Download PDF | (History of Warfare 55) David Whetham - Just Wars and Moral Victories_ Surprise, deception and the normative framework of European war in the later Middle Ages-Brill (2009).
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INTRODUCTION
Warfare is the Way (Tao) of deception. Th us although [you are] capable, display incapability to them. When committed to employing your forces, feign inactivity. When [your objective] is nearby, make it appear as if distant; when far away, create the illusion of being nearby. The tactics of the Medium D Tank are based on the principles of movement and surprise, its tactical object being to accentuate surprise by movement, not so much through rapidity as by creating unexpected situations. We must never do what the enemy expects us to do; instead, we must mislead him. Th e fi rst extract is from the classic work The Art of War completed at some time during the fourth century BC by the Chinese philosopher Sun-tzu.1
The second, by J.F.C. Fuller, was written during the Great War about a weapon that was still under development—the tank.2 Today, the principles espoused in the extracts are, or at least appear to be, taken for granted by the military organisations around the world. Th e utilisation of surprise and deception are part of the arsenal any competent military leader would attempt to draw from. As these extracts illustrate, this appears to have been true for thousands of years. Today, one would probably be considered irresponsible not to use them if the chance for eff ective employment of them arose. Th e fact that these techniques are used does not mean that such use is completely without reservation, even in today’s world. Some feel that there is a stigma attached to these methods—they do not appear to be “fair” somehow. To give a modern example: Put simply, asymmetric threats or techniques are a version of not “fi ghting fair, ” which can include the use of surprise in all its operational and strategic dimensions and the use of weapons in ways unplanned by the United States.3 Th ere is a certain unease associated with the use of ‘underhand’ tactics.
Using surprise or deception appears unsporting or even cowardly— aft er all, one chooses a victim rather than an adversary in an ambush.4 Th is does not appear to be altogether right somehow and reservations about such methods are not new. For example, qualms can be seen in the writings of Homer, Herodotus and Th ucydides, summed up by Euripides: A brave man thinks it unworthy to kill his enemy by stealth; he meets him face to face … Do not praise the clever spear of one who steals victory.5 Although this may be the case, it is still accepted that ‘unpalatable’ means do have to be adopted sometimes. However, some types of deception are not merely frowned upon, they are actually prohibited according to the laws of war in use today: ‘Dishonourable (treacherous) means, dishonourable expedients, and dishonourable conduct during armed confl ict are forbidden’ .6 Th is states what is known as the ‘principle of chivalry’ and stems directly from the very foundation of the laws of war—the acceptance that ‘the right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited’ . 7 All other conventions, protocols and agreements that seek to moderate armed confl ict come from a recognition of this assumption.
While the laws of war are an attempt to moderate or restrain many diff erent aspects of armed confl ict, central to any chance of them being widely respected is the idea that adherence to them does not impose an intolerable burden upon the parties involved. Th e laws are attempting to regulate a situation where many customary norms and international laws have already broken down and a law of war that prohibited any kind of violence whatsoever would not work for obvious reasons. If the utility of adhering to the laws was completely prejudicial to the conduct of military operations then Cicero’s famous adage would quickly become true—inter arma silent leges (in war the law is silent).8 Rather, the laws of war attempt to limit the ‘chain reaction of negative reciprocity’ towards complete anarchy by installing some barriers setting out certain minimum standards of the conduct of war.9 Concerning the theme of this work, the laws of war that are in force today do not exclude the whole area known as “ruse”.
This area of legitimate deception includes things such as the use of camoufl age, decoys, mock operations and the spreading of misinformation, these all being means intended to mislead an adversary or to induce him to act recklessly: Historically, military deception has proven to be of considerable value in the attainment of national security objectives, and a fundamental consideration in the development and implementation of military strategy and tactics. Deception has been used to enhance, exaggerate, minimize, or distort capabilities and intentions; to mask defi ciencies; and to otherwise cause desired appreciations where conventional military activities and security measures were unable to achieve the desired result.10 Th e employment of certain clandestine measures necessary for obtaining information about the enemy, the enemy’s military operations or their country are also accepted in law.11 While some measures therefore appear acceptable, the treacherous or dishonourable means referred to in the principle of chivalry relate to a type of deception seen as perfi dious. Th is is not allowed under any circumstance.
It is an act or behaviour that is contra fi dem and involves the use of the law of war itself to deceive one’s adversary. It includes cases such as the feigning of an intent to negotiate under a fl ag of truce or surrender, or the feigning of an incapacitating injury with the intent to kill, injure or capture an adversary.12 One of the reasons behind this prohibition is that perfi dy potentially erodes trust in the actual laws of war designed to moderate the excesses of confl ict. In addition to this it makes the return to peace ‘unnecessarily diffi - cult’, by damaging the prospects of any future negotiated settlement.13 Condemnation of this type of treacherous or dishonourable means can be found in the Penitentials of Th eodore, written in the latter half of the seventh century and used, adapted and repeated by many later English and Frankish sources.14 In book 1, paragraphs 6 and 7, Th eodore sets out the situation with regards to manslaughter: One who slays a man by command of his lord shall keep away from the church for 40 days; and one who slays a man in public shall do penance for 40 days … if through anger ye shall do penance for three years; if by accident for a year; if by a potion or any trick seven years.15 It is quite clear from this extract that to kill somebody by stealth or in an underhand manner was considered a very serious matter, especially when contrasted with the punishment for killing in an open or public confl ict. Such a view refl ects that found in Deuteronomy—‘A curse on him who smiteth his neighbour in secret’ .16 Such deeds were contrary to the faith and honour of the military classes because they were ‘essentially acts of treachery and cowardice’ .17
Th e current laws of war are based upon a codifi cation of existing practices and codes, and as such, have been and still are open to revision as time passes. Th e laws on perfi dy can be seen as a vestigial sense of chivalry, demanding a minimum level of fairness in attack and defence, based upon the idea of a mutual respect between antagonists. In this principle there remains some sense of past honour, even if other aspects of chivalry, in particular the notion of a fair and open fi ght, have been undermined by, amongst other things, the use and recognition of irregular forces. Irregular forces avoid direct confrontation and employ asymmetric tactics, forcing states to also adopt alternative methods to counter them: Older rules about the “openness” of the conduct of warfare, the avoidance of stealth or trickery, born of the ideals of chivalry and honour, and the practical and humanitarian need to recognise the adversary, meet … the claims of nationalism and military needs.18 Th e idea of open, “straightforward” war is essential to our conception of chivalry and this idea still informs our opinion and judgement about certain types of behaviour, even though in practice, it is only the charge of perfi dy that remains from this body of rules. For example, in response to events in Iraq, the UK Defence Secretary, John Reid, in February 2006 stated that: We can’t continually have an uneven battlefi eld for our troops, where we are facing an enemy, unconstrained by any legitimacy, any morality, any international convention and at the same time, subject our troops to a level of scrutiny, accountability, media intrusion, questioning and taking every conceivable opportunity to criticise them.19 He was speaking in response to the type of insurgent activity that sought to use the laws of war against those who adhere to it. In basketball this would be called ‘drawing the foul’, where one deliberately positions oneself in such a way that the opposing player cannot avoid initiating an illegal contact, thus conceding a penalty. In war: this tactic involves a conventionally weaker side’s attempt to neutralize the technological and/or numerical advantage of its enemy by shaping the conditions of combat so that the enemy cannot act without violating the rules of jus in bello. 