This was one discussion I hadn't intended to get involved in, for the
very good reason that I haven't actually read Lynn's book in full!    As
something of an instinctive British empiricist I am distinctly suspicious of
books purporting to give a grand unified theory of everything, especially
when this is done by cherry-picking a few case studies from across the whole
sweep of human history- and even more when one has some reason to suspect
that the enterprise is being undertaken with more than half an eye to
influencing contemporary American political debates.   The part of the book
I did have a look at in a London bookshop (the chapter discussing medieval
warfare) didn't inspire me with much confidence.  In fact my reaction was a
degree of irritation at yet another non-medievalist engaged in the pastime
of (with apologies to the late Edward Said) "orientalising" the European
Middle Ages by creating a kind of atemporal "other" where nothing much
really changed over very long spans of time, inhabited by strange people
behaving in strange, irrational, and basically stupid ways.

   In the light of Teva Tucker's interesting comments however I feel I ought
to say something, if only to give a bit of aid and support to a fellow 15th
century specialist.

   I suppose I ought to begin by saying why I have problems with the Lynn
take on medieval warfare.   I suppose it's not entirely surprising that a
non-specialist should have lit on chevauchees as a good theme to bring into
his model.   There's quite a bit of recent Anglophone scholarship on the
subject (notably Clifford Rogers' writings- though these are by no means
uncontroversial), which plays into a wider developing historiographical
debate on the basic patterns of medieval warfare ( to grossly over-simplify
quite complex discussions, was this battle-averse or battle-seeking, how
closely did it correspond to Vegetian principles and, if it did, which
Vegetian principles etc).   It's part of the Hundred Years War, which deeply
rooted Anglophone (and Francophone, for that matter) scholarly tradition
tends to depict as the paradigmatic medieval war- to put it simply, the
average non-specialist reader is more likely to have heard of Crecy and
Poitiers and Agincourt than Altopascio or Muhldorf or Nemecky Brod.   Since
this is the tradition my own researches are part of most of my examples will
come from the Hundred Years War too, but one has to remember that there was
a lot more to Europe than England and France and many more wars than the
Anglo-French ones.

   The problem is that the chevauchee is a bit of an oddity.   In the strict
sense of the term- which I would define as a large-scale expedition through
hostile territory aimed largely at plunder and devastation without any
serious intention to take and hold fortified positions- it seems to be an
English invention of the 1340's, used over a period of some forty years.   I
think one could argue for a Scottish pre-history in the shape of the Bruce
campaigns into the north of England during the 1310's and 20's; a really
speculative ancestry might take the first real chevauchee back to Edward I's
1303 campaign in Scotland which critically undermined the willingness of the
Comyn dominated Scottish regime to fight on by taking the war into the Comyn
heartlands in the north east of Scotland.

   The point of the English chevauchees in France is however that they
appear to have been used as part of a rather unusual strategy forced on
Edward III by the dawning recognition that trying to conquer France or make
enough inroads into the French kingdom to force Philip VI to come to terms
with him by conventional methods of siege and capture of major strongholds
were getting nowhere; by 1340 he had virtually bankrupted England and not
got past Tournai.   The alternative was therefore to cause maximum damage
deep into French territory in the hope that a rather insecure monarch with
plenty of enemies and quite a few merely lukewarm friends among his nobility
would feel forced to give battle or risk seeing peripheral regions slip out
of his allegiance.   Up to a point, the strategy worked brilliantly, though
even after John II had got himself captured at Poitiers and the French
kingdom collapsed into internal strife it proved remarkably hard to nail
down a satisfactory peace and the travails of  the 1360 campaign showed that
the model was reaching the limits of its effectiveness.

   In many ways, therefore, this was actually a strategy of weakness; an
attempt to create conditions in which an aggressive but (usually) weaker foe
could impose a political settlement on an enemy too difficult to conquer in
the "normal" way.   It was however something of a departure from the norms
of medieval warfare- and in the end something of a blind alley.  As Baldwin
V of Hainault shrewdly observed as far back as 1185 when pulling back into
his castles to see off a Flemish invasion "Our enemies will go away one day
and leave us our lands; after all, they cannot carry them off".   A ravaging
strategy on its own tended to go nowhere if (as Charles V realised when
facing the English after the renewal of war in 1369) one simply pulled
everything one could move behind stone walls, harassed the invaders in the
flanks and rear and had the self confidence to sit tight.   It is noticeable
that, when Henry V renewed the war in the 15th century, after the Agincourt
campaign (which had a whiff of the chevauchee about it, though this was
partly a matter of circumstances after the fall of Harfleur) his approach
was one of systematic conquest by siege and/or surrender of the major urban
centres and strongholds of Normandy and the Isle de France.

