L. J. Andrew Villalon and Donald J. Kagay (eds.)
The Hundred Years War (Part II)
History of Warfare 51. Leiden:Brill, 2008. 480 pp. ISBN 978 90 04 16821 3. €124.00/US$177.00.
As editors L. J. Andrew Villalon and Donald J. Kagay remark, this stylish volume picks up where the first volume on the Hundred Years War left off. It certainly delivers a remarkably high number of quality articles, and is a worthy edition to Brill’s History of Warfare series (of which this is volume 51). In addition to the particular qualities just adduced, the number of appendices, charts, and tables enhance the book’s reference qualities. The contributors amply bear out the over-all argument of the volume: that the Hundred Years War “influenced or was influenced by events and conflicts occurring throughout western Europe and that it is only logical to view these as part and parcel of that larger war that dominated the later Middle Ages.” (xxv) As Kelly DeVries so aptly states, “The geographical and chronological framework imposed by modern historians has tended to limit our understanding of this crucial late-medieval conflict.” (32) With that said, there is so much to discuss that it is best to dive directly into the articles themselves, both individually and in groups. The book is organized into six parts, the articles grouped by topic and association.
Part 1: Broader Horizons
The first part is a lengthy survey by Kelly DeVries of the military events surrounding the standard narrative of the French-English conflict. Putting this article first accomplishes several things, the most important of which is to contextualize the volume as a whole: to show how western Europe in general was at war during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, to demonstrate that these conflicts were related, and thus to provide a rich context for the articles that follow. In the process, DeVries identifies a surprising number of (at times seemingly basic!) issues which have remained untouched or only partially analyzed, due to the heretofore blinkered approach of many English-speaking academics. The “Hundred Years War” (or as he rightly says, the “Hundred Years WarS”) concerned much more than England and France, and the pages which unfold are at once a chronology, a rich historiographic overview, and a cogent analysis of as-yet unanswered questions.
Part 2: Agincourt and its Aftermath
Of the two articles in this section, Clifford Rogers’ nearly one hundred pages on the Battle of Agincourt risks overshadowing Megan Cassidy-Welch’s fine analysis of how the French dealt with the massive death toll and expressed their individual and collective grief for there losses. “Grief and Memory After the Battle of Agincourt” is a refreshing and insightful piece, and an excellent examination of the effects of war in aspects other than the tactical. The acute sense of shame felt by the French, apparently most of all over the payment of ransoms (138), alternated with the gruesome need to recover the often-unrecognizable dead from the battlefield (140). Immediately after the battle, mourning, especially female mourning, was expressed in a variety of ways, but the memory of the battle was very quickly subsumed into a larger “national” consciousness, and “grief soon gave way to the lessons of war” (150).
Rogers’ article, for entirely wholesome reasons, almost defies analysis in a review of this limited scope; yet, I will try to due some justice to the scale and complexity of the monograph. “The Battle of Agincourt” makes a very strong claim to being the single most essential piece of reading on its subject, first because of its encyclopedic referencing of all important previous studies, and second because Rogers manages to address nearly all major aspects of the battle. On both counts the article is invaluable to students and researchers alike. Rogers’ concerns can be (artificially) reduced to three: numbers of combatants, the English formation, and the efficacy of the longbow (in which he is very strong believer). As many people are aware, Rogers stands somewhat on the other side of Anne Curry’s conclusions concerning English and French numbers, and devotes an appendix (114-121) to expanding his claim that the Gesta Henrici Quinti’s smaller English numbers should be accepted as valid. The “action” core of the article (74-99) is simply a fine piece of writing, and paints a deathly grim picture of the experience of first the French cavalry and then the dismounted vanguard as they tried to come to grips with the English lines--all backed by Rogers’ usual precision and thoroughness. The stark statistic he establishes, that the horsemen would each have had anywhere from 75 to 100 arrows descending on them at any one moment (77), makes one wonder just how the French expected their charge to succeed. While we may never know that expectation for certain, the reasons for the French defeat appear at the close of the article (103-108). I will discuss his analysis of the English longbow under Part 4, which contains two thought-provoking articles on that weapon.
