War - and - Literature 123

7
WAR AND LITERATURE
What can be learned by turning to contemporary writings which, in

one way or another, touched on the theme of war ? If we regard literature
as a mirror, we see reflected in it something of the growing awareness
of what war was, what it was doing to society, and how change was
coming about.1 It was through literature that society thought aloud,
commented on changing moral and political values, and reacted to
developments of which it disapproved. No one writer could be the
common voice on all matters which concerned the public; his import-
ance might lie in him being a voice in the wilderness. But some notice
of what people wrote, how, and when they did so, can give the historian
an idea of reactions to events and developments.
There are at least two ways of recounting the same event: in war these
reflect the points of view of the attacker and of the attacked. Chroniclers
(like football correspondents today) tended to describe the events of war
from the point of view of the attacker, but for whom there would have
been no action to report. It was upon action that the greatest of the late
medieval war correspondents, Jean Froissart, depended. Not over-
concerned with seeking explanations for the causes of war, Froissart's
prime interest was to report action in terms which would evoke the
spirit of chivalry among his readers, making them wish that they them-
selves had taken part in the actions described. Seen through his eyes, and
through those of his successors who wrote not so well but in a similar
chivalric tradition, war was noble because it brought out the best in
1
See L. R. Muir, Literature and society in medieval France. The mirror and the image, 1100—
1500 (London, 1985).
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I5 2 War and literature
those men, mostly knights, whose exploits came to fill his pages.
Courage, honour, perseverence, and loyalty were among the military
virtues to which Froissart wished to draw attention through his writings.
He was less concerned with the outcome of a battle than with the way
in which individuals or groups fought. This was so because his purpose
was didactic: he wanted the episodes which he described to serve as
examples for others to follow.
Froissart's message caught on. * One good man', wrote the anonymous
recorder of the deeds of Jean le Maingre, dit Bouciquaut, about 1410, 'is
worth a thousand who are not', his stated aim being to praise chivalry
by describing the life and military career of one such man. 2 Both
Froissart and the Bouciquaut author were writers who saw war through
the eyes of the individual whose deeds (' Faits' or * Gesta') were in the
mainstream of chivalric literature. Hardly less so was the text of the
deeds of Henry V, written by a clerical member of his household. In this
work the king, striving for justice through war, is confronted by the
forces of evil (the heresy and social dangers of Lollardy, and the treason
of some of his closest associates) over which he triumphs (the very
vocabulary used has a military ring about it) before winning an even
greater victory at Agincourt. Adjectives such as 'epic' and 'heroic' are
not out of place in describing this approach to the reporting of war seen
through the actions of one or more individuals.
Froissart excelled in the description of the large-scale military en-
counter, the battle. But he was also aware that war had its other side, less
noble and less admirable, in which those who had not chosen to fight,
but had none the less got involved, were caught up. France (it was natural
that it should be France, on whose land the war was mainly fought)
produced a number of writers who depicted that less-than-admirable
side of war. One such was Jean de Venette, who could not refrain from
describing the campaigns fought in the war's first decades in terms of the
physical sufferings imposed upon society by unlicensed soldiery. The
priest in Venette saw many of the acts carried out under the guise of war
as little other than sin; what sticks in the reader's mind is the bitterness
behind so much of what the chronicler wrote.
There was bitterness, too, in the personal record of events kept by an
anonymous Parisian clerk for almost the whole of the first half of the
fifteenth century; but it was a bitterness which differed a little from that
of Venette in that it reflected a deep disappointment at the political failure
of those at the head of French society to save their country from the
unfavourable effects of war. In other ways the war reflected through the
2
Le livre des fais du bon messire Jean le Maingre, dit Bouciquaut, mareschal de France et
gouuerneur de Jennes, ed. D. Lalande (Paris: Geneva, 1985), p. 238.
War and literature 153
pages of this disillusioned Parisian is of very great interest. He was not