   Chevauchees don't go away, of course.   In the 15th century the main
exponents of the genre would (I think) be the Hussites with their campaigns
of devastation into Germany and Poland apparently designed less to spread
the gospel of the purified church of Jan Hus than to batter the Emperor and
Pope into making a favourable settlement with God's new elect Czech people
(I think one might find the Hussite use of chevauchee hard to accommodate in
the Lynn chivalric model...).   Henry VIII's campaigns in France in the 16th
century at times revert to the chevauchee model.  I'm sure one can find
chevauchees well after that period- indeed my nomination for the last
chevauchee (though I appreciate the political bases are rather different)
would be Sherman's campaign in Georgia....

   None of this is meant to imply that "normal" medieval warfare was not a
thoroughly messy affair with a great deal of ravaging and looting.   It was.
   It was that deeply ambivalent model of chivalry Henry V who said that
"Warfare without fire is like sausages without mustard".   Some of this was
the inevitable consequence of the shaky logistical underpinnings of most
military endeavour in societies which did not generate much by way of
agrarian surplus.   It took a long time to develop effective means to
translating such surplus as existed into state controlled resources which
could fund  warfare in ways which put a brake on the natural propensity of
soldiery to live off the land (though most societies were getting rather
better at the first part of that trick as the years wore on, the second
element- stopping the troops just taking what they wanted- proved a great
deal harder).    Ravaging (and counter-ravaging in the sense of scorched
earth) was a significant campaign weapon.  It was however rarely a strategy
in its own right.   The basic building block of medieval warfare was the
siege, with many (perhaps the majority) of battles fought in some kind of
association with sieges and any account of the essence of medieval warfare
which misses this point is seriously deficient.

   At the micro level, it's clear from my own work on 15th century French
mercenary troops that the real war for most ordinary French people was as
likely to be that between the peasant and the warrior as that between the
Kings of France and England- a war fought on more even terms than one might
imagine as even the biggest pillager has to sleep sometimes and many
ravagers ended up the in the nearest river with their throats cut.   Even in
the chevauchee era I suspect more damage was done to the interests of
ordinary folk by the scattering of garrisons nominally in the obedience of
the king of England or (in the 1350's and 60') the king of Navarre operating
their own localised protection rackets than by the formal campaigns.
Ravaging as a means of extortion, whether at the grand levels of a Seguin de
Badefol in the 1360's or a Rodrigo de Villandrando in the 1420's and 30's
(who was issuing "permits to pillage" in given regions to members of his
band) or the petty level of the  Scots who hanged the partridge hunter Jean
de Pons near Bourges in June 1423 because they had been having trouble with
the locals (he survived thanks to a miracle worked by St Katherine of
Fierboys), was commonplace.  One should however stress that it also happened
in times of nominal peace, even after the reform of the French royal army
into the royal funded Compagnies d'Ordonnance in 1445.   It could almost be
seen as part of the "normal" social fabric of the day; a structural tension
which society had to cope with like begging and theft and poor crop yields.
  Or at least it was in France.   England had somewhat different law and
order problems, fought most of its wars abroad until the 1450-85 period and
even then saw a series of mostly short campaigns.  It did however arguably
sustain an equally high level of "normal" violence in social relations even
without a sustained domestic military presence.   Elsewhere there are some
tantalising absences in secondary works which suggest that the Italian
peasantry was possibly less likely to fight back against ravagers, though
this may simply reflect source availability.

   In other words, to focus on the chevauchee period and essentialise it as
the sole reality of medieval warfare misses the peculiarities of a
distinctly atypical period and style of warfare, ignores the realities of
"formal" campaigning (most soldiers would have spent much of their time
under arms sitting in camps waiting for a siege to end) and only partially
engages with the endemic levels of violence in society which military
activities certainly contributed to but were not solely responsible for.

   What of chivalry in all this?   Again, "chivalry" is a slippery concept
whose content changed over time and from commentator to commentator.  Some
points are clear.   It was essentially a class position- only a small
minority of the population were even in theory part of the chivalric
circles.   Right from the outset there were deep ambivalences and
unclarities in its demands.   One could interpret the origins of "chivalry"
as a process of negotiation and selective appropriation of clerical models
by secular elites looking for an ideology which would enable them to cope
with and selectively resist the culturally hegemonic impulses of the
Post-Gregorian reform church- impulses articulated by clergy who themselves
come from lay elite families (since the Post-Gregorian clergy could no
longer reproduce themselves).   Much recent scholarship, in French and
English, has sought (convincingly to my mind) to re-frame the alleged
attempts by the church (especially Cluniac monks) to "tame" warfare and
warriors in the Truce and Peace of God Movements of the 10th and 11th in
much narrower terms as attempts by one part of the social elite to ensure
that another part didn't harm their economic interests- the main
beneficiaries of these movements, it is argued, turn out to be Cluniac monks
rather than "ordinary" peasants.   Even the role of "chivalry" as the remote
ancestor of modern laws of war (which seems to be part of its role in Lynn's
formulation) was problematic from the outset.

