Journal of Medieval Military History: Volume III

190 Pages·2005·1.04 MB·English

by  Kelly DeVries

THE JOURNAL OF
Medieval Military
History
Volume III
THE JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL MILITARY HISTORY
Editors
Kelly DeVries
Clifford J. Rogers
ISSN 1477–545X
THE JOURNAL OF
Medieval Military
History
Volume III
Edited by

KELLY DEVRIES
.
CLIFFORD J ROGERS

THE BOYDELL PRESS
© Contributors 2005
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First published 2005
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ISBN 1 84383 171 6
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Contents
ARTICLES
1. A Lying Legacy? A Preliminary Discussion of Images of 1
Antiquity and Altered Reality in Medieval Military History
Richard Abels and Stephen Morillo
2. War and Sanctity: Saints’ Lives as Sources for Early 14
Medieval Warfare
John France
3. The 791 Equine Epidemic and its Impact on Charlemagne’s 23
Army
Carroll Gillmor
4. The Role of the Cavalry in Medieval Warfare 46
J. F. Verbruggen, translated by Kelly DeVries
5. Sichelgaita of Salerno: Amazon or Trophy Wife? 72
Valerie Eads
6. Castilian Military Reform under the Reign of Alfonso XI 88
(1312-50)
Nicolas Agrait
7. Sir Thomas Dagworth in Brittany, 1346–7: Restellou and 127
La Roche Derrien
Clifford Rogers
8. Ferrante d’Este’s Letters as a Source for Military History 155
Sergio Mantovani
NOTE
Provisions for the Ostend Militia on the Defense, August 1436 176
Kelly DeVries

