Some people you just don't want to fight...

...because some people are just scum.

During the first half of the Hundred Years War, when France was in chaos, disbanded soldiers often struck out on their own to fill their purses and their stomachs by capturing both warriors and civilians and ransoming them back to their lords or families.  These were not nice people, as this story of the Good Duke makes clear. Duke Louis, who had himself been captive in England for seven years, was determined to rout out these outlaws.  Duke Louis' men had if anything a lower opinion of these "English" (who may not have been English in fact).

Duke Louis told them:

They have made a pit at Beauvoir , and when they have taken someone who they do not wish to or cannot ransom, they say " put them in hell" and they are thrown into this pit full of fire, of which everyone was so terrified, so that when anyone became a prisoner, he gave out that he was rich for fear of being thrown in hell. Therefore Duke Louis required, that all of his company should take part in the attack.

They all replied "Most redoubtable Lord, we are ready to go where it pleases you and we desire nothing else. But we pray you humbly, that it please you that you personally should not go there; for it would be too much of an honor to such people as they are, that such a Prince as you are ought to go there. For they are excommunicated by the sentence of the Pope, and are men of the companies, and without absolution; but if you please order us to go there." Therefore the Duke agreed with them and with great pain, as to him who always wished to be with them.

They won...

all those at Beauvoir were killed except the captain, Le Bourg Camus, who was taken to Molins, and the others were thrown into their hell.

Image: This might be a later version of Beauvoir castle.

La fin de l'Empire romain d'Occident. Rome et les Wisigoths de 382 à 531, by Christine Delaplace,

I return to my old interest in Late Antiquity today, thanks to Michael Kulikowski, who has written an illuminating review of Christine Delaplace's La fin de l'Empire romain d'Occident for the Medieval Review. A boring title, says Michael, and one would not be surprised if the interpretation offered was a hundred years out of date.

Ah, but it's not. Says Michael:

Perhaps the single most important thing here is the authorial willingness to define terms and exercise a realistic parsimony of interpretation with the evidence. For instance, her exhaustive treatment of treaties and their related vocabulary (pax, foedus, deditio, amicitia) usefully demonstrates that the frequent scholarly attempts to normalize the semantic content of that vocabulary are completely untenable; so too is reading back a normative definition from Procopius and Jordanes into the fourth and earlier fifth century.

Such observations are not wholly new, but actually applying their analytical insight to the narrative evidence exposes the role that fixed definitions of Roman treaties/foedera play in traditional narratives of Gothic history--thus producing a spurious aura of inevitability stretching from 382 to the settlement of some Goths in Aquitaine forty years later and on into the sixth century. In a similar vein, Delaplace correctly notes that Alaric and all the barbarian generals and condottieri of the late fourth and fifth centuries were primarily leaders of armies; their royal status was secondary, indeed often quite notional, and rarely a meaningful factor in their power. In this approach she strengthens Guy Halsall's demonstration that only Roman military office and magisteria constituted success for such people. To fall back on claims to royalty signified failure.

Perhaps the most insightful part of Delaplace's account of the early fifth century follows from the recognition that--whether or not you read Alaric's following, or those of other barbarian leaders of the time, in ethnic terms or instead as relatively heterogeneous mercenary armies--you cannot read them in terms of external diplomacy, or foreign foes. The more precise historical analogy is the late Roman Republic, when the Senate had to deal with rival armies loyal primarily to their generals rather than the state. Mutatis mutandis (for "Senate," read "imperial court"), the endless back and forth of 395 to 418 operated according to the same dynamic. Ethnic difference, still less "foreignness," are not what was at issue.

The book's systematic successes are in a similar vein. A ruthless refusal to retroject later evidence means that the Gothic settlement in Gaul is judged at its correct worth: there was nothing new about 418 that had not been at least implicit in the treaty of the king Wallia and the magister militum Constantius in 416. Wallia's (and then Theoderic I's) Goths were in effect a mercenary army, contracted by the Roman state because they were less likely to slip into the usurpation to which rebellious Gallic armies had long been prone. The Gothic zone of action effectively displaced the western Rhine limes south to the Loire, where, from Aquitaine, the Gothic army could operate in any direction necessary, against barbarians and potential usurpers alike. Thus, there was no kingdom of Toulouse for the better part of a century. There was a Gothic rex (who very rarely used that title) and there were sortes Gothicae, but there was no regnum till the fifth century had run its course.

