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