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Michael Prestwich

Knight: The Medieval Warrior’s (Unofficial) Guide

London: Thames and Hudson, 2010. 208 pp. ISBN 978-0500-25160-7. £12.95.

Professor Emeritus Michael Prestwich, OBE, owns an enviable reputation in Medieval Studies, having long dominated Plantagenet scholarship with such works as The Three Edwards, Edward I, and War, Politics, and Finance under Edward I, and Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: the English Experience. Nevertheless, despite this sterling output on matters martial, Professor Prestwich has over the years expressed less interest in matters relating to chivalry; as late as July, 2009, at the England’s Wars conference at the University of Reading, he expressed doubts concerning the utility of studying chivalry (construed here as the knight’s cultural milieu and behavioral expectations) as an avenue to understanding Edwardian warfare. It is therefore a pleasant surprise to pick up this utterly delightful book, Knight: The Medieval Warrior’s (Unofficial) Guide, which provides Professor Prestwich’s holistic interpretation of a knight’s world-view with impeccable scholarship and style.

As the title might suggest, the book seems pitched toward a younger (or at least a more informal) audience. Illustrations are plentiful, and include some wonderful color plates. Notes are kept to a few pages at the end, and Prestwich employs a familiar, gently humorous style throughout--the reader is addressed directly throughout as a young person with knightly aspirations. Yet it would be a mistake to think that scholarly precision is sacrificed--not in the least! The examples and prose flow faultlessly, each vignette coming exactly where it should. After perusing so many sub-par, cheesy, or otherwise barely satisfying popular books on knights, we at last have a volume that sets the record straight.

The contents are straightforward: if you were knight in period between 1300 and 1415, what would your life be like? What would you do, how would you view the world, and what kinds of cultural, social, and military attitudes would you possess or would be expected of you? The answers to these questions are “pure Prestwich,” if such a phrase may be employed. From the very beginning, he makes clear the dominant activity of his medieval knight: “This is not a book of instruction for the sort of knight who may go on one or two campaigns, but who spends most of his time managing his estates, playing his part in local politics and attending law courts. This is a manual for the knight at war” (7). Prestwich’s three exemplars of knighthood, whom he references throughout the book, reinforce this insistence on a martial chivalry: Geoffroi de Charny, John Hawkwood, and Jean II le Maingre, nicknamed Boucicaut. Of socio-military changes in the fourteenth century, Professor Prestwich as this to say: “Although squires are going up in the world, there is no doubt that the knights are the true elite in society and in war, and it is to knighthood that you should aspire” (26).

How to make those aspirations a reality forms the core of the book, beginning with chapters on training, “becoming a knight,” military hardware, and orders of knighthood. The opening lines of this last-mentioned chapter are worth quoting, as they give an excellent epitome of the entire book:

People enjoy belonging to clubs and organizations. It gives them a sense of belonging, and a shared identity. Knights are no different in this respect. There are a large number of orders that you may be able to join, which will provide you with comradeship and a feeling of importance. Their rituals will help reinforce your chivalric ideals. You should, however, be wary of who you sign up to….You are unlikely to want to join a knightly order such as that of the Hospital, whose members are part monk, part knight. Such orders are in clear decline, and you would probably not enjoy the monastic discipline involved (54).

The remaining chapters (ten in all) explore various aspects of the knight’s military career—retinues, tournaments, campaigning, mercenaries, battle, siege, ransoms, and so on. In the midst of these is the rather curiously placed Chapter 11, “Ladies and Damsels,” which does a tongue-in-cheek job of helping the aspiring knight to navigate the Scylla and Charybdis of medieval gender relations, precariously teetering as they did between ideal (very much our modern conception of chivalry) and reality (much less pleasant or socially-inclusive).

The non-material aspects of knighthood hold comparatively less interest for our author. Chapter 9 is a short assessment of crusading, of which Professor Prestwich says, “Going on crusade should be the high point of a knightly career” (108), and yet it was, “[o]f course… not compulsory for a knight to go on crusade. John Hawkwood was among those who never did so…It will, however, add to your reputation if you do join a crusading expedition, and it should help you to attain salvation.” (116) Similarly short is the last chapter, “Piety and Memory,” which presents the knight’s view of religion and spirituality as essentially utilitarian, and emphasizes (largely correctly, in the reviewer’s opinion) the knight’s obsession with memorialization, especially after his death. The “concepts of chivalry” as such lurk in the background of much of the study, but are handily dealt with in a page or two (33-4). “You need to think about all the chivalric values,” says Professor Prestwich, “but you will find that they do not always coincide with the realities that you face.” (35) Considering the amount of scholarship in the last decade or so dedicated to exploring precisely this issue (Matthew Strickland’s and Richard Kaeuper’s studies come to mind), this reviewer was slightly disappointed with the brusque dismissal of a topic so important to a knight’s weltanschauung.

Nevertheless, following sources such as Charny’s Book of Chivalry, Professor Prestwich does advocate martial prowess as the cornerstone of a good knight (or, per Steve Muhlberger’s studies of deeds of arms, a “good man at arms”): “You will find that your reputation depends above all on your display of prowess. Show that you are bold, brave, and skillful in the use of arms; that is the mark of a true knight” (35). These qualities make mercenaries less objectionable than modern readers might think--“[y]ou might expect the experts to regard this kind of career as the contradiction of all that is chivalric, but Geoffroi de Charny is far from hostile to it.” (117) However, opportunities to display these martial qualities are fewer and more problematic than you might think, and the chapters on battle and siege make this abundantly clear; two sub-sections are entitled simply “Watch out for archers” (167) and “Do not try to be a hero.” (171) “Never think,” says our author, “that the fighting in battle is going to be a glorious experience, a splendid opportunity to demonstrate your knightly skills. It is going to be noisy, crowded, and utterly terrifying.” (169-70) He draws on Barbour’s Bruce, Dlugosz’s account of Tannenberg, and Froissart among others to provide vivid illustrations of the dynamics of battle, which Charny held to be the top chivalric activity (148).

A map, a timeline, a glossary, a list of sources, and guide to further reading wrap up the book. An especially nice touch is the inclusion of the 2001 film A Knight’s Tale (an outstanding chivalric film, in the reviewer’s humble opinion), as well as the De Re Militari website, among others.

All in all, this is a most impressive little volume—humble in its presentation, and near-flawless in its execution. It is the sort of book which takes a lifetime of experience to write, and admirably reflects the scholarship, as well as the warmth and humor, of its author.

Daniel Franke

University of Rochester <[email protected]>

Page Added: September 2010