despite suffering inevitable injuries. Such an event offered a way of proving prowess in times of truce. In contrast, patronage of tournaments was not essential for success in war. The specialist skills needed in the joust were very different from those needed for the mêlée of battle. Henry V in particular had no time for what he probably regarded as frivolous activities; he did not even bother to attend the tournament laid on to celebrate his wedding.

The chivalric world is sometimes seen as one of a refined masculinity. Geoffroi de Charny considered that women should stay at home and ‘pay more attention to their physical appearance and be more splendidly adorned with jewels, rich ornaments and apparel than would be suitable for men’. Yet women had their part to play, and Charny also acknowledged the role of ‘these noble ladies and others whom I hold to be ladies who inspire men to great achievement’.⁹ Women gave those they admired tokens to wear in battle, and encouraged them to take vows to perform valorous deeds. In a possibly satirical poem, Henry of Lancaster’s daughter placed two fingers over one of the Earl of Salisbury’s eyes. He swore not to open it until he had fought the French. Eustace d’Auberchicourt was encouraged by his lady-love when she gave him a fine white horse. The girls of the Channel Isles, when French invasion threatened, made chaplets of violets and other flowers, which they gave to the men, encouraging them to put up a stout defence.¹⁰

CHIVALRY AND BRUTALITY

It was exceptional that at the sack of Caen in 1346 Thomas Holland and his companions did their best to ‘preserve women and girls from rape and villainy’.¹¹ The practicalities of war were far removed from the ideals of courtliness, generosity and mercy. If men held back from delivering a fatal blow in a battle’s mêlée, it was in the hope of gaining a rich ransom, not for reasons of chivalry. The destructive methods of the chevauchée, the savage sacking of towns, the brutal treatment of villagers: such common features of war are hard to equate with the dictates of chivalry. Horrific incidents punctuated warfare. At the siege of Derval in 1373 Robert Knollys’ refusal to surrender was countered by the Duke of Anjou’s action in executing four hostages. Knollys, with a touch of the psychopath, then had four of the prisoners he held beheaded, and flung into a ditch, heads on one side, bodies on the other.¹² There was little that was chivalric about the warfare conducted by Olivier de Clisson, whose slaughter of English prisoners led him to be known as ‘the Butcher’. Neither did Henry V’s treatment of prisoners fit easily into a chivalric mould. John Talbot was responsible for various outrages, notably by setting fire to the church at Lihons in 1440, where ‘there were piteously burned to death a good three hundred or more people, men, women and children, and very few escaped of those who were in the church’.¹³

There are possible explanations. John Fastolf argued that the laws of war meant that ‘burning and destroying all the land’ was justifiable because ‘traitors and rebels must needs have another manner of war, and more sharp and cruel war than a natural and ancient enemy’.¹⁴ For him, the French were rebels against their rightful king, Henry VI. More broadly, the laws of war permitted savage treatment in cases where towns or castles failed to surrender. Another explanation is that the common people were outside the magic circle of chivalry: honour and courtliness was for nobles and knights, not peasants. When Boucicaut set up a knightly order, its aim was to protect ladies ‘of noble lineage’ from oppression, not all women.¹⁵ Nor did the literature of chivalry necessarily exclude the brutality of the chevauchée. In one work, Arthur’s troops invaded Normandy and ‘as soon as they had come from the ships, they ran through the land and took men and women and booty and wasted the country most harshly, and you may be sure that never before had a land been so dolorous’.¹⁶ In one tale, King Arthur himself, when out hunting, met a beautiful maiden and despite her cries ‘did what he wanted anyway’.¹⁷

