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16

Background / Re: Collective Training: Tournaments. 3 pts

« on: April 28, 2014, 05:49:01 PM »

pt 2

In Flanders the reign of Philip of Alsace (1168–1191) saw the full flowering of tournaments and chivalry, which were closely related. About this time Counts Baldwin IV and V of Hainault were busily engaged in fighting in tournaments in countries bordering their own. A century later duke John I of Brabant reaped as great a success as Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders. Philip used special tactics in tournaments and acted as instructor to foreign princes, such as the young Henry of England. John of Brabant trained his knights so thoroughly in war-games that the victory at Worringen may be said to have been the result of that training.

Both princes lived the full chivalric life of their day: at the court of Philip of Alsace there were poets such as Chrétien de Troyes, Gautier d'Epinal and the unknown author of Li proverbe au vilain. Duke John was a patron of Adenet le Roi, and was praised by Jan van Heelu; he was also an occasional poet himself. Philip took part in two crusades and an expedition against Milan; John twice went on campaigns in Spain and travelled through England to fight in tournaments there. Philip died ingloriously of a common epidemic near Acre, and John of the consequences of a minor wound received in a joust.

Both had strong personal military ambitions. Philip's tactics in tournaments seemed lacking in chivalry, although his contemporaries approved them, and as far as he was concerned anything was permissible in dealing with an enemy. John wanted to settle the battle of Worringen sword in hand, and not with the help of ditches, and he preferred the destruction of robber-citadels to spectacular but useless expeditions to the Holy Land.

Through the influential example of these princes, tournaments flourished in the southern part of the Netherlands and in Lorraine, and Flanders, though they were chiefly held in France. France's renown in this respect was so great that the English chronicler Ralph Diceto called the tournaments conflictus gallici, and Ralph of Coggeshall spoke of a conflict more Francorum. Tournaments were forbidden in England by various kings, Henry II among them, because they gave rise to endless political troubles.

At the time of civil war during the reign of the weak king Stephen tournaments were popular. Later, Richard I, a man skilled in the art of war, saw that the French knights were better trained than his own, so he permitted knightly exercises. Being also an outstanding leader, Richard quickly succeeded in making up lost ground by his own example. This gave his fighting men such confidence that, according to the Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, from then onwards they risked attacking forty Frenchmen with thirty knights, 'which never used to be the case'. Philip Augustus experienced this English confidence to his shame and sorrow at Fréteval on 13 July 1194, and at Gisors on 28 September 1198.

17

Background / Collective Training: Tournaments. 3 pts

« on: April 27, 2014, 09:54:58 PM »

pt 1

The Art Of Warfare In Western Europe  During The Middle Ages – J F Veruggen

Collective Training: Tournaments

Even in the Middle Ages it was thought that tournaments were of quite recent origin. Their inventor was said to have been a certain Geoffrey of Preuilly, who died in 1066. Actually they go back to rather primitive collective games, although it is possible that the classic form encountered in the twelfth century had been introduced in the eleventh.

Military leaders have always tried to reproduce war conditions as closely as possible in their training exercises. The Romans attempted to do this in their manoeuvres, and the Germans had military games for the whole population. Tacitus speaks of this with reference to the Tencteri: hic lusus infantium, haec juvenum aemulatio: 'here lies the diversion of infancy, the rivalry of youth'. They are also mentioned at the court of Theodric, king of the Ostrogoths, and Isidore of Seville records that the Visigoths liked sham battles and held military games daily. Einhard reports riding exercises and weapon practice, which according to Frankish custom were carried out by Charlemagne's sons, while the emperor himself liked riding and hunting as his ancestors had done, 'for no one matches the Franks in these arts'.
 
During the struggle between the sons of Louis the Pious there were group exercises and military games among the Franks following the celebrated Oaths of Strasbourg of 14 February 842. These cavalry games were often held by the troops of Louis the German and Charles the Bald, probably at Worms: causa exercitii, for the training of their own followers. In the presence of spectators ranged on both sides of a place which had been prepared for the spectacle, equal numbers of Saxons, Gascons, Austrasians and Bretons rode at each other at full tilt, as though they were going to join battle. But a moment before they met, one of the parties made a turn and pretended to escape the attacking enemy by flight, while the horsemen protected themselves with their shields. Then it was the turn of the fugitives to attack the pursuers. Finally both young princes sprang on to their horses and with great exuberance took part in the game, encouraged by loud cheers from the crowd. Lance in hand, they charged first one group and then another of those who were fleeing.

This kind of mock battle is not yet like the eleventh—or twelfth century—tournament. The lances were held in the hand and were not used to administer a heavy blow. The attack was devised in the same spirit: there was no clash, it remained just a manoeuvre, in which equal numbers of fighters faced each other. But men from the same region were practicing together, attacking and retreating. It is evident from the summary of Vegetius' work on the art of war among the Romans, made by Hrabanus Maurus for King Lothar II, that such exercises were a normal thing among the Franks and he states that the art of horsemanship also flourished among them. 

Half a century after Nithard, the Council of Tribur mentions heathen games which sometimes had a fatal ending. In the tenth and eleventh centuries the Saxons and Thuringians followed the example of the Franks: foot-soldiers had formerly been their main arm, now they introduced cavalry, which quickly became skilled in the new manner of waging war. The Saxon rulers Henry I and Otto the Great were both praised by their biographer for their military games and their skill on horseback. Henry I surpassed all others in military exercises: in exercitiis quoque ludi tanta eminentia superabat omnes, ut terrorem caeteris ostentaret, and Otto practiced riding regularly.


In Flanders we find the earliest traces of tournaments in 1095. One was held near Tournai by the burgrave Evrardus, who had a number of gallant knights under him. Henry III, count of Louvain, invited one of his vassals, who was in the opposing camp, to enter the lists against him personally. Jocelyn of Vorst accepted his lord's challenge only after repeated pressure. Finally he couched his lance, spurred his horse savagely, and charged the count with the intent of unhorsing him, but the thrust struck the count in the heart, and he died instantly.

The counts of Flanders used tournaments to distract their knights from the private wars which were disturbing the peace in the county, and at the same time to give them a chance to practice. After he had restored peace and order in his county, Baldwin VII went abroad to get practice in the knightly profession of arms. His successor Charles the Good pursued the same policy, and went with 200 knights to tournaments in France, in Normandy and even outside France, to enhance his own fame as well as the might and honour of his land, and being a pious man, he atoned for the sins incurred through these ventures with rich gifts to the Church.

Even after the First Crusade the clergy were just as disturbed about these dangerous games as they had been over private wars, for they thought that both meant needless squandering of strength, and bloodshed, and that knights could test their prowess better against the Moslems in the Holy Land. The Council of Clermont in 1130 forbade tournaments because they entailed loss of human lives: anyone who perished in such a game was not to receive Christian burial. But the knights thought otherwise. For them the tournament was a training-school, a pastime, a source of income and a suitable opportunity for meeting men of their own class and their feats to be admired by noble ladies, which was not possible on the battlefield. They let themselves be daunted neither by the criticism of the clergy nor by the prohibitions of the Church.

The ablest clerical figures of the day vigorously attacked tournaments. St Bernard of Clairvaux wrote to Suger: 'Take the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God, against these accursed gatherings which Robert the king's brother and Henry son of the count of Champagne want to hold after the coming feast of Easter'. These two lords had just returned from the Holy Land and wanted to hold a tournament. One of the biographers of St Bernard wrote that all those who perished in a tournament 'certainly go to Hell'. James of Vitry portrayed the opposing champions in a tournament as follows: 'They are jealous of each other and inflict vicious blows on each other. The victor takes horse and arms from the vanquished. Knights cause considerable damage and destroy whole harvests. The lord burdens his subjects with heavy taxes in order to meet these foolish expenses, and the immorality of the feast follows the slaughter'.

The judgement of Humbert des Romans was less harsh: 'Although tournaments are rightly forbidden because they are so dangerous for body and soul, and fighters often perish in them, yet they also have some advantages; some practices should be condemned and others allowed.'

Humbert condemns the dissipation, the gross expenditure, ruinous to the knights and their families, which come from pride and an idle desire for glory because men like to be thought brave and gallant. What was still more serious was that some noblemen seized the opportunity of carrying on personal feuds. Others transgressed the tournament rules and made their opponents a laughing-stock. There were also knights who consorted with women of evil repute after tournaments.

So there were three practices to be condemned, 'dissipation through unreasonable expense, desire for vainglory, and malicious intentions in battle'. But if a knight wanted to fight for God, he might take part in reasonable games so that he acquired skill in combat, for without practice one has no knowledge of the art of war. In tournaments the knights encouraged each other, and what they had long been doing for the vainglory of the world, they could also do for God in the worthy fight against the Saracens. In every case, wanton characters, the 'ribauds' and other evil persons were to be removed.

The Church's prohibitions were repeated without much success in an imposing series of Councils: in 1139 at the tenth General Council, at the Councils of Rheims in 1148 and 1157, at the Lateran Councils in 1179 and 1215, and at the Council of Lyons in 1245. Tournaments were also forbidden by Pope Nicholas III in 1279. They were, however, permitted twice during the reign of King Philip the Fair of France. The first occasion was after Pope Clement V had forbidden them on 14 September 1313. Pierre Dubois then wrote his treatise De torneamentis et justis to please the king and to answer the papal prohibition. The pope permitted them again before Lent in 1314, and later a little known edict of Pope John XXII allowed them again at Philip's request, when their decline had already begun.

18

Background / Re: Everyday life in the Castled. 3 pts

« on: April 09, 2014, 09:09:04 PM »

pt 3 (last part)

During dinner, even on ordinary days, the party might be entertained with music or jokes and stories. Many households regularly employed harpers and minstrels. Adam the harper was a member of Bogo de Clare’s household, and on occasion Bogo hired ystriones (“actors”) and at least once a ioculator (“jester”), William Pilk of Salisbury.

When the meal was over, one of the guests might regale the company with a song; many a knight and baron composed songs in the tradition of the trouvères, the knightly poets who were the troubadours of the North (although in some cases the tunes for their verses seem to have been written by the travelling professional minstrels known as jongleurs). They might be accompanied by the harp, the lute, or the viele, ancestor of the violin. Sometimes the accompanist played chords as a prelude to the song and as background to an occasional phrase; sometimes the singer accompanied himself in unison on the viele and played the tune over once more when he had finished singing, as a coda.

The verses—in French—were sophisticated in form and stylized in subject matter, usually falling into established categories: dawn songs, spinning songs, political satires (sirventes), laments, debates, love songs. They might be May songs, like the following celebrated poem by Bernard de Ventadour, protégé of Eleanor of Aquitaine:

(When the flower appears beside the green leaf, when I see the weather bright and serene and hear in the wood the song of the birds which brings sweetness to my heart and pleases me, the more the birds sing to merit praise, the more joy I have in my heart and I must sing, as all my days are full of joy and song and I think of nothing else.)

