Kaeuper R.W. - Chivalry and violence in medieval europe (1999)(en)

EPILOGUE

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NEAR the end of A Connecticut Yankee in King ArthurÕs Court, TwainÕs time traveller, backed by a force of only Þfty-two boys in a cave stronghold, confronts the host of twenty-Þve thousand knights that has come to wipe out the source of trouble in Camelot. EfÞcient military technology destroys the knights en masse. Attacking in the darkness, they die in droves on concentric rings of electriÞed fences; others are shot down from platforms mounting electric lights and rapid-Þring Gatling guns; Þnally, all that remain drown when a mountain stream is directed into the great ditch Þlled with the

ßeeing chivalry.

Whatever the complexities of TwainÕs views regarding knighthood and ÔmodernÕ technology by this stage in his own life,1 this horriÞc and unforgettable tableau captures the popular, simplistic explanation of the end of chivalry: knighthood died with its shining armour blackened by gunpowder. The technology of the unheroic killed off the heroes from a prudent distance.2

Of course a contrary popular view, though probably a minority opinion, suspects that despite improved military technology, chivalry was never quite done in, or at least was never so safely interred as to be immune from one revival or another. ÔChivalry is not deadÕ: the old tag is usually said in a voice caught between the mockery and nostalgia we feel for ideas and behaviour that seem so immovably a part of our past. In this view chivalry took a leisurely route to its own quasi-demise in the post-medieval European world, expiring slowly and in such good form that the process recalls the slow and stately end of its great twelfth-century exemplar William Marshal, as told unforgettably by Georges Duby.3 Even an image of death almost operatic in its pace and

1 See Kaplan, Mr. Clemens, which elaborates the linkage between TwainÕs view of technology in this novel and the failure of the typesetter in which he had invested heavily.

2 At the scholarly level, however, debate over the role of technology in late medieval and early modern warfare is anything but simplistic, though the debate is beyond the scope of this book. For an overview, with many citations, see Rogers, ed., The Military Revolution Debate. Evaluation of the debate from a late medieval perspective, is provided by RogersÕs essay in this volume, ÔThe Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years WarÕ, by the introduction of Ayton and Price, eds.,

The Medieval Military Revolution, and by Prestwich, Armies and Warfare. Cf. claims for an even earlier period in Bartlett, ÔTechnique militaireÕ.

3 Duby, Guillaume le MarŽchal, 1Ð23.

When his revolt failed miserably, Essex at Þrst spoke the proud and deÞant language of this culture of honour. It was, as we have already seen, the language of Ganelon in the Song of Roland, going back to the late eleventh or twelfth century, the language of the knight Bertelay in The Story of Merlin, from the thirteenth century.8 Essex justiÞed his degree of autonomous action in the honourable pursuit of a private feud; he noted that even natural law allowed force to repel force, after all. He had done nothing against the queen herself, or against God. He was merely Ôthe lawÕs traitor, and would die for itÕ.9

Yet almost as soon as he was condemned, Essex abandoned the language and culture of honour utterly, and all the way to the scaffold embraced a view which Lacy Baldwin Smith found common to those defeated in attempts to overthrow or severely constrain the Tudor monarchy: he adopted wholehearted submission with a sense that his revolt had been judged and defeated by the will of the Almighty.10 He thus became a late convert to what James calls providentialist religion, a believer in the divine purpose that could be effected as England achieved wholeness under its queen. Honour was hers to distribute, not his to win in showy independence; even those as chivalrous and great-hearted as he could not act as autonomous agents. His only success was posthumous. Later writers portrayed Essex as almost saintly, a victim of the pedantic snares of the law and of jealous enemies, a true chivalric and Protestant hero in the service of his country.

JamesÕs argument is powerful and fascinating. Even without entering into all its implications, students of medieval chivalry may take the Essex revolt of 1601 as a signiÞcant signpost. It points away from ideas whose societal effects we have studied; it points toward basic transformations of those ideas by the early seventeenth century.

Our French incident, taking place a quarter of a century later, shows fascinating similarities. The Bouteville affair of 1627 began with a duel and ended with two French noblemen going to the scaffold.11 Not only did the Comte de Bouteville and his cousin the Comte des Chapelles Þght in violation of the royal prohibition against duelling (a law on the books since 1602), they chose to thumb their nose at such regulation by conducting their Þght in the Place Royale, the largest square in the capital and one with clear royalist associations. This was the twenty-second duel the twenty-eight-year-old Bouteville had fought in defence of his honour, but Þghting in the Place Royale (rather than in some remote alley or rural lane) showed a deliberate deÞance of the laws.

