This is taken from the same book and follows on directly from the earlier piece on collective training.
The Psychology of Knights on the Battlefield
The turbulent chivalry of the eleventh and twelfth centuries had gained the reputation of having a gigantic and insatiable lust for fighting, which led to the innumerable wars of the times. This rather too simple explanation is suggested by the lyrical outpourings of some poets, whose evidence should now be re-examined. No one voiced this warlike attitude more clearly than Bertrand de Born in his well-known poem:
"I love the gay season of Eastertide, which brings forth flowers and leaves, and I love to hear the brave sound of the birds, making their song ring through the thickets, and I love to see tents and pavilions set up in the meadows. And I am overjoyed when I see knights and horses, all in armor, drawn up on the field. I love it when the chargers throw everything and everybody into confusion, and I enjoy seeing strong castles besieged, and bastions broken down and shattered, and seeing the army all surrounded by ditches, protected by palisades of stout tree-trunks jammed together.
And I love just as much to see a lord when he is the first to advance on horseback, armed and fearless, thus encouraging his men to valiant service: then, when the fray has begun, each must be ready to follow him willingly, because no one is held in esteem until he has given and received blows.
We shall see clubs and swords, gaily-colored helmets and shields shattered and spoiled, at the beginning of the battle, and many vassals all together receiving great blows, by reason of which many horses will wander riderless, belonging to the killed and wounded. Once he has started fighting, no noble knight thinks of anything but breaking heads and arms—better a dead man than a live one who is useless.
I tell you, neither in eating, drinking, nor sleeping, do I find what I feel when I hear the shout 'At them!' from both sides, and the neighing of riderless horses in the confusion, or the call 'Help! Help!', or when I see great and small together fall on the grass of the ditches, or when I espy dead men who still have pennoned lances in their ribs.
Barons, you should rather forfeit castles, towns, and cities, than give up—any of you—going to war.
Bertrand's warlike verses are not unique in their testimony. In the chanson de geste called Girart de Vienne the aged Garin de Montglane expresses himself in very similar fashion in a family council of war. Peace would make him ill, and he likes nothing better than the neighing of horses, and battle in the open field. In the Moniage Renoart a knight would even return from Paradise to fight the Moslems.
Such lyrical effusions have made scholars think that the knight felt contempt for life and human suffering. Léon Gautier, a great glorifier of chivalry, wrote:
There were two main elements in chivalrous courage, Germanic and Christian, which were not always properly blended. Too often the knights loved battle for its own sake and not for the cause they were defending. Under their mail shirts the primitive barbarian of the German forests still quivered. In their eyes the sight of red blood flowing on iron armour was a charming spectacle. A fine lance thrust transported them to the heavens. 'I prefer such a blow to eating or drinking!' cries out quite naturally one of the savage heroes of Raoul de Cambrai. This naive admiration is most apparent in the oldest epics and, in particular, in the Chanson de Roland. In the midst of a horrible battle our Frenchman, more than half dead, still finds time to criticize or admire skilful blows of lance or sword.
We read in Huizinga: 'The psychology of courage in battle has probably never been so simply and strikingly expressed as in these words from Le Jouvencel':
It is a joyous thing, a war … You love your comrade so much in war. When you see that your quarrel is just, and your blood is fighting well, tears rise to your eyes. A great sweet feeling of loyalty and of pity fills your heart on seeing your friend so valiantly exposing his body to execute and accomplish the command of our Creator. And then you are prepared to go and die or live with him, and for love not to abandon him. And out of that, there arises such a delectation, that he who has not experienced it is not fit to say what delight it is. Do you think that a man who does that fears death? Not at all, for he feels so strengthened, so elated, that he does not know where he is. Truly he is afraid of nothing.
By way of commentary, Huizinga adds that this passage 'shows the emotional ground of pure courage in combat: shuddering withdrawal from narrow egotism to the emotion of life-danger, the deep tenderness about the courage of the comrade, the voluptuousness of fidelity and self-sacrifice'. In discussing the proverbial gallantry of a knight, one scholar was so carried away that he wrote that it was easier for the Knights Templar to stand fast till the end of a battle than to subordinate their will to that of their commander and to fight in units.
Without wishing to detract from the courage, daring and self-sacrifice which the knights so freely displayed both in battles and on many other occasions, especially in the East, it is nevertheless necessary to contradict this often-repeated, usually biassed, praise of their warlike spirit and their contempt for death. Despite their great and sometimes wholly admirable gallantry, the knights were still human beings who feared for their lives in the presence of danger, and who behaved as men have always done in battle—in fear of death, mutilation, wounds and captivity. It is better to look for courage in the manner in which they braved danger, for it is important to know how they overcame their fear and what made them fight bravely.