Part 3: The Iberian Face
Part 3 contains two companion articles by Villalon and Kagay on the Castilian and Aragonese experiences, respectively, in the War of the Two Pedros (1356-66). Both articles make a strong case for considering the Iberian peninsula as an integral part of the Hundred Years War, and when considered together they do indeed make us realize just how important Castile and Aragon were in the years between Poitiers and Najera. The origins of Castile’s important role in the second phase of the Hundred Years War becomes much clearer as well. Also, for those not particularly knowledgeable of Iberian source material, the difference between Castilian and Aragonese sources will come as a bit of a surprise. For Castile, the war saw a growing brutality and paranoia on the part of Pedro I (164-66, 174-78), ultimately resulting in his loss of power. For Aragon, the war saw Pere III forced to construct careful offensives (204), and also to surrender a number of crown prerogatives to his cities and barons (197-201), as the realm buckled under the weight of large Castilian onslaughts. In short, these articles serve as a call for integration; and if the Spanish-themed papers at the 2009 conference at the University of Reading are any indicator, we can expect a far greater Iberian presence in medieval military studies in the near future.
Part 4: Technical Aspects of Archery
For those interested in the nitty-gritty mechanics of medieval warfare, Part 4 will probably be the most interesting section. David Whetham’s and Russell Mitchell’s articles, on the longbow and the longbow-crossbow duel at Crécy respectively, are worthy editions to the on-going debates over the use and development of the English longbow, especially when used with Clifford Rogers’ analysis of arrow penetration (73-77, and 109-113). It will not take much thought to realize that Russell’s, Whetham’s, and Rogers’ articles do not agree with each other. Even Mitchell’s assertion that the “war bow” of 120+ pounds draw was not in standard use at Crécy in 1346, due to the time it would take to keep in practice with the weapon (242)--a very simple, yet sound observation in the reviewer’s opinion--would not meet agreement from Rogers (as we have discussed on occasion). Conversely, Rogers takes up the challenge of reconciling medieval testimony, regarding the ability of the longbow penetrate plate armor, with several modern scientific tests that suggest otherwise (109-113). Meanwhile Whetham restates very clearly the “continuity argument” (in which the longbow is not a new invention of the fourteenth century) found in Strickland and Hardy’s The Great Warbow--an argument Rogers is in the process of drastically revising through an iconographic study of longbows versus short bows. On the other hand, Whetham makes the simple observation that a medieval archer cannot be considered an automaton, capable of constant rates of fire, and that rates would taper off in sustained action (223). Surely this is good sense, and should be recalled when considering Rogers’ calculations of arrows- per-minute during the French cavalry charge at Agincourt.
However, to put these articles in full dialogue with each other would require much greater time and space than a review would permit. Besides, the disagreements are probably not as substantial as they at first appear. Given Rogers’ own very recent and thorough researches into the iconography of the “short bow” versus the “long bow,” it may be assumed that even a bow of (only!) 100 pounds, and drawn to the ear, would have been a tremendous jump over bows commonly used in thirteenth-century England. And arguments over rates of fire and size of bow are not irreconcilable with developments in armor and arrowheads (suggested by Whetham and Mitchell). All these points come into play in evaluating the longbow-crossbow duel at Crécy, for example. Mitchell’s careful arguments concerning the crucial importance of pavises to the effective use of the Genoese crossbowmen are very convincing, and go far to explain the Genoese behavior during and after the battle.
Part 5: Military Participants
In some ways the most intriguing part of the volume, Part 5 contains four articles, each on a different personality of the period. The late Dana Sample’s article on Robert of Artois is an insightful examination of Philip VI’s motives for going to war in 1337, and of the consequences of Edward III’s provocatively harboring Robert in England. Although long discounted as a significant reason for the outbreak of the Hundred Years War, Professor Sample’s meticulous research shows that Robert, in fact, was regarded as a particularly dangerous threat by the French crown (267-73), and that his acceptance at the English court was regarded in France as definite proof that Edward’s peace negotiations meant little. Whether or not it was Robert who proposed that Edward claim the crown of France is another matter, but Robert’s important role in Les voeux du héron, in which he goads Edward into declaring war, seems justified (284).
The famous combat of the thirty--thirty Bretons versus thirty English, in 1351--has received some attention of late, not least from Michael Jones, who in 2009 presented an interesting study of the families and heraldry involved on the Breton side. Steve Muhlberger, well-known for his work in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century chivalry, analyzes here the chivalric elements of the combat, and how its features were interpreted in the warrior community of the time. Using a Breton version of the combat, Muhlberger shows that the “standard” accounts of Jean le Bel and Jean Froissart largely remove the event from its political and ideological context--a context of which the Breton author was acutely aware (288-294)--and allow us to see a different interpretation of the event as a chivalric process.
