Journal of Medieval Military History. Volume XVII [17] 1783273925, 9781783273928

Citation preview

CONTENTS ANDREW BOLINGER EHUD GALILI AND AVRAHAM RONEN HELEN J. NICHOLSON

Baktash the Forgotten: The Battle of Tell Bashir (1108) and the Saljuq Civil Wars The External Fortifications of ʿAtlit Castle, the Only Unconquered Crusader Stronghold in the Holy Land Holy Warriors, Worldly War: Military Religious Orders and Secular Conflict

DONALD J. KAGAY

Elionor of Sicily: A Mediterranean Queen’s Two Lives of Family, Administration, Diplomacy, and War

L. J. ANDREW VILLALON

Wives, Mistresses, Lovers, and Daughters: The Fortunes of War for Royal Women in Late Fourteenth Century Castile. OR: A Gender Limitation on Writing History from Chronicles

MICHAEL HARBINSON

FABRIZIO ANSANI KEN MONDSCHEIN AND OLIVIER DUPUIS MICHAEL LIVINGSTON

The Lance in the Fifteenth Century: How French Cavalry Overcame the English Defensive System in the Latter Part of the Hundred Years War Supplying the Army, 1498: The Florentine Campaign in the Pisan Countryside Fencing, Martial Sport, and Urban Culture in Early Modern Germany: The Case of Strasbourg Note: An Army on the March and in Camp – Guillaume Guiart’s Branche des royaus lingnages

Cover: Coll. Bibliothèques municipales de Chambéry, MS13, fo. 105r (circa 1170–1190). The Italian artist who illuminated this copy of Gratian’s Decretum beautifully captured the deadly seriousness of medieval warfare – for townsmen as well as knights. Image used by generous permission of the Bibliothèques municipales de Chambéry.

JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL MILITARY HISTORY  VIII JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL MILITARY HISTORY

The Journal’s hallmark is broad chronological, geographic and thematic coverage of the subject, bearing witness to ‘the range and richness of scholarship on medieval warfare, military institutions, and cultures of conflict that characterises the field’.  HISTORY

XVII

J ournal of

MEDIEVAL MILITARY HISTORY

FRANCE, DEVRIES, ROGERS (editors)

·   XVII · Edited by JOHN FRANCE, KELLY DEVRIES and CLIFFORD J. ROGERS

JOURNAL OF

Medieval Military History Volume XVII

JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL MILITARY HISTORY

Editors Clifford J. Rogers Kelly DeVries John France ISSN 1477–545X

The Journal, an annual publication of De re militari: The Society for Medieval Military History, covers medieval warfare in the broadest possible terms, both chronologically and thematically. It aims to encompass topics ranging from traditional studies of the strategic and tactical conduct of war, to explorations of the martial aspects of chivalric culture and mentalité, examinations of the development of military technology, and prosopographical treatments of the composition of medieval armies. Editions of previously unpublished documents of significance to the field are included. The Journal also seeks to foster debate on key disputed aspects of medieval military history. The editors welcome submissions to the Journal, which should be formatted in accordance with the style-sheet provided on De re militari’s website (www.­ deremilitari.org), and sent electronically to the editor specified there.

JOURNAL OF

Medieval Military History Volume XVII

Edited by JOHN FRANCE KELLY DeVRIES CLIFFORD J. ROGERS

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Contributors 2019 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2019 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978–1–78327–392–8 The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com

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Contents

1. Baktash the Forgotten: The Battle of Tell Bashir (1108) and the Saljuq Civil Wars Drew Bolinger

1

2. The External Fortifications of ʿAtlit Castle, the Only Unconquered Crusader Stronghold in the Holy Land Ehud Galili and Avraham Ronen

21

3. Holy Warriors, Worldly War: Military Religious Orders and Secular Conflict Helen J. Nicholson

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4. Elionor of Sicily: A Mediterranean Queen’s Two Lives of Family, Administration, Diplomacy, and War Donald J. Kagay

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5. Wives, Mistresses, Lovers, and Daughters: The Fortunes of War for Royal Women in Late Fourteenth Century Castile. OR: A Gender Limitation on Writing History from Chronicles L. J. Andrew Villalon

103

6. The Lance in the Fifteenth Century: How French Cavalry Overcame the English Defensive System in the Latter Part of the Hundred Years War Michael Harbinson

141

7. Supplying the Army, 1498: The Florentine Campaign in the Pisan Countryside Fabrizio Ansani

201

8. Fencing, Martial Sport, and Urban Culture in Early Modern Germany: 237 The Case of Strasbourg Ken Mondschein and Olivier Dupuis

vi Contents

9. Note: An Army on the March and in Camp – Guillaume Guiart’s Branche des royaus lingnages Michael Livingston

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List of Contributors

273

List of Illustrations

2. The External Fortifications of ʿAtlit Castle, the Only Unconquered Crusader Stronghold in the Holy Land Figure 1. Aerial view depicting the geomorphological features of the studied area. Figure 2. The Crusader complex of ʿAtlit, Dec 1937. Figure 3. The ʿAtlit peninsula and the main archaeological features, looking north. Figure 4. The Phoenician Harbor in the northern bay, looking northwest. Figure 5. Reconstruction of the Destroit fortress. Figure 6. Aerial view of the Destroit fortress, looking east. Figure 7. The Crusader Castle Chateau Pèlerin. Figure 8a. A proposed reconstruction of the castle, looking north-east. Figure 8b. Aerial photo of the ʿAtlit peninsula 1938. Figure 9. The northern sea-wall and the tower in 1927, looking west. Figure 10. One of the megalithic standing stones of the barrier on the sea bottom. Figure 11. A possible reconstruction of the wall, the tower and the marine barrier. Figure 12. Multi-step quarry on the ʿAtlit ridge, looking west. Figure 13. Atlit complex and the main features. Figure 14. Mega-ashlar quarry on the ʿAtlit ridge, looking west, figure included to show scale. Figure 15. Section of the rock-cut defense wall on the ʿAtlit ridge, looking south-west. Figure 16. Vertical detaching corridor on the rock-cut wall, looking south-west. Figure 17. The detaching channel and slit, looking south. Figure 18. Aerial view of the place where the detaching was not completed. Figure 19. Vertical detaching corridor on the ʿAtlit ridge, looking west. Figure 20. The detaching channel and a slit, looking north. Figure 21. Schematic cross-section, demonstrating the detaching system

23 23 24 25 27 27 28 29 29 30 31 31 32 33 35 35 36 36 38 38 39 40

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Figure 22. Schematic cross-section showing kurkar mega-blocks quarried from the eastern slope of the ʿAtlit ridge. Figure 23. Schematic model depicting the quarrying method of megablocks. Figure 24. Schematic model depicting the quarrying method of the mega-blocks from the ridge and sub-dividing them. Figure 25. Rock-cut vertical surface and a detaching corridor in a quarry near Mi’ilya. Figure 26. The Nahal Oren channel looking east, 24.5.1929. Figure 27. Rock-cut passage Bab el-Ajal crossing the ʿAtlit ridge, looking west. Figure 28. Rock-cut passage Bab el-Hawa and the rock-cut wall, looking west. Figure 29. Cart tracks in Bab el-Hawa, looking west. Figure 30. Transverse rock-cut road, looking east. Figure 31. Aerial view of quarried enclosure (quarrymen’s camp) and Bab el-Makati. Figure 32. Quarried enclosure (quarrymen’s camp) near Bab el-Makati, looking west. Figure 33. Longitudinal stone-built road looking north. Figure 34. Livestock feeding troughs in the enclosure adjacent to Bab el-Makati. Figure 35. Stone-built causeway crossing the salt pans, looking east. Figure 36. Traces left by the rock-splitting wedges clearly seen along the rock-cut wall. Figure 37. Working tools depicted on tombstones from the Crusader graveyard.

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5. Wives, Mistresses, Lovers, and Daughters. Table 1. Ten Castilian Royal Women Affected by the Wars of Castile (1350–1387). Figure 1. Genealogical Chart of Castilian Royal Women.

112 113

6. The Lance in the Fifteenth Century. Figure 1. Detail from Tournament with Lances (1509) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, showing the rondelle with the arrêt de lance positioned behind the handgrip. Figure 2. L’écu énchancré, the notched, curved, horseman’s shield of the fifteenth century. Figure 3. The arrêt de cuirasse with hinge.

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Figure 4a. Italian or Flemish cuirass c 1490 showing attachments for the 149 arrêt à vervelles. Figure 4b. A later detached arrêt à vervelles of Spanish origin. 150 Figure 5. Milanese horse armor c 1450 by Pier Innocenzo da Faerno, 192 showing a full crinet with cruppers protecting the horse’s rear. 7. Supplying the Army, 1498. The Florentine Campaign in the Pisan Countryside. Figure 1. Map of the Florentine Campaign in the Pisan Countryside. Figure 2. Expenditures on Munitions of the Florentine Republic (Gold Florins) December 1495 – December 1499 Figure 3. Expenditures on Gunners of the Florentine Republic (Gold Florins) December 1495 – December 1499 Figure 4. Expenditures on Heavy and Light Cavalry of the Florentine Republic (Gold Florins) December 1495 – December 1499 Figure 5. Expenditures on Infantry of the Florentine Republic (Gold Florins) December 1495 – December 1499 Figure 6. Overall Expenditures on the Army of the Florentine Republic (Gold Florins) December 1495 – December 1499 Figure 7. Overall Military Expenditures of the Florentine Republic (Gold Florins) December 1495 – December 1499 Table 1. War Budget of the Florentine Republic (Gold Florins) June 1498 – December 1498 Table 2. Munitions Purchases of the Florentine Republic June 1498 – December 1498

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8. Fencing, Martial Sport, and Urban Culture in Early Modern Germany: The Case of Strasbourg Figure 1. Tobias Stimmer, Der große Schießstand bei Straßburg (1576). Figure 2. Strasbourg from Hartmann Schedel’s Liber Chronicarum CXL (1493) Figure 3. Strasbourg in Wolf-Dietrich Klebeband’s Städtebilder (1570) Figure 4. Matthäus Merian’s Topographia Alsatiae (1644), showing the development from medieval defenses to countermeasures against gunpowder weapons. Figure 5. Frequency of fencing competitions. Figure 6. Map of fencing master origins. Figure 7. Title page from Meyer’s Gründtliche Beschreibung. Figure 8. Illustration from Meyer’s Gründtliche Beschreibung. Figure 9. Illustration from Meyer’s Gründtliche Beschreibung. Figure 10. A Fechtschule held in an inn yard in Nuremberg in 1623.

238 243 244 244 246 248 252 253 253 257

x Illustrations

Table 1. Towns Most Represented in the Sources. Table 2. Fencing Masters with the Most Applications Table 3. Most-Represented Professions

248 249 249

1 Baktash the Forgotten: The Battle of Tell Bashir (1108) and the Saljuq Civil Wars* Andrew Bolinger

Occurring only a decade after the Crusaders first arrived in Syria, the battle of Tell Bashir is unique for battles of the time. Though Muslims and Christians had certainly served alongside each other before, this was the first instance since the crusade where crusaders and Turks allied with each other to fight their co-religionists. Both the surviving sources as well as modern recapitulations vary widely in their retelling of how and why the battle happened. This article seeks to clear up why this confusion exists both in the sources and in our modern literature. Instead of synthesizing the many accounts of the battle, it argues that by following the most robust account provided we end up with the narrative that best coheres with what we know about the characters involved. In the autumn of 1108, a curious battle unfolded near the castle of Tell Bashir.1 Not unusual in tactics or strategy, the battle stands out because Christians and Muslims fought on both sides against their co-religionists a mere eleven years after the first crusaders reached Syria. Frankish Count Baldwin II of Edessa allied with Emir Jawuli Saqao of Mosul against the alliance of Tancred, the regent of Antioch, and Prince Ridwan of Aleppo. Though hard pressed, Tancred’s coalition routed the forces of Edessa and Mosul. However, saying anything beyond

*

1

I owe great thanks to those who helped me refine this paper. Of these, first and foremost is Jochen Burgtorf, who gave me several rounds of comments and advice. I also owe thanks to Stephen O’Connor and Maged Mikhail for their comments, insights, and encouragements. Finally, I am thankful for helpful feedback from anonymous reviewers. “Tell Bashir” is also known as “Turbessel,” “Tall Bashir,” or “Tell Baschir.” Likewise, “Jawuli Saqao” is rendered as “Cavli Sakavu,” “Djavaly Secava,” or “Chawli Saqawa” while “Baktash” is sometimes transliterated as “Bektash,” “Artash,” or “Ertash.” While there is certainly value in accurate transliteration, the wide variation in how these names have been transliterated only muddles the story for those who rely on translations. Thus, proper nouns throughout this work will reflect the usage in Donald Richards’ translations, regardless of whether they are the best transliterations available. See Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi’l-Ta’rikh, trans. Donald S. Richards, in The Annals of the Saljuq Turks: Selections from al-Kamil fi’l-Ta’rikh of ‘Izz al-Din Ibn al-Athir (New York, 2002) and The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir for the Crusading Period from al-Kamil fi’l-Ta’rikh. Part 1: The Years 491–541/1097–1146: The Coming of the Franks and the Muslim Response (Burlington, 2005).

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this level of summary is bound to conflict with some other scholar’s work.2 The disagreements are so pronounced that some authors do not even seem to be referencing the same event.3 These disagreements are a byproduct of synthesizing diverse sources into a single narrative. While normally reliable, synthesis is the wrong methodology for understanding the battle of Tell Bashir because of the great disparity between many of the sources in terms of thoroughness and reliability. Instead, we should break with normal methodology and try to make a coherent narrative out of the single best source we have: Ibn al-Athir. His work stands out among the extant sources as vastly more detailed and cohesive, but is sidelined because his version frequently conflicts with Latin accounts. In contrast to modern authors who cast the casus belli as local Latin politics, Ibn al-Athir posits that imperial Saljuq politics led to the battle of Tell Bashir. Specifically, that Jawuli Saqao tried to elevate a Saljuq prince to challenge Sultan Muhammad for the Saljuq domains. Despite the battle’s curious arrangement of protagonists and large ramifications for the region, it is, on average, poorly detailed in the primary sources.4 Some accounts are short – bordering on dismissive – while others are so obviously exaggerated that they are normally dismissed.5 The primary sources do 2

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A note on the usage of titles in this paper: Arabic and Turkish titles from this period do not translate evenly to Western titles. For example, malik is used for king or sometimes just local lord. I will use a very simple system: the widely acknowledged leader of the Saljuq Empire will be called Sultan, all other members of the Saljuq royal line will be called Princes, and non-Saljuq lords will be called Emirs. I do this not to devalue the titles that were used by locals, but because I want to make salient which actors might have had imperial ambitions due to their ancestry as opposed to those whose position prevented them from ever becoming Sultan. Paul Cobb and Harold Fink present two such incompatible versions. See Paul Cobb, The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades (Oxford, 2014), p. 115; Harold Fink, “The Foundation of the Latin States, 1099–1118,” in A History of the Crusades, Volume I: The First Hundred Years, ed. Marshall Baldwin and Kenneth Setton (Philadelphia, 1958), 393–94. Albert of Aachen, Historia Hierosolymitanae expeditionis 9.46, 10.37–38, 11.10–22, trans. Susan B. Edgington (Oxford, 2007), pp. 700–03, 752–55, 780–97; “The First and Second Crusade from an Anonymous Syrian Chronicle,” ed. and trans. Arthur S. Tritton, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 1 (1933), pp. 80–82; Fulcher of Chartres, Historia Hierosolymitana expeditionis 2.28.1–5, trans. Frances R. Ryan and ed. Harold S. Fink (Knoxville, 1969), p. 180; Gregory Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon Syriacum 10.273, trans. Ernest Budge (Amsterdam, 1976), pp. 241–42; Ibn Abi Tayyi, “Un Épisode Épico-féodal Franc dans une Chronique Arabe,” ed. and trans. Claude Cahen, La Noblesse au Moyen Age, XIe– XVe Siècles: Essais à la Mémoire de Robert Boutruche, no. 1 (Paris, 1976), pp. 129–32; Ibn al-Adim, La Cronique d’Alep, in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades: Historiens Orientaux (Paris, 1884), 3:595–96; Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi’l-Ta’rikh 10.457–66 (Burlington, 2005), pp. 136–42; Matthew of Edessa, Chronicle 3.39–43, trans. Ara Dostourian (New York, 1993), pp. 201–03; Michael the Syrian, Chronicle 15.10, 15.14, trans. Matti Moosa (Teaneck, 2014), pp. 625–27, 638–39; William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea 11.8, trans. Emily A. Babcock and August C. Krey, vol. 1 (New York, 1943), pp. 474–75. For example, “The First and Second Crusade from an Anonymous Syrian Chronicle” is largely ignored by modern authors presumably for the author’s excessive imagination regarding the interactions between Joscelin and Jawuli. See Thomas Asbridge, The Creation of the Princi-



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not even agree regarding who was at the battle, much less why it was fought.6 Understandably, these challenges have complicated modern attempts to build a robust synthetic account. To the extent that modern authors address the battle of Tell Bashir, they reflect the original sources’ lack of consensus regarding how or why the events transpired. Of the ten sources for the battle of Tell Bashir, the four that came from the Latin states (Albert of Aachen, Fulcher of Chartres, William of Tyre, and Matthew of Edessa) have had the largest impact on modern works. For instance, out of thirty-two modern accounts of Tell Bashir, 75 percent state in some fashion that the battle was over control of the lordship of Edessa, while about 34 percent claim the Edessans provoked the battle.7 Both ideas primarily stem from

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pality of Antioch, 1098–1130 (Woodbridge, 2000) where despite substantial overlap in content the work is hardly utilized. Likewise, the chronicle of Ibn Abi Tayyi asserts Joscelin traveled all the way to Constantinople to gain aid in defeating Tancred, and is likewise reasonably dismissed by modern authors as wildly implausible. For a full breakdown of each source, see Andrew Bolinger, “The Crusaders’ Sultan: Reinterpreting the Battle of Tell Bashir and its Implications for Twelfth-Century Franco-Turkish Political Relation in Northern Syria” (Master’s thesis, California State University Fullerton, 2016), pp. 17–29. Monique Amouroux-Mourad, Le Comté d’Edesse: 1098–1150 (Paris, 1988), pp. 66–67; Thomas Asbridge, The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land (New York, 2010), pp. 145–47, and The Creation of the Principality of Antioch, 1098–1130 (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 111–14, 118, ; Malcolm Barber, The Crusader States (New Haven, 2012), p. 84; Aziz Basan, The Great Saljuqs: A History (New York, 2010), pp. 116–17; Claude Cahen, La Syrie du Nord à l’Époque des Croisades et la Principauté Franque d’Antioche (Paris, 1940), pp. 248–50; Cobb, The Race for Paradise, p. 115; Işin Demīrkent, Urfa Haçli Kontluğu Tarihi (1098–1118) (Ankara, 1990), pp. 119–25; Taef El-Azhari, The Saljūqs of Syria: During the Crusades 463–549 A.H./1070–1154 A.D. (Berlin, 1997), pp. 128–29; Fink, “Foundation of the Latin States,” pp. 393–94; John France, The Crusades and the Expansion of Catholic Christendom, 1000–1714 (New York, 2005), p. 116; Rene Grousset, The Epic of the Crusades, trans. Noel Lindsay (New York, 1970), pp. 56–58, and idem, Histoire des Croisades et du Royaume Franc de Jerusalem (Paris, 1934), pp. 433–43; Stefan Heidemann, Die Renaissance der Städte in Nordsyrien und Nordmesopotamien (Leiden, 2002), p. 208; Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (New York, 2000), p. 82; Andrew Jotischky, Crusading and the Crusader States (Harlow, 2004), pp. 69–71; Michael Köhler, Alliances and Treaties between Frankish and Muslim Rulers in the Middle East: Cross-Cultural Diplomacy in the Period of the Crusades, trans. Peter Holt, ed. Konrad Hirschler (Leiden, 2013), pp. 65–66, 96–98; Bernhard Kugler, Bohemond und Tankred, Fürsten von Antiochien: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Normannen in Syrien (Tubingen, 1862), pp. 38–39, and idem, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge (Berlin, 1880), p. 90; Amin Maalouf, The Crusades through Arab Eyes, trans. Jon Rothschild (London, 1984), p. 72; Cristopher MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance (Philadelphia, 2008), p. 86; Hans Eberhard Mayer, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, 10th ed. (Stuttgart, 2005), p. 92; Joseph Michaud, The History of the Crusades, Volume I, trans. William Robson (New York, 1891), p. 285; Alan Murray, “Baldwin II,” in The Crusades: An Encyclopedia, ed. Alan Murray, vol. 1 (Santa Barbara, 2006), p. 135; Robert Nicholson, Tancred: A Study of his Career and Work in Relation to the First Crusade and the Establishment of the Latin States in Syria and Palestine (Chicago, 1940), pp. 170–78, and Joscelyn I Prince of Edessa (Urbana, 1954), pp. 12–23; Abdülkerīm Özaydin, Sultan Muhammed Tapar Devrī Selçuklu Tahīrī (498– 511/1105–1118) (Ankara, 1990), pp. 53–55; Cihan Piyadeoglu, “Büyük Selçuklu Devleti Emîri Atabeg Çavli Sakavu” in Istanbul Universitesi Edebiyat Fakultesi Tarih Dergisi, ed. Ali İhsan

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these four sources. The question of which leader or leaders are most responsible for this battle divides scholars even more: 69 percent blame Tancred, 53 percent blame Jawuli, 37 percent blame Ridwan, and 34 percent blame Baldwin. Given that Albert of Aachen is the only source that places notable blame on Tancred, his account clearly has a disproportionate impact on scholarship.8 This bias arises because the synthesizing process favors convergence of data.9 As these four “crusader” sources mostly agree with each other, they form a consensus bloc that heavily influences modern accounts.10 However, as already mentioned, all four of the sources in question are unreliable in relation to this particular battle, so synthesis is a poorly suited methology. First, William of Tyre copied Fulcher of Chartres’ version of the battle, so his “agreement” with the others is easily sidelined and the validity of his version rests entirely on Fulcher.11 Second, there are strong reasons to doubt the account of Albert of Aachen in regards to this particular battle. In his 1928 defense of Albert of Aachen’s chronicle, Andre Beaumont Jr. enumerated the faults of the text. While he does exonerate the text as a whole, a majority of his problems with Albert’s work center on the battle of Tell Bashir.12 Albert’s overt pro-Lorrainer and anti-Norman bias taints his portrayal of this conflict where those two factions came to blows. The only remaining Latin source, Fulcher of Chartres, seems rather unbiased if only because he says so little. In fact, he is so terse that one might suspect he wanted to skip the battle entirely.13 As one of Fulcher’s dominant purposes in writing was to call Europeans to partake in holy pilgrimage and settle the Latin East, the affair at Tell Bashir – where Christians allied with Muslims to kill other Christians – undermined his goals.14 Any in-depth telling of what

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Gencer (Istanbul, 2003), pp. 50–53; Reinhold Röhricht, Geschichte des Königreichs Jerusalem (1100–1291) (Innsbruck, 1898), pp. 74–75; Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, Volume II: The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East 1100–1187 (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 107–15; Pascal Sabourin, “Baudoin de Bourq, Croisé, Comte d’Edesse, Roi de Jerusalem. Proposition de Lecture d’un Itinéraire Peu Ordinaire,” Revue Historique Ardennaise 31 (1996), pp. 8–9; William Stevenson, The Crusaders in the East: A Brief History of the Wars of Islam with the Latins in Syria during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1907), pp. 83–86. Albert of Aachen is also the most thorough of the Latin sources so his disproportionate impact does make some sense, but that speaks less to the thoroughness of Albert than the terseness of other Latin sources. Bolinger, Crusaders’ Sultan, pp. 30–35. By “crusader” sources I am designating sources that were written or reported from the lands held by crusader lords of the Latin east. I avoid “Latin” because Matthew of Edessa is Armenian and I avoid “Christian” because some Christian sources like Michael the Syrian and BarHebraeus wrote from lands held by Muslim Turks. William of Tyre, Deeds Done Beyond the Sea 11.8, pp. 474–75. Andre Beaumont, Jr., “Albert of Aachen and the County of Edessa,” in The Crusades and Other Historical Essays: Presented to Dana C. Munro by His Former Students, ed. Louis Paetow (Freeport, 1928), pp. 137–38. Fulcher of Chartres, Historia 2.28.1–5, p. 180. Harold Fink, introduction to Historia Hierosolymitana expeditionis, trans. Frances R. Ryan and ed. Harold S. Fink (Knoxville, 1969), pp. 24–25.



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happened at Tell Bashir violates his big picture goal, so he marginalized the battle as much as he could. The sole Armenian account of the battle, Matthew of Edessa’s, is problematic in ways very similar to Fulcher’s account. Matthew was first and foremost an Armenian clergyman concerned with steering the Armenian people toward holiness. While Matthew was sympathetic with Baldwin’s legal right to rule Edessa, he was also aghast that Baldwin allied with a Muslim Turk, Jawuli, to settle a dispute between two Christians.15 This moral conundrum leads to a short retelling not unlike Fulcher’s. Matthew was either oblivious to Ridwan’s alliance with Tancred, or he deliberately ignored it to better relate a clear moral message: God judges allying with Turks. Had the outcome of the battle been reversed, we might very well have heard only of Ridwan’s involvement and not Jawuli’s. As the account is so very moralistic and focused on explaining who should be blamed rather than what happened, it should not be the primary basis for conclusions regarding the battle. Thus, all four of the crusader sources that formed the core consensus of the synthetic narrative are questionable, if not unreliable, in regards to this particular battle. In contrast to the consensus group, the remaining sources diverge widely. Ibn al-Qalanisi, Ralph of Caen, and Usama ibn Munqidh are unfortunately silent regarding the battle despite being contemporaries of the battle who likely had knowledge of the events. On the other hand, Michael the Syrian, the anonymous Syrian Chronicle, and Ibn Abi Tayyi relate unbelievable tales that usually involve Joscelin doing something incredible, like round-trip travel from Tell Bashir to Constantinople in less than one month or being cleared of all his financial debts to Jawuli by an awesome display of manliness.16 While Ibn al-Adim’s version of the battle is less fanciful, it reads like bad propaganda aimed to exonerate Prince Ridwan from any wrongdoing in the affair and to vilify Ridwan’s enemies: Jawuli and Joscelin. According to Ibn al-Adim, those two conspired to capture both Aleppo and Antioch (a laughable goal), and thereby forced the alliance between Ridwan and Tancred. Moreover, Jawuli (being the untrustworthy scoundrel that had forsaken an alliance with Ridwan) turned on his Edessan allies while they were engaged in battle, crushed their forces, and fled. Finally, Gregory Bar Hebraeus gives a very brief overview of the battle that is mostly noteworthy for corroborating the broad strokes of Ibn al-Athir, but otherwise adds very little. This leaves Ibn al-Athir, who wrote by far the most detailed account of the battle of Tell Bashir despite writing a century after the battle occurred. His chronicle is one of the most treasured and reputable from this era, which has led modern authors to disproportionately cite his version of the battle in their own retellings.17 Despite this heavy citation, Ibn al-Athir’s account has been treated 15 16 17

Matthew of Edessa, 3.39; Asbridge, Creation of the Principality of Antioch, p. 114. Ibn Abi Tayyi, “Un Épisode,” p. 131; Tritton, “Anonymous Syrian Chronicle,” pp. 80–82. An example of this heavy citation can be seen in Nicholson’s excellently footnoted Joscelyn I where despite being one of eleven primary sources, 28 percent of all original source citations go to Ibn al-Athir, more than double the next most used source. See Nicholson, Joscelyn I, pp.

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more like a data mine for details than an independent narrative. For him the casus belli was Saljuq imperial politics, not Latin hierarchical disputes as the crusader sources assert. His view has been sidelined because it is incompatible with the nexus of consensus positions that carry more weight in the synthesizing process due to the number of confirming authors. That metric for evaluation seems to miss the fact that Ibn al-Athir’s rendition of the battle is longer and more detailed than that of all four crusader sources combined. While the individual sources may be compromised, one might think the synthetic narrative could still be valid as, despite their flaws, their overlap could accurately reflect actual events. While theoretically possible, such hypotheses do not bear out in practice: most modern synthetic accounts contain internal inconsistencies. Some of these issues arise from the crusader sources themselves, while many more are created by adding details from Ibn al-Athir’s version to the consensus narrative. These details are meant to enrich, but tend to confuse the narrative they were meant to embellish. For example, take Count Baldwin II of Edessa: by most summaries of his career, he was a politically skillful ruler, a cautious commander, and a very devout Christian.18 However, some modern accounts of the battle portray Baldwin as rashly assembling an army to attack Tancred, his co-religionist, fellow crusader, and the commander of the strongest army in the region.19 This story of Baldwin’s aggression is constructed from Ibn al-Athir’s data fused into the plots from Fulcher, Matthew, and Albert. Now according to these modern accounts, Baldwin had no land (Tancred retained Edessa), no army of his own (Tancred had been commanding Edessan forces through his cousin), no money (except what Tancred gave him), and he still had to pay a large debt to Jawuli (a detail many add from Ibn al-Athir). Aggressive military action in this context not only fails to mesh with what we know of Baldwin from elsewhere, it runs exactly contrary to our other accounts of the man. Instead of this rashness, we should expect caution and political maneuvering from Baldwin. Ibn al-Athir presents exactly that in his account; Baldwin avoids the battles that Tancred wants while politically outmaneuvering his militarily superior foe. Equally confounding is the portrayal of Jawuli, the Turkish general who was cunning enough to separately defeat both Jokermish of Mosul then Prince Qilij

18

19

12–22. For analysis of the quality and reliability of the Ta’rīkh and its author, see Françoise Micheau, “Ibn al-Athir,” in Medieval Muslim Historians and the Franks in the Levant, ed. Alex Mallet (Leiden, 2014), p. 52, and R. Stephen Humphreys, “Ta’rīkh,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 10 (Leiden, 2000), p. 279. Runciman, History of the Crusades Vol. II, pp. 123, 153, 159–61, and 173; Hans Eberhard Mayer, “The Succession to Baldwin II of Jerusalem: English Impact on the East,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 39 (1985), pp. 139–46; Murray, “Baldwin II,” pp. 135–36. For example, Heidemann (Städte in Nordsyrien und Nordmesopotamien, p. 208) and Mayer (Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, p. 92) (among others) blame the Edessan faction for the Antioch– Edessa rift turning to outright warfare.



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Arslan despite having fewer political allies or soldiers than either of them.20 Qilij Arslan in particular was a very capable commander of great political importance. In fact, he had just declared his intention to challenge his cousin Muhammad for the Sultanate and it was on his first campaign towards that end that he came into conflict with Jawuli. Jawuli was a new provincial governor with limited forces who had just fought major battles less than a year before, so defeating an imperial contender is a testament to his skill as commander. Yet modern versions of the battle of Tell Bashir say that Jawuli fled when Mosul was besieged by Sultan Muhammad’s army, freed his most valuable prisoner (Baldwin of Edessa), then allied with this ex-prisoner (who had no money or land), only to then travel all the way to Tell Bashir to try to reclaim the ex-prisoner-now-ally’s lordship, all while doing absolutely nothing to counter the siege of Mosul.21 If that version of Jawuli had a cunning military mind, it is well disguised. The most charitable explanation for that reading of Jawuli’s actions is that Jawuli wanted to replace Prince Ridwan in Aleppo. However, there is no reason to think that Aleppo was more readily defensible than Mosul. If anything, Ibn al-Athir’s account would lead one to think exactly the opposite: Mosul’s defenses had been greatly increased and the city was in a far better position than Aleppo to resist the Sultan’s army.22 Ultimately, these poor caricatures of Baldwin and Jawuli stem from the over-reliance on problematic sources that assert Latin politics as the central cause for the battle. Conversely, Ibn al-Athir relates one coherent narrative that portrays both Jawuli and Baldwin as intelligent leaders who make rational choices that align with their reputations. Saljuq Civil Wars: Political Context of the Battle Ibn al-Athir’s account of Tell Bashir concludes the sixteen-year succession crisis that followed Sultan Malikshah’s death in 1092. That crisis is difficult to understand without some grasp of how authority passed in the medieval Islamic world. According to Stephen Humphreys, the region’s blend of Arab, Turkish, and Islamic customs for transferring authority fed into vicious civil wars.23 Authority was not simply inherited; the ruler needed to validate his rule by displaying competency in the role. Insofar as some authority was passed by inheritance, it was shared collectively by the ruler’s family, meaning any male family members could claim headship. That being said, lineage was an important precondition that greatly assisted in the ascent to power. This means that

20

21 22 23

Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi’l-Ta’rikh 10.422–30 (Burlington, 2005), pp. 111–17; Gregory Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon Syriacum 10.270–72, pp. 239–41. Also, “Jokermish” is normally transliterated “Chökermish,” “Jukarmish,” or “Cökürmüs,” but as with previous cases, I am intentionally using the same English referent as found in Richards’ translation. Runciman, History of the Crusades Vol. II, pp. 111–13. See below nn. 46–47. R. Stephen Humphreys, “Legitimacy and Stability in Islam,” in The Jihad and Its Times, ed. Hadia Dajani-Shakeel (Ann Arbor, 1991), pp. 5–13.

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when a leader died, the many “heirs” in the family would squabble over the inheritance until someone took and maintained control. As Malikshah marked the third generation of Saljuq rule, the number of contenders in 1092 was quite substantial.24 Confirming Humphreys’ analysis, from 1092 to 1108, at least nine Saljuq princes claimed the throne, while still more were assassinated or died in conflicts over regional control. Squandered Inheritances: The Sons of Tutush Malikshah’s death led to a civil war between his son (Barkyaruq) and brother (Tutush). Though the more experienced commander, Tutush was defeated and killed by his nephew’s army. His defeat opened the door for more challenges to the young Sultan Barkyaruq. Among those contenders were Tutush’s sons, who claimed the titles and lands of their father but predictably quarreled over their father’s inheritance.25 The eldest two, Ridwan and Duqaq, took Aleppo and Damascus respectively, while the three remaining brothers were disinherited. Ridwan had two of those brothers put to death shortly after he came to power, while the last remaining brother, Baktash, lived in Duqaq’s custody.26 Duqaq died unexpectedly in 1104, which should have made Baktash the ruler of Damascus. However, Duqaq’s atabeg, Tughtakin, chose to elevate Duqaq’s infant son instead.27 Following the advice of his mother, Baktash fled Damascus for fear that Tughtakin would kill him, a fear partially confirmed by the opportune death of Duqaq’s infant son some few months later.28 The fledgling prince made his way into the service of the Latin king of Jerusalem in exchange for aid to reclaim Damascus. Upon realizing that King Baldwin I was in no position to retake Damascus, Baktash fled yet again, this time settling in the town of al-Rahba on the Euphrates.29 On a brief aside, up until this point Ibn al-Athir’s account of Baktash ibn Tutush is perfectly corroborated by Ibn al-Qalanisi. After Baktash’s settling in al-Rahba, the accounts diverge. Ibn al-Qalanisi relates that Baktash entered the service of Jawuli, but never mentions him again. On the other hand, Ibn al-Athir fails to mention Baktash ibn Tutush at all. Instead, he relates how Baktash ibn Tekesh (Tekesh and Tutush were brothers) joined with Jawuli. But before we jump to conclusions about who Baktash ibn Tekesh is, we must remember that 24

25 26

27 28 29

For more on the start of the civil wars see Carole Hillenbrand, “1092: A Murderous Year,” in Proceedings of the 14th Congress of the Union européenne des arabisants et islamisants (1995), 281–96. Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi’l-Ta’rikh 10.269 (New York, 2002), p. 294. Robert Crawford, “Ridwan the Maligned,” in The World of Islam: Studies in Honor of Phillip K. Hitti, ed. James Kritzeck and R. Bayly Winder (New York, 1959), pp. 136–37; El-Azhari, The Saljuqs of Syria, p. 159. Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi’l-Ta’rikh 10.375 (Burlington, 2005), p. 80; El-Azhari, The Saljuqs of Syria, p. 178. El-Azhari, The Saljuqs of Syria, pp. 178–82. Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi’l-Ta’rikh 10.376 (Burlington, 2005), pp. 80–81.



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while many sources do agree on parts of the timeline that leads Baktash ibn Tutush to al-Rahba at this time, none ever mentions a Baktash ibn Tekesh. While there is a remote possibility that Baktash ibn Tutush had a cousin with the same name, it is beyond belief that they both ended up in al-Rahba at the same time and that the one nobody had heard of joined with Jawuli while the one with some recorded military experience did not. Thus, it seems likely that Ibn al-Athir was in error and meant ibn Tutush, not Tekesh. D. S. Richards seems to affirm this as he translates the “ibn Tekesh” as “ibn Tutush” in the relevant passages. Apparently, this seemed so obvious that he did not even see the need for a footnote to explain his choice. I concur in Richards’ assessment and treat the two names given by ibn al-Athir as referring to the son of Tutush.30 Meanwhile, the eldest brother, Ridwan of Aleppo, struggled in the decade following the First Crusade. He was largely unable to expand his territory or assert imperial claims due to the expanding power of Tancred of Antioch in addition to his own unpopularity with pious Sunni Muslims. Most works treat the sons of Tutush as minor local lords, which is true, but overly reductive. Tutush had been proclaimed sultan in the khutbah (Friday prayer) and had ruled over most of Syria and Iraq before his defeat at the hands of Barkyaruq. On Humphrey’s model, any of Tutush’s sons had claim to his authority and could challenge Barkyaruq for control of the whole Saljuq dominion, both broadly as Saljuqs and more narrowly as descendants of Alp Arslan and Tutush. While there is less data about Duqaq, Ridwan did claim the full authority of his father by having his own name read directly after that of the Caliph.31 However, his claims never amounted to much because he was not very popular or successful in expanding his rule beyond Aleppo.32 If any of Tutush’s sons could prove their ability to rule or raise a sizable army, their claim to the sultanate would have been quite strong. This includes the oft-forgotten Baktash who, despite a lack of demonstrable power, had enormous potential. Restructuring the Empire: Sultan Muhammad’s Rise After Tutush’s death, the most notable contender against Barkyaruq was his half-brother Muhammad.33 Their war over the empire raged from 1099 to 1105. Thirteen years after Malikshah’s death, Barkyaruq died of severe intestinal issues (possibly from poison) leaving Muhammad as the strongest Saljuq heir.34 With peace in sight, Muhammad was able to focus on issues that had been side30

31 32 33 34

Furthermore, even if the distant possibility that these two homonymous cousins were both in al-Rahba were true, it actually has little bearing on the broad argument of this article. Both Tekesh and Tutush were brothers of Malikshah, and their sons would have similar standing to claim the Sultanate. Furthermore, as both of their fathers had been rebels, both cousins would have been political outsiders or fugitives from Sultan Muhammad. Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi’l-Ta’rikh 10.246 (New York, 2002), p. 279. Crawford, “Ridwan the Maligned,” p. 135. Basan, The Great Saljuqs, pp. 98–121. Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi’l-Ta’rikh 10.380 (Burlington, 2005), p. 84.

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lined by the war. Chief of these issues was the excessive power of some emirs who had gained much more power for themselves during the civil war than Sultan Muhammad thought acceptable.35 Moreover, many such lords in Iraq, Persia, and the Jazira had been loyal servants of Barkyaruq. As we shall see throughout Ibn al-Athir’s account, Sultan Muhammad’s solution was to pit these emirs against each other to erode their martial power and eventually replace them with men who had shown him loyalty during the civil war. Muhammad also focused on eliminating or containing minor Saljuq contenders, usually by means of sending the aforementioned emirs to handle the situation. Some of these claimants were of little concern, like Mankubars whose rebellion in 1105 lasted only a few months.36 Others, like Muhammad’s cousin Qilij Arslan, posed a sizable threat as his powerful branch of the family had been contending for the sultanate for three generations. Following in his father’s footsteps, Qilij Arslan consolidated power in Anatolia before moving into Mesopotamia.37 In 1105, he skirted north of the crusaders to the city of Melitene, and from there to Harran and the Jazira.38 Concerned by these movements, Muhammad gathered the most powerful emirs in Iraq to deal with the problem. These leading men were Emir Jokermish of Mosul, Emir Ayaz of Baghdad, and Emir Sadaqa of Hilla. All three men were the kind of emirs Muhammad wanted eliminated, but they could still be useful if they weakened or killed Qilij Arslan. Tensions had been high between Ayaz and Muhammad following Barkyaruq’s death, as Ayaz commanded Barkyaruq’s army in the name of the deceased sultan’s infant son.39 In February 1105, Ayaz negotiated the surrender of and amnesty for Barkyaruq’s forces, but Muhammad harbored concerns about Ayaz’s loyalty, exacerbated by some unfortunate joking by Ayaz’s soldiers at a dinner party. In early April, Muhammad called a general meeting of emirs to deal with Qilij Arslan and requested Ayaz and Sadaqa privately meet with him and his vizier. Ibn al-Athir reports: The sultan had prepared a group of his guard to kill Ayaz when he entered his presence. As he came in, one of them struck his head and separated it from his body. Sadaqa covered his face with his sleeve and the vizier fainted. Ayaz was wrapped in some sacking and thrown into the street near the Royal Palace.40

The earlier dinner party served as the pretext for the beheading, even though Ibn al-Athir dismissed that event as an unfortunate misunderstanding.41 However, the context would not have been missed by the contemporary audience; the sultan executed Ayaz on a very thin pretext less than two months after the amnesty. 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Ibid., 10.369, p. 77. Ibid., 10.398–99, p. 96. Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi’l-Ta’rikh 10.147 (New York, 2002), p. 223. Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi’l-Ta’rikh 10.415 (Burlington, 2005), p. 106. Ibid., 10.386–88, pp. 88–89. Ibid., 10.388–89, p. 89. Ibid.



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Jokermish caught the hint. He was new to power, having only gained his position in 1102. Jokermish’s involvement in the Turkish victory over the crusaders at the battle of Harran greatly helped confirm his competence as the ruler of Mosul.42 It was at that battle that Baldwin of Edessa was captured and then imprisoned in Mosul until just before the battle of Tell Bashir. As a servant of Barkyaruq, Jokermish had been fighting Muhammad up until the amnesty signed by Ayaz.43 Though he paid homage to the new sultan, Jokermish seems to have had no loyalty to Muhammad. In Qilij Arslan’s first foray into Mesopotamia, Jokermish’s men gladly handed the city of Harran over to the aspiring Saljuq prince, as if they had been waiting to welcome him.44 Furthermore, after Jokermish’s death, his men called to Qilij Arslan and other nobles for aid, instead of the more obvious option of Sultan Muhammad.45 Additionally, Jokermish seems to have stopped paying his taxes to Muhammad, which prompted the sultan to replace him. In the words of Ibn al-Athir: When Jokermish had returned from the sultan’s presence to his lands [when Ayaz was killed], as we have recounted, he promised personal service and payment of tribute. However, once firmly settled in his lands, he did not carry out what he had said and found service and payment of tribute burdensome.46

Ibn al-Athir informs us that, in 1104, Jokermish invested in repairing all the defenses of Mosul. Furthermore, in Jokermish’s eulogy, Ibn al-Athir says that, “[Jokermish] had built up and strengthened the walls of Mosul, and had constructed a barbican and dug a moat, fortifying the city as much as he possibly could.”47 Given that he died in late 1106, had only begun to withhold taxes after Ayaz’s death in 1105, and obviously spent money on fortifications, Jokermish probably spent the tax revenue on Mosul’s defenses. The confluence of evidence supports a hypothesis that Jokermish was planning to ally with Qilij Arslan in a war against Muhammad. In 1106, Muhammad sent Jawuli Saqao to remove Jokermish. Because he had limited forces, a direct assault on Mosul was impossible. Thus, Jawuli tried to draw Jokermish out of Mosul by attacking his underling, the emir of Irbil. Jokermish came with twice the force that Jawuli had, but Jawuli still won the battle and captured Jokermish. Then Jawuli moved on Mosul and began besieging the city (though with his small army it is more accurate to say he tried to negotiate an exchange of Jokermish for Mosul). Unfortunately for Jawuli, Jokermish died in his captivity and the garrison offered the city to Qilij Arslan. Jokermish was the second of the three powerful Iraqi emirs that Sultan Muhammad eliminated in as many years.48 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.

10.342–43, pp. 58–59; 10.375, p. 80. 10.384, pp. 86–87. 10.415, p. 106. 10.424, p. 113. 10.422, p. 112. 10.424, p. 113.

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Sadaqa, the remaining emir, was different from the others. He was very loyal to Muhammad and also extremely pious. In his eulogy, Ibn al-Athir extolls the man as “one of the ornaments of this world.”49 Why would Muhammad target this pious and loyal emir? Because during the civil wars Sadaqa had slowly amassed enormous land holdings in Iraq, encompassing all of the land on the Euphrates from ‘Āna (near the modern Iraq–Syria border) down to Basra (where the Euphrates and the Tigris meet) across salt marshes in southern Iraq to Wasit on the Tigris as well as control of the city of Tikrit just north of Baghdad on the Tigris. In short, excepting Baghdad’s surroundings, Sadaqa controlled all of the waterways of Iraq. Muhammad’s underlings deceptively convinced him that a man so powerful and generous was a danger to the sultanate. The conflict dragged out over the course of the year, at the end of which Sadaqa was defeated and killed in a battle that supposedly neither leader wanted to fight.50 While Ibn al-Athir portrays both men as noble, the clear subtext is that the sultan was eliminating all of the powerful emirs that could cause trouble. In the cases of Ayaz and Sadaqa the justifications for the violence were weak, though Ibn al-Athir does Muhammad the honor of accepting those justifications even while presenting evidence that the justification left ample room for doubt. Ibn al-Athir goes out of his way to be tactful in dealing with the morally ambiguous decisions that his righteous characters made. Even though the text does make it clear that Muhammad needed Sadaqa removed because he became too powerful, Ibn al-Athir would not state it that bluntly. This polite method of not being explicit continues throughout the chronicle. Marching to Tell Bashir: Jawuli’s Rebellion Like Ayaz and Jokermish, Jawuli had been a powerful and loyal emir in service to Barkyaruq. At some point after 1100, Barkyaruq appointed him to govern Fars (modern-day southwest Iran).51 His tenure there was marked by cunning plans to eliminate a sect of radicals that plagued the region.52 By 1104, Jawuli was still loyally governing Fars for Sultan Barkyaruq. After Barkyaruq’s death, Jawuli had to defend his province from a replacement, Mawdud, sent by Sultan Muhammad. Ibn al-Athir noted that Jawuli was harsh and unpopular, so he feared the populace would give the city to the sultan’s army. Thus, Jawuli had little option but to surrender directly to the sultan. Muhammad accepted the surrender and assigned him the governorship of Mosul (which was held by Jokermish) with orders to attack the Franks in Syria.53 While seemingly generous, Muhammad was actually pitting two ex-Barkyaruq supporters against each other. Regardless of the outcome between Jokermish and Jawuli, Muhammad 49 50 51 52 53

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

10.449, p. 129. 10.445–46, p. 128. 10.297–98, pp. 29–30. 10.319–20, p. 44. 10.422, p. 112.



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would be rid of a questionably loyal emir while not risking any of his own troops in the process. Moreover, Fars was now ruled by an emir more loyal to Muhammad. As mentioned, Jawuli overcame Jokermish, but lacked the troop numbers to take Mosul. Qilij Arslan’s advance into Mesopotamia to receive Mosul forced Jawuli to retreat. In 1107, Qilij Arslan occupied Mosul and was formally proclaimed sultan in the khutbah. Meanwhile, Jawuli seized al-Rahba on the Euphrates, when it is likely that Baktash entered into his service. To counter Qilij Arslan’s superior forces, Jawuli made an alliance with Ridwan, Tutush’s oldest son.54 Ridwan’s choice to fight Qilij Arslan might seem unstrategic, as Qilij Arslan was notably more powerful than Ridwan. However, when Ridwan took his father’s place, the khutbah made in Aleppo was made in Ridwan’s name, not Barkyaruq’s, meaning that Ridwan was declared sultan as his father had been. Ridwan’s claim made Muhammad and now Qilij Arslan his rivals. Furthermore, Ridwan had the most to lose from Qilij Arslan’s claim, as the upstart sultan was quite popular in the western regions of the Saljuq empire, unlike Ridwan who was unpopular and suspected of radical Shi`i sympathies. In May 1107, the combined forces of Jawuli and Ridwan defeated Qilij Arslan. Jawuli quickly took over the regions of Mesopotamia that had been ruled by Jokermish. He also sent the captive son of Qilij Arslan, Malikshah, to Sultan Muhammad as a gesture of gratitude.55 This gesture likely was an attempt to buy more time as Jawuli knew he could not stay in the sultan’s good graces for long. As a very powerful emir who had supported Barkyaruq his days were numbered. So while the conflict between Sultan Muhammad and Emir Sadaqa unfolded, Jawuli not only failed to send aid to the sultan, he tried to make an alliance with Sadaqa. That alliance never materialized and the sultan turned his army, led by Mawdud, to attack Jawuli in Mosul for his insubordination.56 Jawuli gathered supplies and placed the citizens of Mosul on lockdown. Confident that the city could hold Mawdud at bay, he left it well garrisoned and took most of his army to gather support.57 Between his and Jokermish’s preparations, Mosul was very well prepared for a siege by 1108. Thus Jawuli knew he had some time to gather an army – but to what end? As he tried to woo forces to his cause, the goal of his mission became clear. Ibn al-Athir informs us that Jawuli went to Emir Ilghazi of Mardin, his neighbor to the north whose loyalties had vacillated between Barkyaruq and Muhammad: Jawuli left and took with him the count, the Lord of Edessa [. . .] to Nisibis, which at the time belonged to Emir Ilghazi ibn Artuq. He wrote to him, asked for a meeting and invited him to support him, both of them acting as one. He told him that their fear of the sultan ought to unite them in securing protection from him.58

54 55 56 57 58

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

10.429, p. 116. 10.430, p. 117. 10.457–58, p. 136. 10.458, p. 136. 10.459, p. 137 (emphasis mine).

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Ilghazi did not unite with Jawuli, but this passage does highlight that Muhammad represented a legitimate threat to emirs of consequence. Having failed to win over Ilghazi, Jawuli released Count Baldwin in exchange for money, prisoners, and military aid. Many cite this release as showing how badly Jawuli needed aid, but with the taking of hostages it was a low-risk chance of getting some money out of a prisoner that had not yet provided any profit. More importantly, this was hardly the only plan that Jawuli was enacting. Edessan Interlude: Baldwin’s Political War with Tancred Upon his release in the summer of 1108, Count Baldwin II of Edessa returned to Antioch to reclaim his lands from Tancred, who was the acting regent. However, Tancred refused to restore Edessa unless Baldwin swore fealty to him and Baldwin rejected Tancred’s conditions. If Albert of Aachen can be trusted on the subject, Edessan taxes represented a sizable income for Tancred, and he was loathe to just give that land away.59 As they were at a political stalemate, Baldwin left Antioch to seek counsel from Joscelin of Edessa and his few other supporters. Keen to strike before Baldwin had substantial forces, Tancred “attacked” Baldwin and Joscelin at Tell Bashir. Ibn al-Athir states: Tancred, ruler of Antioch, now marched against them with his troops to bring them to battle before they became powerful and assembled an army and before Jawuli could join forces with them to bring them support. They fought together but when the fighting was over, they met, feasted and conversed with one another.60

While Ibn al-Athir says the armies “fought,” this should be taken in the context of the feast, as it seems rather unlikely that large numbers of men would stop actively trying to kill one another to instantly switch to feasting together. Importantly, Ibn al-Athir mentions no deaths, no tactics, not even a victor. Moreover, every other source mentions only one battle, which Ibn al-Athir would technically agree with if it were not for a very literal interpretation of this passage. The last reason to doubt that this was a proper battle is the military power discrepancy between the two sides. Tancred was unquestionably the most powerful lord in northern Syria in 1108; if he brought his army to bear on Baldwin and his few supporters it would have been shocking if Tancred did not decisively win the pitched battle. More likely, there were some brawls while the leaders talked and afterwards there was a feast. It may be that Tancred’s goal was not to actually fight a pitched battle but to display his military might to remind Baldwin and his allies that fighting against Antioch would be unwise. Whatever happened in that first confrontation, Ibn al-Athir relates that the incident only escalated tensions between the two factions:

59 60

Albert of Aachen, Historia Hierosolymitanae expeditionis 9.46, pp. 700–03. Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi’l-Ta’rikh, 10.461 (Burlington, 2005), p. 138 (emphasis mine).



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Tancred retired to Antioch without having settled any matter as regards Edessa. The count and Joscelin then went on a raid of Tancred’s forts and took refuge in the area controlled by Kogh Basil, an Armenian, [. . .] the lord of Ra‘ban, Kaysum, and other fortresses north of Aleppo. He supplied the count with 1,000 cavalry from amongst the [Christianized Turks] and 2,000 infantry. Tancred moved to meet them and they argued about who was to control Edessa.61

Importantly, it does not say they fought a pitched battle against each other; they amassed troops and faced off while the leaders argued. Ibn al-Athir shows that it was in this debate that Patriarch Bernard of Antioch intervened and settled the conflict: Their Patriarch [Bernard], who is for them like the Imam for the Muslims, whose authority is not to be opposed, acted as intermediary. Several [bishops] and priests bore witness that Bohemond, Tancred’s uncle, had said to [Tancred], when he planned to sail the sea and return home, that Edessa should be restored to [Baldwin] when he was set free from captivity. Tancred duly restored [Edessa to Baldwin] on [September 18th, 1108].62

Tancred was politically outmaneuvered in these encounters. Baldwin avoided pushing the conflict in Antioch, where Tancred could arrest him, and thwarted Tancred’s pre-emptive strike at Tell Bashir. Then he provoked Tancred to bring his army to the lands of Kogh Basil (Baldwin’s ally), so that all the Christian lords in the region could bear witness to Patriarch Bernard’s ruling on the matter. It was also key that Bernard was there to bear witness at all. He is not mentioned at the previous faceoff, and it seems unlikely that Tancred would willingly invite the Patriarch if he had any notion that man would take Baldwin’s side. Most likely, Baldwin contacted Patriarch Bernard to ensure that he would mediate. Baldwin forced a political conflict instead of a military one, which was in keeping with the caution he normally displayed in military command. Contrary to modern opinions, the Latin conflict over the lordship of Edessa was primarily a political – not a military – conflict and it was resolved without aid from Turkish emirs. The Battle of Tell Bashir After he released Baldwin, Jawuli continued on to al-Rahba where he drew quite a gathering of Sultan Muhammad’s enemies. Ibn al-Athir says: [Jawuli] proceeded to al-Rahba, where [Badran] and [Mansur,] the sons of [Sadaqa], came to him. After the killing of their father they had been at Qal‘at Ja‘bar with Salim ibn Malik. They reached an agreement to help and support one another and Salim promised them both that he would go with them to Hilla. Their intention was to make Baktash ibn Tutush ibn Alp Arslan their commander. While they had this plan 61 62

Ibid., 10.461, pp. 138–39. Ibid., 10.461, p. 139.

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General Sabawa came to them. He had [just made peace with Sultan Muhammad] who had assigned him al-Rahba as a fief, as we have mentioned. [Sabawa] met with Jawuli and advised him to go to Syria, for the land there was empty of troops since the Franks had conquered much of it. He told him that, if ever he aimed at Iraq while [Muhammad] was there or nearby, he could not be sure that some evil would not come upon him.63

Having recently lost their father to Sultan Muhammad, the sons of Sadaqa were ardent opponents of the sultan. Any plan of theirs certainly aimed to do Sultan Muhammad ill. Second, the previously unmentioned General Sabawa was one of the most vocal opponents of Sultan Muhammad during the civil wars, so that when Emir Ayaz signed the amnesty in 1105, it explicitly excluded Sabawa because of his slanderous public statements. So when Muhammad “makes peace” with him, the gesture is a farce; yet again Muhammad is pitting his enemies against each other by sending Sabawa to take land from Jawuli. More importantly, between the amnesty in 1105 and this meeting in 1108, Sabawa was serving the Saljuq princes in Aleppo and Damascus. Thus he was well acquainted with their military capabilities, making his advice to attack Syria very reputable. But the most important part of the passage is the intention to make Baktash the commander. Baktash had limited military experience, especially of a sizable army. The only reason to use Baktash when veteran commanders like Jawuli or Sabawa were options was that Baktash could challenge his cousin’s imperial claims. General Sabawa’s advice was especially good for Baktash, as taking Syria in particular would dramatically strengthen Baktash’s claim to the sultanate. As a son of Tutush, Baktash had as strong a claim to Aleppo as Ridwan and a stronger claim to Damascus than Tughtakin. Had they defeated Ridwan, it is not unreasonable to think that this alliance could have united Islamic Syria. Hostilities escalated when an Arab tribe allied to Ridwan seized al-Raqqa from Jawuli’s ally, Salim of Qal‘at Ja‘bar. Jawuli marched north to respond, but his siege of the citadel dragged until it became too much of a political cost to continue. Jawuli’s promise to Salim before leaving reveals more about his plans. Ibn al-Athir reports Jawuli as saying: I am face to face with an enemy, with whom I must concern myself rather than anyone else. I am planning to go down to Iraq. If my cause succeeds, then al-Raqqa and other places will be yours.64

Jawuli was clearly drawing up plans to head back to Iraq after campaigning in Syria. More importantly, Jawuli thought that he would at that time be in a position to grant lands and titles to supporters, i.e. a position like a vizier to Sultan Baktash. Following Humphreys’ logic, the first step to in promoting 63 64

Ibid., 10.462, p. 139 (emphasis mine). Ibid., 10.463, p. 140 (emphasis mine).



Baktash the Forgotten

17

Baktash was to show his competence by winning notable victories in his name. Driving a few Bedouins from al-Raqqa’s citadel was not sufficient; they needed to attack Ridwan. Ridwan’s nearest holding, Balis, lay between al-Raqqa and Aleppo. Jawuli took the city in less than a week. Ibn al-Athir curiously notes that Jawuli singled out and executed the cadi (judge) of Balis: Jawuli went to the city of Balis, arriving on [22 September 1108], but the populace resisted him. Those men of Prince Ridwan, the lord of Aleppo, who were there, fled. Jawuli besieged it for five days and took it after mining one of the towers, which fell on the sappers, killing several of them. He took the city and crucified a group of notables where the mine had been. He summoned the Cadi Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-’Aziz ibn Ilyas, who was a pious lawyer, and put him to death. Then he sacked the city and took a great amount of money.65

As the text specifically says Ridwan’s allies fled the city earlier and the notables seem to have been killed for the loss of the sappers, we are left with little reason why Ibn al-Athir singles out the cadi’s death. However, a cadi could proclaim the ascension of a new ruler in the khutbah; incidentally the exact thing that Jawuli needed to legitimize Baktash.66 Thus, I think that the most likely reason the cadi was killed was for not proclaiming Baktash as the sultan. After Balis, Ridwan requested aid from Tancred by claiming “if [Jawuli] conquered [Aleppo], the Franks would no longer maintain their presence in Syria.”67 Tancred complied with Ridwan’s request, which prompted Jawuli to call Baldwin and Joscelyn to assist.68 This paints the aggression as squarely between the Turks, and we can see now that Jawuli was not desperate for help as modern accounts portray him; it was Ridwan who was desperate for allies. And the march toward Aleppo had less to do with running from Mawdud and the siege of Mosul than it did with following the best path for proclaiming Baktash sultan. Unfortunately for Jawuli, just as his forces were assembling, the army received news that Mosul had fallen to the imperial army. Ibn al-Athir relates: In this state of affairs Jawuli received intelligence that the sultan’s army had conquered Mosul and seized his treasury and property. This distressed him greatly and many of his followers abandoned him, including Atabeg Zanki ibn Aqsunqur [. . .] He was left

65 66

67 68

Ibid., 10.464, p. 140 (emphasis mine). While “Qadi” is a better transliteration, I continue to mirror Richards’ usage for the sake of continuity. Joseph Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford, 1982), pp. 50–54; Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East (Oxford, 2004), pp. 83–85; Mathieu Tillier, “Judicial Authority and Qadis’ Autonomy under the Abbasids,” Al-Masaq 26:2, pp. 119–31; Taef El-Azhari, Zengi and the Muslim Response to the Crusades: The Politics of Jihad (London, 2016), p. 127. Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi’l-Ta’rikh 10.464 (Burlington, 2005), p. 141. Ibid., 10.465, p. 141.

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with a thousand horsemen but a large crowd of volunteers joined him and he camped before [Tell Bashir]. Tancred drew near, leading 1,500 Frankish cavalry and 600 of Prince Ridwan’s followers, not counting the foot-soldiers. On his right wing Jawuli placed Emir Aqsiyan, Emir Altuntash al-Abari and others, and on the left wing Emir Badran ibn Sadaqa, General Sabawa, and Sunqur Daraz and in the center Count Baldwin and Joscelin, the two Franks. The battle commenced and the men of Antioch charged the count. The fighting was fierce and Tancred drove the center from its position. Then Jawuli’s left charged the infantry of the lord of Antioch and slew a great many of them. The defeat of the Lord of Antioch seemed imminent but at that moment Jawuli’s men turned to the count’s spare horses and those of Joscelin and other Franks. They mounted them and fled the field. Jawuli went after them to call them back but they did not return. His authority over them had been lost after Mosul had been taken from him. When he saw that they would not return with him, he took thought for himself, feared to stay and fled. The rest of his army then fled.69

The leaders of the rebellion dispersed and Jawuli had no option but surrender. He fled in secrecy to Sultan Muhammad to beg forgiveness, which was granted. However, the cost was that he had to hand over Baktash, who was promptly imprisoned in Isfahan.70 The imprisonment of Baktash further confirms that this battle was about Baktash and the sultanate more than anything else. The crumbling of Jawuli’s forces also reveals to modern readers why Ibn al-Athir provides such a detailed account of Jawuli’s doings while others seem to know so little. Zanki ibn Aqsunqur, one of those who abandoned Jawuli, was the founder of the Zankid dynasty in Mosul. Ibn al-Athir served Zanki’s descendants and frequently wrote in praise of that family, which has led some to criticize his accounts as too pro-Zankid.71 This close connection strongly supports the credibility of Ibn al-Athir’s account of the battle of Tell Bashir. First, this account does not put Zanki in a favorable light as he ran before the battle even began. This goes against the grain of what we should expect from a positive bias, and so gives the young warlord’s inclusion an air of truth. Secondly, as researching and retelling this family’s history was of particular interest to Ibn al-Athir and he had family ties to the Zankid court, it seems quite reasonable to presume that in the process of learning about Zanki ibn Aqsunqur’s early life he learned more details about this battle than most others. It also might explain why the Ibn al-Athir was somewhat cagey about explicitly saying that Jawuli was trying to use Baktash to overthrow Sultan Muhammad, as such a statement would have implicated Zanki in a coup against the Sultan. As with earlier cases, Ibn al-Athir was not lying to his audience, he was just being tactful and guiding his readers to truths that he did not want to explicitly state. 69 70 71

Ibid. (emphasis mine). Ibid., 10.466, p. 142. For the critique, see Hamilton Gibb, “Notes on the Arabic Materials for the History of the Early Crusades,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies 7 (1935), pp. 739–54, and for a rebuttal and more recent appraisal see Micheau, “Ibn al-Athir,” p. 52.



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On the whole, Ibn al-Athir relates a much more cohesive version of this battle than does any other medieval or modern account. In contrast to modern portrayals, he depicts Baldwin as politically tactful and Jawuli as strategically competent. Though Baldwin’s overt involvement in Saljuq politics may seem like a radical departure from the traditional narrative, Ibn al-Athir still presents the most coherent version of the count. The shift in focus from Latin or local politics to imperial Saljuq politics can radically change modern perceptions of the Latin East in the early twelfth century as it entails that the crusaders were involved with and affected politics for the entire region.

2 The External Fortifications of ʿAtlit Castle, the Only Unconquered Crusader Stronghold in the Holy Land* Ehud Galili and Avraham Ronen†**

This article looks in detail at the well-planned and very effective defenses at the Crusader castle of Château Pèlerins on the ʿAtlit peninsula, focusing in particular on the defense line of the ʿAtlit ridge. The castle was constructed during 1217–18 by the Knights Templar, and its defenses, which relied on the topography and the exploitation of locally derived building materials, were never breached. The castle was vulnerable to attacks only from the east, so three defense lines were created: (1) On the peninsula neck, two massive walls, towers, and a dry moat. (2) A wall entering the sea in the north and the south bays, with guard towers at both ends, to protect the town east of the castle. A line of large stones which once stood upright, was discovered underwater, extending to the north from the north tower, forming a barrier that prevented approach in the shallows along the coast. (3) An outermost defense line, including two guard towers, and the easternmost external defense line on the ʿAtlit ridge, the focus of this article. A quarry stretched along the ridge, creating an artificial rockcut cliff. This longitudinal defense wall would delay an attack, even if for a short time, enabling people who worked outside the castle to escape to the well-protected peninsula. To provide the large quantity of stones required for building the castle and completing the defenses on the ridge rapidly, the builders simultaneously extracted stones in several places. The stones were quarried from the eastern, far flank of the ridge to create the rock-cut cliff. By applying a sophisticated, pre-planned quarrying technique, they removed immense *

**

The authors wish to thank the Israel Antiquities Authority and The University of Haifa for institutional support and for the archival material on the excavations and surveys in ʿAtlit, Baruch Rosen for his invaluable contribution to the research, David Jacoby, Sarah Arenson, Rachel Galili, John Tresman, and the anonymous reviewers for English editing and their useful remarks on the manuscript, Moti Haiman and Leticia Barda for sharing the measurements of the rock cuttings on the ʿAtlit ridge, Vardit Shotten-Hallel for her notes, Rab’i Hamisi for the information on the Nahat and Mi’ilya quarries, Paweł Moszczyński and Ben Galili for the 3D models. Professor Avraham Ronen (1935–2018) passed away during the preparation of the article for publication. Together with Yaacov Olami, Ronen conducted the survey of Atlit. He was a pioneer researched in the field of prehistory, excavated the Carmel Caves, and identified the chronology of the Kurkar-Hamra sequence on the Israeli coast, using prehistoric industries.

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blocks from the ridge which were then cut into ashlars. The artificial cliff, 2.1 km long and up to 6 m high, thus became the castle’s easternmost defense. This longitudinal barrier, described as a quarry in some previous publications, is shown to be an integral part of a pre-planned defense system, completed by an east–west rampart in the south and the natural canyon of the Oren River in the north. Passages were cut across the ridge from east to west to convey the quarried stones to the castle. Other results of quarrying activity were rock-cut enclosures adjacent to the longitudinal defense wall, and usually associated with the passages. Rock-cut feeding troughs and tethering holes identified in these compounds suggest that they served to protect and house the quarrymen, passage guards, and livestock. The crusader complex of ʿAtlit includes a twelfth-century fortress (Destroit, Destrictum), a thirteenth-century town, and a castle built on an adjacent peninsula. It also included quarries and rock-cut features on the ʿAtlit ridge. The study area extends from the rocky coastline in the west to the ʿAtlit ridge located 800 m from the coast, and from Nahal Oren (Oren River or Wadi Dustrey) canyon in the north to the modern town of ʿAtlit to the south (Fig. 1). The Crusader complex of ʿAtlit was studied by Cedric Norman Johns during the late 1920s and early 1930s, and depicted in a sketch map by Johns (Fig. 2).1 The most significant archaeological feature in the region is the castle, located on a fortified peninsula. On the plain east of the fortress was a small town surrounded by a wall. A graveyard lay on the coastline to the north of the town. The castle was reached by three roads which crossed the lowland located to its east and southeast. The ʿAtlit ridge is shaped by numerous rock-cut features associated with quarrying activity and the defense systems. They had a dual role, both as a source of building stones and as fortifications. Geological and Geomorphological Setting The Carmel coastal plain features three Upper-Pleistocene kurkar ridges running parallel to the coastline.2 (Kurkar is the local term for aeolianite – eolian calcareous, cemented quartz sandstone.) The eastern ridge, here called the ʿAtlit ridge, has been called by various names, including: The Quarry Ridge, the Highway Ridge, the Major Ridge, the Ziqim Ridge, the Carmel Coast Ridge, and the Megadim Ridge. North of the ʿAtlit peninsula, the two western ridges are submerged, and the ʿAtlit ridge lies on the coastline.3 Between the ridges were

1 2 3

Cedric Norman Johns, “Sketch Map of ʿAtlit,” Department of Antiquities, Dec. 1937 (Jerusalem, 1937). Haim Michelson, “The Geology of the Carmel Coast,” TAHAL Israel Water Planning Ltd. Report HG/70/025 (Tel Aviv, 1970) (Hebrew). Ehud Galili, “Submerged Settlements of the Ninth–Seventh Millennium BP off the Carmel Coast” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Tel Aviv University, 2004) (Hebrew); Gideon Almagor, The Mediterranean Coast of Israel, Report GSI/13/02 (Jerusalem, 2002), p. 150, Fig. 10.1 (2012 edition: http://www.gsi.gov.il/_uploads/ftp/GsiReport/2012/Almagor-Gidon-GSI-28-2012R.pdf



The External Fortifications of ʿAtlit Castle

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Figure 1. Map of ʿAtlit showing: Natural cliff, rock-cut defences, kurkar ridge, Oren River chanel. Source: Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO DigitalGlobe TerraMetrics camera: 6,344m 32o41’30”N 34o57’48”E (Modified after Google Earth)

Figure 2. From sketch map of ʿAtlit Antiquity site. Letters and numbers referenced in text. (Modified after Cedric Norman Johns (1937) the Department of Antiquities.) (Hebrew); Yoav Eitam and Zvi Ben-Avraham, “Morphology and Sedimentology of the Inner Shelf off Northern Israel,” Israel Journal of Earth Sciences 41 (1992), 27–44.

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lowlands (troughs) and saltmarshes, occasionally flooded, which were used for salt production at various periods (Fig. 1). The stratigraphy and dating of the Upper Pleistocene kurkar and hamra (red paleosols embedded between kurkar layers) sequence on this ridge were discussed by Farrand and Ronen, Frechen et al., Neber et al., and Mauze et al.4 The basic stratigraphy is of a 2–4-meter-thick solid kurkar deposit, fairly consolidated (termed Dor kurkar) on the top of the sequence (close to the surface), overlying a 1–2-meter-thick paleosol deposit (termed Nahsholim hamra). The hamra overlies a relatively poorly consolidated kurkar deposit several meters thick, termed Ramat-Gan kurkar.5 The upper Dor kurkar (dated to c. 40–60 ky) is used for building stones, while the lower, Ramat Gan kurkar (dated to c. 60–120 ky), is too soft and fragile for that purpose, and

Figure 3. The ʿAtlit peninsula and the main archaeological features, looking north. A: ʿAtlit peninsula and Ancient Phoenician port; B: ʿAtlit Bay; C: The Northern Bay; D: Middle Bronze-age settlement; E: Submerged Neolithic settlement ʿAtlit-Yam (Modified after R. Cleave). 4

5

William R. Farrand and Avraham Ronen, “Observations on the Kurkar–Hamra Succession on the Carmel Coastal Plain,” Tel-Aviv 1 (1974), 45–54; Manfred Frechen, Alexander Neber, Alexander Tsatskin, Wolfgang Boenigk, and Avraham Ronen, “Chronology of Pleistocene Sedimentary Cycles in the Carmel Coastal Plain of Israel,” Quaternary International 121 (2004), 41–52; Alexander Neber, Wolfgang Boenigk, and Avraham Ronen, “Facies Characteristics of Aeolianites near ʿAtlit – Carmel Coastal Plain, Israel,” Mitteilung Gesellschaft Geologie Bergbaustudenten Österreich 46 (2003), 67–75; Barbara Mauz, Marc P. Hijma, Alessandro Amorosi, Naomi Porat, Ehud Galili, and Jan Bloemendal, “Aeolian Beach Ridges and their Significance for Climate and Sea Level: Concept and Insight from the Levant Coast (East Mediterranean),” Earth-Science Reviews 121 (2013), 31–54. Aharon Horwitz, The Quaternary of Israel (New York, 1979), pp. 96–100.



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was usually used for paving roads.6 Using the local Dor kurkar for building stones, the Crusader castle was built on the ʿAtlit peninsula (Fig. 3). Pre-Crusader Archaeological Ruins A submerged pre-pottery Neolithic village, Atlit-Yam, was discovered in the northern bay, some 300–400 m off shore.7 A Bronze Age settlement and burials were located on the south-east coast of the northern bay (Fig. 3).8 Test excavation in the Crusader town yielded remains dated from the Middle/Late Bronze Ages to the Byzantine period.9 An Iron Age settlement and associated stone-built harbor from the ninth to eighth centuries B.C. (Fig. 4) were discovered in the northern bay and on its shores.10 Numerous shipwrecks dating from the last 5,000 years

Figure 4. The ʿAtlit peninsula and the main archaeological features, looking north-west with A: northern breakwater; B: 9th Century BCE harbour; C: eastern breakwater; D: Southern wharf (E.G.) 6 7

8

9 10

Ehud Galili and Rina Tirosh, A Guide to the ʿAtlit Ridge Trail (Haifa, 2009) (Hebrew), p. 45. Ehud Galili, Liora Kolska Horwitz, Vered Eshed, Baruch Rosen, and Israel Hershkovitz, “Submerged Prehistoric Settlements off the Mediterranean Coast of Israel,” Skyllis 13 (2013), 181–204, and references therein. Avraham Ronen and Yaakov Olami, Map of ʿAtlit, Archaeological Survey of Israel Series (Jerusalem, 1978); C. N. Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit: The Crusader Castle, Town and Surroundings (Jerusalem, 1947). C. N. Johns, “ʿAtlit,” in Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land (Jerusalem, 1975), 1:130–40. Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, pp. 10–11. Avner Raban, “The Ancient Harbours of Israel in Biblical Times,” in Avner Raban, ed., Harbour Archaeology – Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Ancient Mediterranean Harbours, Caesarea Maritima, 24–28.6.83. BAR International Series 257 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 11–44; Avner Raban and Elisha Linder, “Maritime ʿAtlit,” in The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, 5 vols. (Jerusalem, 1993), 1:117–20; Arad Haggi, “Report on Underwater Excavation at the Phoenician Harbour, ʿAtlit, Israel,” International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 39 (2010), 278–85.

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were documented on the sea bottom off ʿAtlit.11 Rock-cut pumping stations for producing salt were discovered on the rocky shores south of the ʿAtlit bay.12 PreCrusader burial caves were found on the ʿAtlit ridge and on the intermediate ridge. Three concentrations of structures and installations dating to the Persian period were located on the ʿAtlit ridge. These were probably farms engaged in agriculture, fishing, and commerce associated with the harbor and maritime trading, as attested by the numerous basket-handled amphorae recovered there and on the sea bed. The Twelfth-Century Crusader Destroit Fortress The Destroit (Destrictum) fortress was built on the ʿAtlit ridge by the Knights Templar in the twelfth century.13 It was named for the Bab el-Ajal (gate of cart) passage D2 (known as Petra Incisa, Districtum, or destroit – ‘narrow passage’) (Fig. 2: A; Fig.13: a). Its main square structure, water systems, stables, and defense ditch were cut into the rock, and the superstructure was built of kurkar stones quarried nearby. The fortress defended the strategic narrow passage (Bab el-Ajal) (Fig. 2: D2) located to the south, and probably the Nahal Oren canyon (Fig. 2: B) that crosses the kurkar ridge north of it, and could have been used as a passage during the dry season (see below) (Figs. 5 and 6). A similar square rockcut fortress in the Nahat limestone quarry near Mi’ilya in the Western Galilee was manned by the Teutonic Order. That quarry provided building stones for the construction of Montfort Castle.14 Oliver of Paderborn, the chronicler of the Fifth Crusade, and an eyewitness of the thirteenth-century construction of the ʿAtlit castle, records that the superstructure of the fortress was destroyed by the Templars before the siege by al-Mu’azzam Isa, the Ayyubid Sultan of Damascus, in 1220: “The Templars, knowing that he wished to besiege the Castle of the Son of God, began to destroy the deserted tower of Destroit in the upper section.”15 The ʿAtlit Thirteenth-Century Crusader Castle Castrum Peregrinorum or Château Pèlerins (the Pilgrims’ Castle, or Castrum Filii Dei), was constructed during 1217–18 by the Knights Templar, the Knights of the Teutonic Order, and individual European Crusaders.16 It was built on the 11 12

13 14 15

16

Ehud Galili and Jacob Sharvit, “Underwater Survey in the Mediterranean Sea 1992–1996,” Excavations and Surveys in Israel 19 (1999), 96–101. Ehud Galili and Baruch Rosen, “ʿAtlit, Salt Production Installations on the Carmel and Western Galilee Coasts, Survey,” Hadashot Archaeologiot 127 (2014); Ehud Galili and Sarah Arenson, The Ancient and Modern Salt Production on the Israeli Coast (Haifa, 2017). Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, pp. 95–98; Ronen and Olami, Map of ʿAtlit, pp. 50–52. Peled and Friedman, “Roads.” Edward Peters, ed., Christian Society and the Crusades: 1198–1229, Sources in Translation, Including the Capture of Damietta by Oliver of Paderborn, trans. with notes by John J. Gavigan (Philadelphia, 1936), p. 108; Malcolm Barber, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Cambridge, U.K., 2012), pp. 160–62. C. N. Johns, “Excavations at Pilgrims Castle (ʿAtlit): The Faubourg and its Defenses,” in Pilgrims



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Figure 5. Reconstruction of the Destroit fortress (after Johns 1947: fig. 38)

Figure 6. Aerial view of the Destroit fortress, looking east (I. Grinberg) A: quarry; B: upper cistern; C: lower cistern; D: stables Castle (ʿAtlit), David’s Tower (Jerusalem) and Qal’at Ar-Rabad (Aljun), Three Middle Eastern Castles from the Time of the Crusaders, ed. Denys Pringle (Farnham, U.K., 1997), pp. 111–29; Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, pp. 14–94; Johns, “ʿAtlit,” pp. 130–40; Joshua Prawer, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, European Colonialism in the Middle Ages (London, 1972), pp. 316–18; Denys Pringle, “Crusader Castle: The First Generation,” Fortress: The Castles and Fortifications Quarterly 1 (1989), 14–25; Denys Pringle, “The Archaeology of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Review of Work 1947–97,” Journal of Medieval History 23 (1997), 389–408.

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rocky peninsula (32º 42′ 20″ N; 34 º 56′ 3″ E) using huge amounts of stones quarried on the ʿAtlit ridge (Figs. 7, 8a, 8b). Protected by the sea from three sides, the castle was vulnerable to attack only from the east. The fortifications were described in detail by Johns17 as well as by Ronen and Olami,18 and were analyzed by Mol.19

Figure 7. The Crusader Castle Chateau Pèlerin (after Johns 1947: fig. 24).

17 18 19

Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, pp. 35–92; Johns, “ʿAtlit,” pp. 130–40. Ronen and Olami, Map of ʿAtlit, pp. 39–49. Eva Mol, “Hidden Complexes of the Frankish Castle. Social Aspects in the Configurational Architecture of Frankish Castles in the Holy Land 1099–1291,” Archaeological Studies Leiden University 25 (2012), 84–91.



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Figure 8a. A proposed reconstruction of the castle, looking north-east (drawing Pawel Moszczynski after Johns 1947); A: castle; B: Town; C: Causeway; D: Evaporation salt pans.

Figure 8b. Aerial photo of the ʿAtlit peninsula 1938, looking north-east (courtesy of the National Library, photos collection, Jerusalem, photo by Zoltan Kluger)

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However, the unique quarrying technique of the pre-planned eastern defense wall on the ʿAtlit ridge (the focus of this article) and its key role in the crusader defense system were revealed during the current research. Three main defense lines protected the castle: (1) At the neck of the peninsula’s neck were two massive walls, towers, and a ditch. (2) The town (200 x 700 m) was protected by a surrounding wall built into the sea in the northern and southern bays, with towers at both extremities (Fig. 2: D, E; Fig. 9). Its outer face was built of large ashlars (140 x 80 x 70 cm) and it had three gates (two on the east and one on the south), from which two roads led east (Fig. 2: D11, D12), toward the ridge, and one led south (Fig. 2: H). Underwater research revealed the use of large stones (1.5 x 1.5 x 1.0 m, weighing about 5 tonnes each) in the foundations of the guard tower. Opposite the tower (Fig. 2: D), a line of large stones (about 2.1 x 1.15 x 1.15 m, weighing about 5 tonnes each) extends to the north-west (Fig. 10). These have a massive square base and a tapering octagonal shape. At their tops they are perforated, suggesting that they stood in line, connected to each other, forming a barrier that prevented an approach in the shallows along the coast (Fig. 11).20 The town wall and the underwater barrier were probably built together with the castle, as an integral part of the overall defense system.

Figure 9. The northern sea-wall and the tower in 1927, looking west (Courtesy of the American Congress Library, the American Colony Jerusalem, no. 880) 20

Galili and Sharvit, “Underwater Survey”; Galili and Tirosh, ʿAtlit Ridge Trail, pp. 62–65.



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Figure 10. One of the megalithic standing stones of the barrier on the sea bottom (E. G.)

Figure 11. A possible reconstruction of the wall, the tower and the marine barrier (B. Galili)

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(3) The castle and town were also defended by external structures, including two external guard towers built on the coast south of the town: one on a small rocky island called Beit el Milh (Arabic for “House of Salt”), located on the south-western side of the bay (Fig. 2: J). According to Johns21 this was a watch-tower, and may have also been a lighthouse for guiding ships into the navigation channel to the bay. The other moated tower was built about 200 m to the south, at the eastern end of an east–west oriented rampart that crossed the lowland and constituted the southern external defense line (Fig. 2: K). The easternmost external defense line, the focus of this article, was located on the ʿAtlit ridge, on the eastern perimeter of the Crusader complex (Fig. 13: C). This defense, discussed in detail below, was intended to hold off an army attacking from the east, to give time for people working outside the castle to escape into the protected peninsula. Twelfth-century Rock-cut Features on the ʿAtlit Ridge Most of the features on the ʿAtlit ridge are rock-cut, and are associated with the quarrying and transportation of building stones. More than 600 years later the kurkar ridge became a source of high quality building stones for the deep-water harbor of Haifa, constructed by the British Mandate government

Figure 12. Multi-step quarry on the ʿAtlit ridge, looking north-west (E.G.) 21

Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, p. 72.



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Figure 13. ʿAtlit complex and the main features: Quarries; rock-cut defense wall; passages; enclosures; Destroit fortress (modified by E.G. after Survey of Israel with image from Google Earth)

in 1928–33.22 Rock cuttings on the ʿAtlit north ridge can be divided typologically into several rock-cut features: quarry types A, B, C (Fig. 13: A, B, C); a longitudinal quarry (hence the rock-cut defense wall, Fig. 13: C); rock-cut and stone-built roads and passages, mainly on the west slopes of the ridge (Fig. 13: D1–D8); rock-cut enclosures (Figs. 13: E; 31; 32); and the Destroit fortress (Fig. 2A and see above). Quality stone was also quarried on the western flank of the ridge, but without reaching its crest.

22

Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, p. 70.