concerned with analysing political events, which he merely recorded as
having taken place, although he sometimes added a comment on their
consequences and effects. The real importance of the work lies in other
fields. The author had much sympathy for those who suffered the
physical and moral effects of war (he underlined the futility of wholesale
destruction of crops and property, and the effects of this upon the poor
in days of rising prices), but he was also mindful of the degrading effects
which war had upon the soldier. It was one thing for men from one
country to fight those from another. But the war in Fance was a civil
war, an act of treason by one section of the community against another,
a point of view which made him reflect that while the nobility might
have wished for war, the common people, desiring only peace, had never
done so. It was here that his criticism of the nation's leadership was
expressed most vigorously; far from uniting the country, it had only
divided it.
The historian, then, can search the texts of chronicles for reflections of
opinion regarding war and what it was doing to society. But more
useful, and certainly more significant, are those works, difficult to place
in a particular category, written more specifically as contributions to an
on-going public debate about the effects of war, particularly upon
French society. By 1390 the war, after half a century, had seen the
growth to adulthood of two generations. It is not surprising that the
most significant works of this nature should have been produced during
the long generation which began in the 1380s and ended in the 1410s.
Between them, these works represent some of the worries and concerns
of literate people who looked about them and did not wholly like what
they saw.
Nor are the views of certain well-known Englishmen without signi-
ficance in this respect. To John Wyclif war was an evil thing. To his
contemporary, John Gower, the poet, it was motivated largely by greed
and was not properly justified even if waged against the Saracens: how
could a man kill another whose very face his own reflected ?3 Geoffrey
Chaucer, although no pacifist, expressed doubts about the war which,
by the late fourteenth century, had lasted so long with seemingly so little
result. T w o generations later, in 1436, when the conflict still seemed no
nearer being resolved, John Lydgate, one-time court poet and monk of
Bury St Edmunds, who was not in principle against war ('withouten
werre be-forn as I yow t o l d / W e may nat save nor keepe wele our
right') could none the less plead that 'al wer & striff be sett a-side'. In
3
Gower, Confessio amantis, trans. Tiller, p. 148.
154 War and literature
his Debate of the Horse, Goose and Sheep, a dispute between the three as
to which was the most useful and important, the horse emphasised his
role in war. So did the goose, as the provider of feathers for arrows. The
sheep, by contrast, has appeared to critics as the representative of
peace.4 That is so. But an interpretation of the poem also allows us to
see in the sheep Lydgate's vision of the meek and uncomplaining non-
combatant who is the chief sufferer in time of conflict, and whose
enemies are the more aggressive horse and goose.
What had the poets to say on the subject of war? There was nothing
new in the fact that, like the troubadours, poets should comment upon
war as they might upon any matter of public interest. Their task was to
enquire what was wrong with the world, to express their feelings with
truth, and thus to improve the lot of mankind in general. Just as poets
such as Guillaume de Machaut, Eustache Deschamps, and Geoffrey
Chaucer (in his Tale of Melibee) wrote about the proper exercise of
power by the ruler, so they also voiced criticisms (often those of an
increasingly vocal and literate middle class) against war which can be
seen as part of a wider literature of complaint.
T w o themes, particularly in French poetry, stand out. One was the
need to pursue the war with vigour and proper organisation, so as to
protect the people from death, a frequent and favourite theme in the
poetry of the day. In this way there could be peace, and the public good
could be achieved. The second was criticism of those who ignored or
abandoned their responsibilities to that good, and of the consequent
need of the king to take a firm lead to ensure the achievement and
maintenance of peace. As Lydgate wrote, * Rem publicam ye must of
riht preferre/ Alwey consideryng that pees is bet than were'. 5
H o w were the themes treated in literature other than poetry ? There
can be no doubt that, by the late fourteenth century, a general desire for
peace was manifesting itself very clearly in both France and England.
John Gower, Christine de Pisan, John Lydgate, and Alain Chartier all
wrote works in which the word * Peace' or * Paix' appeared in the title,
while in 1395 Philippe de Mezieres addressed a plea to Richard II to
bring the war against France to an end. Half a century later Jean Juvenal
des Ursins could urge his sovereign, Charles VII, along the 'road to
peace' ('la voye de paix'); the war against England, he claimed, had
gone on for too long. How did these men envisage peace? All wanted
the fighting to stop; at the same time all recognised that, in itself, such
a cessation of hostilities would not necessarily bring true and lasting
peace. What Mezieres, Pisan, and des Ursins had in common (besides
4
Minor poems of John Lydgate, ed. H. N . MacCracken (E.E.T.S., London, 1934), 11,
5
539-66. Ibid., 11, 556.
their Frenchness) was their recognition that it was the responsibility of

