Christopher Allmand (ed.), War, Government and Power in Late Medieval France Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000. ISBN: 0-85323-705-0
Despite its title, this Festschrift
dedicated to P.S. Lewis doesn’t really take war as one of its major topics;
indeed, it contains almost nothing dealing the “sharp end” of military
history (studies of soldiers, campaigns, strategy, or even military organization
or technology). It would probably
have been better titled “Writers, Government and Power in Late Medieval
France,” for two-thirds of the twelve essays it contains deal with authors and
their texts. Still, since all the
articles in the book focus on fourteenth- and (especially) fifteenth-century
France, war is nonetheless inevitably omnipresent in the background of the
essays.
All twelve studies are works of
sound, or even impressive, scholarship. Indeed,
given the remarkable roster of the contributors and the stature of the
dedicatee, we would expect nothing less. The
authors are in some ways quite diverse-- including both English and French
nationals, distinguished senior historians like Christopher Allmand, Maurice
Keen, Peter Ainsworth, Claude Gauvard, and Michael Jones, and more junior but
highly talented scholars like Gareth Prosser and Craig Taylor-- but their
contributions are more cohesive than is commonly the case in Festschriften
or conference collections. Each
reader will gain the greatest benefit from a different set of pieces, but no
historian of late-medieval France will read this collection without finding
substantial value in some of its contents.
I, for one, found Jean Devaux’s study of the literary and historical
efflorescence in the fourteenth-century comital court of Hainault to be
particularly fascinating. The
volume also includes Peter Ainsworth on the boundaries and methods of the
“Second Book” of Froissart’s chronicles; James Laidlaw on Alain
Chartier’s propaganda in support of the Dauphin Charles; Nicole Pons and Craig
Taylor on similar material by other authors; Allmand and Keen on the Boke
of Noblesse; and Joël Blanchard on Commynes’ treatment of Louis XI’s
humanity. Kathleen Daly and Graeme
Small provide a pair of valuable studies dealing with the relationship between
“center” and “periphery” in fifteenth-century France; Gareth Prosser’s
excellent discussion of patronage, clienteles, and royal office-holding fits
well with these two in carrying forward concepts developed earlier by P. S.
Lewis. Claude Gauvard and Michael
Jones finish off the volume with interesting contributions respectively dealing
with the use of the death penalty at the Parlement
of Paris and with the current
state of the dispersed Breton ducal records from the late middle ages.
Together, these works provide historians working in this area with a very
valuable overview of recent work on the interface between the intellectual and
the political history of the Valois realm, especially with regard to work
carried out in France.
The editor is to be commended
for his efforts to make these scholarly studies accessible to less-advanced
students of the period, particularly the decision to give English translations
of nearly all the foreign-language passages contained within the body of the
texts. These translations,
furthermore, are generally quite good, though not flawless:
for example, the order of the elements in the block quotation on p. 196
should not have been altered, since their sequence is specifically stated to be
significant, nor should the “au moins” [“at least”] have been omitted;
and the insidiateurs of p. 194
are highwaymen who lay ambushes, not mere “tricksters.”
Liverpool University Press also deserves credit for a well-produced and
skillfully copy-edited volume.
This book belongs in the collection of all academic libraries. Individual historians who value, or wish they owned, personal copies of P. S. Lewis’ Essays in Medieval French History will also want a copy of this tribute to him.
Clifford J. Rogers
United States Military Academy