Download PDF | (Cambridge Medieval Textbooks) Christopher Allmand - The Hundred Years War_ England and France at War, c.1300-c.1450-Cambridge University Press (1988).
232 Pages
PREFACE
This book is the product of a way of presenting the subject which has been forming in my mind since I began to teach the subject a good many years ago. I am not the first nor, I suspect, shall I be the last to have found the writing ofa 'general' book more ofa challenge than I had anticipated when I took it on. Only the reader will be able to tell how useful and successful the experiment will have been. The preface is usually the last part of a book to be written. By the time that stage is reached, the writer knows to whom he is indebted.
To the many Liverpool students who, over the years, have stopped me in my tracks by telling me that what seemed clear to me was not so to them, lowe a debt of gratitude. I am grateful, too, to the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press for inviting me to write this book, to Mrs Betty Plummer for typing the text, and to Kay McKechnie for carrying out her work as the Press's subeditor with such efficiency. To an old friend, James Sherborne, lowe a particularly warm word of thanks. A dozen or more years ago he organised a very successful conference at Bristol on the theme ofthis book. When I asked him if he would read my draft, he accepted and completed the work with speed. He saved me from a number of errors of both fact and interpretation, while also making valuable suggestions how to improve the text. None the less, as the person whose name appears on the title page, I accept full responsibility for what is contained in the chapters which follow. Christopher Allmand
INTRODUCTION
There is normally more than one way of writing about a particular historical subject or period. A book with a title such as this one could have concentrated on narrative and analysis ofthe political, military, and diplomatic aspects ofthe Hundred Years War. The task was carried out, in remarkable circumstances, more than forty years ago by a good friend ofEngland, the French historian, Edouard Perroy. With justice, his book is still regarded as the soundest narrative account ofthe war available to English-speaking readers. For all the criticisms which can be levelled against it, the work remains a successful attempt to make sense of the complicated relationship which existed between England and France over a period of more than a century at the end of the Middle Ages. 1 But the demands ofmodern approaches to the teaching ofthe subject, as well as the influence of research, have tended to move the writing of history away from narrative towards that of the study of themes.
The influence of the ' Annales' school of historical writing has been largely to place the study of war in the wider social, economic, and cultural background ofthe societies in which it was fought, to make war part of 'total' history. Such an approach has been characteristic of much of the best historical writing of the last generation or so. In 1962 Piero Pieri addressed a Parisian audience on how he saw military history 'spilling over' into other aspects and specialisms of history, creating chain reactions which would bind them all together. 2 Three years later Dr H. J. Hewitt published his influential book, The organization ofwar under Edward III, 1338-62, in which, rather than describe activity of a narrow, military kind, he wrote about the relatively unglamorous background and preparation needed for war at that time and, indeed, ever since. 3 Others have now followed in placing war in its widest context, not only social and economic, but political, administrative, and legal. Philippe Contamine's long study, Guerre, etat et societe alafin du moyen age. Etudes sur les armees des rois de France, 1337-1494, includes all these elements - and many more. 4 As a book on the history of men who went to war, it takes up Pieri's challenge, and meets it handsomely. One day, perhaps, somebody will attempt to do for English armies what Contamine has done for French ones. In writing this book, it has been my intention to try to see how war, over a period of 150 years or so, affected developments and changes in two of Europe's leading societies, those of France and England.
The purpose of a book of this kind is to distil the essential from modern specialised scholarship and to present the whole in some recognisable form. In this case, much of that scholarship has come out of France. Inevitably, therefore, the English-speaking reader will find that in some sections ofthe book the emphasis is on France and on how that country, in particular, reacted to the war. In other places, the stress is more upon England. In general, however, I have had it in mind to try (but not slavishly) to compare and contrast the effects of war upon England and France, in the beliefthat this approach can provide a thought-provoking approach to the subject. This book begins with a narrative account of the main events and developments of the war. Even so apparently straightforward a task is not carried out without difficulty. The historian may relate what happened; but when it comes to explaining why events occurred as they did, and why decisions were taken as they were, he cannot always fulfil his role as he would wish. He must be ready to speculate, for the sources (in this case the chronicles and records of government which provide him with much of his material) do not always come up to expectation. By comparison with what is available to the student of more modern times, the medievalist's sources are often of very thin quality. There are, happily, notable exceptions to this generalisation. Financial records, for instance, when they survive at all, often do so in large quantities.