Again, Delaplace has a firm grip on later fifth-century events. In particular she rejects the lionisation of the general Aëtius as "the last of the Romans," a sort of incomparable bulwark against the encroaching barbarian tides. Aëtius, she demonstrates, fundamentally weakened the Roman state, perpetuating constant rivalries in Gaul and Italy that militated against coherent policy. She shows how the "Gothic wars" of the 430s and 440s should not be read as a Roman defence against aggressive barbarian expansion, but rather as an extension of the civil war that brought Aëtius to power, the initial rivalry of Boniface and Aëtius, allied respectively with Theoderic and the Amal Berimond, was perpetuated in the next generation by Sebastianus (son of Boniface) and Witteric (son of Berimond), supported respectively by Theoderic and Aëtius. The peace of 439 is not a Romano-Gothic peace, nor a taming of the unruly federates by Rome, but rather a final settlement of two decades of rivalry: Sebastian was expelled by Theoderic, Witteric disappears from the pages of history (murdered, one imagines), and Aëtius married a daughter of Theoderic, having repudiated his second wife Pelagia, herself the sister of Berimond and widow of Boniface.

... The book concludes with a more cursory survey of the period from 477-531, but here too, the guiding principles are correct. In particular, Delaplace considers the battle of Vouillé as a stage in the sorting out of post-imperial factions that characterizes the earlier sixth century, rather than as a caesura in Gothic history. Greater detail in this section would have been welcome, but that was not the author's primary goal. One would not have thought it possible to write a strikingly novel history of the last century of the western empire, but that is precisely what Delaplace has done. It is a grand accomplishment.

Think of Attila as John Hawkwood!

What can you say about this?

You can say, this story doesn't seem to have made much impact in the US press. It's from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Fury in Cambodia as US asks to be paid back hundreds of millions in war debts

• Lindsay Murdoch

   
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 Half a century after United States B-52 bombers dropped more than 500,000 tonnes of explosives on Cambodia's countryside Washington wants the country to repay a $US500 million ($662 million) war debt.

The demand has prompted expressions of indignation and outrage from Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh.

Over 200 nights in 1973 alone, 257,456 tons of explosives fell in secret carpet-bombing sweeps – half as many as were dropped on Japan during the Second World War.

The pilots flew at such great heights they were incapable of discriminating between a Cambodian village and their targets, North Vietnamese supply lines – nicknamed the "Ho Chi Minh Trail."

• The bombs were of such massive tonnage they blew out eardrums of anyone standing within a 1-kilometre radius.

War correspondent James Pringle was two kilometres away from a B-52 strike near Cambodia's border.

"It felt like the world was coming to an end," he recalls.

According to one genocide researcher, up to 500,000 Cambodians were killed, many of them children.

The bombings drove hundreds of thousands of ordinary Cambodians into the arms of the Khmer Rouge, an ultra-Marxist organisation which seized power in 1975 and over the next four years presided over the deaths of more than almost two million people through starvation disease and execution.

The debt started out as a US$274 million loan mostly for food supplies to the then US-backed Lon Nol government but has almost doubled over the years as Cambodia refused to enter into a re-payment program.

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William Heidt, the US's ambassador in Phnom Penh, said Cambodia's failure to pay back the debt puts it in league with Sudan, Somalia and Zimbabwe.

"To me, Cambodia does not look like a country that should be in arrears…buildings coming up all over the city, foreign investment coming in, government revenue is rapidly rising," Mr Heidt was quoted as saying by the Cambodia Daily.

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"I'm saying it is in Cambodia's interest not to look to the past, but to look at how to solve this because it's important to Cambodia's future," he said, adding that the US has never seriously considered cancelling the debt.

Cambodia's strongman prime minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander who defected to Vietnam, hit back, saying "The US created problems in my country and is demanding money from me."

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They dropped bombs on our heads and then ask up to repay. When we do not repay, they tell the IMF (International Monetary Fund) not to lend us money," he told an international conference in early March.

"We should raise our voices to talk about the issue of the country that has invaded other (countries) and has killed children."

Mr Pringle, a former Reuters bureau chief in Ho Chi Minh City, said no-one could call him a supporter of Hun Sen, who has ruled Cambodia with an iron-fist for three decades.

