Robert W. Jones

Bloodied Banners: Military Display on the Medieval Battlefield

Woodbridge, Suffolk, England: The Boydell Press, 2010. xi+205pp. us$90. ISBN: 978-1843835615.

Robert Jones begins Bloodied Banners with the “accidental” death in 1369 of Sir John Chandos, one of the leading English captains of the Hundred Years War. As the conflict heated up after a ten year hiatus, Sir John became involved in a minor skirmish with the French at a place called Lussac le Chateaux. Having dismounted, he strode toward the French decked out in all his martial finery, including a long robe emblazoned with his arms. According to Froissart, when his legs became entangled in that robe, he stumbled forward on the slippery ground, falling onto a well-aimed stroke of a French lance that hit him in the face and penetrated to the brain.

Jones asks if the death of this illustrious figure was just another instance of what the twelfth-century churchman, Bernard of Clairvaux, had called the “monstrous error” of medieval warriors going into battle encumbered by their showy raiment? Or was there more involved than just vainglory when the knight strove to cut such a splendid figure in the field? In his own words

If there was no purpose to military display other than fashion or aesthetic why would practical and experienced warriors like Chandos bother with it? What really drove such men to dress themselves in what to our eyes, accustomed to soldiers whose dress hides them from their enemy, in such a flamboyant manner? (3)

It is these questions that Robert Jones sets out to address in Bloodied Banners—a task he accomplishes with considerable success. In this endeavor, the author employs a wide variety of sources, including medieval historical accounts in both prose and poetry, literary works such the French chansons de geste, Arthurian tales, and chivalric romances, medieval illustration, and material remains among which are surviving suits of armor and sculpture.

In addition to an Introduction and Conclusion, the book contains nine chapters, each of which treats a different aspect of medieval martial display:

1. Heraldic display and the role of identification on the battlefield
2. The banner as a symbol of identity; authority; and status
3. Badges and communal display
4. Audible display on the battlefield
5. The practical function of armor on the battlefield
6. The psychological role of armor on the battlefield
7. The display value of the sword and horse on the battlefield
8. Religious symbolism in martial display
9. Martial display and the case for a fourteenth-century military revolution

In his introduction, Jones adopts a broad perspective on “martial display”—one that extends well beyond the Middle Ages, and in fact, beyond the human species. He considers its role in the world of nature, then draws analogies between these natural manifestations an its use by the medieval warrior:

All life makes use of display, and its function or effect can be classified in one of four ways: for identification, for threat and warning, for camouflage, and attraction and lure…Threat and warning are perhaps the functions most readily associated with animal forms of display. (5)

In drawing this analogy between human display and the display one encounters throughout the rest of the natural world, Jones suggests that beyond any calculated reasons dictating battlefield display, there is an almost instinctual imperative within the human species to engage in such activity.

Medieval writers, and the majority of historians…do not approach their subjects in this way [i.e., through analogy to the animal kingdom] and so do not tend to consider these underlying instincts. Because they are so intrinsic a part of human behaviour, the unconscious functions of display generally go unnoticed unless they happen to accord with the conscious functions that the form is serving. (7)

In elaborating this thought, Jones mentions some of the most common examples from the animal kingdom many of which involve either the use of bright coloration (wasps, hornets, and snakes), alteration of body size (bears, frogs, and the plumage of birds and reptiles) or making particular sounds (rattlesnakes), to render an organism appear larger and more threatening than might otherwise be the case.

All of these found their cognates on the medieval battlefield. On the one hand, there was the brightly colored raiment of man and horse, as well as the use of banners, pennons and, badges, which could visually signal not only a warrior’s own prowess, but also his connection to a family notable for bravery or his affiliation to a powerful lord. In respect to size enhancement, there was armor, in particular a full panoply of plate, which most definitely produced that effect. Among the colored illustrations that appear in the center of the volume, there is one that superbly illustrates the point: Plate 3, containing eight frames, shows a not overly-large modern re-enactor donning a suit of armor dating to the later Middle Ages; the fully armored man in the eighth frame appears decidedly more imposing than he did unarmored in frame one.