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Quarries for Kurkar Building Stone Kurkar stone quarries are common on the Carmel coast. Johns identified three main concentrations of quarries on the ʿAtlit ridge, from which roads lead to gates in the town wall.23 In the current research, three main types of quarries were identified: Type (A) The multi-step quarry: Such a quarry is characterized by numerous rectilinear cuts with no distinct pattern. The ashlars were detached from the bedrock by cutting narrow (3–5 cm wide) grooves around the desired dressed stone and hammering iron or wooden wedges into the grooves. This quarrying method was used for extracting small- and medium-sized (about 0.3–1.0 m long) ashlars. Concentrations of such quarries were found in several places along the ʿAtlit ridge (Fig. 2; Fig. 12; Fig. 13: A). This type of quarry is common on the Carmel coast (for kurkar building stones) and at Mount Carmel (for limestone building stones).24 Type (B) The mega-stone quarry: Rescue excavations on the ʿAtlit ridge in 2015 uncovered a large (40 x 50 m) quarry (Fig. 13: B; Fig. 14). Depressions on the quarry bottom and its walls indicate that especially large blocks (up to 7.0 x 2.5 x 1.0 m – about 18 cubic m, weighing over 40 tonnes each) were extracted. Detaching channels (0.2–0.7 m wide) were cut around and under the desired block, to enable detaching. Smaller channels suggest that after detaching, the blocks were sub-divided on site into stones of 1.5 x 1.0 x 1.0 m, weighing about 3.8 tonnes each. The use of wide detaching channels to remove large blocks of stones was also identified at other Crusader quarries, such as the Nahat quarry near Mi’ilya25 in the Western Galilee and in the Nebi Samwil quarry.26 Type (C) Longitudinal quarry/rock-cut defense wall, the easternmost Crusader fortification: The most prominent rock-cut feature on the ʿAtlit ridge is the north–south oriented artificial cliff, one of the longest known rock-cut features in Israel. The pre-designed quarrying created a wall about 2.1 km long and 3–6 m high, mostly located along the summit of the ridge (Fig. 13: C). On the top of the wall is a horizontal ledge about 50 cm wide, with smooth vertical surfaces below and above it (Fig. 15). The lower part of the wall face, below the smooth cut surfaces, is crudely broken, down to the wall’s bottom. At some places, vertical channels about 1 m wide and up to 3 m high are cut into the wall face (Fig. 16). Until the current research, the functions of the ledge and the 23 24

25 26

Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, Fig. 1. Yaakov Olami, Shlomo Sender, and Oren Eldad. Map of Yagur (27), Archaeological Survey of Israel Series (Jerusalem, 2004), site 78; Yaakov Olami, Shlomo Sender, and Oren Eldad, Map of Dor (30), Archaeological Survey of Israel Series (Jerusalem, 2005), pp. 56, 57, sites 114, 116. Rab’i Hamisi, personal communication, 2016. Yitzhak Magen and Michael Dadon, “Nebi Samwil (Shmuel Hanavi-Har Hasimha),” Qadmoniot 118 (1998), 62–77 (Hebrew).



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Figure 14. Mega-ashlar quarry on the ʿAtlit ridge, looking west, figure included to show scale (E.G.)

Figure 15. Section of the rock-cut defense wall on the ʿAtlit ridge, looking south-west (E. G.)

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Figure 16. Vertical detaching corridor on the rock-cut wall, looking south-west (E.G.) A: Detachment corridor; B: Trench side; C: Ledge; D: Slit side; E: Broken rock

Figure 17. The detaching channel and slit, looking south (E.G.)



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vertical channels were enigmatic, and so was their association with the quarrying process. The artificial cliff constitutes a barrier that hindered approach from the east to the town and the castle. In several places, such as the area east and north of the Destroit fortress, the wall was not completed, presumably because the natural canyon and cliffs of Nahal Oren provided an adequate natural barrier at these places (Fig. 2: D1). The Special Quarrying Method of the Longitudinal Rock-cut Defense Wall Investigations of the ʿAtlit ridge yielded an incomplete section of the longitudinal rock-cut wall (Fig. 2: G; Figs. 17 and 18).27 This site provides a unique opportunity to study the quarrying technique used in creating the wall, and to clarify the function of the corridors and the rock-cut longitudinal ledge at the top of the wall. Finds in this site include an east–west oriented detaching corridor 1 m wide x 4 m long (Fig. 18: B; Fig. 19) that provided access to a longitudinal, north–south oriented channel, rectangular in section (17 m long, 1.5 m wide and 0.8–1.0 m deep) (Fig. 20). This channel was cut along the top of the ridge, about 2.5 m west of the wall’s face. It leveled the very rough surface of the ridge, providing a convenient working surface. On the flat bottom of this channel, at its center, a longitudinal slit, triangular in section (0.23 m wide and 0.7 m deep) was cut (Fig. 18: A; Figs. 20 and 21). The longitudinal channel and the transverse detaching corridor bordered a substantial section of the ridge (18 x 2.5 x 4 m, 180 m³) (Fig. 18: C). Given the specific gravity of kurkar, 2.56,28 such a block, if separated from the ridge, would have weighed about 460 tonnes. South of the channel, a 4 x 3 m gap in the wall shows where a massive irregular block of rock was removed from the ridge (Fig. 18: D). The removal of the block left behind a typical artificial cliff, with a step at its top and a broken rough vertical surface at the lower part of the wall. Similar features are seen on the east-facing wall of block C intended for removal (Fig. 18: E). Similar blocks were probably removed from the east side of the ridge. The ledge on the cliff is, in fact, the remaining half of the channel and half of the slit. These features are seen on the wall all along the ridge. The blocks were detached from the rock by inserting iron or wooden wedges into a tapered slit. These were placed between two “sliding cheeks” and were hammered to create pressure on the slit walls until the block separated from the bedrock (Figs. 22, 23).29 This ledge is a by-product of the special quarrying technique, and is the remaining half of the quarrying channel, which remained after removing the last block. The large, crude rock blocks were apparently sub-divided on site into 27 28 29

Galili and Tirosh, ʿAtlit Ridge Trail, pp. 25–27. Shmuel G. Ettingen, Engineering Handbook, 4 vols. (Tel Aviv, 1954) (Hebrew) 1:272. Angelina Dworakowska, “Wooden Wedge in Ancient Quarrying Practice: Critical Examination of the State of Research,” Archeologia 38 (1987), 25–35; Sara Popović, “The Quarries in Stari Grad Bay: Deciphering the Provenance of Stone Used for Building the City Walls of Ancient Pharos,” Archaeologia Adriatica 6 (2012), 114–28, at pp. 114–17.‫‏‬

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Figure 18. Aerial view of the place where the detaching was not completed: a) longitudinal detaching trench, b) vertical detaching channel, c) incompletely detached block, showing the ledge left on the rock-cut wall after removing the last block. (Modified by E.G. after I. Grinberg)

Figure 19. Vertical detaching corridor on the ʿAtlit ridge, looking west, 2018 (the staircase is modern) (E.G.)



The External Fortifications of ʿAtlit Castle

Figure 20. The detaching channel and a slit, looking north, 2018 (E.G.)

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Figure 21. Schematic cross-section, demonstrating the detaching system (E.G., modified by Cath D’Alton)

Figure 22. Schematic cross-section showing kurkar mega-blocks (ca. 450 tonnes each) quarried from the eastern slope of the ʿAtlit ridge (E.G., modified by Cath D’Alton.)



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Figure 23. Schematic model depicting the quarrying method of mega-blocks (E.G., modified by Cath D’Alton)

Figure 24. Schematic model depicting the quarrying method of the mega-blocks from the ridge and sub-dividing them (E.G., modified by Cath D’Alton)

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ashlars (Fig. 24). These were transported west to the building areas of the castle and town. The initial stages of quarrying on the eastern fringes of the ridge can be seen in the longitudinal rock-cut road east of the Destroit fortress (road D9, Fig. 2 see below). The quarrying there first created a 1-m-high wall only, and did not continue. A recently discovered feature, parallel to the ʿAtlit rock-cut wall, was identified in a small isolated Crusader quarry near Mi’ilya (33º 1’ 49.53’’ N; 35º 14’ 51’’ E) (Fig. 25). It is probably associated with the Nahat quarries (see above) used by the Teutonic Order when building Montfort castle.30 That quarry demonstrates quarrying techniques similar to those used in the eastern defense wall of ʿAtlit. This may suggest an importation of quarrying-building techniques from some European source, the presence of Western quarrymen at either site, or connections and transfer of knowledge between the two sites, which were built at the beginning of the thirteenth century (‘Atlit 1218, Montfort 1228).

Figure 25. Rock-cut vertical surface, having a trench side, a ledge and a slit side and a detaching corridor in a quarry near Mi'ilya (E.G.)

The Roads and Passages through and on the ʿAtlit Ridge The network of roads and passages crossing the ʿAtlit ridge was studied and described by several scholars. Johns identified three main rock-cut passages across the ridge: in the north, Bab el-Ajal, located south of Destroit fortress; in the center, the gate (located at the west corner of the modern Yefe-Nof neighborhood); and in the south the modern colony ʿAtlit, Bab el-Hawa (Gate of the Wind). He noted that all three were, in fact, gateways, and could be 30

Prawer, The Latin Kingdom, pp. 308–12.



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closed from the castle side.31 The passages led to three gates in the town wall. A sketch map (Department of Antiquities, Dec. 1937), depicts three transverse passages across the ridge (Fig. 2: D2, D5, D8) and one longitudinal road (Fig. 2: D10), in addition to the transversal natural passage north of Nahal Oren Canyon (Fig. 2: D1). Ronen and Olami32 describe five transverse paths (sites 63, 89, 91, 103, 106), some of them slightly curved (obstructing the observation of one opening from the other), and one longitudinal (site 88, here D10) passage. Peled and Friedman33 agree with Ronen and Olami. Johns noted that, “the rough rock is scored with deep wheel-ruts at a uniform distance of 3 ft. 6 in. or just over a meter from center to center, doubtless for the stone-laden carts which, as the chronicler tells us, ‘two bullocks could hardly pull along.’” He suggested that some of these passages were in use in the early days of the Crusader occupation, a century before the ʿAtlit castle was built, and were termed the “Narrow Ways.”34 The present research documented eight transverse rock-cut passages (Fig. 13: D1–D8), and longitudinal roads on both sides of the ridge (Fig. 13: D9, D10 respectively). The transversal roads were connected, “comb-like” to the longitudinal road on the western side of the ridge. From that longitudinal road, three roads (including two causeways) crossed the trough, leading to the castle.35 The transverse (east–west) roads are described below from north to south, followed by the two longitudinal (north–south) roads: Transverse rock-cut road D1: This road (Fig. 2: D1), first mentioned by Ronen and Olami,36 is some 20 m north of the Nahal Oren canyon (described below). It is about 80 m long and 2.8 m wide, and is cut to a maximum depth of 0.7 m. Two parallel grooves are cut on the road surface, 1.3 m apart. Unlike Bab el-Ajal road D2, (below) which is cut deep into the ridge almost horizontally, road D1 is shallow and follows the topography of the ridge. That road was probably cut as a substitute for the natural Nahal Oren canyon passage that was often impassable during winter. The Nahal Oren transverse canyon: The Nahal Oren crosses the ʿAtlit ridge from east to west, forming a canyon 160 m long and 30 m wide, with steep cliffs, up to 8 m high on both sides (Fig. 2: B; Fig. 26).37 Nir suggested that the canyon is one of the ancient artificial rock-cut draining passages in the kurkar

31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, pp. 70, 71. Ronen and Olami, Map of ʿAtlit. Anat Peled and Yvonne Friedman, “Did the Crusaders Build Roads?” Qadmoniot 20 (1987), 119–23 (Hebrew). Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, p. 71. Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, pp. 70, 71. Ronen and Olami, Map of ʿAtlit, p. 32, site 68. Ronen and Olami, Map of ʿAtlit, p. 33, site 69; Galili and Tirosh, ʿAtlit Ridge Trail, p. 48, Fig. 35.

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Figure 26. The Nahal Oren channel, with steep cliffs up to 8 m high on both sides, 24.5.1929 (Haifa Harbor works. View point No. Q1, Wadi Doustre, (courtesy of The Railway Archive, Haifa municipality archive.)

ridge.38 However, limestone pebbles embedded in paleosol on the sea bottom off the river outlet suggest that the canyon is a natural feature dating to the Late Pleistocene–early Holocene.39 The natural canyon may have been used for crossing the ridge. Transverse rock-cut road D2:40 The road, termed Bab el-Ajal, is almost horizontal. It is 195 m long and 3 m wide, with vertical cut walls up to 2 m high on both sides (Figs 2: D2, 27, 28). At some places on the road there are shallow parallel grooves 1.3 m apart. Some ashlar stones were added to the southern wall. North of the eastern opening of this road there are rock-cut troughs. Two Phoenician letters (Ayin, Tav) were cut into the upper face of the eastern escarp-

38 39

40

David Nir, “Artificial Outlets of the Mount Carmel Valleys through the Coastal ‘Kurkar’ Ridge,” Israel Exploration Journal 9 (1955), 49–50. Ehud Galili, “Submerged Settlements”; Ehud Galili and Moshe Inbar, “Underwater Clay Exposures along the Israeli Coast, Submerged Archaeological Remains and Sea-Level Changes in the Northern Carmel Coast,” Horizons in Geography 22 (1986), 3–34 (Hebrew); Ehud Galili, Dov Zviely, and Mina Weinstein-Evron, “Holocene Sea-level Changes and Landscape Evolution on the Northern Carmel Coast (Israel),” Méditerranée 1 (2005), 1–8. Ronen and Olami, Map of ʿAtlit, p. 88, site 89; Galili and Tirosh, ʿAtlit Ridge Trail, p. 46, Fig. 33.



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ment. According to Johns41 the Phoenician style of the inscriptions may represent the first two letters of ʿAtlit. He suggested that the rock-cut passage was cut at this early period. However, the incised letters may not be associated with this passage. The Bab el-Ajal rock-cut passage (known in the early Crusader period as Petra Incisa, “the hewn-rock,” “rock cutting”; Districtum, or Destroit “narrow passage”) was on the coastal road. The name Destroit was preserved in the Arabic name Khirbet Dustrey.42 It is mentioned as a narrow passage in the description of the voyage of Baldwin I from Acre to Dor in 1103, where he was ambushed and injured by bandits.43 Transverse rock-cut road D3 (Yefe Nof north): This is the northernmost passage of the central complex (the Yefe Nof complex), which includes three passages, four enclosures, and a 200-m-long rock-cut defense wall (Fig. 13: central complex, D3, D4, D5). East of the northern enclosure and adjacent to it, is a 10 m gap in the rock-cut wall. A modern stone-built wall and a rampart 1.5 m high were built over this gap, possibly covering the original passage. Transverse rock-cut road D4: This road (Yefe-Nof center)44 starts at the eastern edge with a step down of about 2 m in the east face of the defense wall (Fig. 13: central complex, D4). The road is about 80 m long, 2.8 m wide, and is cut to a maximum depth of 1.5 m at its eastern entrance, and 0.7 m in the west. In some sections two parallel grooves are cut in its bottom, 1.3 m apart. At some places, the rock-cut road side is missing, and rows of standing stones were inserted to close the gaps. Transverse rock-cut road D5: This Yefe–Nof southern road (which was called the central passage according to Johns)45 (Fig. 2: D5).46 The entrance gate (2.5 x 4m) was cut in the east face of the defense wall. The road leads to the west, and at its western end it turns slightly to the south.47 The road is about 80 m long, 2.8 m wide, and is cut to a maximum depth of 0.7 m (Fig. 27). In some sections of the road two parallel grooves are cut in its bottom, 1.3 m apart. The area between the grooves is elevated up to 50 cm, creating a W-shaped crosssection (Fig. 29). In the western side of the entrance there are vertical ledges and square recesses marking the presence of a device for closing the road from the castle side, using a wooden gate locked by beams, possibly mounted on wheels. When the gate was opened, it could have been kept in a cavity located about 10 m north-west of the entrance, adjacent to the road. 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, pp. 14, 95. Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, 1947, p. 13; Peled and Friedman, “Roads.” Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, p. 14. Ronen and Olami, Map of ʿAtlit, p. 54, site 91. Ronen and Olami, Map of ʿAtlit, p. 60, site 103. Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, p. 70. Galili and Tirosh, ʿAtlit Ridge Trail, p. 41, fig. 29.

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Figure 27. Rock-cut passage Bab el-Ajal (D2) crossing the ʿAtlit ridge, looking west 2017 (I. Grinberg)

Figure 28. Rock-cut passage Bab el-Hawa (D5), and the rock-cut wall, looking west (E.G.)



The External Fortifications of ʿAtlit Castle

Figure 29. Cart tracks in Bab el-Hawa, looking west (E.G.)

Figure 30. Transverse rock-cut road D6, looking east 2017 (E.G.)

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Transverse rock-cut road D6: (Fig. 2: D6; Fig. 13: D6; Fig. 30) This road was discovered during the 2015 rescue excavations of the Israel Antiquities Authority.48 As it is covered by modern landfill, its continuation eastward is unclear. The exposed part is some 60 m long, 150–250 cm wide, oriented roughly east– west. Its sides are crudely cut to a height of 50 cm, and in some places two parallel grooves are cut in its surface, 100–135 cm apart. Between the grooves is uncut elevated rock up to 30 cm high, creating a W-shaped cross-section at some places. Unfortunately, this road was partly damaged during 2018 and it is currently under threat of destruction by modern building. Transverse rock-cut road D7:49 This road, called “Bab el-Makati” (“Gate of the Quarries”) starts at the eastern face of the defense wall, crossing an enclosure located west of the gate from east to west (Fig. 2: D7; Fig. 13: D7; Figs. 31 and 32). The road is about 80 m long and 2.8 m wide at its eastern end, and is cut to a maximum depth of 1.5 m. The eastern opening of the gate is elevated some 1.5 m above the bottom of the defense wall. Several footholds cut into the wall enable climbing over the gate step.50 Transverse rock-cut road D8: This southernmost passage, called “Bab el-Hawa”, on the modern road (Meyasdim St.), crosses the ridge in the center of modern ʿAtlit (Fig. 2). The ancient rock-cut passage was widened at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its northern side is missing, and its original width and cross-section are unknown. According to Johns,51 this gate was connected to a causeway across the salt pans leading to a gate in the south wall of the town. Longitudinal rock-cut road D9:52 On the eastern fringes of the ridge east of the Destroit fort is an elevated road about 240 m long, oriented approximately north– south (Fig. 2: D9: Fig. 13: D9). It is 2 m wide, bordered by a low rock-cut wall (up to 1m high) in the west and a 2–3-m-high vertical drop to the east, where the Nahal Oren channel runs parallel to it. In some sections of the road two parallel grooves are cut into its surface about 1.5 m apart. At the cliff bottom east of the road are huge irregular blocks of rock. On some of these blocks are the remains of parallel grooves identical to those on the road. These indicate that the blocks were sections of the road that collapsed after the Crusader period, probably due to erosion by river floods or an earthquake. It seems that the D9 longitudinal rock-cut road represents the first stage of quarrying, starting from the eastern flanks of the ridge, while the other sections of the high rock-cut defense wall on the ʿAtlit ridge represent the final stage. Quarrying this section of the ridge

48 49 50 51 52

Moti Heiman, personal communication. Ronen and Olami, Map of ʿAtlit, p. 61, site 106. Galili and Tirosh, ʿAtlit Ridge Trail, p. 27, fig. 8. Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, p. 71. Ronen and Olami, Map of ʿAtlit, p. 53, site 88.



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Figure 31. Aerial view of quarried enclosure (quarrymen’s camp) and Bab el-Makati (Road D7) 2017 (Modified after I. Grinberg) A: quarry; B: Ridge summit; C: rock-cut defence wall; D: Enclosure; E: D7 route

Figure 32. Quarried enclosure (quarrymen’s camp) near Bab el-Makati, looking west 2018 (E.G.), D7 route visible as gaps in the rock

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was probably given low priority, because the river erosion created a natural cliff there, acting as a barrier. Longitudinal stone-built road D10: On the western fringes of the ridge is a longitudinal north–south-oriented road made of a line of standing stones (Fig. 2: D10; Fig. 13: D10; Fig. 33). Near the road is a well (Bir al Yazak) with a monumental stone-built superstructure. Sadly, this road was recently demolished by development. The Quarried Enclosures on the West Flanks of the Ridge Several rock-cut enclosures were identified on the ʿAtlit ridge. Some have steep rock-cut walls on all sides, while others are partly open (Fig. 13: E; Figs. 31 and 32). These enclosures may have been preplanned, or were quarries for building stones, later converted for various purposes. Numerous rock-cut features in and adjacent to these enclosures include: feeding troughs (Fig. 34), tethering holes, niches for candles, and wooden beams, some of the latter intended for pergolas. Some of the enclosures are adjacent to the rock-cut passages, and probably associated with them. Unlike in Type A quarries, described above, the walls of these enclosures are mostly vertical and smooth. The enclosures are usually located on the western flanks of the ridge, west of, and adjacent to, the rock-cut defense wall. Such enclosures were identified close to the Destroit fortress and in the central and northern complexes (Fig. 13: E). In several such quarried enclosures, there is a feature identical to the ʿAtlit longitudinal rock-cut wall: a smooth longitudinal ledge on the top of the wall. This suggests that at such places the quarrymen used the same technique for removing large blocks similarly to the longitudinal rock-cut defense wall. The quarried material was most probably used as building stones. These enclosures exploited the high quality Dor kurkar on the west side of the ʿAtlit ridge, without damaging the longitudinal rock-cut defense wall. Roads Crossing the Troughs West of the ʿAtlit Ridge Three transverse roads were paved across the partly flooded lowland west of the ridge, leading to the Crusader town and the castle. The central one (Fig. 2: D11; Fig. 13: D11) is a stone-built causeway (Fig. 35). Its substructure is up to 7 m wide, built of undressed fieldstones. This causeway is about 400 m long, 2.2 m wide, and stands up to 1 m above the surrounding surface. It is built from two or three courses of dressed stones on both sides with a fill of small irregular field stones, apparently quarry waste. It approaches the central gate in the eastern town wall. The northern road (Fig. 2: D12), which is not preserved, connected Bab el-Ajal with the northern gate in the outer town wall, as depicted on Johns’ map (Fig. 2: D12, D2). According to Johns, an additional



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Figure 33. Longitudinal stone-built road D10, looking north 2017 (E.G.)

Figure 34. Livestock feeding troughs in the enclosure adjacent to Bab el-Makati (E.G.)

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Figure 35. Stone-built causeway (D11) crossing the salt pans, looking east (E.G.)

Figure 36. Traces left by the rock-splitting wedges clearly seen along the rock-cut wall (E.G.) The trench, ledge and the slit.



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causeway connected the southern rock-cut passage (D8) to the southern gate in the city wall (see above).53 The ancient cities situated on the Carmel coast (e.g., Caesarea, Dor, ʿAtlit) were mostly built of kurkar ashlars. Johns noted that sandstone (i.e. kurkar) quarries, some dated to the Greco-Phoenician or Roman periods, are found on the eastern ridge all the way to the coastal settlement of Dor, some 10 km south of ʿAtlit.54 The Dual-purpose Quarry/Defense Wall on the ʿAtlit Ridge and the Unique Quarrying Technique Quarrying stones for the construction of the castle from the nearest available source would have been logical, efficient, and thus expected. Surprisingly, the castle builders chose to exploit the more distant eastern flank of the ridge, along a 2-km-long section. They did not utilize huge quantities of high-quality unquarried stone resources on the more accessible western flanks of the ridge. Quarrying on the east flank of the ridge for a distance of two kilometers was less efficient than quarrying the whole ridge opposite the castle and required extra investment. The builders had to cut a network of transverse passages through the ridge to enable crossing it, with carts carrying the stones over considerable distances. Our explanation of such apparently illogical behavior lies in the tactical need to convert the ridge into a rock-cut defense wall, an intentional, desired product of the quarrying. Limited time was presumably a major factor in building the castle and its defenses. Removing large masses of stones to create the rock-cut defense wall on the ridge, and to provide sufficient amount of building stones in a relatively short time, was essential. The combination of quarrying building stones, while simultaneously creating a defense wall, required preplanning and organization, presumably leading to the special quarrying technique identified on the ʿAtlit ridge. The current research suggests that the longitudinal flat ledge on the top of the wall was a product of the unique, innovative quarrying technique employed on the ʿAtlit ridge.55 The quarried stone masses detached from the ridge using this method weighed hundreds of tonnes. Transferring such blocks for further processing was problematic and illogical. They were probably cut into ashlars of the desired sizes on the quarry site and transferred to the castle on carts pulled by oxen and mules, using the network of passages and roads. Working Tools in the Quarries Traces left by the rock-splitting wedges (of wood or iron) are clearly seen along the rock-cut wall (Fig. 36). However, no wedges or other quarrying tools were 53 54 55

Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, p. 71. Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, p. 71. Galili and Tirosh, ʿAtlit Ridge Trail, p. 25, Fig. 8.

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recovered while excavating the quarries.56 The suggestions that wooden wedges soaked with water were used to detach the stones from the bedrock was made by Magen and Dadon57 for the Crusader quarries at Nebi Samwil, located northwest of Jerusalem. However, there is no secure evidence for the use of such a technique.58 Working tools used in the quarries – a plumb line, an angle bar and a hafted adze – are depicted on tombstones in the Crusader graveyard (Fig. 37).59 The large-scale quarrying operation and the building of the castle and the associated fortifications required iron for forging, quarrying and building materials (bars, clamps and fittings), cart fixtures, and weapons. Two round ovens recovered in the castle were originally associated solely with cooking and kitchens.60 However, large amounts of iron slag recovered in and around these furnaces suggest that they were intended for smelting and working iron. Iron ore is rare in the region; thus, it seems that iron ore or iron semi-finished products were imported from Europe or Cilicia (Asia Minor) to produce tools and other iron products crucial for the large-scale Crusader project in ʿAtlit. Seven cargoes of semi-finished iron products recovered from shipwrecks along the Carmel coast61 lend support to the theory that they originated in Cilicia. Cargoes of semi-finished iron products were mentioned as being shipped from that region southward in the 1270s, some reaching Acre.62 Dating the ʿAtlit Quarries and the Longitudinal Rock-cut Defense Line The quarrying at ʿAtlit started as early as the ninth century B.C., when the stone-built harbor was constructed.63 Rectangular rock cut-outs, similar in size to the ashlars used for the building of breakwaters, were identified in several locations on the northern ʿAtlit ridge (Fig. 2: A, B). This part of the ridge was apparently the principal source of building stones for the pre-Crusader builders. According to Johns, the quarries on the ʿAtlit ridge are Crusader, although some of them are probably earlier.64 Judging by the extent of the quarrying activity on the ridge and the quantity of building stones required for the construction of the Crusader castle, town, and fortifications, it seems reasonable that the

56 57 58 59 60 61 62

63 64

M. Heiman, personal communication, 2016. Magen and Dadon, “Nebi Samwil.” Dworakowska, “Wooden Wedge”; Galili and Sharvit, “Millstone Quarry on the Coast of Acre,” ‘Atiqot 42 (2001), 73–78 (Hebrew, English summary) and references therein. Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, pp. 92–94, Fig. 37. Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, pp. 60, 61, Fig. 24. Ehud Galili, Sylvain Bauvais, and Baruch Rosen, “Cargoes of Medieval Iron Semi-Products Recovered from Shipwrecks off the Carmel Coast, Israel,” Archaeometry 57 (2014), 501–35. David Jacoby, “The Supply of War Materials to Egypt in the Crusader Period,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 25 (2001), 102–32, repr. in David Jacoby, Commercial Exchange across the Mediterranean: Byzantium, the Crusader Levant, Egypt and Italy (Aldershot, 2005) pp. 103–08, 112–26. Raban and Linder, “Maritime Atlit”; Haggi, “Phoenician Harbour.” Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, Fig. 1, aerial sketch of the site.



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Figure 37. Working tools depicted on tombstones from the Crusader graveyard: an angle bar and a hafted adz. Such tools may have been used in the quarries (E.G.)

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main quarrying activity on the ʿAtlit ridge was carried out during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The small quarry discovered near Mi’ilya mentioned above may also provide an indirect dating for the ʿAtlit quarries. The Mi’ilya quarry was probably associated with the Nahat quarries used by the Crusaders to build the fortress of Montfort. The quarries are not usually dated. However, the special quarrying technique (Type C above) identified in these two quarries suggests the dating of both to the Crusader period (see above). Rock-cut Enclosures The construction period and the function of the enclosures are not clear. They could have been pre-planned facilities, designed to shelter the passage guards65 or to serve the quarry workers and associated livestock.66 Judging by the features cut in the enclosures and their proximity to the essential passages and to the quarrying areas, they could have served both purposes. The location and characteristics of the enclosures are closely associated with the other Crusader features on the ʿAtlit ridge. Thus, they are most probably an inseparable part of the whole Crusader complex and defense system. Roads and Passages Johns mentions three main “Narrow Ways” (passages) crossing the ridge (D2– Bab el-Ajal in the northern complex, D5 in the central complex and D8–the Meyasdim St. passage in the southern complex). We documented eight passages, some having 1–2 m of steps at their eastern end (e.g., Bab el-Maqati). Beside the roads associated with the Crusader complex, a major road from Acre to Caesarea, Jaffa, and further south passed near ʿAtlit.67 It appears on the maps of Conder and Kitchener68 and Baedeker69. North of ʿAtlit this road passed east of the ridge, probably because the western edge of the ridge was on the coastline and was impassable. The road crossed the ʿAtlit ridge westwards through the Bab el-Ajal passage (Petra Incisa, see above passage D2), and continued southward along the western side of the ridge. According to Johns, the Bab el-Ajal passage was pre-Crusader, probably Phoenician (see above). The network of roads and passages, on and adjacent to the ʿAtlit ridge, was intended to serve the project of quarrying and transporting building material for the construction of the castle. The width of the rock-cut roads varied between 2 and 4 m. The distance between the grooves in the roads is usually 1.2–1.5 m, suggesting that 65 66 67 68

69

Ronen and Olami, Map of ʿAtlit, pp. 60, 61, sites 104, 107. Galili and Tirosh, ʿAtlit Ridge Trail, pp. 27–30. Peled and Friedman, “Roads.” Claude R. Conder and Horatio H. Kitchener, The Survey of Western Palestine: Memoirs of the Topography, Orography, Hydrography, and Archaeology, 3 vols. (London, 1881–1883), 1:261–347. Karl Baedeker, Mt. Carmel – Northern Part – Handbook for Travellers, 5th ed. (Leipzig, 1912).



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carts with a standard axle length were used. The wheel tracks vary in depth: in some places they are deep (up to 50 cm) while in others, they are shallow or totally absent. In some places, the roads were crudely cut, having a rough elevated surface up to 50 cm high between the cart wheel tracks, creating a W-shaped profile. This quarrying method could suggest that the roads were cut ad hoc to serve the quarrying activity with minimum effort. It also seems that the wheel tracks were not caused by heavy use, but were deliberately cut to enable the loaded carts to move smoothly westward, even without guides, with no possibility of leaving the road. No attention was paid to the area between the two-wheel tracks, as the animals pulling the carts had no difficulty in walking on a rough surface. Intensive planning and labor were invested in the network of roads associated with the quarrying activity and transportation of building stones. They were planned comb-like, with eight transverse rock-cut passages joining a stone-built longitudinal road on the western side of the ridge. These roads served the quarries, but they also weakened the defense system of the castle, as they enabled penetration from the east, requiring guarding facilities and gates to prevent enemies storming through them. Oliver of Paderborn described the siege of ʿAtlit Castle by the ruler of Damascus, al-Mu‘azzam, in October 1220.70 According to his description, al-Mu’azzam “finally besieged the fort with a multitude of Turks, extending the line of their tents from the river to the salt works.” It seems that the siege of the castle was based west of the ʿAtlit ridge, over the salt pans in the trough east of the castle. Oliver wrote: “Now he derived this audacity from the fact that he knew that around the beginning of October the seventh passage had been so small; for he believed that not one hundred soldiers came to our aid then with military weapons and horses.”71 Given the situation at the time of the siege, aid was probably not expected from inland. It seems that the “seventh passage” is not associated with one of the passages discussed above, but generally refers to the arrival of Crusader aid from Europe via a sea passage.72 Hauling the Massive Building Stones The blocks quarried in the ʿAtlit Type B quarry were probably cut and dressed to the desired size and were hauled to the castle by wagons drawn by several pairs of oxen. Oliver of Paderborn describes the construction of the two gigantic towers of the Castle: “Two towers were built at the front of the fort of hewn and fitted stones of such greatness that one stone is with difficulty drawn in a cart by two oxen.”73 Wheeled transport of a load of up to 1 tonne, on an average

70 71 72 73

Peters, Christian Society, p. 108. Ibid. We thank the editors Clifford J. Rogers and John France for clarifying this issue. Peters, Christian Society, p. 58.

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farm road, requires a draft force of about 90–120 kgf.74 A bullock weighing 500–900 kg produces a draft force of 60–80 kgf.75 A pair of average-sized oxen can haul about 1.0–1.5 tonnes. The stones used in the foundations of the guard tower at the north end of the town wall entering the sea (see above) were probably extracted from a Type B quarry. Such huge stones, weighing about 5 tonnes each, could have been hauled by four pairs of oxen. The tapering stones (Fig. 10) arranged in a line, documented underwater near this tower (see above), were used as a barrier to prevent approach in the shallows along the coast (Fig. 11). These stones also weigh about 5 tonnes, and could have been transported similarly. The External Defense Systems of the Crusader Complex The external defenses on the northern side of the Crusader complex relied mainly on the natural canyon cliffs of Nahal Oren and the soft coastal sand at its outlet. The eastern flanks of the ʿAtlit complex were defended by the longitudinal rock-cut wall on the ridge. On the south, there were several man-made and natural defenses, as attested by Johns’ map of 193776: from the southernmost passage, a rampart and a fosse (ditch), a few hundred meters long, oriented south-west–west, were built across the eastern trough (Fig. 2: F, Fig. 13: K, Fig. 2: K). A moated tower was constructed on the western part of the rampart (Fig. 13: G). West of the tower, adjacent to the coast, there was probably a natural salty marsh (El-Bassa) (Fig. 13: H), and north of it a stone wall closing the approach along the coast was identified (Fig. 2). These external defenses were not totally impassable, but rather led an attacking enemy to a few narrow passages, because horses and war machines could not have crossed the longitudinal rock-cut wall and the ridge, unless they broke through one of the passages. These could have been guarded by a relatively small number of troops. The outer defenses of ʿAtlit were not planned to withstand a long siege, but only to delay the enemy until the population of the town and people working in the quarries, fields, and salt plants could escape to the protection of the castle. The castle was intended to withstand a siege lasting many months. The local ground water table enabled the excavation of wells, providing permanent sources of fresh water. This system proved to be efficient, as attested by the three unsuccessful attempts to capture the fortress; by Al-Mu’azzam Isa, the governor of Damascus, in 1220; by Emperor Frederick II in 1229; and by Baibars, Sultan of Egypt and Syria, in 1265.

74 75 76

Hans J. Hopfen, Farm Implements for Arid and Tropical Regions (Rome, 1969), p. 11, table 4. Hopfen, Farm Implements, p. 10, table 2. Johns, Sketch Map of ʿAtlit; Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, pp. 71, 72.



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Summary and Conclusions ʿAtlit castle was vulnerable to attack only from the east, through the neck of the peninsula, where two massive walls and a dry moat were constructed. The castle controls one of the few sheltered bays on the shores of the Holy Land. For the Crusaders, who depended heavily on contacts with Europe, the presence of the bay and its protection must have played a critical role in the selection of its location. It demonstrates the builders’ dependence on the relative safety of the castle adjacent to the sea, versus the ever-hostile hinterland to the east. The town east of the castle was protected by a wall entering the sea in the northern and southern bays. This wall ended on both sides with defense towers built in the sea. In the northern bay, the wall continued as an underwater barrier of a row of standing stones. This marine obstacle prevented attackers from passing through the shallows. The defense system on the long eastern flank was based on an exceptional rock-cut artificial cliff, more than 2 km long and up to 6 m high, on the kurkar ridge. The Templar complex of ʿAtlit was a gigantic and complicated project. The first stage in the construction of the defense system must have been a thorough study of the local terrain. The environment must have been carefully surveyed by experts, the geological features were investigated and the quality, availability, and extractability of building materials were assessed. The military topography of the area was studied minutely from the points of view of a possible attacker and of the defender. The thorough understanding of the local topography can be seen by the careful control of quarrying at the northern end of the eastern wall, which was postponed because at this point protection was provided by local natural features. The large scale of building on the peninsula, and the short duration of the project, depended on rapidly supplying building materials of adequate quality and quantity. A major factor determining the nature of the fortified complex, as seen today, was the decision to use the eastern ridge, both as the easternmost defense, and as a major source of building materials. Therefore, the building stones were extracted, while leaving an artificial long rock-cut cliff on the ridge. The builders were aware of the quality of the upper layer of the kurkar (the Dor kurkar) and exploited it in all the quarries. By sophisticated pre-planning, working in specialized groups of quarrymen in several places simultaneously, and by preparing a network of roads, the builders succeeded in extracting large quantities of building stones, transferring them, and constructing the castle and town in a short time. Quarrying the eastern flanks of the ridge increased the transportation cost to the peninsula, but also created the rock-cut defense wall protection from the east. However, it required the laying of passages across the ridge to transfer building materials, creating weak points in the eastern rock-cut defense wall. The scarcity of quarrying waste recovered in the quarries, together with the material of which the causeway (D11) was built, suggest that the waste was efficiently used as building material for paving causeways, roads, ramparts, and, most probably, other installations and structures.

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Quality stone was also quarried on the western flank of the ridge, but without reaching its crest, in order to preserve the continuity of the eastern defense line. Most of the building stone quarried in the ʿAtlit region was presumably intended for local building projects, mainly the Crusader castle on the peninsula. Thus, most of the quarries on the ridge may be dated to the early thirteenth century. Additional features on the ʿAtlit ridge were several enclosures, depressions surrounded by rock-cut cliffs. Their association with the passages, and the features within these enclosures suggest that they were compounds for housing and protecting the quarrymen, guards, and the livestock used for conveying stones extracted from the quarries. When discussing the Crusader castles, T. E. Lawrence concluded that: “The design [of ʿAtlit castle] is simply unintelligent, a reworking of the old ideas of Procopius, only half understood. Given the unlimited time and labor, anyone can make a ditch so deep and a wall so high of stones so heavy as to be impregnable: but such a place is as much a prison for its defenders as a refuge: in fact, a stupidity.”77 Regarding the efficiency of the fortifications of the ʿAtlit castle after three failed attempts to capture it, Johns wrote: “the district was raided once more during 1226, but while other great castles were being reduced one after the other, Pilgrims’ castle was not attacked, probably it was regarded as impregnable, not only on account of its huge walls […], but also because it was founded at sea-level (on a solid rock) and was thus proof against sapping and mining, the most common effective form of attack known at that day.”78 Obviously the fortified ʿAtlit peninsula, protecting one of the very few natural anchorages along the Holy Land coast, cannot be considered as a prison to its defenders, or a stupidity, as stated by Lawrence. During the thirteenth century, military orders led to several evacuation operations of Christians via the sea when endangered by Muslims. The Italian merchants from Akko escaped from the city in 1291 by sailing Templar ships.79 After the fall of Akko, ʿAtlit remained a protected approach to the sea. As a sea-oriented people, the Crusaders in ʿAtlit ensured that the sea side of the castle and the approaches through the shallows were well protected, enabling their retreat via the sea at any time. The castle was not assaulted but was simply abandoned.80 The defenders left the castle at their convenience, when staying there made no strategic sense, once all the other castles and cities in the Holy Land fell. Despite the short time it took to build the castle, the town, the rockcut wall on the ʿAtlit ridge and the associated quarries, enclosures, and roads, it is obvious that ʿAtlit castle was an extremely well-planned fortified complex.

77 78 79 80

T. E. Lawrence, Crusader Castles (London, 1936), p. 87. Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, p. 28. M. L. Favreau-Lilie, “The Military Orders and the Escape of the Christian Population from the Holy Land in 1291,” Journal of Medieval History 19 (1993), 201–27.‫‏‬ Johns, Guide to ʿAtlit, p. 30.

3 Holy Warriors, Worldly War: Military Religious Orders and Secular Conflict Helen J. Nicholson

This article discusses how the military religious orders saw their role in the West, asking whether their role in “worldly” conflict was much more fundamental to their overall activity than previous studies suggest. It argues that although they were religious orders, exempt from secular authority, they became involved in secular warfare through their close working relationships with the local ruling classes, to whom the brothers were closely related, and with the king. As they played an important role in local society, they could not stand outside that society but played their part in local peacekeeping and the government’s military campaigns. How far were the military religious orders involved in secular warfare? The vocation of the Knights Templar, Knights Hospitaller, Teutonic Knights, and similar medieval institutions bound them to fight in defense of Christians, to prevent injustice to Christians and to lay down their lives for their brothers. Hence modern scholars of the medieval military religious orders have argued that the Templars, Hospitallers, and Teutonic knights generally avoided involvement in secular warfare and any warfare outside their own vocation.1 Yet there were also occasions when the military religious orders were physically involved in hostilities against Christians: not necessarily in battle, but in various forms of conflict. This article will examine some of these instances and discuss how the military religious orders saw their role in the West, asking whether the military religious orders’ role in “worldly” conflict was much more fundamental to their overall activity than previous studies suggest. The subject of religious orders’ involvement in secular warfare calls into question the division between the ecclesiastical and secular realms and how far these were divided in practice during the later Middle Ages; the relationship between the religious orders and wider society; and the difference between canonical theory 1

Alan J. Forey, “The Military Orders and Holy War against Christians in the Thirteenth Century,” English Historical Review 104 (1989), 1–24; Alan J. Forey, “Military Orders and Secular Warfare in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” Viator 24 (1993), 79–100; Helen Nicholson, The Knights Templar: A New History (Stroud, 2001), p. 169; Helen Nicholson, Knights Hospitaller (Woodbridge, 2001), p. 111; Nicholas Morton, The Medieval Military Orders, 1120–1314 (Harlow, 2013), pp. 114–15.

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and practice. However, before proceeding into detailed discussion, it will be useful to set out how these Christian institutions were founded, and to investigate their original purpose. The military religious orders first appeared in the city of Jerusalem in the early twelfth century, in the wake of the conquests of the First Crusade. Their members took life-time monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, combining permanent religious vows and military activity within their religious vocation. The three military religious orders which attracted the most patronage and held the most land across Latin (Catholic) Europe were the Knights Templar, the Knights Hospitaller, and the Teutonic Knights. 2 The Templars were apparently founded in January 1120 from a small group of knights who had come together to keep the roads to Jerusalem safe for pilgrims, and to defend Christian territory. King Baldwin II of Jerusalem (1118– 31) gave them the former Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem as a headquarters building. As the Latin Europeans called the mosque “Solomon’s Temple,” the organization became “the order of the Temple” and its members were “Templars.” The knights also attracted temporary members, such as Count Fulk of Anjou, who came to Jerusalem on crusade in around 1120 and joined the Templars for a year. The Templars received papal approval in 1129 at a Church Council in Troyes, France: the Council also approved an official religious Rule for them. Ten years later Pope Innocent II made them exempt from all secular and religious authority except his own in the bull Omne Datum Optimum. The brothers were entrusted with fortified sites to defend in the Iberian Peninsula and in Palestine and Syria and extensive properties and privileges in western Europe to support their work on the frontiers of Christendom.3 Meanwhile, another religious institution in Jerusalem began to be involved in military activity. The Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem had been founded in Jerusalem in the third quarter of the eleventh century by merchants from the Italian city of Amalfi as a hospice for poor pilgrims to the holy city. When the First Crusade captured Jerusalem in 1099, the crusaders were so impressed by the Hospital’s care for poor sick pilgrims that they gave it generous donations of land, income, tax exemptions, and legal rights, not only in the new lands they had conquered in the Middle East, but also in western Europe. In 1113 Pope Paschal II declared the Hospital to be an independent religious institution with its own officials and regulations. By the late 1120s, patrons were entrusting it with the care of fortified sites, and by the 1130s it was involved in military operations, hiring mercenaries to defend Christian pilgrims travelling the road to 2

3

Alan Forey, The Military Orders from the Twelfth to the Early Fourteenth Centuries (Basingstoke, 1992); Alain Demurger, Chevaliers du Christ : Les ordres religieux-militaires au Moyen Âge, XVe–XVIe siècle (Paris, 2002); Morton, The Medieval Military Orders; Anthony T. Luttrell, “The Military Orders, 1312–1798,” in The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, ed. Jonathan Riley-Smith (Oxford, 1995), pp. 326–64. Malcolm Barber, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 6–34, 56–57.



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Jerusalem.4 Clearly the security situation for Christian pilgrims was so bad that the kingdom of Jerusalem needed all the military aid that it could find. At the end of the twelfth century a third military religious order was set up in the “crusader kingdom” of Jerusalem: the Hospital of St. Mary of the Teutons. Like the Hospital of St. John, it developed from a pilgrim hospital. German pilgrims set up a hospital during the siege of Acre, during the Third Crusade, to care for German crusaders. After almost a decade as a hospital, it was reorganized as a military religious order by the German crusaders who came to the east in 1197–98. Unlike the other two leading military religious orders it always recruited mainly from German speakers, and the bulk of its property lay within German-speaking lands and on the eastern frontier of Latin Europe.5 The military religious orders were so successful in attracting patronage that they came to hold property right across Latin Christendom. Their patrons would have been aware that they were exempt from secular authority. As already noted, Pope Paschal II had taken the Hospitallers under his protection and Pope Innocent II had done the same for the Templars, explicitly exempting them from all ecclesiastical and secular control except his and their own. Luis GarcíaGuijarro Ramos has argued that this papal protection in itself was enough to make them exempt from orders of the Church, free from all other authority.6 The opening section of the Latin Rule of the Order of the Temple underlines that the Templars have abandoned secular warfare so as to serve Christ.7 These religious orders held their lands in free alms, not in return for military service. They did not even play a large role in holy wars within Christendom. They were not involved in military action during the Albigensian Crusades, and Alan Forey has shown that they played little role in papally initiated holy wars against Christians in the thirteenth century.8

4

5 6

7

8

Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Knights Hospitaller in the Levant, c. 1070–1309 (Basingstoke, 2012), 17–30; Alain Demurger, Les Hospitaliers: De Jérusalem à Rhodes, 1050–1317 (Paris, 2013), pp. 43–104. As early as 1128, Geoffrey de Flujeac gave the Hospitallers the fortified site of Calansue: Steven Tibble, Monarchy and Lordships in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1099–1291 (Oxford, 1989), p. 37. Eric Christiansen, The Northern Crusades, 2nd ed. (London, 1997), pp. 73–92; William Urban, The Teutonic Knights: A Military History (London, 2003), pp. 9–60. Pope Paschal II, “Pie postulatio voluntatis,” in Cartulaire général de l’Ordre des Hospitaliers de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem, 1100–1310, ed. Joseph Delaville le Roulx, 4 vols. (Paris, 1894–1906), 1:29–30, no. 30; Pope Innocent II, “Omne Datum Optimum” (1139) in Papsturkunden für Templer und Johanniter, ed. Rudolf Hiestand (Göttingen, 1972), pp. 205–9; Luis García-Guijarro Ramos, “Exemption in the Temple, the Hospital and Teutonic Order: Shortcomings of the Institutional Approach,” in The Military Orders, vol. 2, Welfare and Warfare, ed. Helen J. Nicholson (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 289–93. Il Corpus normativo templare: Edizione dei testi romanzi con traduzione e commento in Italiano, ed. Giovanni Amatuccio (Galatina, 2009), p. 404; “Latin Rule of 1129,” in The Templars: Sources Translated and Annotated, trans. Malcolm Barber and Keith Bate (Manchester, 2002), pp. 31–32. Alan J. Forey, “The Military Orders and Holy War against Christians in the Thirteenth Century,” English Historical Review 104 (1989), 1–24.

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Of course, there were occasions when it was difficult for the military religious orders to avoid becoming politically involved in conflict. When King Henry II of Cyprus was overthrown by his brother Amaury in 1306, the Templars and Hospitallers did not take part in military action but the Templars apparently lent non-military support to Amaury. Cyprus was Latin Christendom’s frontier state against the Mamluks and the location of the Templars’ and Hospitallers’ military headquarters, so it was important to them that it was ruled by an effective king – which, it appeared, Henry was not.9 The military religious orders also became indirectly involved in wars which each side claimed were holy but which were not approved as such by the papacy. For example, although the Templars and Hospitallers were not directly involved in military action during King John of England’s wars against his barons in 1215–16, they supported the royalists with loans and as diplomats, and they continued to support the minority regime of Henry III in the same way.10 However, they did not physically fight. Alan Forey has shown that these orders had some physical involvement in warfare that was not undertaken to defend and secure “the interests of Western Christendom and of the church” – that is, secular warfare.11 Yet he argues that this was not a significant role for them. In the Iberian Peninsula it was not until after most of the Peninsula had been conquered from Islam, in the late thirteenth century, that the kings of the region began to summon the military orders for military service against other Christian states. When they did so, it was only for the defense of the kingdom; they were not expected to serve outside the realm.12 Forey argues that “the Aragonese kings appear to have been wary of constantly diverting the orders’ energies and resources away from the conflict with the infidel.”13 In 1247 the Hospitallers agreed to help King Bela IV of Hungary against all pagans of any nation including the Mongols, schismatics, and also any Christian army that tried to invade his realm. In 1241 the Hospitallers and Templars had assisted both the King of Hungary and the Duke of Silesia against the invading Mongols, but whereas fighting non-Christians could have been seen as a continuation of the Hospitallers’ vocation, the obligation to help guard the realm against invading Christians was unprecedented; however, this unique 9 10

11 12 13

Peter W. Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191–1374 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 111–30. Paul Webster, “The Military Orders at the Court of King John,” in The Military Orders, vol. 5: Politics and Power, ed. Peter W. Edbury (Farnham, 2012), pp. 209–19; Helen Nicholson, Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights: Images of the Military Orders, 1128–1291 (Leicester, 1993), p. 21. For instance, the Hospital made a loan of 620 marks in 1216–17: Rotuli litterarum clausarum in turri Londinensi asservati, ed. Thomas Duffus Hardy, vol. 1 (London, 1833), p. 456b; the Temple and Hospital made loans of £200 (300 marks) each in 1223–24: Roll of Divers Accounts for the Early Years of the Reign of Henry III, ed. Fred A. Cazel, Publications of the Pipe Roll Society 82 (new series, 44) (London, 1982), p. 51; the king borrowed another £100 from the Hospital in 1224–25: ibid., p. 57; for these latter loans see also Patent Rolls of the Reign of Henry III Preserved in the Public Record Office, 1216–1225 (London, 1901), pp. 453, 455, 529. For what follows, see: Forey, “Military Orders and Secular Warfare” (see above, n. 1). Ibid., pp. 83–84. Ibid., p. 84.



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agreement was never put into practice.14 In contrast, Forey cited no examples of the Teutonic Order being involved in conflict outside the geographical area of the Baltic and Prussia and the Holy Land.15 In Forey’s view, “away from the border areas, kings and princes could obtain little military aid from brethren of the orders” … “Even when military aid was sought from brethren of the military orders in Western countries it was only of a very limited nature.”16 Nevertheless, he pointed out that the military religious orders were expected to contribute to extraordinary taxes raised for war (by kings, bishops, and secular nobles) and that their tenants were subject to military service.17 In addition, their own personal loyalty to the ruler would have encouraged them to serve: “in Western countries – unlike Syria – members of military orders were usually natives of the kingdom where they served. Ties of loyalty would therefore often incline them to give military and financial support to the crown against its enemies when the need arose.”18 Forey also observed that the military religious orders became involved in warfare on their own account in the West, defending themselves or others or paying others to defend them. The popes confirmed their right to use force against force in self-defense.19 Overall, the military religious orders “by no means avoided all involvement in secular warfare.”20 Yet Forey’s balanced survey indicates that secular warfare was not a major concern for them. The military religious orders’ involvement in secular conflict was certainly not beyond the ordinary for members of religious orders. There is a considerable body of scholarship on the clergy’s involvement in arms-bearing: a recent study that will be familiar to readers of this journal is Andrew Villalon’s discussion of the military career of Cardinal Pedro González de Mendoza.21 The cardinal served the Crown of Castile faithfully throughout his life both as an advisor and on the battlefield, “ignoring Church strictures against blood-letting.”22 Lawrence Duggan has recently set out the evidence for clerical arms-bearing in western Christianity from the beginning of the Christian Church, and argues that military service was incumbent on prelates from the ninth century onwards.23 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21

22 23

Ibid., p. 85; Cartulaire général de l’Ordre des Hospitaliers de S. Jean de Jérusalem, 1100–1310, ed. Joseph Delaville le Roulx, 4 vols. (Paris, 1894–1906), 2:656–59, no. 2445, at pp. 658–9. For an overview of the Templars’ and Hospitallers’ military action against the Mongols in 1241 see Helen Nicholson, The Knights Templar: A Brief History (London, 2010), pp. 117–19. Forey, “Military Orders and Secular Warfare,” pp. 98–99. Ibid., pp. 85, 87. Ibid., pp. 87–88. Ibid., p. 90. Ibid., pp. 90–91. Ibid., p. 100. L. J. Andrew Villalon, “‘Cardinal Sins’ and ‘Cardinal Virtues’ of ‘El Tercer Rey,’ Pedro González de Mendoza: The Many Faces of a Warrior Churchman in Late Medieval Europe,” Journal of Medieval Military History XIII (2015), 213–46. Villalon, “‘Cardinal Sins’,” p. 223. Lawrence G. Duggan, Armsbearing and the Clergy in the History and Canon Law of Western Christianity (Woodbridge, 2013), pp. 21–23.

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They were obliged to perform military service or at least to provide troops for the king, as well as for the pope. He argues that in the early twelfth century, it was accepted that the Church would not surrender the lands and rights it had received from the rulers of Europe and that in return the Church was prepared to fulfil the obligations required or implied by such possessions, including military service.24

He points out that the great canonist Gratian accepted the duty of bishops to obey their royal masters in return for donations to churches, although he … tried to distinguish carefully among the obligations entailed by the possession of different kinds of property and rights and stipulated that bishops had to secure the permission of the pope before accompanying royal military expeditions.25

Although canon law held that clerics themselves should not bear arms, except (sometimes) in self-defense, canonists acknowledged that one of the bishops’ duties was to take part in royal military expeditions, although they might insist that the bishops did not fight in person.26 Craig M. Nakashian has also explored this subject, highlighting the involvement of bishops and other high churchmen in warfare. He points out: “only a minority of clerics actively fought in war” but “these men were … major prelates of the realm, and among the most well-known figures of their day.”27 Most of the churchmen who were militarily active, he observes, “served more in a commander’s role, rather than in the press of the fighting.” Although he acknowledges that military service was due in return for lands held, Nakashian draws attention to other possible motivations, including “an over-arching sense of loyalty to the king, or God, a sense of duty to protect their flocks, or arguments of self-defence.”28 In short, members of the clergy could be regularly involved in military activity for a variety of reasons, but rulers did expect military service from bishops and other high churchmen who held land within their domains. How far did this apply to the military religious orders? Two areas of Latin Europe saw extensive military involvement by the Templars and Hospitallers in particular: the Iberian Peninsula and the islands of Britain and Ireland.

24 25 26 27 28

Duggan, Armsbearing and the Clergy, p. 120. Duggan, Armsbearing and the Clergy, p. 130. Duggan, Armsbearing and the Clergy, pp. 131–32 and note 114. Craig M. Nakashian, Warrior Churchmen of Medieval England, 1000–1250: Theory and Reality (Woodbridge, 2016), p. 13. Nakashian, Warrior Churchmen, pp. 7–8, 21; quotations from interview with Nakashian at https:// boydellandbrewer.com/bb-medieval-herald-warrior-churchmen-of-medieval-england-1000-1250.



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The Iberian Peninsula and Beyond Alan Forey has pointed out that in the Iberian Peninsula the international and the local military religious orders were given lands in return for military service.29 At first glance we would expect that this military service was intended to fight Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula, and, indeed, Forey argues that in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries the military religious orders did not get involved in the wars between Christian rulers in the Peninsula.30 But as Aragon, at least, did not have a frontier with the Muslims by the end of the thirteenth century, it is not clear what the military orders’ contingents would be doing other than fighting other Christians. Forey has pointed out that when orders were given to provision and fortify Templar houses on the frontier with Navarre in 1283 and 1286, this must have been to defend Aragonese property against other Christians. In 1275 James I of Aragon summoned the Templars’ men of Mas Deu to fight against the Count of Ampurias on the basis that he had damaged Church property, in 1283 and 1285 the Templars were summoned to perform military service against King Philip III of France (who was leading a crusade against Aragon), and in 1300 and 1301 they were summoned against Castile.31 Forey pointed out that in the later thirteenth century the Templars became more reluctant to provide military service against the Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula and suggested that royal summonses to fight against Christians were an attempt to demand “service from them elsewhere” in compensation.32 In the same way, the military orders of the Iberian Peninsula were regularly expected to take military action to defend the realm against Christian as well as Muslim attack. For example, the fact that the Order of Alcântara held extensive estates along the Portuguese-Castilian frontier suggests that an important function of this order was to protect Castile against its Christian neighbour.33 King Peter III of Aragon (1276–85) expected the international and Iberian military orders to give him military aid in the defense of the realm against the 29

30 31 32 33

Alan J. Forey, “The Military Orders and the Spanish Reconquest in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” Traditio 40 (1984), 197–234, at pp. 224–26; A. J. Forey, The Templars in the Corona de Aragón (Oxford, 1973), pp. 134–41. Forey, “The Military Orders and the Spanish Reconquest,” pp. 216–17. Forey, Templars in the Corona de Aragón, pp. 133–38. Forey, Templars in the Corona de Aragón, p. 141. Discussed by Cláudio Neto, “‘Pois cata per u m’espeite’ (B 1314; V 919): The Order of Alcântara and the Luso-Castilian war of 1336–1338,” in Entre Deus e o Rei. O mundo das Ordens Militares, ed. Isabel Cristina Ferreira Fernandez (Palmela, 2018), vol. I, pp. 455–68, at p. 461, and, citing: Carlos de Ayala Martínez, “Las Órdenes Militares y los procesos de afirmación monárquica en Castilla y Portugal (1250–1350),” in Revista da Faculdade de Letras: História, série 2, 15.2 (1998), 1279–312, at pp. 1305–1309; Feliciano Novoa Portela, La Orden de Alcántara y Extremadura (siglos XII–XIV) (Mérida, 2000), pp. 21–38, 133–152, 289–313; Carlos de Ayala Martínez, Las Órdenes Militares hispánicas en la Edad Media (siglos XII–XV) (Madrid, 2007), pp. 81–88, 496–99, 724–28; Philippe Josserand, “Alcántara, ordre de,” in Prier et Combattre. Dictionaire européen des ordres militaires au Moyen Âge, ed. Nicole Bériou and Philippe Josserand (Paris, 2009), pp. 62–65.

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crusade of King Philip III of France (1270–85). His successor Alfonso III (1285– 91) complained bitterly to the Hospitallers that some of the French brothers had joined the crusade against him.34 In the fourteenth century the leading French Hospitallers also fought the English: according to Jean Froissart, the grand prior of France and the castellan of Amposta fought on the French side at the battle of Crécy in 1346 and were killed.35 Juan Fernández de Heredia, who went on to be grand master of the Hospital 1377–96, fought on the French side at the battle of Poitiers in 1356 and on the Aragonese side in wars between Aragon and Castile. In 1511, during the Franco-Spanish wars in Italy, the Hospitaller prior of Messina (Sir Pedro de Coignes, knight of Rhodes), was present among the troops of the Spanish captain Saint-Croix at Ferrara, and acted as second in a duel between Saint-Croix and the Spanish lord Azevedo.36 None of these conflicts involved fighting Muslims. Military Service in Britain and Ireland Britain and Ireland were a long way from a frontier with the Muslims, so any military involvement in these islands could not be directly connected to the defense of Christendom. The Templars and Hospitallers performed military duties for the kings of England that were appropriate to their position as tenantsin-chief.37 From the early thirteenth century there were occasional references in the primary sources to these orders’ military support for kings. Brother Guérin the Hospitaller, bishop of Senlis, was a commander in the French army at the battle of Bouvines in 1214; Brother Roger of the Temple, King John’s almoner, was given responsibility for overseeing English shipping during the war between the king and his barons. In 1224, during the minority of King Henry III of England, a ship belonging to Brother Thomas the Templar of Spain came to serve the king, and Brother Thomas then seems to have held responsibility for naval security.38 The Hospitallers had custody of the royal castle of Marlborough 34 35

36 37

38

Cartulaire général, ed. Delaville le Roulx, 3:518–19, no. 4007. Jean Froissart, Chroniques, Livre I: Le Manuscrit d’Amiens, Bibliothèque municipale no. 486, ed. George T. Diller, 5 vols., Textes Littéraires Français 407, 415, 424, 429, 499 (Geneva, 1991–98), 3:26, 514 line 55; Jean Froissart, Chroniques : Dernière rédaction du premier Livre. Édition du Manuscrit de Rome Reg. lat. 869, ed. George T. Diller, Textes Littéraires Français 194 (Geneva, 1972), pp. 737–38, chapter CCXXVII, lines 105–20. La très joyeuse, plaisante et Récréative Histoire du gentil Seigneur de Bayart composée par le loyal Serviteur, ed. J. Roman, Société de l’histoire de France (Paris, 1878), pp. 253–55. What follows is developed from my article “The Hospitallers’ and Templars’ involvement in Warfare on the Frontiers of the British Isles in the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries,” in Ordines Militares: Colloquia Torunensia Historica: Yearbook for the Study of the Military Orders 17 (2012), 105–19. Helen Nicholson, “The Military Orders and the Kings of England in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in From Clermont to Jerusalem: the Crusades and Crusader Societies, 1095–1500, ed. Alan Murray, International Medieval Research 3 (Turnhout, 1998), pp. 203–18, at pp. 211–14.



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for a short time in 1218–19.39 As in Aragon, references to such duties became more frequent from the late thirteenth century on. Leading members of the military religious orders provided military services to the king of England in the course of his wars in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. On 24 May 1282, Brother Richard Peitevin, then lieutenant-commander of the Temple in England, was granted by King Edward I “protection with clause nolumus, with reference to the king’s army in Wales,” which suggests that he was involved in military action for the king in the war against Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, prince of Gwynedd.40 In 1288, during the rebellion of Rhys ap Mereduc, the king wrote to Edmund Mortimer and the other constables of royal castles in Wales to inform them that Brother William of Henley, prior of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in England, was coming to Wales to survey the state of the castles and the king’s munitions there and see how things were. The constables were to give him every assistance and give credence to whatever Brother William told them on the king’s behalf. Although the prior was not involved in hostilities, in surveying and reporting on the defenses of the royal castles at this time of crisis he was actively assisting the king’s war effort.41 On 11 December 1294, Brother Odo, commander of the house of Halston and Ellesmere (which included the Hospitallers’ property in North Wales), “who is staying with the king in Welsh parts on the king’s command” received royal letters of protection for himself and his personal household. He was only one of the many warriors and clergy who were given such letters while they were with the king in Wales.42 In December 1294 and January 1295 Brother Odo de Nevet and Madog ap Dafydd of Hendwr were reimbursed a total of £500 from the King’s Wardrobe for paying a force of Welsh infantry stationed at Penllyn in Meirionnedd (Merioneth). It appears that the Hospitaller commander had been involved in putting down the rebellion of Madog ap Llywelyn that winter (September 1294–March 1295).43 39 40

41

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Roll of Divers Accounts, p. 46 (1218–19). Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office (hereafter cited as CPR), Edward I, AD 1281–1292 (London, 1893), p. 24; apparently acting as lieutenant for grand commander Robert of Turville, who had gone to Scotland on 16 May (p. 20). However, he is not mentioned by John E. Morris, The Welsh Wars of Edward I: A Contribution to Mediaeval Military History, Based on Original Documents (Oxford, 1901), pp. 154–85. “Calendar of the Welsh Rolls,” in Calendar of Various Chancery Rolls: Supplementary Close Rolls, Welsh Rolls, Scutage Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, 1277–1326 (London, 1912), pp. 319–20; Kew: The National Archives of the UK (hereafter cited as TNA): C 77/7, mem. 8d (Welsh Rolls, 14–23 Edward I). TNA: C 67/10 (letters of protection for those going to Wales, 1294–95). The Book of Prests of the King’s Wardrobe for 1294–5, Presented to John Goronwy Edwards, ed. E. B. Fryde (Oxford, 1962), pp. xxx, 58, 59, 61, 186 n. 3. I am very grateful to Adam Chapman for these references. For Odo as commander of Halston, see Calendar of Chancery Warrants Preserved in the Public Record Office, vol. 1, 1244–1326, ed. R. C. Fowler (London, 1927), p. 45. For the uprising of 1294–95 see Morris, Welsh Wars of Edward I, pp. 240–66; R. F. Walker, “Madog ap Llywelyn (fl. 1277–1295),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford, 2004) (hereafter cited as ODNB), 36:94.

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In 1297 widespread rebellions broke out in Scotland, led by William Wallace and Andrew Murray, who on 11 September 1297 won a significant victory over the English at Stirling Bridge. On 20 November King Edward sent out summonses to all heads of religious houses in England, including the prior of the Hospital and the master of the Temple in England, to assemble troops at Newcastle upon Tyne on 6 December. The major campaign which followed did not begin until June 1298, and I have not found any mention of the prior of the Hospital in England taking part in person.44 However, the Prior of the Hospital in Scotland did take part, and Brother Brian le Jay, master of the Temple in England, was given letters of protection for the June campaign, for himself and two followers, Peter de Suthchirche and Thomas de Caune, who were not called “brother” and so were not Templars.45 The king gave Brother Brian permission to appoint representatives to act on his behalf during his absence.46 Also on the expedition was Brother Edenevet, “master of the Hospital.” Brother Edenevet and his horse were recorded in a group of twenty-five mounted men from North Wales, led by John de Havering, justiciar of North Wales, and including four noble knights: John de Ligero, Gwilym (William) de la Pole, Robert of London, and Walter de Bessy. There were also twenty valetti (literally “lads,” but generally translated “squires”), including Gwilym’s brother Gruffydd, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, Einion ap Ieuan, and Meurig Atteben. (The record was made to record the value of the expedition’s horses, for compensation if they were killed. It may be of interest to note that Brother Edenevet’s horse was black with four white feet, and worth £10. It was less valuable than those of the four knights in the party, being only worth half as much as John de Havering’s horse, and two-thirds the value of Gwilym de la Pole’s.)47 Who were these Welshmen? Gwilym and Gruffydd de la Pole were the sons of Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn, prince of Upper Powys and one of the great barons of Wales. Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn had been a supporter of King Henry III of England, and supported King Edward I throughout the king’s wars against the prince of Gwynedd. After Edward’s conquest of Wales, Gruffydd 44

45

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Thomas Parker, The Knights Templars in England (Tucson, 1963), pp. 48, 150; citing The Parliamentary Writs and Writs of Military Summons, ed. Francis Palgrave, 3 vols. in 2 (London, 1827–30), 1:303–04, 747, 821, 868; Michael Prestwich, Edward I (London, 1988), pp. 476–79. Simon Phillips notes that the Hospitaller commanders of Mayne and Buckland were also summoned, and that the prior and these two commanders were summoned again in 1300: Simon Phillips, The Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, 2009), p. 46, citing Parliamentary Writs, ed. Palgrave, 1:304, 386, 289, 293, 333, 336–37. Scotland in 1298: Documents Relating to the Campaign of King Edward I in that Year, and Especially to the Battle of Falkirk, ed. Henry Gough (Paisley, 1888), p. 48; Morris, Welsh Wars of Edward I, p. 91; The Knights of St John of Jerusalem in Scotland, ed. Ian B. Cowan, P. H. R. Mackay, and Alan Macquarrie, Scottish History Society 4th series 19 (Edinburgh, 1983), p.  xxix. Scotland in 1298, ed. Gough, p. 53. Scotland in 1298, ed. Gough, pp. 228–29. I am indebted to Adam Chapman for this reference. See now Adam Chapman, Welsh Soldiers in the Later Middle Ages, 1282–1422 (Woodbridge, 2015), p. 30.



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became an English marcher baron and his children adopted the surname de la Pole. They were loyal supporters of the English king in Wales.48 This campaign resulted in the Battle of Falkirk, in which King Edward I’s forces were victorious, but the prior of the Hospital and Brian le Jay were killed (as the contemporary chroniclers reported, these were about the only casualties on the English side).49 In contrast, Brother Ednevet survived the battle, as he appears again in Scotland in 1303. In the rolls of wages paid to soldiers in Wales and Scotland, 32 Edward I (1303–04), Brother Edenevet, master of the house of the Hospital of North Wales, appears three times. His name appears in a list of twenty-one men from North Wales, many of them with Welsh names, including Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, Gruffydd Vaughan, Meurig Atteben, Llywelyn Welt’, Blethin Routh, and Blethyn Call’is. In this record Brother Edenevet is leading infantry from North Wales; he was paid twelve shillings for his expenses and the expenses of one squire for four days, at three shillings a day. Brother Edenevet also appears in the margin of two other payments in lists of payments to men from North Wales. On both occasions his name appears next to a payment to “Leulinus Gragh” (Llywelyn Gragh), which is given “per m[andatum] fratris de Nevet” and “per m’ fratris Edenevet.”50 However, in a fourth list of the same names from North Wales, giving payments at Carlisle to cover the period from 28 June to 1 September, his name does not appear,51 and I have not found his name in the later Scottish campaigns of Edward I or those of his son Edward II up to 1314. It is possible, of course, that he died on the campaign of 1303–04. The prior of the Hospital in England was summoned to Newcastle or York with his troops for service in Scotland again in 1316, 1317, 1318, and 1322, and in 1322 he was summoned to appear in person, but it is not clear that he actually fought in any of the campaigns.52 Again, he was required to supply troops for the Scottish campaign in 1337, but did not join the campaign himself.53 The physical involvement of members of the military religious orders in wars 48

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50 51 52 53

T. F. Tout, “Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn (d. 1286),” revised by A. D. Carr, in ODNB, 24:135– 36; Adam Chapman “Welshmen in the Armies of Edward I,” The Impact of the Edwardian Castles in Wales: Proceedings of a Conference Held in Bangor 7–9 September 2007, ed. Diane Williams and John Kenyon (Oxford, 2009), pp. 175–82, at p. 177. William Rishanger, “Chronica,” in Chronica et Annales regnantibus Henrico Tertio et Edwardo Primo, A.D. 1259–1307, ed. Henry Thomas Riley, Rolls Series 28.2 (London, 1865), p. 188; William Rishanger, “Gesta Edwardi Primi, Regis Angliæ,” in Chronica et Annales, ed. Riley, p. 415; Thomas Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ed. Henry Thomas Riley, Rolls Series 28.1 (London, 1865), p. 76; “A Continuation of William of Newburgh’s History to A.D. 1298,” in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, Rolls Series 82.2 (London, 1885), p. 583; Flores Historiarum, ed. Henry Richards Luard, Rolls Series 95 (London, 1890), 3:104. TNA: E 101/12/17, mems. 2, 4, 7. TNA: E 101/12/17, mem. 9. Phillips, Prior of the Knights Hospitaller, pp. 46–47, citing Parliamentary Writs, ed. Palgrave, 1:463, 468, 488, 491, 495, 502, 505, 588; CCR, AD 1313–1318, pp. 292, 473, 484, 562, 622–23. Phillips, Prior of the Knights Hospitaller, p. 47.

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in Scotland seems to have been limited to the wars of Edward I, and the main participant was the Welsh Hospitaller Brother Edenevet. Adam Chapman has observed that Brother Edenevet, master of the Hospital in North Wales, is almost certainly the same as Odo de Nevet, commander of Halston. “Edenevet” is so similar to Ednyfed that it is practically certain that Brother Odo was actually Odo ap Ednyfed and was descended from Ednyfed Fychan, illustrious distain or steward of Prince Llywelyn ap Iorwerth of Gywnedd (1173–1240), who died in 1246. To quote the National Library of Wales’ Welsh Biography, Ednyfed’s “descendants formed a ‘ministerial aristocracy’ of considerable wealth.”54 His grandsons Rhys ap Gruffydd ap Ednyfed and Hywel ap Gruffydd were “active and trusted supporters of Edward I in the Welsh war of 1282–4.”55 Rhys’s son Gruffydd Llywd (d. 1335) was “from 1297 to 1314 … in effect the king’s continual commissioner of array in North Wales: he repeatedly raised contingents of Welshmen for service in Flanders or Scotland, and himself served in both those theatres of war;”56 and was a leading “member of that Welsh official class … which showed such remarkable loyalty to Edward II throughout his reign.”57 In short, Brother Odo Ednyfed, commander of the Hospitaller commandery of North Wales, belonged to a Welsh noble family who were loyal servants and supporters of the king of England. Through his family, Odo also had connections with other Welsh noble families who were loyal to the English king: to judge by the composition of the party which he accompanied to Scotland in 1298, these included the princely family of Upper Powys. His involvement in hostilities in Wales and in Scotland could have been prompted by his own family’s loyalties and connections as much as by his Order’s vocation. From the mid-thirteenth century onwards the Hospitallers were also extensively involved in the service of the English king in Ireland. As leading members of the English king’s administration in Ireland, from the 1270s onwards the priors of the Hospital in Ireland took part in active military service against the Irish, but – as Gregory O’Malley has shown – were also at various times involved in fighting between the Anglo-Irish and rebellions against the king.58 In July 1285 Prior William fitz Roger of the Hospital in Ireland was about to lead the king’s army against the king’s enemies in Connacht.59 As justiciar of 54

55 56 57

58 59

My thanks to Adam Chapman for this point, and see Glyn Roberts, “Ednyfed Fychan (Ednyfed ap Cynwrig),” in National Library of Wales, Welsh Biography Online: http://yba.llgc.org.uk/ en/s-EDNY-FYC-1246.html for Ednyfed and his descendants. John Goronwy Edwards, “Gruffydd Llwyd, Sir, more fully Gruffydd ap Rhys ap Gruffydd ab Ednyfed,” in Welsh Biography Online: http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s-GRUF-LLW-1335.html Ibid. Glyn Roberts, “Hywel ap Gruffydd ap Iorwerth, or Syr Hywel y Pedolau,” in Welsh Biography Online: http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s-HYWE-APG-1250.html, citing English Historical Review 3, 577–601; Chapman, “Welshmen in the Armies of Edward I,” p. 178. Gregory O’Malley, The Knights Hospitaller of the English Langue, 1460–1565 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 234–36, 239–41, 244, 250, 256–57. Calendar of Documents Relating to Ireland, Preserved in Her Majesty’s Public Record Office,



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Ireland, Brother Stephen de Fulbourn of the Hospital led the king’s army against the king’s enemies in Ireland.60 In 1302 payment of £100 was made in wages to men-at-arms in the company of Brother William de Ros, prior of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in Ireland – who had been acting in place of John Wogan, justiciar of Ireland, who was in Scotland with the king – for the preservation of the king’s peace in Leinster. In 1304 the king pardoned a felon because in 1302 he had been with Brother William de Ros fighting against the Irish in the mountains of “Glendelory”.61 In August 1318 Brother Roger Outlaw or Utlagh, prior of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in Ireland, was rewarded for his good service against the Scots who had invaded Ireland with Edward Bruce, and in compensation for the losses inflicted on him.62 In July 1338 Outlaw, now ex-chancellor of Ireland, was petitioning the king for payment of his wages from the time he was acting as lieutenant-justiciar and was chancellor of Ireland, and for the fees and wages of his men from the time he was in the king’s service; the request for payment of his men indicates that he had been performing military service.63 The Hospital in Ireland also possessed several fortified commanderies and was entrusted with royal fortresses to defend.64 The brothers were also involved in the feuds that broke out between the Anglo-Irish lords, which in 1444 (for example) led to the prior of Ireland, Thomas FitzGerald, challenging the earl of Ormond to a duel.65 In June 1360 King Edward III noted that the Hospitallers in Ireland had complained to him about the loss of many of their lands and income. He noted that they maintained war against the enemies of the Christian faith on Rhodes, while in Ireland they “hold a good position there for the repulse of our Irish enemies, who daily maintain war upon our liege people.”66 Apparently the Hospitallers were claiming the king’s special favor on the basis that they played a leading military role in Ireland, in addition to their holy war on Rhodes. The Hospitallers continued to play a military role in Britain and Ireland throughout the late medieval period. However, as Simon Phillips has shown,

60 61

62 63 64

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London, ed. H. S. Sweetman, 5 vols. (London, 1875–86), hereafter cited as CDRI, 3:369, no. 814 (including a force of Welsh). CDRI, 2:540; CDRI, 3:251; Philomena Connolly, “Fulbourn, Stephen of (d. 1288),” in ODNB, 21:125–26. CDRI, 5:5; CPR, Edward I, AD 1301–1307, p. 291; Helen Nicholson, “The Knights Hospitaller on the Frontiers of the British Isles,” in Mendicants, Military Orders and Regionalism in Medieval Europe, ed. Jürgen Sarnowsky (Aldershot, 1999), pp. 47–57, at pp. 53–54. CPR, Edward II, AD 1313–1317, p. 197. Calendar of the Close Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office (hereafter cited as CCR), Edward III, AD 1337–1339, p. 437. O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, p. 234; For example, in April 1388 Brother Thomas Mercamston of the order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in Ireland was appointed keeper of the castle of Carrickfergus in Ulster: CPR, Richard II, AD 1385–1389, p. 438. O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, pp. 239–42. “bonum locum ibidem nobis tenent ad repulsionem hibernicorum hostium nostrorum guerram super fidelem populum nostrum in dies machmant’m & perpetuacium”: TNA: C 54/198, mem. 27 (Close Rolls, 34 Edward III); CCR, Edward III, AD 1360–1364, p. 39.

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from 1339 (soon after the beginning of the Hundred Years War) the military role of the grand prior of the Hospital in England changed from providing feudal service to holding official appointments, such as acting as keeper of Southampton in 1339, or acting as admiral of the fleet. In some cases, where the prior had previous naval experience in the eastern Mediterranean, he performed active service at sea. Other Hospitallers could also be involved in the discharge of the prior’s duties. These activities were generally defensive, except in 1513 when Grand Prior Docwra and four other English Hospitallers were involved in active military service in the invasion of France, prompting complaints from the king of Scotland’s secretary that his participation was unchristian. Such military involvement led to the prior gaining political influence, so that by the early fifteenth century he ranked between the lay earls and barons in Parliament. Despite this lay status, the Hospital remained a religious institution and King Henry VIII dissolved it in 1540 as part of his dissolution of the monasteries. Yet even after the order’s dissolution, several of its former members continued to serve the king as naval officers, and in Ireland leading members of the AngloIrish establishment suggested re-forming the order in Ireland to fight the Irish.67 In a conference paper originally presented in 2009, I suggested that during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it was becoming accepted that as kings were appointed by God, and the realm was under God’s protection, war in defense of the realm was a type of holy war.68 Brothers helping their “natural” sovereign in his wars were therefore fighting a holy war – even though they could be fighting against other brothers of their Order who were fighting for the other side. Julien Théry has argued for the “pontificalization” of the French monarchy from the early fourteenth century– which would have justified the Hospitallers’ military service for the king of France.69 Similarly, Jean Froissart reported that King Edward III of England claimed pontifical authority in his own realm: “He was pope in his country and in all the lands which were held from him and in this he was well privileged” (“il estoit pappez en son pays et en touttes les terrez qui de lui se tiennent et de ce est il bien privilegiiés”);70 – a justification for the Hospitallers’ service for him. However, when in 2011 I examined the rhetoric used by both sides during the wars between the kings of England and the Welsh, Scottish, and Irish, I found that the rhetoric of holy war and crusade came from the opponents of the king of England: from the Welsh, Scots, and Irish. They claimed that the English were worse than Saracens and were preventing their going on crusade 67 68

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Phillips, Prior of the Knights Hospitaller, pp. 45–58, especially pp. 52, 55–56, 100–02; O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, pp. 327–29. Helen J. Nicholson, “‘Nolite Confidere in Principibus:’ The Military Orders’ Relations with the Rulers of Christendom,” in Élites et ordres militaires au Moyen Âge: Rencontre autour d’Alain Demurger, ed. Philippe Josserand, Luís F. Oliveira, andDamien Carraz (Madrid, 2015), pp. 261–76, at p. 276. Julien Théry, “Une hérésie d’état: Philippe le Bel, le procès des ‘perfides Templiers’ et la pontificalisation de la Royauté française,” Médiévales 60 (2011), 157–86. Froissart, Chroniques: Livre 1, ed. Diller, 1:318, chapter 246.



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to the East. The Templars and Hospitallers were not claiming to fight a holy war in these islands. There is no indication that they were doing anything other than performing military service for their liege lord as his loyal servants, as their fellow churchmen and relations did.71 Civic Military Services It was not only kings who commanded such secular military service. Bernard Schotte has pointed out that early fourteenth-century documents in the archives of the town of Bruges indicate that the Templars and Hospitallers were involved in the town’s war against the King of France.72 On the first day of May 1302 insurgents of Bruges stormed and captured a castle near the town that was occupied by a French garrison. Two contemporary chroniclers record the involvement of a Templar – though in fact the man they name, Brother Willem van Boenhem, knight, was described in other contemporary documents and on his seal as a Hospitaller. Schotte pointed out that it was common in Flanders to use the name “Templars” for Hospitallers, sometimes making a clear distinction between “White Templars” and “Black Templars,” in reference to the colour of their habits.73 Schotte also set out contemporary documents from Bruges revealing that the Templars and Hospitallers contributed towards the town’s campaign against the French king in September–October 1302. The Templars provided a wagon and four horses and men in white tunics with red crosses, while the Hospitallers provided wagons and six horses and men in black tunics with white crosses. The town later paid the Orders for their contributions.74 Schotte reckoned that these were “very small” forces, “the Templars providing a band of 13 to 20 men, and the Hospitallers had some 20 to 30 men in arms.” Of course these would probably not have been members of the orders: they would have been hired fighting men. In the event, however, there were no battles during this campaign, just skirmishing. Schotte noted that these forces apparently also took part in another campaign in 1302 or 1303 because a further set of accounts appear in the city archives, with payments to the two orders.75 The Bruges communal army was made up of guildsmen, crossbowmen, and hired soldiers. Schotte suggested that the Templars and Hospitallers justified their involvement in these campaigns on the basis that it was holy war against the French (as a French cleric preached the war against the Flemish as a holy war) but also that they could have been acting as loyal subjects of the count of 71 72

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Nicholson, “The Hospitallers’ and Templars’ Involvement in Warfare.” Bernard Schotte, “Fighting the King of France: Templars and Hospitallers in the Flemish Rebellion of 1302,” in The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307–1314), ed. Jochen Burgtorf, Paul F. Crawford, and Helen J. Nicholson (Farnham, 2010), pp. 45–56. Schotte, “Fighting the King of France,” pp. 47–48. Schotte, “Fighting the King of France,” pp. 49–51. Schotte, “Fighting the King of France,” pp. 52–53.