8 Brault, ed., tr., Chanson de Roland, laisse 273; Pickens, tr., Story of Merlin, 339Ð41; Sommer, ed., Vulgate Version, II, 310Ð13.

9 James, ÔAt a CrossroadsÕ, 455. 10 Smith, Treason. 11 Billacois, Le Duel, 247Ð75.

In the ßood of argument and petition that reached Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu on behalf of the young noblemen before their execution, the line of defence taken by their fellow nobles is highly revealing. The two had done nothing against the king or the state, these appeals stated. There had been no fracture of the essential and honourable man-to-man bond uniting king and nobleman. The two duellists had simply violated an edict (a distinction recalling EssexÕs claim that he was merely Ôthe lawÕs traitorÕ, not a traitor to his sovereign). Surely, their essential noble service as warriors ready for the kingÕs service ought to count for more than breaking of such regulations. The effort was unsuccessful. This time the pardon so frequently sought and so regularly obtained was not forthcoming.

After their deaths the two men were highly praised by all (including the royal administration, with one eye on their inßuential families and friends); some even managed to portray them as ideal Christians undergoing a species of martyrdom. During his trial des Chapelles had told his judges that he was willing to shed his blood, if that sacriÞce was necessary for the king to establish his kingdom. Yet he added that he did know that Ôin antiquity [he means the Middle Ages] men had fought and that kings of France had tolerated it up to the presentÕ.12

This trial and the somewhat mystiÞed statement of the condemned des Chapelles will remind us of a trial that took place in Paris three hundred years earlier. In 1323 Jourdain de lÕIsle Jourdain, lord of Casaubon, a notorious violator of the peace, was Þnally brought to justice after he had killed two men under royal safeguard and then murdered the unfortunate royal serjeant sent to arrest him. On his way to the gallows (denied the nobler death by beheading allowed the men of 1627), Jourdain confessed repeatedly that he deserved death for his many misdeeds; but in each case he added, with a puzzlement like that of des Chapelles, his quasi-defence based on old custom: Ôbut it was in warÕ. Though there was no movement to consider Jourdain anything like a martyr, he carried cherished relics on his body as he went to his death, including what he believed to be a piece of the true cross.13

12ÔLedit sieur dit que . . . siÕl faut que le Roy establisse son royaume par le sang, il se sacriÞe. Mais quÕil est vrai que . . . dans lÕantiquitŽ on se battoit, et que cela a durŽ jusques ˆ maintenant et les Roys de France lÕont tolerŽÕ: ibid., 274Ð5.

13Langlois and Lanhers, Confessions et jugements, 37Ð9, print the confession; cf. Cutler, Law of Treason, 46, 144Ð5, and Kicklighter, ÔNobility of English GasconyÕ. Kicklighter notes that his executioners clad Jordain in a robe bearing the papal arms to mock the papal efforts for a pardon.

long and carried enough chivalric glamour that some modern literary treatments of the culture of post-medieval Europe seem almost to assume that this is what chivalry was.

Jousting and the tournament, likewise, though in increasingly stylized form, survived well beyond the Þfteenth century. The monarchs who had once prohibited tournaments or regulated them closely, fearing their show of armed independence and nervous about their potentialities for disorder, became in the end their proud sponsors, having converted tournaments into celebratory ceremonies of regality. ÔThe tournament survived into the second decade of the seventeenth century in a form which the knights of three centuries earlier might still have recognized as their favourite sportÕ, Richard Barber and Juliet Barker note, but they add that on the continent the Thirty Years War (1618Ð48) and the changing attitudes of princes brought an end to the tradition.15

Towards the close of its life, tournament was undoubtedly being transformed not only in degree but in kind; parade and spectacle outweighed combat, which itself gradually became only the mock combat of the ÔcarrouselÕ or the Ôhorse balletÕ. One so-called tournament held at night in the courtyard of the Louvre in 1606 involved Ôpure spectacle, symbolism and just a little real joustingÕ.16

In England, Henry VII and Henry VIII likewise sponsored numerous tournaments, and Queen Elizabeth was honoured by Accession Day Jousts. The association of English kings with tournament lingered on a while longer, in fact, before dying out only in the early years of Charles I.17

Ideas and forms unmistakably recognizable as chivalric thus survived as late as the seventeenth century. But the changes are more important for basic issues of public order. How had essential elements in the formative chivalric fusionÑresponsible for its seemingly endless strengthÑweakened and separated? Meltdown in the chivalric alloy was not sudden; the furnaces had actually been fuelled by the very medieval efforts to constrain and reform chivalry which we have followed throughout this book. The trial of Jourdain de lÕIsle Jourdain noted above, reinforces that point. But as trends already clear in the Middle Ages (such as the growth of state power) continued in the new conditions of early modern Europe (especially the changes in its social hierarchy), chivalry itself was utterly transformed. We can observe this

works on chivalry printed in France before 1600; the list runs to forty-six pages: ÔNostre histoire renouvelŽeÕ, quotation at 175.