the crown to achieve peace. It is evident that to them peace meant not
merely an absence of war; it involved a proper balance in the social
structure, the abolition of abuses both legal and fiscal (critics still had a
very long way to travel along this particular road) and the curbing of
the tyranny of the soldier whose activities neither the crown nor any-
body else was any longer able to control. In his plea for peace, Mezieres
described his vision of an orchard surrounded by a wall, called Tuition,
a kind of Eden ruled by a King of Peace ('rex pacificus') who 'stood for
authority and the common g o o d . . . so loved and looked up to that he
might have been the father of each and all'.6 To Christine de Pisan, too,
the need for good rule was paramount; it would bring the orders of
society together in harmony and peace (' well ioyned and assembled all
in on[e]'). 7 To des Ursins, writing in the war's declining years, some-
thing must be done (the fact that he still needed to write on this theme
shows how unsuccessful earlier efforts had been); even if it required the
making of territorial concessions, the calamities of war must be ended so
that the people (des Ursins wrote as a bishop with experience of a diocese
on a 'frontier' area) should suffer no more. Justice and peace, he ex-
claimed in the vein of the psalmist, should embrace; as the attributes of
God, they were a king's best gift to his people. 8
Lydgate's other theme was that of the res publica, or common good.
Appeal to the concept went back a very long way in the Middle Ages,
in particular in works on government, in which it was often placed
against that of the particular interest, or tyranny. Whom did men of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries regard as tyrants? In England and
France it was not the king (whatever could be said of Richard II) but the
soldier who was seen as the main public malefactor, who sought the
fulfilment of his own interest at the cost of that of others. How had this
come about?
The most important attempt to face up to this question, with its
implications for all groups of society, was undoubtedly that of Honore
Bouvet, prior of Selonnet, a Benedictine monastery in the south of
France, who wrote his Tree of Battles in the 1380s. Bouvet had a good
working knowledge of civil and, in particular, canon law, and it was to
the law that he turned for a solution to the problem. War, he argued,
was not wrong when used for legitimate ends, nor when it was initiated
6
Letter to King Richard II. A plea made in 1395 for peace between England and France, ed. and
trans. G. W. Coopland, (Liverpool, 1975), pp. 54-6.
7
The middle English translation of Christine de Pisan's 'Livre du corps de policie\ ed. D.
Bornstein (Heidelberg, 1977), p. 165.
8
Ecrits politiques de Jean Juvenal des Ursins, ed. P. S. Lewis (S.H.F., 2 vols., Paris, 1978-
85), 11, 166.
and controlled by a prince. It was wrong, however, when it degenerated