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Flanders.76 But these military contributions could also have been expected from them as part of the community of Bruges. The Duty of the Subject to Defend the Realm So, were the Templars and Hospitallers simply acting as loyal subjects when they became involved in secular warfare? This is certainly the role that they appear to have taken on for the king of England, and the Templars’ military involvement in Aragon in the late thirteenth century makes much more sense if we regard them as a branch of the royal government rather than an independent ecclesiastical force. Luis García-Guijarro Ramos has argued that in the early fourteenth century King James II of Aragon was promoting the expansion of Templar lands in Valencia, allowing them to control key strategic districts. The king seems to have been promoting the Order as a trusted administrator of “a geostrategic area vital for the monarchy: the point where Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia had common boundaries.”77 It appears that here the order was acting as a secular administrative organization more than a religious military institution. In 1289 and in 1307 the Templar houses in the Crown of Aragon contained weaponry and armor, including crossbows, hauberks, iron caps, and helmets, even though Aragon was no longer on the frontier with the Muslims, and the Templars’ fortresses no longer had to fear Muslim attack.78 But the Aragonese houses did not have military equipment for more than three or four men: hardly enough even to defend the house.79 Was this simply what was expected of all landowners? We find a similar situation in France, England, and Ireland in 1307 and 1308, where many of the Templars’ houses contained a few items of armor and weaponry, usually no more than enough for one person. The Templars’ house at Kilcloggan in south-east Ireland contained two lances, an iron cap, an aketon and a gambeson (padded defensive jackets), a crossbow, a bow and two baudreys, baldrics, or sword belts.80 At Clontarf near Dublin there were three swords. At Dunwich in Suffolk, where there were no Templars in January 1308, there was armor for one person: a pair of plates (a type of torso armor), a pair of thigh-pieces and knee caps, one mailshirt, one iron cap, one gambeson, and a crossbow. Sandford in Oxfordshire had a full covering for one and additional pieces: a bascinet or helmet, an iron cap, thigh pieces made of plates, three 76 77

78

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Schotte, “Fighting the King of France,” pp. 55–56. Luis García-Guijarro Ramos, “The Extinction of the Order of the Temple in the Kingdom of Valencia and Early Montesa, 1307–30: A Case of Transition from Universalist to Territorialized Military Orders,” in The Debate, ed. Burgtorf, Crawford, and Nicholson, pp. 199–211, at p. 205. Joaquim Miret y Sans, “Inventaris de les cases del Temple de la Corona d’Aragó en 1289,” Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona 11 (1911), 61–75, at pp. 62–70; María Vilar Bonet, Els béns del Temple a la Corona d’Aragó en suprimir-se l’ordre (1300– 1319) (Barcelona, 2000), pp. 113, 119, 120, 122, 125, 130, 132. Forey, The Templars in the Corona de Aragón, p. 140. “Documents Relating to the Suppression of the Templars in Ireland,” ed. G. MacNiocaill, Analecta Hibernica 24 (1967), 183–226, at pp. 199–202.



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haubergeons or hauberks “de grosso opera,” three coifs, one pair of iron footwear, and a pair of trappings covered with green muslin. Bisham in Berkshire had a hauberk, gauntlets, and armor to cover the throat and the thighs. Upleadon in Herefordshire had equipment for one: an aketon, two pairs of iron plates, nine pairs of arm-pieces, kneecaps, an iron gorget or throat covering, thigh-pieces, and whalebone gauntlets. Shipley in Sussex was similarly equipped with an aketon, two pairs of plates, two gorgets, a bascinet, a pair of gauntlets of plate, a pair of greaves, a pair of thigh-pieces, and two bows with seven arrows. At Keele in Staffordshire there was a gambeson with a pair of whale-bone gauntlets and a sword, while Lydley in Shropshire had just an iron cap and a mace. In Normandy, at Voismer there were two bows and around twelve arrows; at Corval there was a crossbow in the commander’s room, while at Lovigny there was a sword and a misericorde or dagger. At Sainte-Eulalie de Cernon in Aveyron in southern France there were ten iron caps and five crossbows.81 None of these houses were near a frontier and most accommodated no more than three Templars. This equipment could have been donations awaiting sale or transfer to the East; or they could have been required as part of civil defense, to defend the house and the locality and assist in the maintenance of law and order. In 1297 the master of the Templars in Ireland and six secular lords, including Roger Bigod earl of Norfolk and lord of Ballysax, were reprimanded for not keeping “horses at arms as assessed”: the Templars had failed to keep the necessary horses at the commandery of Kilcork.82 In England weapons could have been kept in accordance with the 1285 Statute of Winchester, which required that “chescun home eit en sa mesun armure pur la pees garder, solun la aunciene assise” (every man should have in his house equipment for keeping the peace in accordance with the ancient assize [of arms]). The quantity of equipment varied with income, so that a landholding worth fifteen pounds and goods worth forty marks (a quinze liveree des terres e chateus de quaraunte mars) required a man to provide a hauberk or mail shirt, an iron cap, a sword, a knife, and a horse.83 81

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Helen J. Nicholson, The Knights Templar on Trial: The Trial of the Knights Templar in the British Isles, 1308–1311 (Stroud, 2009), pp. 75–76; Bisham: TNA: E 142/119 mem. 19; Clontarf: “Documents,” ed. MacNiocaill, p. 215; Dunwich: TNA: E 358/18 rot. 3; Upleadon: TNA: E 358/18 rot. 2 and E 358/19 rot. 25; Shipley: TNA: E 142/15 mem. 5; Sandford: TNA: E 359/19 rot. 26 dorse; Lydley and Keele: TNA: E: 358/20 rot. 5 dorse; Normandy: “Inventaire du mobilier des Templiers du baillage de Caen,” in Études sur la Condition de la Classe agricole et l’État de l’Agriculture en Normandie en Moyen-âge, ed. Léopold Delisle (Paris, 1903), no. xvi, pp. 721–8, at pp. 725, 726, 728, translated in The Templars, trans. Barber and Bate, pp. 198, 200; Arlette Higounet-Nadal, “L’inventaire des biens de la commanderie du Temple de Sainte-Eulalie du Larzac en 1308,” Annales du Midi 68 (1956), 255–62, at pp. 256, 258. O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, p. 235; Calendar of the Justiciary Rolls or Proceedings in the Court of the Justiciar of Ireland, Preserved in the Public Record Office of Ireland. XXIII to XXXI years of Edward I, ed. James Mills (Dublin, 1905), p. 175. Phillipp R. Schofield, Peasant and Community in Medieval England 1200–1500 (Basingstoke, 2003), p. 176; Statutes of the Realm (1101–1713), ed. A. Luders et al., 11 vols. (London, 1810–28), 1:97.

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The equipment at the Templars’ houses at Dunwich, Keele, Sandford, Shipley, and Upleadon fulfilled these requirements. Conclusion From the 1270s onwards the military religious orders appear in the primary sources committing their military resources to European Christian monarchs’ wars against other European Christian monarchs. In theory these orders set up to defend Christendom were neutral in disputes between Christian rulers, but in practice monarchs could insist that churchmen within a realm had a natural duty to assist their sovereign in the defense of the realm. So, for example: as King Edward I of England regularly employed Hospitallers in particular for important tasks – such as Joseph de Chauncy, treasurer of the Hospital, as treasurer of England, and Stephen de Fulbourn as treasurer and then justiciar of Ireland – it is not surprising that he trusted the Hospitallers with important matters of security such as the state of his defenses in Wales and Ireland. We should note that the military religious orders were not the only religious orders involved in military activities in defense of the realm. In June 1339 Philip de Thame, Grand Prior of the Hospital in England, was acting as custos, custodian, of Southampton, and in the summer of 1339 he was occupied in bringing in supplies of food, weaponry, and engines so that the city could be defended against the French if they attacked.84 Meanwhile the bishop of Bath and Wells was guarding the coast of Dorset.85 All those who were involved in the royal administration in Ireland had by necessity to lead armies against rebels. The archbishop of Dublin and other churchmen who played leading roles in the English royal administration in Ireland fought in the field as part of their duties of office.86 In 1364 on the appointment of a new chancellor of Ireland, a layman, it was recorded that the chancellor must often ride to war and therefore could retain in his service six men-at-arms and twelve mounted archers at the rate of pay usually given to royal troops in Ireland.87 As central figures in Anglo-Irish society, the priors of the Hospital in Ireland could hardly have avoided involvement in war, which was a part of everyday life. The Hospitallers, therefore, were engaged in military activities in Ireland because of their involvement in royal administration and political life, not primarily because they were a military religious order. The Hospitaller commander who took part in Edward I’s campaigns in Wales and Scotland was a member of a noble North Welsh family who consistently gave

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CCR, Edward III, AD 1337–1339, p. 635; CCR, Edward III, AD 1339–1341, pp. 114, 119, 123, 124–25, 155–56, 185. CCR, Edward III, AD 1339–1341, p. 210. James Lydon, “The Years of Crisis, 1254–1315,” in A New History of Ireland, II: Medieval Ireland, 1169–1534, ed. Art Cosgrove (Oxford, 1993), pp. 179–204, at pp. 183–84; J. A. Watt, “The Anglo-Irish Colony under Strain, 1327–99,” in New History of Ireland, II, pp. 352–96: at pp. 362–63. CPR, Edward III, AD 1364–1367, p. 25.



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military support to Edward, and fought alongside members of other noble Welsh families who did the same. In Ireland the Hospitaller commander was part of a social-political network of Anglo-Irish landowners who ruled much of Ireland and fought the Irish to maintain that position. These were members of families who gave military service to the English king, who happened to be members of the military orders, taking part in the English king’s wars. Likewise, details of arms held by the Templars’ houses in 1307 and 1308 suggest that these were not linked to the number of brothers – there were none at Dunwich, and none recorded at Clontarf – but to an obligation to provide military service as required. If we regard the military religious orders as a form of papal army, then this military service for secular monarchs was a result of the increasing pontificalization of the monarchy, as Julian Théry suggested for Philip IV of France. But if we accept that the military religious orders, like bishops and abbots, owed military service to the secular authority – be it king or commune – for their lands, then this was simply part of their duty as land holders. However, the bulk of the brothers in the west did not take part in military activity. Most of the examples above concern the provincial commander of an order, or brothers who were especially trusted by a monarch. Like bishops and abbots, these officials were expected to provide military forces and might lead in the battlefield, but the obligation to provide military forces was on the order as a landholder and not on individuals. Except in Ireland, these commanders seem to have generally hired troops rather than going to battle in person. When they did enter the battlefield they might well lose their lives, as did Brother Brian le Jay at Falkirk, Brother Robert Hales in 1381 (accused of leading a hundred lances against the rebels during the Peasants’ Revolt) or Brother John Langstrother (fighting in person on the Lancastrian side in 1471 at the battle of Tewkesbury during the War of the Roses).88

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For Brian le Jay, see above; for Robert Hales, see Helen J. Nicholson, “The Hospitallers and the ‘Peasants’ Revolt’ of 1381 Revisited,” in The Military Orders, vol. 3: History and Heritage, ed. Victor Mallia-Milanes (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 225–33; for John Langstrother, see Nicholson, Knights Hospitaller, p. 113; O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller, p. 131.

4 Elionor of Sicily: A Mediterranean Queen’s Two Lives of Family, Administration, Diplomacy, and War Donald J. Kagay

This article reviews the colorful life of Elionor of Sicily (1325–75), the third wife of King Pere III of Aragon (r. 1336–87). As an extremely talented administrator, the queen managed her own private property and dowry holdings in a way that continually supported the fiscal well-being of her husband. Her skill in this regard was especially apparent in Pere’s war with his younger rival, Pedro I of Castile (r. 1350–66/69) which lasted from 1356 to 1366. In this desperate struggle the queen repeatedly supplied money and ships for her husband while acting as his representative in Catalonia. As the mother of two princes who grew to manhood (Joan and Marti) she helped guarantee the Barcelona dynasty’s survival until 1410. The registers of Barcelona’s Archivo de la Corona de Aragón have long provided great archival historians such as Robert I. Burns and Teresa-Maria Vinyoles with evidentiary material for the study of eastern Spanish women of all classes during the later Middle Ages.1 Unsurprisingly, this massive depository has also provided scholars – myself included – with a great deal of evidence about royal women of the same region and era, including Elionor (r. 1349–75), the third wife of Pere III (r. 1336–87), who well served her husband’s realms, the Crown of Aragon, and the land of her birth, the island of Sicily. To follow Father Burns’ plan aired over twenty years ago, I will briefly explore the many roles of a “single woman” as they affected both eastern Spain and Sicily by assessing “random charters ... to construct a narrative of her [family, administrative, diplomatic, and political] life.”2 This linked archival information will allow the assessment of the Aragonese queen as a faithful wife and mother who, with her “most beloved husband and lord,” had three sons and a daughter, three of whom advanced to royal life for

1

2

Robert I. Burns, S. J., “Daughter of Abu Zayd, Last Almohad Ruler of Valencia: The Family and Christian Seigniority of Ada Ferrandi, 1236–1300,” Viator 24 (1993), 143–87; idem, Jews in the Notarial Culture: Latinate Wills in Mediterranean Spain, 1250–1350 (Berkeley, 1996), pp. 101–17; Teresa-Maria Vinyoles, Les barcelonines a les derrerìes de l’état mitjana (1370– 1410) (Barcelona, 1976). Robert I. Burns, S. J. “Women in Crusader Valencia: A Five-Year Core-Sample, 1265–1270,” Medieval Encounters 12 (2006), 36–47, esp. p. 38.

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themselves. We will also see her as an important administrative figure in Pere III’s government, who, exercising the offices of governor of Catalonia and royal lieutenant, served as a critically important figure in conflicts against Sardinia (1354––55) and Castile (1356––66). Elionor will also be seen as an important player in her husband’s military endeavors who often kept his captains in line, contributed money from her official revenues and private funds to pay troops and naval crews while even having ships armed, and maintained communication lines between the king, his officials, and captains. From an assessment of the queen’s documents and those concerning her, Elionor also emerges as a significant diplomatic agent who represented her husband in negotiations with important Iberian and Mediterranean figures. To attempt to fashion a personal portrait of any historical figure principally from archival sources demands a close description of these documents as well as of the institution in which they are housed. The raw material from which Elionor’s official life is assembled springs from the massive “Royal Chancellery” (Cancillería real) section of the Archivo de la corona de Aragón in Barcelona. The type of documents used include communiques from Pere III to his wife and vice-versa, Elionor’s orders to the members of her household and court as well as to other royal officials, parliamentary letters, and epistles to the queen’s agents in Avignon and Sicily. The grand total in the twenty registers connected with the Aragonese queen comes to at least 10,000 missives of various sizes.3 The institution in which these documents have been preserved for over 700 years also possesses a very long history. The practice of keeping records was already in full flower within the counties of Catalonia from the mid-eleventh century and quickly spread to Aragon with the marriage in 1137 of the Aragonese queen, Petronilla (r. 1137–72) and the count of Barcelona, Ramon Berenguer IV (r. 1131–62).4 With the reign of their son, Alfonso II (r. 1164–96), the roots of the later royal archive were already apparent due to the work of the royal official Ramón de Caldés in gathering, organizing, and preserving fiscal and feudal documents, which at the time of their codification were as much as a century old.5 This collection of documents, which eventually became the royal archive of the Aragonese kings, grew exponentially during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as their governments were increasingly supported by the issuance and 3

4

5

Elionor’s registers are divided between a section called “For Queen Elionor, wife of Pere III” (Pro regina Elionora, uxore Petri III) which include Numbers 1534 to 1537 and a much larger division entitled “Various” (Varia) which includes Registers 1563 to 1585. Robert I. Burns, S. J., Society and Documentation in Crusader Valencia, vol. 1 of Diplomatarium of the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia. The Registered Charters of its Conqueror, Jaume I, 1257–1276, 4 vols. to date (Princeton, 1985– ), p. 15; Josep Trenchs Odena, “El documental condal catalán: Estado actual de su estudio,” Boletín de la sociedad castellonense de cultura 58 (1982), 315–49; idem, “La escribanía de Ramón Berenguer IV: Nuevos datos,” Saitabi 29 (1979), 5–20. Thomas Bisson “Ramón de Caldées (c.1135–c.1200): Dean of Barcelona and King’s Minister,” in Law, Church, and Society: Essays in Honor of Stephan Kuttner, ed. Kenneth Pennington and Robert Somerville (Philadelphia, 1977), pp. 281–92; Burns, Society, p. 16.



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maintenance of documents written on paper. This is obvious from the number of registers produced by Jaume I (r. 1214–76), and those that survive from the reign of Pere III: respectively 29 and 976.6 The proliferation of documentation at all levels is obvious from the massive cache of official documents that Queen Elionor’s twenty-six years of royal administration produced. To understand how queenly power functioned in the Middle Ages, we must understand how the ruling coefficient of talent, opportunity, and determination for women who exercised royal power operated. Even when a royal title descended on a female heir, a predominantly male administration prevented the possibility of unfettered power. Royal wives and mothers, however, often gained the opportunity to dominate a ruling situation by becoming trusted members of a regal bureaucracy as well as guardians of their minor children who would assume the crown. In the realms of the Iberian Peninsula, Berenguela of Castile (r. 1197–1246), Maria of Aragon (r. 1401–53), and a number of other medieval queens excelled at rulership, even though they were “poised ambiguously between family and bureaucracy.”7 They came into this situation as women with “suitable beauty” but more especially thanks to their “fitness for producing children.” Once offspring were born to these royal unions, the queen possessed indirect power through her own household and those of her children until they came of age. The queen’s influence, however, was often greater as a representative and administrator for her husband. In these supportive functions, queens often gained the respect, if not the love of their husbands, though after the first few years of the marriage they rarely saw their “most dear husbands and masters” except during important holiday seasons such as Christmas and Easter.8 For all medieval queens, marriage meant the exchange of one royal family for another. With Elionor, however, the path to the marital union with her uncle, Pere III, would not be so simple; for she initially proved unwilling to 6 7

8

Federico Udina Martorell, Guia histórica y descriptiva del Archivo de la Corona de Aragón (Madrid, 1980), pp. 187, 191–94. Theresa Earenfight, The King’s Other Body, Maria of Castile and the Crown of Aragon (Philadelphia, 2010), 3; eadem, Queenship in Medieval Europe (New York, 2013), 167–69, 225–34; Miriam Shadis, Berenguela of Castile (1180–1246) and Political Women in the High Middle Ages (New York, 2009); eadem, “Berenguela of Castile’s Political Motherhood: The Management of Sexuality, Marriage, and Succession,” in Medieval Mothering, ed. John Carmi Parsons and Bonnie Wheeler (New York, 1996), 335–58; eadem, Motherhood, Lineage, and Royal Power in Medieval Castile and France; Berenguela de León and Blanche de Castille (Durham, N.C., 1994); eadem, Political Women in the High Middle Ages: Berenguela de Castilla (1180– 1246) and her Family (New York, 2001); eadem, “Women, Gender, and Rulership in Romance Europe: The Iberian Case,” History Compass 1 (2006), 481–87; Nuria Silleras Fernandez, Power, Piety, and Patronage in Late Medieval Queenship: Maria de Luna (New York, 2008); Theresa M. Vann, “Berenguela,” in Medieval Iberia: An Encyclopedia, ed. E. Michael Gerli (New York, 2003), pp. 161–62. Roger Sablonier, “The Aragonese Royal Family around 1300,” in Interest and Emotion: Essays on the Study of Family and Kinship, ed. Hans Medick and David Warrean (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 210–39, esp. 210–19.

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forsake totally the land in which she was born and raised for a new realm with many negative connections from the recent past to Sicily. The troubled ties of the island and the Crown of Aragon had indeed existed long before Elionor’s life had begun. After a Sicilian uprising against its Angevin masters during the Easter season of 1282 and the Aragonese intervention in the same year, southern Italy and Sicily, according to Neopolitan historian, Benedetto Croce, suffered through ninety years of “much trouble and little greatness.”9 With decades of warfare between Angevin Naples and the Aragonese cadet branch that ruled Sicily, the island suffered a steep economic and social decline marked by failing trade, urban decay, and a continual low-level civil war between the island’s old baronial families and the Aragonese and Catalan newcomers who supported the Iberian sovereign.10 Like other colonial outposts stretching across the Mediterranean, Sicily was torn between the indigenous population and the Iberian aristocracy established on the island by the early fourteenth century.11 The Sicilian political world from which Elionor moved in 1349 was almost as disordered as the marital métier she found in Pere III’s court. The Aragonese king had married the Navarrese princess, Maria, in 1337, who died in 1347, leaving three daughters and a short-lived son.12 Determined to guarantee his succession with a male heir, less than a year later Pere took another bride, Princess Leonora, daughter of Portugal’s King Afonso IV (r. 1325–57). After some disagreements over the dowry, the marital agreement was concluded and the Aragonese king brought his intended bride to Valencia. The match seemed doomed from the start, accompanied, as it was, by baronial uprisings in Aragon and Valencia and the appearance of “signs and wonders,” including the changed course of the river Ter at Gerona, which flowed darkly “like a river of death.”

9

10

11

12

Clifford R. Bachman, The Decline and Fall of Medieval Sicily: Politics, Religion, and Economy in the Reign of Frederick III, 1296–1337 (Cambridge, 1995), p. 29; Lawrence V. Mott, Sea Power in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Catalan–Aragonese Fleet in the War of the Sicilian Vespers (Gainesville, 2003); Steven Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century (London, 1961). David Abulafia, The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms 1200–1500: The Struggle for Dominion (London, 1997), pp. 158–59; Bachman, Decline, pp. 29–33, 42–43, 66–67, 72–73, 83, 111; Francisco Giunta, Aragoneses y Catalanes en el Mediterráneo (Barcelona, 1989), p. 123; Giuseppe Quatriglio, A Thousand Years in Sicily: From the Arabs to the Bourbons, trans. Justin Vitiello (Mineola, N.Y., 2005), pp. 59–65. David Green, “The Hundred Years War, Colonial Policy, and the English Lordship,” in The Hundred Years War (Part III): Further Considerations, ed. L. J. Andrew Villalon and Donald J. Kagay (Leiden, 2013), pp. 233–57, esp. p. 248. Originally in reference to Ireland and Normandy. Prospero de Bofarull y Mocaró, Los condes de Barcelona vindicados de los Reyes de España, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1836), 2:273–75; E. L. Miron, The Queens of Aragon: Their Lives and Times (London, 1913), pp. 177–81; José Ramón Castro, “El matrimonio de Pedro IV de Aragón y María de Navarra,” Estudios de Edad Media de la Corona de Aragón [hereafter EEMCA] 3 (1947–48), 55–156. The daughters were named Constança, Joanna, and Maria; the son, Pere.



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These portents were soon fulfilled in regard to Pere’s new bride, who died from the Black Plague on 20 October 1348.13 Having run through acceptable marriage partners in the Navarrese and Portuguese courts, Pere turned to his Sicilian family connections for a suitable mate. Based on the report of a “credible person,” he chose Elionor, the second daughter of King Pedro I (r. 1321–42), who was a young lady of “twenty-one or twenty-two” (she was actually twenty-four), with a ruddy complexion and long, fine, black hair.14 When Pere’s embassy came before the Sicilian court at Messina, the Queen-Mother, Elizabeth of Carinthia, was overjoyed with Pere’s proposal. Many of her native barons, however, who had become increasingly frustrated with Aragonese influence over their island, insisted that the princess would have to renounce all ruling rights over Sicily for herself and her heirs if she intended to become Pere’s wife. Showing both a temper worthy of any man and an unshakeable belief in her royal destiny, Elionor refused to comply with this condition, only relenting after a month of virtual imprisonment. Leaving her home for good on July 9, she married her uncle at Valencia at the end of the same month. Pere would soon find that his new mate was very much his equal in education and political acumen. Elionor showed herself to be a good wife, giving birth to three sons and a daughter in the next nine years, and a skilled royal helpmate, whose administrative abilities were invaluable to her husband. Despite the widely assumed shortcomings of the union, it persisted for a full quartercentury, binding Pere and Elionor in a relationship marked by both respect and true affection. In this regard, the manner in which they referred to each other, which grew as a customary element of their correspondence, is reflective of their relationship. The king repeatedly called the queen “our dear companion,” while, in turn, she addressed him as her “most dear lord and husband.”15 From her position as wife and mother she emerged as Pere’s true partner in government, whose power reached its apex in the disastrous border conflict, the so-called War of the Two Pedros (1356–66). From her long years of training inside the Sicilian and Aragonese royal court, Elionor emerged as a fearless defender of her regnal standing and an agent who often distrusted the machinations of the clergy, nobility, and townsmen whom she blamed for the loss of her Sicilian crown. She thus viewed her rights of office through a lens of Sicilian judicial theory, which was polished in Catalonia and Aragon. The move to a new ruling environment was therefore not that of a complete foreigner, but rather a natural 13

14 15

Miron, Queens, pp. 182–87. For the new queen’s death and the course of the plague in Catalonia and Valencia, see Archivo de la Corona de Aragón [ACA], Cancillería real, Registro [R], 1062, f. 115; R. 1131, f. 108v; Amada López de Meneses, Documentos Acerca de la Peste Negra en los Dominios de la Corona de Aragón (Zaragoza, 1956), pp. 35–36 (docs. 40–41); John Aberth, The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348–1350 (Boston, 2005), pp. 142–45 (docs. 35–36); Philip Ziegler, The Black Death (New York, 1969), pp. 32, 114. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1131, f. 125; Epistolari de Pere III, ed. Ramon Rubern (Barcelona, 1955), pp. 101–02 (doc. 11). They used these phrases in the salutations of all the letters they sent to each other.

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transition supported by the princess’s Catalan education that turned her into a persuasive speaker in that tongue for the rest of her life.16 Almost unnoticed in the midst of her family responsibilities was Elionor’s talent as a political operative whose influence within Aragon’s curia regis steadily increased during her later life. Before the Sicilian princess appeared on the scene, the itinerant court had come under the dominance of Count Bernat de Cabrera, whose family was important on both sides of the Pyrenees.17 As a leader of Pyrenean courtiers, Cabrera had become indispensable in the dark days of the baronial and urban revolts of the Unión during the late-1340s, which he helped to defeat.18 As a result of this efficient service, Cabrera was rewarded with important territorial grants in Catalonia for himself and his son and namesake, the count of Osona. By 1351, the king trusted the elder Cabrera, a “man of valor and prudence,” to be the guardian of Duke Joan of Gerona, Elionor’s first-born son.19 This incensed the queen as both a mother and a political figure of growing importance. From the first years of her marriage, then, she looked on Cabrera and his faction as her bitter enemies, and never ceased seeking opportunities for revenge. These were finally presented to her in the last years of the Castilian war when her husband grew suspicious of his trusted advisor. Fittingly, for the queen’s refined sense of vengeance, when Pere accused Cabrera of “shameful crimes of treason and lèse majesté,” he appointed his wife to mete out justice for these alleged crimes. As the head of a judicial assembly that stayed in session between April and June of 1364, Elionor quickly proclaimed proof of her old 16

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19

Mark D. Johnston, “Parliamentary Oratory in Medieval Aragon,” Rhetorica 20 (1992), 99–117; Suzanne F. Cawsey, Kingship and Propaganda: Royal Eloquence and the Crown of Aragon c. 1200–1450 (Oxford, 2002), p. 147. Donald J. Kagay, “Structures of Baronial Dissent and Revolt under James I (1213–76),” in War, Government, and Society in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (Aldershot, 2007), Study VII, pp. 61–85, esp. 62; Santiago Sobrequés i Vidal, Els barons de Catalunya (Barcelona, 1980), 35–38, 68–74. For Aragonese and Valencian Uniones, see Pere III of Catalonia (Pedro IV of Aragon), Cronicle, trans. Mary Hillgarth, ed. J. M. Hillgarth, 2 vols. (Toronto, 1980), 2:391–451 (IV:1–67); Luis González Antón, Las uniones aragonesas y las Cortes del reino, 2 vols. (Zaragoza, 1975); Manuel Dualde Serrano, “Tres episodios zaragozanos de la lucha entre Pere el Punyalet y la Unión aragonesa relatado por el monarca a su tio, Pedro de Ribagorza,” EEMCA 2 (1946), 358–70; Donald J. Kagay, “Rebellion on Trial: The Aragonese Unión and its Uneasy Connection to Royal Law, 1265–1301,” in War, Government, and Society in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (Aldershot, 2007), Article VI, pp. 30–43; Mateo Rodrigo Lizando, “La Unión valenciana y sys protagonistas,” Ligarzas 7 (1975), 133–66, esp. 148–51; Estebán Sarasa Sánchez, “El enfrentamiento de Pedro el Ceremonioso con aristocracia aragonesa,” in Pere el Ceremoniós i seva epoca (Barcelona, 1989), 35–45, esp. pp. 35–38; Santiago Simón Ballesteros, “El acuerdo secreto firmado entre rey Pedro IV y el noble aragónes Lope de Luna durante la Sedunda Unión (1347–1348),” Aragón en la Edad Media 22 (2011), 247–69. Pere III, 2:414–15 (IV: 30); Ramon d’Abadal i de Vinyals, Pere el Cerimononiós I els inicis de la decadència political de Catalunya (Barcelona, 1972), pp. 88–89; Donald J. Kagay, “The ‘Treasons’ of Bernat de Cabrera: Government, Law, and the Individual in the Late-Medieval Crown of Aragon,” in War, Study VIII, pp. 39–54, esp. p. 40.



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enemy’s “evil deeds,” and began to hector her officials and thirteen-year-old son, Joan, to put Cabrera to torture, and, with the “truth” that this would supply, to have the courtier “publicly executed.” Despite clear misgivings which led to repeated delays, the prince eventually gave in to his strong-willed mother and had his guardian – a man he was clearly close to – executed at Zaragoza on 26 July 1364 by having “his head cut from his shoulders.”20 Even with the ugly light the Cabrera affair cast over Elionor’s reputation, it shows a woman whose strength and courage made her both a faithful wife and a talented political manager, whom Pere grew to respect. As one scholar has characterized Elionor’s public life, “the queen [grew to] dominate her husband ... [playing] an active part in the affairs of state.”21 This control began in Elionor’s household/court and in that of her two young sons. As the “contact person” for these mini-institutions, the queen was constantly pressured by the royal treasurer who actually controlled the court funds and was responsible for regularly putting out a general audit of all the queen’s revenues and expenditures.22 These expenses included the reimbursement of her officials for the loss of personal property or horses while on duty; the protection of her servitors, for example in 1361 when she bought one of her counselors out of Castilian captivity; and the provision of rewards for faithful service, such as a grant of the same year to aid one of her men with his wedding. Many of these costs were included in large fiscal accounts connected with official trips such as Elionor’s journey to join her husband in Sardinia in 1355.23 Most of Elionor’s expenses were of a much smaller scale however, focusing as they did on the purchase and transport of provisions for her own household and for that of her sons. She also spent a good deal on the sending of official messages and letters both for the production of these missives and the salaries of the messengers, other officials, and muleteers who delivered them.24 When Elionor traveled across her new realms, she depended on local officials to keep her court supplied with provisions or the money to purchase it. Only occasionally were they reimbursed for this service.25 In the Aragonese queen’s court, which could consist of some thirty advisors, both secular and religious, and over double that number of servants, the

20

21 22

23 24 25

“Proceso contra Bernardo de Cabrera mandado formar por el rey Don Pedro IV,” ed. Manuel de Bofarull de Sartorio, 2 vols. in Colección de documentos inéditos de Archivo General de la Corona de Aragón, ed. Prospero Bofarull y Moscaró, 47 vols. (Barcelona, 1850–56), 32:96, 125–26; Kagay, “‘Treasons’,” p. 39, 46–48; Miron, Queens, p. 194; J. B. Sitges, La muerte de D. Bernardo de Cabrera: Consejero de Rey D. Pedro IV de Aragón (Madrid, 1911), pp. 45–47, 50, 52–54. Sitges, Muerte, 4. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1563, ff. 178r–v; R. 1566, f. 113v; Els quatre llibres de la reina Elionor de Sicilia a l’arxiu de la Catedra de Barcelona, ed. Anglada Cantarell Margarida (Barcelona, 1992), p. 146. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1565; ff. 148v–49, 173v, 175v; R. 1567, ff. 79, 131r–v, 181v; R. 1570, ff. 120v, 156v–57. Quatre Llibres, pp. 148, 171–73, 175. Ibid., p. 182; ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1565, f. 31.

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queen was the dispenser of court funds, and, probably under the influence of the king’s treasurer, became a stickler for the issuance of receipts for all royal money spent under her jurisdiction. The lists of such queenly expenditures was indeed a varied one, including in the annual audits: monthly alms to the poor; occasional grants to religious orders in Zaragoza; the settlement of bills to a court doctor, the nanny of her children, a trumpeter, a troubadour, a baker, and a falconer (along with the cost of a lost falcon); fees for the work of “sculptors and purveyors in stone”; and expenses for a number of books, both religious and legal in subject.26 Though a good deal of the queen’s spending seemed to go on luxury goods such as gold and silver plates and cups as well as silken banners, “golden crowns, silver ornamental glass for our chapel, silver, gold, and other kinds of jewelry,” these items were often used to make up shortfalls in the queen’s finances through the process of having them pawned, only to be redeemed when there was more money in the court accounts.27 During her husband’s war with Pedro I of Castile, the queen’s court finances became so stretched that she occasionally had to beg for fiscal support from the royal treasurer and other officials of the crown. When this proved impossible because of Pere’s unwillingness to divert money from his military efforts, she turned to her own officials for help with finances and such mundane concerns as her own transport. Thus during 1355–56, she drew 100,000 sous from the hamlets of Teruel to support her trip with Pere to the Aragonese outpost of Sardinia, which yet again had risen in rebellion. Three years later, the queen called on the governor of Menorca to aid her in defraying the “burden of costs for [her] household” by selling off the island’s grain surplus and sending her the proceeds.28 At times, the queen was extricated from her fiscal “danger” by the “sheer generosity” of the urban centers she administered.29 Despite all these actions, the queen, like her husband, could seldom avoid living on borrowed money, which often made her responsible to a whole class of bankers and moneylenders, some of whom parleyed their positions of pressure for entry into her circle of trusted officials.30 In accordance with the marital agreement that bound Elionor to Pere in 1349, the queen was given lordship over such important Aragonese, Catalan, and Valencian cities as Alcoy, Crevillante, Jaca, Lliria, Tarazona, Tarragona, Teruel, and Tortosa. Since the revenues from these sites constituted the principal source of the queen’s income, Elionor was forced to become a manager not only of these varied assets, but also of the urban populations that owed these 26

27 28 29 30

ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1079, f. 73; R. 1563, f. 40; R. 1565, f. 127; R. 1566, ff. 81, 85v; R. 1567, f. 53v; R. 1568, ff. 32r–v, 38; R. 1570, ff. 85v–86; Documents per l’historia de la cultura catalana mig-eval, ed. Antonio Rubió i Llluch, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1908, 1921), 1:148, 209 (docs. 46, 214); Quatre Llibres, pp. 179, 197, 201, 227. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1565, ff. 179r–v; R. 1566, ff. 148v–150v, 171v–72; R. 1567, ff. 28v–29, 37, 115v, 187r–v; R. 1570, ff. 34, f. 46v , 76r–v, 83r–v. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1566, ff. 40v, 46, 97; R. 1567, ff. 25v, 136v–37. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1566, ff. 45v–46, 97, 147v; R. 1567, ff. 43, 139v. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1566, f. 81; R. 1567, ff. 112v–15.



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dues and the officials who administered them. When the Castilian war began in 1356, she very effectively turned her efforts to bringing these urban vassals into support of her husband’s military efforts. Her principal activities in this regard were the raising of extraordinary funds for use in specific campaigns or to replenish Pere’s war chest. This money was often only available because of the queen’s forceful demands from her Jewish and Muslim aljamas for extraordinary subsidies above the tribute normally owed to the Aragonese crown.31 Similar requests to the Christian populations of her towns were more difficult to make since they were already providing troops, supplies, and money for royal military operations. In serious financial declines, however, the queen never shied away from calling for extraordinary subsidies from her main towns and their hamlets (aldeas). She also claimed a tenth of any property her frontier garrisons might capture in clashes with Castilian troops, or of any goods confiscated from Castilian citizens in Aragonese or Valencian territory.32 Because of the damage suffered by her frontier towns and hamlets, Elionor recycled some of the tax revenues from these sites to rebuild their “homes, dwellings, and patios” as well as wall circuits and bridges.33 The unremitting effect of the Castilian war forced the queen to act as the overseer for such economic functions of her urban sites as the round-up of horses to be used by her husband’s troops and the protection of her own townsmen from the unjust demands of her officials and of naval or military captains appointed by the king.34 Though clearly a bystander in the fast-moving and widespread campaigns of the Castilian war, the Aragonese queen took it on herself to become a purveyor of news about the conflict to her Iberian subjects as well as to her Sicilian vassals. In these dispatches, she closely followed her husband’s official line, claiming that during the first months of the conflict her husband was at the point of attacking “his enemy and ours,” Pedro I, and forcing him to accept battle. This triumphalist tone faded after 1356, and, in the following years, her

31

32

33

34

ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1566, ff. 107, 110, 115v, 161, 185; R. 1567, f. 18. For these non-Christian communities of the Crown of Aragon during the reign of Pere III, see Yitzak Baer, The History of Jews in Christian Spain, trans. Louis Schoffman, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1992), 2:28–34; John Boswell, The Royal Treasure: Muslim Communities under the Crown of Aragon in the Fourteenth Century (New Haven, 1977), pp. 196–97; Jonathan Ray, The Sephardic Frontier: The Reconquista and the Jewish Community in Medieval Iberia (Ithaca, N.Y., 2006), pp. 142–43. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1563, ff. 81v, 83; R. 1566, ff. 164r–v; R. 1567, f. 135. For hamlets of medieval Aragon, see Donald J. Kagay, “The Aldea in Medieval Aragon,” Mediterranean Studies 6 (1996), 29–38; idem, “Two Towns Where There was Once One: The Aldea and its Place in Urban Development of the Aragonese Middle Ages,” The Journal of the Rocky Mountain and Renaissance Association 14 (1995), 33–43. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1566, ff. 131r–v; R. 1567, ff. 40r–v, 86, 176. For how this process was carried out across the Crown of Aragon, see Donald J. Kagay, “A Shattered Circle: Eastern Spanish Fortifications and their Repair during the ‘Calamitous Fourteenth Century’,” in War, Study III, pp. 111–35. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1567, ff. Ff. 22v, 73, 117r–v, 133v; R. 1568, ff. 13v–14.

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references to the events of the war were prefaced by increasingly desperate calls for help to prevent “great damage to Pere ... something God does not want!”35 As the years passed, the queen changed her role from dispenser of news to brusque transmitter of advice to her husband and to his principal captains. During the chaotic summer of 1359 when Pedro attacked the Balearic Islands and then turned back on Valencia, the queen warned Pere about diverting subsidy funds collected to support his fleet to pay his principal military captain, Enrique de Trastámara. Though not taking an imperious tone with her husband, Elionor sounded very much the commander in the letters of the same period directed to Pere’s brother, Prince Ferran; to Trastámara; to the castellan of Amposta; and to a number of other barons stationed on the Aragonese frontier. She assured these captains that if they did not remain on duty and any “scandal or damage” occurred due to a Castilian surprise attack, a “great burden and perpetual confusion” would always be attached to their reputations. Though many of these commanders on active duty had left their posts because the salaries of their troops were in arrears, the queen repeatedly pledged that she would make up any salary shortfalls, but an active campaign was hardly the place to settle such fiscal disputes, and, in the meantime, they had to return to the frontier and stay there until relieved “no matter how much the costs.”36 Though demonstrating her strength of character in these exchanges, the masculine tenor of her words offended both her husband and his principal captains. One of the most pressing problems Pere encountered within the first phase of the Castilian war was how to pay for it without going bankrupt. He relied on the invaluable experience of his first twenty years as sovereign, during which he had managed conflicts with Jaume III of Majorca (r. 1324–44), Genoa, and Sardinia as well as the Aragonese and Valencian barony and townsmen. The king’s general means of war financing started with the manipulation of war taxes, and then proceeded to the sale of government bonds, the auctioning off of official posts and future tax revenues, taking out loans, forcing “free-will” gifts from the clergy, and finally, going before the parliaments of each of his realms to arrange for multi-year subsidies.37 The king soon discovered that he possessed a heretofore unappreciated asset, his wife, who proved to be a skilled propagandist and ruthless collection agent. Since royal officials and parliamentary delegates shared the authority for collecting customary imposts and emergency subsidies, the queen used her office as governor of Catalonia and the lord of a number of urban territories 35

36 37

ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1148, ff. 104v, 124v; R. 1380, ff. 3v, 34v–35, 41r–v; R. 1566, f. 87v; R. 1567, ff. 102r–v; R. 1568, ff. 16v, 28v; Epistolari, 124 (doc. 17); Donald J. Kagay, “The Defense of the Crown of Aragon during the War of the Two Pedros (1356–1366),” The Journal of Military History 71 (2007), 11–53, esp. 22; idem, “The Societal and Institutional Cost of Territorial Defense in Late-Medieval Catalonia,” The Journal of the Georgia Association of Historians 25 (2004), 23–63. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1567, ff. 7v, 9–11, 15, 47; R. 1568, ff. 46r–v, 47v. Donald J. Kagay, “War Financing in the Late-Medieval Crown of Aragon,” The Journal of Medieval Military History 6 (2008), 119–46, esp. pp. 125–27.



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for the collection of grants to address her husband’s military shortfalls. To raise money as quickly as possible, she sent her fiscal officials and lawyers into targeted areas with credentials giving them the right to cross the district in search of contributions. Even though she assured the residents that her officials would only claim “what they ... [were] able to pay,” she often produced lists of proposed payments that could mount up to 2,000 libras or more.38 Her most widespread and persistent fund-raising occurred in 1359 during Castilian naval operations. The queen emphasized the fiscal desperation of the royal family, saying that to raise money the king had “sold the jurisdiction of many castles and villages,” while both she and her husband had pawned their jewels – all to keep the Aragonese fleet together. To make certain that this goal was fulfilled, she assured her subjects that the money collected – normally in the form of a “household tax” (fogatge) – would only be used to arm new galleys, provide more supplies for Pere’s fleet, and pay for horsemen to patrol the exposed Catalan and Valencian coasts.39 When the ratepayers refused to contribute to these collections, she reminded them that Pere was under “great pressure” and it was their duty to protect their “king, prince, and natural lord.” Failing to do so would brand them as “stubborn ... ingrates” who might be open to the charge of high treason.40 These outbursts of the queen’s increasingly famous temper were generally sufficient to raise surprisingly large sums of money. Elionor added to these by borrowing “with a free spirit,” ordering the minting of new coinage, selling off grain surpluses, and assigning the fulfilment of labor services. The queen, especially during the Castilian naval attacks of 1359, directly contributed to the upkeep of her husband’s fleet.41 Besides these fiscal actions taken on her own initiative, Elionor also acted for her husband in preparing the towns and countryside under her control for Castilian attack. This was first carried out by giving her castellans money to repair frontier fortresses that had fallen into an indefensible state. If there were not enough people to work on these castles or the fortresses were too badly damaged, she ordered them destroyed.42 The queen was also careful to see to the provisioning of these fortifications with food, crossbows, quarrels, “lances, shields, armor, arrows, helmets, and many other weapons.”43 She issued similar orders for many of the towns and villages she controlled with the sincere belief that such settlements would be better protected by “walls and moats ... [where] there were none [before].” The same view applied if a community had a wall 38

39 40 41 42 43

ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1568, ff. 33v–34, 38–39v, 45, 46. For the coinage types of the Crown of Aragon, see Burns, Society,108–10; Miguel Crusafont i Sabater and Anne M. Balaguer, “Coinage and Currency, Catalonia”; idem, “Coinage and Currency, Aragon” in Medieval Iberia, pp. 240–42. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1567, ff. 106r–v, 107v; R. 1568, ff. 12r–v, 23v, 27, 33r–v. For fogatge, see Kagay, “War Financing,” p. 134. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1568, ff. 17v–18, 23, 32v–33, 35, 39v–40, 43v, 45. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1566, ff. 37v, 87v, 99v; R. 1567, ff. 41, 139; R. 1568, ff. 28r–v. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1566, ff. 153–54, 158r–v; R. 1567, ff. 129v, 184v, 187. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1566, ff. 158r–v; R. 1567, ff. 3v, 44v, 72.

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that had fallen into disrepair. If the wall circuit was severely damaged, the queen insisted that it should be destroyed rather than defended. She did so with the belief that such decrepit defenses could more easily be captured, thus leading to the depopulation of the district, and the consequent interruption of the urban revenues the crown depended on to prosecute its war with Castile. By and large, however, the queen advocated the fortification of most of her urban sites as well as many rural buildings in order to protect the surrounding populace and the flocks of “large and small animals” which she had ordered moved away from the frontiers of her territory with Castile.44 She filled this landscape with horsemen who defended the scattered outposts, and were paid by the local inhabitants or through extraordinary subsidies the queen herself raised. Though many of these soldiers were members of the companies marshaled by the nobility, great emergencies like the naval war of 1359 moved the queen to issue military summons to all the nobles, knights, and townsmen who were “accustomed to maintain a horse and weapons.” While these troops engaged in temporary defensive service, the queen occasionally linked them with larger royal operations such as an attack on Alicante or the defense of Valencia (both in 1359), which expanded the authority of their commanders, and at times brought complaints of violence and malfeasance from the communities these troops were supposed to protect.45 Elionor’s most remarkable feats of wartime administration occurred during Pedro I’s naval offensive of 1359. After gathering in the spring a fleet in Seville of twenty-eight of his own galleys, three each from the Portuguese and Granadan kings, along with many support vessels, the Castilian king spent the summer unleashing the armada on the Valencian and Catalan coasts, harrying Majorcan shipping, besieging the capital of Ibiza, and finally attacking Alicante, which in the meantime had been captured by Pere’s troops.46 Though the queen was sufficiently acquainted with seafaring from her Sicilian upbringing, she met the naval crisis by calling for the advice of some of her most important and wealthy prelates, from whom she expected their pledged support and claimed as much in the call for subsidies she made in July, 1359. In these missives, she sternly called for them to help her husband in his “urgent need” to “oppose the king of Castile by raising the siege of Ibiza.” From the “allegiance and loyalty” the addressees owed the crown, refusal to help the queen would bring down on them her immediate “ire and indignation.”47 In her function as supporter of the royal fleet, the queen also became a propagandist and news hawker for royal campaigns by revealing to her subjects, especially the wealthy ones, details of the Ibiza siege and the battles that played 44 45 46

47

ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1566, ff. 108v, 176v, 188r–v; R. 1567, ff. 123v–34, 125. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1563, f. 70v; R. 1567, ff. 38v, 66v, 100v, 107, 123v; R. 1568, ff. 2, 28v, 34v, 36–37. Pero Lopez de Ayala, Crónica del Rey Don Pedro, ed. Cayetano Rosell y López, vol. 1 of Crónicas de los Reyes de Castilla [Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 66] (Madrid, 1875), pp. 454–509 (1359, chaps. x–xx); Pere III, 2:522–26 (VI:22–25). ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1568, ff. 1v, 5, 16r–v, 25–26, 30r–v, 32.



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out in the Balearic seas. She also narrated details of Pedro’s cowardly desertion of the island campaign, and of his surprise attacks along the Valencian coast down to Alicante. These dispatches were normally affixed to calls for money or for the mustering of land or naval troops for her beleaguered husband. These communiques occasionally sought to show how hard she was working for Pere, however, by proclaiming that she, on her own authority, was purchasing, arming, and equipping galleys – complete with crews and crossbowmen – from Provençal and northern Catalan ports to bring the weakened Aragonese fleet up to full strength.48 The plan to reinforce her husband’s naval war surely originated with Pere’s calls for help, but was implemented by the determined action of the queen herself. By early July, 1359, she was informing the king’s uncle, Count Ramon Berenguer of Empuries, of her desire to arm fully at least ten galleys from the southern French ports of Narbonne, Collioure, and Sant Feliu de Guíxols, which she intended to gather at Barcelona before sending them on to the Balearics. Even though she estimated that this project would cost up to 16,000 libras for preparing the ships with military rigging, weapons, and provisions as well as for paying the salaries of all the ship crews and at least meeting the interest for the money borrowed for these expenses, she somehow hoped that this could be done without carrying these expenses as current debts on the year’s treasury accounts.49 When this process was completed, she ordered the vessels, fitted out with “oars, weapons, and [other] equipment,” to sail down to Barcelona with the officials in charge of arming them serving as temporary captains.50 The same procedure was enforced on bishoprics such as Gerona which dominated stretches of Catalan coastline.51 The crews for the queen’s galleys, ranging from 90 to 180 rowers and between 20 and 50 crossbowmen, were recruited in the same way the vessels themselves were armed–through the forced efforts of the prelates and nobility in gathering Catalan coastal commanders.52 The crew members in the queen’s own galleys were drafted from Catalan sea-side communities in numbers ranging from four to twenty depending on the settlement’s population. They were to be paid a daily wage set by the queen herself or one of her designated vassals.53 Elionor’s mini-fleet was to be fitted with fresh water, ship biscuit, wheat, vinegar, oil, wheat, and meat as well as with naval equipment including masts, sails, anchors, and cables.54 The captains of these vessels were most often the officials the queen had trusted with readying them for combat. On the other hand, the helmsmen were professional seamen 48 49

50 51 52 53 54

ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1568, ff. 14v, 26r–v, 30v–31, 38r–v, 42r–v. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1568, ff. 2r–v, 3, 7, 17, 45v, 47v–48. Despite her calls for such fiscal prudence, the queen also told the count to carry out all her commands, “no matter how great the expenses.” ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1568, ff. 15r–v, 17v, 21v, 24, 37v. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1568, ff. 18–19, 45v. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1567, ff. 101r–v; R. 1568, ff. 3r–v, 5–6v. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1568, ff. 4r–v, 19v–20. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1568, ff. 15, 24v; Mott, Sea Power, 218–24.

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who were responsible for safely navigating the galleys across the gulfs of Lion and Rosas to Barcelona.55 Whether any of these ships ever caught up with the Aragonese fleet in Balearic waters or along the Valencian coast is unclear. What is certain, however, is the administrative skill and personal determination Queen Elionor displayed in carrying out these naval operations. As a successful administrator and trusted confidante of a husband/king who seemed increasingly harried by the pressures inherent in his military and political leadership, Elionor often took up these roles at least partially and temporarily. She served as an announcement secretary for most of Pere’s parliaments in the second half of the Castilian war and spent a good deal of energy in seeing that subsidies of these institutions in support of Pere’s military endeavors were carried out according to published schedules.56 Besides this crucial service to her adopted homeland, Elionor also functioned as Pere’s efficient diplomatic representative and overseer, initiating and concluding agreements with the papacy, and the rulers of Fez, Genoa, France, Morocco, and even Castile.57 Surely her most insistent, but least successful diplomatic missions were those directed to making good her claim to the rule of Sicily. With Elionor, the equation of ruling was formed, first and foremost, from the example of her parents who always projected the image of foreign (Catalan) conquerors, even though they were well acquainted with the world of medieval Sicily that they controlled. She never forgot her island homeland, however, and spent the rest of her life attempting to become Sicily’s true ruler by right of inheritance.58 The new Aragonese queen looked back at Sicily with horror at its manifold decline and hoped that she herself might be able to take away the reins of power from her younger brothers, Lodovico and Federico, who served as Sicily’s kings between 1338 and 1377. They died between age seventeen and thirty-six; though attempting to establish peace across the island, they could never overcome the hatred of the native barony for the Iberian power structure that led many to declare their preference for imprisonment to submission to the foreign rulers. In the incessant conflicts that these basic hatreds spawned, Sicily itself was subject to foreign interference from Pere III and the Angevin rulers of Naples, Louis of Taranto (r. 1327–62) and Joanna I (r. 1326–82).59 Both of the 55 56 57 58

59

ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1568, ff. 17v, 21v, 24v. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1563, ff. 85v–86, 116–17; R. 1567, f. 84, R. 1569, ff. 35, 53r–v, 66v–67. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1563, ff. 85v–86, 116–17; R. 1565, ff. 91r–v, 113v, 118, 121v; R. 1566, ff. 58v, 147v–50v; R. 1567, ff. 116v–17; R. 1568, ff. 13r–v; R. 1570, f. 66v. Pere III, 2:449, 451, 518 (IV:64, 66; VI:18); Bofarull y Moscaró, Condes, 2:275–77; Miron, Queens, pp. 187–89, 191–92; Jeronimo Zurita y Castro, Anales de la Corona de Aragón, ed. Angel Canellas López, 8 vols. (Zaragoza, 1967–1985), 4:180–81, 192 (VIII:xxxvi, xl). Elionor’s sons were Joan, Martí, and Alfonso; her daughter, Elionor. Abulafia, Western Mediterranean Kingdoms, pp. 135, 159; Giunta, Aragoneses, pp. 158–61, 166; Zurita, Anales, pp. 135–36, 158–61, 166; Nancy Goldstone, Joanna: The Notorious Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily (London, 2010), pp. 227–30; Zurita, Anales, 4–180–83



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young monarchs had claimed that they were acting faithfully for “peace, justice, and royal dignity,” only to receive scorn in return from their own people and their foreign adversaries that endangered their realm.60 In their hearts, however, they must have known that one of the most constant perils they faced sprang from their older sister, Elionor. From her first month in Valencia in 1349, the new Aragonese queen opened up communications with her family and the great Sicilian barons who occasionally made the round trip across the western Mediterranean to Spain in less than a month.61 Many of these missions centered on Elionor’s perception of herself as the leader of her Sicilian family, which led her to send representatives to both engage in “secret matters” with the leaders of the island government, and send bolts of expensive cloth and jewels to the members of her Sicilian family. They were also ordered to purchase several gentle palfreys for her trips around eastern Spain.62 In all these missions, Elionor directed the Sicilian authorities to honor her delegates with “credible faith,” and protect them with “safe transit and conduct” from Sicily’s “immense dangers and expenses.” While these functionaries often paid their own way to the central Mediterranean and back again, the queen was extremely careful to arrange for their prompt repayment with her treasurer.63 Because of their “circumspect probity and strenuous service” in a land overwhelmed by the “disturbance of civil war,” Elionor took care to recognize her servants in Sicily with cash rewards and promotion to well-paid jobs in her own household.64 The reasons for Elionor’s delegations to her brother and fellow royal, Lodovico, were connected with her own queenship in Aragon. She sent her delegates to open communications with members of her family concerning matters of “blood and affection.” Through this means, she told her relatives of her recent arrival in Valencia and her wedding, insisting that some of her family members should come to visit her, so as to dispel her homesickness.65 She also quickly declared

60 61

62

63

64 65

(VIII:xxxvi), pp. 251–52 (VIII:lv), 276–78 (VIII:lx). Lodovico was king from 1338 to 1355) and Federico from 1355 to 1377. Giunta, Aragoneses, pp. 165–66, 169, 176. Compare with the shorter trips from Venice to the Latin Kingdoms which averaged some three months. Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Siân Reynolds, 2 vols. (New York, 1972), 1:264–65. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1188, f. 106; R. 1565, ff. 10v, 108r–v; R. 1566, ff. 114r–v, 139; R. 1567, ff. 54v, 154v; Documents historichs catalans del s. XIV, ed. Josep Coroleu (Barcelona, 1889), p. 45. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1563, ff. 178r–v; R. 1565, ff. 10v, 28v–29v, 72v, 106–7, 108r–v, 110v, 144v; R. 1566, ff. 19v, 113v–114v, 117, 139; R. 1567, ff. 54v, 91v, 153, 154v; R. 1570, ff. 116r–v. For safe conduct in eastern Spain, see Robert I. Burns, S. J., “The Guidaticum Safe Conduct in Medieval Arago-Catalonia: A Mini-Institution for Muslims, Christians, and Jews,” Medieval Encounters 1 (1995), 52–113. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1563, ff. 164, 197v; R. 1565, ff. 74v; R. 1566, ff. 94v, 174v; R. 1567, f. 93; R. 1570, f. 121. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1563, ff. 4, 214–v, 30r–v, 104r–v; R. 1565, ff. 66, 106, 108v, 144; R. 1566, ff. 138v–39.

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herself leader of her Sicilian family by forwarding funds to provide for her mother who had remained in Sicily, as well as by entering into negotiations with both Lodovico and Pope Innocent VI (r. 1352–62) to arrange for the marriages of her three younger sisters, whom she took under her special protection.66 Many of Elionor’s letters to Sicily during the early 1350s were directed to the Sicilian barons. Calling for the fulfillment of their fealty to her, the queen, through her representatives, repeatedly called for the planting of “flowers of peace” in Sicily to offset the “incessant war and battles ... [spawned by] divisions and hatred” that held sway on the island. This transformation to a “peaceful and quiet situation” would surely come in the wake of an alliance that Elionor greatly wished for between her brother and her husband, which would manifest itself in the dispatch of a “fleet of [Pere’s] galleys” to support the boy-king as well as the Aragonese and Catalans on the island.67 According to the queen, this political and military “league of agreement” would lead to the ultimate “repair” of Lodovico’s realm and aid Pere’s lands in establishing a more workable understanding for the export of Sicilian grain into the Crown of Aragon.68 From the great number of “rumors and emotions” that reached Elionor from her retainers, she felt impelled to protect her servants as well as her own brother by arranging to pay for troops to be used across Sicily in support of its king.69 In spite of her attempt to become a player in her former homeland, the Aragonese queen soon became frustrated with Lodovico, who seemed unable to free himself from his over-mighty subjects and had grown to resent his sister’s attempts as a marriage broker for both himself and his guardian, Princess Euphemia.70 Elionor also grew angry with the Sicilian king’s failure or unstated refusal to arrange for the transfer of her dowry of 10,000 onzas promised by her father, Pedro I, long before she had married Pere III. Her stern letters and the dispatch of embassies to Sicily through the first months of her marriage brought only partial success, leaving the queen to wonder if she could ever fully trust Lodovico.71 This feeling was intensified by her largely unsuccessful attempts to recover the cache of jewels she had as a princess, which had been confiscated and retained by Sicilian officials, even after her marriage agreement was concluded with Pere in 1349. Two years later, she was forced to utilize funds designated for her Iberian household to replace this varied collection of gems.72 Despite these frustrations with her brother, which Elionor had grown to expect and hoped to overcome, she was greatly shocked by the news of Ludovico’s death of plague at age seventeen on October 16, 1355. 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1563, ff. 100v–01, 179–80v, 182; R. 1565, ff. 109, 177–78v, 187r–v. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1563, ff. 6, 10v–11v, 12v–13, 30, 32–33, 34v, 65r–v; R. 1565, ff. 2v–4v, 109. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1563, ff. 142–43, 179; R. 1565, 142v–43. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1563, ff. 66–67, 89r–v, 98, 102v, 103, 104v; R. 1565, f. 4. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1563, ff. 181r–v; R. 1565, ff. 187v–88. Born in 1330, Euphemia, five year’s Elionor’s junior, remained Federico’s guardian from 1355 to 1357. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1563, ff. 29r–v, 36–39v. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1563, ff. 97, 143–44v.



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She immediately moved to the fore in an attempt to have her sickly younger brother, Federico, made Sicily’s next king.73 Elionor had been in contact with her nine-year-old sibling in 1352 with a letter expressing personal affection for the sickly boy. Two months after Lodovico’s death, she begged Federico to take up the “diadem of the realm” immediately to avoid all the “irreparable damage” that hung over Sicily by taking “anxious care and diligence” to establish a more tenable situation. At the same time, she sternly instructed the great Aragonese barons of the island to protect the boy-king from the serious dangers that threatened him and even offered to send a small Iberian force of horse and foot to Sicily to serve as Federico’s bodyguard.74 Despite some misgivings about the new monarch, Elionor continued to declare her support for her brother throughout 1356 in hopes that, by exiling some of the king’s least dependable courtiers and rewarding others who she could more easily control, she could cure the “inexorable and unheard of [political] pestilence” that faced the teenager.75 For the next year, the queen maintained this official approval while becoming increasingly put out with the Sicilian situation. Seeing to the heart of the “unspeakable and sinister events” that held Federico enthralled, she again offered to help him, in the midst of the ongoing conflict with the Angevins, to make arrangements for a suitable marriage, while clearing up his disputes with the pope concerning this match. She also wanted to show her power – or at least that of her husband – by attacking the high-placed traitors who had surrendered Messina to the Angevin rulers without a fight in 1356, accepting Louis and Joanna as their sovereigns. In the next year, the Aragonese queen tried to improve her brother’s Mediterranean standing by arranging a naval alliance among Aragon, Sicily, and the Muslim ruler of Morocco, Abu Inan Farias (r. 1348–58).76 Even with Federico’s reputation for physical and mental frailty which Elionor repeatedly made public, the young king was able in the spring of 1357 to beat back a Neopolitan naval force at Aci near Catania. Despite the “very great joy” with which the Aragonese queen announced this unexpected victory, it was clear to her and her advisors that she could not expect to dominate Federico, who seemed ready to take an independent course between Aragon and Naples. In spite of this setback, the queen continued her efforts at gaining some form of power over Sicily.77 This eventually led her to attempt the undermining of Federico’s ruling position by claiming that he had not been formally crowned or named king. She also tried to blacken his reputation with Innocent VI, implying that the Sicilian king had violated an agreement with his own family to seek peace with the rulers of Naples. Characterizing her brother as a 73 74 75 76 77

ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1566, f. 17; Giunta, Aragoneses, 145–46. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1563, f. 6; R. 1566, ff. 17v, 30–31. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1566, ff. 52v, 60v, 86r–v. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1566, ff. 58, 116v, 118–19v, 140v–41v; Giunta Aragoneses, pp. 179–80. See n. 52. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1566, ff. 140v–41v, 151r–v; Goldstone, Joanna, p. 242.

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debtor who had never repaid the queen for money loaned him, she demanded immediate repayment from Sicilian tax revenues.78 For the next five years, Elionor attempted to slowly expand her authority over her brother by claiming to be the head of the Sicilian royal family with the death of her older sister, Constança, in 1354. In this role, she continued her drive to arrange the marriages of all her siblings. Her most important duty in this regard was the negotiation of a pact between her husband and Federico, which would be solidified by a marriage between the Sicilian king and Pere’s daughter by his first wife, Constança. Even as the Aragonese royals rapidly moved to gain a papal dispensation for this union, Federico temporized. Pere’s advisors warned that the Aragonese conflicts with Castile and Genoa might undermine this potential alliance if the Sicilian king did not show himself ready to stand as a proper bridegroom. None of Elionor’s threats moved the marriage to completion for years to come. In the spring of 1360, with the marriage agreements made, Elionor, as the step-mother of the bride, began to stockpile operating funds for Constança’s trousseau and wedding trip to Sicily by pawning some of her own possessions and helping her daughter-in-law to sell a castle and village she had inherited. With this money and another large sum borrowed from a pair of Barcelona drapers, the queen booked the Sicilian voyage and equipped the princess with a suitable supply of “gold and silver vessels and jewels.” After a year of such preparation, Constança traveled to her Sicilian fate, marrying Federico in April 1362, and giving him an heir, Maria, in the next year. Unfortunately for the renewed Aragonese hopes of dominating Federico, the Sicilian queen died of plague in 1364.79 Besides assuming the role of marriage broker, Elionor was also severely tested as the proclaimed protectress of her younger siblings. When Messina surrendered to Neopolitan troops in 1356 and its inhabitants took Joanna and Louis as their Aragonese queen and king, the queen was shocked to learn that her sisters, Violante and Blanche (aged twenty-two and fourteen respectively), along with their servants had been captured by the Angevin rulers of Naples. Despite the queen’s best efforts, they would remain Angevin prisoners for the next six years. From the spring of 1357 onward, Elionor used increasingly strident diplomatic means to effect their release. She bombarded both Federico and the pope with demands for military and religious actions against the Neopolitans, who showed no signs of releasing their valuable prizes.80 Between 1359 and 1362, Elionor’s efforts began to bear some fruit, leading her to intensify her efforts to release the captives from their site of imprisonment in Calabria. Louis and Joanna of Naples finally agreed to free their prisoners after the Aragonese queen had sent several envoys to their court. They refused, however, to pay the princess’s travel 78 79 80

ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1566, ff. 93v–94, 96, 118v. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1566, ff. 37v–38, 39v, 874–v, 93r–v; R. 1570, ff. 18v–19, 43–46, 66; Giunta, Aragoneses, pp. 175, 180; Quatriglio, Thousand Years, p. 64. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1566, ff. 116v, 118v; R. 1570, f. 77v; Giunta, Aragoneses, pp. 184–85; Goldstone, Joanna, pp. 235–37; Quatriglio, Thousand Years, p. 64.



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expenses even to Sardinia, leading Elionor to lay out complicated plans for the transfer of her sisters to Barcelona. These were carried out in 1362, but gave neither Elionor nor her Neopolitan rivals much diplomatic traction.81 With Federico’s attempt to plot an independent course of action, Pere III, embroiled in conflicts with Castile, Genoa, and Sardinia during the middle decades of the fourteenth century, began to look on Sicily as a series of unwinnable conflicts that he had to avoid at all costs. His wife, however, still longing for a Sicilian throne that she viewed as rightfully hers, began to put forward this royal claim more and more forcefully.82 After the death of Lodovico, Elionor claimed that by right of inheritance she, not her younger sister, Euphemia, should control at least half of Sicily’s royal lands, and serve as regent for the next king, the fourteen-year-old Federico. Even before he came to the throne, she asserted that she should rule her island homeland by “right of primogeniture” since Lodovico had no legitimate heirs. Even though she eventually accepted Federico’s kingship, she attempted to claim the rights of royal inheritance for herself and her sons if her brother died childless.83 In 1370, her diplomatic maneuvering bore some fruit with her brother who from “fraternal love” granted to his older sister control of the Sicilian duchies of Neopatria and Athens. Constituting two “certain, special, and general procurators,” the queen instructed them to oversee the general feudal oaths of her new subjects and see to the collection of taxes and dues these areas traditionally owed their lord. Unfortunately for Elionor’s more expansive ambitions for Sicilian dominance, her claims were never put into effect.84 Even before these last claims were put forward by the queen, her claims to the Sicilian crown, like so many of her plans, proved moot in 1363 with the birth of Federico’s daughter, Maria, who, like her aunt, was an amalgam of Aragonese and Sicilian royalty. With Federico’s death in 1377, Sicily was formally divided between four scions of the great Aragonese and Catalan families that had held sway over much of the island since the thirteenth century. Disregarding the familial and political desires of both Pere III and his queen, these “vicars” tried to solidify their ruling position by attempting to arrange a marriage between Maria and Gian Geleazzo Visconti, the heir of Bernabó Visconti, the duke of Milan. Both Elionor and her husband were infuriated by this attack on their claims to Sicilian overlordship. As the Sicilian situation deteriorated into a true baronial civil war that endangered his fifteen-year-old granddaughter, the Aragonese king had intensified his preparation for the gathering of a huge fleet for use against Sicily, which would allow him to protect Maria while making good his own claim to rule the island. When the Aragonese king decided against this expensive project, his wife was furious and begged permission to lead such 81 82 83 84

ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1567, ff. 57v, 65r–v, 77r–v, 91v–92, 93r–v, 94r–v, 152–53; R. 1570, ff. 17v–18, 115v. Giunta, Aragoneses, pp. 174–75. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1566, ff. 31r–v, 52, 170v–71; R. 1570, ff. 51–52, 55, 57; Giunta, Aragoneses, pp. 174, 176. ACA, Cancillería real, R. 1379, ff. 34–37.

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an armada back to her homeland to make good her own Sicilian claim. The queen’s protests about the abandonment of this Sicilian project were ultimately silenced by her death, but the worsening situation on the island claimed Pere’s attention once more in 1379 when his granddaughter was abducted by Gugliemo Raimondo Montcada, one of the myriad of Iberian nobles contending for power in Sicily. Attempting to turn over his prisoner in exchange for increased influence with Pere and his sons, Montcada ultimately released Maria to Aragonese ambassadors sent by their royal lord to arrange some kind of peace in Sicily. Maria was thus transported back to Catalonia, where she was eventually married to Pere’s grandson, Martí the Young. By 1392, the queen, her husband, and his father, Prince Martí, the future King Martí I of Aragon (r. 1396–1412) invaded Sicily and reestablished Maria’s control over the island, if only in a very tenuous way. In some way, then, Elionor’s drive to establish her rule over her homeland was fulfilled in the person of her granddaughter.85 Even though Elionor’s record as war administrator in Sicily was a largely unsuccessful one, she quickly became an essential cog in her husband’s conflict with Castile; a ruler of her own court and that of her sons, Joan and Martí; the lord of many Aragonese and Valencian towns and castles, along with their Christian, Jewish, and Muslim populations; and an efficient royal bureaucrat who served for most of her married life as the Governor of Catalonia. Though no portrait of the queen survives except that etched on her well-used secret seal, her reputation as a dependable backer of Pere’s many wars and a formidable rival to his other important advisors was well deserved. As the Castilian war began to wind down in the mid-1360s, the confidence of Elionor – “a woman perfectly mistress of herself” – began to diminish. We can witness her sadness at this changing condition at the Catalan Corts of 1365 when she spoke to the rowdy assembly of Catalans like a mother deserted by her children, and nine years later when she opposed the marriage of her only daughter and namesake to a Castilian prince, only to have her opinion angrily overridden by her husband who was himself at the time seeking younger sexual partners. The magnificent though bruised ego that was Elionor of Sicily died on April 20, 1375 and her body was fittingly buried at the monastery of Poblet alongside many other luminaries of the Barcelona dynasty.86 In contrast to the discussion of Castilian royal women in Andrew Villalon’s article in this volume, which would have been impossible without several contemporary or near-contemporary chronicles, most especially those of Pedro 85

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Pere III, 2:586–92, 596–600 (Appendix:1–2, 4); Sandra Benjamin, Sicily: Three Thousand Years of Human History (Hanover, N.H., 2006), pp. 227–29; Quatriglio, Thousand Years, pp. 65–69. Pere III, 2:582–83, 589–92 (VI:64, App. 2); Parlaments a les corts catalanes, ed. Ricart Albert and Joan Gassiot (Barcelona, 1928), pp. 27–33; Suzanne F. Cawsey, Kingship and Propaganda: Royal Eloquence and the Crown of Aragon, c.1200–1450 (Oxford, 2002), pp. 29, 116; Miron, Queens, pp. 194–95.



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Lopez de Ayala, an in-depth treatment of Elionor of Sicily’s life and work could not exist without the thousands of communiques, instructions, and other state papers that survive in the Archivo de la Corona de Aragón at Barcelona. Though Pere III’s Cronica was a worthy companion to the earlier works of Jaume I, Bernat Desclot, and Ramon Muntaner,87 it gives distinctly short shrift to his “dear queen.” In fact, he mentions her only in connection with the birth of two of his children, her presence on the royal expedition to Sardinia (1354–55), her indirect influence in bringing down her husband’s courtier Bernat Cabrera, her opposition to the marriage of her daughter, also named Elionor, to Juan, the son of the Castilian king, Enrique II (r. 1366/69–79), and her death in 1375.88 This sparse treatment was surely not due to the king’s lack of respect for his third wife, who had proven invaluable in the conduct of his major wars and had aided the continuance of the Barcelona dynasty by giving birth to two healthy sons. His esteem for Elionor is obvious in his break with regnal tradition in the formal coronation of his wife as queen of Aragon on September 5, 1352.89 With such a rare elevation of the queen, one would expect a broader treatment of Elionor in Pere III’s formal historical overview of his reign. But given the king’s general purpose in having the Cronica written; namely, the glorification of his own actions as measured against the great feats of his ancestor and royal paragon, Jaume I, there was simply no room for the meaningful inclusion of Elionor’s story in this work.90 Without the massive documentary remains associated with the queen, there would have been little record of her roles as a successful mother, administrator, war manager, and diplomat. The loss of this remarkable story would surely have been a historiographical tragedy.

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Jaume Aurell, Authoring the Past: History, Autobiography, and Politics in Medieval Catalonia (Chicago, 2012), pp. 39–89. Pere III, 2:449 (IV:64), 451 (IV:66), 485 (V:37), 488 (V:39), 518 (VI:18), 544 (VI:39), 556 (VI:47), 583 (VI:69), 589–91 (Appendix 2). Jaume Aurell and Marta Serrano-Coll, “The Self-Coronation of Peter the Ceremonious (1336): Historical, Liturgical, and Iconographical Representations,” Speculum 89 (2014), 66–95, esp. pp. 73–74, 92–93; Antonio Durán Gudiol, “El rito de coronación del rey en Aragón,” Argensola 103 (1989), 17–40, esp. pp. 30–31; Carmen Orcástegui Gros, “La coronación de los reyes de los reyes de Aragón: Evolución político-ideológica ritual,” in Homenatge á Don Antonio Durán Gudiol (Huesca, 1995), pp. 633–47, esp. 643–44; Jaume Riera i Sans Reina, “La Coronación de la Reina Elionor,” Acta historica et archaeological Mediaevalia 26 [Homenatge a la profesora Dra Carmen Batlle Girart] (2005), 485–92. Aurell, Authoring, pp. 97–99.

5 Wives, Mistresses, Lovers, and Daughters: The Fortunes of War for Royal Women in Late Fourteenth-Century Castile or A Gender Limitation on Writing History from Chronicles* L. J. Andrew Villalon This article first shows what can be learned about Castilian royal women in the latter half of the fourteenth century through the use of existing chronicle accounts, then argues that a gender bias characteristic of such sources is a significant factor in limiting what scholars can discover about the roles of even elite female figures during this highly eventful period in the kingdom’s history. Finally, the article explores what may be called the “source problem” inherent in researching and writing about late medieval Castile: the paucity of surviving documents, something that forces an over-reliance upon the chronicles. This relative absence of documentation stands in stark contrast to the situation scholars encounter in Castile’s

*

This article began as a paper presented at the 50th annual International Congress of Medieval Studies in May 2015, at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. A revised version was presented at the Texas Medieval Association Conference at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, the following October. Particular thanks to my editing partner, Donald J. Kagay, who suggested this line of research for the conference panel at Kalamazoo and who wrote for that panel the closely allied article which also appears in this journal. I also wish to thank Kelly DeVries, whose article on the value of chronicles as sources for doing medieval military history, in JMMH II (2004), led me to explore what I consider to be one noteworthy limitation on the value of such sources, as least in so far as the Spanish story is concerned. Thanks are due to a number of academic institutions that over the years have contributed much of the source material used in my writings on the fourteenth century: the Archivo Histórico Nacional and the Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid; the Archivo General de Simancas outside of Valladolid; the University of Cincinnati library services, in particular, interlibrary loan and photoduplication; and the University of Texas library system. I also need to thank Theresa Vann, who made a number of useful suggestions when this article was in the conference paper stage. As always, my gratitude goes to the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Cincinnati, which took me in from the cold and treated me with a generosity unusual in academe. Unless otherwise stated in a footnote, all translations that appear within this article are my own.

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eastern neighbor, the Crown of Aragon, where careful preservation of documents, in particular state papers, got underway several centuries earlier than in Castile. This article was written in conjunction with the one by Don Kagay that immediately precedes it in this issue of the JMMH, an article that demonstrates what can be accomplished in portraying the life of a royal woman of the period when archival sources are available to flesh out the portrait. During the latter half of the fourteenth century, a new royal dynasty, the House of Trastámara, established itself in the central Iberian kingdom of Castile, largest of five states that occupied the peninsula.1 Early in the following century, one branch of that dynasty also came to power in the neighboring Crown of Aragon, a political conglomerate that included the kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia, the county of Catalonia, and the Balearic Islands as well as a small slice of southern France stretching along the Mediterranean coast.2 The establishment of this family in the two most important Iberian polities set the stage for their eventual unification, one that was accomplished through a famous marriage in 1469 of two cousins, Ferdinand of Aragon (r. 1474–1516) and Isabel of Castile (r. 1474–1504).3 From that marriage sprang a Spanish state that would soon incorporate all of Iberia with the exception of Portugal and would become by around 1500 the most powerful kingdom in early modern Europe. The period in Castilian history that witnessed both the birth and coming of age of the Trastámaran dynasty was one of extensive conflict, a period of roughly four decades (1350–1387) torn by warfare, both foreign and domestic. It started shortly before mid-century with the latest round in the Reconquista, a name given to the Spanish crusade of nearly eight centuries to recover Iberia from the forces of Islam. There followed a struggle of two decades for the crown of Castile between its legitimate holder and his illegitimate half-brother; a brutal ten-year conflict between Castile and Aragon, later dubbed the War of the Two Pedros (1356–66) and fought over the territories lying along their mutual border; a Castilian invasion of Granada, the last Moslem stronghold in

1

2

3

Although what scholars call the Trastámaran dynasty was descended from a direct (though illegitimate) branch of the existing ruling family, the House of Burgundy, scholars treat it as a new dynasty rather than a continuation of the old one. Although Aragon proper gave its name to this monarchical federation, it was the principality of Catalonia, to the east of Aragon and centered on the great maritime city of Barcelona, that tended to dominate it politically as well as economically. In 1474, five years after their marriage, Ferdinand and Isabel succeeded to the Castilian throne. In 1479, Ferdinand came into his own inheritance, the crown of Aragon. Isabel died in 1504, designating Ferdinand as regent for their unbalanced eldest surviving daughter, Juana la Loca. However, the Castilian nobles backed Juana’s Flemish husband Philip “the Handsome,” who reigned briefly as Philip I. After Philip’s premature death in 1506, Ferdinand returned as regent for Castile, a position he retained alongside his own crown of Aragon until 1516 when he was succeeded in both realms by his grandson, Charles I of Spain, Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire. Note that all regnal and papal dates in this article are prefaced by an “r.”



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the far south of the peninsula; a spillover across the Pyrenees of the Hundred Years War that ultimately resulted in the Castilian navy playing a critical role on the side of the French; a short and highly successful invasion of neighboring Navarre and a series of conflicts with another neighbor, Portugal. These lastmentioned conflicts were not dissimilar to the Navarrese war except in respect to their outcome: far from being successful, the last of the conflicts with Portugal, fought in the mid-1380s, ended in a disastrous military defeat for Castile at the battle of Aljubarrota (1385). Capping this period in a military sense was an English seaborne invasion of Castile’s northwestern province in what proved to be the final attempt to unseat the Trastámarans from the throne. Given the number of wars, rarely did the fighting let up for any prolonged time. In a recent article, Theresa Earenfight of Seattle University, who works primarily on the dynasty’s role in Aragon, calls on historians to recognize and address an indisputable, if sad reality that mars our overall picture of the Trastámarans: The events of this tumultuous period have been studied almost entirely through the framework of kingship … [This approach] diminishes the importance of the Trastámaran queens who were central to the events and constricts our understanding of medieval monarchy.4

There can be little doubt concerning the truth of her observation, one that applies not only in the region and time period she studies, but for most of the medieval centuries throughout Europe: past scholarship has afforded the study of queenship short shrift, particularly in respect to the political and military influence often exercised by these highborn women. Even in the not-too-distant past, the failure of scholars to give the queenly role its due has usually been traceable to an intellectual misogyny characterizing so much of male-dominated writing over the centuries. It is an attitude that has led to a general and pronounced underestimate of the feminine role in history. Fortunately, historical scholarship of recent generations (at least in the West) has progressively abandoned this venerable gender bias. Today, most practicing historians known to this author, male as well as female, are quite content to put to rest this particular failing of their forerunners. Today, the failure to adequately study “queenship” tends to lie not so much in ourselves as historians, but instead in many of the sources we are compelled to use when practicing our craft, sources written in large part by men of a bygone era, sources that incorporate and therefore perpetuate the gender biases of the past. The following article is my attempt to address, and perhaps redress in some small measure, the basic issue raised in Earenfight’s article. My focus, however, will not be on Aragon, her stomping ground, but its neighbor to the west, the 4

Theresa Earenfight, “Trastámaran Kings, Queens, and the Gender Dynamics of Monarchy,” in The Emergence of Leon-Castile 1065–1500: Essays Presented to J. F. O’Callaghan, ed. James J. Todesca (Farnham, 2015), p. 142.