15Barber and Barker, Tournaments, 209.

16Ibid, 210.

17Gunn, ÔChivalryÕ; McCoy, Rites of Knighthood; Ferguson, Chivalric Tradition.

transformation in three of the constitutive elements, or fusions of elements, that had created chivalry.18

Prowess and Honour

In the Þrst place, the essential linkage of violence with honour slipped. The value of honour, of course, did not diminish. Who could doubt that belief in honour continued in early modern European society, or that it drew strength from its medieval predecessor? ÔThe Renaissance cult of honour and fameÕ, Malcolm Vale observes, Ôowed more than it was prepared to acknowledge to the medieval cult of chivalry.Õ19 The argument here is, rather, that prowess was no longer so regularly fused to this concept of honour, no longer the universally praised personal means of attaining honour, edged weapons in hand.

State-formation played a key role in this change, probably aided by changes in military technology. Stated in the baldest terms, the state Þnally achieved the working monopoly of licit violence within the realm that had been its distant goal for centuriesÑor at least it came to a new and undoubtedly signiÞcant step on its movement towards that victory.20 Much larger armies, equipped with siege trains of much larger cannon, Þgure prominently in most analyses.21 Historian are, of course, wisely cautious about hurrying noblemen off the stage too precipitously. As Malcolm Vale has noted, Ôthe nobility in England and on the Continent adapted themselves to changes dictated by new

18The fourth key to chivalric strength (suggested in Chapter 10) was the role of chivalry in establishing relationships between the genders. This Epilogue suggests basic changes in the view taken of prowess and in its links with honour, piety, and status. The link between love and prowess, too, must have altered in the post-medieval era; but it would be prudent to leave treatment of such a topic for specialists in the history of gender relationships in early modern Europe.

19Vale, War and Chivalry, 174.

20The classic argument appears in Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, 199Ð270. Even if current scholarship opposes the general thesis of a crisis, and of royalist triumph, the evidence Stone mustered in support of growing royal control of the means of violence seems signiÞcant. Bonney, Political Change, 441, suggests that Ô[t]he nobles were defeated as a political force acting independently of the crown and resorting to the sanction of armed rebellionÕ. In Rebels and Rulers, II, 221, Zagorin, speaking of the princes and grands, argues that Ôif they still possessed substantial social and political power over their inferiors, they had largely lost their ability and will to maintain armed resistance against royal sovereigntyÕ. Hale writes of the ÔcivilizingÕ and ÔdemilitarizingÕ of the Ôarmoured castes of western Europe: War and Society; Schalk suggests (to a medievalist, perhaps too starkly) a move from a medieval view of nobility linked with the function of Þghting to a view, by the late sixteenth century, of nobility as pedigree: From Valor to Pedigree. James argues that the Tudor state monopolized chivalric violence: ÔEnglish PoliticsÕ.

21For the military revolution and state formation in various countries, see Downing, The Military Revolution. Black argues for the importance of the period after 1660 (i.e. beyond the usual terminal date for the military revolution) and for the absolutist state as a cause of military change rather than a consequence: A Military Revolution? On the role of military innovation, see Rogers, ÔMilitary RevolutionÕ; Parker, The Military Revolution; Eltis, The Military Revolution.

techniques of war and military organizationÕ.22 Even when belief in the key role of heavy cavalry in warfare had succumbed to battleÞeld facts, the chivalrous could still happily command units (even infantry units, supplied with Þrearms) in the ever-larger national armies raised to Þght the kingÕs wars. If standing armies were coming into being on the continent from the midÞfteenth century, the crown continued to rely on militant nobles to raise soldiers, put down internal rebellion, and act as military governors.23

Historians likewise recognize that the generous measure of state triumph in warlike violence involves the way people thought as well as the way they waged war. Beyond recruitment and supply, taxes, tactics, and technology, we need to consider the altered self-deÞnition of the nobles, their increasing acceptance of a cluster of ideas about violence and honour.24 The Duc de TrŽmoille in mid-seventeenth-century France copied into his letterbook a description of the Duke of Parma, a famous captain of the previous generation; he notes that the duke was engaged in Ômaking war rather with his wits and speeches than with the force of his armsÕ.25 The nobles were even coming to see chivalry (whether vocation or status) as closely linked to the crown; it meant service in what might almost be termed a Ônational chivalryÕ.26 This was the lesson learned by the Earl of Essex, the Comtes de Bouteville and des Chapelles, as we have seen, only at the very end of their lives. Honour need not be acquired and defended by personal acts of violence; it comes from the sovereign rather than from autonomous displays of prowess.