Next, William P. Caferro presents an article on John Hawkwood’s (largely manufactured) image as a hero of Florence. His fresco in the Florentine duomo notwithstanding, Hawkwood was in fact an Englishman never really trusted by Florence (301-304), and his association with that city was neither as long nor as cordial as it was with various of Florence’s competitors: he only stayed in Florentine service after the battle of Castagnaro in 1387 (314). The “Hawkwood as hero” machine swung into high gear, so to speak, even before Hawkwood’s death (319), and he quickly became part of Florence’s mythology in its quest to dominate central and northern Italy.
Finally, Richard Vernier presents a fascinating vignette of the manner in which Constable of France Bertrand du Guesclin’s life and deeds were successively re-imagined by generations of French historians, and his complexity (indeed, ambiguity) as a character became lost in the process. Malet’s ascription of French strategy solely to du Guesclin, instead of to Charles V (335), is simply one aspect of a complex and lasting distortion of the constable’s memory by French historians, politicians, and film-makers.
Part 6: Fiscal, Literary, and Psychological Aspects
This last part is a disparate collection of articles bound together rather by their quality than by any connection the one to the other. Ilana Krug’s article, “Purveyance and Peasants at the Beginning of the Hundred Years War: Maddicott Reexamined,” is an introductory overview of a larger project on which she is currently engaged. The crux of Krug’s argument is the need to re-evaluate J. R. Maddicott’s seminal study, “The English Peasantry and the Demands of the Crown 1294-1341,” which posits “the notion of a homogeneous English peasantry and fails to address the economic diversity of the class” (348). Krug convincingly demonstrates the need and the methodology to carry out this revision. In contrast to the current picture of a starving peasantry bullied into surrendering their precious goods, she finds instead a well-documented system of requisitioning in which the victims were mainly peasantry who actually had surplus to sell (349)--hence the outrage often expressed when royal purveyors canceled markets and fairs, to force the surplus into the king’s service (352). Finally, Krug suggests that the evidence shows subsidies to be a far greater burden to the localities than purveyance (363). In short, it is a much-needed article.
The next article is a thoughtful discourse on the agendas and biases behind Burgundian Georges Chastellain’s Chroniques, a daunting work of great length and interpretive complexity. L. B. Ross demonstrates how, despite Chastellain’s protestations of loyalty to Charles VII, he actually writes “a passionate, at times anguished, apology for Burgundian positions, filled with spite against England, and often with painful indignation against France” (368). The section on the political context behind Chastellain’s beginning composition in 1455 is especially well done (368-373), and the rest of the article is devoted to tracing his (at times) tortured attempts to reconcile Philip of Burgundy’s friendliness toward England with the very different political climate of the 1450s and 1460s. Needless to say, Chastellain does not entirely succeed in squaring the circle with the pentagon, so to speak, and winds up resorting to fabricated speeches to explain events which contradict his larger agenda of Burgundian nobility in the recently-concluded war with England. Perhaps most noticeable is his hatred for Joan of Arc (382-3).
The last article in the volume is an interesting, if ultimately somewhat unfulfilling, article, by Wendy Turner on “Mental Incapacity and the Financing of War in Medieval England.” The premise is interesting: records of individuals rendered mentally incapacitated by war wounds, prison, etc., and the crown’s subsequent ability to tap their estates’ revenue. We learn much about English governmental procedures for dealing with mental illness, and the vagaries of land custody. Two issues, however, seem to me to remain unanswered. First, one gets the impression that we simply do not have too many documented cases of war-induced mental incapacity, and second, following from that, we really cannot assess just how important such cases were to the crown as revenue-producing opportunities. The author seems to be aware of this, ending the article with the observations that these estate profits “went to serve the king and at least indirectly the war effort,” and that they “might help defray the mounting costs of the Hundred Years War” (402). Perhaps this is simply an indication that more research is needed on this topic, for if the evidence exists there is surely a fascinating opportunity to assess an often-overlooked aspect of medieval warfare, though one common enough in current military affairs.
The volume is completed by a short overview of the entire war by Villalon, accompanied by family charts, genealogies, lists of battles and campaigns, and a comprehensive bibliography--by itself an estimable aid for further research. On the whole, Andrew Villalon and Donald Kagay have once again delivered to us an outstanding contribution to scholarship on the Hundred Years War, one which will be of inestimable value to scholars and students alike for many years to come.
Daniel Franke