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larger and more populous kingdom of Castile. Nor will the time-frame be the same: for while she primarily studies the fifteenth century, we shall venture further back into the fourteenth, to those four war-torn decades mentioned earlier that witnessed the rise of the Trastámarans. Furthermore, the article will branch out beyond queens and look at a larger pool of royal women. From among members of this group living in tempore belli – “in time of war” – I have selected ten women who receive mention in the chronicle sources I shall be using. These are the wives, mistresses, lovers, and daughters of our title (see Fig. 1), and while some of them were indeed queens (or at least claimed to be), others on the list never achieved that elevated status. Our list includes several princesses (one of whom got herself to a nunnery) and even a royal mistress or two. All led lives that influenced or were influenced by, either positively or negatively, the nearly unending warfare that engulfed much of Spain during these decades. (See Fig. 1 for a list of the ten women; Fig. 2 for a genealogical table.) After a historical introduction to the period, the rest of the article falls logically into two parts. The first examines how the “fortunes of war” helped shape the lives of these women and what effect their presence had on both political and military events through which they lived. The remainder of the article – Part II – will consider the limitations imposed by chronicle sources on our ability to investigate the history of these royal women in fourteenth-century Castile; why such limitations are actually far more pronounced for that kingdom than for its eastern neighbor, Aragon; and why (alas) the Castilian situation will almost certainly remain unchanged, despite the clarion call of scholars like Earenfight to pay greater attention to the role of royal women and the best efforts of her fellow scholars, male and female, to heed that call. In examining the case of Castile, we confront a central problem many historians face when trying to study the history of royal women, including in regions far removed from the Iberian Peninsula. An Age of Conflict (1350–87)5 The second half of what has come to be called the “calamitous fourteenth century” was indeed a turbulent period in the history of Castile. It began with the premature death of King Alfonso XI (r. 1311–50) 6 at the siege of Gibraltar 5

6

For a recent account of this period in English, see L. J. Andrew Villalon and Donald J. Kagay, To Win and Lose a Medieval Battle, Nájera (April 3, 1367), a Pyrrhic Victory for the Black Prince (Leiden, 2017). The authors have also published a number of articles in various journals and collections which deal with aspects of the topic. The principal surviving source dealing with this monarch is his lengthy chronicle, attributed to a leading royal official, Fernán Sánchez de Valladolid. See Corónica del muy alto et muy Católico Rey Don Alfonso el Onceno deste nombre, que venció la Batalla del Rio Salado et Ganó a las Algeciras [Alfonso XI]. I have used the late nineteenth-century edition published in Crónicas de los reyes de Castilla desde don Alfonso el Sabio, hasta los Católicos don Fernando y doña Isabel [hereafter CRC], ed. Cayetano Rosell, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1877), 1:171–398. The



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in 1350. The king’s stubborn refusal to lift the siege when plague descended on his army led to his demise, making him Europe’s highest ranking victim of the Black Death. With the succession of his only legitimate son and heir, Pedro I (r. 1350–66/1367–69),7 better known to history as Pedro “the Cruel,”8 Castile descended into a political and military maelstrom that endured for much of the next half century. First came Pedro’s nineteen-year reign, throughout most of which he faced growing opposition from an ever-expanding segment of his aristocracy, many of whose members he assassinated, earning his famous sobriquet. This internal opposition included a flock of illegitimate half-brothers, three of whom he murdered while the eldest, Count Enrique de Trastámara, eventually became its acknowledged leader and, in the end, successfully challenged Pedro for the crown. In 1356, the king launched his major foreign adventure, a ten-year campaign against neighboring Aragon that has become known as the War of the Two Pedros (1356–66), taking its name from the two monarchs who conducted it. (In this struggle, Pedro I of Castile faced off against Pedro IV of Aragon

7

8

CRC was reissued in its entirety in 1953, as part of the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles [BAE], a monumental collection of Spanish literature published by Ediciones Atlas. It occupies vols. 66, 68, and 70 of the collection. The chronicle of Alfonso XI appears in volume 66. Pedro I’s chronicle, the principal source for all later work on this controversial monarch, was written well over a decade after his death by one of the foremost literary figures of the age, the multi-talented royal official Pedro López de Ayala (d. circa 1407), who had served both Pedro and the usurper who overthrew him, and produced a chronicle on each man. Over the centuries, the work has appeared a number of times. For this article, we have used and cited the Cayetano Rosell edition that appears in volume one of the CRC, printed in the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, volume 66. See: Crónica del Rey Don Pedro Primero [hereafter Ayala, Pedro I], in CRC, 1:393–614. Readers wishing to consult more recent, but considerably harder to obtain editions can look at Pedro López de Ayala, Crónica del rey don Pedro, ed. Constance L. Wilkins and Heanon M. Wilkins (Madison, 1985) or Pedro López de Ayala, Crónica del rey don Pedro y del rey don Enrique, su hermano, hijos del rey don Alfonso Onceno, ed. German Orduna (Buenos Aires, 1994–97). Throughout the nineteenth century, a number of books appeared concerning this highly controversial monarch, one of the most famous being the work of French scholar Prosper Mérimée, entitled Histoire de Don Pèdre Ier, roi de Castille, a two-volume English translation of which was published in 1849. A highly useful book for the study of the reign, one that reproduces various key documents, is J. B. Sitges, Las mujeres del rey Don Pedro I de Castilla (Madrid, 1910). In recent decades, an increasing array of books and articles on Pedro have appeared, most of them in Spanish including Julio Valdeon Baruque, Pedro I, el Cruel y Enrique de Trastámara: La primeral guerra civil española? (Madrid, 2002); Paulino García Toraño, El rey Don Pedro el Cruel y su mundo (Madrid, 1996); Manuel Sánchez Martínez, “Pedro I el Cruel: La guerra de los Dos Pedros,” Historia 143 (1988), 45–56. For English readers, there is a fine biography of the king by Clara Estow entitled Pedro the Cruel, 1350–1369 (Leiden, 1995). For a brief assessment of Pedro and his highly impolitic policies see my article, “Pedro the Cruel, Portrait of a Royal Failure,” in Donald J. Kagay and Joseph Snow, eds., Medieval Iberia: Essays on the History and Literature of Medieval Spain (New York, 1997), pp. 201–16. Not unbefitting such a controversial figure, this monarch possesses two contrasting sobriquets; which one uses depends upon how one views his sanguinary activities. To opponents, he is Pedro the Cruel; to supporters, Pedro the Just.

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(r. 1336–87), known to his Catalan subjects as Pere III, the name we shall use to refer to him in this article.9) Although the struggle was interrupted by brief periods of peace, all of these were violated by the Castilian monarch whenever it proved to his advantage to do so. Inexorably, Castile, with its greater size and population, intruded deep into Aragonese territory, and despite that kingdom’s effort to resist Castilian aggression, by the last full year of the conflict (1365), much of Pere III’s realm lay solidly in the hands of his adversary, occupied by Castilian garrisons that continued to ravage remaining Aragonese lands. Ultimately, Pedro’s forces overran an area that according to Pere totaled as much territory as either Valencia or Aragon, the two frontline kingdoms where most of the struggle took place.10 At this point, however, a spillover from the Hundred Years War currently being fought north of the Pyrenees completely reversed the conflict south of the mountains, ultimately bringing about a totally unexpected Aragonese victory. During his reign, the Castilian monarch had thoroughly alienated both France and the French-dominated Avignon Papacy. The French, who had been allies of Castile during the reign of Alfonso, progressively came to look on his son as a deadly enemy, the last straw being a military alliance with England that Pedro negotiated in 1362. During these same years, the papacy, which had once supported Alfonso in the conflict with Islam, became frustrated with Pedro’s unending defiance on many issues, only one of which was his abandonment of the Reconquista. Consequently, during the late 1350s, one pope excommunicated him, while a few years later the next pontiff announced his deposition. In 1365, the French king, Charles V “the Wise” (1364–80) and the reigning pope, Urban V (r. 1362–70) joined with Pere III in an agreement to overthrow the Castilian monarch and replace him on the throne with his principal adversary, his illegitimate half-brother, Enrique de Trastámara. To accomplish this, the three rulers relied on the so-called Free Companies, bands of soldiery sometimes numbering in the hundreds thrown out of work by a temporary lull in the Hundred Years War. Since both France and Avignon suffered from the depredations of these companies, whose members terrorized many of the southern and eastern regions of France, both were more than happy to help recruit them and 9

10

For a far more detailed picture of the conflict, the reader is referred to several of these articles. See Villalon, “Royal Failure”; “Seeking Castles in Spain: Sir Hugh Calveley and the Free Companies’ Intervention in Iberian Warfare (1366–1369),” in Crusaders, Condottieri, and Cannon: Medieval Warfare in Societies around the Mediterranean, ed. L. J. Andrew Villalon and Donald J. Kagay (Leiden, 2003), pp. 305–28; “The Battle of Nájera and the Hundred Years War in Spain,” in The Hundred Years War: A Wider Focus, ed. L. J. Andrew Villalon and Donald J. Kagay (Leiden, 2005), pp. 13–74; “’Cut off their Heads or I’ll Cut off Yours’: The Strategy and Tactics of Castile in the War of the Two Pedros (1356–1366),” in The Hundred Years War (Part II): Different Vistas, ed. L. J. Andrew Villalon and Donald J. Kagay (Leiden, 2008), pp. 153–82. Most of the territory captured by Castilian forces lay within one or the other of these two kingdoms that shared a common border with Castile. For its part, Catalonia, lying farthest to the east, escaped most of the suffering experienced by its two neighbors.



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finance their removal to Iberia where they and their leader, the future constable of France, Bertrand du Guesclin, made short work of Pedro. In spring, 1366, they toppled him from power and crowned in his stead his half-brother, who now took the title Enrique II (r. 1366–67/1369–79).11 Having fled into Portugal, the deposed monarch rapidly traversed that country and reentered Castile’s northern province of Galicia where he soon took ship to the English lands in southern France. Here, he appealed to the English governor, Edward of Woodstock, better remembered as the Black Prince (d. 1376), heir to the English throne.12 Having received the blessing of his royal father, Edward III (r. 1327–77), the prince helped Pedro recruit a powerful Anglo-Gascon army which the pair led back across the Pyrenees in February 1367, entering Castile by way of Navarre. After a campaign of nearly six weeks, the two sides met at the battle of Nájera on 3 April, where the prince inflicted a massive defeat on Enrique and du Guesclin. Pedro regained power and while the usurper managed to escape back into France, the future constable was taken on the field and lingered in captivity for some months until he was eventually ransomed by his Breton friends and the king of France. At this point, the reinstated monarch seized defeat from the jaws of victory when he alienated the English prince, in part through his battlefield brutality, but principally due to his failure to pay a huge debt to the prince and his army, the force that had put him back on the throne. In fall 1367, having received nothing but promises from his perfidious ally, Edward evacuated Spain, at almost the same time that Enrique, having rebuilt forces with French support, reentered the kingdom and renewed his challenge for the crown. Ultimately, these rival claimants to the Castilian crown continued their bitter fight. Enrique had the continuing aid of France and that kingdom’s leading soldier, du Guesclin, who returned to Iberia following his ransom. Stripped of his English support, Pedro fought on with the help of his last ally, the emir of Granada. This struggle between the hated rivals endured until March 1369, at which point Enrique not only defeated Pedro in the decisive battle of Montiel, but afterwards, in one of the Middle Age’s most spectacular acts of regicide, dispatched him with a dagger. Although Pedro’s death removed from the scene one of the two principal antagonists, it did not suddenly bring about peace. Instead, most of Enrique II’s ten-year reign was characterized by nearly constant fighting aimed at preserving and strengthening his hold on the throne he had usurped. During these years, he 11

12

Pedro I’s chronicler, Pedro López de Ayala, would also write the chronicle of his successor, which picks up at the point of Pedro’s death in 1369. See Crónica del Rey Don Enrique Segundo de Castilla [hereafter Ayala, Enrique II] in CRC, 3 vols., ed. Cayetano Rosell (1877; repr. Madrid, 1953), 2:1–64 in BAE, 68. Modern biographies of the prince include Richard Barber, Edward, Prince of Wales and Aquitaine: A Biography of the Black Prince (New York, 1978); Henry Dwight Sedgwick, The Life of Edward the Black Prince, 1330–1376 (New York, 1993); David Green, Edward, the Black Prince: Power in Western Europe (Harlow, England, 2007). Many subsequent historians attribute the prince’s sobriquet, not mentioned in contemporary historical sources until well after his death, to a penchant for wearing black armor. See, for example Sedgwick, Black Prince, p. 27.

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had to take on not only loyalists who continued to support Pedro’s heirs, but also most of the neighboring kingdoms, all of which hoped to profit from Castile’s time of troubles. Particularly noteworthy were two Portuguese wars launched by that kingdom’s monarch, King Fernando “the Inconstant” (r. 1367–83), both of which were won by Castile.13 Near the close of the reign came a successful invasion of Navarre led by the king’s eldest son, Prince Juan. And throughout these years, Enrique faithfully discharged his obligation to aid France in the renewed war with England, on one occasion supplying a Castilian naval presence that made possible a major French victory on the waters off La Rochelle and the recovery of that important port city. Despite continuing conflict, Enrique II was eventually able to bequeath to his son, Juan I (r. 1379–90), a realm much more at peace than the one that had greeted his own succession.14 For his part, however, Juan soon decided to launch his own disastrous war in order to make good a claim his second wife, Beatriz (d. 1420), had on the throne of Portugal.15 During the mid-1380s, this attempt went down to ignominious defeat as a new outbreak of plague devastated a Castilian army besieging Lisbon and Castilian forces, despite their numerical superiority, lost a series of battles to Portugal’s first constable and future saint, Nuno Álvares Pereira,16 the most bloody of which was Aljubarrota (14 August 1385) which witnessed the king’s flight from the battlefield and the death of a considerable number of his highborn Castilian subjects.17 Given the high price-tag of this Castilian venture in both men and money, its failure badly weakened the second Trastámaran monarch and sparked yet another English invasion of Castile, this one led by the Black Prince’s younger brother, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, who two decades earlier had fought at

13

14

15 16

17

The main sources for Portuguese history during this period are the chronicles of Kings Fernando and João written by Portugal’s first great chronicler, Fernão Lopes, early in the fifteenth century. Partial English translations have been made available by Derek Lomax and R. J. Oakley. See The English in Portugal, 1367–87 (Warminster, 1989). For a close analysis of the political situation in Portugal, fueled by marital considerations, as well as the second English invasion of Castile in 1386, see an earlier article in this journal L. J. Andrew Villalon “War and the Great Schism in the Iberian Peninsula: The Interrelated Cases of Castile and Portugal,” JMMH XII (2014), 217–37. The chronicle of Juan I was the third of four such works written by Pedro López de Ayala. See Crónica del Rey Don Juan, Primero de Castilla é de Leon [hereafter Ayala, Juan I], in CRC, 3 vols., ed. Cayetano Rosell (1877; repr. Madrid, 1953), 2:65–158, BAE, 68. Beatriz was the legitimate daughter of Fernando I and heir to his throne when he died in autumn, 1383. In 1423, following an illustrious career in which he held the offices of constable and mayordomo mayor as well as three Portuguese counties, the aging Pereira entered the Carmelite order as a monk and spent the final eight years of his life in the Lisbon convent he had established, where he took the name Friar Nuno of Saint Mary. In January, 1918, he was beatified by Pope Benedict XV. On 3 July 3 2008, Pope Benedict XVI canonized Friar Nuno de Santa Maria Álvares Pereira. A public celebration of his canonization took place in Rome in April, 2009. Ibid., pp. 102–05.



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his brother’s side.18 Lancaster, like his Castilian adversary, was fighting to make good a claim in his wife’s name, in his case a claim to the crown of Castile. (Gaunt had married Constanza, one of Pedro I’s daughters.) Not until 1387 did this renewed military conflict for sovereignty over the central Iberian kingdom finally come to an end, when the circumstances on the ground compelled Gaunt and his Portuguese allies to call a halt to their invasion. A marriage treaty negotiated between the belligerents called for Juan I’s eldest son, the future Enrique III (r. 1390–1407), to wed Catherine of Lancaster (d. 1420), the duke’s daughter by Constanza.19 From the death of Alfonso XI to the marriage of his great-grandson and great-granddaughter, it had indeed been a turbulent thirty-seven years in the peninsula’s history: in particular, in the history of Castile. We must now look at how ten Castilian women, all with ties to the ruling house, fared in the midst of all this. Part I – Chronicle Accounts of Ten Royal Women Living In Tempore Belli The Royal Women of Alfonso XI: A Neglected Queen and a Beloved Mistress The tale of royal Castilian women whose lives were affected by the wars of this period begins with rivalry for the king’s attention between two women – his queen and one of the most famous royal mistresses in Spanish history – a rivalry the former was destined to lose. In 1327, Castile’s young monarch, Alfonso XI, married a Portuguese princess named María.20 Like many if not most royal matches, this one was designed primarily to cement relations between the two kingdoms and supply an heir to the Castilian throne. However, for nearly four years the marriage remained barren and when the royal couple finally did produce their first child, he was a sickly boy named Fernando who died before reaching his first birthday.21 Not until August 1334, nearly seven years into the marriage, did María finally give birth to another son, Pedro, who would survive into adulthood and succeed to the throne.22 There would be no more children born to this queen.

18

19

20 21 22

Scholarly biographies of this fascinating figure who played an extensive role in the second half of the fourteenth century include Sydney Armitage-Smith, John of Gaunt, King of Castile and León, Duke of Aquitaine and Lancaster, Earl of Derby, Lincoln and Leicester, Seneschal of England (1904; repr. New York, 1964); and Anthony Goodman, John of Gaunt: The Exercise of Princely Power in Fourteenth-Century Europe (New York, 1992). There is a highly readable popular account of the nobleman’s life by Norman F. Cantor, The Last Knight: The Twilight of the Middle Ages and the Birth of the Modern Era (New York, 2004). Ayala, Juan I, pp. 117–21. The actual marriage did not take place until the following year (1388). In 1387, Lancaster had secured another royal marriage for his family; in this case, Philippa, his eldest daughter by an earlier marriage to Blanche of Lancaster, wed the new Portuguese king, Joao of Avis. Alfonso XI, pp. 212, 218–19. Ibid., pp. 239, 245, 257. Ibid., p. 264.

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Although this was the royal couple’s only surviving child, he had a number of illegitimate half-siblings. During the four years that separated Alfonso’s wedding to María of Portugal from the birth of their first son, the virile young monarch had, in the delicate phrasing of his chronicler, “sought a means whereby he might have children from another source.”23 These alternative means turned out to be Leonor de Guzmán. Table 1. Ten royal women impacting/impacted by the wars of Castile as depicted in the chronicles of the period (1350–87) (1) María of Portugal (d. 1357), wife of Alfonso XI and queen of Castile, mother of Pedro I “the Cruel” (2) Leonor de Guzmán (d. 1351), mistress of Alfonso XI, mother of Pedro I’s illegitimate half-siblings, in particular, Enrique II “the Bastard” (3) Blanche de Bourbon (d. 1361), legitimate wife of Pedro I, sister-in-law of the queen of France who had married Charles V “the Wise” (4) María de Padilla (d. 1361) mistress of Pedro I whom the king later claimed to have married before his wedding to Blanche, rendering the later union illegitimate (5) Juana de Castro, one-day “wife” of Pedro I; on the basis of a trumped-up marriage ceremony conducted by churchmen acting under duress, throughout the rest of her life she claimed to be queen of Castile (6, 7, 8) Beatriz (d. 1369?), Constanza (d. 1394), and Isabel (d. 1392), daughters of Pedro I and his mistress, María de Padilla; after the death of their older brother, Alfonso, they were declared primary heirs to the Castilian throne in order of birth by a cortes in 1363 (9) Juana Manuel (d. 1381), wife of Enrique, count of Trastámara, who later reigned as Enrique II; founding mother of the Trastámaran dynasty (10) Eleanor (Leonor) of Aragon (d. 1382), daughter of Pere III “the Ceremonious”; first wife of Enrique’s son and successor as king of Castile, Juan I; died in childbirth

23

Ibid., p. 227.



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In 1329, the young monarch encountered Doña Leonor, a rich and lovely young widow from a prominent Andalucian family. Infatuated, he made her his mistress; she, in turn, soon provided his first-born child.24 Over the course of the next two decades, Doña Leonor added eight more sons and a daughter, all but the two eldest of whom survived childhood and lived on into the reign of their half-sibling Pedro, and all of whom were endowed by their father like legitimate princes of the blood.25 It was the eldest of these surviving sons, Enrique de Trastámara (due to his birth often referred to in contemporary documents as “the Bastard”) who would successfully challenge his legitimate brother for the kingship of Castile. The liaison between the king and his mistress, one that lasted for the rest of Alfonso’s reign, was apparently based on more than just sexual compatibility and the lady’s considerable fertility. As the chronicler clearly indicates “the king not only loved her, but also valued her greatly, as much for the many services she performed as for that other consideration[!]”26 Doña Leonor became his chief confidant and a leading adviser: “the king came to place such trust in her that she was consulted on all matters of state....”27 As a result, for over two decades, the queen was forced to live in the shadow of her beautiful rival and watch the aggrandizement of the royal progeny she herself could not provide. It is little wonder that over time María of Portugal built up an implacable resentment of the mistress, a resentment which her only son, Pedro I, apparently came to share. The queen may even have heard of the suggestion made early in her reign by a contentious nobleman, Juan Manuel, that her husband should put her aside and marry instead the Castilian woman who had already proven she could provide him with children.28 Upon learning that Doña Leonor had given birth to a son, Don Juan secretly contacted the royal mistress offering to help her become queen in place of the barren foreigner. The nobleman appears to have made this suggestion not out of any love for the lady, but in an attempt to drive a wedge between Alfonso XI and his father-in-law, the king of Portugal; it came to nothing, however, when she foiled his designs by refusing to be a party to the scheme. In the end, through her prolific production of offspring, Leonor de Guzmán had a major influence on both domestic and foreign warfare that would continue throughout the following reign as her children, in particular the eldest, came into repeated conflict with their royal half-sibling, Pedro. The stage for this hostility 24 25

26 27 28

Ibid., p. 230. Doña Leonor’s children in the order of their birth were Pedro and Sancho, the twins Enrique and Fadrique, Ferrando, Tello, Sancho, Juan, Pedro, and a daughter, Juana. For the list, see: Ayala, Pedro I, p. 405. Their half-brother, King Pedro, was directly responsible for the death of at least three of them. The eldest of the survivors, the twins Enrique and Fadrique were actually some months older than the king. Instances of their endowment can be seen in the Alfonso XI, pp. 230, 235, 259, 292, 294–95, 389. Alfonso XI, p. 227. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 230–31.



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between the two royal families seems to have been set even before the king’s death, although while he was alive he had been able to keep it in check.Unfortunately for Castile, war cut short the monarch’s career. Throughout Alfonso XI’s reign, he devoted the greater part of his time and effort to advancing the Reconquista, the struggle of nearly eight centuries conducted by the Christian kingdoms of northern Spain to regain control of the peninsula from Islam that became one of the most enduring military themes of the Middle Ages. Despite several early setbacks, he ultimately enjoyed notable success in this endeavor, registering the first important gains along the southern frontier since the thirteenth century. The king turned back the latest wave of North African invaders at the battles of Rio Salado (1340) and Rio Palmones (1343).29 Then, in 1344, after an extended siege which became a cause célèbre throughout Christendom,30 he took the port city of Algeciras.31 After decades of victorious warfare, only the loss of Gibraltar remained as a blot on Alfonso’s crusading record. In 1333, that stronghold, conquered by his forebears, had fallen back into the hands of the Moors due to the negligence of its castellan (alcaide).32 Consequently, in 1349, Alfonso laid siege to Gibraltar and by spring of the following year, had reduced its inhabitants to the verge of surrender. At this point, he faced a natural disaster in the form of plague.33 29

30

31

32

33

For recent work on Alfonso’s military career, see JMMH articles by Nicolás Agrait in “The Battle of Salado (1340) Revisited,” JMMH 10 (2012), 89–112; “Por la guarda de la mar: Castile and the Struggle for the Sea in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” JMMH 13 (2015), 139–66. See also: Joseph O’Callaghan, The Gibraltar Crusade: Castile and the Battle for the Straits (Philadelphia, 2011). More than half a century after the siege, English author, Geoffrey Chaucer, would still allude to it in the prologue to his Canterbury Tales, at the point where he introduces one of his most famous characters, the knight. See Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, ed. A. Kent Hieatt and Constance Hieatt (New York, 1964), pp. 4–5. Alfonso XI’s chronicler treats in excruciating detail the king’s most famous campaign which led to his conquest of Algeciras in 1343–44. Thereafter, the chronicle is silent on the king’s activities except for a tacked-on section dealing with the 1350 siege of Gibraltar at which he met his death. This loss of more than a half dozen years makes it impossible to trace in any detail the relations between the queen, the mistress, and their children during the period when those children were coming of age. See Alfonso XI, pp. 388–92. Early in the 1330s, in order to profit from high grain prices, the governor of Gibraltar sold much of the city’s supply to the Moors. He apparently took this step believing that a truce between Castile and Granada would give him plenty of opportunity to re-provision the fortress at a later date, after grain prices had fallen. Only after the Moors suddenly broke the truce and besieged Gibraltar did its governor realize his fatal mistake. Alfonso XI, p. 391. Ayala, Pedro I, p. 404. Although historians would later dub the major outbreak that began in 1347 and lasted for over four years “the Black Death,” contemporary sources usually refer to the mid-century plague as “the great dying” (la mortandad grande), a term Spanish writers would continue to use for several hundred years. For example, it is referred to in this way in the chronicle passages speaking of the king’s death, one of the few mentions of the plague to be found in Castilian literature. See Alfonso XI, p. 390. See also Ayala, Pedro I, p. 403, where the passages are repeated. Nearly two hundred years later, in a more detailed account of the epidemic, the great Aragonese historian, Jerónimo Zurita, continues to refer to it as the mortandad grande. See Zurita, Anales de la Corona de Aragon, 8 vols. (Zaragoza, 1967–87), 4:133, 158–59.

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In vain, leaders of the army called on Alfonso to raise the siege. The impetuous warrior steadfastly refused. As a result, within a few weeks, not only had the disease decimated Castilian forces, but the king had contracted and died from the dread disease, making him Europe’s highest-ranking victim of the Black Death.34 Alfonso’s premature demise (he was not yet thirty-nine when plague struck him down) brought to the throne his son Pedro, at the time still only fifteen. The succession and hostilities emerging from it set in motion those decades of extreme turmoil summarized earlier in the article. The first of the ten royal women in our list to experience (actually “suffer” might be a more appropriate word) the fortunes of war was the former royal mistress, Leonor de Guzmán. Alfonso’s death before the walls of Gibraltar permitted hostility between his two families to surface violently, while at the same time robbing Leonor of her royal lover’s protection. In an attempt to seek sanctuary from the new king and the queen mother, she and her eldest sons, who been present at the siege, abandoned the funeral cortege before it arrived at Seville.35 While her offspring scattered, Doña Leonor fled into Medina Sidonia, a strongly fortified town bestowed on her by Alfonso. Here, she quickly discovered just how vulnerable she had become due to the changed circumstances when a one-time friend, Alfonso Fernández Coronel, later a victim of the new king, renounced his tenancy as governor (alcaide) of the fortress. When she begged him to stay on, he callously replied: My lady, you know that I took an oath to hold this town of Medina for you. But I now ask you to take [the town] back and surrender it into the keeping of whomever you may wish and relieve me of that oath [pleyto e omenage] that I swore to you, for it is not my will to hold [the town] any longer.36

Recognizing the handwriting on the wall, Alfonso’s mistress placed herself under the protection of one of the realm’s leading nobles, whose daughter was affianced to one of her sons; thereafter surrendering herself into the king’s

34

35 36

Most modern works on fourteenth-century plague concentrate their attention primarily on the outbreak as it affected Italy and England, venues that produced the best sources; for example, Philip Ziegler, The Black Death (New York, 1969) which devotes only minor consideration to its effect on Spain (see pp. 113–16). More can be learned by consulting Amada López de Meneses, Documentos acerca de la peste negra en los dominios de la Corona de Aragon (Zaragoza, 1956), and M. V. Shirk, “The Black Death in Aragon 1348–1351,” Journal of Medieval History 7 (1981), 357–67. For an extensive collection of sources in English translation, see The Black Death, trans. and ed. Rosemary Horrox (Manchester, 1994). Two years earlier, the reigning queen of Aragon, Leonor of Portugal, second wife of Pere III, fell victim to the plague, making her another of Europe’s highest-ranking victims. Ironically, that king’s third wife, Eleanor of Sicily, also appears to have died of the same disease in a later outbreak of 1375. Ayala, Pedro I, p. 405. Ibid. Ironically, despite his desire not to anger the young monarch, within a year or two, Coronel himself would fall victim to the royal wrath.



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hands. In the end, the precaution proved unavailing when her would-be noble protector failed to shelter her from the queen mother’s wrath. For his part, Pedro publicly arrested Doña Leonor, and confined her within what is referred to as “the king’s jail” in the royal palace.37 At first, she was allowed visitors, including her eldest son, Enrique, who had managed to reach an uneasy truce with his royal sibling. These visiting privileges abruptly ended, however, when she used them to bring about a clandestine marriage between Enrique and a leading heiress who was confined with her, Juana Manuel (another of the ten), daughter of the nobleman who many years earlier had offered to help Leonor become queen.38 To protect against annulment, the couple consummated the match in her quarters. As a result of her actions, she was moved into near solitary confinement and subjected to increasingly harsh treatment. Fatefully, at this time she was placed under the control of the dowager queen, Alfonso’s long-neglected wife, who had acquired far greater influence with her son than she had ever exercised during her husband’s reign. Within less than a year, María of Portugal managed to engineer her former rival’s murder with at least her son’s acquiescence if not his active involvement.39 In a final passage concerning Alfonso’s mistress, the chronicler Ayala paints a touching picture of her last meeting with another of her sons, Fadrique, Enrique’s twin brother, appointed Grandmaster of the Military Order of Santiago several years earlier by their father. In 1351, during the journey north from Seville to hold his first cortes at Valladolid, the new king and his court halted briefly at Llerena, a place belonging to the order. Here, Pedro summoned his half-brother to meet with him and render homage. Having done so, Fadrique requested and was granted permission to see his mother: The master went to see her, and Doña Leonor took her son [in her arms], embracing and kissing him. He spent an hour weeping with her and she with him and no word was spoken by either to the other. Those who were guarding Doña Leonor then informed the master that he was to return to the king. ... He never again saw his mother after that day nor she him.40

The people of Castile realized that the murder of the now helpless mistress contributed materially to the wars that were to follow: It was widely understood that an act such as this would give rise to wars and scandals throughout the realm, as indeed did occur afterwards, for Doña Leonor had strong sons and many relatives. And from this act of petty revenge later emerged many evils and dangers which would better have been avoided.41 37 38 39 40 41

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

p. 408. Ayala stresses that Doña Leonor was arrested “publicamente.” pp. 408–09. pp. 412–13. p. 412. p. 413.

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In this way, Leonor de Guzmán was the first of the royal women to become a “casualty of war” and her fate became a cause for future conflict. The Fortunes of Women Surrounding Pedro I The next royal women both to affect and be affected by the warfare of the period – in this case a civil war that erupted several years after Pedro’s succession – were the queen mother herself, the young king’s French bride, Blanche de Bourbon, and his own mistress, María de Padilla. Since their three stories are inextricably linked, we must consider them together. In order to prosecute his war with the Islamic kingdom to his south, the former king had promoted a diplomatic policy which called for maintaining good relations with Christian states throughout western Europe, one that helped account for his Portuguese marriage. This strategy became increasingly hard to maintain by the late 1330s when what would eventually become known as the Hundred Years War (1337–1453) broke out north of the Pyrenees between two of those powers, England and France. Unable to fully satisfy both combatants, Alfonso assumed a moderately pro-French stance, while taking care to avoid any irreparable break with the English. Critical to this balancing act had been the king’s ability to play the two great powers off against one other. So skillful did he prove to be that shortly before his death, at almost the same moment he concluded a military and diplomatic alliance with the French, he was deeply involved in negotiating to marry his only legitimate son, Pedro, to an English princess. The arrangement fell through only when the princess in question died of plague during her journey to Spain.42 At the beginning of the new reign, the king’s major advisors, most of them holdovers, were determined to maintain and even extend Alfonso’s pro-French orientation. Consequently, in 1351, the royal council, including both the king’s principal adviser, Juan Alfonso, lord of Alburquerque, and the queen mother decided to revive negotiations for Pedro to wed a French princess, negotiations that had been abandoned when Alfonso decided to seek an English match. Although an earlier contender from the French royal house was no longer available, the councilors learned that the French king’s cousin, the duke of Bourbon, possessed a number of marriageable daughters, one of whom it was already decided would become the wife of the current dauphin, the future king of France, Charles V. As a result, the royal council dispatched ambassadors to

42

The would-be bride, Joan, a daughter of King Edward III (r. 1327–77), contracted the dread disease and died en route. For details concerning this abortive match with an English princess as well as the negotiation of a French marriage accompanied by relevant documents, see Georges Daumet, Étude sur l’alliance de la France et de la Castile au XIVe et au XVe siècles (Paris, 1898). See also one of the finest historical works dealing with the period, the near-definitive history of Charles “the Wise” by Roland Delachenal, Histoire de Charles V, 5 vols. (Paris, 1909–31). Another valuable work is Luís Fernández Suárez, Intervención de Castilla en la Guerra de los Cien Años (Valladolid, 1950).



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France charged with arranging a match with one of the others. After seeing the young women, the two diplomats arranged for Blanche de Bourbon to be their king’s future bride, while, at the same time, reaffirming the existing alliance with France.43 Having written back to inform Pedro and the council of their success, the pair received orders to return immediately with the would-be bride in tow.44 Unfortunately for Blanche, while these negotiations were slowly progressing north of the Pyrenees, back in Castile, the situation had altered dramatically. In spring, 1352, Pedro encountered for the first time María de Padilla, a lady-inwaiting to Alburquerque’s wife, called by one chronicler “the comeliest maiden [apuesta doncella] to be found at that time in the world.”45 A love-struck, seventeen-year-old monarch was so thoroughly infatuated that “he was not himself until he had her.”46 Thus began a romantic attachment not unlike that of Alfonso and Leonor de Guzmán, an attachment that would last with only slight interruption until Padilla’s death a decade later. Originally, her installation as royal mistress met with Alburquerque’s full approval. He hoped that by helping bring it about, he would gain even greater influence over the king. However, it quickly became clear to the first minister and his followers that in promoting the attachment, he had badly miscalculated. Not only had this raised up yet another competing faction, this one composed of Padilla’s relatives and supporters, but her very presence now stood in the way of the French marriage of which he had been the principal architect; for “the king loved Doña María de Padilla so much that he was no longer willing to marry Blanche de Bourbon.”47 At virtually the same moment as Padilla was giving birth to their first child, a girl named Beatriz, the bride-to-be finally arrived in Castile.48 Those who supported the French marriage, including Alburquerque and María of Portugal, argued forcefully that the king had to go through with it, both in the name of producing legitimate heirs and maintaining the French alliance. Ultimately, their arguments fell on largely deaf ears. Much against his will, on Monday, 3 June 1353, Pedro did walk through an elaborate wedding ceremony with Blanche in the cathedral of Valladolid. Two days later, however, he fled back to the arms of his mistress, despite appeals from his mother and aunt that he remain with the new queen.49 Having deserted his young wife immediately 43 44 45

46 47 48 49

Ayala, Pedro I, p. 418. Ayala implies that the ambassadors were empowered to choose for the king which one of the duke’s six daughters would become his bride. Ibid., pp. 418–19. In extensive notes to the edition of Ayala’s chronicle that I have used, the editor cites an alternative version of the meeting between Pedro and Padilla coming from the Historia General, a version which describes Doña María in precisely these words. Ibid., p. 427 [1352, chap. vi], note 2. Ibid. Ibid., p. 429. Ibid. Ibid., p. 433.

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after their wedding, the king would visit her only one more time. On another occasion, despite their both being in the same locale, he refused to meet with her. There is no indication that the marriage was ever consummated; certainly, no real effort was made to produce a successor. In this respect that Pedro’s behavior contrasts markedly with that of his father. Although Alfonso’s attachment to Leonor de Guzmán had caused him to neglect his queen through much of their reign, he gave her both time and opportunity to produce a legitimate heir. Even when, after years of struggling to conceive, her first-born died in infancy, the king avoided the temptation to put her aside and marry his very fertile mistress. In short, his love for the lady, however deep, was not allowed to disrupt diplomatic relations with an important neighbor whose aid he needed for his southern war. By contrast, Pedro’s attachment to María de Padilla was all-consuming. It became the initial wedge driven into his relationship with what had formerly been a friendly power. The new king subjected his queen to ever harsher treatment, eventually renouncing their marriage as invalid on the grounds that he had secretly married María de Padilla before Blanche’s arrival. As a result, he tried to have the children he had sired with Doña María (there were ultimately four of them) declared his legitimate heirs. Not only did this alienate France as well as the pro-French party within his own kingdom, it quickly became a major source of friction with Pope Innocent VI (r. 1352–62), who took up the queen’s cause. While not all of Pedro’s extra-marital liaisons produced such dire consequences, several of them did prove politically (and by extension, militarily) damaging, especially in respect to the king’s relations with the papacy. In the immediate aftermath of the Valladolid fiasco, a series of complex events began to unfold that soon led to civil war. Within hours of leaving the city, Pedro began to move against members of the pro-French party who had supported the marriage, executing and imprisoning some while the lucky ones, including Alburquerque, managed to flee from the realm.50 At this point, four of Pedro’s powerful half-siblings, the ambitious sons of Leonor de Guzmán who had already become a thorn in the king’s side, formed an alliance with their former rival, Alburquerque, that picked up support from numerous Castilian aristocrats including not only their own vassals, but also men who stood against the royal mistress and her grasping relatives, members of the pro-French party, even those who simply enjoyed fishing in troubled waters. For a brief period, this overwhelming coalition actually seized control of the king’s person. For his part, Pedro used “hunting privileges” he was accorded by the coalition, first as an occasion to subvert its wavering members, then as a means of escaping its control altogether.51 During the ensuing struggle, the first civil war of the king’s reign, he managed to triumph, in part through his performance on the battlefield, in part by continuing to successfully buy off coalition members.52 50 51 52

Ibid., pp. 433–38. Ibid., p. 459. Ibid., p. 460.



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By early 1356, those who had not managed to reach an accord with the king were fast fleeing the realm. They including the king’s implacable enemy, his older but illegitimate half-brother, Enrique de Trastámara, who briefly sought employment as a mercenary in the French army. This first civil war of Pedro’s reign lasted for well over a year; as indicated, it resulted in large part from his relationship with the royal women. The aristocratic league that he faced, led by Alburquerque and Enrique, used the king’s treatment of his young French bride and close connection to his mistress and her grasping relatives as a major justification for its formation and its subsequent resistance to the crown. Coalition members repeatedly called on Pedro to return to his wife, put aside Doña María, and banish her relatives.53 It was his refusal to accept these demands that in large part gave rise to the internal strife that spread across much of the kingdom. In turn, these events had a deleterious effect on the fate of two of these royal ladies – Blanche de Bourbon and María of Portugal. At one point in the conflict, the city of Toledo took the mistreated queen under its wing and tried to protect her against her royal husband.54 This chivalrous act on the city’s part worked to the disadvantage of both the inhabitants and the lady herself. For when Pedro retook Toledo, he executed a number of those responsible.55 His anger at his bride’s involvement in the city’s defiance, even if only as a pawn, became one more reason for her increasingly harsh treatment during her later years.56 Blanche’s sad tale ended with her premature death in 1361. In his chronicle, Ayala accuses the king of having her murdered.57 Whether or not the accusation is true (Pedro’s defenders over the centuries have argued vociferously that it is not58), much of Europe believed that it was. It became an important part of the anti-Petrine propaganda that circulated widely throughout Europe and eventually helped bring about his deposition and overthrow. What is more, even if, contrary to contemporary belief at the time, Queen Blanche died of illness rather than assassination, there can be little doubt that the increasingly harsh treatment and isolation to which the king subjected her almost certainly contributed by undermining her health. In the short run, the case of Queen Blanche helped fuel the civil war within Castile; in the long run, its repercussions on the international level were even more profound. Not only did it contribute to the growing hostility between two 53 54 55 56 57

58

Ibid., pp. 451, 453, 456. Ibid., pp. 448–49. Ibid., p. 464. Ibid., pp. 430–33, 447–49, 463–64, 493, 512. Ibid., p. 512. Most fourteenth-century chroniclers echo Ayala in this assertion though, admittedly, few of them were very well placed to know the truth, and many, given their bias against the monarch, were ready and willing to accept the tales of his guilt. One of Pedro’s staunchest defenders, the seventeenth-century historian, Pedro Salazar de Mendoza, speaks for this group when asserting that “the queen, Lady Blanche, wife of the king, died of her illness.” See Pedro Salazar de Mendoza, Monarquía de España, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1770), 1:194.

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former allies, France and Castile, it also helped produce a fatal rift with the Avignon Papacy.59 During Pedro I’s nineteen-year reign, three men occupied the Holy See: Clement VI (r. 1342–52), Innocent VI (r. 1352–62), and Urban V (r. 1362–70). Despite papal disapproval over the Pedro’s withdrawal from the Granadan War, he managed to maintain cordial relations with Clement, and, for a time, with his successor, Innocent. However, as Innocent’s reign progressed, the pope and the monarch found themselves increasingly at loggerheads. Much of this was due to the royal refusal to heed papal calls for an end to the war he had launched against Aragon – the so-called War of the Two Pedros (1356–66) – as well as his growing enmity toward France, a nation that throughout most of the fourteenth century dominated the Avignon Papacy. However, in addition to these irritants, there was also Pedro’s treatment of Blanche de Bourbon. Innocent took up her case and first sent a papal legate to Castile to remonstrate with the king over his marital arrangements; only later were the representatives instructed to direct their efforts to stopping the war.60 This papal–Castilian rift was magnified by yet another bizarre incident involving a royal woman, Juana de Castro, daughter of a powerful Galician family, members of which numbered among the king’s closest supporters.61 In 1354, despite his continuing attachment to Padilla, the king developed a momentary infatuation involving Doña Juana. She, in turn, demanded marriage as the price of sexual capitulation. To win her favors, Pedro agreed, even offering to prove that his recent marriage to the French princess was not binding. He bullied the bishops of Avila and Salamanca first into supporting his claim and then performing a sham wedding, something they apparently did out of fear.62 The “marriage” lasted only a single day, after which Pedro left his latest bride and returned to Padilla. He never again saw Doña Juana, though much to his chagrin, she insisted on entitling herself queen of Castile for the rest of her days.63 When news of this latest scandal, involving the enforced complicity of the church, reached Avignon, it infuriated the pope, who was already trying to decide how he should handle the king’s treatment of Blanche. The incident strengthened his resolve to follow a hard line. He quickly dispatched his nuncio 59

60 61 62 63

The relationship between Pedro and the papacy is treated in considerable detail in two excellent late nineteenth-century works: George Daumet, Étude sur les relations politiques du Pape Urbain V avec les rois de France Jean II et Charles V (1362–70) (Paris, 1887); Étude sur les relations d›Innocent VI avec D. Pedro Ier, roi de Castille au sujet de Blanche de Bourbon (Rome, 1897). Guillaume Mollat’s The Popes at Avignon 1305–1378 (New York, 1963) is a good general account of the papacy during its so-called “Babylonian Captivity.” However, most of its brief account of relations between the papacy and the Spanish kingdoms has to do with Aragon. See chapter 5, “The Papacy and Spain.” Ayala, Pedro I, p. 468. Ibid., p. 444. Ibid. Ibid., p. 446.



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to Castile with instructions to summon the offending bishops to Avignon and to warn the king that he must return to his spouse or face excommunication. The cases of Blanche and Juana de Castro contributed to a widening gap between the Castilian monarch and the papacy. In 1357, Pope Innocent carried through on his threat to excommunicate Pedro. And by the mid-1360s, the king’s anti-French stance and his disregard for his marriage, coupled with his treatment of high churchmen and his refusal to cooperate with papal emissaries seeking peace in Iberia, convinced Innocent’s successor, Urban V, that even more drastic action was needed. It was then that Urban joined the international effort to remove Pedro from the throne and replace him with his illegitimate half-brother, Enrique. As part of this, Avignon announced Pedro’s deposition and declared Enrique to be his lawful replacement. The second royal woman whose fate was adversely affected by the Castilian civil war was Pedro’s mother, María of Portugal. From the start, the former queen had been a strong advocate for the French match64 and when Blanche arrived in Castile, María took the newcomer under her wing.65 Having pushed her son to go through with the marriage, she followed in his wake when he precipitately departed Valladolid, always trying to get him to go back to the wife he had callously deserted.66 It would not be at all surprising if the once abandoned queen saw her own sad experience mirrored in her son’s conduct toward Blanche, though Ayala makes no mention of this. In any case, she eventually joined the aristocratic coalition that seized him.67 Given Pedro’s temperament, the result was predictable. In 1355, he laid siege to the city of Toro, a major center of coalition power where the queen mother was sheltering. According to the chronicler, at this time, she begged the remaining leaders who had not deserted the coalition for protection from her son.68 Finally, at the beginning of the following year, in what became the decisive encounter of his first civil war, Pedro assaulted and took the city.69 When the king ordered his mother to come out immediately, María pleaded for the lives of her friends and servants. Pedro sent back word that she should come out first and that he would later decide what would be done about the others. Instead, she left the city fortress (alcazar) with a number of them huddled around her for protection. As they crossed the bridge leading out of the castle, royal squires fell upon these unarmed knights and slaughtered them in the queen mother’s presence. After her recovery from fainting, she looked at the bloody bodies around her and bitterly berated her son. Apparently in a condition of near hysteria, she was hustled off by the king’s men. When mother and son met, she 64 65 66 67 68 69

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

pp. 433–34, 436. p. 429. pp. 434–36. pp. 452, 457. p. 465. p. 471.

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requested and received permission to return to Portugal. She would die there not long thereafter (1357).70 By contrast to the two royal women whose fate was sealed during the first insurrection against Pedro’s rule, his beloved mistress, María de Padilla, did quite well in holding onto her royal paramour, an ability that not a few attributed to sorcery.71 Despite demands by the aristocratic confederation that the king leave Doña María and banish her relatives from the political arena, he stubbornly refused. Instead, following Pedro’s victory, she became Castile’s unofficial queen for the last half dozen years of her life, spending most of her time in his favorite city, Seville. In July 1361, within months of Queen Blanche, she too died, in her case, clearly of illness.72 After the deaths of both his queen and his lover, Pedro summoned the cortes of 1362 to recognize Doña María’s children as his legitimate heirs.73 He claimed that he had secretly married the lady before his public marriage to Blanche, thus making those children legitimate and, in turn, eligible for the throne. As witnesses, he brought forward several of his principal advisors, including the lady’s brother. Bending to the king’s will, the cortes first acknowledged as heir the couple’s only son, Alfonso; then, following his untimely death, the next year’s meeting recognized the three daughters – Beatriz, Constanza, and Isabel – in the order of their birth.74 Although none of the three would ever succeed to the throne, their lives would be greatly affected by “the fortunes of war.” The middle daughter, Constanza, would herself become a casus belli. The Fate of Three Itinerant Princesses In 1365, Pedro’s principal enemies – the Crown of Aragon, France, and the Avignon Papacy – agreed to jointly sponsored a military intervention in Castile, employing for the purpose the Free Companies.75 These battle-hardened veterans were hired to overthrow the kingdom’s unpopular monarch and replace him on the throne with his half-brother, Enrique, who was well known to many of them due to his service as a mercenary in earlier years. Upon taking Burgos, the invasion’s leader assumed the crown as Enrique II and within a few 70 71

72 73 74 75

Ibid. In a book published in Palgrave’s Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic, the author alludes to this belief that Doña María used witchcraft to exercise control over her royal paramour. Although the belief may have been fairly widespread, I have not encountered it in the chronicle literature. See María Tausiet, Urban Magic in Early Spain: Abracadabra Omnipotens, trans. Susannah Howe (London, 2014), pp. 86–87. Ayala, Pedro I, p. 513. Ibid., pp. 519–20. Ibid., pp. 525–26. For lengthy treatment of this period, see my other articles: Villalon, “Seeking Castles in Spain,” and “Spanish Involvement in the Hundred Years.” See also my short account in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology, ed. Clifford J. Rogers, et al., 3 vols. (New York, 2010), 3:42–43.



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weeks, most of the realm had acknowledged the change. Pedro, rather than face his enemies, fled southward, first to Toledo, then Seville, and finally, across the border into Portugal. Although the king lost most of his treasury during this headlong flight, he managed to bring with him his three young daughters, the princesses Beatriz, Constanza, and Isabel. Having been recognized as Pedro’s heirs by the cortes of 1362, they could not help but play a role in the political and military events surrounding their father’s deposition. In fact, Beatriz preceded the rest the family into Portugal by at least a few days, when the deposed monarch, desperate for Portuguese aid, tried to marry her off to the Portuguese infante Fernando, and, with that thought in mind, sent her ahead. The plan quickly foundered on the infante’s refusal to accept the offer, even though it would bring with it a claim on the kingship of Castile.76 As a result, Pedro rapidly traversed Portugal accompanied by all three daughters and a shrinking entourage, now fearful of the man he had hoped would marry Beatriz. After a few weeks in Galicia, the royal family took ship to Aquitaine where the king successfully appealed to his English allies for help in restoring him to the throne. Throughout the months of negotiations for English aid and the subsequent preparations, Pedro and his daughters continued to enjoy the hospitality of their English hosts. The breakup of the family came when the prince’s expeditionary force set off for Spain in February 1367 and Pedro accompanied it, while the three princesses remained behind as partial surety for his debts. They were, in effect, hostages, albeit well-treated ones. On 3 April, 1367, in one of the largest battles of the fourteenth century, fought just east of the town of Nájera, the prince and the exiled king crushed Enrique II’s army, forcing the usurper to flee for his life. Although the fugitive escaped safely into France, for a time, Castile once again acknowledged its former and highly unpopular ruler. Despite this victory, the three princesses did not rejoin their father. A few days after the battle, the parties sat down at Burgos to put finishing touches on their financial and territorial settlement by determining just what the reinstated monarch had really paid and what he still owed his benefactor.77 After renewed hard bargaining, the king and the prince agreed upon a substantial figure that was to be paid off in several stages. To ensure that he and his men were reimbursed for their participation, Prince Edward demanded that twenty castles of his choosing be turned over to him. Pedro flatly refused, arguing that “no way in this world could he surrender the castles,” since alienating parts of the realm to foreigners would simply promote further rebellion. The prince accepted the king’s argument against turning over further material guarantees in part because (as Pedro would remind him) he already had in hand the most important surety: “The prince would have as hostages until the debts

76 77

Ayala, Pedro I, pp. 542–43. Ibid, pp. 563–66. The chronicler devotes one of the longest chapters in his work to these negotiations.

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were paid, his [Pedro’s] daughters, the infantas, who were then in Bayonne.”78 The young women officially became part of the final settlement; their repatriation was dependent upon their father having paid off all of his debts. This never happened. When all of the royal promises came to nothing, the prince and his army evacuated Castile in high dudgeon leaving the monarch they had restored to face renewed civil war with his illegitimate and very persistent half-sibling, Enrique. In the absence of English aid, the struggle came to an end with Pedro’s defeat at the battle of Montiel in March 1369, followed by his demise at the hands of his successor. In the end, in lieu of the considerable sums involved, the English were left in possession of only three impecunious princesses whose value lay only in what they represented. After all, Pedro had named them heirs to the throne and the cortes of 1363 had ratified his decision. Marriage to the eldest would therefore convey a strong claim to the Castilian crown. In fact, there were soon only two of them since the first-born, Beatriz, having never married, appears to have taken the veil and been repatriated to a convent in northern Castile where she died in the same year as her father (1369).79 Ultimately, the remaining two princesses, Constanza and Isabel, wed two of King Edward III’s sons, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, and Edmund of Langley, earl of Cambridge, future duke of York. By his marriage to Constanza, the duke came into possession of her claim to the kingdom of Castile. Lancaster would have to wait for the better part of two decades before Castile’s disastrous defeat in the struggle to absorb Portugal, a struggle that culminated in the battle of Aljubarrota, provided an auspicious opportunity to make good his wife’s claim on the kingdom. Consequently, in spring 1386, he landed in the northwestern province of Galicia with a large force of men at arms and archers. The duke brought with him various female members of his family, in particular his wife, Constanza, in whose name the campaign was being conducted, as well as their daughter, Catherine of Lancaster. The party also included several of the duke’s daughters by an earlier marriage, one of whom, Philippa, would as a result of the expedition wed the former grandmaster of Avis, recently crowned King Joao I of Portugal.80 With Constanza in tow, the duke marched around Galicia, raising up parts of the population ready to support Pedro’s heir. He occupied a number of places, including the region’s principal city, Santiago de Campostela, which surrendered itself to the duchess. During this period, Lancaster also negotiated with the new Portuguese monarch a joint invasion of Castile. 78 79

80

Ibid., p. 566. It is surprising that Ayala, who on more than one occasion goes into great genealogical detail concerning family claims, fails entirely to mention the fate of Beatriz that transferred the claim of Pedro’s line to his second daughter, Constanza. Ayala, Juan I, pp. 109–10, 115. A third daughter, also by the duke’s earlier marriage, wed John Holland, son-in-law of Lancaster’s deceased brother, the Black Prince, and at the time the constable of the duke’s army.



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Joao I agreed to recognize Constanza’s claim and lead a large force into Castile to help vindicate it. In return, the duke committed to pay all expenses and turn over to Portugal various lands along the border. The Portuguese monarch realized that either an outright victory by the duke or a negotiated settlement of the sort his rival, Juan I, now seemed willing to contemplate would spell an end to the war with Castile that had still dragged on despite his overwhelming victory at Aljubarrota. What is more, the marriage to Lancaster’s daughter, Philippa, would in all likelihood help cement ties between his nation and England.81 The allies determined to use the winter months to ready their armies and, with the coming of spring, enter Castile in force. To arrange his end of the bargain, Lancaster returned to Galicia where his men were waiting for him. In the meantime, Constanza and the other women remained safely ensconced in Portugal. What the duke found upon his return to the army was not encouraging. A renewed outbreak of plague had decimated the force he had brought from England, which now numbered less than half of its original size upon landing.82 And despite Galicia’s reputation as a traditional hotbed of support for Pedro, many fewer local people had ultimately rallied to Constanza’s cause than had been expected.83 Meanwhile, on the other side, the situation had noticeably improved. Despite the terrible losses Castile had sustained during the Portuguese war, due to both plague and battlefield defeats, Juan I had scoured his realm for men to strengthen the defenses of frontline cities and reconstitute a reliable field army that could checkmate the invaders. Bolstering this force were the ever-present French mercenaries, with more on the way as the young French king, Charles VI, dispatched several thousand lances to aid his ally.84 And the majority of Galicians remained loyal to the Trastámaran dynasty. Despite these unfortunate auspices, in summer 1387, Lancaster and Avis marched into Castile, crossing near the border town of Benavente with the reduced but still formidable force they had available. Almost immediately, things began to go wrong. The pair encountered strong resistance. Their troops lacked supplies, most of which had been gathered into garrisoned towns or fallen victim to a scorched earth policy. Foraging parties fell under attack from Castilian-held strong points. To top it off, word reached them that that considerable force sent by the French king had crossed the mountains and was hurrying westward.85 Lancaster and Joao quickly saw the handwriting on the wall. After a few relatively minor skirmishes with the enemy accompanied by a failure to take 81

82

83 84 85

In this respect, the negotiations succeeded brilliantly. The Anglo-Portuguese alliance established in 1387 would last for centuries to become the longest running international agreement in Western history. Ayala, Juan I, pp. 109, 115. Upon their arrival in summer, 1386, Ayala places the duke’s troop strength at approximately 1,500 lances and a similar number of archers. By the following year, this force had shrunk by more than half, to 600 of each. Ibid., p. 110. Ibid., p. 115. Ibid., p. 116.

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Benavente, they withdrew back across the border and began serious negotiations with Juan I. The issue was settled with surprising ease along lines already discussed by the principal parties during the preceding year.86 There would be a royal marriage between Juan’s eldest son and heir, Enrique, and Constanza’s daughter, Catherine, jointly entitled for the event Prince and Princess of Asturias.87 The future queen would be endowed with extensive properties in Castile.88 For surrendering their claim on the royal title, the duke and his duchess would receive a one-time payment of 600,000 francs as well as an annual pension of 40,000 francs. In addition, Constanza would gain title to three major Castilian cities – Medina del Campo, Guadalajara, and Olmedo; she, in turn, agreed to appoint only native Castilians as officials to govern them in her name. For his part, Lancaster was to leave Portugal and return to Bayonne where he and representatives of the Castilian king met to draw up the final marriage treaty.89 With the details worked out and the final agreements signed by both sides, the duke and Constanza had their daughter escorted with all due ceremony from Bayonne to the town of Fuenterrabia, just across the border in Castile. Here, she was met by a royal entourage charged with bringing her the rest of the way to Palencia, a major city in north-central Castile. Here, in the fall of 1388, the young couple (she was fourteen, he only nine) celebrated their nuptials. There were great celebrations and fiestas and many tournaments and jousts took place. The king gave precious jewels to the English knights who the duke of Lancaster had sent to escort his daughter, the princess. 90

Shortly after the wedding, the bride’s mother, who had not been present, asked permission to enter Castile, the land of her birth that she had not seen for over two decades, except for that brief stay in Galicia. Since the marriage alliance had finally settled the outstanding issues between the rival claimants and cemented the Trastámaran dynasty’s hold on the kingdom, Juan proved more than willing to accommodate his cousin and former rival, ordering all cities and towns, nobles and prelates along the route she would travel to extend all possible hospitality. As a result, the journey of Pedro’s daughter to Medina del Campo, one of the three towns allotted to her, became a triumphal procession. She arrived there in November 1388, at which point the king bestowed on her not only precious jewels, but also another village, Huete, with life tenure. While she was in Castile, her husband sent Juan a gold crown, symbolizing their agreement.91 86 87 88 89 90 91

Ibid., pp. 111–14. Ibid., p. 120. Created at this time, the title “Prince of Asturias” (in a manner similar to the English “Prince of Wales”) has ever since been held by the heir to the Spanish throne. Ibid., p. 117. Ibid., pp. 117–20. The basic terms are summarized with the events of 1387; the complete text of the treaty appears in an early chapter for 1388. Ibid., p. 121. Ibid.



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Following their meeting at Medina del Campo, the duchess briefly took up residence in Guadalajara, another of the places assigned to her. In 1389, she joined her royal cousin as he traveled north from Toledo to Burgos, to a meeting he was supposed to have with her husband near the border between their territories. Although no meeting actually took place due to a lingering illness Juan was experiencing, Constanza left Burgos on her own and crossed back into Guienne to meet the duke at Bayonne.92 Four years later, Lancaster sent a message to the new king, his son-in-law, Enrique III, complaining that the crown had not for the past two years paid the annual pension owed to him or to his wife as part of their agreement, a clear indication that Constanza was still alive at the time.93 Ayala fails to note the death of either Constanza in 1394, or her younger sister, Isabel, two years earlier.94 Enrique II’s Wife and Daughter-in-Law Finally, we have two royal ladies who might be dubbed “the winners” coming out of the mid-century wars – Enrique’s wife, Juana Manuel, founding mother of the Trastámaran dynasty, and Eleanor of Aragon, wife of Enrique’s son, Juan I. Both ladies would ultimately reign as queens of Castile. Despite Juana Manuel’s success in the lon grun, from the moment of her clandestine marriage in 1350 until her husband’s final victory nineteen years later, her “fortunes of war” swung wildly back and forth. During the first civil war with Pedro, Enrique left her in the city of Toro along with their somewhat unlikely ally, the queen mother, María of Portugal. As a result, Dona Juana endured the siege and, in 1355, was present at the bloody massacre on the bridge.95 Having fallen into Pedro’s hands, she was eventually rescued by a follower of Enrique, Pedro Carrillo, who pretended allegiance to the king in order to spirit his captive out of Castile.96 Juana passed much of the next decade either in France or Aragon, during which time Enrique fought on the side of the Aragonese against his halfsibling in the War of the Two Pedros. Early in 1366, while still in Aragon, she eagerly awaited favorable news about her husband’s invasion of Castile and when Enrique managed to seize Burgos with surprising ease, one of his first acts was to send for his family. Consequently, Juana, accompanied by her son, 92 93 94

95 96

Ibid., p. 122–23. Ayala, Enrique III, p. 209–10. Some missing details about both are to be found in English sources of the period; after all, following their wedding to John of Gaunt and Edmund of Langley, they had become more English than Spanish. Ayala, Pedro I, p. 471. Following the conclusion of the first civil war, King Pedro accepted the homage of Pedro Carrillo, a former supporter of Enrique de Trastámara. In reality, Carrillo had been sent to effect Doña Juana’s escape from Castile, a task he successfully completed. Just how he accomplished this is not explained. Ibid., p. 479.

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her daughter, and her future daughter-in-law, Eleanor of Aragon, entered the kingdom for the first time in nearly a decade. Her first period as the reigning queen lasted for only about a year. Following Enrique’s defeat at Nájera on 3 April 1367, his supporters the archbishops of Toledo and Zaragoza hurriedly gathered Juana and her children for a harrowing journey back to Aragon, just one step ahead of the victorious army of Pedro and the Black Prince.97 Although the usurper’s family managed to cross the border safely, the changed situation in Aragon occasioned by Enrique’s disastrous defeat now rendered that kingdom, formerly her husband’s close ally, an unsafe place in which to seek sanctuary. As the Aragonese monarch, Pere III, rushed to mend his fences with the victors, there existed the very real danger that he might try to use her as a bargaining chip, perhaps turning her over to the not-so-tender mercies of King Pedro. As a result, the party that remained sympathetic to Enrique’s cause hustled her and her children across the border into France before Pere could lay hands on them.98 In late summer 1367, Juana and her son, Juan, accompanied Enrique on his second invasion.99 After successfully retaking Burgos, he deposited his wife in a “safe zone” not far from Toledo, an area where the towns and nobles had come back over to him. Here they remained while he campaigned to reduce the rest of the north.100 In spring 1368, when Enrique began a lengthy siege of Toledo itself, the queen returned to Burgos, where she assumed the reins of government in his name.101 Following Enrique’s decisive victory at the battle of Montiel in March 1369, and the subsequent surrender of Toledo, Juana Manuel and Crown Prince Juan journeyed there to meet him.102 There is no significant information concerning the queen’s relatively brief stint as governor of the realm during the closing phase of Enrique’s struggle with Pedro. Nor does her husband’s chronicle inform the reader of any role she may have played in the almost unending warfare through which he subsequently cemented his hold on Castile. Although she is mentioned a total of six times in the chronicle, all of these references are very brief and shed little meaningful light on her. 103 The work’s final reference is to Juana’s attendance at the king’s funeral in May 1379.104 The chronicle of her son, Juan I, devotes several lines to her death in March, 1381.105 The tenth and final royal woman on our list is Eleanor (Leanor) of Aragon who, following many vicissitudes, wed Enrique II’s son, the second Trastámaran Ibid., p. 560. Ibid., pp. 573–74. 99 Ibid., p. 576. On this occasion, the couple’s daughter, Leonor, and many of the ladies-inwaiting were left behind. 100 Ibid., p. 579. 101 Ibid., p. 580. 102 Ayala, Enrique II, p. 2. 103 Ibid., pp. 2, 7, 15, 17, 25, 38. 104 Ibid., p. 38. 105 Ayala, Juan I, p. 75. 97 98



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monarch of Castile, Juan I. Born the eldest daughter of the Aragonese king, Pere III, and his strong-willed third wife, Elionor of Sicily (after whom she was named), most of the lady’s life, including her marriage, was shaped by the wars raging around her. Despite some confusion in respect to Eleanor’s marital situation,106 Pere III’s account reveals that the young couple first met during the long years of warfare against Castile, when her future father-in-law, Count Enrique, became the king’s right-hand man and most aggressive general. Juan grew up at the Aragonese court where, in Pere’s words “We kept him as our own son.107 It was during this period that the young man met and became enamored of the king’s daughter: “the princess was a very beautiful creature and pleased the eye of the infante” and, as a result, “the son asked his father to have the Princess Dona Eleanor given him as a wife.” 108 A passage in Pere’s chronicle suggests that the match may have been contracted as early as 1364, at a time when the king and the count were hammering out a series of agreements, spelling out terms under which Aragon would support the Castilian invasion.109 Arrangements for the marriage were undoubtedly in place by early 1366 when the military campaign got underway. Having taken Burgos, Enrique summoned his wife and children to join him, at the same time requesting that the future bride be sent as well in order that a marriage could take place as soon as circumstances would permit. For his part, Pere appears to have had some misgivings about sending his daughter into what was still ostensibly a war zone. At one point, the king says he did not wish to proceed until Enrique had fulfilled his commitments by turning over to Aragon extensive Castilian properties promised in return for financial and military aid.110 At another, he acknowledges his fear that the situation was simply too unsettled since he had little doubt that the English prince was soon going to come in against Enrique.111 Despite these misgivings, however, Pere gave in to his ally’s entreaties. “King Enrich112 required Us that the said marriage should be consummated and finished, and, wishing to fulfill what We had promised, We sent the princess, Our daughter, to Castile.”113 Either when the family crossed into Castile or separately some weeks later, Eleanor journeyed to Burgos accompanied by an entourage headed by the archbishop of Zaragoza, Lope Fernández de Luna, and

106 The

marriage and the negotiations surrounding it come up in several somewhat inconsistent passages late in Pere’s chronicle. I have tried to reconcile these in this article. 107 Pere III, Chronicle, 2:589. 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid., 2:578. 110 Ibid., 2:581–82. 111 Ibid., 2:578–79. 112 “Enrich” is the Catalan form of “Enrique.” 113 Ibid., 2:579.

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fellow ambassadors sent to discuss the fulfillment of treaties enacted between Pedro and Enrique.114 Nearly a year later, in early April 1367, the princess was living in Burgos with the Castilian royal family still awaiting her marriage when news reached them of the disaster at Nájera. As a result, she was caught up in their harrowing flight back to Aragon, once again led by the archbishop of Zaragoza who had brought her to Castile in the first place. Upon their safe arrival in Zaragoza, Pere removed Eleanor from the care of Enrique’s wife, Juana Manuel, and when the latter left for France to join her husband, the princess remained behind. Any wedding was at the very least put on hold if not canceled altogether. Not until early in the 1370s, several years after Pedro’s death and with Castile at least partially pacified, did the question of marriage once again arise. Again, it was the Castilian monarch who broached the subject, asking his Aragonese counterpart to honor their original agreement.115 On this occasion, the major stumbling block seems to have been the Aragonese queen, Eleanor of Sicily. Perhaps due to jealousy at his influence with her husband, she had never been much of a friend to Enrique de Trastámara, an attitude that had hardened considerably after his failure to deliver the promised territories to Aragon. She now dug in her heels. We would have agreed, but the queen, Our wife and the princess’ mother, did not agree. Our house of Aragon had had great trouble and harm from King Don Enrique, and had especially become impoverished [because of him], so that the queen wished him ill and was furious when she heard him mentioned and would not consent, and We, to give her pleasure would not consent [to the marriage].116

As a result, it was only after the queen’s death in 1375, probably resulting from the latest round of plague,117 that the royal couple were finally united. On this occasion, nearly a decade after their match had first been proposed, Pere portrays himself as less willing to go through with it than he had been several years earlier. When Enrique argued that it had been part of the 1366 agreement between the two monarchs, Pere reminded him that the treaties had also called upon Castile to turn over large tracts of territory along the common border, something that had never occurred, and that they should not be speaking of marriage until such time as the transfer had been accomplished. Although there may once have been good reasons for the delay, now that peace had returned the territorial clauses should be honored, in which case he would carry out his end of the bargain and allow the marriage to go forward. For his part, Enrique III, Chronicle, 2:578–79, 581–82. Ayala, Pedro I, p. 541. The Castilian chronicler strongly suggests that the princess travelled along with Enrique’s family, including her future husband, when they received the summons to Burgos. For his part, Pere’s account leaves open the possibility that his daughter traveled separately at a somewhat later date. 115 Ayala, Enrique II, p. 26. 116 Pere III, Chronicle, 2:589–90. See also: Ayala, Enrique II, p. 26. 117 Pere III, Chronicle, 2:582–83. 114 Pere



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countered that the territorial commitments had been rendered null and void by Pere’s friendly dealings with their common enemies, King Pedro and the prince of Wales, and his refusal to reenter the conflict following Nájera. 118 In the end, adverse circumstances came together to force Pere’s hand. First and foremost, he seems to have feared that the impulsive Castilian monarch, coming off a short and victorious war against Portugal,119 a war in which Castilian armies had invaded that kingdom, might initiate hostilities over the marriage issue: “The queen having died, King Don Enrique of Castile requested Us to give Our daughter to his son; if We did not wish to do so, he would challenge Us.”120 And the king cited other problems as well: We had to accede to the requests the king of Castile made to us…although it displeased us greatly, because this was a time when foreign companies were ready to attack Us from the kingdom of France [and] in Our kingdoms there was plague and famine… Weighed down by evils and troubles and toils, and considering the great services that [King Enrique] had [once] done Us, We agreed to give her to him.121

An Aragonese delegation, again led by the archbishop of Zaragoza, met with the would-be bridegroom, Prince Juan, at the border town of Almazán and hammered out a new marriage treaty, one that despite mandating money payments to Aragon, did not call for the surrender of any of the promised Castilian territory.122 With its signing, Pere finally took leave of his daughter, eight years after her return to Aragon following the battle of Nájera. She journeyed to the border, escorted by an impressive entourage under the command of her brother (the future king of Aragon, Prince Marti), composed of Aragonese nobles, and protected by powerful military companies.123 Here, she was placed in the hands of the monarch who had made such efforts to connect her with his son and who, having learned that the negotiations had enjoyed success, now hurried north from Seville to take part in the event. It was Enrique himself who escorted Eleanor to the border town of Soria, where she participated in a double wedding, marrying the crown prince at the same time that his sister married Prince Carlos of Navarre.124 At this point, the lady largely disappears from the chronicles. There is no indication in the sources that during her lifetime she had any political or military influence or helped shape in any way events transpiring in the kingdom where she reigned. Ironically, it would be her departure from the scene that would play a major role in what followed. Having given birth to two sons, the eldest of whom would later inherit the throne as Enrique III, Eleanor died in childbirth Enrique II, pp. 24–26. pp. 14–17. 120 Pere III, Chronicle, 2:582, 591. See also: Ayala, Enrique II, p. 26. 121 Pere III, Chronicle, 2:582, 591. 122 Ayala, Enrique II, p. 26. 123 Pere III, Chronicle, 2:592. 124 Ayala, Enrique II, p. 26. 118 Ayala, 119 Ibid.,

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in 1382.125 The queen’s death freed her royal husband to take as his second wife the much-shopped-around Princess Beatriz of Portugal, whose father, King Fernando (r. 1367–83) would also die almost immediately thereafter.126 It was Juan’s attempt to make good his second wife’s claim on the Portuguese throne that would drag Castile into yet another bloody conflict, one that would last for several years and end disastrously when much of Castile’s military establishment perished in two events: the plague that forced Juan to abandon his siege of Lisbon in 1383 and the battle of Aljubarrota two years later.127 Part II – Gender Limitations Imposed by Chronicle History In 2004, Kelly DeVries, published an article in the Journal of Medieval Military History entitled “The Use of Chronicles in Recreating Medieval Military History,” in which he examined both the strengths and weaknesses inherent in such sources for the writing of military history.128 Weaknesses he noted include the fact that a disproportionate number of chronicles were written by clerics with little or no knowledge of warfare and with extremely limited source information, while others were produced by writers whose interest in telling a good story not all that infrequently trumped their concern for accuracy. Nevertheless, despite any and all shortcomings manifested by the chronicles, DeVries (correctly) points out that they are often the only game in town. “If military historians remove all narrative sources from their historiographical retinue … their knowledge of what occurred in medieval military history will be quite narrowly focused on administrative and notarial studies; recreation of battles and sieges will be non-existent.”129 As a scholar who has made extensive use of chronicles in his work on military history, DeVries reaches what is essentially a positive evaluation of their value: In most cases, these chronicle sources, when cross-referenced against each other, regardless of the nationality of the author, can be quite trustworthy witnesses of military history. More importantly, these narrative sources also depict the dramatic action of warfare, even if the authors were forced to “dress up” or, and I use this word with apprehension “fictionalize” events occurring within the conflict.130

While his article does caution readers concerning several limitations they will encounter in doing chronicle-based history, there is one limitation DeVries Juan I, p. 78. p. 83 127 For a detailed treatment of this battle, see: João Gouveia Monteiro, “The Battle of Aljubarrota (1385): A Reassessment,” JMMH 7 (2009), pp. 75–103. 128 Kelly DeVries, “The Use of Chronicles in Recreating Medieval Military History,” JMMH 2 (2004), 1–15. For the quotation, see p. 4. 129 Ibid. 130 Ibid., p. 5 125 Ayala, 126 Ibid.,



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fails to consider, to wit, the near omnipresent gender bias displayed by such sources. The vast majority of medieval chroniclers, both clerical and secular, were men, and whether churchmen or laymen, their works exhibit a decidedly male orientation. They, like their fellow writers from time immemorial, were primarily interested in what kings were doing, not in the actions of their queens or the other women around them, however important those distaff activities might have been. Unfortunately, throughout the medieval centuries, there were comparatively few female authors at work and even their writings often reflect the gender bias of the society in which they had to function. A Christine de Pizan, focusing as much as she did on the role of medieval women (including a certain humble peasant girl131), was very much an exception to the rule that men controlled the pen. And even though Pizan is today best remembered (rightly so) for her feminist writings such as The Book of the City of Women, one must not forget that a number of her principal works – for example, The Book of the Deeds and of the Good Practices of the Wise King Charles V and The Book of Deeds of Arms and Chivalry – are fundamentally about men and their activities. In short, in that gender bias so common among the authors of past centuries lies the major problem facing today’s historians who would in all sincerity try to reconstruct the role of medieval royal women and, by extension, their true place in the warfare of the era on the basis of chronicles alone. The present article has attempted to show in so far as the chronicles consulted will allow how ten royal women living in mid- to late-fourteenth-century Castile fared during decades of almost ceaseless warfare, both foreign and domestic, as well as the effect their presence had on the various conflicts. As we have seen, not all of them were queens, but all of them were in a position both to influence and be influenced by what was taking place around them. We have also seen that living in tempore belli benefited some of these women while proving dangerous or even fatal to others. The collective portrait that comes through in Part I of this article has been drawn almost exclusively from five such works produced by three authors, two of whom (Ayala and Pere III) arguably number among the greatest chroniclers of the later Middle Ages. Four of these works are chronicles of Castilian kings whose reigns together spanned most of the fourteenth century (1311–90) – Alfonso XI, Pedro I, Enrique II, and Juan I. Together, they constitute the major sources available to any historian researching and writing about the political

131 Joan

of Arc, the so-called “maid of Orleans,” is with little doubt the most famous medieval representative of her sex, as indicated in the title of Marina Warner’s well-known biography, Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism (New York, 1982). One of Pizan’s last works, the Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc, was written shortly after the maid raised the English siege of Orleans. Interestingly, despite having produced a well-received biography of the Jeanne as a military figure, DeVries fails to list gender bias among “chronicler sins”; after all, there can be little doubt he encountered it in some form or another when writing his book. See: Kelly DeVries, Joan of Arc: A Military Leader (Phoenix Mill, 2003).

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and military aspects of fourteenth-century Castilian history. The authorship of the first of them, the Crónica de Alfonso XI, is usually credited to one of that monarch’s principal officials, Fernán Sánchez de Valladolid. The other three were written by a single (and singular) author – royal official, soldier, diplomat, poet, and moral philosopher, as well as one of the leading chroniclers of his age, Pedro López de Ayala.132 Ayala enjoys the nearly unique distinction among his kind of having actually functioned in a significant political, military, and/or diplomatic capacity under all four kings about whom he wrote.133 In addition to these Castilian works, there is a fifth key Iberian source, the autobiographical chronicle of Pere III of Aragon, whose long reign (1337–87) encompassed the entire period covered in this article. For his part, Pere sheds considerable light on the events surrounding the marriage of his daughter, Eleanor of Aragon, to the Castilian monarch, Juan I. Hopefully, at this point, the reader will agree that together these five sources supply a useful narrative account from which we learn much about the role of royal women in both the political and military events of the period and see how those events helped shape their respective destinies. Here, Kelly DeVries is basically correct in his praise of chronicles, works all too often disparaged by those who would rely solely on archival materials. Without any of our three authors, the historical narrative would be much poorer and in some places non-existent. On the other hand, having given chronicles their due, this article also exhibits the limitations inherent in using them to write history. As any discerning reader will have seen, however useful our sources may have been in introducing the royal women, the account we take from them is still very much “skeletal” in nature; as the saying goes, the chronicles have put relatively little flesh on the bones of any of our ten ladies. For while we have seen the influence worked 132 The

first biographical treatment of Pedro López de Ayala appears in Fernán Pérez de Guzmán’s Generaciones y Semblanzas, an early fourteenth-century work in which the author provided sketches of his contemporaries. See: Pérez de Guzmán, Generaciones y Semblanzas, ed. J. Dominguez Bodona (Madrid, 1965), pp. 37–39. For a modern, full-length account of the chronicler’s life and work, consult Michel Garcia, Obra y personalidad del Canciller Ayala (Madrid, 1983). This work reproduces several of the contemporary sources that supply our information about the author. There is also a biography of the chronicler by Luis Suárez Fernández, a leading Spanish historian of the Franco period, that is worth consulting. See Suarez Fernández, El Chanciller Ayala y su Tiempo (Vitoria, 1962). Despite providing useful material on Ayala’s political career, this work exhibits several serious flaws, not least of which is an incomprehensible lack of pagination, making precise citation difficult if not impossible. English readers should consult Helen Nader, The Mendoza Family in the Spanish Renaissance 1350–1550 (New Brunswick, 1979). Nader’s third chapter, entitled “Pedro López de Ayala and the Formation of Mendoza Attitudes,” provides a fine capsule biography of the great chronicler, a penetrating analysis of his chronicle of Pedro I, and valuable bibliography. See also Clara Estow’s article, “Royal Madness in the Crónica del Rey Don Pedro,” Mediterranean Studies 6 (1996), 13–28. For another account in English, one which emphasizes a literary approach to the chronicler, see: Constance L. Wilkins, Pero López de Ayala (Boston, 1989). 133 Since the present article largely terminates with the events of 1387–88, several years before the rather bizarre death of King Juan I (a horse fell on him), there has been only a single reference to Ayala’s fourth and final chronicle, that of Enrique III.



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by their presence, some of their interaction with leading male figures, and how well (or badly) they fared in the politics and warfare of the day, we have learned little about what they actually accomplished and virtually nothing about what they thought. In other words, their actual role, like the majority of the proverbial iceberg, remains largely submerged. Consider for a moment the two women whom the chronicles mention as having played a significant part in the activities of their menfolk: Alfonso XI’s mistress, Leonor de Guzman, and Enrique II’s queen, Juana Manuel. Alfonso’s chronicler informs us that the king consulted Doña Leonor on all matters. It was she who seems to have accompanied him on many of his journeys, especially during his wars with Granada. But with the possible exception of the story about her resisting Juan Manuel’s plot to have her declared queen of Castile, the chronicler supplies no real hint of just how she may have affected political or military policy beyond simply stating that she did so! We see only how warfare ultimately decided her fate, not how she influenced the conflicts in which her royal lover took part or, for that matter, the politics of her time. In a similar manner, Ayala provides some tantalizing facts concerning Juana Manuel. She accompanied Enrique on his second expedition into Castile, governed the north for him during renewed fighting with Pedro, and was then present at the surrender of Toledo. Afterwards, she shared his reign for ten crisis-filled years. But Ayala gives us no relevant details concerning anything this queen might have done. Did she recruit troops for Enrique or gather supplies or in any other way help coordinate the military campaigns he was waging? Or was she just there as a figurehead, a front-woman for Enrique’s male advisors? We are not told. Most present-day historians dealing with the Middle Ages realize that they/ we must often rely, not only heavily but even excessively upon the chronicle sources faute de mieux and that the vast majority of these sources – perhaps all of them – tend to display heavy gender bias. Under the circumstances, throughout most of the medieval centuries, only a very strong royal woman, probably one who ruled in her own right and very possibly one who financed the chronicler’s work, could command enough attention from male-oriented authors for them to generate the fleshed-out portrait we would all love to see. Unfortunately, such portraits seem to be relatively few and far between. As an aside, consider for a moment one of the most successful examples of medievalism ever to make its appearance in popular culture – George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice (with which many of those reading this article are undoubtedly familiar). Then picture how the Song would have dealt with (or more properly failed to deal with) the immensely strong women who inhabit and arguably dominate Martin’s fictional world – Cersei Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, Catelyn and Sansa Stark, Yara Greyjoy, Brienne of Tarth, Olenna Tyrell, and this author’s personal favorite, Arya Stark, to name only the most important – had it been written by a real medieval chronicler, even one of the best of breed such as Ayala or Pere III!

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In sum, given the mentalité of their authors, medieval chronicles can carry us just so far in pursuit of the female role and no further. Obviously, what is needed to round out my minimalist picture of the ten royal women would be contemporary documentation, by or about them, the sort that could truly elucidate their contributions to and thoughts about the on-going events in which they were caught up. Unfortunately, in the case of Castile, the almost total reliance upon chronicles that has shaped this article is inescapable. It results from a nearly complete absence of state papers dating to the era: those very papers that might convey a deeper understanding of the female role in Iberian politics and warfare. One leading English scholar whose work has shed considerable light on the period, Peter Russell, has accused Pedro I’s successor, Enrique de Trastámara, of having tried to “cull” from both public and private archives any documentation generated during his hated enemy’s reign that might have cast that enemy in a better light.134 But while such intentional winnowing almost certainly did occur and had a pejorative influence on our understanding of the period, it is by no means the major reason for the scarcity of sources. The principal fault lies not in any short term censorship by the victor, but in a long-term failing manifested by late medieval Castilians. For unlike their English counterparts from the same period, the inhabitants of Castile took much less care to preserve their documentary record. We simply do not possess the kind or number of papers in Castilian archives that would allow us to put the flesh on the bones of our ten royal women. And I stress that this is a Castilian problem, not a Spanish one. A failure to preserve official papers did not affect all of Iberia, as can be seen in a comparison between Castile and its eastern neighbor, Aragon. For their part, the Aragonese began to compile their official papers with increasing care well over a century before the period we have been surveying. Their efforts ultimately gave rise to one of the finest repositories of late medieval documentation to be found anywhere in Europe: the Archivo de la Corona de Aragon (Arxiu de la Corona d’Aragó), generally abbreviated as the ACA, located in Barcelona.135 Scores of document-filled registers survive in the ACA, shedding enormous light on the history of eastern Spain not only during the period we have been studying, but throughout the later Middle Ages. By contrast, when it came to establishing its own system of royal archives charged with the preservation of similar material, Castile was exceedingly slow off the mark. Throughout the fourteenth century and most of the fifteenth, Castilian state papers continued to travel with a highly peripatetic court, necessitating a periodic “lightening of the load,” either by destruction or abandonment E. Russell, The English Intervention in Spain and Portugal in the Time of Edward III and Richard II (Oxford, 1955). For Russell’s argument that Pedro’s successor tried to censor him into oblivion, see esp. pp. 17–18 and note 1. 135 For information concerning the archives of the Crown of Aragon, see: Federico Udina Martorell, Guia histórica y descriptiva del Archivo de la Corona de Aragón (Madrid, 1986), esp. pp. 21–46. 134 P.



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of those no longer considered worth carrying. In this way, their survival became a matter of chance rather than governmental policy. Despite several fifteenthcentury attempts, it would not be until early in the sixteenth century during the closing reign of the Middle Ages – that of the Catholic Monarchs – that Castile finally established its own Archivo General. In the small town of Simancas just south of Valladolid looking out over Castile’s vast meseta sits the superb castle that scholars refer to as the AGS.136 Only with its creation did Castile begin to approach a level of document preservation that had been common in Aragon for several hundred years. Thereafter, in short order, the kingdom earned a reputation in this area second to none. Ironically, one of the first orders of business in establishing the new archive was to destroy a number of surviving medieval papers deemed not to merit preservation!137 It was largely due to this Castilian failure to preserve its own governmental records that much of the relatively scanty documentation that survives from the reigns of Pedro I, Enrique II, and Juan I can now be gathered into just several relatively modest printed collections, a mere drop in the bucket when compared to the literally thousands of documents preserved from that same period in neighboring Aragon. The present article began with Theresa Earenfight’s observation about Trastámaran queens and the need to look more closely at their activities. Fortunately for Earenfight, she works on the history of eastern Spain – the Crown of Aragon – where possibilities for pursuing that critical line of inquiry are, if not endless, considerably greater than in neighboring Castile. After all, she and her fellow Catalanists have the ACA. To point out just how important documents are to this quest, let me conclude by returning to that other great historical narrative from Iberia generated during the fourteenth century – the chronicle of King Pere III of Aragon. As suggested earlier, the author-king actually wrote or at the very least closely supervised the writing of his own chronicle, a work penned in the “royal we.” Chapter 6 provides a very detailed account of the kingdom’s wartime relations with Castile and its much hated monarch, Pedro I. There, Pere records with great precision his own movements and activities as well as those of some of his male subordinates such as Enrique de Trastámara. 136 For

background on Castile’s oldest archive, including its establishment, see Francisco Javier Alvarez Pinedo and José Luis Rodríguez de Diego, Los Archivos Españoles: Simancas, in Colección Archivos Europeos (Madrid, 1993), esp. p. 16. See also: J. B. Sitges, Las mujeres del rey Don Pedro I de Castilla, p. 8; and Russell, English Intervention, pp. vii–viii. 137 Another irony regarding sources lies in the fact that some of the relatively few documents we do possess dealing with any of our ten royal women were preserved not in Castile, but in Aragon. For example, in the appendices to Andrés Soler’s massive biography of the nobleman Juan Manuel appear two documents referring to Leonor de Guzmán and one concerning that nobleman’s daughter, Enrique II’s queen, Juana Manuel. All of these come not from Castilian, but from Aragonese archives. See Andrés Giménez Soler, Don Juan Manuel, Biografia y Estudio Crítico (Zaragoza, 1932): Docs. DLXXX, DLXXXIX, DXC, pp. 647–48, 652–54.