This is the case for the English king's financial archives which provide us with much information on the sums collected, how they were spent, and the organisation which lay behind that expenditure. In a word, even from accounts we learn how administration functioned. If France's surviving financial records are not as good as English ones, her legal archives, particularly those of that great central institution, the Parlement of Paris, have left us with a remarkable human record of the effects of war upon society in France in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. By using such evidence the historian can come to terms with some of the everyday reality of the war, and how it touched the lives and outlook of men and women, famous and not so famous, rich and poor, whose experiences are described in the proceedings of civil and criminal cases which have come down to us in some number.
The pleadings of advocates contain much valuable information of an economic and social nature; we can learn much, too, about human motivation which made men go to war. Legal records are unique in giving us an inkling of how people of the age saw the world about them. 5 Important, too, although not always easy to evaluate, is the evidence which we may call literary, not merely the chronicles, but rather the tracts, pamphlets, newsletters and even poetry through which people expressed their ideas and views, as well as their emotions, on contemporary issues and problems, which might be the need for government to be better managed, hope of peace, or the criteria according to which society's military leaders should be chosen. Some of these texts are the work of writers whose literary fame and ability have merited the close attention of scholars of literature. Christine de Pisan and Alain Chartier are two such who also attract the attention of historians for a different reason, namely that they were observers and critics of the world of early fifteenth-century France, both of them having things to say which, they hoped, would turn it into a better world.
It is in their observations and criticisms that the historian has an interest, for they enable him to judge what W'lS important at the time, and how intelligent contemporaries reacted to the difficulties and dilemmas which faced men and women of the age. What the historian is trying to do is not merely to record the events and happenings ofwar, but to study them against the background ofthe world in which the long Anglo-French conflict was fought. We need to know why there was a war, and what factors in the early fourteenth century were influential in encouraging it. Something, then, must be said of how men of that time regarded war, and how commonly-held attitudes may have encouraged them to take an active part in it.
The conflict under way, the significant questions are those which concern its conduct. Far from being unimportant, the study of administration and institutions has much to tell us about the increasing effectiveness of the state and central government in an aspect of government growing more important with every passing year. Not all will necessarily agree with the suggestion that those who fight in wars are historically more important than the wars themselves. War should be studied through those who take part in it, so that the attitudes and human reactions of those involved may be appreciated, and the phenomenon of war may thus come to be better understood.
Much recent research has centred on these broader aspects of war. Few who have read ProfessorJ. F. Verbruggen's The art ofwarfare in western Europe during the Middle Agesfrom the eighth century to 1340 will forget this vivid approach to the subject including, for example, his description of the very human fear experienced by men about to face battle, 6 an emotion also vividly described in the more popular, but no less serious work of John Keegan, The face ofbattle. 7
In these, and other works, the soldier as an individual occupies the centre of the stage. Since wars involve others than those who face battle, that overwhelming majority who may prefer to have nothing at all to do with war, they cannot, and should not, be omitted from any modern consideration of the subject. For the non-combatant was not to be merely the quiet underwriter of his country's military undertakings. He had an active part to play, too, behind the scenes and, particularly in France, he was to be one of the main targets of the enemy's attacks.
Increasingly, historians have come to appreciate his role, and have sought in sources, often of a literary character, to understand how he faced war and reacted to the situations which it created. 8 Finally, war served to bring all members of a society, soldier and civilian, under the umbrella of national consciousness. How that consciousness should be studied, what forms it took, how it expressed itself, are questions which those who study the subject, at whatever period, must be ready to answer. In the late Middle Ages, symbolism was widely used to express a feeling of belonging to a people; likewise institutions, such as monarchy, played an important part in creating a sense of national identity; while the writing of history was deliberately fostered to encourage a feeling which the single word 'roots' will convey to a twentieth-century reader.
Since the quarrel which put the kingdoms of France and England at odds with each other was based upon historical differences, it was only reasonable that history should also have been used both to emphasise the differences between them, and to allow each to show itself how its own history and its own characteristics had developed. By treating his subject as widely as possible, by seeing it in terms of the history of war, rather than as the more narrowly defined military history, the modern student will come to understand it in its many facets and complexities.
In so doing he may come as near as he can ever hope to an understanding of war as people of the late Middle Ages knew it, no easy task even in the most favourable conditions, but one which cannot be attempted with any hope of success without a proper appreciation of the many threads which make up history. Not the least is the role which individuals played in war. Without them, there can be no history
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