20 Eff ectively, this is a kind of perfi dy. Th e insurgent tactics of deliberately targeting the civilian population while disguising themselves as those very civilians violates international humanitarian law, and seeks to provoke a response from the coalition forces by undermining the normal assumption of non-combatant status which will then be seen to undermine them when they break the very rules they are there to uphold. However, as long as perfi dy is not involved, surprise and deception, while not necessarily options that everyone is comfortable with, are not in any way banned. Commanders are free to employ all the tricks in the book to outwit or overcome their opponents, safe in the knowledge that they will not be judged harshly for employing such underhand tactics. Practicality and military usefulness supposedly over-rule any lingering doubts that come from the moral sphere of reasoning. Camoufl age, night attacks, decoys, feigned retreats, lightning raids, the spreading of false information, ambushes; all are weapons that form the arsenal of competent soldiers. However, what about the period that was supposedly dominated by the code of chivalry from which today’s ‘watered-down’ laws of war evolved? Although the clever use of stratagems involving the use of surprise and/or deception have doubtlessly been employed throughout history, as has been seen above, it is widely believed that there was a period when warfare was conducted in a rather diff erent way. Until fairly recently, the Middle Ages were seen as a unique time in which certain things were simply not done. Warfare conducted in western Christendom fi tted the Achilles model of face-to-face confrontation and the use of open force was contrasted with that of the East where a more Odyssean ethos asserted the superiority of clever strategies, trickery and cunning to outwit opponents in a more indirect manner where possible.21 Deception was simply not something that the knights of medieval Europe practised. Neal Wood contrasts the inhibitions of the period of chivalric warfare with the pragmatism of Machiavelli in the period that immediately followed it: Between medieval foes there was the bond of Christian conduct and gentlemanly behaviour … [so that they] did not make full use of the stratagems that had been a common part of the classical military leader’s repertoire. Conversely, the medieval commander seemed particularly susceptible to the employment of deception and trickery by a ruthless and unchivalrous opponent.22 Th e proud chevaliers were bound in their behaviour by the rigid code of chivalry that meant that honour above all else was the thing for which men fought. Even if they had wished to, the use of eff ective surprise was simply impossible. It was believed that knights fought essentially as individuals so this simply did not allow the level of co-operation that the eff ective use of surprise required. Th us the argument that if surprise happened, it was probably down to pure accident or lack of eff ective reconnaissance rather than design. Th e organisational structure of medieval knighthood clearly had inherent organisational limitations and the individualism at the core of chivalry was an expression of this. Chivalry provided additional restrictions, sometimes distancing its adherents from the requirements of the battlefi eld. Th is explained how knights were so categorically defeated when they were challenged by those who did not respect or adhere to the rules that chivalry dictated. Supposedly, they were simply incapable of adapting and so were swept away by the tides of change. Th is was the view of medieval warfare that, until recently, dominated understanding of the period. It was blatantly wrong and based on a number of false assumptions. Th e people largely responsible for this erroneous understanding were infl uential authors such as Charles Oman and Hans Delbrück. Th ey were writing around the turn of the twentieth century, a period dominated by interpretations of the works of Carl von Clausewitz, “the philosopher of war” .23 Th is led them to see the primary military objective of any campaign as the destruction or overthrow of the enemy’s forces in order to impose one’s will on him. Th is meant an almost exclusive focus on battles because they were how this primary military objective was supposed to be satisfi ed. Th e idea that warfare could be dominated by a diff erent conception of strategy was simply not entertained. Th e result was that other aspects of warfare in the Middle Ages like sieges or raids, while they were acknowledged as present, were then practically ignored as they did not appear to contribute to what was considered important. Th is also had the eff ect of concentrating attention exclusively on knights for it was they who supposedly dominated the battlefi eld. For the knight, courage was the sole requisite for victory so any kind of organisation or planning did not fi t into this simplistic picture. It was taken for granted that ‘the young Frankish noble deemed his military education complete when he could sit on his charger fi rmly and handle a lance and shield with skill’ .24 Knights, the only important type of soldier, fought essentially as individuals and ‘from the start of the battle on, knights were moved only by the instincts of the mass itself ’ .25 Th is fascination with battles meant that Oman and Delbrück both failed to see that they were largely irrelevant to the type of logistical and economic warfare that was actually being conducted. When Oman noted that the twelft h century did not actually see many battles he then explained this by citing the widespread development of fortifi cations that made the defensive supreme and denied the possibility of largescale confrontation.26 Th is whole century and important campaigns such as those of Bertrand du Guesclin against the English in the fourteenth century were therefore practically written off as there was nothing of interest here for Oman or Delbrück. Unfortunately, they were ignoring some important evidence—the unproductive nature of battles was demonstrated by the eventual French victory in the Hundred Years War, even aft er their huge defeats at Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt. It was not necessarily who won the battles that was important, but who controlled the land at the end of the day. Oman saw the guerrilla campaign of Du Guesclin, like the construction of fortifi cations, as essentially negative because it denied the opportunity for decisive confrontation. He thus ignored the fact that it was a very successful period for the French.27 Delbrück, too, saw battle-avoidance as a failure to appreciate open battle’s function as a ‘truly decisive action’ and ignored the successes that came from exactly this strategy.28 Th is ‘failure’ was supposedly down to the general lack of strategic thought in the Middle Ages and the idea that a radically diff erent conception of war was actually being pursued was simply not entertained. Th e strategic culture of Delbrück’s age did not fi t comfortably with the aims of the warfare in this period and it is easy, with hindsight, to see why the period was dismissed as backward in many respects. It is also hardly surprising that the subtler elements of strategic and tactical thought were also ignored. Ruse, surprise, deception or clever tactical or strategic ingenuity simply do not fi t into this picture and it became the accepted view that the art of war in the West was practically nonexistent from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance.29 Th e idea of chivalry itself reinforced this view by being seen as ‘emptyheaded bravery and foolish courtesy to the enemy, completely undermining the necessary cunning of the art of war’ .30 Th is view was challenged in the 1950’s with the publication of two works: Verbruggen’s Art of War in the Middle Ages, and Smail’s Crusading Warfare. 