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But what of Pere’s queen, Eleanor of Sicily? At several points in that sixth chapter, he does mention her, but only briefly and in passing. By simply reading his account, no one would even think that Eleanor might have been an important player in the conflict, much less one of the most remarkable figures of the age in which she lived. In no way does her husband, the chronicler-king, do justice to the political and military role she played on his behalf and on behalf of her adopted homeland. Here one encounters just one more instance of the gender bias displayed by medieval authors, including a king who had every reason to be grateful to his spouse. We know of Elionor’s role only from documents housed in the ACA. It is these Aragonese documents that make possible overcoming the inordinate focus on kingship decried by Earenfight and characterizing most if not all medieval chronicles. It is, indeed, these documents that have permitted Donald Kagay to write the article that precedes this one, which paints a vivid portrait of the life and activities of one Iberian queen living in tempore belli.

6 The Lance in the Fifteenth Century: How French Cavalry Overcame the English Defensive System in the Latter Part of the Hundred Years War Michael Harbinson

This article offers a study of the lance and its evolution as a heavy cavalry weapon in the late medieval period. The development of the arrêt de cuirasse, a device upon which the heavy lance depended, dramatically increased the force of the strike, but considerably complicated the process of couching. The resultant loss of cohesion caused tactical difficulties, making the weapon both potent and problematic. Spanish and English men-at-arms often preferred the lighter, more versatile lancegay, which proved useful in the pursuit and for engaging those on foot. An analysis of the performance of heavy cavalry in several engagements suggests that smaller units of skilled men-at-arms were more successful than larger bodies of horsemen containing inexperienced individuals. The criteria necessary for an effective charge are examined, including the effects of weather and terrain, particularly in relation to the contest between the longbow and the mounted man-at-arms. Stakes appear to have been an unreliable anti-cavalry defence, and, in the right circumstances, could be penetrated, knocked over, or avoided in a well conducted charge. Small elite groups of experienced cavalry were able to exploit the considerable power of the lance while minimizing its disadvantages, eventually giving the French an edge over their less flexible, infantry-centered English opponents. The final French victory in the Hundred Years War is often attributed to artillery, but heavy cavalry played a significant role. Throughout the fifteenth century the heavy war lance was dependent upon the arrêt de cuirasse, a metal hook which projected from the right side of the breast plate, a device considered to have revitalized heavy cavalry.1 The invention enabled the lance to deliver an impact of unprecedented force, but significantly complicated the process of couching the weapon and increased the difficulties faced by horsemen attempting to execute a successful charge.2 When cavalry 1 2

Malcolm Vale, War and Chivalry (London, 1981), p. 118. Alan Williams, David Edge, and Tobias Capwell: “An Experimental Investigation of Late Medieval Combat With the Couched Lance,” Journal of the Arms and Armour Society (2016) vol. 22, no. 1, p. 8, demonstrated that with an arrêt de cuirasse and replica medieval saddle, riders could impart an energy of over 200 Joules to their target and that in some cases 250 Joules was regularly attained.

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was engaged in significant numbers, the necessity of using the device exacerbated the tendency towards fragmentation and disorder; by contrast, smaller units were more likely to maintain cohesion and couch effectively. While the English often preferred the more versatile light lance or lancegay, a weapon which complemented their tactical system, French nobility remained captivated by the heavier weapon, an obsession which sometimes compromised their performance.3 However, despite these problems, French cavalry harnessed the tremendous power of the lance to achieve a remarkable victory over a formidable English defense in the latter part of the Hundred Years War. This article offers an overview of the lance and its problems in the fifteenth century and argues that the necessity of using the arrêt de cuirasse often left heavy cavalry vulnerable and exposed. The reasons why French cavalry came to prevail over the English are analyzed in a discussion of several engagements, which explore the effectiveness of smaller units of elite horsemen, the defensive value of stakes, and the role of subordinate members of the lance group. The criteria necessary for an effective charge are examined together with the waning power of the longbow against armored horses and the selective avoidance of battle, all factors integral to the French success. The cavalry tactics which helped the French achieve victory were not only relevant to the late medieval period but based on enduring principles of mounted warfare. The Development of the Lance 4 The early lance was similar to the infantry spear and was light and easy to direct. The power of the blow was given primarily by the warrior’s arm and was not reliant on the speed and weight of his horse. The weapon could be carried throughout the battle and used in a variety of ways to deliver incapacitating wounds to several adversaries. A deep penetration was not necessary and the point could easily be freed, so that the warrior could continue his exploits leaving an opponent fatally distressed.5 A further advantage of the light lance was that, unlike the sword, it was not necessary to expose the axilla to make a strike. However, the considerable improvements in armor which began at the time of the crusades meant that the strength of the arm alone was no longer sufficient to inflict a debilitating wound.6 The lance became heavier and was now placed or couched under the shoulder, with the right arm used to maintain a horizontal position and direct the blow. The point became elongated and formed

3 4

5 6

Claude Gaier, “La cavalerie lourde en Europe Occidentale du XIIe au XVIe siècle: Un problem de mentalité,” Revue internationale d’histoire militaire 31 (1971), 385–96. François Buttin, “La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” Archaeologia 99 (1965), 77–178. The following paragraphs give an outline in English of the development of the lance from this seminal work. Ibid., pp. 79–80. Ibid., p. 82. John Hewitt, Ancient Armour and Weapons in Europe, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1855), 2:128, discusses “quadruple arming.”



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like a sage leaf to facilitate a deeper penetration; and, as armor continued to improve, the lance head developed a pyramidal shape with three or four cutting edges.7 The power of the blow was tremendous, but entirely dependent upon the speed of the horse.8 When a direct hit was made the lance would almost invariably break, and if this failed to occur the rider risked being unhorsed. The impact of the strike delivered significant recoil and improvements in the saddle were necessary to enable the man-at-arms to remain on horseback. The result was the selle de haute, with a raised pommel to protect the abdomen and the height of the cantle increased and extended to enclose the hips, providing a more secure seat.9 While the light lance could be used throughout the battle, the heavy war lance could only be used once and had to be maintained in either a vertical or horizontal position. It was carried inclined on the shoulder or rested on the foot. Prior to couching the butt was placed on the fewter, the felt pad on the saddlebow, giving rise to the expression la lance levée sur le fautre to indicate the en garde position.10 However, the development of the high war saddle made this impossible and instead the lance was rested on the rider’s right thigh. Thus, from the fifteenth century onwards, the universal expression of imminent combat was la lance sur la cuisse.11 L’arrêt de lance and L’arrêt de cuirasse The development of a handgrip enabled a broader weapon to be held and the arrêt de lance, a strap of strong leather, which encircled the lower shaft, appeared at the end of the thirteenth century. At that time the lance was held below the arrêt de lance, which protected the hand from a counter blow and allowed the shaft to be gripped more securely. The arrêt de lance prevented the weapon from slipping through the hand during impact and helped to absorb the force of the strike. The arrêt de lance could be fitted to the shaft by the soldiers themselves or alternatively lances were purchased already furnished with an arrêt, as for the Burgundian expedition against Liège in 1466.12 The rondelle was a cone shaped hand guard, which was placed on the lance shaft; but unlike the arrêt de lance was not fixed in place, so that it could slide along the length of the pole. The inside was padded with quilted material, so that if the knight’s hand slipped during a strike it would not be crushed against his armor (Fig. 1).13 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Buttin, “La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” pp. 106–07. Ibid., p. 82. Ann Hyland, The Warhorse 1250–1600 (Stroud, 1998), p. 6. Buttin, “La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” pp. 91, 177. The expressions “lance au poing” and “lance en main” were also used. Ibid., p. 92. Ibid., p. 109. Ibid., p. 98. The rondelle became confined to jousting lances and eventually enlarged to the size of a small buckler.

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Figure 1. Detail from Tournament with Lances (1509) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, showing the rondelle with the arrêt de lance positioned behind the handgrip. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum, New York.

As the lance became heavier, knights used the upper border of the shield as a fulcrum to support the weapon at the moment of impact. The shield was usually suspended from the neck by a strap called a guige, so that the left hand remained free to control the horse. Shields were rapidly modified to accommodate this technique and a notch was cut in the right-hand corner to prevent the lance from sliding off laterally. This type of shield, known as l’écu énchancré, became popular in Austria and Germany from 1350 onwards. During the fifteenth century, it developed a rectangular shape with an inward curve to resist recoil and could be placed on the saddle to give added support with the convex surface resting against the rider’s breast (Fig. 2). It provided the same function as the arrêt de cuirasse. When the weight of an armored man was added to the weight and momentum of the horse, the force of the blow concentrated within the lance point was almost irresistible. Jean de Bueil considered that the horse and lance were the most dangerous arms in the world and emphasized the need to acquire the best possible defensive equipment.14 Thus, as defensive armor improved, heavier lances were required to achieve a damaging penetration, making the weapon increasingly difficult to handle. The lance was made of ash or fir and was originally around 12 foot long, but gradually increased in both length and girth, weighing up to 40 lbs. and placing an enormous strain upon the wrist.15 14

15

Jean de Bueil, Le Jouvencel, ed. C. Favre and L. Lecestre, 2 vols. (Paris, 1887–89), 2:100: “les plus perilleuses armes du monde sont à cheval et de la lance; car il n’y a point de holla.” Good robust armor was needed to resist the power of a lance strike, which otherwise would find the smallest gap in any harness. R. H. C. Davis, The Medieval Warhorse (London, 1989), p. 23. Vale, War and Chivalry, p. 118: “a lance could weigh as much as 18 kilograms by the early sixteenth century.” Buttin,



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Figure 2. L’écu énchancré, the notched, curved, horseman’s shield of the fifteenth century, probably Austrian. Metropolitan Museum New York.

“La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” p. 109: “fûts de lance de bois de sapin.” John Cruso, Militarie Instructions for the Cavalrie (1632, repr. Amsterdam, 1968), p. 29: lances were elongated to 18 feet to compete with the pike, but how such a weapon could be wielded with one hand, “I leave to the consideration of the judicious.”

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An ingenious solution was provided by the arrêt de cuirasse, as mentioned above; a metal projection approximately 15cm in length, sometimes straight but usually with an upward curve, which was attached by two rivets to the right side of the breast plate to act as a fulcrum and rest for the couched lance. The device appeared in France around the second half of the fourteenth century and rapidly became widespread (Fig. 3).16 The invention of the arrêt de cuirasse coincided with the development of steel plate, which was needed to provide a firm base for its support. The arrêt could not be fitted to mail but only to plate armor and the development of articulated plate facilitated the placing of the lance in the arrêt.17 The arrêt de cuirasse could also be attached to one of the lames of a brigandine, which was especially enlarged to accommodate it, but this version was less robust. Sometimes the arrêt de cuirasse was fitted to a section of plate called a placard which was worn on the chest above the brigandine. Coustilliers used this method which, although a weaker design, retained the freedom of lighter armor.18 The arrêt de cuirasse and the arrêt de lance were complementary; both were necessary for the heavy lance of the fifteenth century to be couched successfully. In the act of couching, the lance was fitted into the device so that the arrêt de lance, the leather ring that encircled the shaft, was juxtaposed to the arrêt de cuirasse, which acted as a fulcrum so that the descent of the lance could be controlled. The impact of the strike was taken through the arrêt de lance to the arrêt de cuirasse and transmitted to the breastplate and thorax. At the same time the wrist and arm could not be forcefully driven backwards so that the rider was less likely to be injured or unhorsed by striking his opponent. The arrêt de cuirasse could help support the weight of the lance, but only for a short period.19 When the recoil of the lance was to be taken by the hand only or with the shield of the fourteenth century, the arrêt de lance was fixed to the shaft above the handgrip. However, when used with the arrêt de cuirasse or the rectangular Flemish and German shields of the fifteenth century, the arrêt de lance was placed below the handgrip. Many details on the use of the lance, already almost a lost art, were explained to Louis XIII by Antoine de Pluvinal, a veteran of the Religious Wars:

16

17 18

19

Buttin,“La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” p. 102, for references to the device on monumental effigies and in contemporary literature. Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Knight’s Tale (c. 1390),” in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson (Oxford, 1988), p. 60, ll. 2601–02: “Ther is namoore to seyn, but west and est / In goon the speres ful sadly in arrest.” Vale, War and Chivalry, pp. 118–19. Buttin, “La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” pp. 102–05 and p. 172. The coustillier was a fighting auxiliary within the lance unit, originally a swordsman, or coutilier, but later a partially armored light horseman, whose principal weapon was the lancegay. Coustilliers feature in fifteenth-century Burgundian and French ordinances. Philippe Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, trans. Michael Jones (Oxford, 1984), pp. 128, 169. Buttin, “La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” pp. 111 and 177; the English translation “lance rest” obscures the true function of the device.



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Figure 3. The arrêt de cuirasse with hinge. Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The King: “Tell me about these two arrêts, that of the lance and that of the cuirass?” Pluvinel: “Sire, the arrêt de cuirasse is a small piece of iron about half a foot long and two fingers breadth, fixed by two good screws to the right side of the cuirass, four fingers above the waist. It has a hinge supplied so as not to hamper the knight’s arm when he is not engaged in a charge. The arrêt can be lowered by the gendarme when he wishes to charge. The arrêt de lance is a strong leather strap a good finger’s width, which is wrapped twice around the circumference of the lance shaft, just behind the handgrip. It is fixed into position with good nails and placed just in front of the arrêt de cuirasse when the lance is couched. Without this device the hand would not be strong enough to withstand the breaking of large war lances. And if, by chance, some inexperienced gendarme does not hold the lance properly against the arrêt de cuirasse at the moment of impact, without doubt he will break his wrist.”20

The Problems of the Arrêt de Cuirasse and the Heavy War Lance The arrêt de cuirasse allowed the use of heavy lances with a large diameter, but the war lance of the fifteenth century was now entirely dependent upon this piece of equipment. Couching the lance in the arrêt de cuirasse was a difficult art, which required a long apprenticeship, and even the most experienced made mistakes.21 Sometimes in jousts the competitors failed to hit each other even after numerous passes.22 Furthermore the lance needed to be held firmly in the arrêt de cuirasse, otherwise the rider risked injury or being disarmed by an alert opponent.23 Once the lance was broken, a fixed arrêt hampered the use of the sword arm. The difficulty was eventually resolved by providing the arrêt de cuirasse with a hinge, so that it could be folded away when not required. Prior to this, a device known as the arrêt à vervelles was fitted to the cuirass by means of staples and a large metal pin. When the lance had been used, the knight removed the central pin and the arrêt became detached (Figs. 4a, 4b). This was not an easy maneuver in battle and once the arrêt à vervelles had been discarded the lance could not be used again. It was also more fragile than its later counterpart.24 Although a large thrusting sword or estoc might be placed in the arrêt de cuirasse, once the lance had been discharged, recourse to a secondary weapon could be problematic. At Velez (1487), Ferdinand of Aragon almost lost his life because having used his lance he was unable to extricate his sword from the scabbard. Surrounded by Moors he would have been slain had it not been for the 20 21

22 23 24

Antoine de Pluvinel, L’Instruction du Roy en l’exercice de monter à cheval (Paris, 1625), pp. 176–77 cited in Buttin, “La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” p. 111. Olivier de la Marche, Mémoires, ed. H. Beaune and J. D’Arbaumont, 4 vols. (Paris, 1884), 2:169: Michault de Certaines, a renowned man of war, injured his right hand, “mais il sa blessa luy mesme à son arrest, en couchant sa lance.” de la Marche, Mémoires, 1:313: “qu’ilz coururent neuf courses sans atteindre ou trouver l’ung l’autre.” Buttin, “La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” p. 117. Ibid., pp. 103 and 118. The arrêt à vervelles originated in Italy and spread rapidly to the rest of Europe.



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Figure 4a. Italian or Flemish cuirass c 1490 showing attachments for the arrêt à vervelles. Metropolitan Museum, New York

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Figure 4b. A later detached arrêt à vervelles of Spanish origin. Metropolitan Museum, New York.



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timely intervention of the marquis of Cadiz.25 The arrêt de cuirasse could easily be warped or broken and those fitted to a brigandine were particularly prone to rupture. When such events occurred, the violence of the impact could cause fractures and dislocations to the right arm and shoulder; and even if the rider escaped injury, with the arrêt damaged the lance was no longer serviceable.26 Similar problems would occur if the arrêt de lance was torn from its shaft. Damage to both arrêts and subsequent injuries were far more likely to occur if the rider was inexperienced and the lance used incorrectly. If the lance failed to break on contact, the force of the impact could bring both horse and man crashing to the ground. The high saddle, straight leg, long spurs, and absence of a heel with the foot well run home, made it difficult for a fallen rider to disentangle himself.27 At Seminara (1495), Ferdinand again found himself in difficulties when his horse went down after he had broken his lance against a French gendarme. Unable to free himself from his stirrups he would have perished in the mêlée, had he not been rescued by Juan de Altavilla, who sacrificed his own life by giving the king his horse.28 A powerful strike could rupture the saddle girth, cause both riders to transfix each other, or result in permanent disability.29 “L’heure de coucher les lances” 30 The weight and length of the shaft meant that timing was essential and the lance could not be couched until the very last moment, when the man-at-arms had gained sufficient speed to make a strike and was close to his target. If the lance was couched too early the point would inevitably fall and as the weight of the weapon made it difficult to recover, the rider would be obliged to discard it.31 Moreover, it was impossible to balance the shaft when the lance was held 25 26

27 28

29

30 31

William H. Prescott, History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, 2 vols. (London, 1841), 1:417. Buttin, “La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” pp. 118–19. In Jean d’Auton, Chroniques de Louis XII, ed. R. De Maulde La Clavière, 4 vols., Société de l’histoire de France (Paris, 1893), 3:173, a blow is given with such force that the lance breaks near the handgrip, the arrêt is ruptured and both man and horse are overturned into a heap. In modern riding the ball of the foot only is placed in the stirrups. Prescott, Ferdinand and Isabella, 2:47. Antoine de la Sale, Le Petit Jehan de Saintré, trans. Irvine Gray (London, 1978), p. 239. The Saracens trapped beneath their fallen steeds are rapidly dispatched. de la Marche, Mémoires, 2:320. Chronique de Jean le Fèvre, Seigneur de Saint-Rémy, ed. François Morand, Société de l’histoire de France, 2 vols. (Paris, 1876–81), 1:231–32: Lancelot Pierre and his English opponent transfixed each other with their lances during a skirmish near Eu in 1415. Jean de Waurin, Recueil des croniques et anchiennes istories de la Grant Bretaigne, ed. W. Hardy and E. L. C. P. Hardy, 5 vols., Rolls Series (London, 1864–91), 3:94: a lance strike to the shoulder disabled Lionel de Vendôme for the rest of his life. Philippe de Commynes, Mémoires, ed. L. M. Emille Dupont, Société de l’histoire de France, 3 vols. (Paris, 1840–47), 2:474. Buttin, “La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” pp. 112–13.

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entirely to the right and so it was necessary to place the point to the left across the horse’s head, which made the rider’s seat less stable.32 This made it difficult to strike at a foot soldier on the right side. In summary, the arrêt de cuirasse enabled a heavy lance to be couched at the gallop, acting as a pivot to help control the descent. It could take some of the weight, but only for a short period, and helped to absorb the recoil and allowed the lance to be aimed. However, with a heavy lance up to five meters in length, once the descent had begun it would be impossible to stop. Therefore, the primary target was the opponent’s head, so that if the point dropped the lance would certainly strike the chest.33 Hitting the body further down could cause significant recoil and lead to the attacker being unhorsed.34 The point could be directed to the left or right within certain limits by the rider moving his torso. Ideally, the knight would charge with the lance held vertically, the butt rested on his thigh. When his horse had reached full speed and he was a few meters away from his target, he would couch his lance and place it in the arrêt de cuirasse. The moment of impact should occur just as the lance was becoming horizontal, so that it would not be necessary to maintain that position for any length of time and the opponent would be less able to parry. Clearly a great deal of training was required, but some individuals attained a remarkable proficiency. Buttin cites several examples from the early Italian Wars, including the demise of a halberdier:35 Against him came a Spanish man-at-arms lance on his thigh and when he was near enough to lower his lance, he placed it in the arrêt and struck the German so forcefully through the throat that the broken point remained lodged there and he expired on the field.36

Vieilleville recounts Taillade’s crucial advice to M. d’Espinay, which led to the capture of Lord Dudley’s son, who took the field at Boulogne on a Spanish stallion (1549): I tell you this Milord, don’t you see he is riding like an Albanian, his knees are right up to the saddle bow. Take a good hold and do not couch your lance until you are three or four paces from him because couching at a distance causes the point to fall and will spoil your aim, especially as your vision will be restricted by the visor. M. d’Espinay did not forget this advice and he gave his opponent such a tremendous blow with his lance that it shattered, bringing his adversary to the ground.37

32 33 34 35 36 37

Cruso, Militarie Instructions for the Cavalrie, pp. 36–37. Buttin, “La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” pp. 112–13. de la Sale, Le Petit Jehan de Saintré, p. 185. Recoil from a low strike could push the rider upwards and backwards out of the saddle. Buttin, “La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” p. 112. Jean d’Auton, Chroniques, 3:269. Mémoires de la vie de François de Scépeaux, sire de Vieilleville et comte de Durestal, maréchal de France, in Nouvelle collection des mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de France depuis le



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However, achieving the correct timing was beyond many men-at-arms and at Coutras (1587) both sides waited too long before couching and entered the mêlée with raised lances.38 The Lance at Montlhéry (1465) and Fornovo (1495) Vale considers that the arrêt de cuirasse gave heavy cavalry “a new lease of life in the fifteenth century,” arguing that “the lords of battle could rule the field … as they had rarely done before.” 39 However, the battles of Montlhéry and Fornovo demonstrate that when large numbers of cavalry were engaged, the reality was somewhat different.40 The complicated technique of couching the lance in the arrêt de cuirasse meant that few could achieve the required standard. The need for each individual to reach the speed to couch successfully, get close to his target, and judge the timing of his strike, often led to fragmentation and placed men-at-arms from both sides in dangerous situations. Rather than enhancing the efficiency of heavy cavalry, the necessity of using the arrêt de cuirasse could make armored horsemen more vulnerable.41 Moreover, both battles demonstrate that when confronted with difficulties, such as fatigue, heat, or difficult terrain, the lance was readily discarded, something which effectively neutralized heavy cavalry for the remainder of the encounter unless further weapons could be obtained. Additional supplies were not always available and at Ravenna (1512), Spanish gendarmes were unable to replace their lances.42 Buttin considers that the arrêt de cuirasse complicated the procedure of couching to such an extent that, in wartime, it was difficult to assemble sufficient men-at-arms capable of using the lance correctly.43 He refers to Commynes’ remarks about the Burgundians at Montlhéry who, on sighting the French cavalry, rode through their own archers before they could release a single arrow: I believe there were about 1,200 men-at-arms and scarce fifty of them understood how to lay a lance in the arrêt. Not four hundred of them were wearing cuirasses, with hardly a single armed servant because of the long peace.44

38 39 40

41 42 43 44

XIIIe siècle jusqu’à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, 1ère série, ed. J. F. Michaud and J. F. Poujoulat, 32 vols. (Paris, 1836–39), 9:101–02. Dudley was concussed and slightly wounded in the groin, but eventually released by his kindly host for a ransom of four English hackneys. Buttin, “La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” p. 113. Vale, War and Chivalry, p. 128. Christian Delabos and Philippe Gaillard, Montlhéry 16 Juillet 1465 (Annecy-le-Vieux, 2003), pp. 48–50. The French had 1,900 lances d’ordonnance and the Burgundians 1,400 men-at-arms and 8,000–9,000 archers. Vale, War and Chivalry, p. 118. Charles Oman, A History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1937), p. 141. Buttin, “La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” p. 118: “Il était fort difficile de rassembler pour la guerre une troupe de cavaliers capables de manier correctement la lance.” Commynes, Mémoires, 1:38.

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Few of the Burgundian men-at-arms, “mal armez et mal adroictz,” could use the arrêt properly and those without a cuirass would probably lack an arrêt and so would be unable to use the lance at all.45 Moreover, without the support of armed varlets, the ability to exploit any breakthrough would be compromised.46 The illdisciplined Burgundian charge cost their side a decisive victory, as 100 archers could have decided the issue the following day, but few could be rallied and many were injured, “as a result of the violence we had done them that morning.”47 Vale considers that Commynes’ observations reflect a personal bias: “he must have known that these men had taken part in Philip the Good’s wars against Ghent and Liège, and hardly lacked experience in warfare.” However, at the time of writing his memoirs Commynes had little to gain from partiality.48 Moreover, with twelve years between the conflicts, at least half the men-atarms at Montlhéry were probably too young to have fought in the earlier “petites guerres.”49 Also much of the success against the Ghenters was due to the archers and artillery, with the cavalry, as at Oudenarde (1452), only involved in the pursuit.50 At Gavere (1453), the Ghenters fled in disarray when their gunpowder reserves exploded.51 However, a significant number made a determined stand in an enclosure where the Burgundian horse almost came to grief in a manner which prefigured the fate of the French at Monthléry and Pavia. Halted by pikes, they struggled to use their lances, which lacked reach, and were unable to defend themselves or assist each other. Many horses were killed and their riders dangerously wounded. Only the arrival of Burgundian archers restored the situation.52 At Ruplemonde (1452), when the Ghenters were disorganized by Picard archers, the Bastard Cornelius joined the pursuit. However, having broken his lance against the fugitives, he was unable to parry a pike thrust, which passed straight through his mouth into his brain.53 45 46 47 48 49

50 51 52

53

Commynes, Mémoires, 1:14. Ibid., p. 33. Commynes, Mémoires, 1:44–45: “tant de l’oultriage que leur avions faict le matin.” Vale, War and Chivalry, p. 118. Commynes defected to Louis XI in 1472 but did not commence his memoires until well after both Charles the Bold and Louis were dead. Clifford J. Rogers, Soldiers’ Lives Through History: The Middle Ages (Westport, CT, 2007), pp. 40, 60. In professional armies most men-at-arms were probably aged between 18 and 42 with a fighting life of around 24 years. Some individuals were considerably older, but this was unlikely to have been the norm. Christopher Knüsel and Anthea Boylston, “How Has the Towton Project Contributed to Our Knowledge of Medieval and Later Warfare?” in Veronica Fiorato, Anthea Boylston, and Christopher Knüsel, eds., Blood Red Roses (Oxford, 2007), pp. 170–71, give the mean age of the Towton victims as 29.2 years compared with other military samples “whose average age falls in the early to mid-20s.” Vale, War and Chivalry, p. 114. De la Marche, Mémoires, 2:235. Robert Douglas Smith and Kelly DeVries, The Artillery of the Dukes of Burgundy 1363–1477 (Woodbridge, 2005), p. 133. de la Marche, Mémoires, 2:322–24: Philip the Good decided to participate in the mêlée and both he and his horse, despite their armor, were wounded by pike thrusts. In 2:236, the Burgundian lances could not compete with the Flemish pikes: “car les picques et les glaives des Flamans estoient plus longs.” Ibid., 2:270



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At Montlhéry, in a reckless venture similar to that of his half-brother, Charles the Bold was badly wounded and almost captured.54 Clearly the heavy lance was far from being an ideal weapon of pursuit and was useless when horsemen were brought to a halt. The need to gain speed and close with an opponent before couching in the arrêt often left the foremost isolated amidst the enemy. Louis XI also unwisely involved himself in a disorderly charge. His horse was killed by Antoine de Bourgogne, who would have finished him off, “l’eust mis à fin,” had he not been rescued by his Scottish archers. The king’s disappearance caused panic throughout his army.55 As the Burgundians rallied, the count of St. Pol ordered his men “to gather up the lances that lay scattered on the ground, which sight greatly rejoiced and animated our troops.”56 Clearly the rallying men-at-arms lacked lances and many intact lances had simply been thrown away due to the heat and rigors of combat. De Haynin confirms that “il faisoit hideusement chaud” and the Burgundian horsemen were obliged to endure a prolonged wait in their armor, suffering from hunger, thirst, and the sun.57 Men-at-arms were often required to stand for long periods with the lance resting on the thigh before going into action. Moreover, lifting the lance to place it in the arrêt de cuirasse required significant effort and might well be beyond a rider who was exhausted. This was particularly true when the lance was rested on the foot, as the pole had to be raised through the hand to engage the last quarter. Serious orthopedic problems could arise from using the heavy lance and often, when strenuous riding was to be done or if a retreat was required, the lance was simply jettisoned.58 Similarly if the first charge failed to result in a strike, the lance was discarded as its weight made it impossible to recover. The increased weight of the lance usually meant that it was carried by someone else until the decisive moment – a function performed by the page, who theoretically was ready to supply his master with a further weapon once the first had been used. However, the chaos at Montlhéry demonstrates that this system was unlikely to withstand the stress of battle. Following contradictory orders to dismount and then remount, the varlets who had taken the Burgundian horses to the rear were unable to relocate their masters. In the confusion many men-at-arms mounted the horses of others, leading to a tumult which inevitably attracted the renewed attention of the French artillery.59 The disorder within 54 55 56 57

58 59

Commynes, Mémoires, 1:40–43. Richard Vaughan, Philip the Good: The Apogee of Burgundy (Woodbridge, 2002), p. 387. Delabos and Gaillard, Montlhéry, pp. 57–59. Commynes, Mémoires, 1:44; trans. Andrew R. Scoble, The Memoirs of Philip de Commines, 2 vols. (London, 1879, 1880), 1:28. Jean, Seigneur de Haynin et de Louvegnies, Mémoires, ed. R. Chalons, La Société des bibliophiles Belges, 2 vols. (Mons, 1842), 1:32–33. Commynes, Mémoires, 1:49; Commynes’ horse was so dehydrated that it inadvertently drank a pail full of wine. Michael Mallett, Mercenaries and their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy (London, 1974), p. 199. De Haynin, Mémoires, 1:35. Le Sire de Fienne had the best horse in the army but had to make do with a common bay and Jaques de Jumont, “un beau et puissant chevalier,” was struck in the left thigh by a serpentine.

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the Burgundian ranks persuaded the French cavalry to launch a counter-attack, which was brought to a halt in their opponents’ wagon laager. Here the assailants were encircled as the defenders reorganized once the initial surprise had passed. The riders and their horses were exhausted, having already covered a considerable distance to reach the battlefield.60 Those who still retained heavy lances were unable to use them and many French men-at-arms were pulled from their mounts and, as at Agincourt, dispatched by blows from lead mallets. The rest were put to flight, indicating the extreme vulnerability of heavy cavalry once it had been brought to a halt.61 At Fornovo (1495) the Italian men-at-arms charged across the river Taro, which was swollen with rain and had overgrown banks. The river bed was slippery with large stones and there were marshy areas. Many horses fell in the ditch and others slithered in the mire. The count of Urbino’s troops failed to engage at all and other riders decided not to cross, as did much of the supporting infantry.62 The horses, which were all well armored, were greatly fatigued by their exertions, so that it was inevitable that the charge would fragment and those who retained their lances would be unlikely to couch them in unison.63 Those who crossed were soon disordered being “not governed by one command,” with their leader, Francesco Gonzago, acting more like a soldier than a general.64 The Italians achieved some initial success, but, without adequate infantry support, were forced back towards the river. Mounted reserves could not be brought forward, as the weight of their horse armor impeded their progress in the challenging terrain.65 A massacre followed as those who had been unhorsed were quickly surrounded and dispatched by armed servants.66 In Caiazzo’s division, there was a failure of nerve and the charge broke down in disorder: The count di Caiazzo attacked our van; but they came not so close, for when they should have couched their lances their hearts failed, and they fell into disorder; and the Swiss took fifteen or twenty of them in a company and put them to the sword: the rest fled … with their swords only in their hands; for they had thrown away their lances.67

60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

Delabos and Gaillard, Montlhéry, p. 59: “ils avoient chevauché 80 à 100 lieues sur quatre à cinq jours.” Ibid., pp. 56–58. Alessandro Benedetti, Diaria de Bello Carolino, ed. and trans. Dorothy M. Scullian (New York, 1967), p. 99. Commynes, Mémoires, 2:460: “et y avoit bien deux mil six cens hommes d’armes bardez,” and 2:468: “tous les hommes d’armes bardez.” Benedetti, Diaria, pp. 97–99. Ibid., p. 105. Commynes, Mémoires, 2:475–76. Ibid., 2:474–75: “ilz eurent paour et se rompirent d’eulx mesmes”; trans. Scoble, Memoirs, 2:214.



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The ground was littered with discarded lances, which had proved too great a burden; and Caiazzo’s charge was pressed home only by the leader and a few others, for the rest “cast away their lances … and lightened of this load disgracefully turned their backs and fled like sheep to Parma.”68 Fear of artillery played some part in the failure to engage, but those who did charge became isolated and suffered disproportionate losses, because they had fought “more eagerly than carefully.”69 The temptation to discard the lance was always compelling and at Fornovo lances were readily thrown away by both sides, even the lighter bourdonnasses: We then caused our varlets to alight and gather up the lances which lay very thick upon the field, and especially the bourdonnasses; but they were good for nothing, for they were hollow and light, and weighed no more than a javelin, yet were finely painted; so that we were now better furnished with lances than on the day before.70

The bourdonnasse, essentially a hollow jousting lance, was also carried in battle; and, despite Commynes’ remarks, possessed several advantages. It weighed less, was easier to manipulate, and also broke on contact so the rider was unlikely to be unhorsed by the recoil.71 Being hollow and light its length could be increased, allowing the bourdonnasse to achieve the first strike, recognized as crucial in combat: “a great many French fell and perished at the first onrush, for they carry shorter lances, wherefore they felt the first blows.”72 Fornovo provides a further illustration of the vulnerability of heavy cavalry once a charge became disorganized or was brought to a halt. Again, the need for each individual to utilize the arrêt and couch at the gallop could leave the foremost isolated. Charles VIII charged in the first rank, but, separated from his followers, was set upon by a party of retreating Italians. While the Bastard of Bourbon was captured after having pursued too far. Montlhéry and Fornovo confirm that, with indifferent leadership, the more numerous cavalry became the less well it performed.73 Neither encounter shows evidence of the coolness and sagacity which contemporaries recognized as essential for the effective use of the lance in battle.74 68 69 70

71 72 73 74

Benedetti, Diaria, p. 101. Ibid., Caiazzo’s line was “dissipater bombardarum terrore magis quam caede”; and p. 105: “qui acrius quam cautius inter hostes dimicaverant.” Commynes, Mémoires, 2:477–78; trans. Scoble, Memoirs, 2:216. Louis Edward Nolan, Cavalry: Its History and Tactics (1854; repr. Pennsylvania, 2007), p. 81: “If lances be such good weapons, surely those who wield them ought to acquire great confidence in them, whereas it is well known that in battle, lancers generally throw them away and take to their swords.” de Bueil, Jouvencel, 2:101: “vous ferez meilleur coup d’une lance moyenne que vous pourrez bien manier, que vous ne ferez d’une grosse lance pesante, qui vous dessiège de vostre selle.” Benedetti, Diaria, p. 109; Buttin, “La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” p. 124. Nolan, Cavalry, p. 37. de Bueil, Jouvencel, 2:101: “vous devez courrir froidement.”; de la Marche, Mémoires 2:189: “froidement et saigement.” Le Fèvre, Chroniques, 2:42, the cavalry on the wings behave “sagement et vaillamment.”

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Cavalry Tactics during the Fifteenth Century Late medieval heavy cavalry usually charged en haye, a linear formation, which inevitably led to fragmentation. The horses, all stallions, could become quite restive and easily disrupt a charge.75 Strikes were often missed and riders forced to drop their lances if the horses misbehaved or swerved, which might occur if they had been traumatized by recoil from a previous clash.76 Machiavelli noted the difficulty of getting horses to preserve ranks or reform and the disparity that would inevitably exist between the qualities of both horse and rider within a unit.77 The courageous would get ahead and the less committed lag behind. The weight of armor and horse barding and the need to couch the lance at the gallop exacerbated these problems. The total weight carried by a barded war horse c.1450 was approximately 333 lbs. and armored horses tired easily, especially over difficult ground.78 Ideally a charge should begin at a walk, with the gallop only commencing in the last forty meters. In this way those horses who were fatigued or less robust could keep formation. Galloping at a greater distance, as at Coutras in 1587, was a recipe for disaster.79 The problems of the charge were documented by La Noue: “after moving 200 paces one could see the long line thinning out and wide holes developing in it. That greatly encouraged the enemy. Of 100 horsemen, often not 25 actually clashed with the enemy.”80 Similar difficulties were recognized well into the nineteenth century. Nolan noted that French cuirassiers were reduced to charging at a trot: If a heavy-armed horseman gallops and exerts himself only for a few minutes, the horse is beat by the weight, and the rider is exhausted in supporting himself and his armour in the saddle.81

The solution proposed for these difficulties has important historical resonance for the late medieval period: 75 76

77 78 79

80 81

Davis, Medieval Warhorse, p. 18. Chroniques de Jean Froissart in Collection des chroniques nationales Françaises du treizième au seizième siècle, ed. J. A. Buchon, 15 vols. (Paris, 1824), 12:129–53. Horses refused or swerved several times during the joust at Saint-Inglevert, forcing competitors to miss or drop their lances: p. 129, “par le deroyment de leurs chevaux”; p. 132, “ils faillirent, car les chevaux refusèrent.” De la Sale, Jehan de Saintré, p. 148: after several strikes, Sir Enguerrant’s horse turns around completely. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince and the Discourses, ed. Max Lerner (New York, 1950), Discourses 2, chap. 18, p. 339. Vale, War and Chivalry, p. 184. Oman, Art of War in the Sixteenth Century, p. 477: “Joyeuse with his 1,200 cavaliers, charging in line, started to gallop so early that they fell into a most irregular and scattered formation – the rash got ahead, the cautious lagged behind: the weak horses (they had been on their legs since past midnight) could not keep up with the rest. There were gaps in the thin line before they got near the enemy.” Hans Delbrück, History of the Art of War, trans. Walter J. Renfroe Jr., 4 vols. (London, 1990), 4:129. Nolan, Cavalry, p. 41.



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A charge, even on good ground, is seldom executed by the whole line at once; the enemy is reached in succession by different points in the line more advanced than others. It is therefore of the greatest consequence that those detachments which reach the enemy first shall be compact, and go at him as one man, to burst through. It is easily understood that with fifty men this can be done; but it becomes almost an impossibility with one hundred and fifty or two hundred.82

The argument underlines the principle that smaller bodies of horse were more likely to achieve success because they were easier to control. Smaller detachments could maintain contact with their leader and were more maneuverable and adept at gaining the enemy flanks.83 Wallhausen (1616) confirmed that the lancer gains his effectiveness in small squadrons, preferably in one rank or two at the most, arguing that if a horse falls or is wounded; it is less likely to cause problems.84 These facts were recognized early in the fifteenth century by Braccio da Montone, who preferred small squadrons over which he could keep personal control and feed into battle in rotation, allowing them to rest and recuperate.85 John the Fearless also deployed a small cavalry force to good effect at Othée (1408) in a successful flanking attack with 400 men-at-arms. The enemy were divided and put to flight with the Burgundian horse returning to the field to secure the final victory.86 During the later Hundred Years War the French became increasingly proficient in using small bodies of cavalry, something which was to figure prominently in their victory over the English. In 1421 La Hire defeated a large Burgundian force which had hoped to ambush him, by quickly organizing his small group of horsemen into two squadrons. The first consisted of only fifteen lances but supported by the second squadron, and with the foot following, they pierced the whole Burgundian line. The Burgundians suffered more than eighty dead with numerous prisoners.87 As recognized in Le Jouvencel, when a disparity of numbers exists in a cavalry engagement, if the foremost of the larger group are repulsed, the rest can achieve nothing.88 At Mons-en-Vimeu (1421) the Dauphinist cavalry was again significantly outnumbered by the Burgundians.89 However, the Dauphinists placed their 82 83 84 85

86

87

88 89

Ibid., p. 116. Ibid., pp. 117, 142. Delbrück, Art of War, 4:133. Mallett, Mercenaries and their Masters, pp. 71–72. At S. Egidio (1416), fought in the height of summer, Braccio placed water barrels behind the lines so that his troops could remain well hydrated and refreshed despite the heat of their armor. La chronique d’ Enguerran de Monstrelet, ed. L. Douet d’Arcq, Société de l’histoire de France, 6 vols. (Paris, 1857–62), 1:362–63. Richard Vaughan, John the Fearless: The Growth of Burgundian Power (1966; repr. Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 59–63. Jean Raoulet, Chronique, ed. Vallet de Viriville in Jean Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, roi de France, 3 vols. (Paris, 1858), 3:176; the Burgundians had a “grosse armée,” while La Hire had only fifty lances. de Bueil, Jouvencel, 1:162: “quant les premiers estoient reboutés, le surplus ne y fasoit jamais beau fait.” Monstrelet, La chronique, 4:58: “combien qu’ils feussent en petit nombre au regard de lui.”

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better-armed men and horses in the center and to the front of their formation, en pointe, and using the strength and speed of their mounts went right through the Burgundian line.90 The tactic prefigured the successful deployment of the Lombards at Verneuil (1424), who were placed en tête.91 Half the Burgundian army fled towards Abbeville, pursued by many of the French.92 However, the cavalry on the Burgundian wings came to the aid of their depleted center; and, in an unusual use of the weapon, the men-at-arms held their lances in the arrêt de cuirasse across the saddle bow to limit a further French incursion.93 Le Jouvencel also stressed the importance of defeating the enemy coureurs or scouts, as at La Gravelle (1423), to prevent them from determining one’s strength and deployment; and emphasized the advantage of “une petit bataille secrete” hidden in “ l’ombre d’ung petit bois” to intervene when necessary, as with the “plump of speres” at Tewkesbury (1471).94 The Lancegay and the English Defensive System The tactical system deployed by the English derived from their experience against the Scots at Bannockburn in 1314, where “an excess of individualism” led to a series of suicidal cavalry charges.95 From that time onwards they dismounted to fight and seldom engaged in large mounted attacks. The classic English tactic of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was the defensiveoffensive, where archers, supported by dismounted men-at-arms, employed the devastating firepower of the longbow. The English could gall and incapacitate the mounts of the enemy and disorganize the opposing infantry, while their own horses were kept safely in the rear well out of the range of hostile missiles. Then the English men-at-arms, with horses fresh and ready for action, could charge in pursuit to complete the rout.96 The system brought success at Dupplin Moor (1332), Halidon Hill (1333), Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356), and Homildon Hill (1402). The lancegay was the perfect complement to the English method of warfare, as being light and versatile it was the ideal weapon for a vigorous pursuit. The 90 91 92 93 94

95 96

Le Fèvre, Chronique, 2:42: “Les Dauphinois, comme dist est, avoient mis les mieulx montés et armés au milieu de leur bataille et en pointte.” Thomas Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, ed. C. Samaran, 2 vols. (Paris, 1933, 1944), 1:94: “equitibus Ytalis precedentibus.” Monstrelet, La chronique, 4:61. Philip the Good sustained two lance thrusts at the first onset and was almost unhorsed. Raoulet, Chronique, p. 179: “car aucuns des Bourguignons avoient leurs lances croysées sur l’arson des selles en l’arrest.” de Bueil, Jouvencel, 2:35–36. Anthony Goodman, The Wars of the Roses, Military Activity and English Society, 1452–97 (London, 1981), pp. 178–79. De Haynin, Mémoires, 1:41; a reserve of forty or fifty lances on either side could have proved decisive at Montlhéry. Michael Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: The English Experience (London, 1996), p. 327. Ferdinand Lot, L’Art militaire et les armées au moyen âge en Europe et dans le Proche Orient, 2 vols. (Paris, 1946), 2:428–29.



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word is of Moorish origin and derives from the Spanish azagaya, so that the weapon was often known as the Spanish lance. The light lance continued in use alongside its heavier counterpart, but, from the beginning of the fourteenth century, the word lance was reserved exclusively for the heavier weapon with the light lance becoming known as the lancegay or l’archegaie.97 Throughout the fifteenth century the terms lancegay, demi-lance, and javeline were largely interchangeable.98 The lancegay was essentially the light lance, which retained the sharp-pointed iron socket fitted to the butt, known as l’aresteuil. Consequently, if the point was broken, the weapon could still be used simply by reversing the shaft. The rider could also strike with the reverse end to give a mortal blow to a fallen enemy. The lancegay was made of stiff ash, being about ten to twelve feet long, and was the preferred weapon of the genitors, stradiots, and coustilliers. These lighter troops armed with the lancegay often rode after the men-at-arms, striking at those who had been unhorsed. In France the weapon was adopted by subordinate members of the lance group, whereas in England the lancegay became a weapon favored by “mounted men-at-arms who needed to ride fast and light.”99 The lancegay was carried by Chaucer’s Sir Topas (1390) and the knight in the early fifteenth-century Gest of Robyn Hode.100 The weapon gained a close association with the English military and armor was modified to accommodate it. From 1430 onwards two versions of the right pauldron are commonly found, one of which has a much smaller aperture, suitable only for a demi-lance or lancegay.101 Thus the armor of the period indicates that the heavy lance was not a universal feature of fifteenth-century English armies, whose method of fighting suggests that the lancegay was “a much more suitable weapon for their men-at-arms when they chose to fight on horseback.”102 Sometimes mounted troops, probably armed with lancegays, were held in reserve for a flanking attack as at Tewkesbury (1471), or pursued their routed enemies on horseback as at Blore Heath (1459), Second St. Albans (1461), and Towton (1461).103 The lancegay could be brandished, thrown, used in the arrêt de cuirasse, or deployed on foot in the manner of a pike, and its lightness and versatility

Buttin, “La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” p. 171.The lancegay has a diverse orthography: l’archegaie, archegaye, arzegaie, harsegaye. 98 Ibid., pp. 172–73. The term javeline appeared in the fifteenth century, “qui n’est toujours que la lance légère.” 99 David Scott-MacNab, “Sir Topas and his Lancegay,” in Chaucer in Context, A Golden Age of English Poetry, ed. Gerald Morgan (Bern, 2012), pp. 122–23. 100 Chaucer, “The Tale of Sir Topas,” in Riverside Chaucer, pp. 213–14, ll. 1941–42: “He worth upon his stede gray / And in his hand a lancegay.” “A Gest of Robyn Hode,” in F. J. Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, ed. H. C. Sargent and G. L. Kittredge, Student’s Cambridge Edition (Cambridge, Mass., 1904), p. 263. v.134: “He bare a launsgay in his honde.” 101 Tobias Capwell, Armour of the English Knight 1400–1450 (London, 2015), pp. 232–34. 102 Ibid., pp. 233, 234, n. 22 gives details of a skirmish in 1441 involving men-at-arms in full armor using both heavy lances and lancegays. 103 Ibid., pp. 234, 234, n. 21. 97

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made it deadly.104 The actions of brandishing and shaking were impossible with a heavy war lance, which suggest that the lancegay was the weapon of Joan of Arc.105 Held in the middle of the shaft, the lancegay could be thrust forwards and backwards almost simultaneously and also towards the sides. It could be used in either hand or grasped with both hands to deliver a powerful blow. When couched at the gallop in the arrêt de cuirasse the weapon could deliver a forceful strike. However, the great advantage of the lancegay was that it could be recovered, as shown in the Ordonnances of Philip the Good (1458). The coustillier armed with a brigandine, gorget, and sallet was provided with a “javeline à arrest légière et le plus roide qu’il porra recouvrer pour la couchier au besoing.”106 Whereas the heavy lance was designed to break and could only be used once, the lancegay could be used several times. The weight of the war lance required that the shaft be held across the horse’s neck to retain balance; thus, opponents were usually engaged on the rider’s left side. If the heavy lance was deployed to the right, the point would drop, the butt would rise, and the weight of the weapon made it impossible to recover, forcing the rider to let it fall. However, this was unlikely to occur with the lighter lancegay, which could be used to strike at an adversary on the right side after the Turkish fashion, making it an ideal weapon for engaging infantry.107 In England, the lancegay acquired an association with civil disorder and statutes were issued banning it from the realm; however, the fact that such edicts were constantly repeated suggests they were unsuccessful and attests to the weapon’s popularity.108 The lancegay was the perfect weapon for the pursuit, especially over difficult terrain, where the heavy war lance was too cumbersome to carry. A lancegay enabled a horseman to deal with the unexpected, allowing him to keep his distance and avoid the less certain outcome of a close quarter combat with a foe who might suddenly stand or turn at bay. Its effectiveness was not dependent upon the speed of the horse, so it could be used both offensively and defensively. In 1591 a longer version of the lancegay was still being recommended for English cavalry:

Haynin, Mémoires, 2:171: The Sire de Rousi remained on foot with the archers “la gaveline où poin.” Buttin, “La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” p. 172 gives examples of the lancegay as a missile. 105 Ibid., p. 171. Craig Taylor, Joan of Arc, La Pucelle (Manchester, 2006), p. 111: Alain Chartier describes Joan as shaking and brandishing a lance against the enemy as she spurred her horse to charge; p. 237, the Cordeliers Chronicle notes that Joan also employed “un bourdon de lance (bourdonnasse) très puissamment,” which being hollow was lighter than the war lance. Alençon’s deposition, pp. 304–10, mentions lancea, a light spear, “currendo cum lancea,” “in portu lanceae.” 106 Buttin, “La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” p. 172. 107 Cruso, Instructions for the Cavalrie, p. 36. 108 Scott-MacNab, “Sir Topas and his Lancegay,” pp. 119–24, details the repeated attempts of the crown to outlaw the weapon in the hope of curtailing armed militias. 104 De



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And instead of launces or speares, I woulde wish them to have launces commonlie called launcezagayes of good tite and stiffe ash, coloured black, with double heads of good and hard temper according to the use of the Moores, of 15 or 20 foot long to the intent that taking them in the midst, they may strike both forward and backewarde, I meane as well as their enemies that they have in frunt or on flanks, as also their enimies and their horses that may uppon any retrait pursue them.109

The passage confirms that the lancegay was used to strike at the opposing horses, a tactic for which the Spaniards were notorious, but one which was likely to keep the lance intact.110 Horsemen armed with the lancegay could cause confusion among more heavily armored opponents, who were often easily captured.111 At Fornovo, the tactics of the Venetian stradiots perplexed the French, who were totally unaccustomed to their manner of fighting.112 French and Burgundian lance units contained mounted individuals with lighter weapons, but they were seldom organized as a separate force. They were essentially auxiliaries to the men-atarms and, as at Seminara (1495) and Fornovo, charged together with the heavy cavalry.113 The French entered the Italian wars with more than half their force consisting of heavy cavalry; and it was not until the Novara campaign (1513) that French stradiots were mentioned.114 At St. Jean de Luz (1523) Spanish cavalry armed with the lancegay had no problem in besting French gendarmes, who had to be rescued by their infantry. Many lances were broken, but few on the Spanish side: “pource qu’en ce temps-là les Espaignols ne pourtoinct qu’arces gayes, longues et ferrées au deux boutz.”115 Several gendarmes escaped across the river by holding onto the tails of their companions’ horses, suggesting that the Spaniards had used their weapons to kill the French mounts.116 While three of Monluc’s men, slow to retreat, were “tués de coups de h’arces gayes,” indicating the effectiveness of the weapon against those on foot.117

John Smythe, Instructions, Observations, and Orders Mylitarie (London, 1595), pp. 199–200. 110 Loredan Larchey, History of Bayard (London, 1883), p. 326. Oman, Art of War in the Sixteenth Century, p. 54. 111 Vegetius, Epitome of Military Science, ed. and trans. N. P. Milner (Liverpool, 1993), p. 104. Emanuel Von Warnery, Remarks on Cavalry (1798; repr. London, 1997), p. 122. Prescott, Ferdinand and Isabella, 2:46–47 on the initial success of the Spanish jinetes at Seminara (1495). 112 Commynes, Mémoires, 2:462: “et nos gens ne les congnoissoient point encores.” 113 F. L. Taylor, The Art of War in Italy 1494–1529 (1921; repr. Westport, 1973), pp. 69–76. 114 Oman, Art of War in the Sixteenth Century, p. 41. 115 Blaise de Monluc, Commentaires et Lettres, Société de l’histoire de France, ed. Alphonse de Ruble, 5 vols. (Paris, 1864–67), 1:50. 116 Ibid., 1:53. 117 Ibid., 1:54. 109 Sir

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French Cavalry and the English Longbow The possession of a powerful cavalry force seemed to engender an overwhelming desire to use speed to close with the enemy in the hope of reducing the impact of the arrowstorm. Precipitate endeavors in unsuitable terrain, with large numbers of inexperienced riders, or poorly armored horses, invariably ended badly. However, the French did not have a monopoly on being seduced by the illusion of instant success. At Homildon Hill (1402) the outcome was decided by the longbow before the Scottish cavalry could make any contact with their opponents.118 Nor were the English immune to rash behavior. At Baugé (1421), the duke of Clarence, against the advice of his captains, tried to disperse a Franco-Scottish army with his mounted men-at-arms alone, and in an interesting reversal of roles it was the English who were subjected to a rain of arrows.119 In 1431, near Bulgnéville, the duke of Bar, with a large but inexperienced army, ignored wiser counsel and launched an immediate cavalry charge against a smaller Burgundian force, which included English and Picard archers drawn up behind stakes. The duke was captured in the catastrophe that followed. In an assessment of both sides after the fall of Harfleur in 1415, Basin considered the English “few in number but spirited and courageous in war,” while the French lacked discipline and experience, problems also emphasized by des Ursins.120 The French, however, soon learned to exploit the weakness inherent in the English system, which was that their archers were missile troops rather than shock infantry and were dependent upon the support of a sufficient number of men-at-arms in close combat.121 They lacked the maneuverability of other European infantry and their defensive weapons and stakes could not compete with the reach of the lance. In 1471 Waurin suggested placing the longer pike shafts between the archers to deter horsemen, while, at Neuss (1475), “un picquenaire” was deployed between every two “archiers Anglois” to confront the Imperial cavalry.122 During the later Hundred Years War, the English, despite their defenses, were vulnerable to a well conducted cavalry charge, more so if caught Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ed. Henry Thomas Riley, 2 vols. (London, 1864), 2:251–52: “The magnates and men-at-arms remained idle spectators.” The Scots, encumbered with cattle and booty, may have lacked time to secure protective barding and in striving to rush the archers, their horses were obliged to make a difficult charge downhill. 119 James Hamilton Wylie and William Templeton Waugh, The Reign of Henry the Fifth, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1914–29), 3:301–06; 3:303, n. 4. 120 Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, 1:38 quotes Virgil (Aeneid Vl.754) and attributes French inexperience to the long peace. Jean Jouvenal des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, roy de France, ed. Theodore Godfroy (Paris, 1614), pp. 453, 455, says the French, “n’estoient pas encores bien experts en la guerre.” 121 Lot, L’Art militaire, 2:434–5: “Les armées anglaises étaient des armées fragiles … leur chevalerie était peu nombreuse et l’archer était moins un fantassin qu’un mitrailleur, et il ne savait pas plus manoeuvrer que les autres gens de pied de l’Europe.” 122 Waurin, Recueil des chroniques, 5:626. Vale, War and Chivalry, p. 114. Chroniques de Jean Molinet, ed. J. A. Buchon, 5 vols. (Paris, 1827), 1:126. 118 Thomas



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on the march or attempting to maneuver before the enemy had been disorganized by their arrows. Success against the English required small numbers of experienced men-at-arms, proficient in the use of the lance, who could couch at the gallop on armored horses and make a cohesive charge to drive the enemy away from their protective stakes without coming to a halt. While couching at the trot could still impart considerable impetus, the blow was easier to parry and the horse more likely to be brought to a standstill, which, as recognized by Le Jouvencel, was fatal for heavy cavalry.123 Moreover, a horse, not in full career, would be driven off course by arrow wounds.124 An examination of several encounters demonstrates the problems faced by the French and how they finally came to succeed. Agincourt (1415) The French were unlucky to be defeated at Agincourt. They had an excellent plan, which was unfortunately disrupted by the weather. The flanking attacks, which were to consist of a mounted elite on well-armored horses, were compromised by the rain-soaked terrain. The men-at-arms were unable to achieve the necessary speed to couch their lances effectively, a factor which undoubtedly enhanced the defensive value of the English stakes. The original French plan was discovered in 1984 in the British Library by Christopher Phillpotts and named after its former owner Sir Robert Cotton. Drawn up between 13 and 21 October 1415, it was subsequently revised; but it demonstrates that the French had planned a powerful mounted flanking attack on the left side (consisting of 1,000 men-at-arms), combined with a smaller mounted incursion aimed at the English rear.125 The troops chosen for the enterprise were crucially not only men-at-arms, but also varles mounted on “les meilleurs chevaux de leurs maistres.”126 The plan makes clear that the varles were meant to be part of the flanking charges from the start and were not some last-minute attempt to make up the numbers. The varles or varlets (from Latin valettus) were the men-at-arms’ attendants and consisted of young men in training for the profession of arms as well as more experienced individuals of a different social status. As second-line auxiliaries, they were intended to have a combat role. With lighter weapons and armor they could strike at an enemy on foot, dispatch a fallen foe, or dismount to take prisoners, and seem to have Bueil, Jouvencel, 2:36. below for the effectiveness of the longbow against armored horses. Clifford J. Rogers, “The Battle of Agincourt” in The Hundred Years War (Part II), Different Vistas, ed. L. J. Andrew Villalon and Donald J. Kagay (Leiden, 2008), pp. 74, 127–29 considers that a fifteenth-century cavalry charge probably “never accelerated past the trot.” However, much of the supporting evidence relates to seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century horsemen using firearms, e.g. Nosworthy, Anatomy of Victory (New York, 1990), p. 122. 125 Christopher Phillpotts, “The French Plan of Battle during the Agincourt Campaign,” English Historical Review 99 (1984), 59–66. 126 Ibid., p. 66. 123 de

124 See

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performed the same role as the earlier “horse sergeant,” a term which disappeared around 1250.127 The other extant medieval battle plan, drawn up in 1417 by John the Fearless, also gives a significant role to varlets, who were an intrinsic part of the mounted charge.128 In the plan, 1,000 men-at-arms with all their varlets who possessed weapons were to be mounted, separated from the vanguard, and to act as expedient upon the appearance of any disorder within the enemy ranks. Only those inexpert on horseback or poorly mounted were to be excluded. In addition “400 mounted men-at-arms with their varlets” were to be placed as a rearguard.129 The role of heavy cavalry against infantry was not primarily to kill, but to break their formation, isolate them into small groups and expose them so that the lighter-armed varlets could finish things off.130 Monstrelet reinforces the important order of these events in his description of the flanking attack at Othée (1408): “séparer, diviser et ouvrir, abatre et occire.”131 Varlets, therefore, held an essential position in the mounted battle line. At Agincourt, if most men-at-arms were to fight on foot, their trained destriers would be excluded from the battle. Giving the varlets the best horses of their masters, some of which would be armored, retained an important element of the strike force, which otherwise would be lost.132 Thus rather than making up the numbers, the inclusion of varlets increased the power and effectiveness of the French assault. The Cottonian plan also gave the varlets a crucial role in the attack on the English camp, as their lighter equipment made them more suitable for such a task than their heavily armored masters. The intention was to drive off the horses and damage English morale by reducing the ability to escape or pursue.133 In the event, smaller flanking attacks took place on both sides against the projecting wings of English archers. The men-at-arms, with their better protected horses would take the brunt of the arrowstorm and with the weight of their charge and couched lances push the enemy away from their stakes. Then the varlets would exploit the breakthrough with lancegays and other versatile weapons. Clifford Rogers suggests that the gros varles were shifted out of the flanking forces into the third line and did not participate in the mounted attacks.134 However, specific evidence for the mounted varlets being moved, War in the Middle Ages, p. 70. Rogers, “Agincourt,” pp. 60–63. Vaughan, John the Fearless, pp. 148–51. 129 Ibid., pp. 149–50. 130 Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, p. 230. 131 Monstrelet, La chronique, 1:363. 132 Matthew Strickland and Robert Hardy, The Great Warbow: From Hastings to the Mary Rose (Stroud, 2005), p. 323. 133 Strickland and Hardy, Great Warbow, pp. 323–24. Matthew Bennett, Agincourt 1415: Triumph Against the Odds (London, 1991), pp. 82–84, “when or how this was carried out is far from clear.” 134 Rogers, “Agincourt,” p. 66. Wylie and Waugh, Henry V, 2:145, n. 4 cite Cochon: “furent tous les gros vallès boutez arière,” but his treatment of the battle is cursory. 127 Contamine, 128



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which would limit any possibility of a breakthrough, is lacking. Waurin and Le Fèvre state that the attack on the Agincourt side was made with 300 lances, which would include auxiliaries.135 As with the battle plan of John the Fearless, the units detailed for the flank attacks were to be kept separate from the rest.136 The varlets sent to the reserve were clearly those intended to accompany the foot knights in the advance guard, there being no room for them in a battle line packed with the nobility, whose banners could scarcely be unfurled.137 Moreover, the axiom that heavy cavalry “deficient in speed and endurance” required lighter horsemen to follow up a beaten enemy was equally applicable to attacks upon foot soldiers. The long stirrups and the necessity of maintaining balance in heavy armor limited the capacity to use a sword against those on foot.138 As for the dismounted men-at-arms, without varlets they would have difficulty taking prisoners and if they were knocked to the ground no one would be available to help them up. The re-deployment was a costly error as, deprived of leadership, the varlets sent to the reserve were the first to fly the field.139 The order was not fully implemented, and many varlets remained with their masters, helping them out of the line while the English were too preoccupied with fighting, killing, and taking prisoners to pursue.140 The men-at-arms detailed for the mounted assault would be obliged to charge with closed visors as English archers were specifically trained to aim at the face.141 The longbow could pierce the thinner armor of the visor and knights needed to tilt their heads forward to avoid such strikes.142 A flexed posture impaired vision, Recueil des chroniques, 2:214. Le Fèvre, Chronique, 1:255. Adrian R. Bell, Anne Curry, Andy King, and David Simkin, The Soldier in Later Medieval England (Oxford, 2013), p. 101, on the composition of the French “lance” at this period. Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, p. 127. 136 Phillpotts, “Battle Plan,” p. 66: “hors de toutes les autres batailles.” Vaughan, John the Fearless, p. 149. 137 The context relates to those on foot, especially the vanguard. Mémoires de Pierre de Fenin, ed. M. Dupont, Société de l’histoire de France (Paris, 1837), p. 64: “car tous les princes s’estoient mis l’avan-garde et avoient laissié leurs gens sans chief.” Barker, Agincourt, p. 276, believes the rearguard would consist of “the varlets of the great lords fighting on foot in the main battle.” Waurin, Recueil des chroniques, 2:211 and Le Fèvre, Chronique, 1:253 state only that there was no room for missile troops in the front line. Anne Curry, The Battle of Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 115, 118, 125, 126. 138 Nolan, Cavalry, p. 38. Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, p. 230. Thomas Audley and the Tudor “Arte of Warre,” ed. Jonathan Davies (Surrey, 2002), p. 19: “I would never wish that a man Atarms should follow fast in the chase.” William Patten, “The Expedition into Scotland, 1547,” in A. F. Pollard, Tudor Tracts, 1532–1588 (London, 1903), pp. 124–25: At Pinkie (1547), Scottish fugitives could only be struck on the head and neck, “for our horsemen could not well reach them lower with their swords.” This enabled the more resolute to ham-string the horses, “foin him in the belly,” and injure many of the pursuers. 139 Pierre de Fenin, Mémoires, p. 64. 140 Waurin, Recueil des chroniques, 2:215: “mais les aucuns se releverent a layde de leurs varletz, quy les menoient hors de la presse.” Le Fèvre, Chronique, 1:257. Monstrelet, La chronique, 3:108. 141 J. E. Morris, The Welsh Wars of Edward I (1901; repr. Stroud, 1996), p. 102. 142 Curry, Sources and Interpretations, p. 160. 135 Waurin,

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especially when wearing a bascinet, as the eye slits were angled upwards to block thrusts aimed at the eyes.143 The French may also have attacked into the sun, and without a good field of vision, as Le Jouvencel noted, nothing could be achieved.144 Placing the lance in the arrêt at the gallop and hitting an opponent with a closed visor was not an easy task.145 The inexperienced closed their eyes before contact and others had to learn to move their body, rather than turning their head inside the helm, to improve their visual field.146 Restricted vision and the tendency for the point of the couched lance to fall made it difficult to strike at a man on foot; hence the crucial need of close support from auxiliaries. At Agincourt most authorities agree that the horses of the men-at-arms were well protected and those chosen for the mounted assault were elite and could be expected to have the best armor and barding.147 Therefore, the key factor in the French failure was probably the rain-soaked terrain. A torrential downpour had turned the French camp into a quagmire, and their cavalry charged over recently ploughed fields and sodden ground, already churned up by the horses which the servants had been exercising throughout the night.148 Encumbered by the weight of their protective armor and that of their riders, the animals had difficulty lifting their hooves out of the mud.149 Many horses were jaded, having been ridden hard the previous day so that their owners would not miss the battle; they arrived “en desroy et à tue-cheval.”150 The French men-at-arms had hoped to close quickly, but would have been lucky to manage a trot, with W. Jones, Bloodied Banners: Martial Display on the Medieval Battlefield (Woodbridge, 2010), p. 101. 144 Curry, Sources and Interpretations, p. 133. De Beuil, Jouvencal, 2:101: “vous devez avoir bonne veue, car, sans cela, vous ne pourriez riens besongner.” 145 Mémoires de Vieilleville, 9:101: “la veue s’esblouit parmi la visière.” 146 Duarte I of Portugal, The Book of Horsemanship, trans. Jeffrey L. Forgeng (Woodbridge, 2016), p. 108. 147 Phillpotts, “Battle Plan,” p. 65. Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, le Règne de Charles VI, trans. M. L. Bellaguet, Collection de documents inédits sur l’histoire de France, 6 vols. (Paris, 1839–52), 5:564: “mille hommes d’armes d’élite et des mieux montés.” Gesta Henrici Quinti, The Deeds of Henry the Fifth, ed. and trans. Frank Taylor and John S. Roskell (Oxford, 1975), p. 68: the archers were to be broken by, “certas cohortes equitum per multas centenas in equis armatis.” Juliet Barker, Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle (London, 2005), pp. 272–79 refers to “heavily armoured horses.” Anne Curry, Agincourt: A New History (Stroud, 2005), pp. 203–09, on French counter-measures and horse armor. 148 Saint-Denys, Règne de Charles VI, 5:558; de Beuil, Jouvencel, 2:62–63; Waurin, Recueil des croniques, 2:211; Le Févre, Chronique, 1:252; des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, p. 395. Curry, Sources and Interpretations, p. 128. Barker, Agincourt, p. 292. 149 Rogers, “Agincourt,” p. 127, n. 299. Wylie and Waugh, Henry V, 2:157–58: “they had not counted on the clay furrows neshed with rain,” and p. 157, n. 9. Anne Curry, Great Battles, Agincourt (Oxford, 2015), p. 195 emphasizes the considerable suction exerted by the wet terrain. Patten, “Expedition into Scotland,” pp. 116–21 gives a further example of a disastrous charge across ploughed fields. At Pinkie (1547), the Boulogners (heavy horse) became fragmented, having “badly” made “their race; by reason, the furrows lay travers to their course.” Unable to utilize their lances effectively, the front rank went down to the Scottish pikes, while the rest fled, disordering the forward. 150 Wylie and Waugh, Henry V, 2:200, n. 10. 143 Robert



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few achieving the speed to couch. The labored charge forced them to endure a prolonged arrowstorm, increasing their vulnerability to both direct and plunging fire as well as to damaging flanking shots. The rain of arrows would force the horses to crowd together, exposing the mounts of the varlets and the less well armored to a devastating fire. Consequently, many of the wounded animals, which careered back into the advancing footmen, would have belonged to the varlets. At Valmont (1416), where the French charge was successful, most equine casualties came from the auxiliaries, whose horses, being less well protected, became unmanageable when wounded.151 At Othée, where English archers were present, the majority of Burgundians killed were varlets.152 At Agincourt, the men-at-arms with armored horses, unable to achieve the speed to couch effectively or penetrate the stake defense, were brought to a halt and horses slipped and fell amongst the obstacles as they tried to turn.153 Once stationary the heavy lance was useless and would have to be discarded and individuals could be pulled from their mounts and dispatched as at Montlhéry and Pavia. At close range, even well barded horses would be vulnerable to arrows as their flanks and hindquarters were exposed as they turned about; and, as stated in Le Jouvencel, a repulse caused by an abrupt halt will occasion the loss of the battle.154 Some lost their nerve and fled with the first volley of arrows, leaving their leaders and companions in the lurch.155 However, the majority of mounted menat-arms seem to have returned unscathed, with le Bouvier documenting only two fatalities among eight commanders.156 Des Ursins says their armor gave good protection against arrows and, in contrast to most varlets, their horses must have been well barded to facilitate a withdrawal.157 This suggests that blunt trauma was responsible for many injuries and, unable to achieve the speed to couch, they retreated as no more could be done. Des Ursins supports this view, arguing that due to the arrowstorm the riders could not persuade their horses to “passer outre,” and were obliged to return, which to some gave the impression of flight.158

Règne de Charles VI, 5:756: “quo pedestres partem maximam equorum subsidiariorum nostrorum graviter vulneraverunt et inhabiles reddiderunt.” 152 Monstrelet, La chronique, 1:366: “et le surplus varlets.” 153 Waurin, Recueil des croniques, 2:214. 154 de Bueil, Jouvencel, 2:36 155 Saint-Denys, le Règne de Charles VI, 5:560: “mox fractis animis” 156 Le Fèvre, Chronique, 1:255: “et retournèrent tous excepté trois hommes d’armes.” Les Chroniques du Roi Charles VII par Gilles Le Bouvier dit Le Héraut Berry, eds. Henri Courteault and Léonce Celier, Société de l’histoire de France (Paris, 1979), p. 70. Barker, Agincourt, pp. 294–96. 157 des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, p. 396: “Les François n’eurent guieres de dommaige du traict des Anglois car ils estoient fort armez.” Audley, Arte of Warre, p. 19: “For yt ys the barded horses that bringeth his mastere from the danger of the fight.” 158 des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, p. 396: “mais retournèrent les chevaux et sembloit que ceux qui estoient dessus, s’enfuissient et aussi feut l’opinion et imagination d’aucuns.” 151 Saint-Denys,

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Were the Flank Charges at Agincourt Undermanned? Many historians follow Phillpotts, who suggests that the French were defeated largely because the cavalry charges on the flanks were undermanned.159 However, accounts differ regarding how many men actually participated in the mounted assaults. The defeat led to recriminations and accusations of cowardice and the issues are further confused by “nationalistic pride” and “party politics.”160 Curry states that it is difficult to know whether the French failed to mount the cavalry charges as planned, “or whether this was a story invented later as part of the blame culture.”161 The Gesta says cavalry were placed many hundreds strong on both flanks and the Saint-Denys chronicler considers there were 1,000 elite men-at-arms.162 Waurin says that 1,000–1,200 men-at-arms were to be divided equally between both flanks under the command of Clignet de Brabant on the Tramecourt side and Guillaume de Saveuses on the Agincourt side. However, when the charge came to be made, Clignet’s command consisted of as few as 120 men.163 The Saint-Denys chronicler and le Bouvier blame the Armagnacs, especially Clignet de Brabant and Louis de Bourdon, who were supposed to be in charge of the cavalry operations.164 However, the anti-Burgundian des Ursins regards Clignet and de Bourdon as valiant and experienced, saying they wanted to close with the archers, but were unable to do so.165 In contrast, the Burgundian writers accuse Clignet of cowardice and failing to provide sufficient men, while praising the bravery of Guillaume de Saveuses, who had Burgundian allegiance and attacked on the Agincourt side with 300 lances.166 However, de Saveuses and two companions broke ranks and rode ahead of the group, only to find that their horses slipped and fell among the stakes, where the riders were dispatched by the archers.167 The action disrupted the cohesion of the attack, deprived the group of leadership, and disheartened the rest. Barker considers that personal tensions “Battle Plan,” p. 64. Bennett, Agincourt, p. 76: “the flank charges were seriously undermanned.” Strickland and Hardy, Great Warbow, p. 334: the flanking attacks were “badly under-strength.” Barker, Agincourt, p. 292: there was “a catastrophic diminution in numbers.” Rogers, “Agincourt,” p. 103: “the wing cavalry forces were not strong enough to succeed.” 160 Barker, Agincourt, p. 291. 161 Curry, Agincourt, p. 205. 162 Gesta, p. 80. Saint-Denys, Règne de Charles VI, 5:561: “mille hommes d’armes d’élite et des mieux montés.” 163 Waurin, Recueil des croniques 2:206 and 2:213–14. Monstrelet, La chronique,3:120: “ne furent que six vingts.” Le Fèvre, Chronique, 1:255, says 160. Guillaume Gruel, Chronique de Arthur de Richemont, Connétable de France, Duc de Bretagne, Société de l’histoire de France, ed. Achille le Vavasseur (Paris, 1890), p .17, blames the Lombards and Gascons who were supposed to charge the archers on the wings, but fled at the first volley of arrows. However, the prominence played by such troops at Verneuil suggests confusion between the two battles. 164 Barker, Agincourt, p. 293. 165 des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, pp. 395–96. 166 Curry, Agincourt, pp. 205–06. 167 Waurin, Recueil des croniques, 2:214. 159 Phillpotts,



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between de Saveuses and his followers led to their reluctance to provide close support; but, whatever the reason, the complicated procedure whereby each individual had to get up speed and couch in his own time gave ample opportunity for the less committed to hang back.168 However, considering the restricted flanks and rain-soaked terrain at Agincourt, a greater number of horsemen would have made little difference. Nolan recommended that cavalry should attack a compact body of infantry with a front smaller than the face of the enemy formation to prevent individuals from riding round the sides.169 At Agincourt some horsemen were forced round the flanks of the archers and into the woods, suggesting that sufficient numbers were present for an overlapping frontage.170 Moreover, evidence suggests that it was not necessary to have large numbers of horsemen to disrupt archers. At Bannockburn (1314), the English archers were dispersed by around 500 horsemen led by Sir Robert Keith, who “charged in diagonally upon the bowmen.”171 At Crécy, in one of the many cavalry charges of the day, some French knights broke through the archers of the prince’s battalion to engage the men-at-arms.172 The prince was beaten to his knees and according to two sources momentarily captured.173 Had the French concentrated on disposing of the archers, rather than trying to ride down the English menat-arms, the result might have been different.174 Some individuals went straight through the archers. John de Fusselles, riding a strong black horse and accompanied by his page, “transperça tous les conrois des Anglois.”175 Thus even a single rider could cause problems. At Neville’s Cross (1346), John Graham requested 100 horsemen to charge and break the English archers as Robert the Bruce had done at Bannockburn. When no one would join him, he charged alone, brandishing his lance, and scattered the archers, causing temporary disruption before returning to his own lines.176 At Poitiers (1356), Eustance de Ribemont considered 300 armored horsemen were sufficient to deal with the English archers.177 At La Gravelle (1423), the English were routed by 140 lances, and in the Monstrelet, La chronique, 3:107; de Sauvauses rode “tout seul devant ses compaignons à cheval, cuidant que iceulx le deussent suivir.” Barker, Agincourt, pp. 294–96. 169 Nolan, Cavalry, p. 189. 170 Gesta, p. 86 171 Sir Charles Oman, A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages, 2 vols. (1898; repr. London 1978), p. 95. 172 Froissart, Chroniques, 2:366: “aucuns chevaliers et écuyers François …. par force d’armes rompirent la bataille des archers du prince.” 173 Andrew Ayton and Philip Preston, The Battle of Crécy, 1346 (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 149–50. 174 Oman, Art of War in the Middle Ages, 2:144. 175 Froissart Chroniques, 2:364–65. Thomas Johnes assumes that his horse bolted. 176 Walter Bower, The Scotichronicon in “Illustrative Documents,” ed. Mark Arvanigian and Anthony Leopold in The Battle of Neville’s Cross 1346, eds. David Rollason and Michael Prestwich (Stamford, 1998), p. 154. Alexander Grant, “Disaster at Neville’s Cross: The Scottish Point of View,” in Neville’s Cross, ed. Rollason and Prestwich, p. 29: “a single individual wearing good armor and mounted on a fast horse was probably difficult to bring down.” 177 Froissart, Chroniques, 3:185. Strickland and Hardy, Great Warbow, p. 234. 168

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following year at Verneuil, 400 armored Lombards penetrated the whole English line.178 At Vivoin (1432), a charge by 80–100 lances destroyed a significantly larger, but disorganized English force; while at Gerberoy (1435), the English were defeated in detail by around 60 horsemen.179 Lastly, at Formigny (1450), Richemont achieved success with 200–240 lances.180 This suggests that French cavalry numbers were probably adequate at Agincourt and that tired horses and the nature of the terrain were the deciding factors. What mattered was being able to achieve a gallop, couch simultaneously or in quick succession and that those who reached the enemy line first should remain compact, something which was only possible with small cohesive groups.181 How Effective Were Stakes against Cavalry? The purpose of stakes was to prevent or disrupt a cavalry charge, forcing the horses to reduce speed and hopefully come to a halt, allowing the archers to engage in effective close-range fire. At Agincourt, the stratagem was adopted upon the advice of the duke of York, following the example of the Turks at Nicopolis (1396), a battle in which men on both sides had fought.182 At Nicopolis, the French horsemen took casualties but were able to negotiate the stake barrier, kill Turkish archers, and defeat a counter-attack by feudal cavalry before being taken in the flank by the Sultan’s mailed Spahis.183 The defeat at Nicopolis owed more to a disunited command, with the French charging without the support of their allies, than to the presence of stakes. The stakes at Agincourt present a problem as they do in several other battles. They were meant to be six feet long, but it is unlikely that they were as broad as is often depicted as this would make them difficult to carry and impossible to wield as a weapon, actions which are mentioned in several sources.184 The 178 Chronique

de la Pucelle ou Chronique de Cousinot, ed. M. Vallet de Viriville (repr.Geneva, 1976), p. 216: “à tout sept ou huit vingt lances,” and p. 224 for Verneuil, “environ cinq cent hommes, lances au poing.” Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, 1:92. 179 Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, 1:139 calls Vivoin, Vinaing. Monstrelet, La chronique, 5:120: “à tout soixante fustz de lance.” 180 Jean Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, 2:195: “jusques au nombre de deux cents à douze vingts lances.” 181 Nolan, Cavalry, p. 116. Uccello’s panels of The Rout of San Romano (1432), painted around 1450, employ geometrical patterns to dramatize the descent of the lance and show knights couching in quick succession. In one painting, two men-at-arms incorrectly hold their lances behind the handgrip and their shoulders are forced back. The artist is probably depicting a common fault as the lance is shown held correctly in other sections. Buttin, “La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” p. 114. Christopher Dobson, Uccello: San Romano, The Art of War (Clare, Suffolk, 2001), pp. 31, 33. 182 Barker, Agincourt, p. 247. 183 Oman, Art of War in the Middle Ages, 2:351–52, argues that the knights remained mounted when confronted with the stakes and that “the mass of them broke though the hindrance”. 184 Bennett, Agincourt, pp. 26, 83 illustrate hefty stakes. Curry, Sources and Interpretations, p. 95. Gesta, p. 89.



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Gesta states that the archers were ordered to provide themselves with something like a walking stick or shepherd’s staff, which was six feet long and capable of being handled.185 At La Gravelle (1423), William de la Pole’s men are described as advancing while carrying a great number of stakes, something that would be impossible with stakes of an excessive girth.186 Hewing down and fashioning broader boughs would take time, require a great deal of work and involve major problems with transportation as most of the carts had been left at Harfleur. The considerable effort involved might well be beyond an army almost at the point of exhaustion from hunger, dysentery, and fatigue. At Agincourt, as at Cravant (1423), stakes were intended as an ad hoc emergency measure provided shortly before the battle, unlike the later more sophisticated versions which were reinforced with iron.187 At Agincourt, the English set up their defensive positions, hoping that the French would attack. However, when their opponents failed to move, the English were obliged to advance and begin the battle. What happened to the stakes that had already been erected when the English advanced? The sources are contradictory; some writers don’t mention stakes at all. Pseudo Elmham says they were left behind, but Livius says the archers took their stakes with them.188 Basin and the Chronique de Ruisseauville say that the English commenced firing as they advanced, which would be difficult if they were still carrying stakes.189 The Tudor chronicler Hall provided his own solution, stating that Henry “appointed certeine persons to remove the stakes when the Archers moved and as tyme required.”190 Wylie, however, warns against “fanciful hypotheses” when trying to make sense of the tactical details. Some historians have the stakes interlaced into a palisade or developed into a mobile fortification transported by pioneers. Others have them positioned “hedgehog like” on the sides and rear of the archers as well as to the front.191 Speculation is difficult to avoid: perhaps only the archers on the wings advanced and then retreated to their stake defenses once the French cavalry had been provoked to attack. If the stakes were carried forward, how were they repositioned when already sharpened at both ends? Striking a sharpened point would cause the stake to split and re-sharpening 185 Gesta,

p. 70: “unum palum vel baculum, quadratum seu rotundum, sex pedum longitudinis et grossitudinis competentis.” Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1879), define baculum as a walking stick or shepherd’s staff. 186 Cousinot, Pucelle, p. 217: “qu’ils avoient en grand nombre et portoient avec eux.” 187 Waurin, Recueil des croniques, 3:65. Hall and Holinshed state anachronistically that the Agincourt stakes were bound with iron. Curry, Sources and Interpretations, pp. 237, 254. However, iron-tipped stakes are mentioned at Mortagne, in Saint-Denys, Règne de Charles VI, 6:478; and at Rouvray, in Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris, 1405–1449, ed. Alexandre Tuetey (Paris, 1881), p. 231. Robert Hardy, Longbow: A Social and Military History (Cambridge, 1976), p. 133, states that by 1529 iron-shod stakes were the norm. 188 Curry, Sources and Interpretations, pp. 72, 61. 189 Basin Histoire de Charles VII, 1:42. Curry, Sources and Interpretations, p. 125. 190 Curry, Sources and Interpretations, p. 237. 191 Wylie and Waugh, Henry V, 2:126, 205–16. Christopher Allmand, Henry V (Yale, 1997), p. 92. Rogers, “Agincourt,” pp. 53–56, offers a revised version of the archers’ palisade.

