A Cultural History of Sport in the Medieval Age by Noel Fallows

Author:Noel Fallows [Fallows, Noel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781350283015
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2021-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

FOOT COMBATS

In addition to large-scale mêlée tournaments, smaller-scale tourneys on horseback, jousts, and passages of arms, rules were established for tourneys on foot. Tourneys and jousts were exclusively mounted exercises until the fourteenth century, a chronology that aligns with what the knightly class valued and esteemed at the time. However, around the fourteenth century, the English developed a tactical preference for fighting (and winning) battles on foot, which in turn brought a new emphasis to formal chivalric engagements (Capwell 2015: 5–18). Fighting on foot meant that training and practice for it in the sports that orbited around battlefield combat became increasingly important. The new and highly effective English tactic compelled their French archenemies to dismount as well, and spend more time honing infantry modes of attack. In the second half of the fourteenth century there is a rise in formal combats between English and French combatants fought at least in part on foot, and often completely. The incorporated weapons forms diversified, and soon knights were fighting cordial challenges with the spear, axe, sword, and dagger. Some of these sporting combats involved a fenced-in enclosure called a champ clos, which before that point had been a requirement for judicial combats—a separate activity, though related at least tangentially to foot combats in the sporting arena. A rare and possibly unique manual on axe combat known as the Jeu de la Hache has survived, but here the term Jeu indicates not so much a game or sport as the technique of handling a poleaxe (Anglo 2008). The opening three paragraphs of this treatise make it clear that the fighting in this case is preparation for judicial combat or a duel of honor, and the two combatants are recognized champions possibly fighting to the death.

By the mid fifteenth century, foot combat was a standard feature of high profile tournaments. Some tournaments had both mounted and foot combats; others were dedicated to one or the other. An important development in formal foot combat was the introduction of the barrier, a long railing set waist-high across which the contestants had to fight with staffs (Anglo 2000: 168–71; LaRocca 2017: 90–3). The first documented foot combat at the barriers took place at Sandricourt in France in 1493, and there are most likely earlier examples for which there is as yet no concrete documentary evidence (Anglo 2007) (Figure 4.4). From France its use quickly spread across Europe. In particular the Italian Wars of 1494–1559 could have acted as a conduit of this new tournament fashion. Certainly in the first half of the sixteenth century tournament combats on foot both in the champ clos and at the barriers were popular, and both types of fighting could occur at the same event, even on the same day.

No comprehensive rule books for combat at the barriers and other types of foot combats have survived (or perhaps ever existed, or have yet to be discovered). Even the Jeu de la Hache is about technique as opposed to rules. We must look once again to scattered references in chronicles for clues.

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