31 Verbruggen’s excellent revisionist account dispelled many of the erroneous beliefs associated with the warfare of the Middle Ages, directly challenging the view that the knights of the Middle Ages were blundering amateurs with no kind of organisation, strategy or even tactics. Under the subtitle ‘Weaknesses of modern military historians in discussing medieval warfare’ he cited a number of authors whose historical methodology was questionable by the standards that were being set for historical research even in the fi ft ies. Oman and Delbrück were amongst those whose views were directly challenged.32 Most critically he noted that the individual nature of combat in many battles had been overemphasised thanks to incorrect reading or misuse of the source materials: In many instances … historians, due to a preconceived notion or plain prejudice, have simply not read certain passages in their source carefully. Th ey have kept the name of the prominent nobleman who fought at the head of his unit, but … they forget the words cum suis, avec sa gent, cum sua acie, with the result that the fi ghting of entire formations is represented as a duel fought out by two champions.33 It was this type of ‘misreading’ that had helped to strengthen Delbrück’s thesis regarding the rudimentary military and political organisation at the time. By demonstrating that military organisation was, in fact, highly developed in the Middle Ages, Verbruggen not only assumed that surprise and deception were used throughout the period, he even gave the topic of surprise its own, brief, sub-heading. He gave examples demonstrating that the practitioners of war in the Middle Ages were clever enough to utilise this powerful weapon in their plans of attack and were well aware of its eff ects. He gave cases of night attacks and ambushes, all treated in much the same way that we would view surprise now—as another weapon in an army’s arsenal.34 Th e whole topic was handled in a very matter-of-fact way. Th e implications of Verbruggen’s examination of the warfare of the period were enormous and this helped force a thorough re-evaluation of the subject as a whole. Of course, in such a groundbreaking work, it was impossible to explore every aspect of the subject and some areas were not covered particularly well. For example, while he noted that the small size of armies and the widespread use of fortifi cations meant that war aims were oft en limited, he did not pursue the implications of this any further. Like Oman, he saw castles and fortifi cations as negative things, ways of avoiding battles rather than as an essential part of a strategy based on control of territory. Smail, on the other hand, was the fi rst amongst the growing number of historians who saw raids and sieges in the context of attritional warfare aimed at undermining the economic base of the enemy and gaining control of the means of producing wealth. First published not long aft er Verbruggen in 1956, Smail too noticed that battles were actually very rare in the Middle Ages but he attributed this to the type of warfare that was being conducted. Fortifi cations were merely a symptom of this rather than a cause because they were what made the control of the land possible. Land was the essential basis of Latin dominion. Th e policy of the Latin rulers centred on its possession, and war, as an instrument of policy, was employed in the interests of territorial expansion or defence.35 Although battles could still be important, the primary military objective was normally the control of fortifi cations because they were the key to controlling the land. It was not to destroy or overthrow the enemy in order to impose one’s will on him. Th is is the approach that most scholars have taken following these two great works. It gradually became taken for granted that the level of organisation and skill involved in medieval warfare was actually very high and the period as a whole saw many advances in military technology. Th e Middle Ages were no longer seen as simply a period of stagnation between the fall of the Roman Empire and the “intellectual awakening” of the Renaissance. Th e new framework of analysis allowed many aspects of warfare to be re-evaluated.36 For instance, the repeated chevauchées that were so common during the confl ict known as the Hundred Years War, could now be seen as having some kind of strategic purpose, rather than being dismissed as mere mounted plundering expeditions. While the acquisition of plunder was an undoubted part of any commander’s plan if he intended to keep his followers contented, by being able to move unchallenged through an area, one could demonstrate one’s opponent’s inability to defend the land and people. Th e literal translation of chevauchée is procession rather than raid as it is oft en translated and this speaks volumes about what its role actually was.37 In a period that had a very positivist conception of rights, if one was unable to defend something, one did not have a right to it.38 Th erefore a chevauchée could be used to, very publicly, call into question the legitimacy of the position of the impotent lord and demonstrate the justice of one’s own cause at the same time. If an army intercepted an invader then a battle might result, but the defeat of an army was merely another means of achieving the actual military aim, which was in this case to weaken the moral and economic base of rivals (the conception of chevauchée will be explored further in Chapter Th ree).39 Apart from rapid raids and chevauchées, it gradually became accepted that the mounted knight, while important, oft en played only a supplementary role to that of the infantry or got off their mounts and became infantry. However, while the opportunities for mounted knights to be tactically decisive during a siege were extremely limited, they were still indispensable for the supplementary role of maintaining lines of communication and patrolling the countryside to defend against (and conduct) raids and skirmishes which formed part of the logistical war to reduce the material resources of rivals.40 It was this kind of campaign that was advocated by the most widely distributed and read ‘manual of warfare’ to be found in the West during the Middle Ages—Vegetius’ Epitome of Military Science. For example, in the fi rst decade of the fi ft eenth century, Christine de Pizan paraphrased Vegetius to instruct that battle should only be joined ‘in a playne feld’ if one has a decisive advantage over one’s enemy and this should be determined aft er carefully comparing the forces and calling a council of war.41 If the enemy are discontented through lack of food or money or if they are not used to hard living, then there should be no hurry to battle, but instead: moost secretly that he can he shal sende hys men in to busshementys for to ouer take hem vnbeware there as they shal passe by … grete proff yt cometh to a captayne of an oost that wysely can sett busshementys.42 Although this is obviously not how “the Age of Chivalry” is oft en portrayed, within the context set out above, surprise and deception clearly had an important role to play. Guerrilla warfare and its associated methods of sudden and unexpected raids and attacks in the least likely places, was an excellent weapon for disrupting the enemy’s economic plans. A chevauchée, such as that conducted by Edward III in 1346, relied upon just the eff ect that Fuller speaks of in the opening quote when he said that one must ‘accentuate surprise by movement, not so much through rapidity as by creating unexpected situations. We must never do what the enemy expects us to do; instead, we must mislead him’ .43 Fitting with this perfectly the English historian (and retired colonel) Alfred Burne noted that Edward refused to allow foreigners to leave English ports ahead of his invasion force and kept his destination secret so that the French would not know where he was to land.44 Th e French historian Perroy claimed that it was this surprise that allowed the English force to take Caen straight away and then travel through Évreux right into the heart of Capetian territory.45 In this respect, both