Or they might be songs of the Crusade, like the following, by the early thirteenth-century trouvère Guiot de Dijon:

(I shall sing to cheer my heart, for fear lest I die of my great grief or go mad, when I see none return from that wild land where he is who brings comfort to my heart when I hear news of him. O God, when they cry “Forward,” help the pilgrim for whom I am so fearful, for the Saracens are evil.)

Or lively picaresque songs like one by Colin Muset, another thirteenth-century poet:

(When I see winter return, then would I find lodging, if I could discover a generous host who would charge me nothing, who would have pork and beef and mutton, ducks, pheasants, and venison, fat hens and capons and good cheeses in baskets.)

Sometimes songs were sung with refrains to be repeated by a chorus; there were also lays, in which each verse had a different structure and musical setting.

The meal finished, tables were cleared, the company washed hands again, and turned to the afternoon’s tasks and amusements. “The ladies and the bachelors danced and sang caroles after dinner,” on a festive occasion in The Castellan of Coucy.  A carole was a kind of round dance in which the dancers joined hands as they sang and circled.

Guests could be entertained with parlor games such as hot cockles, in which one player knelt blindfolded and was struck by the other players, whose identity he had to guess, or a variety of blind man’s bluff called hoodman blind, in which a player reversed his hood to cover his face and tried to catch the others. In The Castellan of Coucy, “after dinner there were wine, apples, ginger; some played backgammon and chess, others went to snare falcons.”

Chess, widely popular, was played in two versions, one similar to the modern game, the other a simpler form played with dice. Either was commonly accompanied by gambling—the household accounts of John of Brabant on one occasion recorded two shillings lost at chess. Dice games were played in all ranks of society, and even the clergy indulged. Bogo de Clare’s accounts reported three shillings handed to him on Whitsunday 1285 to play at dice. Bowls, a favorite outdoor pastime, also was accompanied by betting.

Recreation included horseplay. Matthew Paris described disapprovingly how Henry III, his half brother Geoffrey de Lusignan, and other nobles, while strolling in an orchard, were pelted with turf, stones, and green apples by one of Geoffrey’s chaplains, a man “who served as a fool and buffoon to the king…and whose sayings, like those of a silly jester…excited their laughter.” In the course of his buffoonery, the chaplain went so far as to press “the juice of unripe grapes in their eyes, like one devoid of sense.”

Supper was served in the late afternoon. Robert Grosseteste recommended “one dish not so substantial, and also light dishes, and then cheese.” There were also late suppers, just before bedtime, drawing suspicion from such moralists as Robert Mannyng, who described midnight “rere suppers” of knights, “when their lords have gone to bed,” as giving rise to gluttony and waste, not to mention lechery. The romance L’Escoufle (“The Kite”) pictures an evening in a castle, after supper: The count goes to relax in front of the fire in the damsels’ chamber, taking off his shirt to have his back scratched and resting his head in the lap of the heroine, Aelis, while the servants stew fruits over the hearth.

The household of the castle retired early. Manuals for household management describe the activities of the chamberlain in preparing his lord for bed:

Take off his robe and bring him a mantle to keep him from cold, then bring him to the fire and take off his shoes and his hose…then comb his head, then spread down his bed, lay the head sheet and the pillows, and when your sovereign is in bed, draw the curtains…Then drive out dog or cat, and see that there be basin and urinal set near your sovereign, then take your leave mannerly that your sovereign may take his rest merrily.

19

Background / Re: Everyday life in the Castled. 4 pts

« on: April 09, 2014, 08:57:59 PM »

pt 2

In the castle courtyard the grooms swept out the stables and fed the horses; the smith worked at his forge on horseshoes, nails, and wagon fittings; and domestic servants emptied basins and chamber pots and brought in rushes for the freshly swept floors. The laundress soaked sheets, tablecloths, and towels in a wooden trough containing a solution of wood ashes and caustic soda; then she pounded them, rinsed them, and hung them to dry.

In the kitchen the cook and his staff turned the meat—pork, beef, mutton, poultry, game—on a spit and prepared stews and soups in great iron cauldrons hung over the fire on a hook and chain that could be raised and lowered to regulate the temperature. Boiled meat was lifted out of the pot with an iron meat hook, a long fork with a wooden handle and prongs attached to the side. Soup was stirred with a long-handled slotted spoon.

Meat preservation was by salting or smoking, or, most commonly and simply, by keeping the meat alive till needed. Salting was done by two methods. Dry-salting meant burying the meat in a bed of salt pounded to a powder with mortar and pestle. Brine-curing consisted of immersing the meat in a strong salt solution. Before cooking, the salted meat had to be soaked and rinsed.

In addition to roasting and stewing, meat might be pounded to a paste, mixed with other ingredients, and served as a kind of custard. A dish of this kind was blankmanger, consisting of a paste of chicken blended with rice boiled in almond milk, seasoned with sugar, cooked until very thick, and garnished with fried almonds and anise. Another was a mortrews, of fish or meat that was pounded, mixed with bread crumbs, stock, and eggs, and poached, producing a kind of quenelle, or dumpling. Both meat and fish were also made into pies, pasties, and fritters.

Sauces were made from herbs from the castle garden that were ground to a paste, mixed with wine, verjuice (the juice of unripe grapes), vinegar, onions, ginger, pepper, saffron, cloves, and cinnamon. Mustard, a favorite ingredient, was used by the gallon.

In Lent or on fast days fish was served fresh from the castle’s own pond, from a nearby river, or from the sea, nearly always with a highly seasoned sauce. Salt or smoked herring was a staple, as were salted or dried cod and stockfish. Fresh herring, flavored with ginger, pepper, and cinnamon, might be made into a pie. Other popular fish included mullet, shad, sole, flounder, plaice, ray, mackerel, salmon, and trout. Sturgeon, whale, and porpoise were rare seafood delicacies, the first two “royal fish,” fit for kings and queens. Pike, crab, crayfish, oysters, and eels were also favorites.

A royal order to the sheriff of Gloucester in the 1230s stated that since after lampreys all fish seem insipid to both the king and the queen, the sheriff shall procure by purchase or otherwise as many lampreys as possible in his bailiwick, place them in bread and jelly, and send them to the king while he is at a distance from those parts by John of Sandon, the king’s cook, who is being sent to him. When the king comes nearer, he shall send them to him fresh.

The most common vegetables, besides onions and garlic, were peas and beans. Staples of the diet of the poor, for the rich they might be served with onions and saffron. Honey, commonly used for sweetening, came from castle or manor bees; fruit from the castle orchard—apples, pears, plums, and peaches—was supplemented by wild fruits and nuts from the lord’s wood. In addition to these local products, there were imported luxuries such as sugar (including a special kind made with roses and violets), rice, almonds, figs, dates, raisins, oranges, and pomegranates, purchased in town or at the fairs. Ordinary sugar was bought by the loaf and had to be pounded; powdered white sugar was more expensive.

At mealtimes, servants set up the trestle tables and spread the cloths, setting steel knives, silver spoons, dishes for salt, silver cups, and mazers—shallow silver rimmed wooden bowls. At each place was a trencher or manchet, a thick slice of day-old bread serving as a plate for the roast meat. Meals were announced by a horn blown to signal time for washing hands. Servants with ewers, basins, and towels attended the guests.

At the table, seating followed status: The most important guests were at the high table, with the loftiest place reserved for an ecclesiastical dignitary, the second for the ranking layman. After grace, the procession of servants bearing food began. First came the pantler with the bread and butter, followed by the butler and his assistants with the wine and beer.

Wine, in thirteenth century England mostly imported from English-ruled Bordeaux, was drunk young in the absence of an effective technique for stoppering containers. Wine kept a year became undrinkable. No attention was paid to vintage, and often what was served even at rich tables was of poor quality. Peter of Blois described in a letter wine served at Henry II’s court: “The wine is turned sour or mouldy—thick, greasy, stale, flat and smacking of pitch. I have sometimes seen even great lords served with wine so muddy that a man must needs close his eyes and clench his teeth, wrymouthed and shuddering, and filtering the stuff rather than drinking.”

The castle bought wine by the barrel and decanted it into jugs. Some was spiced and sweetened by the butlers to go with the final course. Ale, made from barley, wheat, or oats, or all three, was drunk mainly by the servants. A castle household brewed its own, hiring an ale-wife for the task and using grain from its own stores. At the royal court, according to Peter of Blois, the ale was not much better than the wine—it was “horrid to the taste and abominable to the sight.”

Ceremony marked the service at table. There was a correct way to do everything, from the laying of cloths to the cutting of trenchers and carving of meat. Part of a squire’s training was learning how to serve his lord at meals: the order in which dishes should be presented, where they should be placed, how many fingers to use in holding the joint for the lord to carve, how to cut the trenchers and place them on the table.

The solid parts of soups and stews were eaten with a spoon, the broth sipped. Meat was cut up with the knife and eaten with the fingers. Two persons shared a dish, the lesser helping the more important, the younger the older, the man the woman. The former in each case broke the bread, cut the meat, and passed the cup.

Etiquette books admonished diners not to leave the spoon in the dish or put elbows on the table, not to belch, not to drink or eat with their mouths full, not to stuff their mouths or take overly large helpings. Not surprisingly, in the light of the finger-eating and dish-sharing, stress was laid on keeping hands and nails scrupulously clean, wiping spoon and knife after use, wiping the mouth before drinking, and not dipping meat in the salt dish.

The lord and lady were at pains to see their guests amply served. Bishop Robert Grosseteste advised the countess of Lincoln to make sure that her servants were judiciously distributed during dinner, that they entered the room in an orderly way and avoided quarreling. “Especially do you yourself keep watch over the service until the meats are placed in the hall, and then…command that your dish be so refilled and heaped up, and especially with the light dishes, that you may courteously give from your dish to all the high table on the right and on the left.” At his own house, he reminded the countess, guests were served at dinner with two meats and two lighter dishes. Between courses, the steward should send the servers into the kitchen and see to it that they brought in the meats quietly and without confusion.

An everyday dinner, served between 10:00 A.M. and noon, comprised two or three courses, each of several separate dishes, all repeating the same kinds of food except the last course, which consisted of fruits, nuts, cheese, wafers, and spiced wine.

On such festive occasions as holidays and weddings, fantastic quantities of food were consumed. When Henry III’s daughter married the king of Scotland on Christmas Day 1252 at York, Matthew Paris reported that “more than sixty pasture cattle formed the first and principal course at table…the gift of the archbishop. The guests feasted by turns with one king at one time, at another time with the other, who vied with one another in preparing costly meals.” As for the entertainment, the number and apparel of the guests, the variety of foods: “If I were more fully to describe [them]…the relation would appear hyperbolical in the ears of those not present, and would give rise to ironical remarks.” Such feasts included boars’ heads, venison, peacocks, swans, suckling pigs, cranes, plovers, and larks.