   Chivalry tends to be a "positional good".   In military terms, this means
that whole categories of combatant are outside its remit (or, more
accurately, have no legitimate right to expect "chivalric" treatment even
though individual opponents may choose to extend such treatment to them);
peasant rebels, urban militiamen, heretics of whatever social standing.
Archers were borderline, as were gunners by the end of the 15th century;
mercenaries could be as well.   In theory members of the chivalric classes
looked after each other, most notably in the ransom business (English
archers bought fully into the ransom concept, which probably saved a few
lives when they in turn were captured).   On the other hand, chivalric
protections often went out the window- most notably when Henry V ordered the
massacre of French prisoners during Agincourt (though part of the complaint
was less that this was unchivalric than that he was destroying the property
of others- in terms of future ransoms- without consultation or compensation)
or in the complex tale of the murder of Pedro the Cruel of Castile when
supposedly under the protection of Bertrand du Guesclin after his capture at
Montiel.   If however they themselves didn't play by the rules then the
rules could be suspended in return- and (courts of chivalry- which spent
most of their time sorting out the knotty business of ransom litigation or
deciding was entitled to what arms and had no supranational reach- apart)
the judgement on who was in breach was entirely subjective.

   I don't want to suggest that all medieval combatants of the chivalric
classes were simply hypocrites.   Some worried a lot about their
reputations, others rather less (though du Guesclin was uncomfortable enough
about what happened at Montiel to make sure his version was well aired).
Few would have been happy at being thought entirely unchivalric.   Many
might well have liked to be more chivalric than they felt they could afford
to be in practice and might well have wished for a cleaner, simpler world
where the messy realities of modern warfare intruded rather less.   A
hardened old mercenary like the Spaniard Juan de Salazar, active in mid 15th
century France, called his sons after such chivalric heroes as Tristan and
Lancelot.   Many, even hardened professionals clearly felt that, at bottom,
there were rules of war which all- even civic militias- ought to obey.   An
Italian, Ame de Valpergue, one member of a family which made a career in
15th century France as soldiers and latterly royal administrators, saw fit
to send a herald to the city of Strasburg  in the winter of 1444/5 (during
the strange episode in which the Dauphin Louis led an army of the most
hardened mercenaries in the English and French obediences to Lorraine and
beyond nominally to support Friedrich von Habsburg and Zurich against Basel)
complaining about the militia's practice of using fire to burn his men out
of the places they were occupying and threatening dire retaliation if it was
not given up.   Interestingly, when the militia captured Ame shortly
afterwards, they ransomed him.....

   Chivalry was a complex ideology.   Ravaging the countryside (not
something the chivalric classes generally did in person anyway) was not
necessarily unchivalric.   Rigorist moralists complained and tried to keep
military elites up to a higher mark as far as behaviour went- that was their
job, as most of those railed against would probably have agreed.   It was
however all very difficult.   When Joan of Arc lectured a Scot for looting,
he pointed out that she'd just eaten lunch composed of foodstuffs which had
also been looted.  Few positively delighted in breaking "the rules of war";
many, perhaps most, accepted that points had to be stretched and regrettable
things done in time of war if one wanted to win.    There were a lot of
"cultural" aspects to medieval warfare but they could cut in a variety of
ways.

   As far as tournaments go, I have to admit I'm not a specialist in the
subject though it's one which interests me and which I'd probably have
pursued had I ended up in academic employment.  One of Lynn's more
irritating approaches was to turn from mid 14th century chevauchees to the
experiences of William Marshal in the 1170's as if the latter in some way
explained the former.   Tournaments, like warfare, changed a lot from , say,
1160 to 1500.   The sprawling combats of the 12th century were indeed
virtually indistinguishable from war and had more than a whiff of brimstone
about them.  A promising young fellow of pretty indifferent social origins
could get to the very top out of tournament earnings as the star player on a
major league team.   Things got very different in later years as, for
example, tournaments came to be subject to royal licence in England and
increasingly under the direct control of political authority across Europe
("political authority" including the governments of Italian city states,
whose urban upper classes caught the jousting bug every bit as badly as the
nobility elsewhere).    As a result of this close linkage to authority,
incidentally, there may well have been rather fewer grand tournaments than
one tends to imagine- there were for instance notably few royal sponsored
tournaments in 15th century France and the real homelands of jousting were
in the Burgundian lands and, arguably, southern and western Germany with its
burgeoning tournament societies staging what can look like the making of a
tournament circuit.  Incidentally, I have no problem at all seeing jousting
as essentially a sport- I'm not sure what else one calls a pastime which is
rule-bound (one could be disqualified from a tournament), conducted in a
pre-arranged spot, involves special dedicated equipment and increasingly
complex scoring systems to determine who wins.