Burne and Perroy pre-empted Verbruggen by allowing a fair degree of sophistication in the military campaigns of the Hundred Years War. Burne noted (with some satisfaction) that secrecy was paramount in the Earl of Derby’s attempt to raise the siege of Auberoche in 1347. Even foraging was forbidden in case it gave away the presence of the troops before their surprise descent upon the superior numbers of unsuspecting besiegers.46 Neither of these examples caused Burne to ‘raise an eyebrow’ and he treated them as if they were simply examples of behaviour that was to be expected, conforming to the general behaviour of the times. Chivalry was simply not a code that interfered with the mechanics of war when it came to situations such as this. What has become know as the Gillingham paradigm47 argues that battles were rare in the Middle Ages precisely because the same eff ect (or better) could be achieved with a chevauchée employing such methods. Th is allowed you to undermine your opponent’s political support, economic base and his moral position through demonstrating his inability to protect his subjects and make yourself rich through plunder at the same time. Th erefore obviously it would be better to avoid battle, follow Vegetius’ advice on avoiding a fair fi ght, and the rewards will follow. With the changes in the way the whole period was portrayed by historians, chivalry came to be seen in brutally pragmatic terms rather than as a “brotherhood of arms” where chivalric honour and duty dictated behaviour. While proving one’s right to resort to violence was obviously important, it became widely accepted that it was the legal phraseology in the rediscovered Roman law rather than the spirit of the just war that actually counted. If a cause could be justifi ed using the correct legal jargon, it helped ensure popular support for military action. Once the Aristotelian political philosophy elucidated in Aquinas’ works became widely accepted and the basis for the independent secular state had been established in his Summa Th eologica, it was only a matter of time before sovereigns were claiming to be acting in the interests of “the common good”, justifying just about any action on the grounds of raison d’état. 48 While the ius ad bellum (the laws governing resort to war) came to be seen in a purely legalistic light, the ius in bello (laws governing behaviour once a confl ict was underway) were also seen to be eroded or discarded. Th e period in which the knight in his armour was practically invulnerable was ending by now thanks to ‘all kinds of ungentlemanly, free-thinking innovations by centralizing monarchs and urban patricians’ .49 So what had happened to the idealism associated with the code of chivalry? While the fact of its actual existence was not seriously challenged, it came to be seen as merely a veneer to cover purely fi nancial interests: beneath the high idealism of chivalric honour, war continues much as before, as cruel, atrocious and thoughtless as ever. Knighthood becomes a kind of guild of warriors, who may put the ordinary soldier and the civilian to the sword, but who rarely kill each other intentionally on the battlefi eld, and who see to it that military enterprises have a suitable fi nancial reward. Th e occasional feat of arms is a diversion from the more serious business of pillage and destruction, and chivalry owes more to the pen than the sword.50 While medieval chroniclers may have tried to cast a ‘golden spell of chivalry’, the reality of Medieval warfare remained an extremely unpleasant business—‘Chivalry was in fact compatible with stark, ruthless slaughter’ .51 Certain aspects of the violence were simply restrained for a time as those who considered themselves as belonging to Christendom’s knighthood generally respected the code relating to the laws of ransom. Th is was thanks to a professional class of fi ghters who successfully employed agreements that limited their potential losses in what was, for the most part, a fi nancial exercise.52 Knights were not unchivalrous for not attempting to limit the eff ects of war on anyone else for ‘as a code, chivalry had next to nothing to do with ordinary people’ .53 Th is, then, was what chivalry was about. Th ere was no idealism or romantic sentiments here, just hard-nosed business sense.54 Within this context, honour can be seen as simply the way of holding together this business relationship. Most disagreements likely to arise during confl ict could be seen as questions of contract, either between men who were fi ghting on the same side or between a victor and his prisoner. As the fi ner points of legal theory were unlikely to appeal to soldiers, the whole system was enforced and maintained largely through the institution of honour (although more drastic measures could be employed in certain circumstances). Th is acted as a type of guarantee, for to lose honour was to expose oneself to the public charge that one did not “play by the rules”55 and those rules were important, arising from the need to have an ‘agreed mode of conduct in recurrent situations’, such as when surrendering a town.56 Infamy meant exclusion from “the game” which had both fi nancial and health implications if one continued to fi ght without the safety net of ransom being off ered.57 Th e laws of war and chivalry, the code of honour which buttressed these laws, therefore came to be seen as essentially pragmatic damagelimitation devices, and ‘one cannot, indeed, help wondering whether the law of arms would have meant anything if it had not been for the fi nancial stakes at issue in battle’ .58 Th e romance of chivalry has now been fi rmly put in its place, but is this really a fair refl ection of how things really were? Can chivalry and the romantic imagery the concept invokes really be dismissed quite so easily? Scholarship since Verbruggen’s masterpiece has largely accepted the relative sophistication of the medieval military machine. It has therefore become taken for granted that surprise and deception were weapons used alongside many others on and off the battlefi eld by men who were well aware of the eff ects of their use. Th e attitude of the medieval warriors has been assumed to be similar to that of today’s— while perfi dy was unacceptable, other forms of deception were perhaps frowned upon but otherwise accepted due to the necessities of the battlefi eld. A cursory examination of some of the source material of the period will appear to agree with this view. For example, Honoré Bouvet’s late- fourteenth century account of the laws of war, better known as Th e Tree of Battles, aft er much moral discussion, reaches the conclusion that: according to God and the scriptures, I may conquer my enemy by craft or fraud without sin, once the war has been ordained and declared and ordered between him and me, and I have given him defi ance.59 Bouvet then cites biblical precedent by giving the example of how God himself commanded Joshua to set an ambush for his enemies.60 However, while this type of deception was to be allowed, one was not to break one’s word, particularly if one’s word was in connection with the laws of war themselves. Th us it would be a ‘condemnable deception’ for one to give one’s promise to meet an enemy for parley and then make him a prisoner. Due to the breaking of faith, this would clearly go against God Himself.61 It would also clearly be against God and reason, for example, for anyone to take a town during a truce ‘for the laws say that once a pledge is given to one’s enemy it must be kept’ .62 Th e case of perfi dy aside, once it became accepted that the practitioners of medieval warfare were in fact highly competent at the type of war that was being conducted through the Middle Ages, then it also became accepted that they could not have failed to use such important tools as deception and surprise. Th is is demonstrated by famous cases such as Edward III’s Crécy campaign, already mentioned above. Here, Edward, a well-respected soldier, used subtlety to gain the upper hand over an opponent who was fooled into believing that the English were within their grasp. Th e situation arose through King Philip of France challenging the English ruler to a duel.63 Rather than immediately replying with the customary defi ance, Edward took some time over it, burning the Parisian suburbs in the meantime.64 Using this as a cover, he had a group spend this time constructing bridges further downstream. When he did fi nally send his (sarcastically