20

Background / Everyday life in the Castled. 3 pts

« on: April 09, 2014, 07:12:03 PM »

pt 1

Gies, Frances and Giles, Joseph – Life in a Medieval Castle.

VI
A Day in the Castle

THE CASTLE HOUSEHOLD WAS ASTIR AT DAYBREAK. Roused from their pallets in the attics and cellars, servants lighted fires in kitchen and great hall. Knights and men-at-arms clambered to the walls and towers to relieve the night watch. In the great chamber, the lord and lady awakened in their curtained bed.

They slept naked, and before rising put on linen undergarments—drawers for the lord, a long chemise for the lady. After washing in a basin of cold water, they donned outer garments, essentially the same for both: a long-sleeved tunic, slipped over the head and fastened at the neck with a brooch; a second tunic, or surcoat, over it, shorter, and either sleeveless or with wide, loose sleeves, and often fur-lined; finally a mantle, made from an almost circular piece of material, lined with fur and fastened at the neck either with another brooch or with a chain. The lord’s garments were shorter than the lady’s, with looser sleeves. Both wore belts tied at the waist or fastened with a metal buckle. The man’s costume was completed by long hose attached to the belt that held up his drawers, while the woman’s hose, shorter, were suspended from garters below the knee. Both wore shoes—slippers for the house, low boots for outdoors.

The colors of tunics, mantles, hose, and shoes were bright—blues, yellows, crimsons, purples, greens—and the fabric of the garments was usually wool, though fine silks such as samite, sendal (taffeta), and damask (a kind of brocade) were occasionally worn. Camlet, imported from Cyprus, was sometimes used for winter robes, woven from camel’s or goat’s hair. The fur trimmings and linings were of squirrel, lambskin, rabbit, miniver, otter, marten, beaver, fox, ermine, and sable. Tunics and mantles were decorated with embroidery, tassels, feathers, or pearls. For festive occasions belts might be of silk with gold or silver thread, or adorned with jewels.

Both men and women wore head coverings indoors and outdoors. The lord usually wore a linen coif tied by strings under the chin, sometimes
elaborately embroidered, or decorated with feathers and buttons; the lady wore a linen wimple, either white or colored, that covered hair and neck. Outdoors, hoods and caps were worn over the coifs and wimples. Elegant gloves, sometimes fur-lined, and jewelry—gold rings with stones, pins, necklaces, hairbands, shoebuckles, and bracelets—completed the costume.

The lady might arrange her hair with the aid of a mirror—an expensive article, usually small and circular, mounted in a wooden or metal case, and made either of polished steel or of glass over a metal surface. Despite the disapproval of preachers and moralist writers, ladies wore cosmetics—sheep fat, and rouge and skin whiteners with which they tinted themselves pink and white—and used depilatory pastes.

After mass in the chapel, the household breakfasted on bread washed down with wine or ale. The morning was spent in routine tasks or amusements, depending on whether the castle had guests. The lord had his round of conferences with stewards and bailiffs, or with members of his council; the lady conversed with her guests or busied herself with embroidery and other domestic projects. Knights and squires practiced fencing and tilting, while children did their lessons under the guidance of a tutor, commonly the chaplain or one of his clerks. Lessons over, the children were free to play—girls with dolls, boys with tops and balls, horseshoes, bows and arrows.

Archery was a favorite pastime with boys of all ages. In the twelfth century the son of the lord of Haverford Castle in Wales, and two other boys sent there for their education, made friends with an outlaw confined in the castle who fashioned arrows for their bows. One day the robber took advantage of the negligence of the guards to seize the boys and barricade himself in his prison. “A great clamor instantly arose,” recorded the chronicler Gerald of Wales, “as well from the boys within as from the people without; nor did he cease, with an uplifted axe, to threaten the lives of the children, until indemnity and security were assured to him.”

21

Background / Re: Hunting as a Way of Life (4 pts approx)

« on: January 31, 2014, 10:22:11 PM »

Pt 3 (last part)

On their estates many barons set up private forests or “chases,” either on wooded country not under forest law or by receiving from the king grants of “vert and venison.” By the reign of Edward I, the royal forest of Dean, in Gloucestershire, north and east of Chepstow, contained the private chases of thirty-six landowners, mostly the great magnates of the region, including the lord of Chepstow, Earl Roger Bigod; the abbot of St. Peter’s, Gloucester; the bishop of Hereford; the earl of Lancaster; the earl of Warwick; and Baron Richard Talbot. Once the king had granted a forest to a subject, royal forest law was suspended and royal forest justices and courts surrendered jurisdiction to the baron who owned the chase. The baron’s foresters could arrest trespassers against the venison, but only when they were caught “with the mainour,” in the act and with the evidence. Then they were held in prison until they paid a fine to the lord.

Sometimes districts were enclosed with palings or ditches and became parks. Later such enclosures had to be licensed by the king, but in the time of Henry III a license was not necessary as long as there was no infringement on the royal forest. The baron who created a park, however, was obliged to keep it effectively enclosed so that the king’s beasts did not enter it. Some owners of parks neighboring the royal forests evaded the law by building sunken fences called deer leaps so designed that the king’s deer could leap them to enter the park, but once in could not get out again. Forest courts often ordered deer leaps removed, and even ruled certain parks close to the forest legal “nuisances” because the owner might be moved to entice the king’s deer into the enclosure.

Ecclesiastical as well as lay landlords established their own preserves. In the twelfth century Abbot Samson of Bury St. Edmunds, according to Jocelin of Brakelond, “enclosed many parks, which he replenished with beasts of chase, keeping a huntsman with dogs; and upon the visit of any person of quality, sat with his monks in some walk of the wood, and sometimes saw the coursing of the dogs; but I never saw him take part in the sport.” Other prelates joined in the hunt.

An exception to forest law was provided for the earl or baron traveling through a royal forest. Either in the presence of a forester, or while blowing his hunting horn to show that he was not a poacher, he was allowed to take a deer or two for the use of his party. The act was carefully recorded in the rolls of the special forest inquisitions under the title “Venison taken without warrant.”

A roll of Northamptonshire of 1248 read: The lord bishop of Lincoln took a hind and a roe in Bulax on the Tuesday next before Christmas Day in the thirtieth year [of the reign of Henry III]. Sir Guy de Rochefort took a doe and a doe’s brocket [a hind of the second year] in the park of Brigstock in the vigil of the Purification of the Blessed Mary in the same year… Deer killed with the king’s permission were listed as “venison given by the lord king”: The countess of Leicester had seven bucks in the forest of Rockingham of the gift of the lord king on the feast of the apostles Peter and Paul…Aymar de Lusignan had ten bucks in the same forest…Sir Richard, earl of Cornwall, came into the forest of Rockingham about the time of the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Mary, and took beasts in the park and outside the park at his pleasure in the thirty-second year…Sir Simon de Montfort had twelve bucks in the bailiwick of Rockingham of the gift of the lord king about the time of the feast of St. Peter’s Chains in the thirty-second year.

The records of the forest courts were full of dramatic episodes.

A certain hart entered the bailiwick of the castle of Bridge by the postern; and the castellans of Bridge took it and carried it to the castle. And the verderers on hearing this came there and demanded of Thomas of Ardington, who was then the sheriff, what he had done with the hart…The township of Bridge was attached for the same hart.

Sir Hugh of Goldingham, the steward of the forest, and Roger of Tingewick, the riding forester,…perceived a man on horseback and a page following him with a bow and arrows, who forthwith fled. Wherefore he was hailed on account of his flight by the said Hugh and Roger; and he was followed…and taken, as he fled, outside the covert, with his surcoat bloody and turned inside out. He was asked whence that blood came, and he confessed that it came from a certain roe, which he had killed…

When Maurice de Meht, who said that he was with Sir Robert Passelewe, passed in the morning with two horses through the town of Sudborough, he saw three men carrying a sack…And when the aforesaid three men saw him following them, they threw away the sack and fled. And the said Maurice de Meht took the sack and found in it a doe, which had been flayed, and a snare, with which the beast had been taken…

Clerical as well as lay hunters became embroiled with the law or with their neighbors. In 1236 at the coronation of Queen Eleanor, the earl of Arundel was unable to take part in the ceremony because he had been excommunicated by the archbishop of Canterbury for seizing the archbishop’s hounds when the archbishop hunted in the earl’s forest.

In 1254 a poacher, in the employ of the parson of Easton, was imprisoned for taking a “beast” in the hedge of Rockingham Castle. Freed from prison on pledge, the poacher died, but the parson, Robert Bacon, who had apparently also taken part in the hunt, and Gilbert, the doorkeeper of the castle, were ordered to appear. At the hearing Sir John Lovet, a forest official who may have been bribed by the accused, declared that the “beast” was not a deer but a sheep. The accused men were acquitted, but John Lovet was imprisoned for contradicting his own records, and released only after the payment of a fine of
twelve marks.

One night in 1250 foresters found a trap in Rockingham Forest and nearby heard a man cutting wood. Lying in wait, they surprised Robert Le Noble, chaplain of Sudborough, with a branch of green oak and an axe. The next morning they searched his house and found arrows and a trap that bore traces of the hair of a deer. The chaplain was arrested at once and his chattels, wheat, oats, beans, wood, dishes, and a mare were seized as pledges for his appearance before the forest eyre.  Another cleric was one of a company that spent a day in 1272 shooting in the forest, killing eight deer. Cutting off the head of a buck, they stuck it on the end of a pole in a clearing and put a spindle in its mouth, and in the words of the court rolls, “they made the mouth gape towards the sun, in great contempt of the lord king and his foresters.”

Sometimes malefactors used clerical privilege to obtain release from prison, as when in 1255 one Gervais of Dene, servant of John of Crakehall, archdeacon of Bedford and later the king’s treasurer, was arrested for poaching and lodged in the prison of Huntingdon. The vicar of Huntingdon, several chaplains, and a servant of the bishop of Lincoln came to the prison armed with book and candle, claiming that Gervais was a clerk and threatening to excommunicate the foresters. Taking off the prisoner’s cap, they exposed a shaven head. Gervais was allowed to escape, though the foresters suspected that he had been shaved that day in prison. But at the forest eyre of Huntingdon in 1255 John of Crakehall was fined ten marks for harboring Gervais, who along with the vicar was turned over to the archdeacon of Huntingdon to deal with.

Usually the sons of knights or freeholders, foresters often abused their powers for gain—felling trees, grazing their own cattle, embezzling, taking bribes, extorting “sheaves, cats, corn, lambs and little pigs” from the people at harvest time (although specifically forbidden to do so by the Forest Charter), and killing the very deer they were supposed to protect. Not only the people who lived within the royal forests, but the nobles suffered.

Matthew Paris complained that a knight named Geoffrey Langley, marshal of the king’s household, made an inquisition into the royal forests in 1250 and forcibly extorted such an immense sum of money, especially from nobles of the northern parts of England, that the amount collected exceeded the belief of all who heard of it…The aforesaid Geoffrey was attended by a large and well-armed retinue, and if any one of the aforesaid nobles made excuses…he ordered him to be at once taken and consigned to the king’s prison…For a single small beast, a fawn, or hare, although straying in an out-of-the-way place, he impoverished men of noble birth, even to ruin, sparing neither blood nor fortune.