But he said on this matter he is "absolutely correct."

"Cambodia does not owe a brass farthing to the US for help in destroying its people, its wild animals, its rice fields and forest cover," he wrote in the Cambodia Daily.

American Elizabeth Becker, one of the few correspondents who witnessed the Khmer Rouge's genocide, has also written that the US "owes Cambodia more in war debts that can be repaid in cash."

Mr Hun Sen pointed out that craters still dot the Cambodian countryside and villagers are still unearthing bombs, forcing mass evacuations until they can be deactivated.

"There are a lot of grenades and bombs left. That's why so often Cambodian children are killed, because they don't know that they are unexploded ordnance," he said.

"And who did it? It's America's bombs and grenades."

A diplomat posted in Phnom Penh between 1971 and 1974 told Fairfax Media the food the US supplied Cambodia came from excess food stocks.

"I remember well that shipments of maize were made," he said.

"Cambodians do not eat maize so it was fed to the animals."

He pointed out that the US refused to normalise relations with Vietnam until it accepted to take on the US debt of the former southern regime.

Chivalry and the Ideals of Knighthood in France...by Craig Taylor

By coincidence I am reading this book for the second time, just as this review from the Medieval Review comes out.

I highly recommend the book. Craig Taylor is always good.

Taylor, Craig. Chivalry and the Ideals of Knighthood in France during the Hundred Years' War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. 345. £82.00(hb); £21.99(pb). ISBN: 978-1-107-04221-6.

Reviewed by Thomas K. Heebøll-Holm

University of Southern Denmark

thee@sdu.dk

The story of French chivalry and its miseries during the Hundred Years' War is an ever fascinating and puzzling one. With this book Craig Taylor breaks important ground by showing how much French knighthood in this period was shaped by and, in turn, shaped developments in the chivalrous ideology as well as by the changing military reality of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. While indebted to Maurice Keen's and Richard W. Kaeuper's studies of high and late medieval chivalry, Taylor refines these paragons' more general studies of medieval knighthood by concentrating on a specific time period and region, namely Valois France during the Hundred Years' War. France during this time period is especially fertile ground for such a study. Not only was it the epicenter of chivalry, but during the Hundred Years' War the French knighthood experienced a number of military catastrophes which forced French warriors and writers to critically examine and discuss the causes of these calamities and how one could remedy them. This debate is a treasure trove for historians looking to get a firmer and more nuanced picture of the muddled concept of late medieval chivalry. Indeed this concept is one of those that all think they know and consider to be simple, yet upon closer inspection find confusing, slippery and self-contradictory. It is an immensely demanding task that Taylor has undertaken. It is also one which he resolves splendidly.

Taylor approaches the topic by a combined study of the practice and ideology of knighthood as it appears in various types of late medieval narratives such as chansons de geste, biographies, didactic manuals and political, legal and moral treatises. Through nine chapters (including an introduction, a chapter on the texts and their context and a very brief conclusion) Taylor takes the reader through seven core values of French chivalry during the Hundred Years' War. These were honor, prowess, loyalty, courage, mercy, wisdom and prudence. While these have been separated for pedagogical reasons, Taylor immediately acknowledges that they were not isolated values, but should be seen as part of what I am tempted to call the chivalric kaleidoscope. They were interdependent and inseparable parts of a whole. However the weighing of the relative importance of the values changed with the individual writer's personal convictions and situation as well as his/her specific historical context.

In the introduction, Taylor presents and discusses the guidelines of his study. It is interesting to note that the late Middle Ages presents a new phenomenon in medieval literary production, namely that the knights themselves begin to write down their own experiences of chivalry and war. While this certainly does not remove the classic problem of to what degree medieval writing was dictated by genre conventions and socio-cultural expectations, it at least brings us closer to the military experience of the warriors, and Taylor's take on this problem is both prudent and thought provoking. These texts reflect not only practical changes in late medieval martial culture. They are also a goldmine for the historian as through them we gain access to the combatant's thoughts and recollections (flawed and biased as they may be) instead of having to rely on ecclesiastical middlemen who may have had neither interest in, or knowledge of the practical reality of knighthood. A topic which Taylor pays particular attention to is the medieval debate over chivalry and the right behavior of knights and men-at-arms. Essentially this debate came down to the difficult question of how to reconcile a proud military ethos and aggression with Christian values of humility, piety and salvation. Taylor makes the important remark that texts do not just mirror reality. They also have an influence of their own and thus enter a reciprocal relation with social reality, where texts form men and men write texts.