1
A Lying Legacy? A Preliminary Discussion of Images of
Antiquity and Altered Reality in Medieval Military History
Richard Abels and Stephen Morillo
Introduction
In 1990 one of the co-authors of this article, Richard Abels, was asked by
Donald Scragg to contribute a chapter on late tenth- and early eleventh-century
English tactics and strategy to a volume of essays marking the millennium of the
battle of Maldon. He agreed readily, though he was concerned about the paucity
of source materials describing battles. Other than the poem of the battle of Maldon,
he knew only two extended battle narratives for this period that might shed light
on English tactics, John of Worcester’s accounts of Edmund Ironside’s victory
over Cnut at Sherston and his subsequent defeat at Ashingdon in the year 1016.1
To the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s accounts John added telling details. At Sherston,
he tells us, when Edmund
drew up his army according to the terrain and the forces he had, he moved the best soldiers
into the front line, placed the rest of the army in reserve [in subsidiis], and addressing each
man by name, exhorted and entreated them to remember that they strove for country,
children, wives and homes, and with these most inspiring words he fired the soldiers’
spirits. Then he ordered the trumpets to sound, and the “cohorts” [cohortes] to advance
gradually. The enemy army did the same. When they arrived at the place where they could
join battle they rushed together with their hostile standards and with a great shout. They
fought with spear and lance, striving with all their might. Meanwhile, King Edmund
Ironside made his presence felt in fierce hand-to-hand fighting in the front line. He took
thought for everything; he himself fought hard, often smote the enemy; he performed at
once the duties of a hardy soldier and of an able general.2
1 The Chronicle of John of Worcester, vol. 1, ed. R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, trans. Jennifer
Bray and P. McGurk, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1995), pp. 486 and 490 (s.a. 1016).
2 John of Worcester, Chronicle, 2:486–7: Vbi exercitum pro loco et copiis instruit, optimum
quenque in primam aciem subducit, ceterum exercitum in subsidiis locat unumquenque nominas
appellat, hortatur, rogat, ut meminerint se pro patria, pro liberis, pro coniungibus, atque suis
domibus certare, et optimis sermonibus militum animos accendebat, deinde tubicines canere
et cohortes paulatim incedere iubet. Idem facit, hostium exercitus. Vbi eo uentum est ubi ab illis
prelium committi posset, maximo clamore cum infestis signis oc currant, lanceis et gladiis pugna
geritur, maxima ui certatur. Interea Eadmundus Ferreum Latus in prima acie comminus acriter
insta bat, omnia provide bat, multum ipse pugna bat, sepe hostem feri bat, strenui militis et boni
imperatoris officia sumul exequebatur. Italicized passages are from Sallust, Catiline, 59.1–60.4.
2 Richard Abels and Stephen Morillo
John’s description of Ashingdon is similar. Edmund, we are told, “drew up his
battle line with three lines of reserves” [triplicibus subsidiis aciem instruit] and
attacked in that order Cnut’s troops, who had deployed “on level ground.”3
In comparison with the vague accounts in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of these
and other battles, John’s narratives are a treasure trove of detail about prepara-
tions for battle and deployment of troops, derived, Abels then believed, from
either a lost recension of the Chronicle or some other near contemporary source.4
Edmund’s approach to battle, as presented by John, was strikingly similar to that
of the ancient Romans, and the resemblance was made even clearer by John’s
use of classical phrases such as copiis instruit and words like cohortes. After
writing a draft of the article, Abels discovered why. John had lifted his accounts,
almost word for word (though in highly edited form), from, respectively, Sallust’s
Catiline and his Jugurthine War.5 Chagrined, Abels removed his extended analy-
ses of Sherston and Ashingdon, added a discussion of “military organization” to
fill out the article, and hoped his readers would not notice how little there was in it
on battlefield tactics.6 Before he did this, however, he asked our friend and col-
league Professor Bernard S. Bachrach for advice. Bachrach did not see a real prob-
lem. That John had selected these particular passages from Sallust was to him
highly significant, for John undoubtedly had chosen them because he deemed them
to be accurate characterizations of what had actually occurred in Edmund’s battles.
Abels did not agree then nor do we agree now. Rather, we think that all that
John knew about these battles came from his main source, the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, and that he added the details from Sallust to spruce up the narrative
3 John of Worcester, Chronicle, 2:490–1: “triplicibus subsidiis aciem instruit, dein singulas turmas
circumiens, monet atque obtestatur uti memores pristine uirtutis atque uictorie sese regnumque
suum a Danorum auaritia defendant cum iis certamen fore quos antea uicerunt. Intera Canutus
paulatim in equum locum suos deducit . At contra rex Eadmundus aciem sicuti instruxerat
uelociter movet, et repente signo dato Danos inuadit. Italicized words are from Sallust, Jugurtha,
49. 2–50. 3. Cf. also Sallust, Catiline, 59: “paululum commotus, … instructos ordines in locum
aequum deducit.”
4 C. R. Hart argues that the Worcester Chronicle up to the year 1016 was compiled between that