worded) reply it was at the end of his fi rst days’ march across the river giving him a considerable head-start on the pursuing French force. Alfred Burne, writing in the 1950’s, appears almost proud of the king’s deception: ‘Th us Edward had completely outwitted Philip’ .65 He sees no problem with this example of deceit in warfare and accepts it as just that, for ‘deceitful it was. One of the maxims of war is to deceive your opponent, but the good cleric of the Abbey of St. Denys would not be conversant with such maxims’.66 Th e ‘good cleric’ of which he speaks was the author of the Grandes Chroniques, which take a rather diff erent view of the king’s behaviour. Th e chronicle stigmatises the King’s conduct due to his apparently calculated deceit that gave Philip a false impression regarding the English force’s whereabouts. Aft er apparently agreeing to give battle Edward instead crossed to the north bank of the Seine, leaving the French king in totally the wrong place and ‘greatly angered’ . As the King of France raced north he told everyone in his path that he had been betrayed: ‘and the king doubted whether otherwise he could have been led back and forth thus. Th e people murmured too, and said that such a way of going and returning would not be without treason’ .67 It may have been that the author was seeking to justify his own king’s behaviour by giving him an excuse for his dallying in the city but the moral language of the writings clearly seeks to place Edward’s actions in the area of one who has used deceit to gain an unfair advantage. Th is is the contradiction between chivalric literature and the ac - tual realities of war which writers such as Maurice Keen and Johan Huizinga noted.68 While prescriptive texts such as Geoff rey de Charny’s Book of Chivalry might preach against the use of ‘excessive subtlety’, the reality was that if subtlety was required, then theory quickly gave way and weapons such as surprise and deception were cer - tainly not to be ignored.69 Th is was borne out by the very example of Geoff rey de Charny himself who attempted to seize Calais from the English, during a truce, by clandestine, subtle and very questionable methods.70 In another example, Keen noted that while the laws of war stressed the importance of unfurling one’s banners and using heralds before a battle, it was also accepted that ‘the exigencies of war’ could make these formalities impossible: ‘A captain who planned to take a town by escalade at night did not send a herald round in the aft ernoon to announce his intentions’ .71 In eff ect, if a situation was going to be “tactically embarrassing”, then Keen believed that in the majority of cases the law or custom was simply put aside. Adherents to the ‘Gillingham paradigm’, mentioned above, suggest that competent practitioners would adopt precisely this type of behaviour, seizing advantage where it could be found, as advocated by Vegetius, rather than engaging in anything that resembled a ‘fair’ fi ght. However, not all historians are quite as eager to ignore the chivalric literature or dismiss the trappings of chivalry as mere “business law”. Perroy, for one, was actually fairly reserved in his attitude towards the use of such tactics and was not ready to claim that resort to ruse was done without second thought. He considered that the behaviour of the English knights at Crécy, and again at Poitiers, was unworthy of their position. Th e use of concealment, ambushes and feints, along with archery aimed at the knights’ mounts broke the rules that governed warfare of the time.72 Pragmatically, he accepted that for Edward to have attempted any other kind of engagement at Crécy, although it may have been more acceptable to his contemporaries, would have been ‘unpardonable folly’ given the position he was in. However, this acceptance of the realities facing the English king did not change his view that it was a clear breach of custom and that Edward, himself a chivalrous knight, recognised the laws of war and ‘was somewhat ashamed’ of his improvised ruses.73 Although he did accept that the laws gave way under the pressures of real combat, Perroy is not alone in having reservations. Other authors who accept the relatively high level of strategic and tactical competence of the practitioners of medieval warfare, are still not totally happy with the supposed use of deception and surprise even though common sense appears to state that they go hand-in-hand. While in one respect they are trying to convince readers that the military organisation of the Middle Ages was actually extremely advanced, in another respect, there are obviously still some reservations about medieval soldiers actually using all the weapons that were at their disposal. For example, Christopher Allmand talks of the Free Companies—mercenaries who lived off the French countryside—developing skills diff erent to ‘more conventional soldiers’ . Th ese men did not work within the same framework as those concerned with national expeditions or confl icts and they did not respect the “traditional” way of waging war as a result. Th ey specialised in mobility and war of surprise where ‘the dawn raid was more eff ective than the siege’ .74 Implicit here is the view that this was unconventional war. Even though the ‘regular’ soldiers of the day were tactically competent, they did not generally fi ght in this way. Th e success of the Free Companies speaks for itself, so this was obviously an eff ective way of conducting war. Why was it the preserve of “irregulars” or mercenaries to fi ght this way? Another author, while happy to concede that ‘most late medieval knights seem to have adopted a … practical attitude when engaged in the more mundane aspects of warfare’ was also convinced that chivalry was not a meaningless veneer, glossed on to accounts of battles aft er the fact: chivalrous notions oft en had a signifi cant eff ect upon the way real battles were fought. Not only individual knights … but commanders … and princes … commonly exposed themselves to unnecessary dangers and sacrifi ced strategic and tactical advantages in order to maintain their heroic reputations or avoid the possibility of appearing less than honourable.75 Th e last author appears to have been considering cases like that involving Henry “the Bastard” before the battle of Najerá where he supposedly gave up an advantageous position against the advice of his captain so that no-one could accuse him of acting unfairly or unchivalrously (he then lost).76 Another example would be the refusal of John Talbot to wear armour in the last battle of the Hundred Years War due to an oath not to appear against the French in arms. Talbot, a successful and highly eff ective soldier who excelled in ‘the tactics of surprise’, appears to have unfurled his banner before having a full appreciation of the strength of the enemy force facing him at Castillon. However, despite this, he chose to continue the attack rather than safely withdrawing in the face of the overwhelming numbers and was killed in the engagement.77 Th is reluctance to accept that advantage would always be sought and then grasped was even demonstrated by Burne who had happily stated that ‘one of the maxims of war is to deceive your opponent’, but then, later, appeared to hold a somewhat diff erent view.78 When he was exploring reasons for why the French neglected to employ a fl ank attack at Crécy, he concluded that they were obstructed by terrain and that the rear of the English force could not be attacked because ‘such things were not done in the pitched battles of the time’. 79 Clearly Burne felt that while certain types of deception could be and were employed, in pitched battles one did not surprise an opponent by making him think you were engaging him in the front while attacking him unexpectedly from the rear. Th is is again curious, as no competent leader of troops in the present era would hesitate to attack an enemy in the fl ank or surprise him in the rear if that were possible. If the practitioners of war in the Middle Ages did not see how eff ective this was, how could they be so advanced? Even if fl ank attacks were employed in the period, and there is much evidence to support the idea that they were, the point here is that the otherwise pragmatic Burne, so fond of his “inherent military probability”, still allows himself to be infl uenced by perceived notions of chivalry.80 Th e whole concept of chivalry as a restraining infl uence on warfare is certainly not wholly dismissed.