The very assumptions and actions of men like Bouteville and des Chapelles may, however, seem to deny these changes. From roughly the mid-sixteenth century a veritable cult of duelling stands as a remembrance of things past that is all but immovable in the face of all other changes taking place. Tournament was gone, or as near as mattered, and judicial combat was likewise on its way into memory, but autonomous individuals could still remove any stain to their sacred honour by spilling an opponentÕs blood in the duel, the obvious descendant of these forms. Duelling certainly demonstrates at least a partial

22Vale, War and Chivalry, 162. Hale, War and Society, 94Ð5, similarly argues that Ô[i]t has been suggested that the adoption of unchivalrous gunpowder weapons and the declining importance of cavalry led to a decreasing appetite for military service among the aristocracies of Europe. Neither assumption can be taken seriously.Õ Hale likewise discounts Ôthe case for the suggestion that artillery was an instrument centralizing powerÕ: p. 248.

23Hale, War and Society, 247Ð8; Vale, War and Chivalry, 162Ð3.

24Discussed in Vale, War and Chivalry, 100Ð74; Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, 132Ð72.

25Quoted in Dewald, Aristocratic Experience, 57. Of course, many medieval captains used their wits well, but the shift of emphasis away from prowess is fascinating. Some contemporary observers noted the same phenomenon, but were on the other side. At ElizabethÕs court, the poet Samuel Daniel regretted the lowered ÔvirilitieÕ of an age in which Ômore came to be effected by wit than by the swordÕ and decried Ôall-drowning SovÕraintieÕ. Quoted in McCoy, Rites of Knighthood, 105, 118.

26Keen, Nobility, Knighthood, 167Ð70.

continuance into the early modern era of the old chivalric theme of a defence of honour through violence, and the old chivalric sense of political and even ethical autonomy as well. This survival of the chivalric obsession with honour and the perhaps even heightened assertion of personal independence seemed to the participants not so much an illegal as an extra-legal practice, a statement of their freedom from troublesome restraints in important matters of their own choosing.27

Of course the institutional force of both Church and State formally opposed the duel, and sometimes even took genuine steps to restrain it. The pattern will look familiar to anyone who has studied the arguments and measures directed at other troublesome chivalric practices, such as private war or the early tournament. The sense of a genuine opposition of ideals is obvious, as is the caution that the governors knew must accompany any clash with the deeply held beliefs of those whose support was still essential to successful governance. Royal legislation sometimes explicitly raised the issue of sovereignty and (as we have seen) royal administrations sometimes insisted that spectacular violators suffer the full punishment of the law; but the crown seldom pressed the issue to its logical and rigorous conclusion. As Fran•ois Billacois suggests concisely, ÔDuel is the supreme afÞrmation that aristocracy and monarchy are essentially opposed associates in a coherent political system.Õ28

Yet we must recognize that duelling is not the same social practice as its ancestor, private war. Perhaps the crown was all the more willing to look the other way because duel involved only individuals in private combat; the days of calling out a veritable army of armoured relatives and tenants and going to war, pennants ßying, had come down to a few men with pistols or rapiers in a dark alley or a convenient Þeld. Public order was, of course, still threatened in theory, but was obviously less threatened in fact; the public stance of those in charge could be maintained by growling and occasionally making examples of spectacular offenders.

In fact, insistence on the right to duel may inversely illustrate the degree of success the state was achieving in the separation of prowess and honour. Duelling, from this point of view, represents a reaction to growing royal control over violence on a grander scale. Such a view is Þnely illustrated in the statement of a sixteenth-century French nobleman, appropriately named Guillaume de Chevalier, that duelling had increased among his contemporaries because nobles were doing less Þghting on the battleÞelds as a result of stronger monarchy.29

27See in general Billacois, Le Duel; Kiernan, The Duel; Schalk, From Valor to Pedigree, 162Ð74.

28Billacois, Le Duel, 391.

29Quoted in Schalk, From Valor to Pedigree, 169Ð70. Cf. Vale, War and Chivalry, 165Ð7.