Sense of Honour and Duty

[Longmane]

This is from a chapter in the book  -The Art Of Warfare In Western Europe During The Middle Ages –  by J F Verbruggen.

Sense of Honour and Duty

A sense of honour is also very important for the psychology of the knight in battle, for the knightly concept of honour forbids flight before the enemy. The ideal knight is of course the hero of the Chanson de Roland. Roland accepts a battle against overwhelming odds when he might have avoided the combat, but being a proud and undaunted knight, he chose to fight. He refuses to flee, overcomes his fear, only to die in the end. He offers his life for the cause he is defending, and would never do anything throughout the hard fight which might taint his honour. Young Vivien is another such hero: he fought a battle against a king of Cordova with too few troops, and he too could have fled before it was too late. But when his uncle Guillaume had knighted him, he had solemnly vowed never to flee from the Saracens. He kept his oath and chose to die.

This problem of a knight's sense of honour especially occupied the writers of the chansons de geste. They show that the knights feared most of all being denounced as cowards: 'Mieux vauroit estre mors que coars appelés'166 —Better be dead than be called a coward. One of them wrote that 'a single coward can discourage an army' and 'U nos i garrons tuit, u nos tuit i morron', which may be roughly translated as 'win or die'. Charlemagne is portrayed as the emperor who chooses death rather than escape in the Chanson de Roland.  Roland and Oliver also die rather than avoid battle: 'Ja pur murir n'eschiverunt bataille.'  The solution is clear for the poets in the lines: 'See, the death comes upon us, but as noble men we prefer to die while fighting.'  This immutable judgment was given also in the Chanson d'Antioche, an epic based largely upon historical fact. 'It would be better for every man to lose his head than to flee even half a foot before the heathen.'  The crusaders during the Fourth Crusade considered it better to go down fighting than to be killed in flight.

The mirror that the poets held up to the knights often gives an accurate reflection. Stephen of Blois forsook the Crusaders' army during the siege of Antioch in 1098, but three years later he took part in the Lombards' Crusade. He died an honourable death at the taking of Ramla on 19 May 1102, thus restoring his good name. The chroniclers wrote a moving eulogy of him.

It is often difficult to separate the knights' sense of honour and of military duty. The dilemma of Joinville and his retinue during their night watch on the towers in Egypt has been mentioned: they remained at their post for the sake of honour, and did their duty at the same time, for in the Middle Ages, when the conception of duty was rather different from that of our day, knights feared shame more than punishment.

Men were keenly conscious of the shame of cowardice, and for that reason knights usually wrote very carefully about cases known to them personally. Joinville gives no names of the great nobles who fled so wildly at the battle of Mansurah, and who made no effort to redeem themselves even when they were back with their own troops.  It was dangerous to describe such acts in full: poets might make up scurrilous songs about them and not only the personal honour of the fugitive or coward would be attacked, but that of his family.  If the facts were generally known, the chronicler could not gloss them over, and if he were not a knight himself, he would not do so in any case. In the battle of Arsuf, the count of Dreux was reproached for not having gone to the help of James of Avesnes and his men: 'I heard so many people speak evil of that, that history cannot conceal it.'

But not every knight could be expected to fight as bravely as Roland, Oliver, or Vivien, and human weaknesses had to be taken into account. Nor could it be expected that everyone should let himself be killed as soon as it was clear that the army was beaten. Men knew from experience that a lost battle did not necessarily mean a lost war, which would have been the case if they all let themselves be killed: the absolute concept of honour had to be reconciled with the interests of society and of human safety. It is very hard to decide when this is right.

Actually, flight was regarded as a disgrace. Knightly honour demanded a fight to the death, and allowed two possibilities: death in action or capture. In the council of war held before the battle of Bouvines by the emperor Otto, count Ferdinand, Renaud de Dammartin and Hugues de Boves, Renaud is said to have foretold that Hugues would flee as a coward. Renaud would fight to the death or until capture. This happened. He kept up the fight and was taken prisoner after a bitter resistance. William the Breton testified as a spectator that the Flemish knights chose death or capture rather than flight. Count Ferdinand surrendered to the enemy, but his followers fought on till those who would not give in were all killed.

In the battle of Worringen, Jan van Heelu tells that the knights from Guelders were also unwilling to leave the battlefield, and preferred to be taken prisoner. The count of Guelders, who wanted to flee with the help of some friends among the allies of duke John, after tearing off his coat-of-arms, was censured by the poet because he could no longer pass for one of the best in the enemy army.

The Grand Master of the Templars naturally regarded flight as a terrible scandal: such dishonour would affect not only him personally, but the whole Order. During the Third Crusade, he refused to flee at the battle of Acre while it was still possible, and perished. In the fourteenth century, the knights of the Order of the Star, founded by king John of France, swore that they would not flee further than four 'arpents', otherwise they had to hold out till they were killed, or else surrender.

A distinction must necessarily be made between the escape of an individual in battle when the fight was still going on, and the outcome was still in doubt, and retreat or collective flight when an army was faced with defeat. The Rule of the Templars provided for the case of defeat and its consequences: once the Christians were so near defeat that there were no banners left flying on the battlefield, the Templars might flee where they liked. This was generally accepted practice. It is of course axiomatic that not all defeats were thought dishonourable.

The knights' lofty concept of honour and duty is evident from the records of innumerable councils of war. Many times some nobles advised against a battle, but were overruled by a majority. Those who wanted to postpone the fighting to a more propitious time were frequently mocked because their courage was called into question. But every one of them, even those who did not want to fight, played their part bravely in the attack, and were frequently killed, refusing to survive on the battlefield out of a sense of honour and military duty.  At Bannockburn a famous knight, Giles of Argentan, one of the nobles charged with protecting Edward II, led him out of the battle. As soon as he had brought the king into safety, he said he was not accustomed to running away, returned to the battlefield, and was killed.

Public opinion in France could not understand that brave knights sometimes had to flee when they were defeated. In such a case the nobility was considered suspect, or else was openly accused of treason. Such accusations were made after the defeat at Courtrai. The nobles were said to have behaved treasonably in September 1302 during the retreat of the royal army.

They were again accused of treason when the knights fled in panic at Mons-en-Pévèle, but these accusations were very minor compared with those hurled at the nobility after the great defeat at Maupertuis near Poitiers in 1356. This time both clergy and citizens felt that far too many nobles had fled, and had not worried about defending their country, but had plucked the people clean, plundered them and robbed them of their possessions. France had been disgraced. The barons had committed a long-planned treason, as the circumstances of the defeat showed. The writer of the Complainte de la bataille de Poitiers advised the king to call up peasants: 'They will not flee to save their lives, as the knights did at Poitiers.' The nobles' shame was all the greater because they misused their military might in time of war, to promote their own interests and to exploit the common people.