Th ere are other areas that do not appear quite straightforward. For example, the French chronicles of the period are highly contemptuous of the way that the Welsh conducted their war against the English. Th e Welsh were the allies of the French at the time of the Glendower uprisings but the few French soldiers that were supplied to aid the rebellion were supposedly disgusted with the surprise attacks and ambushes used against the English—this was not how they thought war should be conducted.81 Th e idea that the chronicles that record this disgust were keen to promote an ideal rather than actually discuss the real brutality of the battlefi eld is compelling if it were not for the fact that in other cases they are happy to list examples that certainly do not glorify chivalry (at least in the way that it is popularly understood). For example, that most famous of chroniclers, Froissart, tells matter-of-factly of how a squire and his master deceived some knights as to their identity in order to make them appear to be allies. Once the deception had been carried out and the two parties were marching together, the knights were taken by surprise and captured.82 When surprise and deception were used, this chronicler obviously did not shy from discussing it and in these particular instances no moral objections appear to have been raised. Yet when King Edward used subtlety on his successful chevauchée in 1346 his behaviour was roundly criticised in the Grandes Chroniques (see above). Th ere appear to be some inconsistencies here— why should this type of behaviour be acceptable on one level and yet not on another, or is it simply a matter of diff erent authors having different views? Another area that appears to pose problems for the idea that medieval commanders were far more profi cient than previously thought is that they appeared very keen to announce their intentions to the enemy. One cannot help wondering, if the concept of surprise was so well understood, why military leaders felt it necessary to send defi ance and attempt to arrange a time and place for hostilities to commence. Considering the time required to marshal a medieval host, why announce one’s intentions in advance when surprise might result in an easier victory? To illustrate this point: before the battle of Neville’s Cross, the Scottish army issued a challenge to battle and then supposedly waited for the English to arrive at the site and deploy themselves. No attempt was made to disrupt this even though the Scots were obviously ready to fi ght long before the English force was properly deployed.83 One cannot imagine a modern commander waiting for his enemy to fi nish their breakfast before attacking! Th e mutual arrangements made before the battle of Verneuil and the pains taken to meet the specifi c terms of the agreement provide another example that seems to defy common sense when so many potential advantages were passed over.84 Froissart also gives the confusing example of Sir Walter Manny’s expedition into France to surprise and capture the town of Mortaigne. As part of the expedition of Edward III, Froissart was adamant that Manny did not ‘chevaucha secretement’ into France to surprise the town until the King of France had received a challenge and defi ance from the English King.85 Again, it appears that surprise was acceptable on one level but not on another as the town was still going to be surprised by the attack, even if King Philip, presumably miles away, was not. Any attempted analysis of the concept of chivalry appears to be confronted with these and many other strange inconsistencies. Th ere is an obvious diff erence between the way that some medieval campaigns were apparently conducted and the way that modern military thinking would see the same situation. It might be considered that once the focus on battles had been abandoned, and the profi ciency of the people involved had been accepted, the military activity of the period made more sense. However, it is clearly not as straightforward as this, thus the problem with applying such concepts as Inherent Military Probability without fi rst appreciating the different conceptual framework in operation at the time. Th is problem demonstrates that there are defi nitely still areas that require some thought and analysis if the military campaigns of the period are to be properly understood. Chivalry is a somewhat all-embracing concept, ‘tonal rather than precise in its implications’86 and even if one attempts to focus on its military function, it still embraced moral, religious, social and legal codes of conduct. It is clearly an enormous, or even ‘impossible’, subject to attempt to try and cover comprehensively.87 Th erefore, this work will “step back a little” from the enormous subject and employ the twin ideas of surprise and deception to provide a methodological tool by which the whole world of medieval warfare can be viewed. An analysis of the relationship between the use of surprise and deception and the conduct of armed confl ict is an excellent way of illuminating the complicated concepts embraced by the term chivalry. As has already been noted above, surprise and deception are widely considered to be opposed to the concept of chivalry although their relationship with both the theory and practice of the military code appears somewhat more complex than this simplistic view allows. Th is work will examine the restraint, or lack of restraint, in the employment of surprise and deception in both the theory and practice of medieval warfare, by looking at the way that the terms are used, the contexts within which they operate and the diff erent attitudes to them that are expressed by diff erent sources. However, before this can be tackled, it is necessary to address the problem of how we are actually to defi ne the terms: what do surprise and deception mean in a linguistic and technical sense? Th is question, as it will quickly become obvious, is not a simple matter as the terms are extremely value-laden. A very good illustration of this is provided by looking at an example from an earlier time. Th e Roman author Valerius Maximus gave the example of Tarquinius’ capture of Gabii. Th is feat was made possible through the eff orts of Tarquinius’ son, Sextus, who infi ltrated the enemy in the guise of a refugee. Th is apparently acceptable form of deception is contrasted with Hannibal’s ‘tricks’ at Cannae which, being carried out by a non-Roman against a Roman army were clearly unfair and detestable.88 Valerius ‘portrays the common Roman bias that trickery against the Romans is base, but trickery by the Romans is prudence’ .89 Specifi c actions can be judged to be either of these depending on the perspective (and allegiance) of the interested party and the language used to describe them will change as a result. Th us it will be necessary to try and reach a working defi nition that minimises the subjective element as far as possible, allowing specifi c examples to be judged clearly as cases of surprise and deception or not, regardless of one’s perspective.90 Th is should in turn allow a qualitative assessment of the behaviour surrounding examples that clearly fi t into our model. While it is conceded that the grey area here may be substantial, this area may also prove to be the most interesting. Th e use of the word “trickery” in the quotation above leads us onto the other question that this chapter will discuss. Th ere are clearly words that are, or have been used as, synonyms for surprise and deception and there are other words that are so inextricably linked to these concepts that they cannot be ignored. It will be necessary to look at these and clarify which terms and defi nitions are going to be employed in this study, either explicitly or