Villagers in forest areas were supposed to raise the “hue and cry” (shouting when a felony was committed and turning out with weapons to pursue the malefactor) when an offense had been committed against the forest law. But their sympathies were often with the poachers. Again and again the rolls of the forest courts record the statements of the neighboring villages that they “knew nothing,” “recognized nobody,” “suspected no one,” “knew of no malefactor.”

Forest officers were a hated class. A Northamptonshire inquisition of 1251 recorded an exchange between a verderer and an acquaintance he met in the forest who refused to greet him, declaring, “Richard, I would rather go to my plow than serve in such an office as yours.”

Many of the accounts of the forest inquests have the ring of Robin Hood, whose legend, significantly, sprang up in the thirteenth century.

In May 1246 foresters in Rockingham Forest heard that there were poachers “in the lawn of Beanfield with greyhounds for the purpose of doing evil to the venison of the lord king.” After waiting in ambush, they saw five greyhounds, of which one was white, another black, the third fallow, a fourth black spotted, hunting beasts, which greyhounds the said William and Roger [the foresters] seized. But the fifth greyhound, which was tawny, escaped. And when the aforesaid William and Roger returned to the forest after taking the greyhounds, they lay in ambush and saw five poachers in the lord king’s demesne of Wydehawe, one with a crossbow and four with bows and arrows, standing at their trees.  And when the foresters perceived them, they hailed and pursued them. And the aforesaid malefactors, standing at their trees, turned in defense and shot arrows at the foresters so that they wounded Matthew, the forester of the park of Brigstock, with two Welsh arrows, to wit with one arrow under the left breast, to the depth of one hand slantwise, and with the second arrow in the left arm to the depth of two fingers, so that it was despaired of the life of the said Matthew. And the foresters pursued the aforesaid malefactors so vigorously that they turned and fled into the thickness of the wood. And the foresters on account of the darkness of the night could follow them no more.

And thereupon an inquisition was made at Beanfield before William of Northampton, then bailiff [warden] of the forest, and the foresters of the country…by four townships neighboring…to wit, by Stoke, Carlton, Great Oakley, and Corby.

Stoke comes and being sworn says that it knows nothing thereof except only that the foresters attacked the malefactors with hue and cry until the darkness of night came, and that one of the foresters was wounded. And it does not know whose were the greyhounds. Carlton comes, and being sworn, says the same. Corby comes, and being sworn, says the same. Great Oakley comes, and being sworn, says that it saw four men and one tawny greyhound following them, to wit one with a crossbow and three with bows and arrows, and it hailed them and followed them with the foresters until the darkness of night came, so that on account of the darkness of night and the thickness of the wood it knew not what became of them…

The arrows with which Matthew was wounded, were delivered to Sir Robert Basset and John Lovet, verderers. The greyhounds were sent to Sir Robert Passelewe, then justice of the forest. Matthew died of his wounds, and a later inquisition revealed that Matthew’s brother and two other foresters had seen the same three greyhounds in April when dining with the abbot of Pipewell, and that they belonged to one Simon of Kivelsworthy, who was thereupon sent to Northampton to be imprisoned. The abbot of Pipewell had to answer before the justices for harboring Simon and his greyhounds. The case was later brought before the forest eyre in Northampton in 1255, where Simon proved that his greyhounds “were led there by him at another time but not then,” and was released after paying a fine of half a mark. The real culprit was never found.

22

Background / Re: Hunting as a Way of Life (4 pts approx)

« on: January 28, 2014, 10:58:14 PM »

Pt 2

Hunting was much more than a sport, and the forest much more than a recreation ground. The deer and other quarry supplied a substantial share of the meat for the castle table, and the forest supplemented game with nuts, berries, mushrooms, and other wild edibles. It also furnished the principal construction material and fuel for all classes. King Henry III granted ten oaks from the Forest of Dean in 1228 to William Marshal II to use in remodeling and heightening Fitz Osbern’s Great Tower; later he granted more oaks to Gilbert Marshal to finish the work.

Forest land was a natural resource of immense value, and consequently coveted, defended, and fought over. William the Conqueror, a great lover of hunting, brought “forest law” from France to England to preserve the English forests for his own use. Medieval land clearance and sheep grazing had had a major impact on the ecology of Europe (something like that of agricultural expansion on North America in the nineteenth century), and although William and other European princes who enacted regulations were not interested in ecology, their actions had the effect of curbing deforestation.

Stringent prohibitions were promulgated against poaching. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reported: William set aside a vast deer preserve and imposed laws concerning it, so that whoever slew a hart or hind was to be blinded. He forbade the killing of boars, even as the killing of harts, for he loved the tall deer as if he had been their father…The rich complained, and the poor lamented, but he was so stern that he cared not though all might hate him.

William established as royal forest or game preserve large tracts that embraced villages and wasteland as well as woods. On these lands no one but the king and those authorized by him—not even the barons who held the land—could hunt the red deer, the fallow deer, the roe, and the wild boar. Hounds and bows were forbidden. Because foxes, hares, badgers, squirrels, wild cats, martens, and otter were considered harmful to the deer and boar, rights of “warren” were often granted for hunting these smaller quarry. Birds hunted in falconry were generally also included in the “beasts of the warren,” although they were not harmful to the deer. Dogs kept within the forest had to be “lawed”—three talons cut from each front foot.

The twelfth-century chronicler Florence of Worcester attributed the death of the Conqueror’s son, William Rufus, in a hunting accident in the New Forest (south of Winchester), to his father’s strict forest laws. Nor can it be wondered that…Almighty power and vengeance should have been thus displayed. For in former times…this tract of land was thickly planted with churches and with inhabitants who were worshippers of God; but by command of King William the elder the people were expelled, the houses half ruined, the churches pulled down, and the land made an habitation for wild beasts only; and hence, as it is believed, arose this mischance. For Richard, the brother of William the younger, had perished long before in the same forest, and a short time previously his cousin Richard, the [natural] son of Robert, earl [duke] of Normandy, was also killed by an arrow by one of his knights, while he was hunting. A church, built in the old times, had stood on the spot where the king fell, but as we have already said, it was destroyed in the time of his father.

William Rufus’ death was vividly pictured by Ordericus Vitalis: [That morning—August 1, 1100] King William, having dined with his minions, prepared, after the meal was ended, to go forth and hunt in the New Forest. Being in great spirits, he was joking with his attendants while his boots were being laced, when an armorer came and presented to him six arrows. The king immediately took them with great satisfaction, praising the work, and unconscious of what was to happen, kept four of them himself and gave the other two to Walter Tirel [lord of Poix and castellan of Pontoise, fifteen miles northwest of Paris]. “It is but right,” he said, “that the sharpest arrows should be given to him who knows best how to inflict mortal wounds with them.”…[The king] hastily rose, and mounting his horse, rode at full speed to the forest. His brother, Count Henry, with William de Breteuil [son of William Fitz Osbern] and other distinguished persons followed him, and, having penetrated into the woods, the hunters dispersed themselves in various directions according to custom.

The king and Walter posted themselves with a few others in one part of the forest, and stood with their weapons in their hands eagerly watching for the coming of the game, when a stag suddenly running between them, the king quitted his station, and Walter shot an arrow. It grazed the beast’s horny back, but glancing from it, mortally wounded the king who stood within its range. He immediately fell to the ground, and alas! suddenly expired…Some of the servants wrapped the king’s bloody corpse in a mean covering, and brought it, like a wild boar pierced by the hunters, to the city of Winchester.

Henry II, William Rufus’ great-nephew, was another enthusiastic hunter. According to Gerald of Wales, He was immoderately fond of the chase, and devoted himself to it with excessive ardor. At the first dawn of day he would mount a fleet horse, and indefatigably spend the day in riding through the woods, penetrating the depths of forests, and crossing the ridges of hills…He was inordinately fond of hawking or hunting, whether his falcons stooped on their prey, or his sagacious hounds, quick of scent and swift of foot, pursued the chase. Would to God he had been as zealous in his devotions as he was in his sports!

By the thirteenth century, forest law was even more strictly enforced in England than on the Continent, where there were fewer royal forests and more grants of hunting rights. William I’s successors had persistently striven to extend the area of the royal forest, although Richard I and John, when they needed money, “disafforested” large areas, opening them to local lords in return for cash payments. In 1217, under William Marshal’s regency in the early years of Henry III’s reign, the Forest Charter was granted as a kind of postscript to Magna Carta, to further satisfy the barons. By it the forest law was codified and a commission directed to make “perambulations” of the royal forest, reviewing additions made under Henry II, Richard, and John, and retaining only those that were in the king’s own demesne. Ten years later, when Henry came of age, he summoned the knights who had made the perambulations and forced them to revise their boundaries in the royal favor. The forest then remained essentially unchanged until 1300, when Edward I was forced once
more to disafforest large tracts.

The Forest Charter designated the courts to enforce forest law: local courts that met regularly every six weeks, special forest inquisitions called to deal with serious trespasses, and the royal forest eyre (circuit court) that had ultimate jurisdiction. The local attachment courts dealt with minor offenses to the “vert”—the greenwood of the forest: cutting; clearing; gathering dead wood, honey, and nuts; allowing cattle to graze or pigs to feed on acorns and beechnuts. When a graver offense against the vert or a crime against the “venison”—the right to hunt deer—was committed, a special court was called to hear the case before the forest officers, and either send the offender to prison until the next eyre or attach him to appear before it, depending on the seriousness of the crime. Any evidence—arrows, antlers, skins, poachers’ greyhounds—was delivered to forest officials to be produced before the justices (the deer was usually given to the poor, the sick, or lepers). Sentence to imprisonment by the special inquisition was not punishment, but merely insurance that the accused would duly appear before the eyre. If the accused could find pledges to secure his appearance, he was released.

Every seven years the forest eyre, made up of four barons and knights appointed by the king, traveled from county to county hearing the accumulated forest cases. Trespassers were brought from prison or produced by the sheriff; the foresters and other officers presented their exhibits and the record of the special inquisition. The record was usually accepted as proof of the facts without any further hearing of evidence, and the prisoner was sentenced to prison for a year and a day—again not as punishment but against the payment of a ransom or fine. Usually the fine was in proportion to the prisoner’s condition, and sometimes trespassers were pardoned because they were poor. If a man had spent much time in jail waiting to be tried, he was released: “And because Roger lay for a long time in prison, so that he is nearly dead, it is judged that he go quit; and let him dwell outside the forest.” “Because he was a long time in prison and has no goods, therefore he is quit thereof.” On the other hand, if he failed to appear, the trespasser was outlawed.