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might take time, leaving the English line exposed.192 Rogers suggests that the stubs of projecting branches were left on the stakes so that they could be struck without damaging the point.193 Mark Hinsley has demonstrated that the optimum diameter for a stake was between two and three inches, light enough to carry, but sufficiently robust to be struck without breaking. With period tools, a stake could be placed in soft ground and sharpened in less than two minutes.194 However, on harder ground the situation would be different. Weather, therefore, played an important role in the effectiveness of stakes. At Agincourt, the ground was soft and if the stakes were easy to manipulate, they could be repositioned without the need for striking. However, on hard ground, as at Mortagne (1422) and Verneuil (1424), erecting stakes would be difficult and time consuming. Agincourt and Beauvais (1429) seem to be the only battles where stakes played a decisive role; and in the former engagement firm ground would have seen the English overrun. Stakes were used at Bulgnéville, but the battle was largely decided by artillery. At Rouvray (1429), the wagon laager was the key element in a successful defense, with stakes having a secondary role. Although the French horsemen had hoped to stand off and allow their artillery to play upon the English position, they were drawn into the conflict by the impetuous Scots.195 In many engagements stakes proved an inadequate defense and their effectiveness could be negated by the spirited onset of relatively small numbers of experienced, armored cavalry. In medieval warfare reach was important and although stakes were extended to eleven feet, they were not placed contiguously and lacked the length of pikes.196 The success of the English system was not just based on the volume of arrows, but also, as the Saint-Denys chronicler recognized, on the fluidity of its defense. At Agincourt, the archers were not pressed tightly together and could pass freely through their stakes to deliver mortal blows.197 However, flexibility came with a price, because if archers could move forward from behind their stakes, then the position could be penetrated by horsemen.198 Sometimes stakes were not positioned securely, leaving vulnerable areas or open flanks, and as the majority of defenders were missile troops rather than infantry trained for hand-to-hand combat, armored horsemen could push through them. War horses were trained to kick and bite and if they could clear a space in the press of a

Keegan, The Face of Battle (London, 1976), p. 91. “Agincourt,” p. 53. 194 Mark Hinsley, “Playing for High Stakes: The Archer’s Stake and the Battle of Agincourt,” The Historian, 127 (2015), p. 31. 195 Cousinot, Pucelle,p. 268. Alfred H. Burne, The Agincourt War (1956; repr. Westport, 1976), p. 235. James H. Ramsay, Lancaster and York, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1892), 2:385. 196 Sir Harris Nicolas, The History of the Battle of Agincourt (1832; repr. London, 1970). Ordinances of the earl of Shrewsbury, appendix no. VIII, p. 42. 197 Saint-Denys, Règne de Charles VI, 5:563–64. 198 Waurin, Recueil des croniques, 2:214. Le Févre, Chronique, 1:256. 192 John

193 Rogers,



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mêlée, they could knock down stakes.199 Spurs could urge horses laterally as well as forwards, flattening stakes and trampling men underfoot. At Poitiers, the intention of the French armored cavalry was “ad sagittarios conculcandos,” and “prostratos calcaribus equinis conculcare.”200 Similarly, at Agincourt the archers were to be knocked over by the barded breasts of the horses.201 Sometimes casualties occurred on the same side, as with the Genoese at Crécy and Burgundian archers at Montlhéry; but more often were inflicted upon their intended opponents as at Valmont, Verneuil, Patay, and Formigny.202 A good horse enabled his rider to escape imminent danger and facilitated the pursuit, but in the press of battle could also confound his enemies: “a strong and hardy horse doth some time more damage under his master than he with all his weapons.”203 Stakes did not guarantee success; in many circumstances they could be passed through, knocked over by trained horses, destroyed by artillery or avoided altogether. The Angle of Attack It was not necessary to charge stakes and their defenders head on; suddenly changing the angle of attack in the final approach might avoid most of the stake points and allow the rider to couch and strike on his preferred left side. A favored French tactic was to canter or “coast” parallel to the lines of archers until they could find a weak spot or suitable target. Xenophon recommended that when near the enemy, the horses should remain collected, under control with their heads held high and ready to make a sudden turn in any direction. Keeping the horse in hand in this situation allowed the rider to do the most damage, while being able to escape hurt himself.204 The counts Alençon and Flanders with their mounted detachments employed these tactics at Crécy: keeping good order, “moult ordonnément,” and cantering parallel to the archers, “en côtoyant les archers,” they suddenly turned and launched themselves upon the contingent of the Black Prince.205 Throughout the battle, French cavalry demonstrated excepBennett, “The Medieval Warhorse Reconsidered,” in Medieval Knighthood, 5, ed. Stephen Church and Ruth Harvey (Woodbridge, 1995), p. 37. 200 Chronicon Galfridi Le Baker de Swynebroke, ed. Edward Maunde Thompson (Oxford, 1889), pp. 143, 148. 201 Curry cites Walsingham, Sources and Interpretations, p. 52. 202 Le Baker, Chronicon, p. 83, for the Genoese at Crécy: “sub pedibus equorum calcaverunt prostratos.” For Valmont, Saint-Denys, Règne de Charles VI, 5:756: “aut equorum pedibus conculcatis.” Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, 1:94 for Verneuil: “multis eorumdem Anglorum prostratis ad terram,” and Formigny 2:140: “omnes ipsos Anglicos prostraverunt et jugulaverunt.” Robert Blondel, “De reductione Normanniae,” in Joseph Stevenson, ed., Narratives of the Expulsion of the English from Normandy (London, 1863), p. 175: “Anglici consternuntur, lapsique mucrone guttura resolventi a mangone.” 203 Sir Thomas Elyot, The Book Named the Governor (1531; repr. London, 1962), p. 64, mentions Bucephalus, the horse of Alexander the Great “who although sore wounded … continued out the battle, with his feet and teeth beating down and destroying many enemies.” 204 Xenophon, The Art of Horsemanship, trans. Morris H. Morgan (Boston, 1893), pp. 43, 49. 205 Froissart Chroniques, 2:364. 199 Matthew

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tional skill in wheeling and turning repeatedly.206 “Coasting” was also used at La Gravelle, where the French horse rode between the lines, then suddenly changed course when they found a gap in the stakes: “tout à coup tournèrent sur un costé de la bataille où il n’y avoit aucuns paulx.” 207 Lombard and Gascon cavalry had a reputation for maneuvering at speed, “acoustumez de tourner en courant,” something which may have occurred at Verneuil.208 The Lombard cavalry could be deployed to take the enemy in the rear, but also “ou au travers,” to cut right across them or otherwise to inflict the most harm.209 The phrase suggests something different from a flank attack, which Waurin later describes as “ou sur le coste.”210 At Formigny, Clermont sent 60 lances “entre les deux batailles,” to probe for weakness, and Pierre de Brézé made a sudden turning movement with his armored horsemen to repel the English archers during the same battle: “equestres armatos impigre detorquet.”211 Success against the English depended on several factors: the number of their archers and supporting men-at-arms, a coordinated plan, knowing when and when not to engage; and above all the requirements needed to couch the lance effectively: experience, speed, cohesion, timing, and suitable terrain. The following encounters demonstrate these precepts. Valmont (1416) The earl of Dorset with more than 1,000 mounted men was engaged in a longrange foraging expedition to re-provision the garrison at Harfleur when he was intercepted by a French force led by Armagnac, the constable of France. Waurin and Monstrelet give comparable figures for both sides, but the chronicler of Saint-Denys considers that the French were outnumbered.212 However, more importantly, the French force contained a proportion of elite troops.213 According to the Gesta, the English drew up their battle line on foot with the horses and transport to the rear and lances leveled at the breasts of the French cavalry, with the other end driven into the ground.214 The Gesta uses palus to describe the stakes at Agincourt, so lancea suggests that light spears or lancegays were utilized, the latter already sharpened at both ends. Armagnac’s men were picked troops, suggesting that their horses were armored; and they made and Preston, Crécy, p. 148. Pucelle, p. 217. 208 Monstrelet, La chronique, 2:102. Waurin, Recueil des croniques, 3:111–13. 209 Waurin, Recueil des croniques, 3:111. A.R. Myers ed. English Historical Documents, 1327– 1485 (London, 1969), 4:191. 210 Waurin, Recueil des croniques, 3:113. 211 Chronique de Mathieu D’Escouchy, ed. G. Du Fresne de Beaucourt, 3 vols., Société de l’histoire de France (Paris, 1843), 1:283. Blondel, De reductione Normanniae, p. 172. 212 Waurin, Recueil des croniques, 2:238. Monstrelet, La chronique, 3:171. Saint-Denys, Règne de Charles VI, 5:755: “et que l’infériorité du nombre ne nous permet pas de soutenir avec avantage.” 213 Gesta, p. 116: “de electissimis eorum.” 214 Ibid., pp. 118–19. 206 Ayton

207 Cousinot,



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a forceful charge, which despite the archery and lance/stake barrier, went right through the English center: “dissiparunt et precurrerunt staciones Anglorum per medium.”215 The French royal chronicler makes clear that they used their lances at exactly the right moment: “they put spurs to their horses, charged flat out at the enemy and when the time was right couched their lances in the arrêt.”216 Then having expended their lances, they continued the mêlée with secondary weapons and the English were broken and overridden. The French took possession of the English baggage, which gave Dorset time to reposition his surviving troops in a garden surrounded by strong thorn hedges. With night approaching the French decided against a further attack, giving the English the chance to slip away, having lost all their horses and provisions. The French suffered few casualties, but the horses of the auxiliaries sustained debilitating arrow wounds, which suggests that the mounts of the vanguard were well armored.217 Valmont confirms the vulnerability of the English defensive system to cavalry when the criteria for an effective charge were present. Mortagne (14 August 1422) In July, Jean d’Harcourt, the count of Aumale and the vicomte of Narbonne, with around 2,000 combatants, raided deep into Normandy and sacked Bernay within forty miles of Rouen.218 They brushed aside a small force led by Lord Scales and headed for home. Sir Philippe Branch, however, having gathered an army of around 3,000 men, set out to intercept them.219 Accounts differ as to how the battle commenced. Chartier says that when the French rearguard caught sight of the English, the Sire de Loré ordered his men to create as much dust as possible, sending a messenger to alert the rest of the army at Mortagne.220 The rearguard then faced off against their opponents, who advanced uncertain as to the strength and disposition of the French force, which was screened by clouds of dust. When the English realized that the entire French host was deployed on rising ground, they took off their spurs and planted stakes around their front.221 However, the French cavalry chosen for the attack were experienced, well-equipped and led by “chevaliers remplis de science militaire.” Failing to be unnerved by the stakes, Aumale and his captains made a spirited charge and, keeping their men together, penetrated the enemy ranks.222 The English 215 Ibid.

Règne de Charles VI, 5:756: “et mox equites universi, concitatis equis calcaribus, habenis quoque laxatis, in hostes dimissis lanceis, sicut condictum fuerat, invehuntur.” 217 Ibid. 218 Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, 1:15–18. Saint-Denys, Règne de Charles VI, 6:474–79. 219 Chroniques de Perceval de Cagny, ed. H. Moranvillé, Société de l’histoire de France (Paris, 1892), pp. 124–25. 220 Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, 1:15–18. 221 Ibid., 1:18. 222 Ibid., 1:18: “Cette manoeuvre ne troubla pas l’habileté des François. A l’instant, tous ensemble, les François montés à cheval tombèrent précipitamment sur les Anglois.” 216 Saint-Denys,

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defense collapsed with many slain as desperate fugitives tried to reach their horse line.223 The total number of English dead was around 1,200 with 200–300 taken as prisoners.224 As at Verneuil, the battle was fought in August and the dust raised by the horsemen suggests that the ground was hard and dry, making stakes difficult to erect. Chartier implies that the English were surrounded, so their location may not have been entirely protected. However, the chronicle of Saint-Denys, which makes no mention of stakes at Agincourt, says that the English stakes were tipped with iron and placed all around their position.225 What is not in doubt is that the English fell apart following a single well-conducted charge with French cavalry achieving the speed to couch, retaining cohesion, pushing through the stakes and engaging in an effective pursuit. Sumption says that the English were defeated because “the odds were too great,” but evidence suggests they were in the greater number.226 The heavy loss of life and the fact that, although the French remained well within English territory, no further attempt was made to halt their progress indicated the vulnerability of Normandy to a well-organized cavalry incursion.227 La Gravelle (1423) At La Gravelle, the count of Aumale intercepted an English army of around 2,500–3,000 men under William de la Pole, who was returning to Normandy with hostages and a huge herd of cattle following a raiding expedition into Maine and Anjou.228 In a brief account of the battle, Waurin says the French had 6,000 men, both militia and men-at-arms, and that the greater part charged on horseback.229 However, although the French had hastily augmented their force with local peasantry, these numbers seem excessive. Cagny gives the English 3,000 men and Aumale around 2,500.230 The French were all on foot apart from a mounted contingent of 140-60 lances led by Louis de Tromargon.231 The French cavalry intervened to support their coureurs and after fierce skirmishing, the English outriders were pushed back and forced to dismount

223 Ibid.

Chroniques, p. 125, those chosen to attack were “bien empoint.” Cousinot, Pucelle, p. 187, says there were more than 800 dead and numerous prisoners. 225 Saint-Denys, Règne de Charles VI, 6:478: “et Anglici equos suos descendereunt, seque pallis ferreis circumquaque, ut eorum mos est, munierunt.” 226 Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War, 4 vols. to date (London, 1999–2015), 4:766. Cagny, Chroniques, p. 125; the English had 2,000–3,000 combatants and Aumale 1,000–1,200. Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, 1:15; the English had “plus de deux mille gens d’armes.” 227 Wylie and Waugh, Henry V, 3:413. 228 Cousinot, Pucelle, pp. 214–17: “bien deux mille et cinq cens combatans Anglois.” 229 Waurin, Recueil des croniques, 3:22–24. 230 Cagny, Chroniques, p. 130. 231 Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, 1:33–38. Cousinot, Pucelle, p. 216: “à tout sept ou huit vingt lances pour besonger sur iceux Anglois.” 224 Cagny,



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among their vanguard. The French horsemen then slowly retired towards their own lines, preventing the English from assessing their dispositions. The English carried a great number of stakes which they set up across their front when they came within bowshot.232 As the armies faced off, the French horse traversed the lines between the two battles looking for an opening. Then discovering that one side of the enemy line lacked the protection of stakes, they suddenly turned and struck the English in the flank at almost the same time as their comrades engaged on foot.233 The English were broken and suffered more than 1500 casualties with a further 300 lost in the pursuit.234 La Gravelle demonstrates the importance of winning the initial cavalry skirmish and shows that relatively small numbers of horsemen, coasting the archers with their mounts collected, in good order and with determined leaders could suddenly exploit a weakness in the English line with devastating results. Verneuil (1424) At Verneuil the French relied on a combination of Scottish mercenaries and Lombard cavalry to try and overcome the forces of the duke of Bedford. The Lombards, who numbered 400–500 lances, were chosen because both horse and man were exceptionally well armored.235 While many French men-at-arms possessed plate barding for their horses, what was striking about the Lombards was not only the high quality of their armor, but its prevalence throughout the whole group. Basin uses the superlative optime protecti, to suggest that their equipment was the very best available.236 The Lombards, immune to the blows of arrows, would break into the archers and drive them from their stakes. Burne follows Chartier and Raoulet, placing the cavalry on both wings in traditional fashion, and Newhall sees “nothing novel in the tactics employed on either side.”237 However, more recent scholarship has suggested an alternative version of events, emphasizing the account of Thomas Basin, who concludes that the Lombards were placed en tête, in front of the main battle line, “equitibus Ytalis precedentibus”; a deployment confirmed by Jean de Bueil, who was present: Pucelle, p. 217: “en marchant ils picquoient de gros paulx, qu’ils avoient en grand nombre, et portoient avec eux.” 233 Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, 1:36: “tournèrent tout à coup sur le costé de la bataille des ditz Anglois, où ilz n’avoient nulz paux.” Cousinot, Pucelle, p. 217. 234 Cousinot, Pucelle, p. 217. 235 Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, 1:92: “qui armis, tam viri quam equi eorum, optime protecti.” The Book of Pluscarden, ed. F. J. H. Skene (Edinburgh, 1880), p. 272. 236 Hewitt, Ancient Armour, 1:342–43. Milan was renowned for the high quality of its armor, producing horse armor since the thirteenth century. Italian armor was also noted for its use of reinforcing plates, see Claude Blair, European Armour (London, 1958), pp. 79–82. 237 Burne, Agincourt War, pp. 196–215. Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, 1:40–43. Raoulet, Chronique, pp. 185–88. Richard Ager Newhall, The English Conquest of Normandy 1416– 1424: A Study in Fifteenth Century Warfare (New Haven, 1924), pp. 316–21. 232 Cousinot,

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“et mirent ung bon nombre de gens à cheval devant eulx.”238 The tactic derived from Vegetius and the Dauphinists had used their cavalry in a similar fashion at Mons-en-Vimeu.239 As the English were drawn up on an open plain, defenses were organized for the baggage with an additional guard of 2,000 archers. The rest, together with their stakes, were placed along the front of the English position as well as on the wings.240 The charge of the Lombards, however, did not just take out a section of archers, but went right through the whole English line, something which Basin stresses several times: “et tocius Anglorum exercitus acies penetrantes …. et omnem Anglorum exercitum pertransissent.”241 The stakes were completely ineffective and the Lombards, couching at the gallop, burst through the English men-at-arms sending them sprawling into the dust. Others threw themselves on the ground to avoid the lance points of the horsemen. Somehow part of the English battle opened spontaneously, allowing the cavalry to pass and limiting the potential for harm. However, the whole army was ridden through and many turned their backs to flee.242 Why were the stakes ineffective? As at Mortagne, it was August and the dust raised by the cavalry suggests that the ground was hard, making stakes difficult to erect.243 However, as with Agincourt and Cravant, there was a considerable delay before the fighting started. Cagny says that “la bataille des Englois ne se bougoit” and it was after 3 o’clock before the English were compelled to advance.244 Thus, the stakes were either left behind or if carried forward by the archers would have been difficult to reposition securely in the face of an imminent cavalry incursion. Such a maneuver would take time and cause disorganization, particularly if, as Burne suggests, stakes were passed forward to the front-rank men.245 Reasons for the French Defeat at Verneuil It seems incredible that after such a promising start the French would go on to lose the battle. The Lombards, however, having disrupted the English line considered their work done and, aside from attempting to pillage the baggage, Histoire de Charles VII, 1:91–99. De Bueil, Jouvencel, 2:63–64. Michael Harbinson, “Verneuil – the Events of 17 August 1424: An Examination of the Sources and the Account of Thomas Basin,” Hobilar: Journal of the Lance and Longbow Society 30 (1998), 2–22. Michael K. Jones, “The Battle of Verneuil (17August 1424): Towards a History of Courage,” War in History, 9:4 (2002), 375–411. 239 Milner, Vegetius, p. 104. Le Févre, Chronique, 2:42. 240 Waurin, Recueil des croniques, 3:113. Monstrelet, La chronique, 4:193. Burne, Agincourt War, p. 211 cites Hall. 241 Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, 1:94–96. Harbinson, “Verneuil,” pp. 11–12. 242 Harbinson, “Verneuil,” p. 19. 243 Waurin, Recueil des croniques, 3:111: “pour la pouldriere des gens et chevaulz ilz aparcheurent.” Burne, Agincourt War, p. 206. 244 Cagny, Chroniques, p. 134. Newhall, English Conquest, p. 319, cites Bedford, “environ quattre heures après midi.” 245 Burne, Agincourt War, p. 206. 238 Basin,



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played no further part in the proceedings. Perhaps they should have reformed and charged again in roulement perpétuel, but their lances were probably expended, and the horses fatigued by the heat and weight of their armor.246 The Lombards also had good reason for feeling that their objective had been achieved. Many archers and men-at-arms left the field; and the flight was far more widespread than the English wished to admit, triggering a series of insurrections against their rule in the surrounding countryside.247 Initially the cavalry may have been deployed on both wings and then joined together in front of the army before the charge. However, French writers keen to blame the Lombards for the entire defeat, and anxious to dissociate the heroic efforts of their countrymen from the ineptitude of the Italians, may have wished to preserve a physical separation. Thus, in several narratives, the cavalry remain in two groups. Cousinot says the Lombards did nothing, while the French on their wing “frappèrent vaillamment” and carried themselves “grandement et honnorablement.”248 Raoulet says it was the French, not the Lombards, who broke the English formation, killing 300 men, his third attempt at manufacturing a realistic figure.249 However, Basin states there were few casualties at this point, probably due to the difficulty of using the lance in the arrêt with a closed visor to strike at a man on the ground.250 Also, striking downwards with a secondary weapon was not an easy task for a fully armored horseman. Although the English were “ad terram prosternentes,” the key word “jugulaverunt,” which accompanies similar phrases in Basin’s description of Formigny, is absent.251 As previously mentioned, the main purpose of heavy cavalry when attacking infantrymen was to fragment and disorder their opponents rather than kill them, a task left to the auxiliaries. Basin says that the English were to be driven away both with lances and light spears, suggesting this was the scenario intended at Verneuil.252 Yet, if the Lombards had been supported by a significant number of gros varles, the English would have been defeated. The Italian lance consisted of three men: a mounted man-at-arms, a less well-armored sergeant, and a page. The principal concern of both followers was to serve their leader and dealing with his sophisticated armor and intricate horse barding may have precluded their involvement in the battle.253 The 3:283 defines roulement perpétuel as riding back and through the enemy in a constant rolling motion. 247 Jones, “Verneuil,” p. 390. Paul Le Cacheux, ed. Actes de la chancellerie d’Henri VI concernant la Normandie sous la domination Anglaise 1422–1435, Société de l’histoire de Normandie, 2 vols. (Paris, 1907–08), 1:125: the fugitives were mounted including a “grant nombre de gens d’armes et de pages, tant de nostre pais d’Angleterre.” 248 Cousinot, Pucelle, p. 225. 249 Raoulet, Chronique, p. 186: The Lombards “n’entrèrent point dedens.” 250 Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, 1:94: “cum minore eorum detrimento.” 251 Ibid., 1:94–96. 252 Ibid., 1:92: “eos contis et lanceis proterendo.” 253 Mallet, Mercenaries, pp. 148–49. By 1450 the weight of armor and increased number of horses meant that the Italian lance required numerous subordinates. 246 Delbrück,

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Lombards may well have charged without their varlets as did the French horse at Montlhéry: “trois cens hommes d’armes, la lance sur la cuisse, sans varlet ou meschin.”254 On both occasions the horsemen faced archers, and the less wellprotected varlets were left behind. The Lombards probably wore early armets, which provided an excellent glancing surface against arrows and gave improved vision.255 Such factors may have influenced the decision to dispense with varlets, together with the expectation that those on foot would rapidly follow. However, the Scots and French did not follow up in unison, giving the English a breathing space. Respite was also created by part of the French mounted contingent, presumably the less well-armored, being repulsed by arrow fire and disorganizing their own footmen.256 Fortunately for them, the English had a large number of men-at-arms and experienced captains upon whom those who were broken could rally, and for the most part morale held firm.257 Verneuil demonstrates that stakes were not a reliable defense and that the longbow was largely ineffective against well-barded horsemen charging in open terrain. Beauvais (1429) In January 1429, Sir Thomas Kyriel, having undertaken a successful raid into French territory, was met near Beauvais by the count of Clermont whose force was supplemented by local peasants. The English dismounted and with their backs to a wood, planted stakes across their front. The possibility of a cavalry breakthrough was recognized, and the stakes were placed in such a way as to make it a costly exercise, possibly in a closer or deeper formation than usual.258 The French horsemen made numerous close approaches, even breaking into the obstacles, and fierce fighting ensued before they were finally driven back and disorganized by arrow fire. However, nearly all the casualties were unarmored peasants, while the French cavalry returned to Beauvais disheartened but unharmed.259 This would suggest that their horses were well protected and that the repulse from arrow fire was probably due to blunt trauma rather than penetrative injury. Patay (1429) At Patay, the English again found themselves on an open plain, but this time they were ill- prepared. A force under Lord Scales, Sir John Talbot, and Sir John la Marche, Mémoires, 3:11. “Verneuil,” p. 9; armets originated in Italy around 1410. 256 de Bueil, Jouvencel, 2:64. Some of the cavalry placed in front of the main battle: “furent reboutez contre eulx, dont ilz furent desconfiz.” 257 E. Carlton Williams, My Lord of Bedford, 1389–1435 (London, 1963), p. 113. 258 Waurin, Recueil des croniques, 3:349–51. 259 Ibid., 3:350–51: “mais en fin les Francois quy estoient de cheval furent reboutez par le trait des archiers Anglois, a cause duquel reboutement se commencerent a destroyer.” The English killed and took prisoner “de leurs annemis environ cent, a scavoir desdis paysans; et ceulz de cheval sen retournerent tous confus et annuyez a Beauvaix.” 254 de

255 Harbinson,



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Fastolf was in the Meung region, having been sent from Paris to engage the French, who had successfully retaken several towns. The English were joined by remnants of the garrison of Beaugency, which had recently capitulated, and the morale of the army was poor, exacerbated by arguments between the commanders.260 Talbot’s force had marched a considerable distance and the French leaders were advised by their coureurs that the English were unprepared.261 The French ordered their battle with the better-protected horses in the vanguard led by Poton and la Hire. After riding five leagues, they accelerated into a gallop as soon as they came within view of the English, who had not managed to set up their stakes.262 The coordinated French charge delivered a tremendous impact and, with lances couched at speed, the first shock felled around 1,400 men.263 The result was a severe defeat with only those, like Fastolf, who were mounted managing to escape. The English position was in open countryside and despite their intention to fight on foot, insufficient time had been left to make the necessary preparations.264 The final number of English dead was between 2,000 and 3,000.265 In the absence of stakes, the French could not be harmed and apart from the disastrous loss of life, the capture of Talbot and other prominent leaders did not bode well for the English kingdom of France.266 Gerberoy (1435) At Gerberoy, the French formulated a daring plan and in exercising discipline and control again demonstrated that even small bodies of cavalry could make a decisive contribution to victory. The earl of Arundel set out from Gournay with a large force, including 500 mounted men-at-arms, augmented by reinforcements from the garrison and an artillery train, to prevent the French from establishing themselves at the old fortress of Gerberoy.267 He was, however, unaware that Poton and la Hire “en petit nombre,” with 50 or 60 horsemen and 200–300 infantry, had journeyed through the night to reach the castle before him.268 Arundel with his vanguard arrived in the early morning and began organizing defensive positions and preparing for a siege. La Hire and the French captains La chronique, 4:328. J. Pollard, John Talbot and the War in France 1427–1453 (London, 1983), p. 17. 262 Gruel, Chronique de Arthur de Richemont, pp. 72–74: “Et furent mis les mieulx montez en l’avant-garde … et pluseurs gens de bien à cheval … et adoncques galloperent grant erre et la bataille après.” Monstrelet, La chronique, 4:328–30: “se préparènt de tout point et chevaulchèrent bien et hardiement …. car ilz n’eurent point loiser d’eulx fortifier de penchons aguisés par la manière qu’ilz avoient acoustumé de faire.” 263 Paul Charpentier and Charles Cuissard, eds., Journal du Siège d’Orléans 1428–1429 (Orléans, 1896), pp. 139–40. 264 de Bueil, Jouvencel, 2:64: “on doit prendre champ de bonne heure, qui veult combatre à pié.” 265 Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, 1:86. 266 Monstrelet, La chronique, 4:330; Juliet Barker, Conquest, The English Kingdom of France 1417–1450 (London, 2009), p. 123. 267 Monstrelet, La chronique, 5:118–23. Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, 1:211. 268 Ibid., 1:208–12. 260 Monstrelet, 261 A.

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acted decisively. Armed with the lance, 60 men-at-arms, “tous les mieux montés et les plus expers,” were to remain on horseback and assault the main English battle, preventing Arundel from reinforcing his forward troops. The rest under Poton dismounted and made a demonstration against the English vanguard to hold it in position.269 The French cavalry armed themselves and then charged the dense mass of the main English column, which was deeply penetrated and broken several times in a roulement perpétuel.270 Unable to re-form, the English fled, pursued for two leagues by la Hire, who eventually returned with his prisoners. Arundel and his vanguard, however, remained largely intact. They had taken up a position in an enclosure with their front protected by stakes, which had proved impassable to the French foot. A bombard brought from the castle struck Arundel on the ankle with its second discharge, inflicting a mortal wound. La Hire and the French horse then charged straight through the defensive stakes and English resistance collapsed.271 The French Gain the Upper Hand As the war continued, English armies tended to become smaller with an increasing proportion of archers to men-at-arms, often more than double the preferred 3:1 ratio of earlier campaigns.272 Brigandage, famine, and depopulation meant that Normandy could no longer raise sufficient taxes to pay for its defense.273 By 1441, England had to shoulder the full financial burden of the war and also ensure a regular supply of reinforcements if there were to be any military gains.274 As the war degenerated into a succession of sieges, it became less profitable and increasingly unpopular. Financial constraint and the growing reluctance of the English nobility to fight in France led to a significant increase in the proportion of less expensive archers.275 Recruitment difficulties were manifest even for the well-balanced army that sailed with Henry VI in April 1430.276 The collapse of the Burgundian alliance in 1435 led to manpower problems, with Calais, Gascony, and Normandy competing for limited resources. The siege of Orleans in 1429 had demonstrated how far the English were stretched, with insufficient men to maintain an effective blockade even though the army was augmented by garrison retinues.277 Also of concern was the fact that the proporLa chronique, 5:120–21. “et à force tresperciés et dérompus par plusiers fois. Par quoy ilz ne se peurent rassembler.” 271 Ibid., 5:122. 272 Anne Curry, “English Armies in the Fifteenth Century,” in Anne Curry and Michael Hughes, eds. Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 45–46: “under Henry VI few armies exceeded 2,000 men.” 273 Pollard, John Talbot and the War in France, pp. 30–33 and p. 60. 274 Ibid., pp. 41–42. 275 Ibid., p. 42: “there beth but few captains as of knights and squyers that wollen go.” 276 Ramsay, Lancaster and York, 1:414–15. 277 Pollard, John Talbot and the War in France, p. 14. Ramsay, Lancaster and York, 2:382–84. 269 Monstrelet, 270 Ibid.:



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tion of archers to men-at-arms was increasing at a time when the longbow was becoming less effective against improved armor and barded horses. Archers, no longer invincible in the open field, now lacked an adequate number of supporting men-at-arms. Only 200 of the 2,500 men mustered in 1442 for the duke of York’s expedition were men-at-arms and just 300 of the archers were mounted. Although Henry VI sold the crown jewels to transport the army to France, poor quality limited its capabilities in the field.278 However, in France improved finances enabled Charles VII via the “Ordonnance sur la Gendarmerie” of 1439 to create a well-paid standing army of around 1,500 lances together with 8,000 free archers raised to compete with the English longbow. With a core of experienced leaders, an elite gendarmerie was chosen from those whose equipment and skill at arms made them increasingly formidable. Proficiency with the lance was expected as it was widely recognized that the English could not hold their own on horseback against the French.279 Sir John Fastolf’s report of 1435 demonstrated that the war was not going well for the English. The French were recognized as superior in siege warfare, which was consuming men and material at an alarming rate. There was an implicit fear of French cavalry arising from their increasing effectiveness in the field and previous incursions into Normandy, whose long border made it difficult to defend. A return to chevauchée was advocated in the hope that damaging French supplies would limit the numbers of their horsemen and allow the English to control the nature of future encounters.280 The widespread devastation of the Norman countryside made it difficult for both sides to maintain armies in the field for long periods, but the English were more vulnerable in this regard. On many occasions the French used the situation to their advantage to frustrate the aims of their opponents by refusing to engage and concentrated on their strengths in siege warfare. In 1439, Richemont controlled most of Meaux, apart from the stronghold known as the Market. He avoided a pitched battle with the English relieving force under Somerset and Talbot, who resupplied their comrades, but then, lacking provisions themselves, had to retreat to Normandy. Soon afterwards the French returned to the siege and the Market, which had taken Henry V so much effort to secure in 1422, was forced to surrender.281 In 1441, Charles VII took the field in the hope of Lancaster and York, 2:42–43. Barker, Conquest, pp. 299–301 and p. 452. Talbot had hoped to use this force to recover several towns, but due to lack of men-at-arms had to be satisfied with Conches. 279 Blondel, De reductione Normanniae, pp. 46–47. Georges Chastellain, Oeuvres, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, 8 vols. (Brussels, 1863–66), 1:226: “que communément les Anglois ne peuvent tenir route à cheval contre les François.” Le Jouvencel, 2:232: Bedford’s horsemen were considered less capable and “adextres à cheval” than their opponents. 280 Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Wars of the English in France during the Reign of Henry the Sixth, King of England, ed. Joseph Stevenson, 2 vols. in 3 parts (London, 1861–64), 2, pt. 2:.575–85 and 584: “if, the enemys wolde yeve bataile, it shulde not lie in there powere to fighte on horsebak.” 281 Ramsay, Lancaster and York, 2:17. 278 Ramsay,

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taking Pontoise and eluded the best efforts of Talbot and the duke of York to force a decisive encounter. Finally, when the English, weak from hunger, straggled back to Rouen, Charles returned to Pontoise and took the city by storm.282 Similarly, in July 1449, after failing to relieve Verneuil, Talbot retired towards Rouen, but decided to offer battle near Harcourt. The French, however, led by Dunois, sensed an uncertain outcome and with evening approaching, declined to engage. Unable to attack himself, Talbot was obliged to continue his retreat and was powerless to prevent the fall of Pont-Audemer.283 Formigny (April 1450) The defeat at Formigny sealed the fate of the English occupation of Normandy with the French employing all their tactical knowledge to achieve a resounding victory with their mounted arm. On 15 March 1450, Sir Thomas Kyriell landed at Cherbourg with around 2,500 men, but as Grafton commented: “his power was too small, either to recover that which was lost, either to save that which yet remained ungotten.”284 Kyriell was supposed to “goo spedly” and join Somerset at Bayeux, but was persuaded by his captains to retake Valognes, a decision which led to the charge of “negligently tarying.”285 He was, however, substantially reinforced by troops from other garrisons, bringing his total strength to more than 5,000 and the town fell on 10 April.286 He then proceeded to cross the tidal fords over the Vire at Saint Clément on his way to Bayeux. Clermont was at Carentan and when the citizens realized that the English were negotiating the fords, they ran to arms.287 Clermont, however, fearful of risking his cavalry in the treacherous sands forbade an assault.288 The population was incensed and, despite orders to the contrary, burst out of the gates to attack the English. Geoffroy de Couvran and Joachim Rouault, unable to prevent the unauthorized sortie, decided to lend support.289 The engagement at the fords is usually dismissed with the assumption that the English brushed aside an uncoordinated assault.290 However, Blondel, d’Escouchy and le Bouvier state that the English rearguard became embroiled in a vicious fight, sustaining significant losses both from the onslaught of the

John Talbot and the War in France, pp. 54–57. p. 65. 284 Charles Joret, La Bataille de Formigny (Paris, 2015), p. 73. 285 Stevenson, Letter and Papers, 2, pt. 2:595. 286 Joret, Formigny, p. 73, cites Grafton who says there were about 5,000 men. Ramsay, Lancaster and York, 2:105 n. 3 makes a deduction to compensate for the “exaggerated” figures of French writers. 287 Blondel, De reductione Normanniae, p. 167. 288 Ramsay, Lancaster and York, 2:105. 289 Joret, Formigny, p. 79. 290 Burne, Agincourt War, p. 315. David Nicolle, The Fall of English France 1449–53 (Oxford, 2012), p. 29. 282 Pollard, 283 Ibid.,



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citizens and a mounted charge.291 The conflict was only terminated by the rising tide, and the mauling received at the fords together with the casualties sustained at Valognes may explain why the English rested at Formigny rather than pressing on to Bayeux. The fierceness of the hand-to-hand fighting exposed the English deficiency in men-at-arms and Matthew Gough immediately set out for Bayeux to procure reinforcements.292 Meanwhile, Clermont, stung by the reproaches of the crowd, who blamed him for allowing the English to escape, sent a message to the constable at St-Lô and embarked upon a night march to intercept the enemy. The French strategy was to prevent the English from uniting with Somerset; and Clermont with 500–600 lances hoped to hold them in position until Richemont, the constable, arrived.293 Disagreement persists surrounding the numbers present at Formigny, with English writers unable to accept that their army was defeated by a smaller French force.294 Basin gives the English strength as between 6,000–7,000, which at first sight seems excessive.295 However, the English slain are listed as 3,000 in the Paston letters and 4,000 by Grafton, which suggests that the official French figure of 3,774 dead is probably correct.296 If the 1,500 who escaped and the 800 or more prisoners are then added, the total number of English combatants is close to Basin’s lower figure.297 Archers composed two-thirds of the English force and were drawn up in three groups connected by a line consisting of three ranks of men. However, only the third rank consisted of men-at-arms, the middle rank being made up of billmen and the first with archers.298 The position was fortified with stakes and pot holes. The French made three cavalry charges at Formigny. Clermont initially sent 50–60 lances supported by some archers “entre les deux batailles” to coast the enemy and probe for a weak spot, as the French had done previously at Crécy and

De reductione Normanniae, p. 168: “The French assault burst like fire over the rearmost columns of the English, who were assailed with javelins, spears, and sharp swords. Some perished by the sword, others were pierced with arrows and many were drowned.” D’Escouchy, Chronique, 1:281. Le Bouvier, Charles VII, p. 334: “Geffroy de Couvren et Joachim Rouault les trouverent, et frapperent sur leur arriere garde moult asprement, en telle maniere qu’il y ot plusieurs Anglois mors et prins.” 292 Blondel, De reductione Normanniae, p. 169: “Proinde Baiocas petit ut armatorum subsidium adducat.” 293 Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, 2:193. 294 Nicolle, Fall of English France, p. 29. 295 Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, 2:134, says the French: “non tamen equabant numero Anglorum exercitum, qui circiter ad septem milia bellatorum estimabatur.” 296 The Paston Letters 1422–1509, A.D., ed. James Gairdner, 4 vols. (Edinburgh, 1910), 1:125–26: “Sir Thomas Keriel is taken prisoner, and alle the legge harneyse, and abowte 3,000 Englishemen slayn. Matthew Gooth, with 1,500 fledde, and savyd hym selffe and hem.” Joret, Formigny, p. 74 cites Grafton: “and of them slaine above foure thousand, and VIIJ hundreth taken prisoners.” Le Bouvier, Charles VII, p. 337. Lot, L’Art militaire, 2:80–82, gives a full discussion of the figures. 297 Paston Letters, 1:126 298 Blondel, De reductione Normanniae, pp. 171–73. 291 Blondel,

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La Gravelle.299 However, when the horsemen made no progress, two culverins were moved to enfilade the English line. The need to retain close formation in the presence of cavalry made the English an inviting target and as losses mounted, 600 archers made a desperate sally against the French guns. Although initially successful this excursion was dispersed by the second cavalry charge of the day, led by Pierre de Brézé, who attacked diagonally with his armored horsemen.300 Clermont dismounted some of his men-at-arms and continued to put pressure on the enemy position, when a body of troops appeared on the English left flank. Spirits were raised as the defenders thought they recognized the banner of the duke of Somerset, who had come to their rescue, but joy turned to trepidation when they finally discerned the gleaming lilies of France.301 Disconcerted by French artillery; subject to counter-fire from French archers; and with their morale shaken, the English attempted to change front to meet the new threat. As confusion reigned in the English ranks and their fire slackened, Richemont charged with around 200 lances, his archers having dismounted to provide covering fire. The French cavalry, powerful and well armored, couched at the gallop, brushed aside defensive stakes and knocked their enemies to the ground so that the coustilliers with their lancegays could complete the destruction.302 Formigny demonstrates the limitations of the traditional English defense: with missiles proving less effective against barded horses and insufficient men-at-arms to support their archers, they succumbed to a mounted flank attack. Le Jouvencel lists the battle as an exemplum of the dangers of attempting to maneuver in the face of the enemy and Kyriel made the fatal mistake of trying to change position before his opponents had been disorganized by arrow fire.303 French casualties seem unbelievably light, only six or eight men-at-arms, which attests to the fact that their horses were well armored; but considerably more must have been slain among the rank and file.304 The small size of Richemont’s force proved crucial to the French success, enabling it to use a single road to cover the 20 miles between St-Lô and Formigny and make a timely arrival on the battlefield as a compact unit, which could then maneuver quickly during the action.305 Armored Horses Within the Narrative The importance of horse armor had been recognized since the time of Xenophon.306 It was therefore inevitable, with the invention of articulated plate and D’Escouchy, Chronique, 1:283. De reductione Normanniae, p. 172: “equestres armatos impigre detorquet.” 301 Ibid., p. 174. The story is probably true as Somerset’s banner was quartered with the fleur de lys. 302 Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, 2:140: “velocissimo cursu advolantes, omnes ipsos Anglicos prostraverunt et jugulaverunt.” 303 de Bueil, Jouvencel, 2:64–65. Lot, L’Art Militaire, 2:435. 304 D’Escouchey, Chronique, 1:285. 305 Jules Auguste Lair, Essai historique et topographique sur la bataille de Formigny (Paris, 1908), p. 21. 306 Xenophon, Horsemanship, p. 67: a horse should be armed with a frontlet, breastplate and thigh pieces and its belly, the weakest part, should be protected with quilted material. 299

300 Blondel,



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the better protection afforded by steel, that this type of armor would extend to the horse.307 By the second decade of the fifteenth century, many horses would have a shaffron, crinet, peytral, crupper of three oblong plates and flanchards to protect their sides.308 Hardened leather was often retained because it could be elaborately decorated and the extensive padding worn beneath both types of armor prevented chafing and reduced the impact of missiles. Horse armor rarely features in contemporary illustrations and is almost entirely absent from the San Romano panels, at a time when it was in common use.309 Christopher Dobson argues that Uccello was more interested in portraying the form of the animals and in demonstrating their household colors.310 The presence of horse armor at an engagement is seldom made explicit within the source material, but it is sometimes possible to make reasonable deductions from the narrative. At Agincourt the Gesta refers to “equis armatis”; but in many encounters where the men-at-arms achieved success or returned from a charge unharmed, it can be assumed that most had armored horses: “for yt ys the barded horses that bringeth his mastere from the danger of the fight.”311 At Valmont, almost all the wounded horses belonged to the auxiliaries, suggesting that those of the men-at-arms were well armored.312 At Mortagne the stakes “ne troubla pas l’habileté des François”; and at Beauvais most of the casualties were peasants while the cavalry returned disheartened but largely intact, presumably because on both occasions the horses were armored.313 At Verneuil, Basin states that the Lombard horses were furnished with the very best armor, while the Bourgeois of Paris refers to them as being “moult bien montés.”314 Therefore, when cavalry are described in similar terms, it seems likely that the reference is not only to the excellence of the horses but also to the quality of their protection. Hence phrases such as: “les meilleurs chevaux de leurs maistres,” “les mieulx montez,” “pluseurs gens de bien à cheval,” and “des mieux montés” suggest the presence of armored horses.315 Moreover, when cavalry are noted as being well equipped it also suggests that they are well armored. Thus, the horsemen detailed for the invasion of Normandy are “equis et armis optime instructorum,” and at Formigny,

San Romano, pp. 36–37. European Armour, pp. 184–87. Kelly DeVries, Medieval Military Technology (New York, 1992), p. 93: plate armor for the entire horse came at the end of the fourteenth century. Charles Edward Ashdown, British and Continental Arms and Armour (London, 1909), p. 354. 309 Dobson, San Romano, pp. 37, 43. Giovanni Bettini’s painting of the army of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta c.1460 is a notable exception. 310 Ibid., p. 37. 311 Gesta, p. 68. Audley, Arte of Warre, p. 19. 312 Saint-Denys, Règne de Charles VI, 5:756. 313 Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, 1:18. Waurin, Recueil des croniques, 3:351. 314 Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, 1:92. Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris, p. 197. 315 Phillpotts, “Battle Plan,” pp. 55–56. Gruel, Chronique d’Arthur Richemont, p. 73. Saint-Denys, Règne de Charles VI, 5:561. 307 Dobson, 308 Blair,

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“instructorum militum equestrium copias validissimas”; while de Brézé’s men are “equestres armatos.”316 The Effectiveness of the Longbow against Armored Cavalry There are significant difficulties in trying to reconcile the dramatic accounts of the arrowstorm described by the chroniclers with the results of recent scientific studies, especially when considering moving targets. Variables include: the draw weight of the bows; the types of arrowhead used; and the recognition that padded garments worn beneath armored plate significantly increased its protective effect. The longbow could certainly cause problems for unprotected men and horses at long range, which was around 250–300 yards; but at this distance shooting in a parabolic arc would limit the chances of a significant strike on an armored horse or man.317 However, not everyone could afford the same degree of protection and in an arrowstorm some missiles would inevitably find their mark. Furthermore, in a large attack, it only required one horse to be injured to disrupt the progress of several others.318 Riders subjected to extensive arrow fire would be obliged to charge with closed visors, affecting their breathing, vision, and orientation, making it difficult to maintain cohesion and couch effectively. However, success of this sort required a large supply of arrows and the presence of archers in significant numbers, confirming Commynes’ assertion that while the main strength of an army might lie with the archers; “they must be in their thousands, for few are of no avail.”319 The longbow was most effective at close range, up to 40–50 yards, where it could inflict severe wounds.320 At the siege of Dax (1442) the English approached “ jusques à la pointe de la lance” before releasing their arrows, and during the Camisade of Boulogne (1544) Monluc noticed that they came within four or five pike lengths, around 24–30 yards, before firing.321 Recent experiments have indicated that lethal penetration of a steel breast plate with underlining aketon only reliably occurred at about 22 yards, which would tend to confirm these observations.322 A revised version of the arrowstorm has been suggested, with fire reserved until around 50 yards, where shooting at a horizontal trajectory would give “more targeted and robust hits,” cause greater disruption, and conserve precious arrow supplies.323 Histoire de Charles VII, 2:92 and 2:138. Blondel, De reductione Normanniae, p. 172. Loades, The Longbow (Oxford, 2013), p. 68. 318 Stephen Morillo, Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings 1066–1135 (Woodbridge, 1994), p. 157. 319 Commynes, Mémoires, 1:37. 320 Hardy, Longbow, pp. 36–38. Loades, Longbow, pp. 66–67. 321 Gruel, Chronique de Arthur de Richemont, p. 177. Michael Harbinson, “The Longbow as a Close Quarter Weapon in the Fifteenth Century,” Hobilar: The Journal of the Lance and Longbow Society, 15 (1995), 2–9. 322 Mike Loades, “Medieval Weapons and Combat – the Longbow,” https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=5tuJvei2Uw8 (accessed 16 Mrch 2017) 323 Loades, Longbow, p. 68. 316 Basin, 317 Mike



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Shooting into the flanks of charging horsemen would result in “crowd chaos” with the horses instinctively herding together. The subsequent pressure on the center would cause horses to throw themselves against each other, leading to exhaustion with the weaker ones forced out of the line.324 Those unable to keep up, especially the less robust mounts of the auxiliaries, would expose their more vulnerable areas to arrow fire. Cavalry pushed together by flank shooting would couch less effectively and be more easily disorganized by fallen or riderless horses. At Poitiers horse armor gave the French cavalry significant frontal protection, with arrows shattering or being deflected skywards, forcing the English archers to move so that they could fire obliquely on the horses’ unprotected hindquarters.325 However, on this occasion the target was stationary; a moving horse with better armor might prove a different proposition, which is why it was essential for cavalry to maintain speed. In the fifteenth century, the crupper or steel plate which covered the animal’s rear could be almost as thick as a knight’s breastplate, indicating the priority given to protecting the horse (Fig. 5).326 Archers firing at a moving target might miss or have their arrows deflected by the curved, polished armor of the period. As a strike at right angles was usually necessary for lethal penetration, blunt trauma may have been the main cause of disruption, repeatedly thumping “the enemy with very heavy hits.”327 Successive arrow blows on armored horsemen could result in severe bruising and concussion, forcing them to retreat, an effect documented by Galbert de Bruges in the twelfth century: “armatos sine vulnere contusos, stupefactos in fugam vertebat.”328 The negative impact of blunt trauma upon horses explains why they “would not face the ‘huzzing’ arrows” and refused to charge home.329 Animals with previous experience of the phenomenon might have no desire to endure further torment. At Agincourt, several sources state that the French cavalry were forced back by the hail of missiles and fled to the rear, suggesting that large numbers of horses were not immediately disabled.330 Des Ursins considers that the French were scarcely harmed by Cavalry, p. 115. Baker, Chronicon, p. 148. 326 David Edge and Alan Williams, “A Study of the German ‘Gothic’ Fifteenth Century Equestrian Armour (A21) in the Wallace Collection, London.” Gladius 21 (2001), p. 246. The left and right rear plate cruppers have an average thickness of 1.5 mm, the upper breastplate 1.6 mm, and the lower breastplate 1.4 mm. The weakest part of the armor was the crinet with a thickness of only 0.4–0.6 mm, but the overlapping plates would help deflect missiles. Comparison with the Innocenzo horse armor (c. 1450) is difficult as there has been much degradation, but the thickness of the cruppers is between 1–1.6 mm (Wien Museum). 327 Loades, Longbow, pp. 70–74. 328 Galbert de Bruges, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bon, ed. Henri Pirenne (Paris, 1891), p. 59, cited in Clifford J. Rogers, “The Development of the Longbow in Late Medieval England and Technological Determinism,” Journal of Medieval Military History (Woodbridge, 2011), p. 330. 329 Wylie and Waugh, Henry V, 2:158. 330 Gesta, pp. 86–87: “in pluviis sagittarum retrocedere compelluntur, et fugere ad acies posteriores.” Le Fèvre, Chronique, 1:255 and Monstrelet, La chronique, 3:107 say the horses were affected “pour la force and doubte du traict.” Wylie and Waugh, Henry V, 2:158 n. 6 cite the chronicle of Ruisseauville: “pour le trait que leur chevaux ne povient plus endure.” 324 Nolan,

325 Le

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Figure 5. Milanese horse armor c 1450 by Pier Innocenzo da Faerno, showing a full crinet with cruppers protecting the horse’s rear. The flanchards are missing. Copyright of the Wien Museum



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missiles; but, unable to persuade their horses to advance because of the blows of arrows, simply turned back.331 Many problems seem to have resulted from impact rather than penetrating wounds. Similarly, at Baugé, the English horses refused to face the deluge of arrows which came from the Scots, forcing their riders to dismount. However, the fact that nearly all remounted and continued on their way suggests that most horses were not seriously wounded.332 Again, at Beauvais, the French horsemen, struck at close range, were “reboutez par le trait des archiers Anglois,” and disorganized, but crucially not destroyed, and most returned home.333 Reserving fire until the last 50 yards against armored cavalry, closing at speed, involved considerable risk. At Crécy it has been estimated that it would take just 40 seconds for a knight to cover the longbow range of 250–300 yards.334 Experiments with a simulated armored horseman moving from a distance of 80 yards at a speed of 20 miles per hour, approximately that of a charging destrier, revealed that the combined kinetic energy of the arrow and moving target could result in a much deeper penetration.335 However, there was only time for two shots with the archer under pressure to release a second arrow, unless the first was fired immediately the target moved. The closest that the bowman could realistically aim a shot and move away was at five yards and if a lance had been aimed at the archer from that distance, “jumping from its path would have been extremely hazardous.”336 The conclusion was as follows: With a military war bow of realistic draw weight, no more than two shots could be achieved during a head on charge over 80 yards by an armored knight on a galloping horse. As medieval archers, we would have been very grateful for the protection offered by our stakes.337

However, as previously demonstrated, stakes were far from being a reliable barrier and, as at Verneuil, a successful defense could only be achieved with good numbers of supporting men-at-arms. While a well-placed arrow might immediately kill an armored rider charging at close range, the same would not necessarily apply to the horse. Galloping horses are already in flight mode and would be unlikely to stop even with Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, p. 396: “Les François n’eurent guieres de dommaige du traict des Anglois car ils estoiet fort armez.” Also: “les dicts Seigneurs voulurent venir sur les archers… et quand les dicts chevaux se sentirent ferus des flesches, il ne feut onques en la puissance des hommes d’armes de passer outré.” Curry, Sources and Interpretations, p. 130 has “when the horses felt themselves pierced by arrows,” but ferus means struck not pierced. 332 Wylie and Waugh, Henry V, 3:302–03. 333 Waurin, Recueil des croniques, 3:350–51. 334 Loades, Longbow, p. 54. Rogers, “Agincourt,” p. 128 suggests the charge would have taken at least twice that long. 335 Mark Stretton, “Experimental Tests with Different Types of Medieval Arrowheads,” in Hugh Soar, ed. Secrets of the English Longbow (Pennsylvania, 2010), pp. 140–43. 336 Ibid., p. 142. 337 Ibid., p. 143. 331 des



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debilitating arrow wounds.338 As Nolan remarked, “no horse unless he is shot through the brain or has his legs broken, will fall; though stricken to the death, he will struggle through the charge.”339 Warnery cited the case of an animal who continued for 300 paces although stabbed through the heart and concluded: “a horse must be very much wounded to make him fall on the spot.”340 Ann Hyland considers that the excitement of the charge would mask the pain of a wound, whereas pain inflicted in cold blood would be registered immediately. Horses were more likely to be disordered when struck at the halt; while forming up; or at a distance greater than 50 yards, rather than in full career.341 At Agincourt, where the terrain prevented most horses from reaching a gallop, evidence suggests that many were driven back while arrayed to charge; while others were seriously wounded when hit at close quarters as they turned and milled about in front of the stakes.342 At Crécy, the French cavalry were most vulnerable when pushing through the Genoese, because their horses had not gained speed.343 Moreover, the wider a unit’s frontage the slower it would have to move to maintain formation, which explains why smaller units of cavalry, which could move quickly, might sustain fewer casualties.344 Horses galloping with full plate armor, which was the norm by the mid-fifteenth century, would prove very difficult to stop.345 Conclusion At Castillon (1453), the last battle of the Hundred Years War, the coup de grâce was given by Breton cavalry in the final triumph of the lance over the longbow. In an ironic reversal of roles, French men-at-arms mounted the horses remaining within their stockade and sallied forth to complete the rout.346 In their victory over the English in the latter part of the Hundred Years War, the French learned not to reinforce failure and increasingly adopted a combined arms approach. They understood when to engage and when to avoid battle and, on many occasions, both sides faced each other “sans combattre.”347 The French were, however, aided in their endeavors by the poorer quality of English armies with

Longbow, p. 54. Cavalry, p. 189. 340 Warnery, Cavalry, p. 19. 341 Ann Hyland, Training the Roman Cavalry (London, 1993), pp. 166–67. 342 Nicholas, Agincourt, p. 263. Elmham’s dispositos, “drawn up,” suggests that the charge had not yet begun, while the Gesta, p. 86 notes that the horses and horsemen who failed to return were struck at close quarters as they turned from the stakes: “exceptis quam pluribus quos palorum affixio ac telorum acuties in fuga tam in equis quam equitibus ne longe fugerent arestarunt.” 343 Loades, Longbow, p. 54. 344 Jeremiah B. McCall, The Cavalry of the Roman Republic (Oxford, 2002), p. 148. 345 Stuart W. Pyhrr, Donald J. Larocca, and Dirk H. Breiding, The Armored Horse in Europe 1480–1620 (New York, 2005), p. 13. 346 Nicolle, Fall of English France, p. 70. 347 Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, 2:23 338 Loades, 339 Nolan,

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their reduced proportion of men-at-arms. The longbow became less effective against improved armor and horse barding; and, after Agincourt, the English seemed less able to deploy enfilading fire. Either their flanks were too open as at Verneuil, or the French avoided it, by hitting their opponents before they were drawn up (Patay); after they broke formation (Formigny); or from the flank, as at La Gravelle. France’s ultimate victory in the Hundred Years War is usually attributed to cannon and expertise in siege warfare, but heavy cavalry also played a significant role. Smaller elite units of heavy lancers proved better than large numbers of mounted men-at-arms of variable quality; and eventually gave the French an edge over their less flexible, infantry-centered opponents. The problems inherent in using the lance with the arrêt de cuirasse were amplified by large bodies of relatively inexperienced horsemen, whereas those who became proficient were less likely to encounter difficulties. Small highly skilled groups of well armored French cavalry, led by experienced captains, could exploit the considerable power of the lance while minimizing its disadvantages. Cavalry units with fewer men-at-arms were easier to control and less likely to be disorganized by fallen horses. They were more likely to retain cohesion and couch at the gallop to penetrate the enemy ranks. The mobility of their cavalry also gave the French a strategic advantage. Smaller detachments were easier to provision in a devastated Norman countryside and, as at Formigny, could maneuver quickly both on and off the battlefield. Smaller groups enabled horsemen to remain collected, so that the angle of attack could be altered to surprise the enemy, gain a flank, or negate the effects of the stake barrier. When used correctly, as at Othée or Verneuil, a cavalry force of around 400–500 men-at-arms appears to have been the maximum required for a charge to prevail, with success often achieved with significantly fewer horsemen. It therefore seems unlikely that the flank attacks at Agincourt were undermanned, and that it was rather the water-logged terrain and tired horses that were the main determinants of the English victory. What mattered in a cavalry charge was not numbers, for “celerity and precision of movement cannot be attained with large unwieldy squadrons,” but rather that the first to reach the enemy line should remain compact, couch in quick succession, and burst through as one man.348 Many battles demonstrate the principles of using the lance expounded in Le Jouvencel and underline precepts of cavalry tactics, which remained valid until the end of the nineteenth century. It was “not necessary for cavalry to be numerous to achieve success, but bold, resolute, and rapid.”349 The concept that “determined infantry could always see off cavalry” depended upon conditions generally “unnoticed by historians”: poor leadership, tired horses, “heavy and deep” terrain, lack of cohesion, insufficient speed; and the dispersal of the squadrons by artillery.350 Usually the French circumCavalry, p. 37. Ibid., p. 117. 350 Bennett, “Medieval Warhorse,” p. 37. Nolan, Cavalry, p. 200. 348 Nolan, 349



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vented these potential handicaps. Speed was crucial because stakes proved an inadequate defense against armored horses in a properly conducted charge and because it was impossible to use the lance at the halt, when heavy cavalry became vulnerable and exposed. Armored horses who had achieved a gallop presented a difficult target and were impervious to all but the most serious injuries. Experience also mattered because the lance was “useless in a mêlée … and not a dangerous weapon in all hands,” though “at speed you can drive a lance through anything.”351 Accounts of the later battles of the Hundred Years War underline the details essential for the lance to be couched effectively: the quality of the horsemen, the experience of their leaders, cohesion, timing, and the momentum of the charge. At Valmont, selected troops, “electissimis eorum,” led by a “vir sagacis ingenii,” put spurs to their horses and charged together, “equites universi,” placing their lances in the arrêt de cuirasse at exactly the right moment to break through the English line.352 At Mortagne, with leaders “remplis de science militaire,” the cavalry kept together to fall upon the English: “tous ensemble, les François montés à cheval tombèrent précipitamment sur les Anglois.”353 At La Gravelle, the horsemen remained collected, cantered between the lines, and then tout à coup turned upon an unprotected flank and “frappèrent vaillamment sur eux.”354 At Verneuil the Lombards “chargèrent avec fougue” and at Patay, the French “se préparènt de tout point et chevaulchèrent bien et hardiement” and “adoncques galloperent.”355 While at Vivoin (1432) following “les grans gallos de leurs chevaulx,” the French couched with perfect timing.356At Gerberoy sixty horsemen, “tous les mieux montés et les plus expers” charged and “par force tréperçés et dérompus” the English “par plusieurs fois.”357 At Formigny, the English were simply unable to cope with the French horse, who “velocissimo cursu advolantes.”358 Le Jouvencel stressed the need for “bonnes gens” without whom nothing could be achieved; for powerful horses, “loyal et hardy”; and advised that smaller numbers should keep together, “tous ensemble.” It was important to support the coureurs, as at La Gravelle; and crucial to attack the enemy “saigement et froidement.” Boldness and fervor (“hardiesse” and “chaleur”) were important, but needed to arise from deliberations made in cold blood, so that they could be

351 Ibid.,

p. 79.

Règne de Charles VI, 5:756–57: “fondirent sur l’ennemi bride a battue et la lance en arrêt, ainsi qu’il avait été convenu.” 353 Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, 1:17–18. 354 Cousinot, Pucelle, p. 217. 355 Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, 1:95. Monstrelet, La chronique, 4: 329–30. Gruel, Chronique de Arthur de Richemont, pp. 72–74. 356 Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, 1:139: “à cette heure couchèrent les François leurs lances.” The defeat led to the capture of Matthew Gough and the lifting of the siege of Saint- Celérin. 357 Monstrelet, La chronique, 5:120. 358 Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, 2:140. 352 Saint-Denys,

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transformed into “diligence, qui est bien requise en guerre.”359 Thus at Valmont and Montargis (1427), the French, having achieved initial success, refused to force the issue and the English were obliged to leave their defensive positions on foot and at night.360 Similarly at Gerberoy, the French captains made their plan and then acted decisively. Auxiliaries, such as gros varles and later coustilliers, were intrinsic to a successful charge, ensuring the final discomfiture of the enemy; but the lighter armor of their horses made them vulnerable to the longbow. At Agincourt, as at Valmont, many of the stricken and unmanageable horses belonged to the varlets, because most mounted men-at-arms returned unharmed. Conversely, it was probably the failure of the Lombards to deploy sufficient mounted varlets that compromised their success at Verneuil. The vulnerability of auxiliaries to arrow fire was perhaps why the French were slow to develop their own light cavalry arm. The role played by the lance in their triumph over the English seems to have reinforced the French nobility’s fervent belief in the weapon’s pre-eminence. However, at Montlhéry coolness and foresight were absent from the command structure on both sides and with large numbers of inexperienced horsemen, maladroit in using the lance, the battle became a disorderly free-for-all; and, as at Fornovo, lances were readily discarded. The heavy lance was both potent and problematic. The arrêt de cuirasse enabled the lance to deliver a devastating blow, but its drawbacks exacerbated the weaknesses of heavy cavalry. There was an increased tendency for a charge to fragment, leaving those who had achieved the speed to couch isolated among the enemy, or disadvantaged during the pursuit, where a lancegay might prove the superior weapon. As we have seen, weather and artillery were significant factors in many encounters. A breeze might make couching the war lance difficult and rainsoaked terrain was the major cause of disorganization at both Agincourt and Fornovo. Men-at-arms and horses became fatigued by heat and dust, as at Monthléry; and hard ground affected the positioning of stakes at Verneuil and Mortagne. In the latter engagement French cavalry created dust clouds to obscure their deployment aware that enemy units unable to see the standards were more liable to break.361 Artillery influenced several battles later in the century, destroying stake defenses at Bayonne (1451); while smaller pieces prepared the way for cavalry at Geberoy, Formigny, and Castillon. The combination of archers and gunpowder weapons was highly effective both in provoking and disrupting a cavalry charge.362 Gun shots would frighten and disorganize the horses, giving Bueil, Jouvencel, 1:148; 1:159–61 and 2:101. Nolan, Cavalry, p. 36, underlines the need for good officers and horses. 360 Gesta, p. 119. Waurin, Recueil des croniques, 3:220. 361 Delabos and Gaillard, Montlhéry, p. 48. 362 Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII, 2:316. Smith and DeVries, Artillery, p. 29. 359 de



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archers the opportunity to fire at their more exposed areas, as at Bulgnéville. Similarly, a flanking movement by French cavalry at Montlhéry was repelled by English archers, as the “large number of horses” killed by artillery fire made their task easier.363 In the following century the French obsession with the heavy lance continued, manifesting itself in the cult of the great captain, where loyalty and individual valor took precedence over collective effort. Irrational and precipitate mounted attacks returned, leading to the death of Gaston de Foix at Ravenna (1512) and the massacre of the French gendarmerie at Pavia (1525).364 The reasons for the decline of the lance are well known. Extensive training was necessary to handle the weapon proficiently and the large number of horses and ancillaries required to support a single individual, who could only use his weapon once, was simply not cost effective. Light cavalry were cheaper and more flexible. The advent of the pistol around 1534 finally made lance-armed heavy cavalry redundant.365 In France the arrêt de cuirasse and the heavy lance fell into disuse around the time of the last Wars of Religion.366 Paradoxically, while the arrêt de cuirasse was invented to facilitate the continued use of the heavy war lance, it also gave the lancegay a new dimension, enabling the weapon to impart a blow almost as effective as that of its heavier counterpart. In a further irony, it was the increased versatility given to the lancegay that prolonged the life of the arrêt de cuirasse. The lancegay, a weapon favored by English men-at-arms and sometimes engraved with their coats of arms, was no longer restricted to Burgundian coustilliers, but throughout Europe became the essential accoutrement of emperors and other illustrious persons.367

archers belonged to the contingent of Antoine de Bourgogne, de La Marche, Mémoires, 3:11. Vaughan, Philip the Good, p. 387. Smith and DeVries, Artillery, p. 141–45. 364 Oman, Art of War in the Sixteenth Century, p. 146, pp. 202–03. 365 Buttin, “La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” pp. 120–21. 366 Ibid. 367 Scott-Macnab, “Sir Topas and his Lancegay”, pp. 123–24. Buttin, “La lance et l’arrêt de cuirasse,” p. 176. 363 The

7 Supplying the Army, 1498: The Florentine Campaign in the Pisan Countryside Fabrizio Ansani

This article analyzes the equipping of an army in late medieval Italy: an expensive, problematic, and daily process that involved statesmen, soldiers, and artisans. The context is Renaissance Tuscany during the transition from the traditional warfare of the Italian peninsula to a strategy radically influenced by the appearance of new French cannons. The connections between practices of war and methods of production are the focus. Other subjects discussed include the collection of money, the market for raw materials, technological developments, and the effectiveness of the transalpine ordnance. Using data gathered from the Florentine State Archive, supplemented by numerous chronicles, the article demonstrates that innovations in artillery led to significant changes in the supply chain of munitions, and in the conduct of sieges. In spite of a generic awareness of their impact on operational choices, the supply of munitions has not sparked much interest among scholars of Renaissance Italy.1 Much remains to be studied about the manufacture of or the commerce in weapons in the fifteenth-century Peninsula, or about military–technological innovations, or about the construction of new arsenals.2 Historians have focused more on the theoretical studies of eminent engineers, and on the formation of their humanistic culture, than on the actual practices of smiths and gunmakers.3 Gilded parade 1

2 3

Enrico Stumpo, “La finanza di guerra negli antichi stati italiani,” in Storia economica della guerra, ed. Catia Eliana Gentilucci (Rome, 2008), p. 196; William Caferro, “Warfare and Economy in Renaissance Italy,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 39 (2008), pp. 198–200; Richard Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence (Baltimore, 2009), pp. 400–01. Manlio Calegari, “Nel mondo dei ‘pratici’: Molte domande e qualche risposta,” in Saper fare: Studi di storia delle tecniche in area mediterranea, ed. Manlio Calegari (Pisa, 2004), pp. 9–33. Andrea Bernardoni, “La fusione delle artiglierie tra Medioevo e Rinascimento: ‘Cronaca’ di un rinnovamento tecnologico attraverso i manoscritti di Leonardo,” Cromohs 19 (2014) pp. 106–16; Gustina Scaglia, “A Miscellany of Bronze Works and Texts in the Zibaldone of Buonaccorso Ghiberti,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 120 (1976) pp. 485–513; Scaglia, “Drawings of Machines for Architecture from the Early Quattrocento in Italy,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 25 (1966) pp. 90–114; Bertrand Gille, Leonardo e gli ingegneri del Rinascimento, trans. Adriano Carugo (Milan, 1972); Pamela Long, Artisans, Practitioners and the Rise of the New Sciences (Corvallis, 2011), pp. 94–126.

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armors have often drawn the attention of art experts, but the state’s orders of thousands of cuirasses have been completely neglected by economic historians.4 The extensive, lively market for the indispensable ingredients of gunpowder, especially saltpeter, has been regarded with the same indifference as the introduction of new shapes and new materials in the fabrication of ordnance.5 Sporadic publications on the management and production of firearms cannot fill all the blanks in the field,6 and cannot be compared to the complete analyses offered by the international literature.7 Mines and furnaces, at least, have been studied by archaeologists and specialists in medieval craftsmanship.8 This neglect of the technological and economic aspects of warfare is perhaps not surprising, considering that it is only recently that the military historiography of the fifteenth-century Peninsula has evolved from badly outdated paradigms.9 4

5

6

7

8

9

Silvio Leydi, “Le armi,” in Il rinascimento italiano e l’Europa. 6 vols, ed. Franco Franceschi, Richard Goldthwaite, and Reinhold Mueller (Treviso, 2007), 3:171–90; Stuart Pyhrr, José Godoy, and Silvio Leydi, Heroic Armor of the Italian Renaissance: Filippo Negroli and his Contemporaries (New York, 1998); Luciana Frangioni, “Aspetti della produzione delle armi milanesi nel XV secolo,” in Milano nell’età di Ludovico il Moro (Milan, 1983), pp. 195–200; Mario Scalini, “L’armatura fiorentina del Quattrocento e la produzione d’armi in Toscana,” in Guerra e guerrieri nella Toscana del Rinascimento, ed. Franco Cardini and Marco Tangheroni (Florence, 1990), pp. 83–126. Silvia Bianchessi, “Cavalli, armi e salnitro fra Milano e Napoli nel secondo Quattrocento,” Nuova rivista storica 82 (1998), pp. 572–82; Fabrizio Ansani, “Craftsmen, Artillery, and War Production in Renaissance Florence,” Vulcan 4 (2016), pp. 12–13. Walter Panciera, Il governo delle artiglierie: Tecnologia bellica e istituzioni veneziane nel secondo Cinquecento (Milan, 2005); Calegari, “La mano sul cannone: Alfonso I d’Este e le pratiche di fusione dell’artiglieria,” in Pratiche e linguaggi: Contributi a una storia della cultura tecnica e scientifica, ed. Luciana Gatti (Pisa, 2005), pp. 55–76; Renato Ridella, “L’evoluzione strutturale nelle artiglierie di bronzo in Italia fra XV e XVII secolo,” in I cannoni di Venezia: Artiglierie della Serenissima da fortezze e relitti, ed. Carlo Beltrame and Marco Morin (Florence, 2013), pp. 13–28; idem, “Produzione di artiglierie nel XVI secolo: i fonditori genovesi Battista Merello e Dorino II Gioardi,” in Pratiche e linguaggi, pp. 77–134; Marco Merlo, “Armamenti e gestione dell’esercito a Siena nell’età dei Petrucci. Le armi,” Rivista di studi militari 5 (2016); Fabrizio Ansani, “‘Per infinite sperientie’: I maestri dell’artiglieria nell’Italia del Quattrocento,” Reti medievali rivista 18 (2017). See, for example: Kelly DeVries, Medieval Military Technology (Peterborough, Ont., 1992); Kelly DeVries and Robert Douglas Smith, The Artillery of the Dukes of Burgundy (Woodbridge, 2005); Philippe Contamine, “L’artillerie royale française à la veille des guerres d’Italie,” Annales de Bretagne 71 (1964); Contamine, “Les industries de guerre dans la France de la Renaissance: L’exemple de l’artillerie,” Revue historique 221 (1984); David Bachrach, “The Military Administration of England: The Royal Artillery,” The Journal of Military History 68 (2004); Dan Spencer, “The Provision of Artillery for the 1428 Expedition to France,” Journal of Medieval Military History 13 (2015); John Francis Guilmartin, Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and Mediterrean Warfare at Sea in the 16th Century (London, 2003). Angelo Nesti and Ivan Tognarini, Archeologia industriale. L’oggetto, i metodi, le figure professionali (Rome, 2003), pp. 70–106; Enzo Baraldi, “La siderurgia In Italia dal XII al XVII secolo,” in La civiltà del ferro. Dalla preistoria al terzo millennio, ed. Walter Nicodemi (Milan, 2004), pp. 147–86. William Caferro, “Continuity, Long-term Service and Permanent Forces: A Reassessment of the Florentine Army in the Fourteenth Century,” The Journal of Modern History 80 (2008), pp.



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Niccolò Machiavelli’s juxtaposition of unreliable mercenary companies and dependable citizen armies10 has finally been overcome by a gradual reevaluation of the military establishments of kingdoms, duchies, and republics. Several contributions have highlighted the importance of permanent military offices in the organization of armies, the repercussions of war on tax systems, and the formation of regional states.11 The purpose of this article will be the examination of one of the indispensable functions of those institutions: the supplying of arms and money to soldiers during a campaign. The context will be northern Tuscany in the late fifteenth century, at the time of the war between the Florentine Republic and the Pisan rebels. This conflict illustrates the appearance of new technologies on the battlefield, their assimilation, and their considerable, direct effects on production. Moreover, the account-books of the Dieci di Balìa, the ten officials responsible for Florentine warfare, offer the opportunity to study the output levels of the armament industry, the costs of munitions, and the quality of weaponry.12 The correspondence of this office, along with the dispatches of the Signoria and the letters of condottieri and commissioners, makes it possible to document also the solutions to problems of transportation, the difficulties with the scarcity of equipment, the role of public demand in the introduction of innovations, and the problematic adaptation to new patterns of war and military strategies. Lastly, diaries and chronicles provide the context of the political tensions between Florentine factions, and open up the possibility of seeing the effects of the work of the Dieci di Balìa in the results of sieges and battles.

10

11

12

219–23; Claudio Donati, “Strutture militari degli Stati Italiani nella prima età moderna: Una rassegna degli studi recenti,” in Società Italiana di Storia Militare: Quaderno 2000, ed. Piero Del Negro (Rome, 2003), pp. 45–62. Niccolò Machiavelli, Il principe, ed. Mario Martelli (Rome, 2006), bks. 12–13; Machiavelli, L’arte della guerra, in L’arte della guerra. Scritti politici minori, ed. Denis Fachard, Giorgio Masi, and Jean Jacques Marchand (Rome, 2001), bk. 1; Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, ed. Francesco Bausi (Rome, 2001), bk. 2. Francesco Storti, L’esercito napoletano nella seconda metà del Quattrocento (Salerno, 2007); Michael Mallett, L’organizzazione militare di Venezia nel Quattrocento, trans. Enrico Basaglia (Rome, 1989); Maria Nadia Covini, L’esercito del duca: Organizzazione militare e istituzioni al tempo degli Sforza (Rome, 1998); Enrica Guerra, Soggetti a ribalda fortuna: Gli uomini dello stato estense nelle guerre dell’Italia quattrocentesca (Milan, 2005); Roberto Farinelli and Marco Merlo, “La Camera del Comune: Miniere, metallurgia, armi,” in L’età di Pandolfo Petrucci. Cultura e tecnologia a Siena nel Rinascimento, ed. Petra Pertici (Siena, 2016), pp. 189–225. For comprehensive and comparative surveys, see Piero Pieri, Il Rinascimento e la crisi militare italiana (Turin, 1970), pp. 257–398; Michael Mallett, Mercenaries and their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy (London, 1974); Luciano Pezzolo, “La ‘rivoluzione militare’: Una prospettiva italiana,” in Militari in Età Moderna: La centralità di un tema di confine, ed. Alessandra Dattero and Stefano Levati (Milan, 2006), pp. 32–59. An outline of the tasks of these officers can be found in Guidubaldo Guidi, Lotte, pensiero e istituzioni politiche nella Repubblica Fiorentina dal 1494 al 1512, 3 vols. (Florence, 1992), 2:787–99 and 2:804–08. An incomplete, superficial investigation of their documentation has been recently made by Andrea Guidi, “The Florentine Archives in Transition. Government, Warfare and Communication,” European History Quarterly 46 (2016), pp. 466–67.

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Internal Turmoil, External Rebellions: The Origins of the Campaign The events of 1498 and 1499 cannot be understood without a brief summary of the internal power struggles that characterized Florentine public life after the exile of Piero de’ Medici and the fall of his regime.13 During the first years of the republican restoration, three major rival parties competed for preponderance in public councils. The powerful “sect” of the “holy prophet” Girolamo Savonarola ruled “everything” in the capital. It was composed by the so-called frateschi, or piagnoni, or pinzocheri, upholders of a popular, “broader” government. Their foes were the oligarchic arrabbiati, supported by the radical, violent youth of the compagnacci. Last but not least, the nostalgic palleschi, or bigi, aspired to the Medici’s return and the revival of the “old state.” On several occasions they were found guilty of plots, but their support was indispensable for governing the town.14 Furthermore, other interests grouped and divided the Florentine citizens. The opposition between the common people and the aristocratic oligarchs often developed into fierce conflicts over the extension of political rights, the electoral system, and fiscal legislation.15 The ambitious, “degenerate” elite was repeatedly accused of concentrating power in its own hands, assigning public offices to “friends” and “unworthy men,” and increasing taxation in order to oppress the common people.16 The “union of the city,” invoked continuously during meetings of the parlamento, was simply a chimera. As Parenti described the situation: Our city was in complete disorder. Hope was lacking. Expenditures were multiplying. Artisans could not work, poor men could not feed their families. We could not bear this situation. Our citizens, moreover, were split. Some yearned to steal the government from the people, establishing an oligarchy. Others wanted to oppose this peril, even at the cost of seizing arms. The supporters of the past regime hoped to recall Piero de’ Medici. Selfishness and ambition incited everyone. Even the Signoria was divided. Florentines were proving to be enemies of each other.17 13

14

15

16 17

Leonardo Morelli, “Cronaca,” in Delizie degli eruditi toscani, XIX., ed. Ildefonso di San Luigi (Florence, 1785), p. 199; Piero Parenti, Storia fiorentina, I, ed. Andrea Matucci (Florence, 1994), pp. 149–51; Filippo, Alamanno, and Neri Rinuccini, Ricordi storici, ed. Giuseppe Aiazzi (Florence, 1840), pp. 152–57; Luca Landucci, Diario fiorentino, ed. Iodoco del Badia (Florence, 1969), pp. 73–76 and 89–90. Bartolomeo Cerretani, Storia fiorentina, ed. Giuliana Berti (Florence, 1994), pp. 222–23 and 233–34; Filippo de’ Nerli, Commentari dei fatti civili occorsi dentro la città di Firenze, ed. Colombo Coen (Trieste, 1859), pp. 112–20; Francesco Guicciardini, Storia fiorentina, ed. Piero and Luigi Guicciardini (Florence, 1859), pp. 139–41; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, I, pp. 167–69 and 190–91; Piero Vaglienti, Storia dei suoi tempi, ed. Giuliana Berti, Michele Luzzati, and Ezio Tongiorgi (Pisa, 1982), pp. 31–41. Giorgio Cadoni, Lotte politiche e riforme istituzionali a Firenze tra il 1494 e il 1502 (Rome, 1999), pp. 19-84; de’ Nerli, Commentari, pp. 134–35; Jacopo Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, ed. Lelio Arbib (Florence, 1842), pp. 119–20. Cerretani, Storia fiorentina, p. 230; Piero Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, ed. Andrea Matucci (Florence, 2005), pp. 53–54. Parenti, Storia fiorentina, I, p. 272.



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Another cause of bitter controversy was foreign policy. The “pacific friar” exhorted his followers to trust the promises of the king of France, the victorious “divine minister” guided by “holy wisdom.” Charles VIII was also favored by merchants and bankers, who were worried about the loss of privileges and prestige in Transalpine fairs, and menaced by royal banishments.18 Faith and fear, as well as money and markets, consolidated an unstable alliance, despite all the deceits perpetrated by the “wicked,” “perfidious,” and “thieving” French.19 Florentines, moreover, were suspicious of Italian diplomacy. According to Francesco Guicciardini, Ludovico Sforza, the duke of Milan, often spoke in public against the republican regulations. To the people’s eyes, “il Moro,” as he was called, was secretly planning to establish an oligarchic government in collusion with the arrabbiati, the bigi, and other “principal citizens.” Increasingly, the gentry was considered subversive, antagonistic to the “good, popular way of living.”20 This already critical situation was undoubtedly worsened by the war with Pisa. The city of the leaning tower had rebelled against the Florentine “unbearable tyranny” on 9 November,1494, during the stay of Charles VIII. Shouting for “people and freedom,” Pisans occupied the “old citadel,” expelled their rulers, and pledged loyalty to the king. In the vicinity, the inhabitants of Lari, Vico, Ponsacco, and Cascina joined the revolt immediately.21 Lucca and Genoa backed the turmoil.22 In a few days, Florence lost its most important regional market,23 one of its principal arsenals,24 and a “large quantity” of its soldiers. Pisan men-at-arms, in fact, abandoned the Florentine forces, “and all of them are now against us.”25 That was the start of a wearing military campaign that raged across all of Tuscany. Neither the king nor his envoys could obtain the surrender of the “obstinate” Pisans, notwithstanding the pacts between his majesty and the Florentine Republic.26 Florence reacted by force of arms in December 1494, sending 18 19 20 21

22 23

24 25 26

Landucci, Diario fiorentino, pp. 108–09; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, I, pp. 207, 251, and 282–83; Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, p. 96. Rinuccini, Ricordi storici, pp. 138–39; Landucci, Diario fiorentino, p. 112. Guicciardini, Storia fiorentina, p. 145; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, I, pp. 210–11 and 315–16; Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, p. 99. Giovanni Portoveneri, “Memoriale,” in Archivio Storico Italiano 6 (1845), pp. 287–88; Vaglienti, Storia dei suoi tempi, pp. 14–20; Cerretani, Storia fiorentina, pp. 210–11; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, p. 129. Portoveneri, “Memoriale,” pp. 294–95; Paolo Giovio, Historie del suo tempo, 2 vols. (Venice, 1555), 1:81v. Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence, pp. 149–58; Giuliano Pinto, “Cultura mercantile ed espansione economica di Firenze,” in Vespucci, Firenze e le Americhe, ed. Giuliano Pinto, Leonardo Rombai, and Claudio Tripodi (Florence, 2014), pp. 9–10. Fabrizio Ansani, “Geografie della guerra nella Toscana del Rinascimento: Produzione di armi e circolazione dei pratici,” Archivio Storico Italiano 651 (2017), pp. 104–08. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 38, fol. 29r. Among the other things, these covenants provided for the “restitution” to Florence of Pisa and Livorno at the end of the Neapolitan expedition. See Négociations diplomatiques de la France avec la Toscane, ed. Abel Desjardins and Giuseppe Canestrini, 5 vols. (Paris, 1859), 1:601–06.