implicitly. Only then can this thesis successfully explore the way that these concepts were understood in the Middle Ages. Th e word ‘surprise’ has a number of related meanings, only some of which are relevant here.91 Surprise can mean the act of encountering or discovering someone or something unexpectedly or suddenly by chance. As this is essentially a passive sense of the word and carries the implication of an accidental rather than intentional encounter, it really falls outside of the scope of this study. Although there are surprise meetings that can result in military confrontation, they are only of interest to this work if that confrontation comes about due to the conscious eff orts and considerations of one of the two parties or if an otherwise surprise meeting for both sides is then consciously exploited by one side to the disadvantage of the other. Th e sense of surprise that is most pertinent is when it refers to a conscious attempt to capture or attack (someone) suddenly and without warning. Th e medieval author Christine de Pizan gives a Biblical example of where God commands Joshua to ‘surpyse and ouercome hys enemyes’ using an ambush.92 In Froissart we fi nd an example of a French force attempting to attack an English one at night so that they would be surprised and unable to arm themselves properly.93 Th ese examples clearly fall within the meaning of surprise that this work is focusing on, as is the idea of surprise into, where someone is provoked into an unintended action through a trick etc. Clearly one cannot surprise somebody cautiously and sedately and “suddenly” appears to be a prerequisite of surprise. To deceive is to intentionally mislead either by lying or by failing to correct a false belief, while deception is either: a) the act of deceiving someone or the state of being deceived, or; b) something that deceives such as a trick. Th ere are types of deception where, for example, an enemy is misled through the spreading of false intelligence, or fooled into believing that a particular plan is being implemented when there is no such intention. An example of intentionally misleading someone by lying would be the case of William of Graville who assured the governor of the castle that his gate could be opened without fear and then split his head open with an axe the second the gate was unlocked.94 An example of deception brought about by failing to correct a false belief would be Sir Galahaut de Ribemont concealing his pennant (by which he would be recognised) and also failing to raise his helmet visor so that Sir Reginald de Boullant would continue in his false belief that Galahaut was a friend.95 Th ere are also other types of deception that go further than this and, certainly according to contemporary opinion, appear to undermine the very basis of the minimum standard of conduct in military aff airs. Th at is to say deception that is contra fi dem and involves the use of the law of war itself to deceive one’s adversary.96 A modern example of this that would also be applicable to the medieval period would be the feigning of an intent to negotiate under a fl ag of truce or surrender. Th ere can clearly be a very fi ne line between some types of behaviour that are universally judged as acceptable, acts of war that are strictly speaking permitted (but not necessarily condoned) by the codes or even the spirit of the law, and clear acts of perfi dy. Th e keeping of good faith appears to be one of the key points in distinguishing which category particular acts of war are judged to fall into and this will be a theme that is repeatedly brought up throughout this work. Where this line is thought to be and, therefore, what actions are considered acceptable in the warfare of the late Middle Ages should prove to be extremely enlightening. Th e term stratagem is of relevance to this work where it is employed as a collective term for various types of surprise and particularly deception in a military context. Th e term will be defi ned as: attempts to gain military advantage over an opponent through the employment of acts intended to mislead, cause confusion or to be unexpected so as to catch that opponent in an unprepared or disadvantaged state. 97 I will leave the question of what exactly constitutes a military advantage for the moment as I do not believe that it can easily be reduced to a simple formula. It instead includes tangibles such as the occupation of a specifi c territory or achievement of an objective through to such intangibles as relative morale and psychological states. As such, I do not feel that leaving the exact defi nition slightly open in this way is unwarranted. Th e phenomena of surprise and deception will be analysed in the period broadly covered by what (much) later became known as the Hundred Years War, c.1337–1453.98 Th is period coincides with the formation of the exclusive orders of knighthood like the Order of the Garter in England (following the much celebrated victory of the English at Crécy) and, shortly aft erwards, King John’s Order of the Star in France.99 Th e body of rules that make up chivalry are seen to be institutionalised, to some degree, through this period.100 Th e line drawn between public and private warfare came into sharper focus as the central, royal control of violence became increasingly monopolised. Th e war off ered ‘the catalyst for the increasing formulation and development of such rules of conduct, refl ected by the production of tracts concerned specifi cally with the ethical and juridical aspects of warfare’ .101 At the same time it is widely perceived as the period in which the laws of war were challenged by a number of factors such as the rise of professional mercenaries not interested in the “discipline of chivalry”, increased use of archery and the “popular wars” of the Flemish Communes and the Swiss Cantons.102 It is diffi cult, perhaps impossible, to separate out the moral, legal and metaphysical understanding of the purpose and practice of medieval war. It is therefore a given that there will be some overlap in areas of each chapter because of this. I beg the indulgence of the reader as, without this approach, it would be a matter of presenting everything at once and this, obviously, is not possible. Th erefore, to begin to determine the role, importance and perception of the use of surprise and deception in the warfare of the late Middle Ages, Chapter Two will begin by exploring the evolution of the Just War Tradition up to this point. Once this context has been established, it will analyse the popular work of the Benedictine monk Honoré Bouvet, the Tree of Battles, a vernacular account largely based on the earlier John of Legnano’s Tractatus de bello, de reprisaliis et de duello. Th is was written in the late fourteenth century and, because Bouvet was interested in what was wrong with contemporary chivalry, he gives us examples of how things were being done in an incorrect manner before demonstrating the correct course of action. Th e work came to be considered as an authority on the legal conduct of war and it was quoted alongside other written laws in legal disputes by the end of this period.103 Christine de Pizan based an important part of her Book of Fayttes of Armes and Chyvalrye on Bouvet’s work. Th is popular work was intended for the military education of the Dauphin himself and, when taken as a whole, was intended as a practical guide for the practising knight. Th e section in which Christine employs Bouvet’s help follows his legalistic arguments and clarifi es them for the reader, highlighting certain examples and exploring them further. Both Bouvet and Christine demonstrate an understanding of a strong moral and metaphysical role for warfare. Chapter Th ree will build on the ideas