In the following chapter "Texts and contexts," Taylor concentrates more narrowly on the historical and literary context of the narrative sources analyzed in the book. Contrary to the practical and structural reasons for the French defeats as presented by modern military historians, contemporary writers argued that the reasons for the defeats were cowardice and moral laxity due to the corrupting effects of court life (among others). Consequently, they advocated for a reform of the mores of the knighthood especially by the adoption of the values and discipline of the Romans of antiquity. This emphasis on the Romans was, as Taylor shows, in no small part due to the fact that many writers implicitly or explicitly served royal Valois interests. To these kings, the Roman models of chivalry that focused on self-sacrificing loyal service to the sovereign and the commonweal were echoed in the military reforms from Charles V onwards--and vice-versa.

In chapter 2 Taylor deals with the central issue of chivalric honor. On the basis of philosophical, anthropological and historical theories of honor, Taylor produces a good and nuanced discussion which is firmly grounded in contemporary sources and contexts. In particular, the chapter contains thought provoking discussions of the relationship between masculinity and knightly honor and between honor and reputation. As Taylor shows, there was a continuous and reciprocal interplay between the chivalric values of society and those of writers of chivalric reform. He furthermore refreshingly argues that honor is not merely a societal tyranny of expectations and values. Rather, individuals knights can and do have agency. By their actions they entered a continuous (re-)negotiation of chivalric values with society.

Chapter 3 deals with what Richard W. Kaeuper has termed "the fundamental quality of knighthood," namely prowess. [1] As with honor, prowess is a difficult concept to grasp, not least because it, to a large extent, was propagated by writers with no personal experience of war. Moreover its portrayal of the brutality of war was dominated by genre over reality. Indeed, at the heart of prowess lay violence--just when used in the service of a higher cause (ideally crusades, but increasingly also in service of king and country), but criminal when used by lower orders against their superiors. Unfortunately most medieval war lay in the grey area between these two, and interestingly Taylor combines this discussion of right prowess with the one on loyalty. Here it seems that contemporary Frenchmen drew inspiration from Roman military ideals where the loyalty to commonweal and crown could discourage acts of vainglorious prowess as only actions against the common enemy ought to be considered as "true" honor conferring prowess.

The cousin of prowess, courage, is discussed in chapter 4. While written sources discuss these issues, they are difficult to use in historical analyses and they are very much dependent on conventions and literary stylings. Moreover they serve various practical issues such as encouraging group cohesion, leadership and discipline. In this chapter, Taylor touches upon the possibility of doing emotional history in regards to medieval warriors, but reaches the safe, if somewhat conservative conclusion, that emotions though characterized by universal triggers in their display of emotions are not human constants, but rather wholly shaped by society and culture. To this reviewer, this discussion is a bit lacking as Taylor flirts with but eventually shies away from the possibility of conducting emotional history on the basis of these sources. Though he acknowledges the promising prospects of studying the antonyms of courage, fear and cowardice, Taylor in the end resigns himself to a fleeting treatment of these two.

Chapters 5 and 6 deal with mercy. In chapter 5 the topic is mercy towards other soldiers while chapter 6 concerns mercy towards civilians and non-combatants. In regards to soldiers, Taylor provides an important corrective to the romantic notion that knights spared each other out of feelings of chivalry and nobility. Rather knightly mercy towards peers was the result of the prospect of rich ransom-money. Moreover, more lowly soldiers could not expect spared since they could not pay for their liberation and in fact were reviled by the nobility. In regards to civilians, treatment was also mostly dependent on social status. While theologians and priests celebrated restraint and mercy towards civilians, the fact remained that most medieval knights treated their social inferiors with disdain. Furthermore, structural problems lay behind the more general and continuous pillaging and ravaging of soldiers on civilians. Simply put, lack of pay caused soldiers to prey on civilians. Though the Valois kings repeatedly tried to enforce discipline in the royal armies, by 1450 Charles VII's Compagnies d'ordonnances were still reputed to be mostly manned by ruffians and pillagers.