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its troops toward San Miniato.27 Conscript infantrymen were mobilized in the Pistoiese region, while the “brave” Florentine youth marched to the army’s encampment. According to Luca Landucci, the possibility of plunder attracted also numerous peasants.28 By the end of the winter, a large part of the Pisan countryside was reconquered, but, in March, the uprising in Montepulciano led to mounting tension on the southern, Sienese border.29 The fighting on two fronts had imaginable consequences. Undisturbed, the Pisans made several incursions into Valdinievole and into Maremma. With the help of the French garrison of the “new citadel” and Gascon mercenaries, they also assaulted Montecarlo and Ripafratta. 30 In May 1495, the fall of the latter, and the “betrayal” of the Gallic troops, raised a storm of protest. Citizens blamed the Dieci di Balìa for a “deliberate” rout, “planned for subjugating our people.” Charles VIII became viewed as an “unworthy, disloyal, perfidious, barbarous assassin.” The enraged Florentines would have cursed him again in the following months. On 14 September, during a first siege of Pisa, the same French garrison, the same “traitors,” opened fire on Florentine soldiers, forcing them to withdraw. The Florentines hired many soldiers, entrusting them to the Guidubaldo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, a young man, with more talent for literature than war. The Dieci, moreover, appointed Francesco Valori and Paolantonio Soderini as commissioners general. Our army fiercely entered the suburb of Saint Mark, near the walls of Pisa, and several men-at-arms got over the city gates. Rebels were dismayed. However, despite our bribes and their promises, the French troops began to aim their guns at our army, from the citadel. Like mortal enemies, they bombarded our brigade, killing several of our men. Our officers, then, ordered the retreat.31

Not content with that, the French captain also sold the “new citadel” to the rebels, a few days after the attack.32 Nonetheless, the republican government did not accept the assistance of the new Italian League in recovering Pisa. On the contrary, the intransigence toward this alliance between Venice, Rome, and Milan lasted a long time. The royal lies, the “victorious overcoming” of the French by the League at Fornovo, and Charles’s retreat into Asti and to Lyon did not change the minds of the frateschi rulers, comforted by Savonarola’s sermons, and frightened by a probable “confusion” and a possible “revolution.”33 The confederation was therefore compelled 27 28 29 30 31 32

33

ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 31, fols. 36v and 47r. Landucci, Diario fiorentino, p. 98. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 32, fols. 92r, 97v, 102r, and 176rv. Parenti, Storia fiorentina, I, pp. 205, 208, 216–17, and 223; Portoveneri, “Memoriale,” pp. 303–09; Giovio, Historie, 1:83v–84r. Cerretani, Storia fiorentina, p. 230. Portoveneri, “Memoriale,” pp. 322–23; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, I, pp. 265–66; Rinuccini, Ricordi storici, p. 149; Landucci, Diario fiorentino, pp. 115–16; Guicciardini, Storia fiorentina, pp. 135–37. Giovio, Historie, 1:142r–144v; Vaglienti, Storia dei suoi tempi, pp. 25–26. Guicciardini, Storia fiorentina, p. 145; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, I, pp. 207, 236, 243–44, and 251.



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to defend the Pisans, in order to put pressure on the Florentines to support the League in repelling the Gallic menace. The first Milanese and Genoese contingents arrived in Tuscany in the autumn of 1495, along with Venetian money.34 In the next year, even the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, besieged the Florentine port of Livorno, but his expedition resulted in an unexpected, resounding failure.35 During the following season, the campaign dragged on. Victories alternated with defeats. Fortresses and towns were conquered and then lost. Diplomacy and war reached an impasse. Neither the Florentine efforts nor the allied reinforcements could break the stalemate, until the spring of 1498. Springtime in Florence, Springboard for War The situation changed radically at that time. In Florence, politics took another sudden twist. Savonarola was losing popularity, due to papal excommunications, and because of a split within his party. This came to a head during the vespers of Palm Sunday, on 8 April, when a small group of compagnacci assaulted the monastery of Saint Mark, followed by a large number of armed citizens, intending to “annihilate their opponents.”36 The surprised frateschi barricaded themselves in the sanctuary, defending its doors with prayers and handguns. During the tumult, the principal exponent of their faction, Francesco Valori, was chased down and killed by his rivals. The Signoria, then, decided to storm the church with artillery, “like it was a castle,” and to support the attackers with trained infantrymen. Eight hours later, the Dominican friar was arrested.37 His capture preceded the fall of his followers. Forty of them were charged with misconduct, favoritism, and clientelism, and punished with exiles, fines, and temporary exclusions from public offices.38 The arrabbiati were finally overthrowing their adversaries.39 Simultaneously, the piagnoni lost another symbolic leader. Charles VIII passed away in Amboise on 7 April. The death of the French sovereign was a turning point in Florentine foreign policy. The ascendant pro-Milanese faction renewed and strengthened its relations with Ludovico Sforza, and the former adversary was delighted at the possibility of bringing his earlier diplomatic efforts to a successful conclusion. The duke offered the new government financial aid for the Pisan war, promising also to mediate between Florence and its 34 35 36 37

38 39

Portoveneri, “Memoriale,” pp. 324–25; Vaglienti, Storia dei suoi tempi, pp. 37–38; Giovio, Historie, 1:147v; Landucci, Diario fiorentino, p. 116. Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, pp. 102–10; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, pp. 47–61. Vaglienti, Storia dei suoi tempi, p. 46. Guicciardini, Storia fiorentina, pp. 171–74; Cerretani, Storia fiorentina, pp. 246–48; Landucci, Diario fiorentino, pp. 170–71; Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, pp. 150–53; Giovanni Cambi, “Istorie,” in Delizie degli eruditi toscani, XXIV, ed. Ildefonso di San Luigi (Florence, 1785), pp. 119–21. ASF, Consulte e pratiche, 64, fols. 82r–85v. Cambi, “Istorie,” pp. 121 and 132; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, pp. 167–75; de’ Nerli, Commentari, p. 132, Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, p. 162.

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Genoese enemies.40 Although his letters from Lombardy were received with “relief” and “happiness” by Florence’s rulers, the common people had a very different opinion on the subject. Piero Parenti and Jacopo Nardi reported the union was afraid to secretly set the stage for an oligarchic coup. Piero Vaglienti accused “il Moro” of being a “whore,” asserting that he extended the hand of friendship only to be protected against his aggressive Venetian neighbors and from the pretensions of the new king of France, Louis XII, who was claiming the Milanese duchy as an inheritance from his grandmother.41 The Republic underwent a further major upheaval in the next month. On 20 May, Venetian and Pisan troops routed the Florentine forces at San Regolo. The army, having run into an ambush, suffered heavy losses. Several condottieri were imprisoned, and 80 men-at-arms were captured or killed. The rest of cavalry were deprived of horses and arms. About 150 infantrymen died, while most of the survivors disbanded. The Florentine commissioner, Guglielmo de’ Pazzi, and the governor general, the count Rinuccio da Marsciano, escaped imprisonment fortuitously, but they were soon charged with imprudence and greed. 42 Our commanders noticed six hundred light horse plundering in Maremma. The menat-arms of count Rinuccio and the infantrymen of Ciriaco from Borgo Sansepolcro, then, went to meet the foes. Treacherous peasants, however, informed the rebels about our counterattack, and Pisans were able to prepare an ambush between San Regolo and Lari. Our brigade, in the meanwhile, assaulted the enemies, and recovered their booty. Hankering after loot, our troops fell into the trap, and were routed.43

Apart from the defeat, the Republic’s officers had to face other severe difficulties in those weeks. The political turmoil in the capital had serious repercussions on the management of the field army, entrenched near the border town of Pontedera.44 Guglielmo de’ Pazzi complained repeatedly about the delays of instructions, the indiscipline of the mercenaries, and, above all, the shortage of money and food. At the end of April, the hay for horses and oxen was lacking. On 6 May, the commissioner had to put down a mass brawl among “our desperate and starving soldiers.” He had to “buy on credit,

40 41 42

43 44

ASF, Consulte e pratiche, 64, fols. 59r–60r; Biagio Buonaccorsi, Diario (Florence, 1568), p. 2; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, p. 158; Cerretani, Storia fiorentina, p. 257. Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, p. 184; Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, pp. 172–73; Vaglienti, Storia dei suoi tempi, p. 54. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 57, fols. 137r and 207r; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, p. 179; Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, pp. 173–74; Marino Sanudo, Diari, I, ed. Federico Stefani (Venice, 1879), pp. 966––67 and 974–77; Domenico Malipiero, “Annali veneti,” Archivio Storico Italiano 7 (1843), p. 503; Girolamo Priuli, “Diari,” I, ed. Arturo Segre, in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XXIV, 3, ed. Giosuè Carducci and Vittorio Fiorini (Città di Castello, 1912), p. 82. Vaglienti, Storia dei suoi tempi, p. 51. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 57, fol. 169r; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, p. 184.



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begging for everything.”45 After the rout, the new arrabbiati-controlled Dieci decided to take drastic steps to remedy the situation, “not only defending towns, but also taking the offensive.”46 Italian Captain, French Warfare The numerous letters dispatched from the Palazzo dei Priori on 21 May testify to all of the measures taken by Florentine officers to confront the immediate perils they faced. According to Parenti, “if our plans used to proceed slowly, now we are animated.” Several thousand florins were collected from the convicted frateschi. The Dieci urgently requested 500 infantrymen from the Pistoiese commune, and called to arms several condottieri, including Alessandro Bentivoglio da Bologna, Ottaviano Riario da Forli, and Astorre Baglioni da Perugia. They also sent to the encampment another commissioner general, Benedetto de’ Nerli, tasked with resisting the Pisan attacks until the arrival of the new captain general, Paolo Vitelli da Città di Castello.47 The nominated commander of the army had already served in Florentine forces, like other members of his family. His father, Niccolò, had fought against Sienese and Neapolitan troops after the Pazzi’s conspiracy, and was restored to the signoria of Città di Castello by Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1482. During that decade, his older brothers, Camillo and Giovanni, were Florentine connestabili, that is, heads of mercenary infantrymen.48 Paolo followed their footsteps with his own company, led jointly with his younger brother, Vitellozzo, earning the esteem of allies and enemies alike.49 In September 1495, they were under the walls of Pisa. Two years later, the Republic paid to them 25,000 florins for the services of 300 men-at-arms, encamped in Valdichiana. Their correspondence for 1497 reveals the “friendship” between the Vitelli and the leaders of Savonarola’s faction, such as Paolantonio Soderini and Francesco Valori. Moreover, one of their secretaries, Cerbone Cerboni, stayed permanently in Florence.50 Far from Tuscany, along with Camillo, Paolo and Vitellozzo gained valuable military experience during the time of Charles VIII’s expedition. The three relatives, in fact, were hired by the king, along with other Italian condottieri. During the march toward Naples, they were probably impressed by the 45 46 47

48

49 50

ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 56, fol. 155v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 57, fols. 147r, 189r, and 211r. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 58, fol. 125r. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 56, fol. 172rv; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 57, fol. 141v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 58, fols. 127r–128r. See also Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, p. 179; Sanudo, Diari, I, p. 973. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 22, fol. 31r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 24, fols. 58v–59r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 27, fol. 250v. Sanudo, Diari, I, p. 547. ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fol. 6r; ASF, Lettere varie, 5, fols. 37r, 71r, and 87r; ASF, Lettere varie, 9, fol. 2r.

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Ultramontane siege techniques, by the crushing of Montefortino and Monte San Giovanni. The rapidity and the efficiency with which French gunners could move, aim, and fire their guns represented an absolute, frightening novelty. The practice of positioning numerous guns near the walls, the simultaneity of the explosions, the saturation bombardments, the use of iron cannonballs, and the immediate assaults were unprecedented in Italian Renaissance sieges.51 The brothers learned a lot from this warfare: about the use of ordnance, infantry tactics, strict discipline, and violent brutality.52 Vitellozzo and Camillo mastered pike squares. Paolo, instead, got very interested in firearms, and especially in the cannons, culverins, and falcons of the royal artillery. After their return to Umbria, he commissioned Florentine and Pistoiese artisans to craft bronze harquebuses, molds for casting handguns, “French” heavy lances for knights, and infantry pole weapons “according to the Swiss custom.” A Spanish gunmaker, maestro Pietro, was entrusted with the manufacture of several falcons. Two cannons were also requested from the Florentine commune.53 The relationship between France and Florence led to a formal condotta with these states. The two-year contract was signed on 12 February 1498. Under its terms, Paolo and Vitellozzo had to maintain 200 men-at-arms and 200 mounted crossbowmen, with an annual wage of 40,000 florins.54 Despite the large number of troops, Paolo was not appointed with the title of captain general due to the previous agreements between the Republic and Charles VIII, which forbade a unilateral designation.55 The death of the king, and the continuing Pisan menace, eventually favored the promotion. On 1 June, Paolo received the ceremonial baton and the Florentine insignia from the Signoria, in recognition of his “virtue and experience,” and with “honor, convenience, benefit, and reputation of the Republic.”56 The appointment, however, was not popular with everyone. The captain was chosen in 51

52

53 54 55 56

Contamine, “L’artillerie royale française à la veille des guerres d’Italie,” p. 248; Simon Pepper, “Castles and Cannons in the Naples Campaign of 1494–95,” in The French Descent into Renaissance Italy: Antecedents and Effects, ed. David Abulafia (Aldershot, 1995), p. 291. Pieri, Il Rinascimento e la crisi militare italiana, pp. 366–68; Cecil Clough, “The Romagna Campaign of 1494. A Significant Military Encounter,” in The French Descent into Renaissance Italy, p. 193. For the innovation of French guns, and their impact on Italian warfare, see: Pepper, “Castles and Cannons in the Naples Campaign,” pp. 286–91; Bert Hall, Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe (Baltimore and London, 1997), pp. 87–95; Ridella, “Produzione di artiglierie nel XVI secolo,” pp. 78–87; Jean-François Belhoste, “Nascita e sviluppo dell’artiglieria in Europa,” in Il Rinascimento Italiano e l’Europa, 6 vols. (Trento, 2007), 3:335–43; Fabrizio Ansani, “‘This French Artillery is Very Good and Very Effective’: Hypotheses on the Diffusion of a New Military Technology in Renaissance Italy,” The Journal of Military History 83 (2019), 347–78. ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fols. 3r, 21r, 31r, 40r, 40r, 67r, 112r, 121r, 124r, and 153r; ASF, Lettere varie, 5, fols. 9r and 36r; ASF, Miscellanea repubblicana, 3, e. 98, fol. 79r. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 43, fols. 94r–99v. Négociations diplomatiques de la France avec la Toscane, 1:604. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 43, fol. 111v; Landucci, Diario fiorentino, p. 179; Vaglienti, Storia dei suoi tempi, p. 55.



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preference to the governor general, count Rinuccio da Marsciano, who could vaunt sixteen years of uninterrupted service in the Florentine army.57 The Dieci tried to explain their reasons, but the count felt very angry at the nomination, threatening to leave the encampment with his company and his five brothers, Lamberto, Ludovico, Bernardino, Pirro, and Alessandro. In the capital, his resentment and his “dishonor” were soon manipulated by the frateschi against the new arrabbiati officials. Once again, the political division of the city had major repercussions on the conduct of the war. Only a significant increase in the number of men-at-arms of the governor’s condotta convinced him to stay, but the appearance of obedience concealed a fierce rivalry, stirred up by the various factions, not counting the Venetian attempts to corrupt and hire the count.58 In the meanwhile, the light cavalry of the rebels continued to raid the countryside. On 3 June, 200 horsemen appeared in the vicinity of Montecarlo. The formidable Venetian stradiotti even ventured into the neighborhood of Florence, sacking inns and burning vineyards around San Miniato, San Casciano, and Santa Gonda.59 Nonetheless, Florentine spies reported numerous problems among their ranks. Men-at-arms were not properly paid. Gunpowder was lacking. Above all, the Venetian officers, the provveditore Tommaso Zen and the “governor of the army” Marco da Martinengo, were deeply unpopular among citizens and soldiers, because of their “villainy” and their quarrels.60 On 7 June, however, the Pisans decided to carry out a surprise assault against Ponsacco, in order to bar the way to enemy reinforcements. The artillery “heavily” damaged the town walls, but Florentine “perturbation” did not last long. On the next day, the night advance of the Vitelli’s entire company from Montopoli compelled the attackers to withdraw in disorder at sunrise (Fig. 1).61 On 8 June, “200 men-at-arms, 150 mounted crossbowmen, one hundred mounted hand gunners, and one thousand and five hundred infantrymen” entered the Florentine encampment in Pontedera, after a long, forced march through the Valdichiana, the Chianti region, and the Valdelsa.62 According to the registers of the Dieci, with these reinforcements the whole army numbered, 57

58

59 60 61 62

ASF, Otto di pratica, Missive, 7, fols. 40v–41r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Entrata e uscita, 17, fols. 20r–26r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, c. 81v; Ferdinando Ughelli, Albero et istoria della famiglia de’ conti di Marsciano (Rome, 1667), pp. 73–74. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 57, fols. 140v–141v and 157v–158r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 48, fols. 2v–3r; Guicciardini, Storia fiorentina, p. 186; de’ Nerli, Commentari, p. 133; Buonaccorsi, Diario, p. 2; Cerretani, Storia fiorentina, p. 256; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, pp. 183–84; Sanudo, Diari, I, pp. 1005 and 1022. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 57, fols. 237r, 270r, and 271r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 57, fol. 156r; Landucci, Diario fiorentino, p. 179. Sanudo, Diari, I, pp. 985–86 and 990–91; Malipiero, “Annali veneti,” pp. 506 and 509; Priuli, “Diari,” I, p. 86. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 57, fols. 310r, 311r, and 313r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fols. 6rv and 10v; Vaglienti, Storia dei suoi tempi, pp. 55–56. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 58, fols. 126v and 131r; Sanudo, Diari, I, pp. 990–92; Giuseppe Nicasi, “La famiglia Vitelli di Città di Castello e la Repubblica Fiorentina fino al 1504,” Bollettino della Regia Deputazione di Storia patria per l’Umbria 17 (1911), p. 346.

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on paper, 700 men-at-arms, 450 light cavalrymen, and more than 4000 foot soldiers.63 Infantry companies, however, were liable to desert. The commissioners lamented immediately that many connestabili needed recruits, arms, back pays, and current salaries, describing their poor condition as a “chaos,” a “random living.” Soldiers besought the Dieci to be paid. Giorgio from Imola, for example, bemoaned that he could not “help his companions any longer.” Count Cecco da Montedoglio wrote that he had “nothing else to pawn,” that he felt “consigned to oblivion,” and that “even friars cannot be patient, with an empty stomach.” The inhabitants of Pescia reported that his brigade was constrained to “rob and burglarize” the subjects that it was supposed to protect, protesting at its insults and harassment.64 Guglielmo de’ Pazzi commented that “speeches and promises are useless, now, considering the great expenses for this camp,” and with good reason. Parenti calculated that the war had a daily cost of 1,600 florins. The Signori, then, had to impose a forced loan, a so-called accatto, scraping together 50,000 florins with an annual interest of twelve percent.65 This sum was to be spent on wages, and on munitions, because “soldiers would be useless, if we did not supply them with arms.”66 Supplying the Army In the first half of June, the commissioners general Guglielmo de’ Pazzi and Benedetto de’ Nerli were disappointed at the “soaked, worthless gunpowder” present in the encampment. They requested the Dieci to dispatch saltpeter, and also all of the “new” culverins and falcons, along with carts and draught animals, in order to “protect our land” and “satisfy the captain.” At his arrival in Pontedera, in fact, Paolo Vitelli seemed to be very unhappy with the scarcity and disorganization of the ordnance.67 Indeed, Florentine firearms were not “superabundant.” A contemporary inventory of the arsenals of the capital itemized three heavy bronze bombards and two iron ones, three bronze cannons, twelve bronze falcons, twenty-six iron spingards, and four bronze cerbottane, mounted sometimes on carts, sometimes on trestles and beds.68 The list represented the production of the city workshops, a combination of the new French models and the customary Italian manufacture. Florentine craftsmen had been mainly using tin and copper for the creation of their giant bombarde since the 1450s, relying on the solid tradition of artists and 63 64 65 66 67 68

ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 48, fols. 2r–7v and 24v–26r. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 57, fols. 252r and 342r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 58, fols. 29r, 48r, 67r, and 80r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 58, fol. 17rv. Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, pp. 186, 190, and 194; Landucci, Diario fiorentino, p. 180; Vaglienti, Storia dei suoi tempi, p. 56. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fol. 91r. ASF, Dieci di balia, Responsive, 57, fols. 323v, 325r, 342r, and 354r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 58, fol. 43v. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 58, fol. 135v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 7, fol. 337v.



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bell founders. Thirty years later, the Republic was undoubtedly in the vanguard of bronze castings. In the public foundries of Florence and Pisa, several guns were realized by the renowned Alberghetto Alberghetti and Pasquino from Montepulciano, and even by Andrea del Verrocchio. Florentine masters experimented with mobile firearms, such as spingarde “mounted on carts.” The Medici bank, moreover, invested heavily in the purchases of the metals.69 After the fall of the regime, this state interest in artillery was also confirmed by the introduction of a significant technological improvement. In January 1495, soon after the passage of Charles VIII through Tuscany, the Dieci decided to build a new factory for the production of the “very good and very effective” French firearms. In March, the first ever bronze cannon produced in Florence was sent to the encampment, mounted on a carriage “according to French custom.”70 Between the winter of 1495 and the spring of 1498, thirty-eight new guns were cast in the workshops of Florence, Volterra, and Firenzuola. Their designers were Francesco di Bartolomeo Telli, Bonaccorso di Vettorio Ghiberti, the grandson of the illustrious Lorenzo di Cione, and Lorenzo di Giovanni, called Cavaloro, as well as his associate, the “goldsmith” Ludovico di Guglielmo del Buono. Other foreign artisans were invited to work in the foundries, such as Pierre from Douai, Johann from Augsburg, and Antonio Chiariti from Lucca. Even the ambassadors in France asked the king for a “master of artillery.”71 All of these craftsmen copied the original French firearms, sketching their shapes and imitating the Transalpine methods of founding. A French culverin will weigh about one thousand and seven hundred kilograms, if it has a bore diameter of nineteen or fifteen centimeters, a length of three and a half meters […], and a rear part thick as two shot. Another culverin will weigh about two tonnes, if it has a length of three and a half meters, and if it fires twenty-seven kilograms of lead […]. French gunmakers are accustomed to cast the rear part of their culverins three shot thick, that is, one for empty space and two for bronze, that is, every side of the chamber as much thick as the gap. This is their own way to craft guns with a shot weight of three kilograms of lead, or less. And for the pieces with a shot weight of ten, or thirteen, or seventeen kilograms of lead, they made these rear parts two and a half shot thick. 72

69 70

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Ansani, “Craftsmen, Artillery, and War Production in Renaissance Florence,” p. 14. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 5, fols. 15v, 25r, and 32r; ASF, Dieci di Balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 31, fol. 149v; ASF, Dieci di Balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 33, fol. 245r; ASF, Dieci di Balìa, Missive, 32, fol. 79rv. For a thorough examination of these sources, see Fabrizio Ansani, “The Life of a Renaissance Gunmaker: Bonaccorso Ghiberti and the Development of Florentine Artillery in the Late Fifteenth Century,” Technology and Culture 58 (2017), pp. 760–61. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 40, fol. 356r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 26, fol. 82v; Négociations diplomatiques de la France avec la Toscane, p. 659. BNCF, Banco rari, 228, fols. 87v–88r.

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These practitioners also combined technical innovations with traditional machines. Cannons and culverins were cast in a single, safer piece, but several falcons were equipped with a separate breech, like old spingards, or combined in a sort of ribauldequin.73 After assuming the command, Paolo Vitelli urged the Dieci to enhance the production of the new guns. Throughout the summer, he frequently and anxiously requested heavy and light ordnance, “as fast as the masters can manufacture it.”74 Captain’s chancellors supervised the construction of new private furnaces for “an easier and better melting,” whilst the Dieci ordered the reopening, the repairing, and the widening of the public foundry of the Sapienza. Ultimately, more than 16 tonnes of bronze were cast into 32 pieces. They were 22 small falcons of various forms, each loaded with lead projectiles of 17 hectograms, and, above all, 10 cannons, “round, with trunnions,” from 3.5 to 4.5 meters long, weighing from 1.5 to 2 tonnes, and loaded with iron shot of 16.5 kilograms.75 The price was fixed, as usual, at 9 florins for every 330 kilograms of cast bronze. The cost of pieces weighing less than this measure, such as falcons, was set at 12 florins for the same quantity of molten metal.76 The ordnance was promptly moved towards Pontedera, easily transported by the Arno river on numerous rafts, or dragged by oxen over the Tuscan hills. In any case, the servants of the Signoria were authorized to draft men and animals for completing the task. Several other falcons were rapidly shifted from the Vitelli’s stronghold of Città di Castello, with orders that “they cannot halt, neither by day, nor by night.”77 All of these guns were mounted on French-style carriages, vehicles that “had a robust axle that connected two well carved wheels, in order to shoot incessantly and without shelters. The wheels had solid bent spokes, and were strengthened with thick iron plates and nails” for withstanding difficult journeys over bad roads.78 The old wooden supports, beds, and trestles, were dismantled and discarded.79 The Dieci tasked with the manufacture of these new carriages: Domenico di Pacino, also known as “Nolla,” Bartolomeo di Ventura Banchini, and the Pratese brothers Lorenzo and Francesco Bifolchi. Vitellozzo Vitelli lauded the “worthy” masters for their “incomparable” skills: 73 74 75

76 77

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79

ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 5, fols. 181rv and 360v–361r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Entrata e uscita, 13, fols. 190v–191r. ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fols. 160r, 163r, 183r, 197r, 204r, 249r, 254r, and 256r. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 7, fols. 367v, 387v, 427v, 488r and 508v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 35, fols. 161v, 223v, 244r, 301r, 314r, and 317r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Entrata e uscita, 23, fols. 241v–242r; Landucci, Diario fiorentino, p. 183. ASF, Dieci di Balia, Munizioni, 5, fol. 181rv; ASF, Dieci di Balìa, Munizioni, 7, fols. 318r and 508v. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Entrata e uscita, 30, fols. 86v–88r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fols. 71v, 83r, 90v, 91v–92r, and 124v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fols. 1r, 88r, 101r, and 104v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 57, fols. 286r and 315r. Andrea Bernardi, “Cronache forlivesi,” I, 2., ed. Giuseppe Mazzatinti, in Monumenti istorici pertinenti alle provincie di Romagna (Bologna, 1896), pp. 17–18; Niccolò Machiavelli, Libro dell’arte della guerra (Venice, 1550), fol. 96rv. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fol. 28r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 58, fol. 49r; ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fol. 204r.



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in a couple of weeks, they constructed fifteen carrette, each one priced at eight florins. Moreover, they crafted thirty pairs of “large” wheels, and modified several old carts with new spokes and new axles.80 The Florentine officers also hired Niccolò di Antonio di ser Lolo “with twenty-five horses, twenty-five men, and twenty-five carts” to move the light pieces, with an extremely generous monthly salary of 200 florins, and with the guarantee of free accommodation, free hay, and free firewood.81 Antonio from Certaldo was charged with supervising land transports.82 Thanks to these vehicles, Paolo Vitelli built a reputation as an “admirable” commander, capable of “leading artillery over mountains and across rivers, like an ancient and strict Roman general.”83 The major problem of the new heavy ordnance consisted in its iron projectiles. According to contemporary chroniclers, they were totally unknown to Italian warfare before the French descent.84 As with the guns, Florentine masters assimilated the new technology immediately, but Tuscan ironworks could not cast a sufficient quantity of cannonballs, both due to the poor quality of local metal and because of the dearth of adequate blast furnaces.85 An effective saturation bombardment, however, needed hundreds of missiles.86 The Dieci tried to deal with this issue in any way possible. On 4 June, they demanded from the town of Castrocaro all the shot that the French army had left there fours year earlier, during its march towards Naples. The entreaty aroused a dispute about hypothetical royal permission for signing the projectiles over to the Republic, but the subjects had to give in eventually, after a couple of weeks. In total, 500 iron balls were dispatched to the capital, half for cannons, and half for culverins. They cost nothing, except the expense of transport and some thanks.87 Nevertheless, the captain expected more projectiles, because he “did not intend to lift a siege due to their scarcity.”88 Giovanni di Pierfrancesco

80

81 82 83 84

85 86 87

88

ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 7, fols. 356r, 360r, 364v, 367r, 371r, and 446v–447r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, fols. 162v and 168v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Entrata e uscita, 23, fols. 207r and 210r; ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fols. 160r, 183r, and 350r. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 47, fol. 13r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 48, fols. 7v–8r and 75r; ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fol. 220r. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 48, fol. 27v. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, c. 123v; Cerretani, Storia fiorentina, p. 256; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, p. 192; Guicciardini, Storia fiorentina, p. 187. Vannoccio Biringuccio, Pirotechnia (Venice, 1558), fol. 117v; Francesco Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, ed. Silvana Seidel Menchi (Turin, 1971), p. 78. See also Ansani, “The Life of a Renaissance Gunmaker,” pp. 772–76. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 5, fol. 37r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 6, fols. 231v–233r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Entrata e uscita, 14, fol. 10v; ASF, Dieci di Balìa, Missive, 32, fol. 96r. Contamine, “L’artillerie royale française à la veille des guerres d’Italie,” pp. 247–48. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 10, fol. 243rv; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 7, fols. 352v– 386v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 35, fol. 164rv; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fols. 47v–48r, 60r, and 98v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fols. 1r, 9v, 51r–52v, 60v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 57, fols. 293r, 294r; ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fol. 208r; Marino Sanudo, La spedizione di Carlo VIII in Italia, ed. Rinaldo Fulin (Venice, 1883), p. 127. ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fol. 237r.

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de’ Medici, the commissioner general of the province of Romagna, suggested smuggling these pallottole from the Venetian state, or acquiring them from the nearby factories of Piombino and Elba. A master of the Estense ironwork of Fornovolasco offered the Dieci his services and his goods.89 In July, the officers signed a contract with Angelo di Filippo from Brescia and Baldo di Giovanni from Careggi for the provision of 300 cast iron shot. I record that today, on 21 July, we have made a bargain with Angelo di Filippo from Brescia and Baldo di Giovanni from Careggi for cast iron shot, weighing up to sixty and a half kilograms each, according to the model. We will pay thirteen lire for every thirty-three kilograms of metal, and Angelo and Baldo will provide two hundred cannonballs by August 5th and three hundred by the 10th of the same month. They have to bring the shot to Signa at their expense, except the custom duties of our territory.90

The two bought the merchandise in Mantua, Brescia, and Bologna. One month later, they imported 379 cannonballs, each one priced at 150 soldi. In total, the associates profited more than 380 florins.91 The Dieci also ordered the preparation of traditional, inexpensive stone shot in the quarry of the gorge of Golfolina. Stonecutters prepared 400 missiles for the new cannons, and 500 for the old bombards. The cost was either 7 or 14 soldi each, depending on the weight and the size of the stones. Other innumerable, small cast lead projectiles were made from 6 tonnes of metal.92 At the end of August, nonetheless, the captain was still requesting “shot and powder, powder and shot.”93 According to the Venetian paymaster in Pisa, Vincenzo Valier, the Florentine army could line up “two hundred guns mounted on carts, including twentyfive cannons and two bombards.” It is likely that also iron spingards and old passavolanti were pressed into service,94 obliging the commissioners general to engage several new gunners, and to spend more than 1400 golden florins for their services (Fig. 3). The most competent men could earn up to 10 florins per month, a little bit more than a simple man-at-arms. Besides, these masters had skills not only in aiming ordnance, but also in casting bronze, refining saltpeter, crafting incendiary missiles, repairing pieces, and manufacturing carriages. They came from the whole European continent. Francesco from Lucca received 20 florins for defecting from the Pisans. Cristoph and Johannes from the Holy Roman Empire offered a free period of probation for “demonstrating their 89 90 91

92 93 94

ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fol. 120r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 57, fol. 283r. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 7, fol. 355rv. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 7, fols. 457v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 35, fol. 215v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fol. 108r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fols. 70v, 102r, and 109v. ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 7, fols. 374v and 386r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 35, fol. 167v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fol. 95r. Nicasi, “La famiglia Vitelli di Città di Castello e la Repubblica Fiorentina fino al 1504,” p. 366. Sanudo, Diari, I, p. 1103.



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virtues,” proposed by Vitelli’s chancellor. Johannes Anzi was defined by the Dieci as “excellent” but “vain.” Bernardo from Novara presented himself as an “expert gunmaker” and a “perfect gunner.” Anton and Wilhelm from Freiburg, and Giovanni from Piedmont, boasted about their abilities to realize “artillery, carts, shelters, bastions, battering rams, and other defensive and offensive engines.” All in all, Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, Gascons, Dutchmen, and Spaniards were on the Florentine payrolls, as well as many other Italians. Ioannis from Greece and Giovanni di Bartolomeo Boriani were their “chiefs” in the encampment.95 Their “tireless and important work,” their “promptness,” satisfied the captain.96 The high number of firearms also necessitated the Republic raising the output of “mealed” and “corned” gunpowder, the first used for the charges of heavy artillery, the second for portable firearms.97 During the summer, a new mill was opened in Leghorn, entrusted to Piero di Zanobi, called Zucca, one of the principal Florentine masters, active since early 1480s.98 Another factory was constructed in the capital, near the Ponte alle Grazie, and equipped with a bronze boiler for “refining and drying” saltpeter. It was managed by a versatile engineer, Filippo di Giovanni, nicknamed “Pippa,” and Jacopo di Corso, also known as “Baia.” Officials also enrolled several carpenters in manufacturing the explosive in the pre-existent workshop of San Niccolò. The aforementioned Bartolomeo di Ventura Banchini, for example, did not only craft carts and wooden handles of harquebuses. He was also able to refine 11 tonnes of raw saltpeter and 8 tonnes of “rotten and bad” gunpowder. Another collaborator, Nuziato, was simply a “painter.” Each of these artisans was paid 5 florins for every 300 kilograms of incorporated saltpeter.99 The encampment, also, was tooled up with riddles, boilers, scales, and other tools for making powder.100 In the first days of August, however, the Dieci were compelled to requisition a large amount of explosive from their fortresses of Volterra, Leghorn, Arezzo, Cortona, Borgo Sansepolcro, and Pistoia. The consumption soon grew to such massive amounts that it exceeded the public

ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 48, fols. 33v–35r, 61r, 107v–108v, and 173v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 58, fol. 117r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fols. 9r, 104r, and 122v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fols. 87v and 129r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 58, fol. 43v. 96 ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fol. 322r. 97 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fol. 107v. For the different typologies of gunpowder, see Hall, Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe, pp. 69–74; Walter Panciera, “La polvere da sparo,” in Il rinascimento italiano e l’Europa, 3:307–15. 98 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Entrata e uscita, 27, fol. 25v: ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fols. 25r and 115rv; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, fol. 45r. 99 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 7, fols. 373v, 428r, 451rv, 452v, and 495v–498r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 35, fols. 178v, 222v, 224v, and 225v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Entrata e uscita, 23, fols. 324r and 331r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 48, fol. 144v. See also Ansani, “Geografie della guerra,” pp. 84–88. 100 ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fols. 196r and 197r. 95

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production facilities.101 The appointees, then, commissioned private apothecaries to fabricate the compound. Giovanni di Stagio Barducci dispatched 8 tonnes to magazines, and Giovanni di Simone Formiconi more than 1,000 kilograms. This explosive was costly, approximately 10 florins for every 300 kilograms of incorporated saltpeter.102 Moreover, 500 kilograms of finished gunpowder were acquired in the Papal States for 45 florins.103 The overall expenditure was large. By the end of the campaign, the Florentine guns consumed more than 37 tonnes of gunpowder, 9 times more than the preceding year. This quantity of explosive cost about 2,500 florins, including the salaries of manpower and the value of raw materials.104 For its transport, the Dieci also had to purchase about 600 barrels. Their price was fixed at 12 soldi for the “small” containers, and 15 for the “large” ones.105 To maintain and improve this level of productivity, the Dieci had to collect a large quantity of raw materials, encourage internal commerce, and augment imports from the neighboring regions. The duties on the Volterranean yellow sulfur, for example, were temporarily abolished (330 kilograms of this mineral had a value of 7 florins). In the countryside, the cutting down of willow trees and the production of charcoal were authorized and promoted, in spite of public or private rights to forests and timbers. Beech and chestnut were required for stoking furnaces and for casting metals. In general, 330 kilograms of charcoal cost 4.5 florins.106 Saltpeter was not produced in Tuscany. It was “scarce as much as necessary.”107 Merchants had to procure it abroad. Piero di Matteo Berti, a Florentine businessman, sold 3.5 tonnes of raw nitrate for 437 florins. Giovanni Bentivoglio, the ruler of Bologna, allowed his allies to pick up 300 kilograms of refined material. The brothers Andrea and Faragano were rewarded with 10 florins for the opening of a modest nitrary in Castrocaro. Small quantities of raw compound were also dispatched from the castles of Modigliana and Firenzuola, or bought from the aforementioned “Pippa,” or from Pratese and Viterbese masters, or from one of the keepers of Florentine arsenals, Gaspare di Antonio Pasquini. All imports were exempted from taxes and tolls.108 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fols. 77v, 81v, and 82v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fol. 74v. Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 7, fols. 460v, 447v–478r, and 509r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 35, fols. 226r, 231r, 236v, and 244r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 48, fol. 130r. 103 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 7, fol. 358v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fol. 70v. 104 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 35, fols. 22v, 110v, 180v, 242v, 251v, and 286v. This amounted to 1.8 percent of the total military budget. 105 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 7, fol. 412v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 35, fol. 203v. 106 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 7, fols. 423r and 426v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 35, fols. 228v and 255v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 58, fol. 79r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fol. 104r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fol. 134r. 107 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fol. 128r. 108 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 7, fols. 341r, 344v, 347r, 361r, 362r, 381v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 35, fols. 219r and 235v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 48, fol. 124rv; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fols. 82v and 119v. 101

102 ASF,



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The most important deals, however, were the ones negotiated and signed by the Republic’s envoys to Italian courts. In August, in Genoa, the Florentine ambassador Braccio Martelli obtained 4 tonnes of saltpeter at a cost of 700 florins, including various duties and chartered boats. He tried also to smuggle other material through a “secret way,” with the help of friendly retailers.109 In the same period, Francesco Gualterotti, in Rome, traded 8 tonnes of refined mineral with the Sienese banker Giulio Spannochi.110 Today I met both the saltpeter maker, Antonio from Leccia, and a boy of these Spannochi. I have concluded a deal with them on eight tonnes of saltpeter. The price has been fixed at fifty ducats for every thirty-three kilograms of merchandise. The goods must be consigned to the customs officers of Florence within a month. The bankers will pay the expenses for transportation, except the duties imposed by our state. The saltpeter has to be similar to, or even better than, the sample that I received from your lordships […]. I could not obtain a discount, because these Spannochi know how to sell their materials at the opportune time, and how to move this materiel through the Sienese territory. Also, they have not agreed to supply more saltpeter in less time. However, they have guaranteed that the first barrels will appear in our capital within fifteen days.111

All of this mineral was rapidly “transformed into gunpowder.” A few weeks later, Ludovico Sforza was also persuaded to supply ten tonnes of “indispensable” refined nitrate, dispatching them from the Adriatic port of Pesaro. Nevertheless, despite the urgency, the transport was slower and more problematic than expected, due to the lack of barrels, sacks, and mules. Meanwhile, in Milan, a Neapolitan merchant offered a significant amount of saltpeter to the Florentine emissary, Francesco Pepi.112 By the middle of August, the Dieci affirmed that they “had bought so much saltpeter that masters can mix gunpowder until the end of the campaign.”113 The army was also provided with portable firearms. Baldo di Giovanni from Careggi traded 116 iron harquebuses, purchasing them in Brescia. The price was fixed at 20 lire for every 33 kilograms of merchandise, that is, 4 lire and 10 soldi per weapon, indicating an average weight of 8 kilograms. The same cost applied 109 ASF,

Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 48, fol. 108v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fols. 88v–89r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 58, fol. 338v. 110 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 7, fols. 394v, 398v, 406v, 407v, and 409r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 35, fol. 248r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Entrata e uscita, 23, fol. 351v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fol. 127v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fol. 143r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 58, fols. 183r. 111 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 58, fol. 175rv. 112 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 7, fols. 410v, 448v, and 511v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 35, fol. 314r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fols. 128rv, 131v, and 136r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 54, fols. 60rv, 69r, 78v, and 89r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 58, fol. 219v. 113 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fol. 93v.

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to the 28 pieces traded by Niccolò di Alessandro Machiavelli. A carter, Piero di Bino, sold 80 “heavy Brescian handguns” at 3 lire and 3 soldi each. The Dieci purchased also 600 iron scouring sticks.114 Several iron harquebuses were also transported from Città di Castello. The captain himself solicited fuses, ramrods, and trestles, and encouraged the presence of “useful” foot soldiers and mounted units armed with hand guns. He appointed his secretaries and his servants to buy 100 bronze firearms in Florence and in Bologna, along with their bulletmolds and their ramrods. He also contacted 50 Pisan handgunners, convincing the commissioners general to hire their company.115 The Republic also supplied its army with thousands and thousands of projectiles for muscle-powered missile weapons. In June, 17,000 bolts were stored in Florentine arsenals. Angelo di Filippo from Brescia and Baldo di Giovanni from Careggi deposited a further 27,000 “common” bolt-heads and 5,000 “large” ones, as well as 10,000 “olive leaf, half-moon, pointed, and spiked” pieces for mounted crossbowmen. They received 3,000 lire, that is, 500 florins. Francesco de’ Nerli made 170 florins from 31,000 artifacts of “common” type.116 These quarrel-heads were then fixed to shafts by assembly workers, while fletchers bound the feathers. The three brothers Nonni, Antonio, and Santi del Nonno manufactured almost 80,000 quarrels, during the whole summer, purchasing the wooden part of bolts over the Umbrian Apennines.117 Besides quarrels, the Dieci acquired linen thread for the manufacture of crossbow strings. In Pontedera, 18,000 bobbins were acquired at a cost of 180 florins, more or less (Table 2).118 So, one arrow after another, one cannon after another, the Dieci spent approximately 6,000 golden florins on munitions by the end of their semester on December 1498, that is, a 4.5 percent of the overall war budget (Table 1).119 Markets and Mercenaries Crossbows, spears, breastplates, sallets, bucklers, and swords were usually owned by soldiers. Infantrymen could purchase arms in camp, or in the shops of retailers of second-hand goods, or even from their employers. The Dieci usually 114 ASF,

Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 7, fols. 341rv, 421v, 447v, 466r, and 467v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 35, fol. 185v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 58, fol. 83r. 115 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 58, fol. 43r; ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fols. 90r, 112r, 121r, 153r, 160r, 183r, 196r, 197r, and 204r; Nicasi, “La famiglia Vitelli di Città di Castello e la Repubblica Fiorentina fino al 1504,” pp. 383 and 386. See also Pieri, Il Rinascimento e la crisi militare italiana, p. 373. 116 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 7, fols. 362r and 473r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 35, fol. 218v. The bolt heads were “ferri da passatoi da balestrieri a chavallo fra a foglia d’ulivo, a punta e spuntone e lune.” 117 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 35, fols. 57v, 174v, and 246v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 48, fol. 174r. For the production cycle of darts, see Ansani, “Craftsmen, Artillery, and War Production in Renaissance Florence,” pp. 16–17. 118 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 7, fols. 350r and 478v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 48, fol. 126r. 119 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 39, fol. 292v.



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deducted the price of these supplies from wages. The connestabile Dionigi Naldi, for example, received 20 crossbows, 22 cuirasses, and 150 helmets instead of 550 lire of salary. Generically, a breastplate could be sold at 7 lire, a reinforced cuirass at 16 lire, a simple armet at 3 lire and 5 soldi, a spear at 12 soldi.120 Menat-arms preferred more expensive armor of Lombard manufacture, renowned for its toughness. Paolo and Vitellozzo Vitelli were indebted to maestro Giacomo di Pietro from Milan for 650 ducats, the cost of several gauntlets, spaulders, pauldrons, vambraces, greaves, “Swiss” breastplates, “Italian” and “French” armets, barbutes, helmets, and a full armor. During the Pisan campaign, the two brothers also purchased 150 “good-looking” cuirasses “of proof,” priced at 3 florins each.121 In Florence, the captain general bought horses of various breeds and coats, black, gray, bay, for warfare or transport. Their value fluctuated between 15 and 43 ducats.122 A tack maker from Borgo Sansepolcro also put forward to the captain a society for producing and trading saddles for the company. Giovannantonio, I beg you to ask Paolo and Vitellozzo if they want twenty-five or thirty saddles for them, at a fair price. I will make all the tack at my expense: saddle, stirrups, breastplates, girths, and blankets. I will sell the finished set at two golden ducats […]. Their lordships have only to hand me a list, signed by the purchasers of these saddles: men-at-arms, or mounted crossbowmen, or light cavalrymen. I will halve the profit with their lordships, like a good and honest associate. However, at the moment, I beg fifty ducats from their lordships, in order that I can go to the fair and buy leather, saving some money. I hope, with the help of God, to craft all of these items within six months.123

The two condottieri often sold or lent to their troop clothes and hoses, and paid and rewarded their men-at-arms with berets, tabards decorated with the white “French” cross, cloaks, “Turkish” doublets, and various and colorful textiles, such as baize, velvet, plain weave, brocade, and satin. Paolo and Vitellozzo themselves often dressed in elegant transalpine fashion, with a certain pride.124 The condottieri also looked after the barracks of their brigade. The Dieci refunded to them 450 florins for 235 “tents for two bottoms.” Obviously, the

120 ASF,

Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 7, fols. 351r and 415r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fols. 84r and 101v. 121 ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fol. 237r; ASF, Lettere varie, 5, fols. 6rv, 7v, and 75r. 122 ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fol. 53r; ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fols. 12r–13r. 123 ASF, Lettere varie, 9, fol. 5r. 124 ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fols. 48r, 90r, 161r, 183r, 235r, 316r, and 320r; ASF, Lettere varie, 5, fols. 15r, 61r, and 62r; ASF, Lettere varie, 6, fols. 114r–131r. For these markets in clothes and textiles inside mercenary and “mercantile” companies, see Mario del Treppo, “Gli aspetti organizzativi, economici e sociali di una compagnia di ventura italiana,” Rivista storica italiana 85 (1973), pp. 253–75; William Bernardoni, “La compagnia del capitano Micheletto Attendolo nella contabilità quattrocentesca della Fraternita dei Laici di Arezzo,” Annali aretini 22 (2014), pp. 115–44.

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captain had the privilege of “decent” mattresses, blankets, and pavilions.125 His dignity was also symbolized by the republican insignia. The Florentine government offered to its captains and its governors the square flag of the Commune: a four-and-a-half-meters-wide, red and white standard with the arms of the lily. The taffeta, the silk, and the manufacture came to 50 florins.126 Other banners were used for the cavalry squads and the infantry units. Sir Cerbone, we are sending you six shields with six different liveries painted on them, along with an azure flag. You have to task a tailor with the making of six standards for the infantry as large as the azure one, and all of them have to be marked with the pictures of the shields and the numbers, one, two, three, etcetera. You have also to order five other white banners for the men-at-arms, but larger than the azure one. The first has to depict a calf, the second a lion, the third a black horse, the fourth a red eagle. For the fifth use a purple fleur-de-lis, which represents the coat of arms of the king of France. The symbols have to be visible and apparent.127

Considering the figures of the captain’s condotta, under a single cavalry banner fought 40 men-at-arms, while every infantry banner corresponded to 250 infantrymen. Contrary to other companies, the vitelleschi did not depend exclusively on the Dieci for the equipping of their soldiers with spears, or pikes. Through his brother-in-law, Francesco Bracciolini, Paolo could buy hundreds of pole arms in Pistoia. This town, at that time, was the Tuscan center of their production. Goods were sold in Florence, in Siena, in Lucca, and even in Pisa. Pace di Pippo and Donato di Giuliano were two of the most important manufacturers of shafts and iron pointed heads. A local wholesaler, Doffo di Piero Partini, controlled the market, dealing with customers, offering sales on “excellent items,” and recommending his “very good friends.” Doffo tendered with the captain for 100 items for infantry at 9 florins, and 100 “French” lances for cavalry at 22 florins. The institutional buyers, instead, paid a bit more, both for traditional arms and new, Transalpine styles.128 In any case, the Dieci stocked up on shafts and spearheads, dispatching the finished products to their camps. At the end of the campaign, they had acquired 10,000 spearheads in Brescia and in Pistoia, and 7,600 spears, pikes, and lances for infantrymen, light horse, and men-at-arms.129 125 ASF,

Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 48, fol. 49r; ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fol. 160r. 126 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 22, fol. 190v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 30, fol. 225v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 42, fols. 167v and 171v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 48, fol. 92r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Entrata e uscita, 26, fol. 59v. 127 ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fol. 99rv. 128 ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fols. 21r, 49r, and 346r; ASF, Lettere varie, 5, fols. 33r and 112r. 129 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Munizioni, 7, fols. 342r, 351r, and 362r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 35, fols. 168v, 173v, and 232v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 48, fol. 145v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fol. 93v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fol. 91r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 53, fol. 154r.



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From Buti to Ripafratta In spite of all these expenditures, in midsummer the army was still entrenched in Florentine territory, in the vicinity of the village of Calcinaia, near to the Arno river. After the Pisan withdrawal, the operations had slowed down. The only significant encounter took place on 26 July, when Paolo Vitelli set a trap for the enemy light cavalry in the surroundings of Cascina, capturing 150 prisoners and 50 mules laden with food.130 According to Parenti, the Florentine government, at that time, was not giving any order to move, or to attack. The captain, instead, waited for money, guns, and reinforcements, while engineers and architects tried to repair the walls of Ponsacco. Soldiers could only protect the indispensable harvesting of wheat, helping peasants and pioneers.131 The Florentine officers, besides, also had to supply their troops with “ammunition of food.” Soldiers “cannot feed on Holy Spirit” wrote, provocatively, Guglielmo de’ Pazzi, reminding the appointees of the necessity of “abundant” provisions in order to prevent desertions and protests. In the first half of June, the Dieci had to arrange a public bread market in the town of Pontedera. Several bakers blended the flour lent by the government. Five servants supervised the production of nourishment, and its influx from the surrounding towns. In Florence, the Dieci often organized the transportation of bread from the capital to the camp. The monthly cost of pane cotto, biscuits, sacks, and baskets, could exceed the sum of 5,000 lire. Besides, the “mobile city” of an army could consume more food than expected.132 At that time, this “fifth quarter” of Florence numbered about 8,000 “inhabitants,” not counting hundreds of merchants, artisans, carpenters, bricklayers, stonecutters, cooks, wives, lovers, prostitutes, boys, and servants. It was necessary to raid the countryside to obtain pigs, steers, and goats. Peasants, moreover, could sell meat, eggs, fruit, cheese, and the indispensable wine, the drink most beloved by soldiers.133 Above all, villagers provided hay for men-at-arms. Bales, in fact, were granted to knights without any payment. In the valley of the Arno river, officials obliged every countryman to dispatch 100 kilograms of straw to Pontedera, threatening latecomers and reluctant subjects with fines and imprisonment.134 Plundering and skirmishes engaged the troops until the arrival of a Milanese contingent, 200 men-at-arms and 250 mounted crossbowmen, led by count Ludovico Pico della Mirandola. In Romagna, another Lombard condottiere, Gaspare Sanseverino, better known as “Fracassa,” barred the way to enemy

Storia dei suoi tempi, pp. 56–57; Sanudo, Diari, I, pp. 1026–28; Priuli, “Diari,” I, p. 93. Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fol. 12rv; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fols. 18rv and 42rv; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 58, fol. 48r; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, p. 188. 132 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 33, fol. 223v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 48, fols. 81v, 83v, 110v, 112v, and 113v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fol. 139rv. 133 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 36, fol. 214rv. 134 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fols. 35v, 90v, 99v, and 103v. 130 Vaglienti, 131 ASF,

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Venetian reinforcements. At the beginning of July, Ludovico Sforza was deciding to form an open alliance with Florence, proposing the marquis of Mantua as the captain general of their league, and sending an envoy for reconciling Paolo Vitelli and Rinuccio da Marsciano. Another ambassador was to mediate between Florence and Siena.135 After various procrastinations, hence, the Dieci decided finally to make the most of the opportunity. In the general city council, they proposed a new tax on the Florentine countryside, amounting to 20,000 florins. A subvention of 15,000 ducats, moreover, was offered by the duke of Milan.136 This ready cash was spent in enlisting new infantry companies. In a couple of weeks, the treasurer of the Dieci, Alfonso Strozzi, paid more than 1,000 foot soldiers. Seven Florentine connestabili came forward with 400 men. Dionigi Naldi moved 500 companions from Romagna, and hundreds and hundreds of Italian, Swiss, and Spanish mercenaries followed the army, waiting for a contract. As usual, moreover, the Pistoiese commune conscripted 200 infantrymen. The Dieci also issued a peremptory proclamation, requiring every man-at-arms and every foot soldier to leave Florence and reach the encampment immediately, menacing deserters with corporal punishments. Four citizens were assigned to review all of these troops.137 In addition, 2,000 pioneers were mobilized in the villages of Casentino, in the Scarperia region, and in the Pratese countryside. Several “loyal” and “discreet” spies were sent out in Pisa and in Cascina, in order that “we can defend ourselves easily, and attack the rebels confidently.”138 On 15 August, the officers solicited the new commissioners general, Piero Popoleschi and Jacopo Pitti, to finally guide the army towards an enemy position.139 You ought to regard the desires of our city. The people expect some results from the provisions we have made with such difficulty. Considering the proper supplies of artillery and gunpowder, and having hired five thousand infantrymen, we have already satisfied all of the captain’s demands. Here, in Florence, everyone judges that the victory consists in the quickness of your actions. The Signori, as well as private citizens, urged us to solicit your departure from the encampment. By Friday, or Saturday, the army has to begin its march, according to your wise opinion and to the captain’s experience and art. Be diligent. We would not like to be charged with delaying this expedition.140 135 ASF,

Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fols. 35v and 39v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fols. 39rv and 43r; ASF, Consulte e pratiche, 64, fols. 87r–98r and 101r–102r; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, p. 190; Buonaccorsi, Diario, pp. 2–4; Vaglienti, Storia dei suoi tempi, pp. 57–58. 136 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 54, fols. 49v, 69r, 94v and 95r; ASF, Consulte e pratiche, 64, fols. 97r–99r. 137 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fols. 69rv, 94rv, and 95v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fols. 85v, 91v, and 99r; Vaglienti, Storia dei suoi tempi, p. 58. 138 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fols. 28v, 36v, and 72v–73r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 58, fol. 43r. 139 fol.ASF, Consulte e pratiche, 64, fols. 105r–106r. 140 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fol. 90r.



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Notwithstanding another altercation between the captain and the governor, the Florentine soldiers left Calcinaia on 19 August before dawn, heading north, with the purpose of conquering the hills that dominated the Pisan plain and bordered the Lucchese territory. Florentine commanders, in fact, were trying to isolate the rebels from their allies, blocking the road towards Liguria and Emilia, and cutting off the daily arrivals of food, weapons, and reinforcements from their “deceitful,” “treacherous” neighbors.141 Shortly after its departure, the army appeared under the walls of Buti. Thanks to their carriages and their trunnions, 14 cannons and 50 falcons were immediately ready to fire. The bombardment lasted four hours, “razing to the ground a large part of the ramparts.” The town, nonetheless, did not surrender, and had to be taken by force. Its resistance was severely punished by Paolo Vitelli himself, according to the brutality of his French masters, and flouting the contemporary Italian rules of “good war.”142 The captain ordered the hanging of several inhabitants, and even children were imprisoned and sent to Florence. The hands of five gunners, moreover, were amputated, and were hung on the shoulders of the unfortunate soldiers.143 Sanudo reported that this loss and this violence caused anguish and fear among the Pisan troops: only twelve days before, they had believed that the Florentine army was disbanding. The maimed, above all, badly frightened the commissioner of the Most Serene Republic, Piero Duodo, and the Venetian governor general, Marco da Martinengo.144 The new warfare was apparently working. The replacement of the old, cumbersome, giant artillery with a full train of mobile ordnance was speeding up assaults tremendously. The siege of an “insignificant hovel” could not slacken the campaign anymore.145 On the contrary, the Florentine army had covered six miles, and bombarded and seized a town, in just one day. The news and the progresses cheered up and “united” the Florentine people. Relying on the “hope of further and better successes,” the government succeeded in levying a new tax, with the intention of collecting “four hundred thousand florins over the next two years.”146 The authorities announced also the condotta of Giovampaolo Baglioni da Perugia, a longtime friend of the Vitelli, with 70 men-at-arms and 50 mounted crossbowmen. Furthermore, beating the Venetian competition, the Commune and Ludovico Sforza hired the lord of Piombino, Jacopo IV Appiano, appointing him with the title of Milanese governor general, and entrusting to him 200 men-at-arms.147 Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fols. 101v–102r and 107r; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, p. 192. Mercenaries and their Masters, pp. 200 and 205. 143 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fol. 111v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fols. 101v and 102v; Landucci, Diario fiorentino, p. 183; Vaglienti, Storia dei suoi tempi, p. 59; Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, p. 177; Sanudo, Diari, I, p. 1068; Priuli, “Diari,” I, p. 95. 144 Sanudo, Diari, I, pp. 1039, 1056, and 1062; Cerretani, Storia fiorentina, pp. 256–57. See also Pieri, Il Rinascimento e la crisi militare italiana, p. 373. 145 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 33, fol. 385v. 146 Parenti, Storia fiorentina, p. 192. 147 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti, 48, fols. 8v–9r and 10r–11r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fol. 92r; ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fol. 259r; Sanudo, Diari, I, pp. 1058 and 1063. 141 ASF,

142 Mallett,

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Only the frateschi seemed to be displeased with the military and diplomatic achievements of the arrabbiati Dieci.148 The Florentine rulers also argued over the objective of the expedition. The officers demanded that their commissioners besiege Vico Pisano, one of the principal towns of the rebels, “well defended by eight hundred Venetian infantrymen and hundreds of armed peasants.” The captain, instead, obstinately preferred to storm the nearby fortress of Verruca, a formidable but remote observation post over the valley below. The Dieci protested “animatedly” against his decision, considering the enterprise to be “unnecessary, dishonorable and harmful for the reputation of our Republic and our powerful army,” and a “deceit of our soldiers for wasting time and requesting another pay.” They reaffirmed that “we cannot bear the cost of this campaign any longer, if you do not quickly get other significant results.”149 In the meanwhile, on 28 August, the village of Calci, located about ten miles east of Buti, gave in, along with its hamlets. Also the fortified monastery of Saint Michael, about a half mile west of Verruca, was occupied by Florentine forces in the same days. The captain ordered also the construction of a bastion over the Dolorosa, a high rocky spur placed in the neighboring woods. Then “we will move towards Vico, in order to satisfy our lords, even though we would rather attack the castle.”150 Between the army and the victory, however, there were two other major obstacles. The first was the soldiers’ request for their wages, interpreted again by the Dieci as a “regrettable and dishonest blackmail,” a “sign of disloyalty.” The second was an earthwork fortified with wooden structures and artillery, which protected the hillside of Vico.151 Yesterday, on 30 August, with the help of God, we carried the ordnance to this bastion. Gunners fired a few shots, while we were pitching the tents of our encampment. The last night cannons hit the target repeatedly and vigorously. Now, our enemies are abandoning the place, due to our bombardment. They are taking refuge in Vico. We hope that, with the help of God, the town will be captured soon. In any case, sir Corrado, you have to solicit coins and gunpowder from our lords, and especially the cash. There is no doubt at all that these soldiers will willingly die for this excellent Signoria, after receiving their wages.152

The Dieci replied that the seizing of Vico would have facilitated the collection of new taxes and the imposition of forced loans, guaranteeing the accumulation of “a large amount of money, which is the nervus belli,” and demonstrating to the adversaries, and especially to Venetians, that “we are winning, wealthy, and united.”153 Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fol. 110v; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, pp. 192–93. Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fols. 112r–113r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fol. 102v. 150 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fols. 123v–124r; ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fol. 254r; Sanudo, Diari, I, pp. 1064, 1073, and 1075. 151 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fols. 117v–118r. 152 ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fol. 255r. 153 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fols. 125r–126r. 148 ASF, 149 ASF,



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On 1 September, the guns were aimed at Vico, but they malfunctioned, due to the heavy rain. Moreover, an enemy culverin, along with two falcons, was hammering the batteries, damaging shelters, breaking three carts, and killing two gunners. The Pisans were striving desperately to react to the Florentine predominance, supplying the besieged town with gunpowder, shot, and bolts. They also frequently raided the vicinity of Pontedera, and enlisted numerous infantrymen. Nevertheless, the rebel army was decidedly outnumbered by its foes. According to Vincenzo Valier, the Venetian commanders had at their disposal only 1,000 foot soldiers and 50 cavalry squads, too few for attempting effective counterattacks. On 4 September, the infantry captain, Giacomo from Tarsia, struggled to create a diversion, fighting back against the garrison of the church of Saint Michael, and overcoming it.154 This maneuver was probably too late. Around 200 soldiers had left Vico two days before, reducing the likelihood of repulsing an assault. The Florentine ordnance, above all, was aimed at “the weakest and most undefended part of the walls,” as suggested by the same enemy deserters. Witnesses reported that artillery shot in total 150 projectiles per day.155 On 5 September, 400 infantrymen mutinied, “after the breaking of the wall, because they did not want to die.” We took control of Vico Pisano in this way. Our guns reduced the defenses to rubble, and we hoped to attack in the evening. However, our adversaries were scared, and they did not desire to await the battle. So, they entered negotiations, granting to us the possession of the town and of their guns. We promised to spare both the life and the belongings of the inhabitants.156

Paolo Vitelli menaced only the last, stubborn defenders of the town’s castle with the mutilation of their hands. He also claimed for himself the captured firearms, four culverins, and several spingards and falcons.157 After the conquest, the rest of the army split, coming back temporarily to Bientina, Pontedera, and Calcinaia. Carpenters and smiths repaired carriages and cannons. Architects, stonecutters, and bricklayers reconstructed the damaged walls of Vico.158 Condottieri, meanwhile, solicited money. Again. And again. The captain was “on fire,” because of the “scarce provisions” of the Dieci for several condottieri, for the Milanese crossbowmen, and for “all the infantrymen, that are continuously breathing down our necks.” The cash was 154 ASF,

Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fol. 127v; ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fols. 292r and 293r; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, p. 194; Sanudo, Diari, I, pp. 1074–76, 1078, and 1085. 155 Landucci, Diario fiorentino, p. 183; Sanudo, Diari, I, pp. 1078 and 1084. 156 ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fol. 286r. 157 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fol. 148v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fol. 135rv; Vaglienti, Storia dei suoi tempi, p. 59; Cerretani, Storia fiorentina, p. 257; Guicciardini, Storia fiorentina, p. 188; Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, pp. 177–78; Cambi, “Istorie,” pp. 134–35; Sanudo, Diari, I, pp. 1078–79 and 1085; Priuli, “Diari,” I, p. 99. 158 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fols. 152v–153r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fols. 138r, 143r, and 145r; Sanudo, Diari, I, pp. 1099 and 1103; Nicasi, “La famiglia Vitelli di Città di Castello e la Repubblica Fiorentina fino al 1504,” p. 385.

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essential for “swelling the ranks of the companies” and for “persuading the brigade to stay with us, while the enemies are offering generous pays.” He also solicited “gunpowder, shot, and pioneers,” explaining that “the autumnal bad weather could halt the campaign soon,” and complaining that “everything has to be begged for, everything takes a year to arrive.”159 In Florence, the necessity of money even led to a modification in the electoral system. The officials responsible for the public debt were proposed exclusively by the Signoria, and then hurriedly voted. They were urged to lend 50,000 florins. An irritated Vaglienti commented that “this war is waged by the savings of our people,” while “the oligarchs are getting richer from the interest on their loans.”160 Citizens, however, could not get rid of this problem. The Pisans did not give up. They fortified the town of Cascina, the tower of Foce d’Arno, and the fortress of Ripafratta, digging moats, building ravelins, and constructing terrepleins. On 10 September, moreover, 1,000 foot soldiers and 150 mounted crossbowmen assaulted the bastion of the Dolorosa, endeavoring to regain the control of the adjacent hills. This morning, at sunrise, the rebels reached the Dolorosa, bearing ladders and portable firearms. Here, they attacked our position, wounding forty of our men. Informed, the captain got on his horse, and prepared his company. He set off for the hills immediately. Vitellozzo, instead, left from Vico for Calci, in order to occupy the passes and block the roads towards Pisa, preventing the enemy retreat. At the sight of our forces, the Pisans withdrew, but they soon encountered our soldiers hidden on the slopes. A skirmish broke out. After a while, the captain struck our foes from behind, putting them to flight. Finally, we captured six connestabili and one hundred stradiotti. We also seized most of their infantrymen, and Giacomo from Tarsia was seriously wounded.161

It was a heavy defeat for the rebels. Their infantry was totally overwhelmed, and lost numerous crossbows, “countless” quarrels, and all of the guns. The Florentines, on the contrary, became the “absolute masters” of the countryside. Vitellozzo raided as far as the gates of Pisa, seizing as plunder 100 beasts of burden, and taking several peasants captive.162 Furthermore, on 17 September, the commissioners ambushed a Venetian convoy that was transporting 5,000 kilograms of gunpowder from Ravenna to Pisa.163 This rise was only interrupted by yet another dissension within the Florentine government. According to Guicciardini, Rinuccio da Marsciano and 159 Nicasi,

“La famiglia Vitelli di Città di Castello e la Repubblica Fiorentina fino al 1504,” pp. 372–77, 382, and 384. 160 Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, pp. 194–95; Vaglienti, Storia dei suoi tempi, p. 60. 161 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fols. 140v–141r. 162 ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fol. 301r; Buonaccorsi, Diario, p. 10; Landucci, Diario fiorentino, pp. 183–84; Cerretani, Storia fiorentina, p. 257; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, p. 195–96; Sanudo, Diari, I, pp. 1092–93. 163 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Missive, 60, fol. 154rv.



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“arrogant and inexpert” rulers, backed by the common people, wanted to besiege Cascina, or even Pisa, taking advantage of the enemy disbandment. Paolo Vitelli and his “supporters,” instead, were of the opinion that both these cities were “almost impregnable” due to the “defense of valorous and desperate men” and the “high number of guns.” The captain would rather have surrounded the Pisan region, depriving the rebels of any possibility of military assistance from Venice, Lucca, and Genoa. At last, on 23 September, he personally decided to march on Ripafratta, completing the conquest of the hills and the encirclement of the countryside.164 Today, on 28 September, we took control of the bastion of Ripafratta in this way. As soon as the enemies saw our artillery, they shouted out ‘pacts, pacts,’ and asked for three hours prior to capitulating. We did not agree, and a skirmish broke out. After a little while, we seized the post definitively.165

Two other towers fell three days later. The entire fortress yielded on 3 October, after a “good bombardment.” In the same days, the army, “six thousand infantrymen, one thousand and five hundred light horse, and five hundred men-atarms,” occupied Filettole, securing the high valley of the Serchio river.166 The theater of war did later move eastwards, into the mountain region of Casentino. The agreements between the Most Serene Republic and Piero de’ Medici, in fact, resulted in an invasion of Tuscany in the fall of 1498, and in an effective diversion from the Pisan campaign. In a “disordered” Florence, the frateschi and the palleschi gave “openly” the impression of conspiring against the state. The friar’s party, above all, criticized and defamed the Dieci di Balìa and all of the arrabbiati rulers. Parenti commented, sadly, that “we were so close to the victory. Now, we are on the brink of our ruin.”167 While the Venetian troops flowed across the borders, Paolo and Vitellozzo Vitelli were compelled to leave from the encampment for Arezzo in midNovember. The brothers carried with them the larger part of the army, and six cannons, two culverins, and nine falcons.168

164 ASF,

Dieci di balìa, Missive, 59, fol. 152r; ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fol. 294rv; ASF, Miscellanea repubblicana, 3, e. 98, fol. 50r; Guicciardini, Storia fiorentina, pp. 188–89; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, p. 197–98; Sanudo, Diari, I, p. 1105. 165 ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fol. 304r. 166 ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fols. 298r; Landucci, Diario fiorentino, p. 186; Vaglienti, Storia dei suoi tempi, p. 60; Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, p. 199; Cerretani, Storia fiorentina, p. 257; Buonaccorsi, Diario, p. 14; Sanudo, Diari, II, ed. Guglielmo Berchet (Venice, 1879), pp. 8 and 16; Nicasi, “La famiglia Vitelli di Città di Castello e la Repubblica Fiorentina fino al 1504,” pp.  398–99. 167 For this alliance between the Venetian government and the exiled son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, see Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, pp. 193–212; Cerretani, Storia fiorentina, pp. 257–59; Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, pp. 179–83; Malipiero, “Annali veneti,” pp. 509–10. 168 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Entrata e uscita, 30, fols. 69r, 72r, 73r, 75r, 81r, 82v, and 90r.

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Conclusions Numerous guns, saturation bombardments, deliberate savagery, immediate surrendering, and rapid movements: the victories of Paolo Vitelli seemed to be a triumph, brought about by his French-style warfare. Five fortified positions, both towns and fortresses, fell one after the other, in the course of fortyseven days. Vico and its bastion, above all, were seized in less than a week. Compared to the sieges of the previous decade, the differences were many, and significant. The conquest of Citerna and Città di Castello, in 1482, required five months. Pietrasanta resisted Florentine assaults from August to November 1484. Eight heavy bombards did not subdue Sarzana in 1487, frustrating the republican commanders.169 The new-style offensive was not slowed or hindered by the movement and positioning of the traditional, cumbersome bombards. Gunners did not have to wait weeks for their weapons. Not even the absence of pioneers could halt the operations. The captain protested continuously about their desertion, but the ordnance could be transported everywhere, in spite of everything. By hand, if needed.170 Modern carriages and trunnions, moreover, made it simple and quick to aim the guns. And the iron shot proved to be undoubtedly effective. This rapidity of action, however, was counterbalanced by the necessity of a planned, constant, adequate supply of projectiles, gunpowder, and firearms. The Dieci had to improve their management of the equipment. Within six months, the expenditures on munitions doubled, exceeding 6,000 golden florins (Fig.  2).171 Production increased. New workshops were opened, and new craftsmen were employed in refining, mixing, assembling, and casting. During the whole summer, gunmakers realized more than thirty pieces, reaching notable levels of output. Nevertheless, the scarcity of saltpeter and the frequent shortage of missiles compelled the Republic’s officers to turn often to foreign markets. Dozens of cannons consumed immense quantities of propellant, and were completely useless without their proper shot. Timely provision of these materials became a serious problem, with evident repercussions. The lack of this indispensable material deferred the march of the army for two-and-a-half months, while the soldiers demanded repeatedly to be paid. The wages of the troops were the largest recurring item on the balance sheet of the Commune.172 In total, 75 percent of the incomes of the Dieci di

169 For

the proceedings of these campaigns, see, for example: ASF, Dieci di balìa, Responsive, 32; ASF, Otto di pratica, Missive, 6. 170 ASF, Lettere varie, 3, fols. 287r and 291r. 171 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 34, fol. 156r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 39, fol. 292v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 40, fol. 193r. 172 ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 34, fols. 129r, 227r, and 235r; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 39, fols. 292v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 40, fols. 182r, 199r, 200r.



Supplying the Army, 1498

231

Balìa was spent on condottieri and connestabili (Fig. 6). Between June and December 1498, infantrymen earned 66,000 golden florins (Fig. 5). Men-atarms received 34,000 golden florins, and the light cavalrymen got 5,000 golden florins (Fig.  4). But the cost of the conflict also included gunners, garrisons, commissioners, chancellors, spies, transporters, postmen, as well as “minor” and “extraordinary” expenses. By the end of the year, the officials disbursed more than 130,000 golden florins, tripling the payments of the three preceding semesters (Fig. 7).173 The Florentine people found the consequent raises in taxation highly irritating. The accusations against the rival factions, the “evil” aristocracy, the “corrupt” government, and the “incapable” Dieci multiplied. Rulers and soldiers seemed to prolong the agony of an endless war.174 Another political crisis was imminent.175

173 ASF,

Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 30, fol. 293v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 34, fol. 238v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 39, fol. 292v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 40, fol. 202v. Note that the overall military budget does not include the back debts of the office. 174 Parenti, Storia fiorentina, II, pp. 207–10; Vaglienti, Storia dei suoi tempi, pp. 61–62. 175 Cadoni, Lotte politiche e riforme istituzionali a Firenze tra il 1494 e il 1502, pp. 101–75. The next phase of the war, including the siege of Pisa in 1499, will be examined in a separate article in the next volume of this journal.

Figure 1. Map of the Florentine Campaign in the Pisan Countryside.

June 1499 December 1499

1359 7475



Supplying the Army, 1498

233

Figure 2. Expenditures on Munitions of the Florentine Republic (Gold Florins) December 1495–December 1499 8000

6000

Table 1

9 49

99

8

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14

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98

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939 1225 916 1032 1416 1020 2020

97

ne

r1 be

14

49

96

14

ne

D

ec

em

6

359

Ju

be

r1

49

5

December 1495 June 1496 2000 December 1496 June 1497 December 1497 0 June 1498 December 1498 June 1499 December 1499

Ju

4000

Sources: ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori: 25, fol. 186r; 29, fol. 251r; 30, fol. 264r; 34, fol. 156r; 39, fol. 292v; 40, fol. 193r; 43, fol. 272v; 45, fol. 329v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Entrata e uscita, 15, fols. 238r, 255r, 277v, and 304v.

Figure 3. Expenditures on Gunners of the Florentine Republic (Gold Florins) December 1495–December 1499 2200

1650

1

1100

550

99 14

99

be r em ec D

Ju ne

be r em ec

14

98 14

98 14

Ju ne

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D

97 14

97 14 D

96 be r em

ec

Ju ne

14

96

Ju ne

14 D

D

ec

em

be r

14

95

0

Sources: ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori,:25, fol. 47r; 29, fol. 248r; 30, fol. 283r; 34, fol. 224r; 39, fol. 292v; 40, fol. 56r; 43, fol. 272v; 45, fol. 329v.

June 1499 December 1499

20235

234

Fabrizio Ansani Figure 4. Expenditures on Heavy and Light Cavalry of the Florentine Republic (Gold Florins) December 1495–December 1499 60,000

45,000

9 r1

14

49

99

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74335 50512 33509 27414 66505 35363 58037

98

December 1496 June 1497 December 1497 0 June 1498 December 1498 June 1499 December 1499

14

30274

49

December 1495

15,000 June 1496

7

Table 1

30,000

Sources: ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori: 29, fols. 247r and 254r; 30, fol. 247r; 34, fols. 129r and 227r; 39, fols. 292v; 40, fols. 182r and 199r; 43, fol. 272v; 45, fol. 329v.

Figure 5. Expenditures on Infantry of the Florentine Republic (Gold Florins) December 1495–December 1499 80000

60000

1

40000

20000

9 be em

D ec

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ne

14

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99

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be

14 D ec

ne

Ju

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97

6 r1 49

96

Ju

ne

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be

r1 49

5

0

Sources: ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori: 25, fol. 173r; 29, fol. 252r; 30, fol. 289r; 34, fol. 235r; 39, fols. 292v; 40, fol. 200r; 43, fol. 272v; 45, fol. 329v.

June 1499 December 1499

78272



Supplying the Army, 1498

235

Figure 6. Overall Expenditures on the Army of the Florentine Republic (Gold Florins) December 1495–December 1499 120,000

90,000

Table 1

9 49

99

8

r1

14

be

ne D

ec

em

be D

ec

em

Ju

r1

14

49

98

7 49

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97

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159523 143002 253618 122094 96964 100046 227399 48726 356452

14

49

96

14

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D

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em

be

r1

49

5

December 1495 June 1496 30,000 December 1496 June 1497 December 1497 0 June 1498 December 1498 June 1499 December 1499

6

60,000

Sources: ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori: 29, fols. 247r, 252r, and 254r; 30, fols. 247r and 289r; 34, fols. 129r, 227r, and 235r; 39, fols. 292v; 40, fol. 200r; 45, fol. 329v.

Figure 7. Overall Military Expenditures of the Florentine Republic (Gold Florins) December 1495–December 1499 400000

300000

1

200000

100000

49 9

9

r1

49

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Ju

r1 be em ec

ne 1

49 8

8 49 D

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49 7

7 49 D

Ju

r1 be em

ne 1

49 6

6 49 ec

Ju

ne 1 D

D

ec

em

be

r1

49 5

0

Sources: ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori: 29, fol. 255v; 30, fol. 293v; 34, fol. 238v; 39, fol. 292v; 40, fol. 202v; 43, fol. 272v; 45, fol. 329v; ASF, Dieci di balìa, Entrata e uscita, 15, fols. 178v and 315r.

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Fabrizio Ansani

Table 1: War budget of the Florentine Republic, expressed in golden florins, June 1498 – December 1498 Expenditure Men-at-arms Mounted crossbowmen Infantrymen Gunners Pioneers Munitions Artisans Transports Postmen Spies Garrisons Commissioners Staff of the office Extraordinary expenses Minor expenses Total

Fund 34.311 5.306 66.739 1.425 73 6.056 5.133 2.239 1600 166 625 4.916 740 2.915 277 132.521

Percent of total 25,89 4,00 50,36 1,07 0,05 4,57 3,87 1,69 1,21 0,12 0,47 3,71 0,56 2,20 0,21 100

Source: ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 39, f. 292v.

Table 2: Purchases of munition of the Florentine Republic, June 1498 – December 1498 Firearms Bronze cannons Bronze falcons Iron bombards Iron spingards Iron harquebuses Bronze harquebuses Iron handguns Bronze handguns

Units 10 20 1 2 283 4 121 2

Projectiles Iron shot Stone shot

Units Metals 899 Lead 2.105 Iron

Gunpowder Raw saltpeter Refined saltpeter Sulfur Charcoal Powder

Weapons Spears, pikes, and lances Spear-heads Steel crossbows Bobbins of string Bolts Bolt-heads Pavises Cuirasses

Kilograms 17.641 10.933 1.828 1.430 37.836

Source: ASF, Dieci di balìa, Debitori e creditori, 35, ff. 151v-317r.

Units 7.670 9.816 132 18.355 137.112 99.732 138 181 Kilograms 6.262 639

8 Fencing, Martial Sport, and Urban Culture in Early Modern Germany: The Case of Strasbourg Ken Mondschein and Olivier Dupuis

Despite the preeminence of gunpowder weapons in late medieval and early modern Strasbourg, fencing formed an important subculture in this city as in the rest of the Holy Roman Empire. In an age where owning and bearing arms was associated with enfranchisement and citizenship, tournaments using the longsword and other weapons formed a means for increasingly proletarianized journeymen to assert their masculinity and social standing. These activities were tightly controlled by the city council, which also left a rich trove of documentation. Further, the rise of fencing societies in the sixteenth century, which were often split between Protestant and Catholic lines, as well as a pan-Germanic literature of fencing that formed communities through referencing a common history, show that the history of fencing is relevant to the history of the Holy Roman Empire as a whole and the formation of a German ethnostate. Situated on the Rhine frontier between the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of France, the city of Strasbourg was both strategically and economically important. As with other free Imperial cities, a large part of Strasbourg’s military pride was wrapped up in its use of ranged weapons – first arbalests, then gunpowder weapons. The practice of such weapons was promoted by the city government: Strasbourgeois arbalesters and gunners took part in numerous battles and sieges, and even after the decline of the civic militia and the rise of standing armies in the early sixteenth century, the self-perception remained, and the manufacture of firearms was a major industry.1 In a 1588 military parade, only 275 of 880 footmen did not carry firearms – 80 came with pikes (Langspiess), 70 with halberds (Hellenpart), 65 with two-handed swords (Schlachtschwert), and 60 with boar spears (Federspiess).2 When Louis XIV made his triumphal entry into the city in 1681, he was greeted by a salute from 300 guns. 1 2

Thomas A. Brady, Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg 1520–1555 (Leiden, 1978), pp. 69–72. The last outing of the guild militia was in 1526. Johann Scheible, Das Kloster: Weltlich und Geistlich (Stuttgart, 1848), p. 1142. In addition, there were 228 cavalry, making the fighting force over half composed of men with firearms. Thanks to Matt Galas for the source.

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Figure 1. Tobias Stimmer, Der große Schießstand bei Straßburg (1576). Source: Wikimedia commons.

