Download PDF | Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Rory Naismith, Elizabeth Ashman Rowe - Writing Battles New Perspectives on Warfare and Memory in Medieval Europe-Bloomsbury Academic (2020).
279 Pages
Introduction
Medieval battles, model and myth Rory Naismith, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh and Elizabeth Ashman Rowe Battles have long featured prominently in historical consciousness, as moments when the balance of power was seen to have tipped, or when aspects of collective identity were shaped. This volume examines the changing importance of battles in the longue durée of British, Irish and Scandinavian history. It looks back a thousand years, from the vantage point of a group of modern nations that are acutely aware of their military past. The volume was prompted by the slew of commemorations of great conflicts in the 2010s. The year 2014 saw the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn and the millennium of the Battle of Clontarf; 2015 the centenary of Gallipoli, the bicentenary of Waterloo, the 600th anniversary of Agincourt and the millennium of the invasion of England by King Cnut; and 2016 the centenary of the Somme and the Easter Rising, and the millennium of Ashdon/Assandun.
In each of these years a conference was hosted by the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge in which historians of medieval and modern history entered into dialogue on the nature of commemoration and the place of battles in recollection of the past.1 Writing Battles showcases a critically digested selection of material from those conferences, chosen and arranged by the editors to stand alone as a coherent volume, and supplemented with contributions by other scholars. The core of this volume focuses on material from the medieval period, placed alongside snapshots of warfare in more recent times. What emerges from this juxtaposition is the timelessness of warfare as a structuring element in both society and memory. Striking continuities are highlighted in the physical, spiritual and literary commemoration of battle, beginning with how and by whom a battle is named, as Robert Bartlett’s opening chapter explores.
A name accords a battle definition, bestowing upon what Bartlett terms ‘the messy realities of courage and confusion’ a simple label. Yet in reality the contours of any given conflict are difficult to draw, dependent as they are on changing political and cultural assumptions. According a particular battle decisive status is entirely subjective, as noted by Matthew Strickland in his discussion of writing and remembering battle in Anglo-Saxon England. The influence of battles perceived as momentous is debated throughout the volume. Encounters long regarded as ‘key markers in the course of history’, in Strickland’s words, punctuate the chapters, including the battle of Brunanburh in 937 in which King Æthelstan won ‘undying glory by the sword’s edge’, as the title of Strickland’s chapter recalls. The Battle of Ashdon/Assandun in 1016, presented as definitive in contemporary and later sources, was but one of many staging posts on a long and rocky road. It constitutes a focus of Jenny Benham’s analysis of the movement from conflict to peace. Among the most mythologized of battles, Hastings in 1066 (once known as the Battle of Senlac, as Bartlett informs us) looms large, being celebrated in poetry and prose, as well as stonework and tapestry.
Yet that should not obscure its undoubted significance. It marks an important point in Rory Naismith’s account of war and the making of London: interest in that city on the part of the Normans after the battle illustrated how control of London had come to signify control of the kingdom as a whole. A mere three weeks before Hastings, the Battle of Stamford Bridge was fought, in which the king vanquished in the later encounter, Harold II Godwineson, had been victorious. As a case study in writing battles, Stamford Bridge proves instructive, with a plethora of texts of various dates and genres providing different perspectives on this military engagement.
Translation and analysis of the material in question by Naismith, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh and Elizabeth Ashman Rowe enhances readers’ appreciation of the synergies that compound, connected battle accounts can create. The realities of conflict which must have informed such descriptions are difficult to detect. Tony Pollard interrogates how the different stages of medieval battle have been brought to the contemporary screen, often with the help of modern technology, such as pyrotechnics. In the medieval world, there must have been considerable variety in scale of battle and the duration of conflict, as Strickland discusses; differences in battle type are similarly reflected in terminology, as the distinction between cath (a single battle) and cogadh (a more extended encounter) in medieval Irish writing shows. The ideology of warfare is equally elusive. What was considered right and wrong? What were the rules of engagement? These remain to a large extent hidden from view. Values such as heroism, courage and generosity permeate poetic accounts like the Old English composition, The Battle of Maldon, recalling the defeat of Byrhtnoth and his followers against Vikings in 991.
Like their much earlier Brittonic counterparts of the kingdom of Gododdin, whose destruction at the hands of the men of Deira and Bernicia is marked in a series of poetic elegies, Y Gododdin (The Gododdin),2 Byrhtnoth’s men demonstrated ultimate loyalty to their lord, choosing to fight to the death on the battlefield. How much such emotive depictions are imbued with literary licence is impossible to say. Occasionally, those participating in conflict or observing at close quarters provide their own perspective on events. Charlemagne’s grandson, Nithard, records some details of warfare in his chronicle, as Strickland relates, but his comments on the Battle of Fontenoy of 841 in which he himself was involved are disappointingly sparse. Asser is more forthcoming in his account of the military encounters of King Alfred the Great, but his desire to glorify his patron means that his comments are coloured by his partisan approach.
Rowe comments on the extent to which the views of Snorri Sturluson on the conduct of warfare are reflected in his description of the Battle of Stiklestad, fought near Trondheim in Norway in 1030. His emphasis on eyewitness accounts seems farfetched; nonetheless, ‘he paradoxically captures the chaos of the actual battle – fighters in the thick of it do not and cannot see the actual battle, as it unfolds’. The sense of panic expressed in many battle narratives, as well as the frequency of violent death, captured the essence of medieval conflict, even if many of the details may be made up. Fabricated history is in any case revealing, and as fixed nodes in a complex construction of the past, battles embody characteristic features of their age. Pollard explores how medieval battles are translated into modern film in his chapter, while Robert Tombs comments on the vast and diverse popular literature pertaining to the First World War.