presented in Chapter Two, examining the legal framework that governed the use of violence in the Middle Ages. It will examine the feud, the duel and trial by battle to demonstrate how war was perceived and what its place in society was. Together, these chapters provide a strong foundation on which to build the next stage: what could one actually do in war and how did this relate to the use of surprise and deception? Building on the previous chapter, laws, in theory, refl ect the values of the society within which they are created. If there were what we would now call laws, did they cover cases such as surprise, deceit and related areas such as ambush and ruse de guerre?104 How was the law or code of conduct and its relationship with this kind of behaviour actually perceived by diff erent people? Th e following chapters will determine if there was a diff erence in the perception about what one could and could not do in warfare between scholars, canon and secular lawyers, chroniclers and, perhaps most tellingly of all, those who actually did the fi ghting. Chapter Four moves from the metaphysical and legal to the pragmatic and practical. Th e Epitome of Military Science by Vegetius proved to be one of the most popular texts to survive from antiquity into the Middle Ages and many copies were made. Th e majority of these were in the original Latin, but as with Th e Tree of Battles, the work was also translated into a large number of vernacular languages.105 Vegetius’ work provided an epitomization of Roman authorities on the successful conduct of war and was basically a handbook on how to conduct military operations. It is the changes made to the contents of the various copies to make them more concurrent with medieval belief and experience that are of particular relevance to this work. Aft er seeing what the original has to say on the subject of surprise and deception, the chapter looks at three popular medieval adaptations of the Epitome, beginning with John Trevisa’s 1408 translation made for Th omas, Lord Berkeley. Th e Poem of Knighthood was completed in the closing years of the Hundred Years War and translated the Epitome into verse form. Th e Epitome was also paraphrased extensively (and adapted) in Christine de Pizan’s Book of Fayttes Armes and Chyvalrye. Some of the changes or adaptations are subtle but are also highly illuminating of medieval attitudes. Chapter Five contains an analysis of the works of Geoff roy de Charny who, according to one of his contemporaries, was ‘a knight more skilled in military matters than any other Frenchman, so that his fame was widespread’ .106 His eminently practical works include the Demandes and the Book of Chivalry both written in the mid-fourteenth century. Th e Demandes is of particular interest as it consists of a list of questions addressed to the knights of King John’s Order of the Star, concerned mainly with technical questions regarding how they, as experts in these matters, would interpret various rights and duties. Geoff roy’s pragmatic concerns were for how the actual practice of the rules in operation aff ected him and other knights.107 Th is provides a strongly positivistic approach and each of Charny’s works has some genuine contributions to make for the purposes of this thesis by discussing the type of behaviour that was not only expected of knights, but was also practised by them. Chapter Six turns to that most famous of medieval chroniclers, Jean Froissart. Froissart provided us with one of the most important and detailed accounts of the later Middle Ages and his exposition of chivalric and courtly ideals is peerless. Along with many of the other chronicles that have survived, Froissart’s tends towards normative or pre scriptive accounts. Th is can make many of the chronicles, including Froissart, dubious as an exact historical record. However, it does allow a strong impression of contemporary attitudes. In addition to some historical inaccuracies, the medieval chroniclers also tend to be prejudiced towards those of rank. Again, this can be useful because as they were generally written with a particular audience in mind, they ‘provide insights into the aristocratic mentality which the records can rarely off er’ .108 Although in some respects Froissart’s Chronicles can give a false impression, they do not simply portray an ideal and do not avoid criticism of behaviour when it appears justifi ed. Froissart goes some way towards bridging the gap between the theoretical, prescriptive advice off ered by Bouvet and (in places) Christine de Pizan, and actual medieval practice by utilising the beliefs and shared expectations of the expected audience while narrating historical or relatively contemporary events, thus providing us with illustrated examples. Essentially, Froissart provides a framework for the management of chivalric expectation. Th e structure is intended to move from the more abstract or theoretical to the practical and real world application. In doing so it is hoped that the implications of the belief system that underpins the practice of later medieval warfare will be appreciated, and medieval strategy can be understood within its cultural construct. By necessity, this work cannot cover every possible source of evidence, nor is this an attempt to forensically examine a single aspect, text or event.
All of the major sources referred to in the following chapters deserve their own study on this scale. An analysis of the normative aspects in the work of Froissart on his own would fi ll several volumes. However, I have tried to do each of the major sources justice while accepting that one can only look at part if the idea is to explore the broader context that is the aim of this work. To make the work more accessible to the general military historian, rather than expecting the reader to be able to fl uently read medieval French and Latin, English translations have been provided alongside the original text.109 As such, the approach will probably not satisfy some specialist medieval historians but hopefully the result should be of far more practical use to those interested in shedding some light on medieval strategic thought, its theory and practice. Th rough focusing on surprise and deception in the medieval theory and practice of warfare, this work will provide a window through which to view the whole period. If the accepted laws of war did in fact pragmatically allow deceit and surprise to be employed then what does this say about the way that we view medieval knighthood and the warfare of the Middle Ages? If the laws do not accept the unconditional use of these weapons, when and where were they acceptable and by whom? Did the rules about surprise and deception change depending upon the parties or the situation involved? Can chivalry really be seen as simply a way of regulating business relations, a code of conduct motivated purely by self interest? Th e work will provide insights into the relationship between restraint in medieval warfare and the role of chivalry.
The complicated and, occasionally, seemingly contradictory role played by surprise and deception in the warfare of the Middle Ages has clearly not been satisfactorily explained before. Th is work will argue that the rules governing the use of surprise and deception were not actually applied haphazardly or ignored when the situation demanded it, but that they were simply applied at diff erent levels at diff erent times depending upon the legal and moral context within which they were employed. Th rough taking this approach, chivalric war can be seen for what it is—a framework of understanding or system of rules that allow a result or decision to be reached which is accepted by both sides.
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