This was reflected in the official sporting culture of the city by well-publicized shooting competitions, such as a 1576 match with Zurich commemorated in verse by the Strasbourg literatus Johann Fischart (c. 1545–91; see Fig. 1) and in art by his frequent collaborator Tobias Stimmer (1539–84), in which a pot of porridge cooked in the Swiss city was still warm 19 hours later when the Zurich team carrying it arrived by boat in Strasbourg. The implications of this went far beyond the culinary: Protestant Strasbourg was closely allied with the three major towns of German-speaking Switzerland against the Emperor, and the traveling gruel was a declaration to all and sundry that relief could arrive before siege works were even in place. But parallel to the culture of firearms was a less well appreciated, but still meaningful, martial culture: that of fencing. Although Tlusty notes that fencing was less significant a sport than competitive shooting during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which certainly appears to be the case in the eyes of the elites who ran the city – and there are certainly fewer mentions of fencing culture than there are of shooting in chronicle accounts and the “official” culture of Strasbourg – if we look below the surface, we can see quite a different story.3 In fact, in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Strasbourg we can uncover evidence of nothing less than the popular pan-Germanic fencing culture amongst journeymen with its own narrative of martial enfranchisement, tradition, and a community that grounded its legitimacy in the medieval past. The best-known document of Strasbourg’s fencing legacy is Joachim Meyer’s (c. 1537–71) grand Gründtliche Beschreibung der Kunst des Fechtens (“Fundamental Description of the Art of Fencing”), printed in that city by Thiebolt Berger in 1570 and reprinted in Augsburg in 1600.4 Meyer drew on a medieval 3

4

B. Ann Tlusty, The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany (New York, 2011), p. 210. Tlusty discusses fencing on pp. 210–17. See also her article “Martial Identity and the Culture of the Sword in Early Modern Germany,” in Late Medieval and Early Modern Fight Books: Transmission and Tradition of Martial Arts in Europe (14th–17th Centuries), ed. Daniel Jaquet, Karin Verelst, and Timothy Dawson (Leiden, 2016), pp. 547–70. Olivier Dupuis, “Joachim Meyer, escrimeur libre, bourgeois de Strasbourg (1537?–1571),” in



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fencing tradition tracing itself back to the apocryphal master Johannes Liechtenauer, and which we have evidence was at least three centuries old by that time.5 Meyer stood at the end of a long line of predecessors, and his work is replete both with reference to a pan-German fencing culture and an imagined past that was better, more noble, and more enfranchised than in his own day. On the other hand, Fechtschulen in Strasbourg (which were competitions and not training halls, despite the name, which translates as “fencing schools”) only appear in three surviving chronicle accounts of which we are aware, all dating from the seventeenth century – well after their heyday. The sixteenthcentury Strasbourg historians Sebald Büheler and Jacob Trausch are silent, or at least their mentions were not reprinted by the nineteenth-century historians who preserved Strasbourg’s narrative history.6 (The latter scenario is less likely: fencing was more interesting to the nineteenth century than to the twentieth or twenty-first.) Only in Johann Wencker’s so-called “extracts from Sebastian Brant’s chronicle” (which Wencker likely composed himself in the 1630s) do we find regulations for Fechtschulen from 1511 and permission for fencing masters to hold “schools” as had been done at Ulm, Nuremberg, and other places for some years previously.7 In the second record, Balthasar-Ludwig

5

6

7

Maîtres et techniques de combat, ed. Fabrice Cognot (Dijon, 2006). Meyer’s Fechtbuch was translated and published by Jeffrey Forgeng as The Art of Combat: A German Martial Arts Treatise of 1570 (New York, 2006). See Keith Alderson, “Arts and Crafts of War: die Kunst des Schwertes in its Manuscript Context,” in “Can These Bones Come to Life?” Insights from Re-construction, Re-enactment and Re-creation, Vol. I: Historical European Martial Arts, ed. Ken Mondschein and Michael A. Cramer (Wheaton, IL, 2014), pp. 24–29. The original manuscripts were lost when the Prussians shelled the library in 1870. However, most of the chronicles were printed in the series Fragments des anciennes chroniques d’Alsace, ed. Leon Dacheux vols. 1, 2, and 4 (Strasbourg, 1887–1901). These comprise the Petite chronique and the chronicles of Bühler, Trausch, and Wencker. See also “Strassburg im sechzehnten Jahrhundert, 1500–1591: Auszug aus der Imlin’schen Familienchronik,” ed. Rodolphe Russ, Alsatia 10 (1873/1874), 363–476; Die Strassburger Chronik des Johannes Stedel, ed. Paul Fritsch (Strasbourg, 1934); and Die Strassburger Chronik des elsässischen Humanisten Hieronymys Gebwiler, ed. Karl Stenzel (Berlin and Leipzig, 1926). “Annales de Sébastien Brant,” ed. Léon Dacheux, Bulletin de la Société pour la conservation des monuments historiques d’Alsace 15 (1892), p. 230: Item als zwischen den fechtmeistern irrung ist, sol man den meistern die schul halten, gebieten dass sie mit gegen einander uffheben oder fechten. Item als der ammeister anbringt der fechtmeister halb, wie die begehren ihre schulen zuzulassen, und wie er bericht wird dass vor etlichen jaren hie, auch noch zu ziten zu Ulm, Nürnberg un andren orten der gebrauch gewesen und ist, das di lehrherren 2 knechte darzu zu behüten geben, denen die fechtmeister ein verehrung gethan, uffrühr zu verhüten. Erkant dem ammeister gewalt geben. Sabb. Post Valent. – XXI Item meister Niclaus ist zugelassen, offen schul zu halten, doch dass sich kein uffrühr mache; und ammeister gewalt geben knecht in sein kosten zuzugeben, uffshen zu haben. 3a post Mathie. – XXI. Item hh. Florenz Gabriel und Jost gewalt geben die fechtmeister all zu beschicken und ihnen bescheid geben, wer die best freiheit hat, dem soll

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Künast (1589–1667) mentions in his Argentoratum Sacro-Profanum a remarkable incident from 1587 (that is, two years before his own birth) wherein the wife of one of the visiting fencers accompanied her husband in the customary pre-fencing competition procession to the sound of fife and drum with a crown and a Paratschwert (longsword foil) on her shoulder while dressed in men’s clothing and then fought in the contest itself, which was held at the Mason’s Guild.8 The third – an unquestioned eyewitness account – is from a Frenchman, Balthasar de Monconys, who in his Journal mentions watching a Fechtschule in 1664 (two years before his work’s publication) where the contestants, protected by padded gauntlets, fought with two-handed swords, half-pikes, and dussacken, a sort of wooden cutlass, striking one another so strongly that heads were split open.9 (This was a brutal sport: drawing blood from the opponent was a victory condition.10) The only contemporary reference to fencing competitions comes from Fischart himself, who in Chapter XXVII of his translation-cum-adaption of Gargantua (published in 1575) satirically describes a Fechtschule, together with a burlesque of the Liechtenauer verses quoted by Meyer.11 In its heyday, the practice of fencing was clearly not deemed something noteworthy or praiseworthy in the life of the city – it was certainly inferior to shooting sports, at least in Fischart’s eyes – and it is not until a very late date that it becomes part of a glorious past.



8

9 10

11

man die schul zu lassen. 4a post Miseric. Dom. – XXI. Item als ein kürsner begert dem fechtmeister das svert abzuhauen, soll man ihm sagen und gebieten bei einer leibstraf, das schwert nit abzuhauen oder schul hie zu halten, noch gegen den meister uffzuheben; woe er darwider thäte, woll man ihn an sim lib stroffen. Sol hh. Gottfried und Gabriel antwort geben, wann die schüler meister warden und das anzeigen, mögen sie erwarten was man ihn erlauben wird. Sabb. Post Miseric. Dom. – XXI On p. 248 there is mention of another master in 1525: Mohler und bildhauer suppliciren dieweil durch das wort gottes ihr handtierung abgond, sie mi tempter vor anderen versehen, darneben Hans Bildhauer der fechtmeister bitt ihm ein für oder underhaltung zu geben. Erkt. Ihn sagen so empter ledig warden, mögen sie sich geschriben geben, woll man der bitt ingedenck sin. Des fechtmeisters halb für mhh. die XV gewisen. 6a post Purif. 1525. Bulletin de la Société pour la conservation des monuments historiques d’Alsace 17 (1895), p. 33. It has been suggested by enthusiasts in various online forums, blogs, and the “Wiktenauer” historical martial-arts wiki that this woman was the wife of the Fechtbuch author Lienhart Sollinger, but I can find no confirmation of this in the primary sources. On Künast, see Revue d’Alsace 49 (1898), p. 133, n. 1. Revue d’Alsace 48 (1897), p. 557. The literature on Fechtschulen is voluminous, dating back to the nineteenth century – for instance, Karl Wassmannsdorff’s Sechs Fechtschulen (d. i. Schau- und Preisfechten) der Marxbrüder und Federfechter aus den Jahren 1573 bis 1614 (Heidelberg, 1870). For a good overview, see the relevant essays in Late Medieval and Early Modern Fight Books: Transmission and Tradition of Martial Arts in Europe (14th–17th Centuries), ed. Daniel Jaquet, Karin Verelst, and Timothy Dawson (Leiden, 2016). Johann Fischart, Geschichtklitterung (Gargantua) (Halle, 1891).



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Bearing Arms in Strasbourg Strasbourg in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was known as a center of free thought – it figures prominently in the history of both printing and of the Reformation, the latter of which plunged it into several military conflicts. The city had expelled its prince-bishop and become a free city of the Empire in 1262 – an event in which the civic militias played a large part – and in 1332, the guilds overthrew the patrician government and established a republic. The patricians were never entirely expelled, however, since their military leadership, role as diplomats, and service as heavy cavalry was valued. Another revolution in 1482 established the government as it stood in the time period for which records of fencing contests survive. Civic organization in the free city had many overlapping organizations, including the Zunft (guild), of which there were twenty; the Bruderschaft (confraternity); the Stube (club); and the Constoffeln (exclusive societies for the patricians). These served overlapping social, religious, welfare, political, and military roles. Most important were the Zunft: to be a citizen, which is to say having voting rights, required being male, a guild-member, and over 30 (or 25, if married). About 3,000 men of the total population of about 20,000 were so enfranchised. Besides their roles in regulating trade and in civic defense, the guilds were also the basis of the town government. Each named 15 Schöffen (aldermen) to the town senate, for a total of 300. These senators named an Ammeister, or chief magistrate. He, together with the four Stettmeisters (who were patricians elected from the Constoffeln), the Council of 15 (for domestic affairs), and the Council of 13 (for foreign affairs, such as wars), formed the Council of 21. One or two other officials were added into the mix, so that, despite the name, the Council of 21 consisted of 33–35 men, of whom 10 were patricians and the rest (including the Ammeister) were citizens elected by the guilds.12 The bearing of weapons in medieval and early sixteenth-century Strasbourg, especially by the lower orders of manual laborers (Dienstknechten, day-laborers, or knechten, servants), was tightly regulated both in the name of public safety and because carrying sidearms was an important social marker. Prohibitions against workmen and strangers carrying weapons were reiterated many times,13 and innkeepers were required to hold the weapons of foreigners lodging there for the duration of their stays.14 A regulation of 1510, preserved likely because it was in Sebastian Brandt’s hand, specified that no one should carry noncustomary weapons; only citizens could carry weapons at night; furthermore, it was forbidden to wear bladed weapons at marriages, to dance, and where there

12 13 14

For an explanation of this convoluted system, see Brady, Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation, p. 165 et passim. 1MR2 fol. 2v (1418), 1MR2 fol. 25 (1464), 1MR2 fol. 26v (1452), 1MR2 fol. 60 (1465), 1MR2 fol. 85bv (1473), 1MR2 fol. 87v (1474), 1MR3 fol. 6 (1502). 1MR2 fol. 126v (1488).

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were women present.15 Valets and workmen were restricted from participation in the culture of arms in other ways, as well: they were forbidden from participating in military expeditions,16 and an ordinance of 1519 charged that workmen were not to form bands and fight in groups.17 Cases of wounds by bladed weapons were considered serious enough that they had to be tried by the Council.18 The types of weapons were regulated, as well. It was forbidden to carry weapons other than the “customary” ones.19 What “custom” dictated changed, however: in the early fifteenth century, knives had to be a handspan or less, but a regulation of 1501 specifies that the langes messer could be as long as an ellen or aune (forearm-length), or 0.5395 meters. That weapon, the use of which was shown in contemporary Fechtbücher (“fight books,” written records of martialarts teachings), was essentially a machete, differing from a falchion only in that the handle was constructed with scales and rivets and not a peened tang through a pommel.20 On the other hand, sales of arms were not restricted: a regulation of 1525 specifies that commerce in bladed weapons of all sorts had been allowed since time immemorial.21 Firearms were, interestingly, less regulated than were white arms, though we can find regulations on range safety and on competitions mentioned as far back as the fifteenth century (for instance, the council forbade playing dice during the shooting competition that closed the fair in 1454).22 In fact, the only decrees regulating firearms use that the present authors can find are two Imperial prohibitions against certain types of firearms and repeated warnings not to discharge weapons inside or within a league of the city (one late fifteenth-century example specifies this is so as not to frighten pregnant women).23 Since Strasbourg was located in wetlands, the many water birds must have presented tempting targets for those on their way to the target range outside the walls. Furthermore, shooting sports were officially organized and sponsored, and the subject of great inter-city brouhaha (the famous shooting competition with Zurich 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23

1MR3 fol. 23 (1510). 1MR2 fol. 114v (1482). 1MR4 fol. 51 (1519). 1MR3 fol. 16 (16th c.). 1MR3 fol. 19v (1509): Gebott Messer und Gewer tragens halb … das niemans … dhein ungewonlich Gewere by ime haben oder tragen sol … als Axtlin, Wurfbyhel, Kolben, Kolben, Wärfkugeln oder anders… Repeated 1MR3 fol. 83 (1519). A. Hanaeur, Études économiques sur l’Alsace ancienne et moderne (Paris, 1878), 6. See Archives de Strasbourg 1MR3 fol. 12r–v (1501). 1MR3 fol. 128 (1525). On range safety, see Archives de Strasbourg 1MR2 fol. 22 (1441), 1MR4 fol. 15 (1508); on dicing, see 1MR2 fol. 43 (1454). On Imperial regulations, Archives de Strasbourg 1MR3 fol. 69a (1518) and 1MR3 fol. 71 (1519). On pregnant women, Archives de Strasbourg 1MR2 fol. 115 (1482). Prohibitions against shooting in or near town are: 1MR2 fol. 46v (1456), 1MR2 fol. 49v (1461), 1MR2 fol. 115 (1482), 1MR2 fol. 134 (1494), 1MR3 fol. 6v (1508), 1MR3 fol. 38 (1512), 1MR3 fol. 61 (1517), 1MR3 fol. 113 (1523), 1MR3 fol. 114 (1523), 1MR4 fol. 137 (1537), 1MR3 fol. 261 (1539), 1MR4 fol. 182 (1541). 1MR3 fol. 276 (1541, repeated 1549), 1MR5 fol. 146 (1587).



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is one such instance, though other competitions were organized in 1466 and 1527).24 Shooting was, of course, also more practical for city defense or even battlefield use. We see the importance of gunpowder weapons echoed even in the changing geography of the city’s defenses from medieval curtain walls to the final star-fort shape of the mid-seventeenth century (Figs. 2–4). We see this paralleled in other towns, as well; for example, Laura Crombie has written on the civic and military importance of the Flemish shooting guilds.25 However, despite attempts to connect weapons ownership to civic defense (a regulation from 1534, repeated in 1535, specifies that all are to stay home with their weapons and armor and not take service elsewhere),26 by the mid-sixteenth century Strasbourg was relying on mercenaries. The militia’s last expedition was in 1526, when they marched over the Rhine Bridge to Castle Willstätt to liberate a citizen, Jörg Harder, who had been imprisoned by the bailiff of Count Philip IV of Hanau-Lichtenberg. Finding him already free, they instead liberated some of the count’s wine and shot up his dovecote.27

Figure 2. Strasbourg from Hartmann Schedel’s Liber Chronicarum CXL (1493). Source: Wikimedia Commons 24 25

26 27

Archives de Strasbourg 1MR2 fol. 66 (1466); 1MR3 fol. 146 (1527). For the context in the Low Countries, see Laura Crombie, “Defense, Honor and Community: The Military and Social Bonds of the Dukes of Burgundy and the Flemish Shooting Guilds,” The Journal of Medieval Military History 9 (2011). 1MR3 fol. 225v (1534) and 1MR3 fol. 231 (1535). Thomas A. Brady, Protestant Politics: Jacob Sturm (1489–1553) and the German Reformation (Leiden, 1995), pp. 166–67.

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Figure 3. Strasbourg as depicted in Wolf-Dietrich Klebeband’s Städtebilder (1570) (Universitätsbibliothek Salzburg, G 71 III). Source: Wikimedia Commons

Figure 4. Strasbourg in Matthäus Merian’s Topographia Alsatiae (1644). Source: Wikimedia Commons



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The Rise of a Culture of Arms Concomitant with the replacement of civic militias with professional armies came a renewed emphasis by private citizens in at least appearing warlike. As Tlusty has noted, “By the sixteenth century, good citizenship [in the German free cities] had become synonymous with an assumption of martial skill” – which we should note meant individual martial skill, as opposed to participation in a militia.28 Sword-carrying reached a high point between around the middle of the century and continued through the seventeenth; the many regulations against bearing arms found earlier in the century are conspicuously absent (though the 1510 prohibition against carrying concealed weapons at weddings was reiterated in 1589).29 What was the place of Fechtschulen in a world that so valued and encouraged firearms and the carrying of other weapons, but in which fencing had only an ancillary relation to military service, which relies more on working as a unit than on individual prowess? Unfortunately, due to accidents of history and Prussian artillery, these are only preserved in the records of the Council of 21 (the Ratsprotokolle) from 1539 to 1673 with some short excerpts dating back to 1511. In his research, Olivier Dupuis has found a total of 1545 Fechtschulen event applications from this period, of which 1342 were authorized to take place.30 Most date from between the Peace of Augsburg and the Swedish Intervention in the Thirty Years’ War. At their height, competitions were held nearly every week (see Fig. 5), with lulls during times of conflict such as the Strasbourg Bishops’ War (where most of the fighting had finished by 1593) and following the Defenestration of Prague, with a brief revival after the Peace of Westphalia. Despite the lacunae, we know that fencing tournaments were held in Strasbourg at least as far back as the fifteenth century. Dupuis has found two records of such early competitions: one similar to German later Fechtschulen, the other a sparsely described mêlée-type event. Four magistrates signed the document detailing the first event: Friederich Bock, Bernhart Bock, Jacob Amlung, and Claus Baumgarter. Friederich Bock was a patrician and knight with military experience who was nonetheless frustrated in his attempts to gain admission to imperial tournaments; the second Bock, Bernhard, was a distant relative and an esquire (Edelknecht). Amlung and Baumgarter were rich guildsmen – the first an innkeeper, the second a boatman. The document specifies the tournament will take place within barriers, as was customary, with a platform for guests to view the proceedings. The locale is not specified, but was likely a large public place such as the horse market or in front of the city hall. The city provided the fencing weapons; all other arms were to be left outside the barriers. The audience was to behave in good order, and four

28 29 30

Tlusty, “Martial Identity and the Culture of the Sword,” p. 549. Archives de Strasbourg 1MR5 fol. 164 (1589). This research was presented by Olivier Dupuis for the first time at the conference Urban Cultures of Contest in Renaissance Europe (Institut für vergleichende Städtegeschichte, Münster, 20–22 October 2016). The proceedings are in press.

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Peace of Augsburg (1555)

Defenestration of Prague (1618) Stadthlohn (1623) Swedish Intervention (1630)

Peace of Westphalia (1648)

Figure 5. Frequency of fencing competitions. Graph and data courtesy of Olivier Dupuis, emendations by Ken Mondschein

referees (Grieswarter, “grit-warders,” the same term as was used for judicial duels), assisted by two fencing masters, would officiate. One master was to be local; the other from elsewhere. The regulations also contained details on how fencers would draw their opponents by lot, with bouts fenced to one hit and the victors remaining to fight the next round; the victors were the two fencers who drew the most and the bloodiest wounds.31 The term Fechtschule was clearly not applied to fencing tournaments until somewhat later, in the sixteenth century. The humanist Jakob Wimpheling proposed (in his 1501 Germania) a humanist Fechtschule. It is interesting that this was the only German translation he could think of for the Greek “Gymnasium,” γυμνάσιον: “A place where you exercise your body and develop your person.” Obviously, he was not thinking of a fencing competition, but a school for the study of the arts and sciences, and he certainly would not have offered this translation a generation later. Sixteenth-century Fechtschulen were considerably less grand affairs than the fifteenth-century tournament, and certainly nothing that would be associated with a German Gymnasium. There are no surviving records of the Council of 21 allowing them to be held in public places (an application to use a marketplace was refused in 1549), or, from 1567 on, in the private courts of houses (which would include inns and taverns); instead, the few references to location indicate that they were usually held at guildhalls. (The courts of the houses of canons of the cathedral, perhaps because of the number of Catholics there, were especially avoided; in 1568, Meyer himself asked to hold a Fechtschule at the lodgings of a canon

31

1MR13 182. See Dupuis, “A Fifteenth-Century Fencing Tournament in Strasbourg,” Acta Periodica Duellatorum 1 (2013), 67–79.



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but was refused, with an apology from the Council since the flyers advertising the event had already been printed.32 As Tlusty points out, these events were an opportunity for the tradesmenmasters to make some extra money; the fencers could also win cash prizes. The tournament would be publicized beforehand and a maximum price for admission (usually 1–2 pfennig or 1 kreutzner) was set. Fechtschulen were usually held on Sundays until 1557, when complaints were brought that the usual processions with drums and fifes were disturbing sermons. Thereafter, they were held on Mondays (which was the journeymen’s day off), as well as during St. John’s fair, the Feast of St. Stefan, or the New Year. The noise involved was not the only threat to public order that the Fechtschulen posed; warnings against bad behavior such as cursing and stone throwing were a standard part of the authorizations. The early nineteenth-century Strasbourg antiquarian Louis Schneegans, perhaps drawing on now-lost sources, notes that in 1559, the council investigated Georg Osswald Gernreich of Nuremberg, a student, and came close to canceling some of his Fechtschulen based on some scurrilous verses exchanged between him and the tradesmen.33 Following some disorders in 1571, the town jailer was required to be in attendance. The fencing masters made an attempt to have regulations concerning the procedures for holding contests similar to those in place other cities passed in 1571, 1599, and 1608. Why they were unsuccessful is unclear. In 1610, the council required that fencing contests be separated by two weeks; this regulation, as well as rules concerning the maximum amount to be charged to spectators, are mentioned regularly from 1610 to 1625. Compare this to Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Frankfort, which had clear rules concerning the organization and legalities of fencing.34 Fechtschulen were always organized by individual Fechtmeister – never by corporate bodies. The records of the applications mention the organizer’s name and fencing title, the city from which he originated (of which over 400 were represented), and his profession (see Fig. 6 and Tables 1–3). The fencing masters were never organized into their own guilds; instead they formed their own pan-Germanic associations such as the Marxbruder and Freifechter. The pan-Germanic nature of such events is additionally highlighted by the fact that the Fechtmeister in the applications are often foreigners: the 613 masters who applied for permission originated from 396 cities and towns and were often apparently transient. More than half – 357 – only applied for one occasion, and 126 applied twice, usually in the same year. Those who made multiple applications were few: the shoemaker and Strasbourg citizen Georg Köllerle made an 32 33

34

Olivier Dupuis, “Joachim Meyer, escrimeur libre, bourgeois de Strasbourg (1537?–1571),” in Maîtres et techniques de combat, ed. Fabrice Cognot (Dijon, 2006). Ludwig (Louis) Schneegans, “Die unterbrochene Fechtschule,” in August Stöber (ed.) Alsatia: Jahrbuch für elsässische Geschichte, Sage, Alterthumskunde, Sitte, Sprache und Kunst, vol. 4 (1853), pp. 180–92. Tlusty, “Martial Identity and the Culture of the Sword,” p. 553.

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Figure 6. Map of fencing master origins. Courtesy of Olivier Dupuis.

Town

Number of Individuals

Strasbourg

31

Augsburg

29

Nuremburg

24

Danzig

11

Munich

10

Ulm

9

Breslau

7

Nördlingen

6

Köningsberg

5

Table 1. Towns Most Represented in the Sources



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Name Georg Köllerle Hans Bartel Grasman Weigand Brack

Legal Status Citizen of Strasbourg Citizen of Strasbourg Citizen of Strasbourg

Philips Meichsner Hans Grasman

Citizen of Strasbourg Citizen of Strasbourg

Frantz Naher

Probably Strasbourg citizen From Stettin Probably Strasbourg citizen From Nördlingen; became Strasbourg citizen in 1595 Probably Strasbourg citizen

Shoemaker

Zacharias Schonknecht Christoph Greiner Jacob Beck

Sebastian von Matzenheim

Profession Shoemaker Tinsmith Tailor until 1575, then messenger Glovier Bodyguard

249

Number of Years Active Applications 1574–1609 81 1591–1606 65 1563–1581 35

1613–1635 1595–1614

33 28

Spur-maker

1615–1630

26

Furrier

1625–1629

18 17

Furrier

1595–1609

17

Baker

1600–1609

17

Table 2. Fencing Masters with the Most Applications

Profession Furrier (Kürsner) Shoemaker (Schumacher) Joiner (Schreiner) Tailor (Schneider) Baker (Beck) Soldier (Soldat/Kriegsman) Locksmith (Schlosser) Bricklayer (Maurer) Bodyguard (Trabant) Total:

Table 3. Most-Represented Professions

Number 119 31 29 26 24 22 13 10 10 461

Percentage 25.8% 6.7% 6.3% 5.6% 5.2% 4.8% 2.8% 2.2% 2.2% ~62%

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astonishing 81 applications between 1574 and 1609; Hans Bartel Grasman, a tinsmith and also citizen of Strasburg, made 65 between 1595 and 1606. Four others made between 20 and 30 applications in our period; one, Zacharias Schonknecht from Stettin, made 18; and 3 other probable citizens made 17. We can only conclude that most applicants were foreign workers, itinerant travelers, or journeymen. Certainly, the other details match well with professional patterns. Journeymen were guild-members and, as their name implies, had no settled abode but were rather expected to wander. As we mentioned above, during their height, Fechtschulen tended to be held on the journeymen’s day off. The journeymen had ample reason for forming such subcultures: by the mid-sixteenth century, much like adjunct professors, they were being used for cheap labor and were increasingly unlikely to achieve the security of guild-mastery, but were still forbidden from marrying and founding a household. Instead of living in their masters’ households, they increasingly lived in boarding houses, kept to their own company, and formed their own confraternities. All of this points to the origins and organization for the Fechtschulen: sport, like the ritualized drinking sessions and initiations that were also a part of their world, served the increasingly proletarianized journeymen’s needs for social cohesion. (We can perhaps see a bit of this in the guild-member’s mocking of Gernreich, the student-Fechtmeister.) Furthermore, it set them apart from the lower-level workers to whom weapons ownership was forbidden and made them a bit of extra money on the side. (There were cash prizes for successful competitors.) Finally, participating in the “chivalric art” (ritterliche Kunst) in a Fechtschule was an implicit statement of enfranchisement by the lower-ranking members of the social hierarchy who were often forbidden or unable to marry but who felt some pressure to confirm their masculinity and place in the world in an increasingly regimented socioeconomic system that defined manliness as being a married, respectable householder.35 We can also see something of a ground-up organization in this, a “folk tradition”: fencers from all of Germany could take part in a Fechtschule with a common understanding of fencing custom, or Fechter Brauch. This understanding and enforced orthopraxy would have been critical when fencing with no protective equipment, and in legal cases arising from fencing accidents, acting in accordance with Fechter Brauch was a positive defense. Such understandings and other conventions – such as an interdiction against thrusting – are confirmed by Meyer. Much as they did in other spheres, journeymen-fencers formed their own confraternities or guild-like organizations. Some years of apprenticeship provided the path to becoming a Fechtmeister and, being licensed to oneself, charge for lessons and hold Fechtschulen. Thus, even if he might never be a master in his guild, the journeyman could still be a Fechtmeister. Most notable of this was

35

See Merry E. Wiesner, “Wandervogels and Women: Journeymen’s Concepts of Masculinity in Early Modern Germany,” Journal of Social History 24 (1991), pp. 767–82.



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the Marxbruder organization, which was accorded by the Emperor Frederick III in 1487 the sole right to use the term Fechtmeister and teach throughout the empire. Against the Marxbruder were set the Freifechter or Federfechter, their rivals, albeit less well documented. There was quite a rivalry between the two groups in the sixteenth century.36 Meyer identifies himself as a Freifechter in both his book and other documents, and the term seems to simply refer to one who was not an official member of the Marxbruder.37 As we will discuss below, the two groups might also bespeak larger political allegiances. The frequency of Fechtschulen was closely linked to the state of war and peace in the Empire. The high point of such events in Strasbourg was after the Peace of Augsburg, when close to 40 were held per year. Numbers fell off during the Strasbourg Bishop’s War from 1592–1604, a small but highly important conflict between the Peace of Augsburg and the Thirty Years’ War. Numbers fell off precipitously after 1618, with brief revivals after the Imperial victory at Stadtlohn (1623), and then after the Peace of Westphalia. In the seventeenth century, however, the Fechtmeister increasingly presented themselves not as tradesmen, but as “soldiers.” Fechtbücher as an Early Modern Medievalism Besides holding Fechtschulen, another way for fencing masters-tradesmen to make money was by writing Fechtbücher. The aim in this martial capitalism predominantly seemed to be achieving noble patronage; making money from book sales was only a secondary concern. Joachim Meyer stands as a preeminent example of this. A native of Basel, he gained Strasbourgeois citizenship and the ability to practice his trade as a Messerschmidt (knife-maker) by marrying Appolonia Rülmann, widow of Jacob Wickgaw, in 1560. He was about 23 at the time; baptismal records from Basel indicate that a Joachim Meyer was born to a paper-maker named Jakob Meyer in 1537. Once established in Strasbourg, Meyer asked the Council of 21 for permission to hold a Fechtschule no less than five times between 1561 and 1568.38 Meyer was also apparently teaching fencing at this time: another Fechtschule applicant, Christoff Elias, is noted in 1561 as having “von Joachim meiern gelert.”39 Meyer’s first edition of his Fechtbuch was a manuscript written for Otto, Count of Sulms, Minzenberg, and Sonnenwaldt, who studied at the Protestant Academy in Strasbourg around 1568. Noble patronage must have encouraged him to take a financial risk: he published his sumptuous Gründtliche Beschreibung der Kunst des Fechtens (see Figs. 7–9) in 1570 – an effort that left him at least 300 crowns in debt. Again, Meyer sought noble patronage to advance his cause: the Gründtliche Beschreibung was dedicated to Johann 36 37 38 39

Tlusty, “Martial Identity and the Culture of the Sword,” pp. 554–57. Dupuis, “Joachim Meyer, bourgeois de Strasbourg”. Ibid. Archives de Strasbourg AMS 1R24, fol. 57.

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Casimir, Count-Palantine of the Rhine and Duke of Bavaria. In June of 1570, Meyer again turned journeyman and set off for Speyer, where the Imperial Diet was meeting.40 He was successful, signing a contract to serve as fencing master to Duke Johann-Albrecht I of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, at whose court he thought he could sell his books at a price of 30 florins apiece.41 Unfortunately, Meyer fell ill on the winter journey to Schwerin and died on 24 February 1571, exactly a year after the date given in the prologue of the Gründtliche Beschreibung. And so the knife-maker’s hubris ended in tragedy.

Figure 7. Title page from Meyer’s Gründtliche Beschreibung. Courtesy the Wiktenauer and Jeffrey Forgeng.

40 41

Lunds Universitets Bibliotek MS A.4º.2. See Jeffrey Forgeng’s “Addendum to the Second Edition,” in Joachim Meyer, The Art of Combat, (London, 2015), pp. 32–33. Dupuis, “Joachim Meyer, bourgeois de Strasbourg”.



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Figure 8. Illustration from Meyer’s Gründtliche Beschreibung. Courtesy the Wiktenauer and Jeffrey Forgeng.

Figure 9. Illustration from Meyer’s Gründtliche Beschreibung. Courtesy the Wiktenauer and Jeffrey Forgeng.

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Meyer’s choice of associations gives us some idea as to his social network. As stated above, he was a Freifechter and therefore against the Marxbruder; since the latter were Imperially recognized, can we perhaps see a Protestant, anti-centralizing tendency in the Freifechter? After all, Meyer was most likely Protestant: Strasbourg was Lutheran during his lifetime, and Count Otto, CountPalantine Johann Casimir, and Duke Johann-Albrecht were all Protestants as well. Furthermore, Johann-Albrecht had granted the Federfechter the same privileges in Mecklenburg as the Marxbruder enjoyed in the Empire as a whole.42 Meyer is modern in another way, as well: he self-consciously references the glories of the past. Indeed, the entire treatise is replete with mentions of the glorious past and common customs of the German nation. Much as his Italian contemporary Camillo Agrippa did, in his dedication to Johann Casimir, Meyer decries guns as ignoble, praises the past, and mourns the decline of the art of fencing, which is so useful to the fatherland. This art, Meyer writes, was studiously practiced by “German heroes” such as Pepin, Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, and Henry I, who established the “true chivalric school.” Of course, Meyer updates the system: his weapons include not just the longsword – which, with the dussack, provides the pedagogical basis of the system – but also pikes and halberds and the rappier, which is not quite a rapier but a cutting-and-thrusting weapon that preserved the thrusts that had disappeared from common practice. Meyer, much like contemporary Italians such as Agrippa, sought to order the art of fencing into a rational pedagogy. Unlike the Italians, however, he did not begin anew with a new weapon (the rapier), but rather used the traditional knowledge handed down as merkverse (mnemonic poetry) from the apocryphal master Johannes Liechtenauer. Meyer reproduced the Liechtenauer verses in the third part of his treatise on the longsword and gave his own gloss.43 The various transmissions of and Zettel on the Liechtenauer verses have filled works in themselves; what we are concerned with here is their antiquity. The first surviving Fechtbuch to record the verses – indeed, the second known Fechtbuch – is dated to around 1389. This is Nürnberger Handschrift GNM 3227a, a Hausbuch that contains not only the Liechtenauer merkverse, but also mentions fireworks, oath-taking, dyeing cloth, alchemical steel-hardening, and medicine, astronomy, magic, and oral hygiene.44 As Alderson says, “The common function of all of these different arts or crafts is that they are collected knowledge which the reader was to use to gain ability in an area, which ability would then increase his effectiveness, which in turn gives him power.”45 This eclectic nature also enables us to make an attempt at dating the manuscript: the calendar on fol. 83v begins in 1390.46 42 43 44 45 46

Ibid. See Meyer, Art of Combat, trans. Forgeng, pp. 89–90. Alderson, “Arts and Crafts of War,” pp. 24–29. Ibid., p. 24. This has been called into question; see Eric Burkart, “The Autograph of an Erudite Martial Artist: A Close Reading of Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Hs. 3227a 451,” in Late Medieval and Early Modern Fight Books.



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Regarding fencing, the anonymous author tells us that Liechtenauer did not invent this art, but rather that it was hundreds of years old and that he searched it out from many lands.47 (Meyer, who was about 33 at the time of writing, similarly mentions how he had learned the art from many “skilled and famous” masters and had practiced it for “many years.”)48 The Liechtenauer tradition seems to have similarly been transmitted by itinerant masters. GNM 3227a also contains glosses by Andres Juden, Jobs von der Nissen, Nicklass Preußen, and Hans Döbringer (the first of whom was apparently a Jew, and the last of whom was a priest). Paulus Kal of Dingolfing in southern Bavaria (c. 1420–after 1485), a fencing master and/or military officer (Schirrmeister – “fencing master”) who served Ludwig IX, Duke of Bavaria-Landshut and several other members of the high nobility, likewise mentions members of the “Society of Liechtenauer” (Geselschaft Liechtenauers).49 Kal mentions 17 members, including his own teacher, Hans Stettner of Mörnsheim, all coming from different cities spread throughout the Empire. Stettner would have belonged to the generation immediately following MS 3227a. The tradition was both martial and literary: some of these masters mentioned in Kal’s list, such as Sigmund ain Ringeck and Andre Liegniczer, also authored treatises.50 We can get from this an idea of a world of wandering journeymen-masters, some literate, some not, who created a shared sense of community by tracing a common heritage to an apocryphal master.51 Occasionally a literate master, or one in service to a noble with a wish to commemorate his teaching, would produce a Fechtbuch to try to appeal to noble patrons. Many depicted unarmed fighting as found later in Meyer; others depicted mounted combat or armored combat in judicial duels. (Even if not very common, the recourse to arms was still an important symbol to the nobility.) We must regard such treatises less as “how to” manuals and more as a sort of martial pornography: something to delight the reader, but in no way a substitute for actual practice. Joachim Meyer stands firmly in this tradition, albeit making use of the possibilities of print to both increase his potential audience and to explain the art to readers who had not received instruction in person. (Earlier German printed works are all rooted in Andre Paurñfeyndt’s 1516 Ergrundung Ritterlicher Kunst der Fechterey, which referred also to the Liechtenauer tradition – though it presented somewhat different material – and kept a very medieval ordering 47 48 49 50 51

Alderson, “Arts and Crafts of War,” p. 26. Meyer, Art of Combat, trans. Forgeng, p. 38. The holotype of the various examples of Kal’s work is Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Cgm 1507. Several of these are collected in the Codex Danzig (c. 1452) (Rome, Biblioteca dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei e Corsiniana Cod.44.A.8). For the current state of the questions, see Dierk Hagedorn, “German Fechtbücher from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance,” in Late Medieval and Early Modern Fight Books: Transmission and Tradition of Martial Arts in Europe (14th––17th Centuries), ed. Daniel Jaquet, Karin Verelst, and Timothy Dawson (Leiden, 2016), pp. 247–79.

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of material.) The Fechtbücher, however, were only an epiphenomenon: the noumenon was a manifestation of popular culture amongst journeymen. This tradition of wandering artisan-swordsmen was, at the time Meyer wrote, at least 200 years old. Conclusions Fencing competitions were indicative of a non-official – which is to say a popular – culture amongst journeymen in the sixteenth-century Holy Roman Empire. The origins of this culture stretched back to at least the fourteenth century. However, its meaning changed with the times. Earlier masters could serve high nobility, but longsword fencing in the days of gunpowder weapons and increasingly effective standing militaries was a deliberate anachronism, a tacit statement of the individual’s dignity and right to own arms and practice a ritterlich (knightly) art. Fencing thus had a polyvalent meaning: it was a masculine sport, a statement of enfranchisement, a recollection of an imagined past, and an assertion of membership in a pan-Germanic community. Looking at the specific example of Strasbourg, fencing events had their height before 1618, then fell off after the Thirty Years’ War. At the same time, new regulations against carrying weapons became common throughout the Empire, at first mainly targeting servants and journeymen – the class amongst whom Fechtschulen were most popular. By the time the city was annexed by Louis XIV in 1683, these competitions were almost entirely gone. Daniel Martin, in his French/German conversation book New Parlement published in Strasbourg in 1637, presents a dialogue between well-heeled fencers but expects them to be playing at rapiers and daggers, not auff die Teutsche manier (“in the German fashion”).52 A century later, the fencing master Michel Martin was under the protection of the royal prêteur (praetor) and had a monopoly on the teaching of fencing in the city, which he taught in the conventional form of the court sword of the Parisian guild of masters. The realities of war and fashion similarly affected support of fencing culture elsewhere, as well; for instance, in 1647, Danzig banned Fechtschulen in favor of pike and musket drills.53 The carrying of the old weapons fell out of favor in favor of Italianate rapiers and then French court swords, and they appear in fewer inventories post mortem.54 Still, though the Fechtschulen seemed quite outmoded by the time of Wencker, Monconys, and Künast, they had far from disappeared. Theodor Verolini’s Der Künstliche Fechter (“The Artful Fencer”) of 1679 is essentially a plagiarism of Meyer’s work. The practice of the alter 52 53

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Daniel Martin, New Parlement oder hundert kurtzweilige, doch nützliche Gespräch (Strasbourg, 1637), pp. 726–32. Gotthilf Löschin, Geschichte Danzigs von der ältesten bis zur neuesten Zeit: mit beständiger Rücksicht auf Cultur der Sitten, Wissenschaften, Künste, Gewerbe und Handelszweige, Vol. 1 (Danzig, 1828), p. 355. Tlusty, “Martial Identity and the Culture of the Sword,” pp. 560–61.



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Fechtkunst was not just a literary conceit: the Junker “von A,” in his eighteenthcentury Alchemia Diminicandi, mentions the Klopfechters of the old guilds as if they were still in currency, albeit populated by people of low birth, and recommends that it is better to carry a stout staff and brace of pistols on the road than a sword. Fechter even came to mean “itinerant beggar”: Johann Ebers in his 1796 English–German dictionary gives Fechter as a possible synonym for ein unverschämter Bettler, “an impudent, saucy beggar.” Nonetheless, the practice of Fechtschulen persisted, albeit in a reduced form, in the Empire and Low Countries until the Napoleonic conquest.55 Clearly, Bürgerliche Martialissimus (“Civic Martialism,” to coin a phrase along the lines of Hans Baron’s Bürgerliche Humanissimus or “Civic Humanism”) continued to carry meaning for a good long while in the Empire.

Figure 10. A Fechtschule held in an inn yard in Nuremberg in 1623. The participants are already labeled as Klopfechter. Courtesy Christoph Amberger.

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Bert Gevaert and Reinier van Noort, “Evolution of Martial Traditions in the Low Countries: Fencing Guilds and Treatises,” in Late Medieval and Early Modern Fight Books: Transmission and Tradition of Martial Arts in Europe (14th–17th Centuries), ed. Daniel Jaquet, Karin Verelst, and Timothy Dawson (Leiden, 2016), p. 391.

9 Note: An Army on the March and in Camp – Guillaume Guiart’s Branche des royaus lingnages Michael Livingston

This brief note provides a new translation and discussion of a passage from La Branche des royaus lingnages, Guillaume Guiart’s 12,510-line verse history of the French kings, written between 1306 and 1307. In this text, Guiart provides an insightful description of what he saw of a French army on the march and in camp during Philip IV’s 1304 campaign in Flanders (which would culminate with the Battle of Mons-en-Pévèle) including the roles of supply wagons and roads, and the central presence of many non-combatants. In his excellent 2007 book, Soldiers’ Lives, Clifford J. Rogers observed that, in the Middle Ages, armies would usually have with them very substantial numbers of unattached camp followers – prostitutes, butchers, women selling provisions, shield merchants (shields being prone to demolition in combat), cobblers, and washerwomen, among other groups. Guillaume Guiart gives a nice picture of them in a French army camp in 1304, crying their cheeses and breads, dispensing wine from casks, baking tarts and pasties, and getting into trouble of various sorts.1

While collecting sources for a medieval warfare reader, Kelly DeVries and I found this reference too tantalizing to pass up, especially as we were seeking a source that would give our readers a glimpse of the realities of a medieval military encampment.2 The passage to which Rogers points does not, upon examination, include the full range of possible camp-followers, but what Guiart’s poem does say about a medieval army on the march and in camp is nonetheless fascinating. Indeed, among the poem’s several points of interest is the way in which it indicates that the needs and wants of the medieval soldier might deviate from some modern expectations. After the disastrous defeat of his French knights at the Battle of the Golden Spurs below the walls of Kortrijk on 11 July 1302, King Philip IV (the Fair) 1 2

Clifford J. Rogers, Soldiers’ Lives Through History: The Middle Ages (Westport, 2007), p. 75. Kelly DeVries and Michael Livingston, ed. Medieval Warfare: A Reader, Readings in Medieval Civilizations and Cultures XXI (Toronto, 2019).

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launched a major campaign against the Flemings in 1304. Among the soldiers accompanying this French army – he describes himself as a sergent d’armes from Orléans – was Guillaume Guiart. His name, one suspects, might be unknown to history if it were not for the fact that he was wounded in the campaign. Unable to continue in the life of the sword, Guiart took up the life of the stylus: between 1306 and 1307 he composed La Branche des royaus lingnages, a massive verse history of the French kings from the birth of Philippe Augustus to 1306. Running to 21,510 octosyllabic verses in length, Guiart’s poem was first edited by J.-A. Buchon in volumes 7 and 8 of the Collection des chroniques nationales françaises (Paris, 1828); this edition, to say the least, is poorly managed, even to the point of incorrect lineation. A subsequent text correcting these errors, but unfortunately omitting lines 497–8,964, appeared in volume 22 of the Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, edited by N. de Wailly and L. Delisle (Paris, 1865). No modern edition has been made, and the text has never been translated – the latter fact almost assuredly due to the difficulty of Guiart’s language. By all appearances, the Orléanais sergent came into his poetic literacy late in his life, and even considering the variability of medieval linguistics his language can be noteworthy for the looseness of its grammar and the oddities of an often transliterated orthography. R. D. A. Crafter, in a 1957 article calling for the creation of a modern edition (to be followed, one would hope, by a suitable translation), admirably broke down Guiart’s sources. He revealed that, following a 496-line prologue, the first 13,132 lines are highly indebted to the Dyonisian Chronicles and a lost work of Jean de Prunai (one suspects this is part of the reason the Wailly-Delisle edition omitted much of this portion of the work). Starting with the reign of Philip IV, however, Guiart begins to incorporate eyewitness accounts, and lines 16,331–21,150 are notable for being – outside of his description of the naval battle of Zierikzee on 10–11 August – “nearly all Guiart’s first-hand reporting” of Philip IV’s 1304 campaign into Flanders.3 It is this section of Guiart’s work that has received most of the scant attention that scholars have given to the poem. Some of this academic awareness has concentrated on matters of trivia that can be gleaned from Guiart’s wideranging account – it has, Peter Thorne has claimed, the “earliest contemporary reference expressly connecting royal sergeants of arms with maces”4 – but there is also much historical interest in what Guiart tells us of the actions of the French army on land, up to and including the Battle of Monsen-Pévèle on 18 August 1304. 3

4

R. D. A. Crafter, “Materials for a Study of the Sources of Guillaume Guiart’s La Branche des Royaus Lingnages,” Medium Ævum 26 (1957), p. 4. For a study of Guiart’s account of Zierikzee, see William Sayers, “Naval Tactics at the Battle of Zierikzee (1304) in the Light of Mediterranean Praxis,” Journal of Medieval Military History 4 (2006), 74–90. Peter F. Thorne, The Royal Mace in the House of Commons (London, 1990), p. 15.



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Guiart, as it happens, was not in that climactic battle, though he heard much about it from witnesses.5 He had been wounded a week earlier during a daring raid on the fortified house of La Haignerie. Guiart, with a sneaky humility, recounts the tale of an Orléanais sergeant leading the rather heroic assault and taking wounds in the left arm and right foot – a role and wounds that match his own (lines 19,881–906; cf. 97–115). From that point forward, Guiart was confined to camp, reliant on what reports came to him there. The passage in Guiart’s poem that Rogers highlights describes actions prior to the poet’s wounding, as the French king began marauding Flemish holdings at the end of July. This rich, eyewitness glimpse of a soldier’s life on the march is here translated into Modern English, along with a brief discussion of some of the passage’s important points.

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The majority of scholarship that makes use of Guiart, in fact, focuses on his utility as a source for Mons-en-Pévelè. See, for instance, J. F. Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare in Western Europe During the Middle Ages from the Eighth Century to 1340, 2nd ed., trans. Sumner Willard and R. W. Southern (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 198–203, and Vlaanderen na de Guldensporenslag (Bruges, 1991), as well as Kelly DeVries, Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century: Discipline, Tactics, and Technology (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 23–48.

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– from Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, vol. 22, ed. N. de Wailly and L. Delisle (Paris, 1865), 282–83.6 A Arraz est li rois de France, Et maint homme de grant puissance, Toute est de gent la vile plaine. VIII jourz après la Magdelaine, Fait li rois, qui de touz iert sire, Par la vile crier et dire Que l’endemain, à l’ajournée, Soit toute la gent atournée, Une et autre, grant et menue, Qui à gages est là venue, Si comme el doit estre establie, Chascun en sa connestablie Où il s’est otroié et mis, Pour aler sus leur ennemis; Et que le pas serréement Sivent tuit ordenéement Les mareschaus et leur banières Qui devant l’ost iront premières. De ce font li serjant grant feste. Au matinet li oz s’apreste. Qui lors véist par les charrières Genz armez avant et arrières En flotes, comme bergeries, Issir hors des herbergeries, Chars charchiez d’armes ateler Et destriers de pris enséler, Viandes mètre sus brouètes, Et il oïst bruire charrètes, Chevaus hénir et trompes braire, Garçons, qui ne se sevent taire Noisier et de joie chanter, Ge me puis bien de ce vanter, Tout fust-il de courrouz en voie, Si li levast le cuer de joie. Soudoier, qui d’armes se vestent, D’aler vers les Flamens s’aprestent Pour leur faire desconvenue. 6

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The alternative text, with incorrect line numbers, is in Collection des chroniques nationales françaises, vol. 7, ed. J.-A. Buchon (Paris, 1828), pp. 408–13.



Guillaume Guiart’s Branche des royaus lingnages

Translation At Arras is the king of France, And many men of great power. The town is full of men. Eight days after the [Feast of] Magdalene, It is ordered by the king, who will rule them all, To cry and shout throughout the town That the next day, at dawn, All the men should be ready, One and the other, large and small, Who have come receiving wages, As it had been arranged, Should report into their constables’ companies Where each man is assigned and situated, In order to move against their enemies; And they pack the road tightly, All of them following in an orderly manner The marshals and their banner-bearers Who go in the first position in front of the army. After this the sergeants make a great gathering. Throughout the morning the army gathers itself: Those who will later go by the roads, The men-at-arms go forward and back In their troops, like sheep-herders, As they issue out from the lodgings. You would see the harnessing of carts with arms, And the saddling of prized horses, The loading of victuals on wheelbarrows, And you would hear the rattling of carts, The neighing of horses and blaring of trumpets, The boys, who could not keep quiet, Shouting and singing with joy. I would do well to praise this last thing, For can there be troubles on the road If the heart is raised in joy? Soldiers, who are provided with arms, Prepared themselves to go against the Flemings In order to do to them some misfortune.

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Michael Livingstone Mès nouvèle est au roi venue Et à ceus qui o lui séjournent Que si ennemi s’en retournent: Jà ont tuit (tant se sont lassé!) Le pont de Vendinc repassé; Là veulent que François les truissent, Si que vers eus aler ne puissent; Là sont de guerre appareillié; Mès on a au roi conseillié Que, s’il leur veust faire domage, Querre couvient autre passage; Ileuc ou leur ost est à tire Ne les pourroit nus desconfire: Trop est le pas greveus à prendre. Parquoi li rois fait, sanz atendre, Ses oz trestourner d’autre part. Li peuples qui d’Arras se part De guerroier tout afiné, S’est vert Fampons acheminé. Granz est li bruiz quant l’ost s’aroute: Les compaignies, route à route, Par devers Douai d’Arras issent; Li chemin queuvrent et emplissent (Si que l’un à l’autre se serre) De genz armez et presz à guerre. D’Arraz se partent duc et conte, Baron, chastelain et visconte, Serjanz d’armes et séneschaus; Les banières aus mareschaus Desploies contre le vant Sont enz el premier front devant: Si très grant plenté vient après Joingnant et serrés près à près, Et si grant fès de baronnie, Par mons, par vaus, par terre onnie, Qu’il n’est nus homs qui les prisast Ne qui le nombre en devisast, Tant en a de long et de lé! Diex! con li destrier ensélé, Que li garçon en destre mainent, Orgueilleusement se démainent! Et con li escucel des sèles, Frains seurorez et compenèles, Et eschelètes et lorains, Sus ceus dont ge parlai orains,

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Guillaume Guiart’s Branche des royaus lingnages But word is brought to the king And to those who rest with him, That his enemy turns aside; What’s more, all of them are fatigued! 19,575 The bridge at Vendin is recrossed; There they desire that the French will find them Such that they cannot advance against them: There they are organized for war. But one gave counsel to the king 19,580 That, if he wished to do harm to them, They ought to search out another crossing; At that place where their army is gathered up He had no chance of defeating them, The road is too difficult for them to attack. 19,585 For this reason the king decided, without delay, To turn his army in a completely different direction. The people who had already left Arras Were stopped by a soldier, Re-routed to the countryside of Fampoux. 19,590 Great is the noise when the army assembles; The companies, troop to troop, By way of Douai, issue from Arras; They cover and fill the road, Each one pressed against another, 19,595 These men who are armed and ready for war. From Arras depart these dukes and counts, Barons, castellans, and viscounts, Sergeants of arms and seneschals. The banners of the marshals, 19,600 Deployed against the wind, Are in the first position up front. A great multitude came after them, All of them together, densely packed, And this great host of barony, 19,605 Across mountains, valleys, plains, No man could be found who could count them Nor even imagine such a number, Not in length nor in width! God! how the saddled charger, 19,610 That the boy leads on the right side, Shakes so proudly! And with escutcheons on the saddles, Golden horse bits and seat pads, And bells and harness straps 19,615 On all the chargers I’m talking about,

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Michael Livingstone Qui s’en vont si joieusement, Sonnent mélodieusement. Clers chantent motez, bidauz dancent, Vieilles plaident, charretiers tancent, Gennes fames janglent et rient, Serjanz hoquètent, hérauz crient, Charroiz comme foudre randonnent, Tabourz croissent, trompes bondonnent, Banières cliquent et frémissent, Asnes braient, chevaus hénissent, Les armes tentissent qui poisent, Ribauz huent et garçons noisent Tout le païs entour résonne Du grant escrois que l’en li donne. Connestables et capitaines Des compagnies premeraines Fichent pour eus logier leur bonnes, De là Arras, II lieues bonnes; Et cil qui les sivent à traces Ront ordenéement leur places: Par arées et par seillons Tendent tentes et pavillons, Comme en forz maisons et en sales, Mètent dedanz cofres et males. Cil à pié, qui n’ont mie rentes Ne denier dont il aient tentes, Queurent les arbres esbranchier: La véissiez rainsiaus tranchier Et aus serjanz atraïner Et petites entes cliner, Et faire loges et fueillies De branches qu’il orent cueillies. Ainz que fussiez alé gramment (Se Guillaume Guiart n’en ment), Péussiez véoir estendues, Tantes tentes ès chans tendues,

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Guillaume Guiart’s Branche des royaus lingnages Which were leaving so joyously, They made a melodious sound. The clerics chant motets; the militia1 dance; The aged ones beg; the carters quarrel; Young women chat and joke; Sergeants hiccup; heralds cry; Wagons with big barrels ramble; Drums sound; horns trumpet loud; Banners clatter and tremble; Asses bray; horses neigh; The arms of the armed made noise; Scoundrels yell and boys argue. All the surrounding country resounds With the great din that they all make. Constables and captains Of the prestigious companies Direct for them to lodge their goods, Out of Arras, two good leagues; And those to come follow their example, In ordered fashion find their places. With shovels and buckets They deploy tents and pavilions, As if in strong houses and halls, Furnished with trunks and luggage. Those on foot who do not have revenues, Not a penny do they have for tents, So they search out the limbs of trees: There would you see little branches cut And the sergeants dragging these And bending them towards little saplings, To make lodges and lean-to shelters From the branches they have gathered up. Before that would be a vast multitude (If Guillaume Guiart doesn’t lie) You could see stretching out, So many tents spread across the fields,

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The Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (s.v. bedeau) generally defines this component of the army as “Homme d’armes subalterne (de mauvaise réputation),” specifying them further as “Soldat de troupes légères, armé de dards, d’une lance et d’un poignard (ces troupes ne sont autre chose que des paysans armés, adonnés au pillage, et à la solde de tous les partis indifféremment).” To call these men “light infantry” with standard arms, however, falsely implies a level of organization and structure that they did not have. Given their regional origin, I have instead translated them as “militia,” though a more wordy translation like “rabble of armed peasants” might be closest to the mark.

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Michael Livingstone Que plus d’une grant lieue dure L’aceinte entour et la closture. Entre les autres, par mestrises, Sont les tentes le roi assises, Plaisanz, avenantes et bèles, A la circuite desquèles Li serjant d’Orliens qui là ièrent, Armez chascune nuit veillièrent; O eus une connestablie De soudoiers de Picardie. En l’ost çà et là, par les rues, Resont les bonnes gens menues Qui du travail de leur cors vivent, Et qui, pour gaaingnier, l’ost sivent: Cil font petiz forniaus et fors Es fossez près des quarrefors; Moult se sont du faire hastez; Là cuisent tartres et pastez. Taverniers, dont mainz sont en dètes, Ront tonniaus de vin en charrètes, Qu’aus soudoiers qui en demandent Troubles (atout la lie) vendent. Li autre leur godales crient, Qui est d’Arraz, si comme il dient. Çà et là roïssiez vieillotes Crier haut à diverses notes, Les unes pour fourmages vendre, Autres pour pain blanc dur et tendre. Cil cuisinier ces poz rescument; Les loges de toutes parz fument. Ribauz, qui portent les berlenz, Ne resont pas de jouer lenz; Moult démainent grant braiterie A chascune baraterie: Dez plains, dez vuidiez, dez mespoinz Saillent aus ribauz hors des poinz, Quant il ont trouvé leur renaut; Mès comment que la chance en aut, Il veulent avoir l’avantage. L’un met sur le berlenz son gage, Et l’autre met argent encontre; L’un dit de VII, l’autre rencontre: Cil qui gaaingnent à eus traient, Et li perdant crient et braient. Tel i a qui maugraie et jure

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Guillaume Guiart’s Branche des royaus lingnages That more than a great league extends The perimeter and the enclosure. Among the others, by authority, Are the tents the king establishes, Pleasing, welcoming, and beautiful, Around the outside of these, A sergeant of the Orléanais who were there, Standing armed guard with them each night; With them a constable’s company Of the soldiers of Picardy. In the host here and there, by the roads, Are the diverse good people, Who live by the work of their hands, And who, for profit, accompany the army. Here they make little furnaces and ovens In ditches near the crossroads; Many are there to make spits; There they cook tarts and pastries. Barkeeps, to whom so many are in debt, Bring barrels of wine in wagons, Which to the soldiers who demand it Watered down, even the dregs, they sell. Others cry for their beers Which are from Arras, as they say. Here and there the aged ones echo, Cry out their diverse calls, The ones to sell cheeses, Others white bread hard or tender. These cooks set aside their pots; Everyone’s tents are filled with smoke. The scoundrels, who carry their dice, Will not cease to play their games. Many commence great shouting At each deception: From the complaints, fights, and false marks Scoundrels are chased away from such places, All who get what’s coming to them; Whichever game of chance is played, They desire to have an advantage. This one places his bet on the game, And the other counters with coins; The one calls for seven, the other matches: The one who wins grabs from the other, And the loser cries and shouts. One blasphemes and swears

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Michael Livingstone Le sanc, le foie et la fresure, Que, si comme chascun le set, Que son argent aloit de VII, Et que ses compainz avoit IIII. Lors les véissiez entrebattre, Et donner mériaus et poingnies, Et muselées et groingnies (En lieu de gastelez rasiz) Si très granz que par les nasiz Leur saut le sanc plénièrement; Mès paiz font si légièrement Qu’il ne couvient que de leur dète Prévost ne baillif s’entremète. A Fampons sont François tenduz, Qui par les chans sont estenduz. Toulousan ont là, comme amis, Maint soudoier au roi tramis.

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There is much to be gleaned from this description of the mass of an army on the march and in camp, beginning with the logistics of calling so many men to order and getting them moving along with their supplies. The process, as Guiart attests, would have been measured in many hours (line 19,554), as the officers – in an analogy that could speak to how they viewed the common soldiers – herd the men like sheep (19,556–57). Guiart’s focus in these early lines on the loading and transport of supplies, it must be noted, quite belies any war study that ignores fundamental supply chains by focusing exclusively on the actions of the front-line fighting men. Also often forgotten by modern historians of the period, these masses of men and their hundreds of supply transports could only be efficiently moved by roads, a common sense truth that Guiart nevertheless mentions multiple times (19,549, 19,551, 19,555, 19,567, 19,585, 19,594). Any attempt to understand force movements during a medieval military campaign or battle that ignores the practical realities of the locations and routes of ancient and medieval roads, one imagines, must be treated with some suspicion. Additionally, Guiart is keen to emphasize how the distinctions of class organize the march. He distinguishes between soldiers who are salaried and those who are not (19,544–45), as well as, eventually, the separate forces of a militia (19,619). And when the army issues out it is the marshals and their banner-bearers who ride ahead of the common soldiers, the sergeants pushing the battles along behind them, along with the attending supply train. The king and other members of the nobility apparently lag behind: it is doubtful that they would be roused out of bed with the dawn and unlikely they would arrive in camp before their lodgings had been prepared. Their departure is described as occurring much later in the day (19,597–99), following a decision to change the



Guillaume Guiart’s Branche des royaus lingnages On the blood, liver, and guts, That, as everyone knows, His silver was set on seven, And his companions were on four. Then you would see them begin to fight, And to exchange fists and blows, Punching faces and noses (Instead of punching down bread) So forcefully that from their noses The blood pours out of them. But peace is made so quickly That it is not necessary for their blows To bring in the provost or the bailiff. At Fampoux are these French encamped, Who through the fields are extended. Toulousains are there, too, as allies, Many soldiers are sent to the king.

271

19,700

19,705

19,710

route of the army – a decision that creates chaos in the lines already issued out along the road (19,586–90). The royal lodgings, of course, occupy the central portion of the camp layout that Guiart describes at march’s end: a pavilion that is literally fit for a king. Here, Guiart no doubt speaks of himself when he describes a “sergeant of the Orléanais” (19,659) who stands guard outside the royal structure all night. Surrounding this, in turn, are field tents whose proximity to the king’s lodging (and, one assumes, their size) marks their status and authority. Guiart describes, too, the fact that a great many of the men in the army could not afford even the barest of field tents. Forced to make their own shelter, they construct crude lean-to shelters from sticks and whatever else they can scrounge from the area (19,641–48) – a far cry even from the most simple pup tent of a modern infantryman.7 All this, it seems, is held within “the perimeter and the enclosure” (19,654), which is likely a field fortification of circled wagons or (though it seems less likely to this particular encampment) a rudimentary palisade. Perhaps even more interesting is the time Guiart takes to observe the oftenunnoted presence of non-combatants who accompanied (and often profited from) the hungry and thirsty soldiers. There are clerics (19,619), as well as young women who could take on any number of roles within the army (19,621), and there are a wide range of the medieval equivalent of food trucks: in the ditches along the sides of the road they cook and bake goods that can be sold to

7

Rogers provides a list of sources describing similar ramshackle shelters in Soldiers’ Lives, p. 105 n82.

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Michael Livingstone

hungry soldiers (19,667–70) – doing so in the ditches, one suspects, because it enables them to construct their ovens more speedily by simply digging out the embankment. Nearby, merchants sell diluted wine and beer to the men (19,671– 75), while others hawk cheeses and breads (19,679–81). And amid the din of all these people and horses and carts all packed together to seek foodstuffs in the smoke (19,682), the men pass the time gambling (19,683–84) and fighting over the rolls of dice. Guiart’s feelings about these games of chance – and the bloodied noses that can result from them – is perhaps implied when he parenthetically observes that they are punching faces when they could be punching down rising bread (19,704–05). Following Rogers’ lead, we approached Guiart’s work with the anticipation that we would find strong evidence of prostitution in the army, yet we found none. It might well have been unnoted by Guiart, of course, or implied in the mere presence of the young women – which would certainly introduce a set of gendered questions – but it could also be the case that our expectation of prostitution is greater that the reality of it. The truth of a medieval army on the march, if Guiart’s eyewitness account is a suitable measure, may be that the exhausted men were more apt to think with their stomachs than with something lower.

List of Contributors Fabrizio Ansani is a fellow of the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici. He was awarded a Ph.D. in Early Modern History from the University of Padova in 2018. His interests range over all aspects of Italian Renaissance wars, from the creation of permanent military offices to developments in weapons production, from the recruitment of standing armies to the contemporary narrations of conflicts. He has focused, in particular, on the implications of warfare for the politics, the economy, and the society of fifteenth-century Florence. Andrew (Drew) Bolinger recently graduated California State University Fullerton with a master’s degree in history. His research thus far has focused on the underlying causes for surprising diplomatic relations between groups in northern Syria in the first quarter of the twelfth century ad. Particularly, he looks at the diplomatic relations of both Latins and Turks to their Arab, Armenian, and Greek neighbors, with special attention paid to how individual leaders and groups reacted to the Saljuq civil wars that ravaged the region. He plans to pursue doctoral work focused on the Latin East and Medieval Islam. Olivier Dupuis is an independent researcher living in Strasbourg, France. He focuses mostly on the history of fencing and other hand-to-hand martial arts. Working directly with archival documents from France, Switzerland and Germany, he has published several critical editions and studies on that subject. Ehud Galili is a marine archaeologist and a research fellow in the Zinman Institute of Archaeology, and a lecturer in the maritime civilizations department at the University of Haifa. He directed the underwater excavations in the submerged Neolithic settlements off the Carmel coast (1984–2018), and has carried out underwater archaeological surveys off the Israeli coast since 1965 studying and publishing the archaeological material yielded. His activity focuses on the study of the relationship between man and sea along the coasts of Israel and the rescue of remnants of the maritime civilization developed there. Galili established the marine unit of the Israel Antiquities Authority, which is in charge of the protection, management, and research of the underwater archaeological heritage of Israel, and directed the unit from 1990 to 2004. Michael John Harbinson was educated at The Royal Grammar School Newcastle in the same class as the late Timothy Reuter, and took a degree in English Language and Literature at Worcester College Oxford. A retired general medical practitioner who has taught on the Medicine and Humanities course at Newcastle University, Dr. Harbinson has pursued a a lifelong interest in medieval history, publishing in Notes and Queries, Classical Quarterly, British Medical Journal, and The Hobilar: Journal of the Lance and Longbow Society.

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List of Contributors

Donald J. Kagay, formerly a Professor of History at Albany State University, now lectures at the University of Dallas. He has published very widely on medieval legal and military history, specializing in the medieval Crown of Aragon. Among his many publications are three books, eight essay collections, and over two dozen refereed articles, including previous contributions to The Journal of Medieval Military History. Michael Livingston, Associate Professor of English at The Citadel, holds degrees in History and Medieval Studies as well as a Ph.D. in English. His latest scholarly work, The Battle of Crécy: A Casebook (co-edited with Kelly DeVries) received a prestigious Distinguished Book Award from the Society of Military History. Dr. Livingston is also the series editor for the Liverpool Historical Casebooks Series. Ken Mondschein received his Ph.D. from Fordham University in 2010. He is currently teaching at the University of Massachusetts’ new campus at Mt. Ida College. Dr. Mondschein has published a dozen books and numerous chapters and articles, with the histories of fencing and of timekeeping being his primary research subjects. He is also a professional teacher of writing, riding, and historical fencing, as well as a jouster and freelance writer. Helen J. Nicholson is Professor of Medieval History at Cardiff University, Wales, and has published extensively on the military religious orders, crusades, medieval warfare, women’s roles in these, and medieval “fictional” literature as a historical source. She is currently researching into the Templars’ and Hospitallers’ properties in England and Wales, and is writing a study of Queen Sybil of Jerusalem (d. 1190) for Routledge’s “Rulers of the Latin East” series. Avraham Ronen (1935-2018)  was Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Haifa University and in 1988 founded the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa. He conducted, with Ya’acov Olami, the archaeological survey of ʿAtlit, published in the ʿAtlit Map volume (1978).  In his pioneering research on the Kurkar and Hamra deposits on the Israeli coast, their chronological dating was identified, using prehistoric industries. He carried out numerous excavations and authored or edited eleven books and over one hundred articles.  Prof. Ronen’s major research topics were stone tool technology, human behavior and adaptations, and the oldest migrations.  Sadly, Prof. Ronen passed away during the preparation of the article for publication. L. J. Andrew Villalon is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin, Professor Emeritus at the University of Cincinnati, and past president of De Re Militari. He has published extensively not only on late medieval and early modern Spanish history (especially the War of the Two Pedros), but also on the Hundred Years War and the First World War.

Journal of Medieval Military History 1477–545X

Volume I 1 The Vegetian “Science of Warfare” in the Middle Ages – Clifford J. Rogers 2 Battle Seeking: The Contexts and Limits of Vegetian Strategy – Stephen F. Morillo 3 Italia – Bavaria – Avaria: The Grand Strategy behind Charlemagne’s Renovatio Imperii in the West – Charles R. Bowlus 4 The Composition and Raising of the Armies of Charlemagne – John France 5 Some Observations on the Role of the Byzantine Navy in the Success of the First Crusade – Bernard S. Bachrach 6 Besieging Bedford: Military Logistics in 1224 – Emilie M. Amt 7 “To aid the Custodian and Council”: Edmund of Langley and the Defense of the Realm, June–July 1399 – Douglas Biggs 8 Flemish Urban Militias Against the French Cavalry Armies in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries – J. F. Verbruggen (translated by Kelly DeVries)

Volume II 1 The Use of Chronicles in Recreating Medieval Military History – Kelly DeVries 2 Military Service in the County of Flanders – J. F. Verbruggen (translated by Kelly DeVries) 3 Prince into Mercenary: Count Armengol VI of Urgel, 1102–1154 – Bernard F. Reilly 4 Henry II’s Military Campaigns in Wales, 1157–1165 – John Hosler 5 Origins of the Crossbow Industry in England – David S. Bachrach 6 The Bergerac Campaign (1345) and the Generalship of Henry of Lancaster – Clifford J. Rogers 7 A Shattered Circle: Eastern Spanish Fortifications and Their Repair during the “Calamitous Fourteenth Century” – Donald Kagay 8 The Militia of Malta – Theresa M. Vann 9 “Up with Orthodoxy”: In Defense of Vegetian Warfare – John B. Gillingham 10 100,000 Crossbow Bolts for the Crusading King of Aragon – Robert Burns

Volume III 1 A Lying Legacy? A Preliminary Discussion of Images of Antiquity and Altered Reality in Medieval Military History – Richard Abels and Stephen F. Morillo 2 War and Sanctity: Saints’ Lives as Sources for Early Medieval Warfare – John France

The 791 Equine Epidemic and its Impact on Charlemagne’s Army – Carroll Gillmor The Role of the Cavalry in Medieval Warfare – J. F. Verbruggen Sichelgaita of Salerno: Amazon or Trophy Wife? – Valerie Eads Castilian Military Reform under the Reign of Alfonso XI (1312–1350) – Nicolas Agrait 7 Sir Thomas Dagworth in Brittany, 1346–1347: Restellou and La Roche Derrien – Clifford J. Rogers 8 Ferrante d’Este’s Letters as a Source for Military History – Sergio Mantovani 9 Provisions for the Ostend Militia on the Defense, August 1436 – Kelly DeVries 3 4 5 6

Volume IV 1 The Sword of Justice: War and State Formation in Comparative Perspective – Stephen F. Morillo 2 Archery versus Mail: Experimental Archaeology and the Value of Historical Context – Russ Mitchell 3 “Cowardice” and Duty in Anglo-Saxon England – Richard Abels 4 Cowardice and Fear Management: The 1173–1174 Conflict as a Case Study – Steven Isaac 5 Expecting Cowardice: Medieval Battle Tactics Reconsidered – Stephen F. Morillo 6 Naval Tactics at the Battle of Zierikzee (1304) in the Light of Mediterranean Praxis – William Sayers 7 The Military Role of the Magistrates in Holland during the Guelders War – James P. Ward 8 Women in Medieval Armies – J. F. Verbruggen 9 Verbruggen’s “Cavalry” and the Lyon-Thesis – Bernard S. Bachrach 10 Dogs of War in Thirteenth-Century Valencian Garrisons – Robert I. Burns

Volume V 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Literature as Essential Evidence for Understanding Chivalry – Richard W. Kaeuper The Battle of Hattin: A Chronicle of a Defeat Foretold? – Michael Ehrlich Hybrid or Counterpoise? A Study of Transitional Trebuchets – Michael Basista The Struggle between the Nicaean Empire and the Bulgarian State (1254–1256): towards a Revival of Byzantine Military Tactics under Theodore II Laskaris – Nicholas S. Kanellopoulos and Joanne K. Lekea A “Clock-and-Bow” Story: Late Medieval Technology from Monastic Evidence – Mark Dupuy The Strength of Lancastrian Loyalism during the Readeption: Gentry Participation at the Battle of Tewkesbury – Malcolm Mercer Soldiers and Gentlemen: The Rise of the Duel in Renaissance Italy – Stephen Hughes “A Lying Legacy” Revisited: The Abels-Morillo Defense of Discontinuity – Bernard S. Bachrach

Volume VI 1 Cultural Representation and the Practice of War in the Middle Ages – Richard Abels 2 The Brevium Exempla as a Source for Carolingian Warhorses – Carroll Gillmor 3 Infantry and Cavalry in Lombardy (11th–12th Centuries) – Aldo Settia 4 Unintended Consumption: The Interruption of the Fourth Crusade at Venice and its Consequences – Greg Bell 5 Light Cavalry, Heavy Cavalry, Horse Archers, Oh My! What Abstract Definitions Don’t Tell Us About 1205 Adrianople – Russ Mitchell 6 War, Financing in the Late-Medieval Crown of Aragon – Donald Kagay 7 National Reconciliation in France at the end of the Hundred Years War – Christopher Allmand

Volume VII 1 The Military Role of the Order of the Garter – Richard W. Barber 2 The Itineraries of the Black Prince’s Chevauchées of 1355 and 1356: Observations and Interpretations – Peter Hoskins 3 The Chevauchée of John Chandos and Robert Knolles: Early March to Early June, 1369 – Nicolas Savy 4 “A Voyage, or Rather an Expedition, to Portugal”: Edmund of Langley’s Journey to Iberia, June/July 1381 – Douglas Biggs 5 The Battle of Aljubarrota (1385): A Reassessment – João Gouveia Monteiro 6 “Military” Knighthood in the Lancastrian Era: The Case of Sir John Montgomery – Gilbert Bogner 7 Medieval Romances and Military History: Marching Orders in Jean de Bueil’s Le Jouvencel introduit aux armes – Matthieu Chan Tsin 8 Arms and the Art of War: The Ghentenaar and Brugeois Militia in 1477–1479 – J. F. Verbruggen 9 Accounting for Service at War: the Case of Sir James Audley of Heighley – Nicholas Gribit 10 The Black Prince in Gascony and France (1355–1356), According to MS 78 of Corpus Christi College, Oxford – Clifford J. Rogers

Volume VIII 1 People against Mercenaries: The Capuchins in Southern Gaul – John France 2 The Last Italian Expedition of Henry IV: Re-reading the Vita Mathildis of Donizone of Canossa – Valerie Eads 3 Jaime I of Aragon: Child and Master of the Spanish Reconquest – Donald Kagay 4 Numbers in Mongol Warfare – Carl Sverdrup 5 Battlefield Medicine in Wolfram’s Parzival – Jolyon T. Hughes 6 Battle-Seeking, Battle-Avoiding or Perhaps Just Battle-Willing? Applying the Gillingham Paradigm to Enrique II of Castile – Andrew Villalon 7 Outrance and Plaisance – Will McLean

8 Guns and Goddams: Was there a Military Revolution in Lancastrian Normandy 1415–1450? – Anne Curry 9 The Name of the Siege Engine Trebuchet: Etymology and History in Medieval France and Britain – William Sayers

Volume IX 1 The French Offensives of 1404–1407 against Anglo-Gascon Aquitaine – Guilhem Pépin 2 The King’s Welshmen: Welsh Involvement in the Expeditionary Army of 1415 – Adam Chapman 3 Gunners, Aides and Archers: The Personnel of the English Ordnance Companies in Normandy in the Fifteenth Century – Andy King 4 Defense, Honor, and Community: the Military and Social Bonds of the Dukes of Burgundy and the Flemish Shooting Guilds – Laura Crombie 5 The Battle of Edgecote or Banbury (1469) through the Eyes of Contemporary Welsh Poets – Barry Lewis 6 Descriptions of Battles in Fifteenth-Century Urban Chronicles: A Comparison of the Siege of London in May 1471 and the Battle of Grandson, 2 March 1476 – Andreas Remy 7 Urban Espionage and Counterespionage during the Burgundian Wars (1468–1477) – Bastian Walter 8 Urban Militias, Nobles, and Mercenaries: The Organization of the Antwerp Army in the Flemish-Brabantine Revolt of the 1480s – Frederik Buylaert, Jan Van Camp and Bert Verwerft 9 Military Equipment in the Town of Southampton during the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries – Randall Moffett

Volume X 1 The Careers of Justinian’s Generals – David Parnell 2 Early Saxon Frontier Warfare: Henry I, Otto I, and Carolingian Military Institutions – David S. Bachrach and Bernard S. Bachrach 3 War in The Lay of the Cid – Francisco Garcia Fitz 4 The Battle of Salado (1340) Revisited – Nicolas Agrait 5 Chivalry and Military Biography in the Later Middle Ages: The Chronicle of the Good Duke Louis of Bourbon – Steven Muhlberger 6 The Ottoman–Hungarian Campaigns of 1442 – John Jefferson 7 Security and Insecurity, Spies, and Informers in Holland during the Guelders War (1506–1515) – James P. Ward 8 Edward I’s Wars in the Chronicle of Hagnaby Priory – Michael Prestwich

Volume XI 1 Military Games and the Training of the Infantry – Aldo A. Settia 2 The Battle of Civitate: A Plausible Account – Charles D. Stanton

3 The Square “Fighting March” of the Crusaders at the Battle of Ascalon (1099) – Georgios Theotokis 4 How the Crusades Could Have Been Won: King Baldwin II of Jerusalem’s Campaigns against Aleppo (1124–1125) and Damascus (1129) – T. S. Asbridge 5 Saint Catherine’s Day Miracle: The Battle of Montgisard – Michael Ehrlich 6 The Military Effectiveness of Alan Mercenaries in Byzantium, 1301–1306 – Scott Jesse and Anatoly Isaenko 7 Winning and Recalling Honor in Spain: Pro-English Poetry in Celebration of the Battle of Nájera (1367) – Donald J. Kagay and L. J. Andrew Villalon 8 The Wars and the Army of the Duke of Cephalonia Carlo I Tocco (c. 1375–1429) – Savvas Kyriakidis 9 Sir John Radcliffe, K. G. (d. 1441): Miles famossissimus – A. Compton Reeves 10 Defense Schemes of Southampton in the Late Medieval Period, 1300–1500 – Randall Moffett 11 French and English Acceptance of Medieval Gunpowder Weaponry – Kelly DeVries

Volume XII 1 Some Observations Regarding Barbarian Military Demography: Geiseric’s Census of 429 and Its Implications – Bernard S. Bachrach 2 War Words and Battle Spears: The kesja and kesjulag in Old Norse Literature – K. James McMullen 3 The Political and Military Agency of Ecclesiastical Leaders in Anglo-Norman England: 1066–1154 – Craig M. Nakashian 4 Couched Lance and Mounted Shock Combat in the East: The Georgian Experience – Mamuka Tsurtsumia 5 The Battle of Arsur: A Short-Lived Victory – Michael Ehrlich 6 Prelude to Kephissos (1311): An Analysis of the Battle of Apros (1305) – Nikolaos S. Kanellopoulos and Ioanna K. Lekea 7 Horse Restoration (Restaurum equorum) in the Army of Henry of Grosmont, 1345: A Benefit of Military Service in the Hundred Years’ War – Nicholas A. Gribit 8 The Indenture between Edward III and the Black Prince for the Prince’s Expedition to Gascony, 10 July 1355 – Mollie M. Madden 9 Investigating the Socio-Economic Origins of English Archers in the Second Half of the Fourteenth Century – Gary Baker 10 War and the Great Schism: Military Factors Determining Allegiances in Iberia – L. J. Andrew Villalon

Volume XIII 1 Feudalism, Romanticism, and Source Criticism: Writing the Military History of Salian Germany – David S. Bachrach 2 When the Lamb Attacked the Lion: A Danish Attack on England in 1138? – Thomas K. Heebøll-Holm 3 Development of Prefabricated Artillery during the Crusades – Michael S. Fulton 4 Some Notes on Ayyubid and Mamluk Military Terms – Rabei G. Khamisy

5 Helgastaðir, 1220: A Battle of No Significance? – Oren Falk 6 Por la guarda de la mar: Castile and the Struggle for the Sea in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries – Nicolás Agrait 7 The Battle of Hyddgen, 1401: Owain Glyndwr’s Victory Reconsidered – Michael Livingston 8 The Provision of Artillery for the 1428 Expedition to France – Dan Spencer 9 1471: The Year of Three Battles and English Gunpowder Artillery – Devin Fields 10 “Cardinal Sins” and “Cardinal Virtues” of “El Tercer Rey,” Pedro González de Mendoza: The Many Faces of a Warrior Churchman in Late Medieval Europe – L. J. Andrew Villalon 11 Late Medieval Divergences: Comparative Perspectives on Early Gunpowder Warfare in Europe and China – Tonio Andrade

Volume XIV 1 Anglo-Norman Artillery in Narrative Histories, from the Reign of William I to the Minority of Henry III – Michael S. Fulton 2 Imperial Policy and Military Practice in the Plantagenet Dominions, c. 1337–c. 1453 – David Green 3 The Parliament of the Crown of Aragon as Military Financier in the War of the Two Pedros – Donald J. Kagay 4 Chasing the Chimera in Spain: Edmund of Langley in Iberia, 1381/82 – Douglas Biggs 5 Note: A Medieval City under Threat Turns Its Coat, While Hedging Its Bets – Burgos Faces an Invasion in Spring, 1366 – L. J. Andrew Villalon 6 Medieval European Mercenaries in North Africa: The Value of Difference – Michael Lower 7 Medieval Irregular Warfare, c. 1000–1300 – John France 8 Muslim Responses to Western Intervention: A Comparative Study of the Crusades and Post-2003 Iraq – Alex Mallett 9 “New Wars” and Medieval Warfare: Some Terminological Considerations – Jochen G. Schenk 10 Friend or Foe? The Catalan Company as Proxy Actors in the Aegean and Asia Minor Vacuum – Mike Carr.

Volume XV 1 Later Roman Grand Strategy: The Fortification of the urbes of Gaul – Bernard S. Bachrach 2 In Search of Equilibrium: Byzantium and the Northern Barbarians, 400–800 – Leif Inge Ree Petersen 3 Evolving English Strategies during the Viking Wars – Richard Abels 4 Norman Conquests: A Strategy for World Domination? – Matthew Bennett 5 The Papacy and the Political Consolidation of the Catalan Counties, c. 1060–1100: A Case Study in Political Strategy – Luis García-Guijarro Ramos 6 Alfonso VII of León-Castile in Face of the Reformulation of Power in Al-Andalus, 1145–1157: An Essay in Strategic Logic – Manuel Rojas Gabriel

7 The Treaties between the Kings of León and the Almohads within the Leonese Expansion Strategy, 1157–1230 – Maria Dolores García Oliva 8 A Strategy of Total War? Henry of Livonia and the Conquest of Estonia, 1208–1227 – John Gillingham 9 The English Long Bow, War, and Administration – John France

Volume XVI 1 In the Field with Charlemagne, 791 – Carl Hammer 2 The Recruitment of Freemen into the Carolingian Army, or How Far May One Argue from Silence? – Walter Goffart 3 Baybars’ Strategy of War against the Franks – Rabei G. Khamisy 4 Food, Famine and Edward II’s Military Failures – Ilana Krug 5 The Impacts of Warfare on Woodland Exploitation in Late Medieval Normandy (1364-1380): Royal Forests as Military Assets during the Hundred Years’ War – Danny Lake-Giguère 6 Exercises in Arms: the Physical and Mental Combat Training of Men-at-Arms in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries – Pierre Gaite 7 The Skirmish: A Statistical Analysis of Minor Combats during the Hundred Years’ War: 1337-1453 – Ronald W. Braasch 8 Yron & Stele: Chivalric Ethos, Martial Pedagogy, Equipment, and Combat Technique in the Early Fourteenth Century Middle English Version of Guy of Warwick – Brian R. Price 9 Reframing the Conversation on Medieval Military Strategy – John Hosler

CONTENTS ANDREW BOLINGER EHUD GALILI AND AVRAHAM RONEN HELEN J. NICHOLSON

Baktash the Forgotten: The Battle of Tell Bashir (1108) and the Saljuq Civil Wars The External Fortifications of ʿAtlit Castle, the Only Unconquered Crusader Stronghold in the Holy Land Holy Warriors, Worldly War: Military Religious Orders and Secular Conflict

DONALD J. KAGAY

Elionor of Sicily: A Mediterranean Queen’s Two Lives of Family, Administration, Diplomacy, and War

L. J. ANDREW VILLALON

Wives, Mistresses, Lovers, and Daughters: The Fortunes of War for Royal Women in Late Fourteenth Century Castile. OR: A Gender Limitation on Writing History from Chronicles

MICHAEL HARBINSON

FABRIZIO ANSANI KEN MONDSCHEIN AND OLIVIER DUPUIS MICHAEL LIVINGSTON

The Lance in the Fifteenth Century: How French Cavalry Overcame the English Defensive System in the Latter Part of the Hundred Years War Supplying the Army, 1498: The Florentine Campaign in the Pisan Countryside Fencing, Martial Sport, and Urban Culture in Early Modern Germany: The Case of Strasbourg Note: An Army on the March and in Camp – Guillaume Guiart’s Branche des royaus lingnages

Cover: Coll. Bibliothèques municipales de Chambéry, MS13, fo. 105r (circa 1170–1190). The Italian artist who illuminated this copy of Gratian’s Decretum beautifully captured the deadly seriousness of medieval warfare – for townsmen as well as knights. Image used by generous permission of the Bibliothèques municipales de Chambéry.

JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL MILITARY HISTORY  VIII JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL MILITARY HISTORY

The Journal’s hallmark is broad chronological, geographic and thematic coverage of the subject, bearing witness to ‘the range and richness of scholarship on medieval warfare, military institutions, and cultures of conflict that characterises the field’.  HISTORY

XVII

J ournal of

MEDIEVAL MILITARY HISTORY

FRANCE, DEVRIES, ROGERS (editors)

·   XVII · Edited by JOHN FRANCE, KELLY DEVRIES and CLIFFORD J. ROGERS