Chapter 7 deals with the virtues of wisdom and prudence. In the research these virtues have traditionally been seen as the antithesis to knightly ones, yet Taylor admirably proves wrong. Chivalric culture in fact placed great emphasis on age, experience and prudence and many contemporary writers were openly critical of rashness and inexperience. Moreover, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries more and more French commanders collected written accounts of the experience of veteran warriors (contemporary as well as Roman) thereby suggesting a greater interest and emphasis amongst them for written advice. In regards to this, Taylor suggests that this rising interest was due to the defeats the French suffered in the Hundred Years' War. Interestingly, Taylor observes the same phenomenon in England in the 1440s when English reversals of fortune in earnest set in. This chapter is followed by a brief concluding chapter that sums up the book's major results.

This is an impressive book. One of its most important contributions is its demonstration of how inspiration from the Roman Empire was by no means an isolated Italian "renaissance" phenomenon. Throughout the book, Taylor demonstrates how these ideas came to the fore in France simultaneously with Italy and how they influenced and indeed pushed chivalric ideals from a more Arthurian, "feudal" model to a "republican" Roman one. Although imperial Rome had long been one of many ideals for the European knighthood (see for instance John of Salisbury's Policraticus), then the roving bands of routiers and self-serving knights in the late middle ages caused a yearning with many writers for this Roman republican ideal of fighting for the commonweal as the highest honor for a warrior. Another feat that Taylor should be lauded for is his insistence on treating the narrative source material in its historical context. This means that Taylor studies chivalry as a dynamic genre responding to current situations instead of a fossilized monolith--as it is all too often treated in research as well as in many popular presentations.

If I were to voice one criticism, it would be that, although Taylor discusses the complicated issue of routiers and their relationship with and role in chivalric ideology, his treatment of this issue is never quite to the satisfaction of this reviewer. While they on the one hand were part of the chivalric elite then at least a number of the English routier captains were indisputably of non-noble background--a fact that profoundly disturbed writers such as Jean le Bel and Geoffroi de Charny. However, this is a really minor issue.

In sum, this is a piece of impressive and lucid scholarship. It is well written and presents a refreshing discussion of chivalry, war, society and literature in late medieval France. Furthermore, it is also pedagogical. This reviewer has used the book with considerable success in his teaching. Thus not only do I recommend it for its research qualities, but also for its approach to a topic that is in fact much harder to grasp for students than they usually anticipate. This book ought to be consulted by anyone interested in late medieval chivalry in ideology as well as in practice.

-------- Note:

1. Richard W. Kaeuper Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 130.

Drink Your Blood! sketches for the graphic novel of the Combat of the 30

Death by overexertion, an English duel of 1380

Some of you probably know that I am writing a source reader -- a book that combines medieval documents with modern commentary -- on the subject of judicial duels.  These were considered to be the most dramatic "deeds of arms" by contemporaries and modern re-enactors are very interested in them.  My book in fact was inspired by Will McLean's collection of sources in his blog, and he will be credited as co-author.

This book includes an account of an English duel between as squire,Thomas Katrington, and Sir John de Annesley.  Annesley, the knight accused Katrington, who had commanded a castle in France, of treason, because, said Annesley, he had surrendered it to the French when he had the resources to defend it.  After a certain amount of political back and forth among major players, including Duke John of Gaunt, a duel was arranged.  There was so much public interest that the crowds who attended were said to exceed those at the recent coronation of Richard II.

An interesting point is the way the duel ended.  It was said to be half an hour long, and very strenuous, with the weapons of either man being destroyed so that (I think) they  were fighting on foot with daggers.  They ended up both lying on the ground with Katrington on top.  The question then arose, what next?

Soon after [Annesley, the knight] was raised up, without any support he eagerly went to the king, while the squire [Katrington]who had been raised, was not able to stand nor go anywhere without the support of two men; and therefore, he was put upon a chair,  and he remained there quietly. The knight therefore came to the king and asked him, and his nobles, that he would grant him the grace, he should be put in the same place as before, with the squire on top of him... he realized that the squire was nearly at his last breath from the excess of [labor] and heat, and the weight of arms which had almost taken the vital spirits from him.