Every three years an inspection of the forests was made by a body of twelve knights, the “regarders,” who were supposed to report any encroachments on the king’s demesne—the erection of a mill or a fishpond, the enlargement of a clearing, the enclosure of land without license, or any abuse of the right to cut wood. Besides the regarders, the forest was administered by a large hierarchy of officials, headed by the justice, who directed the whole forest administration of England. Next in authority were the wardens, also called stewards, bailiffs, or chief foresters, who had custody of single forests or groups of forests; below them were officers called verderers, knights or landed gentry nominally in charge of the vert but actually with a variety of duties; and there were also foresters, who acted as gamekeepers, responsible to the wardens and appointed by them. Usually each forest had four agisters, too, appointed by the wardens to collect money for the pasturing of cattle and pigs in the king’s demesne woods and lawns, allowed at certain seasons. The agisters counted the pigs as they entered the forest and collected the pennies as they came out. Landowners inside the forest also employed woodwards, their own
foresters.

23

Background / Hunting as a Way of Life (3 parts)

« on: January 27, 2014, 07:30:52 PM »

Pt 1

This has been taken from the book  - Life in a Medieval Castle –  by Joseph and Frances Gies

VII
Hunting as a Way of Life

AT DAWN ON A SUMMER DAY, when the deer were at their fattest, the lord, his household, and guests loved to set out into the forest. While the huntsman, a professional and often a regular member of the lord’s staff, stalked the quarry with the leashed dogs and their handlers, the hunting party breakfasted in a clearing on a picnic meal of meat, wine, and bread.

When the dogs found a deer’s spoor, the huntsman estimated the animal’s size and age by measuring the tracks with his fingers and by studying the scratches made by the horns on bushes, the height of the rubbed-off velvet of the antlers on trees, and the “fumes” (droppings), some of which he gathered in his hunting horn to show his master.

The lord made the decision as to whether it was a quarry worth hunting. Sometimes the huntsman, by silently climbing a tree, could get a sight of the deer. The dogs were taken by a roundabout route to intercept the deer’s line of retreat. They were usually of three kinds: the lymer, a bloodhound that was kept on a leash and used to finish the stag at bay; the brachet, a smaller hound; and the greyhound or levrier, larger than the modern breed and capable of singly killing a deer. The huntsman advanced on foot with a pair of lymers to drive the deer toward the hunting party. Meanwhile the lord raised his ivory hunting horn, the olifant, and blew a series of one-pitch notes. This was the signal for the greyhounds. Once begun, the chase continued until the hounds brought the stag to bay, when one of the hunters was given the privilege of killing it with a lance thrust. Sometimes the hunters used bows and arrows. The kill was followed by skinning and dividing up the meat, including the hounds’ share, laid out on the skin.

Although the hart could be a dangerous quarry, the wild boar, usually hunted in the winter, was more formidable. A wily enemy, he would not venture out of cover without first looking, listening, and sniffing, and once his suspicions were aroused no amount of shouting and horn blowing would lure him from his narrow den. The boar-hunting dog was the alaunt, a powerful breed resembling the later German shepherd. Even when dogs and hunters caught the boar in the open, his great tusks were a fearful weapon. “I have seen them kill good knights, squires and servants,” wrote Gaston de la Foix in his fourteenth-century Livre de la Chasse (“Book of the Hunt”). And Edward, duke of York, in the fifteenth-century treatise The Master of Game wrote, “The boar slayeth a man with one stroke, as with a knife. Some have seen him slit a man from knee up to breast and slay him all stark dead with one stroke.” An old boar usually stood his ground and struck desperately about him, but a young boar was capable of rapid maneuvers preceding his deadly slashes.

The huntsman was always well paid, and in a great household might be a knight. Henry I employed no fewer than four, at eight pence a day, at the head of a hunting company that included four horn blowers, twenty sergeants (beaters), several assistant huntsmen, a variety of dog handlers, a troop of mounted wolf hunters, and several archers, one of whom carried the king’s own bow. A royal hunting party was a small military expedition.


But the form of hunting that stirred the widest interest throughout medieval Europe was falconry. Hawks were the only means of bringing down birds that flew beyond the range of arrows. Every king, noble, baron, and lord of the manor had his falcons. A favorite bird shared his master’s bedroom and accompanied him daily on his wrist. Proud, fierce, and temperamental, the falcon had a mystique and a mythology. Of many treatises and manuals about falconry, the most famous was the exhaustive De Arte Venandi cum Avibus (“The Art of Falconry”) by the erudite emperor Frederick II (from which most of the following information is drawn).

The birds used in medieval falconry belonged to two main categories. The true falcons, or long-winged hawks, included the gerfalcon, the peregrine, the saker, and the lanner, all used to hunt waterfowl, and the merlin, used for smaller birds. The short-winged hawks included the goshawk and the sparrow hawk, which could be flown in wooded country where long-winged hawks were at a disadvantage. Only the female, larger and more aggressive than the male, was properly called a falcon; the smaller male was called a tiercel, and although sometimes used in hunting was considered inferior.

One of the essential buildings in a castle courtyard was the mews where the hawks roosted and where they took refuge during molting season. It was spacious enough to allow limited flight, had at least one window, and a door large enough for the falconer to pass through with a bird on his wrist. The floor was covered with gravel or coarse sand, changed at regular intervals. In the semidarkness inside, perches of several sizes were adapted to different kinds of birds, some high and well out from the wall, others just far enough off the floor to keep the bird’s tail feathers from touching. Outside stood low wooden or stone blocks, usually in the form of cones, point down, driven into the ground with sharp iron spikes, on which the falcons “weathered,” that is, became accustomed to the world outside the mews.

A good falcon was expensive chiefly because her training demanded infinite patience and care. The birds were obtained either as eyases—nestlings taken from a tree or a cliff-top—or as branchers, young birds that had just left the nest and were caught in nets. Branchers were put into a “sock,” a close-fitting linen bag open at both ends, so that the bird’s head protruded at one end, feet and tail at the other.

Gerald of Wales reported that once when Henry II was staying at the Clares’ Pembroke Castle and “amusing himself in the country with the sport of hawking,” he saw a falcon perched on a crag, and let loose on it a large high-bred Norway hawk. The falcon, though its flight was at first slower than the Norway hawk’s, finally rose above its adversary, became the assailant, and pouncing on it with great fury, laid the royal bird dead at the king’s feet. “From that time the king used to send every year in the proper season for the young falcons which are bred in the cliffs on the coast of South Wales; for in all his land he could not find better or more noble hawks.”

The falconer’s first task was to have the bird prepared for training. The needle points of the talons were trimmed, the eyes usually “seeled”—temporarily sewn closed—and two jesses, strips of leather with rings at the end, were fastened around the legs. Small bells were tied to the feet to alert the falconer to the bird’s movements. She was then tied to the perch by a long leather strap called a leash. At the same time, whether seeled or not, she was usually introduced to the hood, a piece of leather that covered her eyes, with an opening for the beak. Now, blinded, she had to be trained through her senses of taste, hearing, and touch.

The falcon’s first lesson was learning to stand on a human wrist. To begin with, she was carried gently about in a darkened room for a day and a night, and passed from hand to hand, without being fed. On the second day, the falconer fed her a chicken leg, while talking or singing to her, always using the same phrase or bar of a song, stroking her while she ate. Gradually the bird was unseeled, at night or in a darkened room, with the attendant being careful not to let her see his face, on the theory that the human face was particularly repugnant to the falcon. Again she was carried about for a day and a night and fed in small quantities while being gently stroked, and gradually she was exposed to more light. When she was well accustomed to the new situation, she was taken outdoors before dawn, and brought back while it was still dark. Finally her eyesight was fully restored, and the falconer exposed her to full daylight.

The initial stage of her training was accomplished: The captive was partially tamed and accustomed to handling. But the falconer still had to guard the sensitive, excitable creature closely to prevent her from taking alarm and injuring herself. If she became restless and tried to fly off her perch, or bit at her jesses and bell and scratched at her head, she had to be quieted by gentle speech, stroking, and feeding, or by being sprinkled with drops of water, sometimes from the falconer’s mouth (which had first to be scrupulously cleansed).

Once the bird felt at home on her master’s wrist outdoors, she was taken on horseback. Now the falcon was ready to be taught to return to her master during the hunt by means of the lure. This device was usually made of the wings of the bird which was to be the falcon’s quarry, tied to a piece of meat. If a gerfalcon, a bird distinguished by its size, dignity, speed, and agility, was to be used to hunt cranes, the lure was made of a pair of crane’s wings tied together with a leather thong, in the same position as if folded on the crane’s back. To the lure was tied a long strap. To keep the falcon from flying away during these first departures from his fist, the falconer fastened a long slender cord, the creance, to the end of her leash.

In the field, as much of the line was unwound as was necessary for the bird’s flight, and she was taken on the falconer’s fist. An assistant handed him the lure as he removed the falcon’s hood, at the same time repeating the familiar notes or words that he always used while feeding her. The falconer held firmly onto her jesses while she tasted the meat fastened to the lure. Then his assistant took the lure and moved away with it, always keeping it in the falcon’s vision, finally placing it on the ground and withdrawing, while the falconer released the bird, letting the line run through his free hand. When the falcon landed on the lure, the assistant slowly approached her, holding meat out, repeating her call notes, and finally setting it down before her. While she seized it, he picked her up on the lure, and gathered the jesses and drew them tight.

Once the falcon responded well to the lure, she was taught to come to it when it was whirled in the air by the assistant while he uttered the call notes. Finally the falcon sprang eagerly from the fist when she saw the lure and flew directly at it. The Creance was now abandoned and the bird could be allowed to fly free.


Now she was ready to be taught to hunt. A gerfalcon to be used in hunting cranes was often started on hares, because the same method of flight was used for both, and because a hare would be unlikely to distract a falcon when she hunted for cranes, since hares always had to be driven out of cover by dogs. Sometimes a stuffed rabbit pelt baited with meat was dragged in front of the falcon, with the falconer on horseback racing over the fields after the decoy, letting the falcon loose only to jerk her up short before she could strike, teaching her to swoop and pounce suddenly. Then the falconer brought out the hounds, who drove live rabbits out for the falcon. Next the gerfalcon was exposed to snipe and partridge. Only when she became proficient with these was she ready for her real quarry, and even now her introduction was gradual.

At first a live crane was staked in a meadow, its eyes seeled, its claws blunted, and its beak bound so that it could not injure the gerfalcon. Meat was tied to its back. The gerfalcon was unhooded and the crane shown to her. When the falcon killed the crane, the falconer removed its heart and fed it to the falcon. The process was repeated, increasing the distance between the mounted falconer and the crane bait until the gerfalcon began her flight a bowshot away (300 to 400 yards). At the same time the falconer trained the falcon to recognize a crane’s call by slitting a crane’s larynx and blowing into it.

Dogs, usually greyhounds, were often used in teaching the gerfalcon to capture larger birds. This meant special training for the dogs as well as the falcons, so that the dog did not desert the hunt to chase a rabbit. Dog and falcon were fed together to enhance their comradeship, while the dog was trained to run with the falcon and help her seize her prey.