   Jousting in the later medieval style does pose some interpretative
problems.   For one thing, like chivalry, it was a positional good (the
right to take part in a tournament was one marker of social position- the
German societies were very hot on this,precisely because so many of their
members were very much at the bottom of the chivalric scale).  In
consequence lay adult males of the right class might be expected to joust
from time to time even if they weren't much good at it (even the unmartial
Charles VII of France participated in tournaments occasionally, though
-unlike his father Charles VI who had been a keen and talented participant
before his madness struck and retained a genuine enthusiasm for the sport in
his moments of lucidity- he does not seem to have enjoyed the experience and
his performances required tactful sportswriting later).  On the other hand,
it's clear there were genuine professionals.  The most famous perhaps was
the Burgundian Jacques de Lalaing.   His biography may well be the first of
a professional sportsman in existence (William Marshal's biography is only
partially about his jousting years; Ulrich von Liechtenstein's autobiography
is as much about his outsize ego as his actual performances in the tilt
yards of Europe) and focuses almost entirely upon the combats on horse and
foot which made his reputation.   Revealingly, the biography stops before
the last year of his life (in which he actually went to war for the Duke of
Burgundy against Flemish rebels and was killed in battle, supposedly by
gunshot).  Revealingly, too, he seems to have had trouble finding opponents
at times- he was, one suspects, a bit too good for the ordinary "social
status" jouster.

   As far as the relationship between war and jousting goes, Malcolm Vale
discussed this issue in an almost forgotten little book called "War and
Chivalry" as long ago as 1981.  He clearly believed that there was a
continuing useful link between tournament practice and how wars were fought
even in the late 15th century.   He bases this on the continuing team
aspects of jousting in institutions like the melee, the links with orders of
chivalry and the continuing role of heavy cavalry in warfare.  I'm not so
sure.  I have no trouble at all with his demonstration that heavy cavalry
remained a vital part of armies around 1500 despite claims to the contrary
(if the one truism of English history used to be that the middle class were
always rising then it is surely a similar axiom of military history that
heavy cavalry are always on the way out- but somehow they remained in
business until at least 1914).   I can up to a point see his argument that
those who jousted together probably fought better together, though I'm not
as sure about the omnipresence and importance of melees as he is.  Specific
descriptions of what one might call "team" events- even "internationals",
like the Burgundo-Scottish contest at Stirling involving Lalaing- seem to
suggest a series of individual one on one combats.   Some (though by no
means all) of the melees at royal events sound staged, organised according
to a pre-scripted scenario- the start of a process of theatricalistion whose
ultimate descendants can be seen in the Spanish Riding School of Vienna.
Lalaing's career is defined by his single combats and by the hugely
elaborate and highly scripted pas d'armes in which he participated.   I
suspect the "Hollywood version" which privileges single combat in the lists
isn't totally wide of the mark- a lot of German illustration seems to
suggest that jousters there thought in terms of win/loss ratios in single
"runs", for instance.

   On the other side of the argument, it's worth noting that no 15th century
melee sprawls over the vast acreage of 12th century tournaments and none
seeks to integrate infantry let alone firearms into the proceedings (this is
important given Vale's own argument that effective warfare required just
this integration of horse, foot and shot).   Indeed I would suggest that
large scale hunting of this era would actually have been far better training
for military leadership than tournament fighting could provide.

   As far as individual skills are concerned, clearly jousting aided
horsemanship and the general bodily endurance required to wear armour for
long periods- and fight on foot in it is required.   Indeed the armour
involved in jousting was massively heavier than combat armour.  On the other
hand, I'm less convinced that it always helped with weapons handling skills
as tournament weapons were not necessarily the same as "normal" ones (one of
Lalaing's foot combats was complicated by an opponent whose poleaxe- if I
recall right- didn't meet the local equipment standard and there's another
well recorded case of an Italian being told to take the spikes off his
armour).  More seriously perhaps, jousting with lance on horseback was done
largely "blind" (I only recently discovered this myself from reading a piece
on tilt armour- given the risks from fragmenting lances involved in helmet
hits the normal technique was to "sight" though the eye slit by leaning
forward in the armour at the start of the run but ease back well before
impact and do the final part of the run blind).   I may be wrong but I doubt
if it would be a good idea to charge into battle with quite such a limited
view of where one was going!

   So in summary while the military elites (and sometimes not-so-elites)
would undoubtedly have jousted and some of them might have been very keen
jousters my sense is that this was at the highest level beginning to become
a game for professionals- some of whom, like Lalaing, were clearly state
sponsored "national champions" whose actions brought cultural prestige to
their rulers independent of their possible military role.

   I hope this slightly sprawling post is of some interest, if only in
suggesting that the Lynn model needs a lot more consideration before it can
be squeezed on to medieval warfare.


Brian G H Ditcham

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