 In the meantime the squire, lacking breath, suddenly  fell off the chair, as if dead, among those who stood around him. Many therefore took care of him, pouring wine and water over the man; but nothing helped at all, until his arms and all of his clothing were removed . This being done  it proved that the knight was the victor and the squire defeated. After a long delay, however, the squire's spirit began to revive, and opening  his eyes he began to raise his head, and terribly began to look at all of those standing around ; when this was announced to the armored knight, (for the knight had not taken off his armor from the beginning of the fight) he approached the squire and called him a false traitor, and asked if he dared to repeat the duel. Since [Katrington] indeed had neither sense nor breath to answer, it was announced that the fight was over and that each should return to his own place. The squire therefore was soon carried to his bed, and he began to rave; and persisting  in his madness, the next day, about the ninth hour, he breathed forth his spirit. 

Interesting that an experienced warrior could end up dying of overexertion caused by among other things the weight of his armor.

In addition, a short piece from Froissart (book III, chapter 7; also late 14th century):

A squire of Navarre was there slain, called Ferdinand de Miranda, an expert man at arms. Some who were present say the bourg d'Espaign killed him, others that he was stifled through the heat of his armour. 

Onslaught, by David Poyer

David Poyer's publisher sent me a proof copy of this book in hopes I would comment on it. I was a little hesitant since it is a "big war" story, and such books tend to be a bit on the fantastic side, and their authors often seem to be motivated by a smug confidence that they know better than their readers how things really work.

I very quickly became impressed with David Poyer's most recent naval adventure novel. Not necessarily because he knows more about the modern navy than I do, there's no doubt about that, but more because he has got a real talent for taking a complicated situation and showing how many different people are affected by the big events.

Poyer has written fifteen novels about a US naval officer named Dan Lenson and shown his hero dealing with a lot of different crises. In Onslaught, Lenson is in command of a naval squadron in the East China Sea just as the leader of communist China decides to launch a new militaristic dynasty by annexing Taiwan, Okinawa and a slew of other small but strategic islands. The US is caught flatfooted and Lenson has to desperately put together a response to Chinese aggression without clear direction from the political leadershib or adequate resources, such as fuel and ammunition. There's plenty of story in just this scenario, but Poyer doesn't stop there. He uses other characters very deftly to fill out the picture. We see Washington through the eyes of Lenson's wife, a defense expert who is also running for Congress; the complexities of shipboard life by following an NCIS investigator trying to track down a rapist; the extreme dangers of a career in the Navy SEALS and the high price of failure.

Poyer is a good storyteller, with a talent for explaining weapons systems, international politics and a variety of characters. I got hooked and read it at top speed.

Review of Will a Frenchman Fight? ed. Steven Muhlberger Deeds of Arms, 4.

I'm grateful for this positive review but I wish the reviewer had said more about the main theme of the book, the often conflicting demands of military effectiveness and individual honor in the minds of men at arms of the time.
Muhlberger, Steven, ed. and trans. Will a Frenchman Fight?. Deeds of Arms, 4. Wheaton, IL: Freelance Academy Press, 2015. Pp. viii, 102. $24.95. ISBN: 978-1-937439-17-0.