A different technique was used for “hawking at the brook,” that is, hunting ducks on the riverbank. Here the hawk was trained to circle above the falconer’s head, “waiting on,” while the hounds raised the ducks. She then “stooped” (dived) to strike them in the air.

The good falconer, according to Frederick II, who employed more than fifty in his Apulian castles, had to be of medium size—not too large to be agile and not too small to be strong. Besides the cardinal virtue of patience, the falconer needed acute hearing and vision, a daring spirit, alert mind, and even temper. He could not be a heavy sleeper, lest he fail to hear the falcon’s bells in the night. And he had to be well versed in the ailments of hawks and their remedies—medicines for headaches and colds, salves for injuries: mixtures of spices, vinegar, snakemeat, gristle, and drugs almost as unpleasant as the medicines prescribed for human beings.

24

Background / Sense of Honour and Duty

« on: December 09, 2013, 11:09:17 PM »

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.

25

Background / Re: War, Society and Technology (approx 3/4 pts eventuly)

« on: November 05, 2013, 06:34:05 PM »

pt3 (last part)

Wagons could carry much more. By the eleventh century, the horseshoe had made the horse a formidably efficient form of traction. Better harnesses and linkages meant that a single horse could pull a load of 900 kg. Moreover, the better harnesses meant that teams could be linked to wagons, with improved results. Wagons themselves developed: pivoted front axles made large four-wheeled types possible, and by the thirteenth century they were replacing two-wheeled ones. But horses were not always available and oxen all too often had to be used. Moreover, even the most efficient wagon was limited by roads and weather, both very uncertain quantities in the medieval West.

In the right conditions, good wagons could help an army enormously. When Philip Augustus decided to retreat from Tournai before the Battle of Bouvines, his infantry were able to move very quickly because they put their weapons and equipment in carts which, perhaps, resembled the ladder-sided examples portrayed in the Maciejowski Bible, which were pulled by two horses. At Hattin, Guy was able to carry elaborate tents into battle, and these must have been transported in wagons. In the plain of the Po, armies carried wooden sheds for shelter and we hear of small missile throwers mounted on carts, but this was flat easy country in summer: in winter cartage would have been more difficult.

Lack of bridges was another formidable problem for an army that was dependent on wheeled transport – indeed, in Spain the existence of Roman bridges was a major influence on campaigns. On the northeastern frontier of Germany there were virtually no roads, and the German expansion was long confined to the river valleys where supply by ships was possible: on one occasion, scouts blazing a route through virgin territory took nine days to cover less than 70 miles.

Carts of the two-horsed type shown carrying armour and equipment in the Maciejowski Bible must have been able to carry a load of about 450kg, which would have fed 500 men for a day. But because good carts and good roads did not always coincide, we have to recognize that the transport problem continued. Moreover, many commanders would not have been able to specify what kind of transport they received.

The efficiency of carts explains why armies such as that of Frederick I on the Third Crusade could pass through friendly territory without pillaging and still sustain themselves. But there were definite limits to what could be carried, imposed by roads, weather and seasons and by military necessity – for mobility could be compromised by too elaborate a baggage-train. This is why armies often used fleets.

Henry II employed ships in his attacks on Wales. Edward I used huge fleets to supply his great armies as they destroyed Welsh resistance. Once the conquest was achieved, he built ports to supply his major strongpoints. Great engineering works were undertaken to straighten the River Clywdd, so that a port could be built by Rhuddlan castle. Edward’s elaborate logistic preparations for the Scottish campaigns are well known and always included a major fleet: even so, before the Battle of Falkirk in 1298 his supply situation was so bad that elements of his army were rebellious. The army of the First Crusade enjoyed invaluable naval support, as did Richard I at the Battle of Arsuf.

But naval support was not always available, and the transport problem was one of the factors that limited the size of medieval armies. It was probably not as important in this respect as cost or the need to adjust the force to the scale of the task, but it was a major consideration. In 1066, England was conquered by an army of about 7,000 Normans and allies. Just over 200 years later, the fate of South Italy was decided at Tagliocozzo by armies which, together, numbered only about 10,000.

In the light of this, scepticism of the large numbers that chroniclers often attribute to armies is a right and proper reaction: for example, the idea that Frederick Barbarossa mobilized 100,000 for the Third Crusade needs critical examination. In fact, the threat of starvation remained with armies from first to last: Jean le Bel reported his sufferings during a 1327 campaign against the Scots – bread, when there was any, soaked in horses’ sweat, foul water and expensive wine. His experience could stand for that of the soldiers across this period and far beyond.

It is very difficult to gain a real impression of what a medieval army on the march looked like. Our illustrations are only occasionally large-scale, but they convey a suspicious uniformity which was probably imposed by the artist on a much more diversified reality. Because weapons and armour changed only slowly, they must have enjoyed very long lives. The sword that Otto IV (1198–1215) bore at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214 was actually made in the eleventh century and redecorated for him in about 1208. Probably only the better-off could afford to be up to date, while the remainder wore what amounted to hand-me-downs, patched, developed and augmented as their pockets made possible.

However, the increasing production of iron improved the weapons and protection of even the footsoldiers. In the Maciejowski Bible of c.1250, many footsoldiers are seen wearing padded aketons and steel caps: this is the kind of equipment that contemporary kingdoms and cities were requiring their poorer citizens to keep for the purposes of war. A minority of the infantry illustrated carry much more elaborate equipment – hauberks and swords. In the case of mounted men, an apparent uniformity probably conceals considerable differences in the quality of protection, but they are almost invisible to us.

 There must have been enormous diversity, but mainly of variants of basic types. Weapons and armour had advanced somewhat, but the knights and foot of the Bayeux Tapestry would have been able to fight perfectly competently at the end of the thirteenth century, although their equipment would have relegated them to the second or third rank. Better carts and more horses improved supply marginally, but without any dramatic advance. War had changed in the two and a half intervening centuries, but even at the end of the thirteenth century the warriors of the Bayeux Tapestry would not have found their equipment hopelessly obsolete.

26

Background / Re: War, Society and Technology (approx 3/4 pts eventuly)

« on: November 04, 2013, 06:00:24 PM »

pt2

This is hardly the place to analyse at length the great European expansion of the period 1000–1300. The simplest evidence of it was the growth of cities, which was much commented on by contemporaries. The development of trade produced new classes of people and new kinds of wealth. A major consequence was the burgeoning diversity of European society. The famous characterization of European society as divided between those who fight, those who pray and those who labour was formulated in the early eleventh century and was visibly inadequate by the mid-twelfth century. John of Salisbury described the amazing diversity of his world, which included the townspeople who Henry II’s Assize of Arms of 1181 recognized as a distinct social category.

What has been called the “monetary explosion” of the eleventh century had a deeply unsettling effect on Western society, creating a new fluidity as society became richer. This enabled those who controlled the new wealth, the kings and nobility, to protect themselves better than ever before. In so far as there was innovation, this was its motor, for the idea of technical innovation was not yet strong enough and the educational underpinning for it emerged only slowly.

This narrow view of the purpose of technology had profound effects on warfare. The crossbow was an effective weapon but its development seems to have been slow and it was rarely deployed en masse. Richard I, quite exceptionally, used large numbers at Arsuf, to deadly effect. Mounting crossbowmen enhanced their mobility and with it the firepower of patrols and strike-forces, and they were commonly used in this role from the time of Philip Augustus onwards. But, generally, the weapon never reached its full potential, and seems to have been most effectively deployed in sieges.

This was partly a matter of expense, a reluctance to spend on mere foot. Partly, it was a consequence of ambivalent attitudes: at the siege of Rochester John wanted to hang the garrison but was persuaded to spare all but the crossbowmen. Richard I on his deathbed spared the life of the crossbowman whose quarrel mortally injured him, but his intimates nevertheless butchered him. But there was a further cause of the slow development and deployment of this useful weapon. There was no forum in which to develop weapons. Warfare was episodic and there were no permanent staffs to form intellectual centres: the “Twelfth-century Renaissance” bred no academies of war, for war already had its elite, who felt no need to give way to any new forces.

By the end of the twelfth century, powerful monarchies were acquiring arsenals and these must have been busy places in times of war. Their very existence must have stereotyped arms and armour to a degree. But there was no marriage of thought and technology, so that advance remained piecemeal and by individual experiment. In these circumstances, new ideas would have been diffused only slowly and unevenly. In this way, the conservatism of a social elite slowed military development, and it was in areas where expertise was most needed and theirs most lacking that technology made its greatest impact – on military architecture and poliorcetic.

The slow development of technology had other effects on the conduct of war. Supply was always a major constraint on the size and movement of armies. William the Conqueror made a very cautious and entirely unopposed approach to London in 1066, but his army became desperately short of supplies on the way. At Flarchheim on 27 January 1080, Henry IV was victorious in battle, but was unable to follow up his victory because the Saxons had sacked his camp, and he had to retreat. In 1097, William Rufus’s attack on Wales was frustrated by guerrilla tactics that prevented his army from foraging and thus forced a retreat, and the same happened to Henry II in 1165. Richard went to great trouble to guard his supply lines during the Third Crusade.

St Louis made the most elaborate preparations to feed his army for his attack on Egypt, creating what was virtually a logistic base on the island of Cyprus: ultimately, his army was destroyed not by enemy victory but by the cutting of his communications with Damietta – without food he had to surrender. Philip III was equally careful in stockpiling provisions for his attack on Aragon in 1285, but he faced retreat in desperate conditions of starvation when the enemy cut him off from secure access to his bases.

The basic necessity of an army was food, and in the context of the age this meant bread: even at a moment when the First Crusade was blessed with plentiful supplies of meat, Raymond of Aguilers commented on the lack of bread. The technology of food preservation was not highly advanced: grain would have been the most durable form in which to carry this staple, but that would have meant carrying waste husk and some kind of milling equipment. Flour saved weight but was very liable to go off. In any case, both are bulky and bulk transport was limited by the available technology.

The basic measure of food which we need to take into account is that a man living a fairly active life needs about 1 kg of bread (or the calorific equivalent) to feed him per day. Packhorses could carry 100–150kg, enough to feed 150 men for a day, so a force of 3,000 would need 140 horses for a single day’s food. Each horse takes up about 2.5m of road, so that in single file they would be strung out along 350m of road. However, if the 3,000 men included cavalry, the warhorses would need fodder, because except at the most favourable times of the year they could not fend for themselves without losing condition: in the German army of 1914 the ration was 11 kg of grain and fodder per day for a horse.