Jones even finds in medieval display not only an analogy for the threat that nature conveys through bright coloration, but also the mimicry evolved by some creatures such as the moth who appears to potential predators like a hornet:

Early in the development of heraldic display it was the norm for knights to bear the arms of their lord until they were able to draw together a retinue of their own. When they did adopt their own arms they often chose designs that were similar to their lord. (22)

Finally, in the same way he compares visual display among both humans and animals, Jones extends the comparison to audible display, arguing that in the cacophony of battle, audible signals as well as visual ones would ordinarily be utilized, especially when the latter became torn and dirty: “Over this maelstrom [of battle]…trumpets and clarions were sounded, drums and tabors beaten and war-cries were shouted amidst the din with definite purpose. In order to consider martial display in the round it is necessary to listen to it as well.” (69) In virtually the same breath, he mentions the war cries and beating of shields by the English at Hastings and what he calls “the stereotypical gorilla chest-beating.” (78) For both man and animal, such an act builds aggression within the performer, triggering a release of adrenalin and preparing him physically for a possible confrontation.

According to Jones, while many scholars have alluded to the importance medieval warriors attached to display in a courtly setting, they have rarely taken into consideration its equal if not greater importance on the battlefield. In this latter setting, “for the modern historian the banners, heraldry, and other finery carried by the medieval warrior are nothing more than a distraction.” (3) By contrast, given the author’s much wider perspective on display, it is not surprising that he sees in this flamboyant aspect of medieval warfare an integral part of the medieval military profession, at least in respect to the knights, whose rank and lineage lent themselves to visible advertisement as they entered the fray.

Beginning the book by considering the individual coat of arms, Jones lays out the traditional argument for what has been thought of as its primary role in medieval warfare, i.e. “that by wearing it the individual could be recognized by his friends and distinguished from his foes, preventing him from being attacked in error.” (11) He then proceeds in large part to debunk this conventional wisdom:

It might be conceivable that a knight would know the arms of his fellows in the early years of heraldic display when it was limited to the great lords who had households. However, as time went on and the number of men bearing arms increased and the arms they bore became more complex and inter-related it must have become increasingly difficult for anyone to remember all of the arms of one’s friends on any particular campaign, particularly as one’s friends might become one’s foes. (12)

In fact, the proliferation of often quite similar arms could become a fertile source of battlefield confusion and error if one used them for purposes of identifying who was on one’s side and who was not. Jones argues that what really made possible such a determination in the heat of battle were the use of banners, collective badges and livery, and distinct war-cries, as well as the fact that troops entered combat in an “ordinate” fashion, that is, fighting in ordered ranks alongside their comrades. Much more important than individual heraldry in identifying other occupants of the battlefield and maintaining what military jargon refers to as “command and control” were these alternate features of medieval military display—features to which Jones devotes chapters 2 and 3.

The banner…not only served to mark the position of a commander on the field, but also telegraphed his orders and intentions, and served as a rallying point for his men….If the banner was lost the men lost their only visual link with their commander, and their commanders their main means of telegraphing their position and instructions to their men. Given this role it will be clear that the loss of a commander or of his banner could be catastrophic for an army. (37)

According to Jones, evidence for the use of unique banners by individual lords predates the heraldic display of individual warriors by at least half a century and possibly more. Jones hints at the possibility that the use of banners for control over the small units of which medieval armies were composed may in fact have been the genesis of heraldic display as knights came to imitate their lords. “The banner,” he says, “was a vital form of martial display, and is important for understanding the roles of display on the field. It was a precursor to heraldic display, and possibly its root, serving to advertise a warrior leader’s presence on the battlefield.” (55; see also 33-34)

The unfurling of a banner indicated that its possessor was bent on war. That banners were of extreme importance in controlling and steadying a medieval army may be seen in the fact that several of the best-organized military establishments of the period—the Knights Templar and the Byzantine army—made special provisions for backups in case something were to happen to the original. On the other hand, banners also indicated to an opposing army where on the field an enemy might be found, thereby providing an important target for attack. Even if a lord could not actually be present on the battlefield in person, he could demonstrate his interest in the outcome by dispatching his banner under which any troops he had contributed would serve. A few banners like the French oriflamme even took on a special aura of religion and myth: said to be the banner of Charlemagne, it was occasionally removed from its resting place in a chapel at St. Denis when the king went to war.