into a private affair fought without proper authority, as was too often
the case at a time when the Companies roamed in France, and in
particular the south, seeking their private advantage. It was this develop-
ment in war which Bouvet condemned so strongly. The knight, with
his love of the individual exploit, who was, at exactly the same moment,
receiving the praise of Froissart, also came in for criticism. So, too, did
the merchant who, attacked and deprived of his cargo upon the high
seas, procured letters of marque from his sovereign which enabled him
to seek compensation by seizing the lawful property of a fellow national
of his attacker, either at sea or in port. According to the law of arms and
common practice, such acts of retribution were legitimate. Yet, Bouvet
argued, was it just that an innocent merchant, whose only association
with the original miscreant was a shared nationality, should suffer the
consequences of another's illegal act ? Was the cause of justice and peace
well served if such a practice were allowed to continue, for the issue of
letters of marque did little more than legalise piracy ?
Aware of the implications of his criticisms, Bouvet asked what rights
the non-combatant, whether woman, child, farmer, priest, or student
travelling to his place of study, had in time of war ? The purpose of
discussing such questions was obvious. Bouvet was trying to limit the
physical effects of war to those who actively took part in it; as far as
possible the bystanders should remain innocent of those effects. In his
view, the soldier was allowed too much freedom, and was too little
subject to the discipline of the law. For the law under which the soldier
acted, the law of arms, although intended to give some protection to all
parties, none the less gave the soldier a privileged position by emphasis-
ing his rights over those of others. A soldier must be within society, not
outside it.
Bouvet, 'one of the first to argue for the rights of non-combatants',9
was standing up for the overwhelming majority whom many saw as
the victims of the soldiery. It was their good which he equated with the
public good, the good which knighthood should be defending, not
abusing under cover of the law of arms. Only the person who exercised
sovereignty over both the soldier and the general community should
apply the laws of war: and he should do so with vigour, to see justice
done in the name of the public interest. The emphasis which emerges
from Bouvet's Tree is of the law being strongly administered by the
ruler for the benefit of all, not simply for a few, and of a vision of the
soldier as a servant, not as a master, of the community. In this way, as
9
R. L. Kilgour, The decline of chivalry as shown in the French literature of the late Middle Ages
(Cambridge, Mass., 1937), p. 168.
Lydgate pleaded, and as Mezieres had done before him, the common
good ('le bien du peuple') would be preferred to a particular one.
In essence what Bouvet was advocating was not new. 'The name of
knight is an honour, but it involves hard work', John of Salisbury had
written in the twelfth century, and some three hundred years later his
view was to be quoted with approval by Jean Juvenal des Ursins. 10 A
country's chivalry, he wrote, must defend its other members, and even
its king, in the name of the public good. The knight and, by implication,
even the common soldier, was the servant of that good; both, too,
should be ready to submit to the discipline of the law. The alternative
was that a particular interest, a form of tyranny, might prevail. The firm
attitude of the Romans of old was much read about and praised at the
end of the Middle Ages. The Bouciquaut author stressed how far Jean
le Maingre had applied the rules and discipline of chivalry as the ancients
had done, and Jean de Waurin was to praise Henry V's discipline in the
very same terms. Medieval society felt it had much to learn from the
ancient world in matters military.
Nowhere is this better seen than in the popularity in this period of the
late fourth-century handbook on war, the De re militari of Vegetius. The
twelfth and thirteenth centuries had witnessed an increasingly intellectual
approach to war: the knight must be not only a fighter but a thinker
endowed, above all, with foresight ('prudence'). He must always be
ready for whatever might happen, in particular the unexpected, and he
could prepare himself for this in several ways. He could read about the
science of war in a work such as that of Vegetius, which told him how
to organise a fighting force, how to succeed in certain situations such as
sieges, and how, through training, to make himself ready to fight. The
popularity of Vegetius's manual was undoubted, many manuscript
copies surviving to this day. 11 Beginning with that made into Anglo-
Norman for the future Edward I in the mid-thirteenth century, trans-
lations were made into the growing vernacular languages, Italian,
German, French (four), Catalan and, finally, English. Some have chosen
to regard the De re militari primarily as a handbook for war, to be kept
within reach for ease of rapid consultation in battle or siege. Be that as
it may, the work is much more than that. It is the expression of a basic
philosophy on the waging of war, intended as much as food for thought
as directive to action. Not only do the works (military, philosophical
and religious) with which it is bound tell us something of how it was
10
Ecrits politiques, ed. Lewis, 11, 240-1. See also 'iste nomen militis est nomen honoris et
laboris' (Sermons of Thomas Brinton, ed. Devlin, 1, 167).
11
C. R. Shrader, 'A handlist of extant manuscripts containing the De re militari of Flavius
Vegetius Renatus', Scriptorium, 33 (i979)» 280-305.
regarded by men of the Middle Ages; the names of the work's owners,
which include those of bishops and monks, as well as kings, princes and
soldiers, reveal to us who may have read it and been influenced by its
content.
What did Vegetius have to teach the late Middle Ages on the waging
of war ? Rather than the details of techniques or organisation, we should
be seeking generalities and principles; it is these which were important.
Crucial was the understanding that war was fought to achieve a political
end. The need to achieve victory was, therefore, paramount, so that a
soldier's value was to be judged by his effectiveness rather than by the
fine deeds, however notable, which he carried out. Victory, too, should
be won in as brief a time as possible, with a minimum of effort and the
least possible loss of life. Advance information of the enemy's plans and
movements would enable commanders to act with foresight, and if spies
could tell them what they needed to know, then they should be used,
a point endorsed by Philippe de Mezieres.12 It is clear that, in the system
advocated by Vegetius, the commander who planned in advance, and
who used his experience of war to the best effect, would be at an
advantage over the enemy. Henry V was admired for the elaborate
preparations which he carried out before invading France. Equally, and
to the contrary, Philippe de Commynes criticised the failure of Duke
Charles of Burgundy to capture Beauvais in the summer of 1472 not
because God was on the side of the defenders (which Commynes thought
he was) but because Charles had come to the siege with ladders which
were too short for scaling the town's walls and with an insufficiency of
cannon shot with which he could easily have battered down the defences.
As Commynes commented wryly, the duke ' had not come prepared or
equipped for such an eventuality', so that success was rightly denied
him. 13
Nor would numbers necessarily ensure victory. Men had constantly
before them the success in battle of Judas Maccabeus, who did not rely
on the size of his army to defeat the enemy. What mattered were other
factors. One was the quality of leadership. The recurrence of the theme
of the Nine Worthies (great military leaders of the past, of whom
Maccabeus had been one) serves as a reminder of the importance attached
to this factor. As we saw earlier, men were coming to recognise that the
ability to lead was not always an attribute of birth. Authority in an
12
J. R. Alban and C. T. Allmand, ' Spies and spying in the fourteenth century', War,
literature and politics in the late Middle Ages, ed. C. T. Allmand (Liverpool, 1976), pp.
73-101.
13
Philippe de Commynes, Memoirs. The reign of Louis XI, 1461-83, trans. M. Jones
(Harmondsworth, 1972), p. 208.
army, commented the Bouciquaut author, should be given to only the