The advantage of pack animals was that they could go almost anywhere: in Byzantine times the road system of Asia Minor included stepped roads which clearly could not carry wheeled vehicles, and it is likely that the preserved stretch of road from Antioch to Aleppo was intended for pack use, because it is not scored by wheels. The army of the First Crusade certainly had carts when it travelled across Europe: Peter the Hermitis force had a train a mile long, but these seem to have been abandoned in Asia Minor. The French army on the Second Crusade was also dependent upon pack animals. Since these were some of the best roads available, the advantages of this form of portage are evident, but so, equally, are the drawbacks. Pack animals cannot carry large or awkward objects, their packs need careful balancing and they must be emptied at night. They also need to be fed, and so consume much of their carrying capacity.

27

Background / War, Society and Technology (3 pts)

« on: November 02, 2013, 10:45:30 PM »

This chapter is taken from the same book, "Western Warfare in The Age of The Crusades 1000 – 1300.", as the one concerning fortifications ect I posted earlier.

Pt/1


War, society and technology

Medieval metallurgy was advancing. Although primitive bloomery hearths, which could only produce a maximum of 40kg in a session, continued to be used, larger and more advanced furnaces, such as the Corsican and Catalan types, with powerful bellows could smelt up to 150 kg of iron in one process. The Stückhofen, which was developed in Germany at the end of our period, was 3–4m high and capable of producing up to 900kg in a single operation.

None of these furnaces could produce liquid iron except accidentally and under the most favourable conditions, when the subsequent cast iron seems to have been rejected as too brittle to use. They produced a soft malleable mass of iron, the bloom, which could be forged into wrought iron, or, at great trouble and expense, into steel.

By the end of the twelfth century there was substantial industrial production of iron in virtually all of the countries of western Europe. Larger furnaces put pressure on wood reserves and as a result coal was used from about 1190, although this was only to bulk out charcoal. Water-driven bellows were employed from the twelfth century, and by the thirteenth century hammer mills using water power are known. The scale of production could be considerable – the great iron forge-building at the Cistercian abbey of Fontenay in Burgundy is testimony to that. Trade in metal was vigorous, with Flanders, for example, importing iron from Spain.

The development of a flourishing iron industry all over Europe was a product of the great European expansion of the period 1000–1300, whose most obvious symptoms were the growth of populations and the flowering of cities. But the demand for arms must have been a powerful stimulant, for by the end of the thirteenth century there was large-scale weapons production in most European countries, with very notable centres in Italy, Flanders and Germany, especially in the Rhineland.

The scale of production could be very large: in 1172, the ironworkers of the Forest of Dean sent 100 axes, 1,000 picks, 2,000 shovels and 60,000 nails for Henry II’s expedition to Ireland, and 50,000 horseshoes were supplied for Richard I’s crusade. More particularly, the demand for weapons must have stimulated production of steel. Since Roman times there had always been an awareness of the superior qualities of steel, and medieval sources distinguish between the two metals.

Since there was no science of metallurgy, the production of weapons and other metal goods was a craft process that was dependent on the skills of the individual smith, whose experience taught him how to create iron with the right qualities. Even large-scale production of arms was essentially craft-based, and remained so through to the nineteenth century. Production methods for many weapons were probably pretty routine, but the production of steel involved great skill.

The sword, the finest of all weapons, was created by the pattern-welding of strips of iron, which produced a strong, flexible steel that could take an edge and stand up to the violent hammering on hard surfaces that characterized medieval warfare. Damascus and Toledo blades were much admired in the West, which for a long time did not have access to the Indian crucible steel from which they were forged. But the very high international reputation of German swords shows that even by the eleventh century European techniques were developing.

The hauberk was made of rings, some of which were punched out of carefully flattened steel; mostly, however, they were drawn from wire, shaped on a mandril and the ends holed for a rivet. Each ring was threaded with four others and the rivets inserted to build up the whole. It was a very slow process that required great patience, an impression well conveyed by a fifteenth-century illustration. Once it was assembled, the whole hauberk was annealed in the forge.

Plate armour only began to appear towards the end of the twelfth century and then it seems that small reinforcing pieces were fitted under the hauberk. It is unfortunate that we do not have any early pieces. It was only towards the later thirteenth century that plate armour proper emerged, and we can assume that this was the result of smiths gradually working out how to produce, at reasonable cost, good-quality steel which was light and designed to fit well, yet was strong enough to protect.

It is interesting that manuscript pictures of armourers nearly always include the making of helmets, and this presumably reflects the fact that the fabrication of any kind of large plate involved considerable skill. Sometimes the pointed helmet was made by hammering a single piece of metal: tenth-century examples are the “helmet of St Wenceslaus” in the treasury of Prague cathedral and a Kievan example in the Artillery Museum in St Petersburg. In the form called the Spangenhelm, fabrication was by welding together a series of shaped segments on a conical frame. The appearance of these helmets varies considerably in the Bayeux Tapestry, with some seeming to have horizontal or vertical bands and others not: however, this may relate to decoration rather than structure. In an age of artisan production, knowledge of techniques must have spread slowly and unevenly, for there was no real technical literature or tradition of teaching.

Although the level of skill involved in the the production of minor weapons – spear and arrowheads, for example – was limited, it still involved much time and labour, especially if specific shapes were needed with hardened cutting edges. There were varieties of arrowheads, with long narrow types being used for piercing mail.

The basic smelting of the iron was difficult and required careful judgement of times and temperatures, and the whole manufacturing process was a handcraft that was dependent on individual skill and knowledge. These were expensive processes: tools were commonly made largely of wood, and shod with iron only at the cutting edges. A spade of this kind appears in the twelfth-century manuscript illumination of the “Dream of Henry I” and in the Maciejowski Bible, and precisely similar tools dating from the nineteenth century can be found in the Beaune wine museum.

It is difficult to establish what costs were in the Middle Ages, not least because of regional variations. In tenth-century France, a mailed coat was valued at 60 sheep or six oxen. In early fourteenth-century England, the price was a sterling pound, the equivalent of about 20 sheep or two oxen, while at the same time in France it was three livres tournois. Although there were variations, on the basis of such figures it is possible to postulate a real fall in prices over the period under consideration. But demand for iron was clearly rising and the development of the industry was proceeding apace, even though it remained, broadly, a craft industry.

It was this huge expansion of production, rather than any pattern of innovation, that made possible more and more sophisticated weapons in the thirteenth century. In the early ninth century, Charlemagne demanded that each pair of freemen summoned to the host should bring between them a lance, a shield and a bow with two strings and twelve arrows. This would have involved a very minimal amount of iron. By contrast, vassals were expected to come well armed with a mail shirt and provided with horses.

By 1181, iron weapons were evidently more common, because Henry II of England promulgated an Assize of Arms in 1181 requiring all those who possessed £100 Angevin to provide themselves with a horse and full knightly equipment, while those with £20–40 should have a hauberk, iron cap, lance and sword, and even those of lesser status were to have a quilted coat, iron cap and sword, or bow and arrows. The Assize for England commanded that the burgesses and the “whole body of freemen” should have a padded surcoat, an iron cap and a lance, while knights were required to provide themselves with a hauberk, iron helmet, shield, lance and horse.

By the time of Edward I’s Assize of Winchester in 1285, the regulations demand even more metal weapons. Those with land to the value of £15 and with 40 marks per year must have a full hauberk, helm, sword, knife and horse: lesser men with land worth £10 and incomes of 20 marks can make do with a short-sleeved hauberk, but must have helmet, sword and knife. The 100 shilling freeholder must provide a padded surcoat, iron cap, sword and knife, and a sword is expected even of a 40 shilling freeholder, along with a knife, bow and arrows. Even the 20 shilling man must produce a spear, scythe and knife, and only the poorest are limited to bows and arrows.

Communal charters in the Low Countries tell the same story. In 1244, the better-off amongst the Luxembourg bourgeoisie were expected to serve their lord armoured and on horseback, while at Mortagne in 1251 and at Bruges at about the same time they were required to produce a sword and elaborate equipment. The less well-off in these city ordinances were footsoldiers with a padded surcoat, iron cap and lance.

By the end of the thirteenth century in Flanders, weapons were much more common than ever before and the widespread circulation of the short-sword, which was of Italian origin, is particularly indicative of this. In the Italian cities the communes required men to serve well armed either as infantry or, in the case of the wealthy, as cavalry, and laid down minimum specifications. By the mid-thirteenth century, Florence was divided into six quarters (Sesto), each of which was responsible for a proportion of the specialized troops required, from heavily armoured cavalry through crossbowmen to Pavesarii (shield-bearers) and sappers.

Such provisions were commonplace in the cities of Italy. And this new availability of iron, which gave western Europeans a huge advantage over the peoples on their periphery, was a result of the general development of the European economy, which had great influence on the conduct of war.

28

Background / Re: Fortifications and Siege.

« on: August 27, 2013, 05:55:37 PM »

pt 11 (last part)

Western armies were occasional bodies, lacking a continuous existence which could nurture the special skills needed to build, operate and develop siege-equipment. Robert of Bellême and Gaston of Béarn were rare specialists at the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Even in the mid-twelfth century, Geoffrey of Anjou’s engineering skills were evidently unusual. It is not strange that one of the penthouses built by the First Crusade to attack Nicaea in 1097 collapsed, while their mangonels were ineffective. In 1174, a Scottish traction-trebuchet was deployed against Wark castle, but its first missile fell on the team operating it. Many may have known in principle how to build machinery, but doing it was a different matter.

However, military architecture was developing in the twelfth century and commanders needed weapons against it. It was a Genoese sailor, William Ricau, who built the siege machinery of the Provençals at Jerusalem in 1099. Guintelmus, a great engineer, was high in the councils of Milan during the conflict with Barbarossa. During the siege of Milan, Marchesius of Crema enjoyed rich rewards when he defected to Barbarossa. The rivalry of the Italian cities, their wealth and their commercial and maritime background, brought together all the skills needed for construction, but great kings were quick to follow suit. Henry II had engineers in his train, and specialized operators of siege-equipment.


In the thirteenth century, engineers could enjoy great importance and their deeds are chronicled in the records of the period. Elias of Oxford served Richard I, while John bestowed a knight’s fee upon Urricus. Masters Osbert and Bertram were prominent under Henry III. Edward I used a whole host of engineers and master-carpenters, supported by miners and others. Master Robert of Ulm supervised the mass of machinery deployed against Caerlaverock in 1300, and Master James of St George fulfilled the same role at Stirling in 1304. The engineer Jean de Mézos was raised to knighthood in 1254 by St Louis, while James I of Aragon employed the Italian engineer Nicoloso. Frederick II so valued his great Spanish engineer Calamandrinus that he kept him in shackles!

By the end of the twelfth century, such people had become so important that the writer Guiot de Provins was dismayed at the prospect of their dominating war. There was little risk of this, because they were rewarded much more modestly than the traditional military caste: in war, status and conformity to the canons of chivalrous behaviour counted for more.

It is an interesting reflection on the importance of status in war that the siege of Lisbon, although it was a major victory over Islam and saw the employment of siege-equipment on a large scale, never seems to have enjoyed great renown in northern Europe, almost certainly because no notable person was present.