Reviewed by Katherine Hodges-Kluck
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
kthomp41@vols.utk.edu
Will a Frenchman Fight? is Steven Muhlberger's third contribution to the Deeds of Arms Series. This sourcebook focuses on the great chevauchée, or raid, led by Thomas of Woodstock, first earl of Buckingham, through French territory in 1380-81. The book opens with an 18-page introduction, followed by selections of Froissart's Chroniques and Cabaret d'Orville's 1429 Chronicle of the Good Duke. As Muhlberger explains, Cabaret received his information from the French knight Jean de Châteaumorand, who recollected the events of his youth. Together, therefore, these chronicles provide two contemporary perspectives on the raid. The book concludes with a short bibliography for further reading.
The 1380-81 chevauchée was a response to duke of Brittany Jean de Montfort's call for aid after he was exiled for opposing the French king's attempts to exert royal jurisdiction over the ducal succession in Brittany. Will a Frenchman Fight? does an excellent job of highlighting the precarious situation which de Montfort faced. Out of favor with Charles V of France and charged with treason, the duke turned to the English for assistance, only to be thwarted by his own lords who refused to accept foreign support against their fellow countrymen. The introduction and primary sources in Will a Frenchman Fight? highlight these overlapping and frequently conflicting layers of leadership and allegiances, which in turn shaped France's military response to the rebellious de Montfort and his would-be English allies.
Muhlberger's introduction begins by outlining some of the major events of the four decades leading up to Buckingham's raid, including the Black Death, the English victory at Poitiers, the capture of the French king Jean II, and the Jacquerie rebellion. Muhlberger effectively demonstrates the economic pressures that shaped Edward III's and Parliament's military decisions on the one hand, and Charles V's struggles to "re-establish royal authority" in France on the other (5). The rest of the introduction then breaks down the sequence of events for the chevauchée and discusses the varied motivations of the French and English soldiers involved in it. The author assumes some basic knowledge of the first phase of the Hundred Years War, and the major players involved. It is not until midway through the introduction, for instance, that the reader learns that Buckingham is the "son of the King of England" (13), and only in the color plate of Buckingham's coat of arms in the middle of the book that the reader finds the earl's full name and titles.
The primary source section of the book presents the events of the chevauchée in chronological order, following the English on their march through enemy territory, their largely unsuccessful attempts to engage their enemy in battle during the winter months, and finally their retreat back to the coast. The primary texts have been thoughtfully selected to highlight the nuances of the complicated political, as well as tactical, situations posed by the English presence in France. As the book's title suggests, the sources shed light on "a variety of different kinds of combat and different motives for fighting" (3). In particular, they depict the tensions between 1) open pitched battles like those of Crécy and Poitiers, which favored the English; 2) the pragmatic but unpopular scorched-earth tactics employed by both the French and the English armies at the expense of the French populace; and 3) the desire of individual knights and squires on both sides of the conflict to demonstrate chivalric honor through individual combat.
The sources are divided into eight sections, throughout which chapter numbers and titles from the original texts are included as subheadings. Six of the sections are drawn from Froissart, while the remaining two (which are relatively short by comparison) are from Cabaret's chronicle. In the first section, titled "Buckingham's Campaign Begins," Froissart describes the exchange of ambassadors between Brittany and England, and Edward III's subsequent plans for an armed expedition into France. The chronicler discusses the deployment of troops, the effects of international alliances on events, and the capture of prisoners of war. The next section, "The Confrontation at Troyes," describes the skirmishes between French and English forces outside that city. The third section, "The Deeds of Arms at Toury and Marchenoir," follows the English army's travels into Brittany and the reception that the English received in various towns along the way, a reception that ranged from lukewarm to outright hostile. This section also includes Froissart's account of the death of Charles V. In "Buckingham in Brittany," Froissart shows the complicated political situation facing Jean de Montfort. He also describes the siege of Nantes and the coronation of the child king, Charles VI. The next passage, "The Siege of Nantes," is drawn from Cabaret's chronicle. It describes how the French defenders of the city used a variety of tactics to drive back and defeat the English besiegers. The next two selections, both titled "The Deeds of Arms at Vannes," give first Froissart's and then Cabaret's descriptions of individual combats between some of the knights and squires of the two armies. The final section, "Nicholas Clifford and Jean Boucinel," turns again to Froissart's text, outlining the peace concluded between Jean de Monfort and Charles VI, the English retreat out of Brittany, and an individual chivalric combat between Clifford and Boucinel.
While English translations of portions of Froissart's Chroniques have long been available, Cabaret's chronicle is less familiar to English readers, and this book makes a welcome contribution by including passages from it (though one wishes they were longer). Muhlberger's translations are clear and appealing to readers of all levels. This book should be a popular one for use in college classrooms, as it is accessible, attractive, affordable, and offers many topics of potential discussion.
The weaknesses of the book are largely structural. There is no index, and although Muhlberger defines specialized terms such as a outrance within the text (17), a glossary of such terms, as well as of important names, would make the book more user-friendly. Moreover, the two maps that the book reproduces (France at the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360 and at the death of Charles V in 1380), while in full color, are antiquated--one dates to 1877--and rather difficult to read. The book would benefit from a map that clearly plotted the route taken by the English army during the raid and the locations of important cities and skirmishes specifically mentioned in the text. It would also be useful to have in-text references to the images in the color plates at the center of the book.
Ultimately, this source reader presents a detailed view into an exciting yet lesser-known episode of the Hundred Years' War. Rather than placing attention on the famous battles like Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, Will a Frenchman Fight? shows the more common side of war: one marked by short skirmishes, inconclusive raids, prolonged sieges, individual desire for honor, bad weather and disease, and the vicissitudes of fortune and politics.
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