There are points of comparison, but also contrast, in how modern authors deal with issues of authenticity, as well as atmosphere. Ní Mhaonaigh, Natalia Petrovskaia and Rowe illustrate some of the myriad ways in which medieval battle narratives were deployed. Writing battles was a means of writing society and politics, as much as military history, as Rowe illustrates, drawing on Scandinavian narratives in which issues of honour are made to complicate warfare among rulers. Religion too was a central concept, as Petrovskaia’s exploration of the influence of the Crusades on battle narratives brings to the fore; the enduring interest of the latter is manifest in modern film, as Pollard notes.
Indeed religion continues to play a key structural role in the experience and memorialization of conflict in modern times, as evident in Tombs’ contribution. While medieval religious commemoration is best known in the context of elites and leaders, however, and almost any fight in the name of Christianity against its enemies was a holy one, the religious element in modern times is somewhat different and has included a highly devolved element, manifested (for example) in tens of thousands of plaques and cenotaphs in British churches. Notwithstanding these different emphases, remembering and writing battles down through the ages underlines the enduring importance of the past for the present. It was ever thus: peace strategies during King Stephen’s reign in the twelfth century inform the depiction of conflict and peace in accounts of the Battle of Ashdon/Assandun written at that time, as Benham relates.
Deliberate recollection of Troy in medieval Irish narratives served to validate contemporary political events. Furthermore, in her analysis of the historiographical notion of translatio imperii, whereby history was conceived of as a linear succession of transfer of empires, Petrovskaia adduces sixteenth-century evidence from South America of its utility, alongside medieval examples, in which the trope is used in parallel though different ways. In the construction of identity, battles were made to play a variety of roles, often being closely tied to the promotion of institutional, royal or national allegiance. This continues today and Pollard highlights how Braveheart in particular has been utilized ‘in conversations about Scottish identity and nationalist politics’. At an earlier period, battles were used to mark specific phases in the origin legends of both Anglo-Saxon and Irish kingdoms, as Strickland and Ní Mhaonaigh discuss. In Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People), they form crucial moments in the advance of Christianity itself.
The malleability of such created memories is evident in Strickland’s account of the very different purposes to which the legend of Hengist and Horsa was put in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and in a tenth-century Welsh poem, Armes Prydein Vawr (The Prophecy of Great Britain). A century or so later, a sense of shared identity was coupled with an actual aversion to battle in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as Strickland also observes. Notwithstanding this, Anglo-Saxon England and London, in particular, owed its unified character to military activity. Naismith delineates how London came into being as a community in arms towards the end of the ninth century, becoming England’s leading centre about one hundred years later at the turn of the new millennium. While peoples may define themselves in relation to specific battles, such encounters may also be made to promote a type of aristocratic identity, as Rowe’s assessment of Scandinavian texts makes clear. Such variety is to be expected in a written culture extending across Latinate Europe and encompassing a time span of considerable duration.
Local colours shine through, notwithstanding the monochromatic tenor of some of the sources and traditions upon which those writing battles drew. Bartlett elucidates the Latin terminology underlying the naming of battles, and Petrovskaia comments on the formulaic nature of medieval chronicling more generally, illustrating it with reference to the Welsh Brut y Tywysogion (The Chronicle of the Princes) and other compilations. But classical rhetorical style was also influential, especially the work of the fifth-century historian, Paulus Orosius. His emphasis on the emotive dimension of historical writing, with its concomitant stress on violence, is likened by Petrovskaia to the sensationalism of modern newspapers, leading in both cases to a partial presentation of supposed facts. Oral sources can only be conjectured, and lists of kings and other casualties, as well as battle catalogues, can but occasionally be glimpsed. But the existence of a multitude of text types brings different perspectives to light.
Commemorative rune-stones set forth a minimum of information, and it must be assumed that the story of the battle to which they allude was more widely known. Rowe contrasts these laconic accounts with Old Norse metrical compositions of considerable complexity, showing how their skilful authors balanced comprehension with artistry. The didactic function of some accounts, including many chronicles and exemplary battle narratives, is distinct from the moral and emotional force of other texts. Such depictions shape the legacy of battles, some of which might leave many kinds of legacy, depending on perspective. The chapters in Writing Battles seek to present a variety of these perspectives, examining how different times and cultures reacted to war, and drawing strength from one another to construct an overarching view of the subject.
In the medieval context which is our primary focus, this often includes retrospective assessment of battles from long ago – sometimes through the imaginative recreation of very distant events, plucked from legends of medieval England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Scandinavia and beyond. In assessing how these and other battles were remembered and recalled in selected periods, we offer food for thought in relation to current conflicts. Writing battles retains a universal hue. This is, in short, a book which offers an invitation to new ways of thinking about conflict and its impact on the collective psyche by turning back to old ways. Writing Battles shows what can be gained if the remit of commemoration is extended back beyond the last two centuries. Fighting and killing have been deplored, glorified and everything in between across the ages, and this volume reminds us of the visceral impact left on those who come after.
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