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De Re Militari | Book Reviews

Margaret L Kekewich and Susan Rose

Britain, France and the Empire 1350-1500

(Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005). xxiii + 308 pp.
£49.50/$72.00(hb) £16.99/$23.95(pb). ISBN 0-333-68973-9 (hb)/0-333-69075-3 (pb).


A book which attempts to provide an undergraduate level audience with a general survey of developments in much of Europe west of the Oder and north of the Alps and Pyrenees over the eventful years of the later middle ages cannot be faulted for lack of ambition -- especially when it seeks to cover political, social, economic, religious and cultural fields in just over 250 pages of text. It would be pleasant to welcome a book which takes a broader view than the traditional Anglophone focus on developments in England and France. Unfortunately one senses that the authors have bitten off rather more than they can chew.

The problems begin with the geopolitical decribers in the title. "Britain" is not a particularly meaningful concept in the late middle ages. In practice Wales and Ireland only figure when they cause trouble for the English crown. As for "The Empire", its residual Italian dimension is ignored. While the Hussites ensure some coverage of Bohemia, the German speaking lands dominate. Apart from a short section on the Swiss Confederation coverage of these tends to favour the Baltic north east and Rhenish west- the economic rise of the south German cities is barely mentioned. The Burgundian lands, straddling France and the Empire, are treated in the traditional manner as a unit in their own right.

The book by its nature draws heavily on the work of others and tends to reflect the emphases of and gaps in current historiography. In this case the authors are familiar with recent writings- with the exception of the sections on Scotland. These appear unaware of most of the work which has appeared in the last fifteen years and substantially revised views of the reigns of David II and the early Stewarts [1]. It is noticeable that the bibliography is confined to works in English (no doubt a comment on the linguistic skills of the likely readership). While some works written in French are cited in the endnotes, none in German feature there.

The authors are clearly most at home in elite and urban settings. The peasantry and rural economy are handled in a rather tentative way and the authors make no attempt at all to cover rural popular culture, (assumed to be coterminous with "popular religion" [p. 182]), while peasant revolts are placed in the chapter on townsmen and traders. Political history also suffers. The potted histories of the various polities covered in the book (placed in the section on kingship) are very compressed and seriously oversimplify periods of complex political activity such as England in the 1380's and again in the 1450's or France in the period 1400-20. They also ignore military confrontations (battles like Radcot Bridge, Shrewsbury and the early engagements of the Wars of the Roses are not mentioned). An undergraduate reader without a clear grasp of the sequence of events could easily get lost.

De Re Militari members will be particularly interested in the chapter on warfare, which follows that on kingship. This seeks to cover such issues as military organisation and financing, strategy and tactics, the theory and practice of chivalry and the role of wars in promoting patriotism -- all in 27 pages. It is a tall order, even given that the discussion is almost entirely confined to land warfare (despite Rose's writings on naval warfare and the fact that the only illustration in this section relates to a sea battle, nautical developments are dispatched in a couple of paragraphs relating purely to English and French activities). Coverage tends to reflect the strengths and weaknesses of scholarship currently available in English. There is therefore a good deal on English military organisation up to about 1420 but little thereafter, adequate coverage of the French structures created by Charles V and those which emerged after the 1445 reforms (including the tax system which underpinned them) but nothing in between, a bit on the Hussite crusades and the Burgundian army- and little on Scotland beyond familiar citations from Froissart. The Swiss pikeman is barely mentioned, the evolution of the Landsknecht is not discussed at all. Even the English archer gets less space than usual. Coverage of individual campaigns and battles is limited and weighted towards English victories (Crecy and Agincourt- though Nancy gets a sketchy analysis). The reasons for the ultimate French victory in the Hundred Years War remain largely unaddressed. Indeed events at the sharp end get relatively short shrift with only a couple of paragraphs on issues like the role of gunpowder weapons and the effectiveness of infantry (p. 146). The impact of warfare on the wider population is dispatched very briefly. The conclusion is conservative- there were changes but nothing like a military revolution (though, oddly, the overall conclusion to the book takes a slightly different line, arguing that the foundations for a military revolution had indeed been laid).

In general there is a slightly old fashioned air to the work and its conclusions-even the "New Monarchy" in England makes a reappearance, though pushed back to Edward IV's reign. Kings get stronger, cities act as a ferment for change and the laity become more important in religious matters, pointing the way to the Reformation despite the strength of traditional religion. These are clearly perfectly tenable positions though not always easy to reconcile with points made in individual thematic chapters.

There are however wider problems with the book. Explanations are sometimes muddled and hard to follow (for instance the discussion of family structures is thoroughly confusing and could be read as implying that partible inheritance was the norm in England and Northern France [p. 27]). The text is riddled with statements which are distinctly debateable (the observation that the Emperor Maximilian "avoided the expense of warfare except when it was absolutely necessary" [p. 133] would have caused some bafflement to those who had to try to keep that inveterate campaigner’s armies together when the money ran out yet again), strange (James II of Scots would have been amazed to be told that his family matrimonial policy allied Scotland to the "pro-French, anti-British powers of Europe" [p. 99], the statement that the moderate Hussite nobility and merchants "had always wished for compromise with their king and with the Bohemians, who had remained orthodox Catholics" [p. 209] is either a misprint or requires more elaboration to disentangle these Catholic Bohemians from the equally Bohemian Hussites), downright wrong ( the University of St Andrews was not founded by Bishop William Elphinstone [p. 241]; he founded Aberdeen University while Bishop Wardlaw founded St Andrews) or recycle hoary myths (the story that the Dauphin Charles was declared illegitimate by his own mother [p. 123] may go back to the 15th century but was thoroughly debunked years ago [2]). While the book is pleasantly presented and includes some unfamiliar illustrations, the printed text is sprinkled with misprints (for instance Oldcastle's rebellion is variously placed in 1414 and 1415 [pp. 79, 206]) and italicises technical terms (presumably for a glossary which was ultimately dropped).

To summarise, this is a somewhat disappointing work unlikely to establish itself as an indispensable textbook for aspiring late medievalists.

Notes

(1) E.g. Michael Brown "James I" (Edinburgh 1994), Michael Brown "The Black Douglases" (East Linton 1998), Stephen Boardman "The Early Stewart Kings- Robert II and Robert III 1371-1406" (East Linton 1996), Alastair J MacDonald "Border Bloodshed" (East Linton 2000); Roland Tanner's book on the Scottish Parliament and Michael Penman's one on David II no doubt appeared too recently to be taken into account though both have been active publishers of journal articles in the past decade. [back]
(2) Notably by Francoise Autrand, Charles VI (Paris 1986). [back]

Brian Ditcham

Independent Scholar <[email protected]>

Page Added: January 2006