most sensible, the most expert in arms, and the most experienced ('les
plus sages et les plus expars aux armes et les plus acoustumez'). 14 The
intention was not to deny the nobility its traditional position of com-
mand, but rather to ensure a reasonable chance of victory through
having armies led by men of above-average military ability to exercise
effective discipline and leadership over them.
To present a commander with at least a sporting chance, the army
placed under him must be composed, as far as possible, of troops who
were properly prepared to fight. Training, an important theme in the
Roman war canon, could lead to the soldier facing battle both better
prepared in the use of his arm and psychologically at an advantage over
an enemy less well trained. The insistence of Edward III that English-
men should train at the butts suggests that the teachings of Vegetius were
in the process of taking effect. William Worcester, writing in the mid-
fifteenth century, had clearly learned the message (which he probably
got from Christine de Pisan who, in her turn, had taken it from Honore
Bouvet) when he wrote * that there is none erthely thing more forto be
allowed than a countre or region whiche be furnisshed and stored withe
good men of armes well lerned and exercited', by which he meant
trained.15 Indeed, in another passage in the same work, Worcester
attributed the English loss of Normandy to the fact that the army was
not properly prepared to face the French who, in such conditions, were
the natural victors in the contest.
One final, and all important, lesson was to be learned from Vegetius
and other classical writers. Since war was waged for the general good,
defence should be a common obligation. In Italy, notably in Florence in
the first years of the fifteenth century, the classical view of civic obli-
gation in matters touching the common welfare, which stressed the
citizen's duty to help his state in moments of danger, was gaining
ground. With its implied rejection of the mercenary, the soldier tem-
porarily hired from outside to fulfil a particular military objective, and
its stress on the need for self-sufficiency, the view was also to find greater
acceptance north of the Alps, particularly in France. The story, recalled
by Alain Chartier in his Quadrilogue invectif of 1422, of the women of
Rome who helped in the defence of the Capitol by allowing their hair
to be cut and twisted into ropes 'to help the public necessity' had its
broad parallel in the role played by the women of Beauvais against the
14
Bouciquaut, ed. Lalande, p. 402.
15
William Worcester, The Boke of Noblesse addressed to King Edward IV on his invasion of
France in 1475, ed. J. G. Nichols (Roxburghe Club, i860), p. 27.
Burgundian besiegers in 1472, a role which was to win them social and
civic privileges from the king.16
In the context of a growing awareness of national consciousness, the
obligation to take part in the protection of a town or city was easily
extended to the defence of the wider common interest, the country.
Taxation for war, after all, had been justified by that very argument, and
constituted one form of national response to a military crisis, the severity
of which would be judged by the king. * If you ask your people for
money for reform', Jean Juvenal des Ursins told Charles VII in 1440,
'they will vote it very willingly' ('tres voulentiers le vous octroyent').
Des Ursins was certainly not against taxation; far from it. The king, he
was to write a few years later, can take part of his people's possessions
required to maintain the public good, since the raising of money to
satisfy public necessity is legitimate. But as both Philippe de Mezieres
and Jean de Montreuil before him had emphasised, no more than was
really necessary should be demanded, and taxes levied for war should be
used for that purpose alone.17 Mezieres's comments on royal fiscal
practice show him to have been much concerned with contemporary
developments. Taxes, he wrote more than once, were high, if not
insupportable, and were having a devastating social and economic effect,
draining the country's well-being. At a period of truce, when God had
temporarily ceased to punish his people, the king should also show
mercy. The invitation not to impose taxation during that period was all
too obvious.
Although the anonymous author of the poem Against the King's Taxes
(c.1340), taking the part of the English rural community, had stressed the
evil effects of taxation, what emerged from the works of these com-
mentators was not opposition to taxation but deep hostility to mis-
appropriation and misuse. In the England of 1340 it was being said that
'not half the tribute raised in the land reaches the king'.18 Fifty years
later in France, Mezieres could voice much the same criticism: money
was not being properly collected, but was being diverted into the wrong
hands. What he meant by this is clear. Writing like a fourteenth-century
Jeremiah, Mezieres could point out that the life of luxury being led at
court was swallowing up the money intended for defence and re-
16
Quadrilogue invectif, ed. Droz, p. 31; R. Vaughan, Valois Burgundy (London, 1975). P-
156.
17
Ecrits politiques, ed. Lewis, 1, 320-1: Philippe de Mezieres, Le songe du vieil pelerin, ed.
G. W. Coopland (Cambridge, 1969), n, 66; Jean de Montreuil, Opera. II. Voeuvre
historique et pole'mique, ed. N. Grevy-Pons, E. Ornato, and G. Ouy (Turin, 1975), 220/
424.
18
J. C o l e m a n , English literature in history, 1350-1400. Medieval readers and writers (London,
1981).
conquest, in a word for the public good. Gifts, pensions, buildings and
other forms of expensive living were draining the funds needed for war.