In the later stages of the war, the star of chivalry did not shine as brightly as it had done in the past. In France there were many critics of knightly attitudes. Honorat Bovet in his Tree of Battles, written in the late 1380s, was unsympathetic towards those who fought for ‘vainglory, and valour and personal prowess’. In his lengthy treatise he explained that the poor, who had no idea of how to ‘put on a coat of mail, close a pair of Crapaudaux or a bacinet’ should not be killed or imprisoned.¹⁸ A common view, expressed by the poet Eustace Deschamps among others, was that knights had become soft, even effeminate. There were similar views put forward in England, though the chorus was not as loud. At the end of the fourteenth century in his Vox Clamantis, John Gower assaulted the knights with his pen, accusing them of being soft and empty of honour. John Clanvowe, himself a knight, condemned those who ‘spend outrageously on meat, drink, clothing and building, and in living in ease, sloth and many other sins’.¹⁹ Chaucer, surely pointedly, did not make his knight take part in the war in France.

To some extent, such criticisms reflected the changes of the time. By the fifteenth century the war was not punctuated as frequently as in the past by individual acts of bravery (or folly), or by notable feats of arms. Chivalrous offers might be refused. When an English commander in Gascony, probably the Earl of Huntingdon, encountered the Spanish adventurer Rodrigo de Villandrando, he suggested that the two should share bread and a bottle of wine, before the outcome was determined ‘by the pleasure of God and the help of St George’. Rodrigo would have none of it, and in the end, no battle took place.²⁰ The character of the war, particularly with the many sieges involved in the English defence of Normandy, was very different from that of the days of Edward III and Philip VI. A decline in knightly involvement in war and an increase in the proportion of archers and other common soldiers in both English and French armies provide a part of the explanation.

Yet courtly chivalric culture was far from forgotten, particularly by the dukes of Burgundy. Philip the Good instituted the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1430, and patronized elaborate jousts and tournaments. The Feast of the Pheasant, held in 1454, featured extraordinary pageantry and display. ‘My lord the duke was served at table by a two-headed horse ridden by two men sitting back to back, each holding a trumpet and sounding it as loud as he could.’²¹ Such lavish chivalric display was, however, increasingly divorced from the hard reality of campaigning.

GUILT AND GENEROSITY

It might be expected that the contrast between the ideals of chivalry and the brutal character of war would have created a sense of guilt. No doubt this was sometimes the case. There will have been others like John de la Ryvere who went on crusade to redeem themselves. However, the devotional treatise written by one crusading knight, John Clanvowe, suggests broader penitential motives. In most cases motives cannot be established; there could, for example, be a number of reasons to explain why Edward III’s warlike keeper of the privy seal, William Kilsby, went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Egypt in 1342, though guilt for taking up arms seems a likely one.

Yet in many cases guilt is not easy to demonstrate. Henry, duke of Lancaster made many gifts to the church, notably transforming the hospital at Leicester into a college for a hundred poor people, providing it with a substantial endowment. However, rather than this being related to his military career, the statutes for the foundation make it clear that its purpose was for the clergy there to pray for the royal family, the duke’s parents and for the duke himself after his death. In his will, made in 1402, the Breton soldier Morice de Trésiguidi detailed a host of bequests to his family and the poor, including the prisoners in the Châtelet, and to churches, but there is no hint that his generosity was linked to any regrets over his long fighting career. Indeed, nothing in his will even reveals that he had been a soldier.²² John Chandos died unmarried, but his property went to his sisters, not the Church. During his whole long career, he made just one small donation to the Church. Olivier de Clisson could have afforded to make lavish grants, but even in his final days showed a characteristic lack of generosity. The one large gift he made to the Church was of an unpaid debt, which would have been almost impossible to collect.

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The contrast between the savagery of campaigning and the idealism of chivalry may have troubled some writers, and puzzled some historians, but it was of little concern to most of those who fought. They were not aware of the contradictions. Chivalry was important in encouraging nobles, knights and men-at-arms to fight. It provided a finely polished veneer, which covered over the brutality of war. Chivalry did little to protect non-combatants, or to prevent the destruction of towns and villages. It did not soften sharp swords. Rather, with its myths and rituals it served to make war acceptable.