In the age before uniforms, badges and livery joined banners in indicating who was who on the medieval battlefield. In addition to banners, badges and livery constituted an important means of establishing collective identity on the battlefield. Some of these distinguished the retinue in which a soldier served; others were common to an entire army. While many consisted of just a piece of cloth, often in the shape of a cross, they could take other forms as well, Jones tells us: “As a means of telling friend from foe, the use of the cognizance or field sign formed a simple and more logical method than the individual display of heraldry.” (62)

In addition to establishing identity, such badges were significant for other reasons. They could demonstrate social affiliation and with it the individual warriors backing by a great lord. Like individual heraldic symbols, collective ones could in some instances serve to protect the wearer from simply being slaughtered if his side lost. For urban militias as well as lordly retinues, wearing a badge fostered group solidarity and helped the man wearing it to stand up to enemy action. Jones makes the case explicit when he argues that,

For infantry troops to be effective on the field of battle, they had to show great discipline, and yet they were for the most part the least experienced troops in the armies, and the most brittle. Commonality of display helped to make up for this lack of experience by offering another means of building esprit de corps…Such identification also promoted good discipline. Not only were you surrounded by your comrades, peer pressure holding you in place, but the wearing of livery made you immediately recognizable should there be trouble or should you attempt to desert. (66)

Instead of battlefield identification, he posits other reasons that dictated the wearing of individual heraldic devices. First and foremost, they served to advertise the warrior’s presence on the field, letting fellow combatants know that here was a man to be reckoned with. Heraldic display made it possible for others present to properly ascribe to him his heroic actions. Not only could such display advertise the individual’s presence, by extension, it might also establish his link to a renowned lineage that contained past warriors of note. The display of arms made it necessary for the knight to perform well in order to bring credit rather than dishonor on his forebears. If he came from a renowned line, announcing that fact could help overawe enemies “for prowess was often seen as running in the family, an unsurprising attitude in a hereditary military elite which was well aware of the importance of good bloodstock in the breeding of horses.” (21)

Those who chose animals rather than the more common geometrical shapes to serve as their heraldic emblems normally chose beasts noted for their ferocity, the theory being that a fearsome warrior was best represented by a ferocious beast. At the same time, however, such an animal’s mere representation on the shield was not expected to inspire panic among one’s opponents. The ability of a heraldic device to frighten enemies lay not in what was pictured, but rather the reputation of the man who bore it.

According to the author, upon entering into conflict, one of if not the most important knightly consideration was to win renown, an end accomplished through the performance of valorous deeds witnessed by one’s comrades: “Deeds of great valour not only had to be done, but also had to be seen to be done.” (19) Heraldic display helped signal just who had done what. Undoubtedly, this was one reason that a knight jealously guarded his arms and took such umbrage if he encountered another knight on the battlefield bearing the same or very similar ones. Jones cites a principal knightly text of the later Middle Ages, Geoffrey de Charny’s Book of Chivalry, that concurred: “For de Charny,” he says,

to be seen performing great deeds was more important than being seen in fine armour, yet how was this to be achieved if the knight was an anonymous figure encased in iron? The answer lies, of course, in the warrior’s armorial devices. This personal emblem supposedly unique to the individual, ensured that deeds of valour would be visible across the battlefield to friends and foes alike. (19-20)

The book is more than simply a synopsis of how display worked. Jones also takes on some arguments that have been made previously on the matter. He takes issue with those who contend that heraldry was “born out of the developing tournament culture of north-east France.” (3) He argues instead that as familial coats of arms became increasingly complex, they evolved in two directions, with a simplified badge or devise serving to identify the participant during a tournament while the full coat of arms would be reserved for war:

Such a distinction is at odds with those who have argued that heraldry only reaches its full significance on the tournament field, for if that was truly the case then one could expect the devise to be used on the battlefield and the heraldic achievement, with all its divisions signifying the familial ties and ancestry of the knight, to be seen at the jousting lists. (21-22)

At the same time that heraldic display signaled one’s prowess and proficiency in arms, it might also have considerable survival value for knights defeated in battle, in effect, enabling them to live to fight another day. According to Jones, as knighthood became increasingly exclusive during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, members came to see themselves as an elite class, transcending regional and national boundaries. As a result, they adopted a battlefield code of conduct by which they would attempt to capture and subsequently ransom rather than slaughter one another. Under these circumstances, the knight who chose to fight without identifying marks was much more likely to die on the field than his well-accoutered counterpart: “it was the bearing of heraldic arms that marked the wearer out as a member of the knightly class and their display could mean the difference between life and death.” (15)

Jones alludes to cases where knights came down from their towering warhorses and fought on foot pour encourager les autres:

Normally, when a knight dismounted in battle it was in order to bolster the line of foot soldiers, both physically and in terms of morale. Often in descriptions of this action the link is made between the knight’s dismounting and an undertaking on his part not to flee the field. (16)

Extrapolating from an incident in literature where knights had been ordered not only to dismount, but also to discard their devices, Jones hypothesizes that these devices should be seen in a similar manner: “As they cast off their devices, [the] knights… cast off their right to capture and ransom, to all of the special treatment accorded knights by their fellows, and [made] a commitment to share the fate of the common soldiery.” (16)