The theme was thus already familiar when it was taken up by Jean
Juvenal des Ursins in 1452. In a moral tone he pointed out how John II
may have been punished (by defeat and capture) in 1356 because wrong-
ful use had been made of taxes, a thing which a king, in all conscience,
should not allow to happen. More recently, he admonished Charles VII,
money raised for war had been used to pay for jousting and luxury in
a period of truce, something which was bringing no advantage to the
public welfare. Both critics were indignant about a phenomenon
developing before their very eyes, but which they were powerless to
stop, namely the levying of taxes when there was no war to justify
them.
A second matter troubled them. Mezieres, Montreuil, and des Ursins
were united in their indictment of the growing body of royal officials
needed to administer the collection and expenditure of public money.
Describing them as extravagant upstarts whose corrupt ways and
practices enabled them to become rich to the point when they could buy
the lands of knights impoverished by the rising costs of war, Mezieres
denounced their abuses and demanded that they should give proper
account of their stewardship. The theme was again to find a place in the
writings of des Ursins: money, he wrote, which had been raised for
purposes of war was being spent on high living and building by royal
administrators who were, in any case, far too numerous and grossly
overpaid from public funds which, very significantly, he termed the
'blood of the people' ('le sane du peuple').
Reform was needed. Let royal officers, both Mezieres and des Ursins
wrote, be made regularly accountable not to one another, but to the
king himself. Mezieres favoured a large measure of decentralisation in
the collection and redistribution of war taxes: people would be more
ready to pay if they knew that collectors had been chosen locally and if
they could see how the money was being spent. Besides, the number of
officials could thus be considerably reduced. And, in order to re-establish
public confidence, each locality should appoint a suitable person to hear
disputes regarding the levying of such taxes with, of course, right of
appeal from his decisions. Such proposals, Mezieres thought, would find
general approval; the only persons to object would be the royal officers
and a few others who had hitherto controlled the use of taxes, and who
stood to lose from any change to a system whose development they had
turned to their advantage over a period of half a century or so.
Some literature could be a vehicle of criticism and complaint, intended
to show what was wrong with a society heavily involved in war over a
long period of years. Other literature was, in the widest meaning of the
word, didactic: it was a spur to action, a guide to ensure that things were
done - and well done - for the good of society. Victory in battle might
be won with divine favour; equally, God helped those who helped
themselves. There were * reasonable' lessons to be considered about the
conduct of war which, at worst, could help avoid defeat, at best, might
bring victory. Man was learning to break out of a fatalistic spirit and to
make his own contribution to events more positively and powerfully.
The military and historical literature of the period helped him do this.
Just as the Bouciquaut author wrote (in much the same vein as Froissart
and others had done) 'to recall to mind the acts of good men so that they
may give courage and inspiration to noblemen who hear them to try to
follow them and do likewise', so he reported that Jean le Maingre liked
to hear readings from books about God and the saints' and from the Fais
des rommains and authentic histories'.19 This work, which dated from the
early thirteenth century, and had originally been planned as a history of
Rome, proved to be a best seller, drawing upon some of the main
historical writers of Rome, and presenting history as a series of deeds
with, as might be expected of a work intended for a chivalric audience,
warlike action taking the limelight. Three other works concerned with
war were also popular. The Facta et dicta memorabilia of the first-century
writer, Valerius Maximus, like the Fais des rommains, was much used as
a source of good stories and didactic points; while the Stratagemata of
Frontinus, of the same period, was a compilation of military maxims
illustrated by reference to historical events culled from a wide group of
classical writers. The last and, as has been suggested, the most influential
was Vegetius's De re militari of the late fourth century, a book whose
philosophical message was at least as important as its military one.
All four works were translated into the developing vernacular
languages, and thus came to be read in their own right. Jean Gerson
recommended that the dauphin should have copies of Valerius Maximus,
Frontinus, and Vegetius in his library, while rulers such as Edward I,
Edward III, and Charles V owned manuscripts of Vegetius. The first
French translation was commissioned late in the thirteenth century by
the knight, Jean de Brienne, count of Eu, and the English one was
prepared for Thomas, Lord Berkeley, in 1408; while among the other
military owners of Vegetius's work were Sir John Fastolf and Antonio
da Marsciano, the fifteenth-century Italian condottiere, who had a good
collection of military books. 20
19
Bouciquaut, ed. Lalande, pp. 410, 416.
20
M. Mallett, ' Some notes on a fifteenth-century condottiere and his library: Count
Antonio da Marsciano', Cultural aspects of the Italian Renaissance. Essays in honour of Paul
Oskar Kristeller, ed. C. H. Clough (Manchester: New York, 1976), pp. 202-15.
But it was not necessary to own the works themselves to appreciate