In fact, armies usually deployed every possible technique and instrument of war when they really wanted to capture a city or castle. No single method of attack was outstandingly effective, so they all had to be tried. No machine in this period actually altered the balance of advantage between attack and defence. The best way to seize a fortification was to isolate it with overwhelming numbers which, self-evidently, could prevent any relief. This required good leadership, skill, determination, organization and plentiful supplies – difficult enough to achieve when armies were transient. It was pre-eminently kings who could achieve the conditions for success in siege warfare.

Strong centralized authority in England and France absorbed castles into the political system. They continued to have a military potential that could influence the political balance, and in times of weakness this could come to the fore. But their absorption into political systems reduced the need for sieges. In Germany after the death of Frederick II in 1250, political fragmentation mirrored that found in France at the beginning of our period, in a landscape dominated by castles; but large-scale siege employing complex machinery was rare, and the stalemate imposed by numerous cities and castles may even have increased the readiness to risk battle.

In Italy, siege was more common because the area was dominated by great cities. The crusader settlements in the Holy Land after the Third Crusade were anchored by a few cities and great castles, and they were gradually reduced by a series of epic sieges, culminating in that of Acre in 1291, by an Islamic world with a highly developed siege technique.

In all areas, fortifications continued to dominate the pattern of war. Successful siege could achieve all that victory in battle offered and perhaps more, but at the price of much the same risks. Both kinds of action required enormous political and financial investment which could easily be lost. Duke William of Normandy’s large force outside Gerberoi was taken by surprise by a sally and was scattered, as was Frederick II’s camp before Parma in 1247. Relief forces could appear: William the Conqueror could not prevent a relief entering Arques in 1054; the First Crusade had to fight off enemy armies during the sieges of Nicaea and Antioch; Philip Augustus was forced to abandon the siege of Verneuil in 1194, when Richard suddenly cut his communications; and Charles of Anjou failed before Messina in 1282, because an Aragonese army came to its relief.

Even when there were no such risks, the siege of a strong place was expensive: the siege of Bedford in 1224 was in part a political demonstration by the new king of his strength, but the employment of the latest in siege equipment and the concentration of large forces cost £1,311 18s. 2d. in wages alone, while the crushing of the Montforts in the siege of Kenilworth in 1266 required a huge effort and enormous expense.

Sieges were simply a very specialized form of battle. They did what battle in other societies was designed to do – to destroy the basic strength of the enemy and acquire it for your own use. Strong central authorities absorbed cities and castles and used them where appropriate for large-scale confrontations of their own. But where an attack on a fortification was necessary, it remained as hazardous and difficult as ever, because no development or set of developments in the course of this period altered the balance between defence and attack. In 1310, Frederick of Austria gathered an army of Rhinelanders and Swabians, and allied with the Archbishop of Salzburg to ravage Bavaria and seize Wels, before besieging the castle of Schaerding. They had a large army, against which Otto of Hungary and Duke Stephen of Bavaria could muster only hastily raised forces, but lack of food, bad weather and loss of horses forced the abandonment of the siege – the failings of armies remained much as before.

29

Background / Re: Fortifications and Siege. (approx 10/12 parts eventualy )

« on: August 15, 2013, 09:41:38 PM »

Pt10

The counterweight-trebuchet appears so suddenly that it was evidently an invention. Its creation must have been the outcome of careful thought and calculation, because performance depended on a number of variables, notably the shape of the hook that governed the release of the sling, the weight of the missile, the weight of the counterpoise, the ratio between the parts of the arm and the length of the sling. But formidable though it was, the counterweight-trebuchet did not radically alter the balance of advantage between attack and defence. Walls were built more strongly, and at Kenilworth, and later Caerphilly, the creation of large ponds around the main fortifications kept the weapon out of range.

The construction and operation of the counterweight-trebuchet was the province of specialist engineers, who were not always available, and it was ponderous to transport. Its use was, therefore, limited, and traction-trebuchets remained popular because they were simpler and cheaper. The weapon had a limited range: trials on modern replicas suggest that it was of the order of 100–120m, but at this distance projectiles would be striking the bases of walls rather than their weaker upper parts. Counterweight-trebuchets were deployed so close to their targets that the operators needed protection from the missiles of the defenders: the machine used against Dryslwyn and Newcastle Emlyn had a shelter to protect them.

The dynamics of the traction-trebuchet are so complex that it must have been very difficult to change range. For example, a lighter missile will only go further if adjustments are made to the sling and the hook. The operator must have had to make very careful judgements balancing range against weight of missile, and taking into account local topography, weather and the strength of the target, in order to locate the machine; once in situ it was unlikely to be moved. Moreover, the quality of the missiles mattered. At Castelnaudary, stones that would not shatter had to be brought from “a long league away”; even so, one of them shattered, limiting damage. At Acre, Richard used very hard stones brought from the West, which were so unusual that they were specially shown to Saladin.

Moreover, the counterweight-trebuchet could also be as useful to the defender as to the attacker. We have noted that traction-trebuchets were deployed on towers that gave them enhanced range. Counterweight-trebuchets could be built within the walls. At Toulouse, Simon de Montfort’s great “cat” was smashed by a stone from a counterweight-trebuchet, and he was killed by one thrown by a traction-trebuchet, allegedly worked by women. An illustration of the siege of Savona by the Genoese in 1227 shows a traction-trebuchet on the city wall being struck by a stone from a much larger machine fired by the attackers, and there is a similar picture in a manuscript of Peter of Eboli.

In the Muslim East, enormous towers began to appear in the fortifications of the thirteenth century in order to carry counterweight-trebuchets: the most obvious example is the great square structure known as Baybars’ Tower, which dominates the vulnerable southern wall of Crac des Chevaliers. The square towers at Bosra and the enormous round ones at Subeibe had the same function. This seems to reflect a much greater use of heavy missile-throwers in siege-warfare in the Middle East than in the West. Baybars even dragged such equipment up the terrible slopes of ’Akkar in 1271 after his success against Crac. At Acre in 1291, al-Ashraf deployed nearly 100 machines, including a great trebuchet called “The Victorious”: this was siege-warfare on a scale unknown in the West.

30

Background / Re: Fortifications and Siege. (approx 10/12 parts eventualy )

« on: August 13, 2013, 06:15:37 PM »

Pt9

In the very late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, a new word comes to be used to describe hurling engines, variously spelt trabuchetum, tribok or trabocco. In about 1270, the French engineer, Villard de Honnecourt, drew a plan for a trabucet, and his description of the counterweight-trebuchet is supported by Egidio Colonna, writing in c. 1280, and Marino Sanudo, in about 1320.

This kind of machine acted on the lever principle, but its load end was pulled down by a gang of men against a massive weight attached to its front end, normally using a winch for the purpose. The sling was then attached to the load end with a missile inserted, and when the rope securing it was released, the load end swung up, propelled by the massive weight at the front end. A radical improvement was the attachment of the weight in a pivoted basket.

The range and power obviously depended on the size of the beam and the weights employed, but this kind of engine was capable of throwing substantial missiles. The front-end weight made for much greater accuracy than could be provided by a team of men, whose pull on the traction-trebuchet inevitably varied, thus altering the range. As in the traction-trebuchet, the principle was of a beam pivoted on a triangular frame. Comparison of two good modern replicas – one Danish and the other at Caerphilly castle – indicates the scale of the machine:


                        Danish (m)    Caerphilly (m)
Arm length            6.5                6.5
Behind pivot          5.5               5.15
Tower height          4.8               4.2
Frame length          8.5               6
Frame width           7                  4.2

Massive beams of timber are used in both machines, and the Danish example has cast a 47kg missile 100m.  This would certainly be enough to inflict real damage on the main structure of a stone castle.

The earliest use of the term “trebuchet” is by Codagnellus, who says that a trabuchis was used at the siege of Castelnuovo Bocca d’Adda in 1199: this has been seized upon as evidence of the first appearance of the new counterweight-trebuchet in the west. However, on three of the occasions when he uses the word, Codagnellus seems to indicate a light weapon.

The Genoese annals of the early thirteenth century mention trebuchets along with other weapons, sometimes specifically referring to them as quickly built. Rolandino of Padua mentions trebuchets and other machines mounted on a wooden belfry tower at the siege of Mussolente in 1249. This suggests that the term could be applied to a light weapon. But an illustration from the Genoese annals of 1227 offers very different evidence. It shows large traction-trebuchets with their firing beams in the characteristic semi-horizontal rest position; by contrast, two other machines at rest have their beams vertical, which is the characteristic position of the counterweight-trebuchets. The scale of the drawing makes it clear that these were very large, heavy machines.

French evidence from the early thirteenth century indicates very clearly that the trebuchet was a large engine. The Chanson de la Croisade Albigeoise reports that Simon de Montfort used a trabuquet against Castelnaudary in September 1211: this was evidently a large and powerful machine, for with a single stone it demolished a tower, and with another a hall. Even allowing for poetic licence, this is suggestive. The Count of Toulouse attempted to retake the castle a little later, but was forced to abandon his camp and with it a trebuchet.

Later in the Chanson there is a much clearer indication that the word trabuquet is being applied to a counterweight-trebuchet. As the defenders of Toulouse in 1217 prepared to meet the crusader attack, they “ran to the ropes and wound the trebuchets”, while later we are told that, having set dressed stone in the slings of their trabuquetz “they released the ropes”. These are very clear indications of what we are dealing with: the beam of a counterweight-trebuchet had to be “wound” or tensioned down and then “released”: these actions are quite different from what was required of a traction-trebuchet. Moreover, the general descriptions offered in this poem suggest sizeable engines, for these weapons did great damage to the citadel of Toulouse held by the crusaders.

At Toulouse in 1219, trebuchets were prepared for use against Louis VIII; they were differentiated from other stone-throwers by being put in the charge of men who were experienced in using them. The Tours chronicler reports that in 1226 the Avignonese used a similar array of machines, including trebuchets, against Louis. The first mention of a trebuchet in Germany, in 1212, says that it was then regarded as a new machine.

English sources do not use the term “trebuchet” much in the thirteenth century. The Dunstable annalist says that Prince Louis of France brought a tribuchetta to the siege of Dover in 1217, but mentions only petraria, maggunella and balisterii quam fundibularii being used against Bedford in 1224, and Matthew Paris mentions the same range of machines. In 1224, Jordan the Carpenter made a trebuchet for Dover and in 1225 another for Windsor.  At the siege of Kenilworth in 1266, Edward I deployed a number of balistae, some mounted on a tower, and 11 petrarii; the defenders replied with mangonellae.

The huge machine built in August 1287 to attack Dryslwyn, and subsequently transported by between 40 and 60 oxen to batter Newcastle Emlyn into submission in January 1288, was probably a trebuchet, but the word is not used. The great engine which Edward I was so anxious to use against Stirling in 1304 is described by a chronicler as immensis tormentis and by neutral terms in the records, although it is almost certain, as Michael Prestwich comments, that a counterweight-trebuchet was actually used.