The Hundred Years War (Cambridge Medieval Textbooks) by Allmand Christopher

Author:Allmand, Christopher [Allmand, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1988-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

ORDER AND CONTROL

As we have already noted, people of the late Middle Ages appear to have accepted, with a certain sense of fatalism, the destructive energies released by war. We have also seen that the period witnessed an increasing awareness of what such destruction meant to those who experienced it: moral shock and material loss. Was this desirable, either in terms of the physical violence which war appeared to breed (‘there is no good war without fire’), or of the economic loss (sometimes long-lasting) which it caused, or (a point increasingly accepted) of the military effectiveness which commanders sought to achieve? The evidence seems to suggest not.

It has become fashionable to see war in terms of armies ravaging the enemy’s countryside, in order to deprive him of material and economic resources, rather than as a series of ‘set-piece’ confrontations or battles. The enemy, Vegetius had taught, should be brought to his knees with as little risk, effort and expense as possible. This required that war be fought in a relatively disciplined and ordered manner. We must take note of how these changes took place.

The late Middle Ages witnessed a development in the formalisation of war’s activities. Some writers have seen this as satisfying the well-known medieval love of symbolic action: the giving of his right glove to Sir Denis de Morbecque symbolised John II’s act of surrender at the battle of Poitiers, while the very formal surrender of the keys by its leading citizens represented the capture of Harfleur by Henry V in September 1415. Likewise the raising of unfurled banners signalled the opening of hostilities, just as the firing of a cannon came to mark the start of a siege. The sociologist may choose to interpret such acts in terms of play or game, and that element cannot be totally ruled out. Yet of far greater significance is the fact that such acts were not only symbolic but were also regarded as creating particular legal situations which could have effects upon decisions taken in the courts of law. Disputes as to the legal status of a soldier claimed by another as his prisoner could hang on the circumstances in which the man was captured or the manner in which he was taken. Whose prisoner he was might depend to whom he had formally surrendered, and how. A knight might take another prisoner and assume that he was now his ‘master’ (with all that this could mean in legal terms); but if the ‘giving of faith’ to the captor by the captured were not done properly and formally, then the ‘capture’ might be regarded as invalid and open to challenge in a court of law.11

The historical significance of this form of evidence (which may appear to be mere quibbling over a matter of military custom) is precisely that it shows us that recourse to the law was encouraged as a means of bringing fairly widely-held conventions to bear upon the conduct of war, and that these were being applied judicially

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