the main points they were making. In the twelfth century John of
Salisbury, who owned a copy of Vegetius, had incorporated substantial
extracts from his work into his own Policraticus; Vincent of Beauvais
was to do the same, and their example was followed by Giles of Rome,
whose De regimine principum, written late in the thirteenth century, was
perhaps the most popular contribution to the large and still developing
' Mirror' (or ' How to be a Good Prince') literature of the Middle Ages.
As Aquinas had pointed out, a ruler had to defend his people; to do so
he must be able and ready to fight, and it was in the provision of advice
as how best to fulfil this obligation that the work of Giles of Rome was
so useful. When Christine de Pisan wrote her Livre du corps de policie in
the same tradition early in the fifteenth century, she also quoted Valerius
Maximus and Vegetius frequently, while in her very popular Livre des
fais d'armes et de chevalerie, destined to be translated into English by
William Caxton, she relied on the same two authors, adding to them
Frontinus and, most significantly, Honore Bouvet, whose ideas thus
reached a wider public.
In this way war literature, whether of ancient or more recent times,
whether it consisted of whole texts or * moralised' ones, in which the
distilled wisdom of past historians or writers on war, significantly
termed 'the seyng of the masters of philosophic', was incorporated into
updated works, came to have a practical influence. In all cases the aim
was unashamedly didactic: people read or were read to (as Charles the
Bold, in camp before Neuss in 1474, had read to him, * Valerius
Maximus, Livy or some book about Alexander the Great or of battles')
partly for distraction, partly for what they could learn.21
Learn what ? About the art of war ? It has to be recognised that since
the examples which they read came from the very distant past, it was
more the generalities of military experience than the niceties of military
art, the general rather than the particular, which they could obtain from
books. But since, too, the popular form of didactic literature for princes
contained much advice on the place of war in the polity, there were
things here which the ruler, as well as the soldier, might usefully learn.
Much of this literature was ultimately about the good of the state, its
rule, and its defence against outside enemies. It was' les choses pourfitables
pour le royaume et la chose publique d'icellui' which concerned writers
such as Mezieres and, in particular, Bouvet. The title of Bouvet's work,
the Tree of Battles, suggests a more than passing interest in war. Yet, in
the final analysis, his greater concern was with peace, a peace in which
the soldier was not allowed to practise violence for his own end, but
used his strength and training for the good of the whole community.
21
Cited by R. Vaughan, Charles the Bold (London, 1973), p. 163.

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7

WAR AND LITERATURE

What can be learned by turning to contemporary writings which, in

pages of this disillusioned Parisian is of very great interest. He was not

their Frenchness) was their recognition that it was the responsibility of

and controlled by a prince. It was wrong, however, when it degenerated

army, commented the Bouciquaut author, should be given to only the

But it was not necessary to own the works themselves to appreciate

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