Jones makes the point that some aspects of knightly display on the battlefield might be subsumed under the heading of unintentional (if serendipitous) by-products. A principal example involves the wearing of armor. While briefly raising the question of just how protective armor really was, the author leaves no doubt that most people of the time thought that it served that function. “If the contemporary manuscripts can offer us little by which to assess the effectiveness of armour, it is clear from a number of them that it was felt that armour conferred a protective benefit upon the wearer.” (92) The fact that armor might also serve to both enlarge the knight and magnify his fearsome appearance was merely incidental: “First and foremost, armour was designed to protect the wearer. That the wearer should also appear more massive and masculine was a side effect of this design.” (7) (While the author’s point may indeed be true generally speaking, one does wonder if it applied to certain features such as the monumental codpieces found on the armor of a notorious womanizer like Henry VIII! Was such a feature, with which most armor was not endowed, really for “protection” or might it not have been designed for “display” and therefore be the exception proving the general rule?)

On the technical side, the book is very well-produced. Not only is its cover design quite attractive, it is highly appropriate to a work bearing the title “Bloodied Banners.” The title, written in white, runs across a broad red background at the top of the cover, a background that suggests blood flowing down toward the illustration below. That illustration, taken from the biography of Godefroi de Bouilllon in the Bibliothèque National de France (Ms. Fr. 352, fol. 49^v), pictures a battle between knights filled with martial display. The book also provides a number of well-chosen illustrations, the black-and-white ones interspersed throughout the text which the rest appear in color in an eight page center section. The majority of those that appear in the text have come from the most famous pictorial source of the Middle Ages, the Bayeux Tapestry dating to the late eleventh century, but there are also photographs of actual medieval armor or medieval representations thereof, including a suit of plate made for Henry VIII with its highly intrusive (one might say boastful) codpiece prominently displayed! Among the color plates, one pair illustrates the warning that nature conveys through bright coloration as manifested by a hornet and contrasts this with the resulting mimicry displayed by a harmless fly.

Bloodied Banners is not without a few faults. Most noteworthy from this reviewer’s perspective was a problem he occasionally encountered in following the argument, due primarily to the insertion of material that, although relevant to the issue of martial display, did not seem to fit easily where it had been placed. In another case, considering the dismounting of knights to fight from foot, Jones makes it sound like a more unusual phenomenon than it seems to have been. In some medieval armies, most notably the English of the later Middle Ages, it was less the exception than the rule.

Perhaps it is just a personal quirk, but this reviewer finds it particularly disturbing to come across an error in respect to something he knows quite well. In discussing how the lord’s banner could inform his men where on the battlefield he was situated and provide them a rallying point, Jones alludes to a well-known incident involving John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, that occurred during the English invasion of Spain in the mid-1360s. (36) Unfortunately, the date he supplies—1366—is incorrect; the incident actually took place the following year. For one well-acquainted with this event, the error is not unimportant nor is it simply a typo: on later pages (37, 46), the author repeats the chronological mistake. Since Jones makes substantial use of one of the two major sources dealing with the English expedition—The Life of the Black Prince by a man historians call the Chandos herald—he should probably have gotten this right. In fact, he gets it right at another point in the text (67) Although a relatively small thing, it does make one wonder if similar errors may be present.

In rendering quotations, the author has adopted a policy of placing the English translation in the text and the original language in a footnote. While this will please some readers, others, including this reviewer, consider reproducing the original in most cases as unnecessary and even a touch pedantic, except perhaps when a particular quotation is of paramount importance to the author’s subject or alternatively, when it is ambiguous and the translation presents one of several possible interpretations. Other readers will disagree and be grateful for the author’s inclusion. On a mundane level, the author seems to have a penchant for a particular grammatical fault that troubles the soul of a reviewer whose scholarship encompasses a fair amount of editing, to wit, his failure to make nouns and possessive adjectives agree. Consider, for example, the following sentences ( talics added): “Thus, the drive to identify an individual and their place within a social group, etc.” (7) Or again, “It is also the case that a fighter who controls their aggression is better able to fight, etc.” (80)

These, however, are minor failings and pale by comparison to the book’s obvious virtues. It is necessary reading for anyone interested in why an experienced, battle-hardened knight—a man such as Sir John Chandos—would enter the fray decked out in all his finery when that finery, by encumbering his movements, might contribute materially to his demise.

L. J. Andrew Villalon

University of Texas at Austin <[email protected]>