year and c.1020 by the monk Byrhtferth of Ramsey, to whom he attributed the composition of
the later annals, including these battle descriptions. C. R. Hart, “The Early Section of the
Worcester Chronicle,” The Journal of Medieval History 9 (1983), 251–215. More cautiously,
Michael Lapidge, noting the resemblance between the language of the Worcester Chronicle
and Byrhtfeth’s Life of St. Oswald, has suggested that a lost version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
underlies the entries for 958 through 992, and that this chronicle could possibly have been
composed at Ramsey, perhaps even by Byrhteferth. Michael Lapidge, “Byrhtferth and Oswald,”
in St. Oswald of Worcester, eds. N. Brook and C. Cubitt (Leicester, 1996), p. 76. See also
Alfred P. Smyth, The Medieval Life of King Alfred the Great (Basingstoke, Hampshire and
New York, 2002), pp. 69–71. Cf. P. McGurk, “Introduction” to The Chronicle of John of Worces-
ter, 2:lxxix-lxxxi, which rebuts Hart’s case.
5 R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, “The ‘Chronicon ex Chronicis’ of ‘Florence’ of Worcester and
Its Use of Sources,” Anglo-Norman Studies 5 (1983), 185–96, at 193, n. 37; C. R. Hart, “Early
Sections of the Worcester Chronicle,” Journal of Medieval History 9 (1983), pp. 303–4.
6 Richard Abels, “English Tactics, Strategy and Military Organization in the Late Tenth Cen-
tury,” in Donald Scragg, ed., The Battle of Maldon, AD 991 (Oxford, 1991), 143–55. John of
Worcester’s accounts of Sherston and Ashingdon are discussed on p. 153, n. 17.
Images of Antiquity and Altered Reality 3
and to demonstrate his own erudition. To be sure, John’s compression and edit-
ing of the Sallust texts may be significant. Among the details that he chose not to
include in his narrative of the battle of Sherston are Catiline’s decision to drive
away his horses so that his men would have to stand and fight, descriptions of
topography and terrain clearly inappropriate for Sherston, and references to cen-
turions and subordinate commanders on the wings. John also changed Sallust’s
“pila omittunt, gladius res geritur” to “lanceis et gladiis pugna geritur.” Simi-
larly, in his account of the battle of Ashingdon, John edited out Sallust’s descrip-
tion of how the Roman commander Metellus deployed his slingers (funditores)
and archers (sagittarios) between the companies of infantry, and placed his cav-
alry on the wings. These omissions may reflect John’s awareness of differences
between armies of his day, the first decades of the twelfth century, and those
described by Sallust. (In this respect, John’s decision to change Sallust’s de-
scription of soldiers throwing javelins [pila] to soldiers thrusting with lances
[lanceae] is suggestive.) Or John may have simply wished to condense the nar-
ratives. In either case, John probably used Sallust’s Cataline and Jugurtha not
because Edmund Ironside actually commanded and fought like a first century
BC Roman general but to demonstrate his familiarity with a classical authority
then in vogue.7 Bachrach’s interpretation is indeed possible, but strikes us as
inherently less likely.8 It is less likely unless, of course, one begins, as does
Bachrach, with the assumption that “the picture of medieval military history
which is emerging today” is that of “continuity between the ancient and medi-
eval periods.”9 Bachrach’s thesis is founded, in part, upon his careful study and
7 The growing popularity of Sallust is suggested by the rise in the number of copies of extant
manuscripts of his work between the tenth and twelfth centuries: four in the tenth, thirty-three
in the eleventh, and fifty-eight in the twelfth. L.D. Reynolds, ed., Texts and Transmission. A
Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford, 1983), pp. xxvi-xxvii.
8 Some obvious questions suggest themselves regarding Bachrach’s interpretation that John used
Sallust because the description fit what he knew of the battle. Why Sallust? Did John search
through any number of classical sources until he found an appropriately parallel battle? What
other descriptions did he have available? Given that John edited the accounts in Sallust in
ways already noted, why did he not borrow shorter phrases and descriptions from several
sources, surely a technique more likely to produce an accurate description than wholesale
appropriation of a single battle-piece from a single source? All medieval chroniclers’ heads
were full of classical words and short phrases, many of which regularly found their way into
descriptions of warfare – see for example the discussion of Orderic Vitalis below, pp. 10–11
and notes 18–20. But when they had clear and abundant information about a battle, either from
witnessing it or from other eyewitnesses, they had no trouble creating original descriptions in
which classical words and phrases provided some of the bricks of the structure, so to speak,
rather than the entire architecture. See, for example, William of Poitiers’ description of the
Hastings campaign and battle, which positively invited borrowings from Caesar, but whose
account of Hastings is clearly his own: The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, ed. and
trans. R.H.C. Davis and Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford, 1998), hereafter WP; see further discus-
sion below, pp. 5–6 and notes 15–16.
9 Bernard S. Bachrach, “Medieval Military Historiography,” in Michael Bentley, ed., Compan-
ion to Historiography (London, 1997), p. 206. On Charlemagne’s study of Roman military
tactics and strategy, see Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare: Prelude to Empire (Philadel-
phia, 2001), p. 162.